brioSphere

What dreams may come...

2009-06-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

Gawd was that the world's Shittiest Movie Ever or what? Robin Williams needs to retire while we still think of him as merely cloying and insipid. Or go back to snorting rails like when he was at least maniacally funny -- but then he'd likely die a tragic death and I only wish that on CERTAIN people. So anyway...

I have a lot of weird, crazy dreams that I should share here more often. This, unfortunately, isn't one of those, but it's still fresh in my mind and I usually forget them in about five minutes so perhaps someone will be entertained (or inspired to give me some profound translation that changes my whole future for the better) but anyway here goes:

Okay. Picture the scene: it's last night; I'm sleeping. Got it? OK, glad you're still with me.

So I'm at some kind of trade show/convention dealio -- you know the ones. Hundreds of booths, mainly low-budget with people who just LOVE their product but are unable to generate much enthusiasm among the non-binary-digit-speaking crowd, and others that spend a fortune on whiz-bang visuals and young, fast-talking speakers and/or eye candy of either gender (but mostly female).

Anyway, so I come upon this group of women, all slickly and impeccably dressed/shod in matching black, all perfectly groomed and beautiful, all slightly different and each one impossibly intriguing to my hopelessly male and chromosome-driven brain. Choreographed like a fine dance company, and each one trained in Jedi Mind Control and exactly how to act and what to say to charm, disarm, and utterly confuse men. Yes, these were the type of women that every halfway intelligent guy wishes were representative of ALL women -- smart, classy, sassy, sexy as hell but nowhere near trashy ('bimbos' don't really work on me) -- and most importantly, each one with a big smile and eye contact that could melt a glacier, with a carefully cultivated but seemingly natural confidence and way of making a man feel like, well, a MAN. Not only did I have an erection, but I was actually TALLER.

So they were bantering with me, and I said something along the lines of "Ha! I see through your transparent attempts to charm me into signing a long-term contract with some company that provides a service I can only begin to understand after I graduate from MIT, a place that doesn't allow my kind within 500 yards of its campus. So where do I sign?"

Not particularly witty OR charming of me by even MY standards -- yet warm, convincing, sincere and APPRECIATIVE laughter erupted from each of the women like 'The Wave' at a ballgame. Perfectly timed, and a perfect combination of sociable and cute and erotic and so out of my league that I was of course unable, like Superman with a FedEx package of chocolate-covered Kryptonite bars, to resist.

Like I was the only man in the whole place, for a few seconds. "Oh, they're good," I thought, wondering how many annoying telemarketer calls from Bangladesh I would be getting once I helplessly, even earnestly, handed over my phone number.

And then it got weird. As soon as they were about to usher me off to some private room to sell me some Timeshare or Obscure Software Doohickey or Penis Enlargement Pills (or, given the usual nature of my dreams, prepare me for slaughter like a ten-point buck in the bed of a '74 Ford F100), some guy in the next booth waved me over. He clutched a bottle of high-end silver Mezcal, and he was pouring shots for each potential customer in a desperate bid to compete with the Jiffy Lube Team From The Island Of Beautiful Women. Oddly, he looked just like me. I mean, exactly. Disheveled hair and everything.

Anyway, so he just looked at me for awhile, saying nothing but leaning at me with the shotglass and a wry grin, so I said "hey man, the tequila is a nice touch, but something is drawing me back to Charlie's Angels -- no hard feelings, eh?" And I started to drift back to the Noir-Clad Sirens who still beckoned from literally meters away.

"Hey," he (or I?) blurted out, "so what are you gonna do with them tonight? I was wondering if maybe I could come along?" This was an odd twist, as I hadn't really thought there were going to be any afterschool specials happening, so I replied, within earshot of The Girls, "First of all, my friend, anything that occurred would need to have a PG rating, since I have a girlfriend who is equally stunning and almost as nice -- I say almost because she knows me, and therefore justifiably rolls her eyes fairly often. She thinks I don't know this, but though she may be sharp as most women of her caliber are, she never had to survive Army Basic Training, and I did. That was a zillion years ago, and the least said about it the better, but some things stay with you."

"Also, I may be gullible but I'm not particularly stupid. These fine women are paid to entice me. No more; no less. They are nice to me because it is their job, and I'm sure that whatever they have planned, you are free to join us, provided that both of us buy something so they can get their commission, remove those gorgeous and expensive and oh-so-uncomfortable shoes, and go home to men much better looking than you or I -- yet somehow still inadequate since, well, they are here and not in, say, St. Tropez."

"And", I added, "if those guys are halfway smart and know a good thing when they've got it, they will NOT ask if she wants a footrub. They will simply do it."

* * *

Damage

2009-05-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

The needle tears a hole
that old familiar sting
tried to kill it all away
but I remember everything.

- Trent Reznor, of course

Shhhhhh....

2009-04-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

I'm hunting wabbits...

* * *

Happy Palm Sunday!

2009-04-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

For those of you unfortunate sinners who don't know the story, this is the day when Our Lord And Savior(TM), The Holy Precious Plastic Baby Dashboard Jeebus, went into Jerusalem to get himself some Ass so he wouldn't have to use his Palm anymore.

Anyway, he had his disciples go round up the best piece of Ass in town for him to ride, and ever since then he's been known as The Prince Of Piece.

This is also, I believe, where Christians got the idea they could come riding an ass and still consider themselves a virgin.

* * *

Gawd I love Pat Condell

2009-03-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Well-said, sir!

* * *

Finally somebody says it.

2009-03-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Read this.

I just happened to stumble onto this brilliant piece. Read it and weep, or nod your head -- or get pissed off if you're one of the remaining clueless propaganda-suckers. Either way.

I happened to comment on it there somewhere, and here's what I had to say:

FINALLY somebody says what I've been thinking all these years.

Throughout the '08 Prez campaign my ears were bleeding from hearing 'John McCain: War Hero' every five minutes. OK, so let me get this straight: Vietnam was a misguided fiasco at best, an immoral mass murder at worst, and here you have a guy who could barely keep a plane in the air during training, who flies a zillion feet over jungles and rice paddies and stone age villages indiscriminately and amorally carpet-bombing whatever happens to be alive down there and, since he's an incompetent pilot, gets shot down and captured. So, um, he's a HERO?

It is often said that history is written by the victors, so a similar Luftwaffe pilot who murdered a hundred London children before getting downed and captured would have been called a hero if the Nazis won WW2, right?

Except that we didn't 'win' Vietnam; we simply gave up on a very lost and very questionable cause -- so among those Americans who can't accept that we screwed up, they live in denial and create their own version of history, an alternate reality in which a murderous loser like McCain gets to play the 'hero'.

Until this sort of glorification of violence is uprooted from our national ethos (the way it was forcibly in Germany), we will never be anything but glorified self-congratulatory Prozac-addled Vikings.

Let's hope it doesn't have to happen the way it happened to Germany.

* * *

Counting down the days...

2009-01-17T15:19:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm fairly settled into my new home in chilly, rainy Seattle (well, Greater Seattle, anyway -- I'm in the 'burbs and that's the biggest adjustment for this city boy); very glad to be with my beautiful girlz but missing my friends back home.

Saw bits of Bush's 'farewell address' that I prefer to call the 'good riddance asshole obstinately clueless concession speech'. Didn't bother seeing the whole thing, as I'm so sick of looking at that bastard's smirking face that I really don't ever want to see it again unless it's blinking beady-eyed at a war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

Lest I sound as disgusted as I've been for a long time now, make no mistake -- I'm celebrating. Less than three more days and the Neocon Reign of Terror will be OVER. Yes, they leave behind smoldering wreckage from which we can only hope in desperation to slowly recover, if we somehow manage to dig out of the deep multifaceted crater that 8 years of unbridled destruction have wrought upon the world at large and our place in it. Not to mention the tattered economy, the blame for which can easily be spread around in a fairly bipartisan manner, but nobody can convince me that a gazillion-dollar war and rampant robber-baronism didn't break the proverbial camel's back -- the direct cause-and-effect of which can be laid squarely at the feet of the BushCheney Korporate brownshirts.

But enough negativity (did you ever think you'd hear that from the likes of moi?); Tuesday is Morning in America (to steal one of the few good lines from that overwrought and mistakenly idolized bastard Reagan). Oops -- guess that was still a little negative. Sorry. Anyway, Obama's historic transition is underway and I feel like I've waited a thousand years in the tenth circle of Hell for this moment; the man is a year older than me and ten times the man I will ever be -- which is what I look for in a leader, as opposed to the morons who want a president they'd have a beer with (and they got one, didn't they? Worked out well, didn't it?). Am I one of the Disciples? The 'Obamabots' so derisively labeled by desperate right-wing fascists as the hour of their demise approached? Nobody who knows me would say so. I'm a born skeptic, cynical to the core, and I know that any politician who could actually make it to office in our corrupt system is bound to break my heart by definition.

Still, after 8 years of being revolted and ashamed of being an American; of waking every day expecting more of the same evil bullshit and media complicity in the worst and most devastating Ponzi scheme this once-great nation had ever seen, I am for the moment basking in the promise of the new; the possibilities of some sort of homecoming. It's been a long time; exiled in my own country by a so-called 'uniter' who thought 51% constituted a mandate, even assuming he'd won it fair and square (which he didn't). Exiled by an absurd winner-take-all system that marginalizes half the country as 'outsiders' and has devolved to permit tyrannical authority never granted in the Founding Documents.

For the first time in many years (many more than 8), we have a gifted orator and statesman who has won the admiration and respect of much of the world before even taking office. An educated writer with a story that is international in scope and understanding yet uniquely American in its poignancy and staggering success against considerable odds. A man who believes in Science, logic, pragmatism and diplomacy; who doesn't dismiss or oversimplify the complex geopolitical realities that will take more than the sublimely short-sighted and morally bankrupt brute force we've been using in vain to address.

In short: for the first time in a long time, we have a President.

Mister Obama -- soon to be President Obama -- I salute you, sir. No one man may be capable of carrying the burdens you inherit, and I don't expect you to be faster than a speeding bullet or able to leap tall bureaucracies in a single bound. You will no doubt have to compromise a thousand times to get things done, even if those things are but a symbolic shadow of what you intended. I know how politics works. But if you are half the leader you seemed when I voted for you, you will still be ten times the leader your predecessor could even aspire to be. And despite my long-ago abandoned belief in the system; despite my waning belief in even the possibility of solving the massive crises that have enveloped the world -- despite all my cynicism and disbelief in general, Sir, I believe in you.

* * *

Off to the Great NorthWet

2008-11-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, at the risk of sounding like a pretentious fuck, it's the end of an era. I've lived and worked in my beautiful, beloved (warts and all) San Francisco for 20+ years, and I have many old friends there that have become dear family. I will miss my city, my neighborhood, the craziness, all the cool shit to do, and the fact that I knew the town and the bus routes like the back of my hand, and knew enough locals to get a good table at the good restaurants without reservations. SF will always have a place in my heart, and so will the many people there who are now a part of me.

But I just got the fuck outta Dodge.

The economy is spiraling downward everywhere, and San Francisco is no place to be poor. The jobs are drying up again, and I've seen this shit before. Last time I opted to stay, and it nearly bankrupted me before I managed to recover, holding on by the skin of my eyelids. But I'm not getting any younger, and while nowhere is great right now from a fiscal perspective, I thought it wise this time to get while the gettin' was good.

But I DID have another reason; in fact, it was the primary one.

A zillion years ago, when I was just a pup in high school, I had the biggest crush on a shy but mesmerizingly beautiful girl who was 2 grades behind me and had strict parents that wouldn't even let her be SEEN with a boy. So all we had was lunch together, every day for my senior year.

Upon graduation, I went off to college and we lost touch, since there was no email back then and she was, as mentioned, not allowed to have contact with guys -- phone, letters, or otherwise. I knew a lot of girls in those days who had similar situations, but they were as rebellious as me and I snuck more than a few of them out their bedroom windows to do the things that teenagers do. But not her; she was one of those 'good' girls, and so we faded from each others' lives. But I never forgot about her.

I got married young, and so did she. She had a child -- an adorable, precocious little girl who might just be the coolest kid I know (my niece would have made the number one spot, but she'll be nineteen in a couple weeks so technically she's not a 'kid' anymore). But I was unaware of any of this, for I had moved on with my life, moving to California and settling into married 'bliss' for years before one day finding myself alone again.

Fast-forward to just about seven years ago, and I reconnected with a few friends from teenybopperhood on classmates.com, and one of them eventually led to Her. She still lived just outside of Seattle, had gotten divorced at around the same time as me, and she still had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. We met in person and I was smitten all over again, pretty much instantly. And amazingly enough, it was mutual.

We've spent the last 2 years having a long-distance relationship, flying back and forth, getting to know each other again (beyond the initial attraction), and trying to figure out that if it came down to relocating, which one of us would be the one to take the leap.

I was hesitant to leave SF for the wet and chilly Northwest again, having been there and done that -- but she DID have a well-adjusted teenage daughter and 20 years at a steady job. So all along I was the more likely candidate, since my work came mostly from freelance sources and I could technically do it from anywhere. But I dragged my feet, because the Other Woman (San Francisco) seduced me anew every morning, even while the fog obscured my breathtaking view of Twin Peaks. That city gets ahold of your soul and doesn't let go.

At this point all I really needed was a reality check -- after all, how could I let the Love of My Life potentially slip away from me while I basked in my unsustainable and rather ridiculous Peter Pan lifestyle? I'm no spring chicken and getting gamier every day, and this girl could have her pick of the litter and yet she chose ME -- so what the hell was I dragging my feet for?

So I guess I can thank the shitty economy for slapping me upside the head and making it painfully clear that, while I barely survived the dotcom crash, THIS one was destined to kick my ass and snap off its foot in it. Thus giving me the aforementioned reality check and nullifying the strange resistance I had been feeling.

So while I gotta be honest and say that economic factors made the final decision as to WHO would do the relocating, I hope it doesn't take all the romance out of it. After all, we were destined to be together one way or another. I just had to pull my head out of my ass -- and the cold boot of recession popped it right outta there like a sommelier with a corkscrew.

So...my last couple weeks were spent packing my voluminous crap and trudging it all with my two ornery Persian cats to just outside of Seattle, where the rent is, by SF standards, cheap, and the weather is...crappy. But I'm with my girls, and that makes it alright.

I just hope they can stand living with me. Gawd only knows I can barely stand myself sometimes...

* * *

Ode to Miss Wasilla

2008-11-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

Oh, Sarah Palin
You trashed your party
Like Van Halen
With a case of Bacardi
In a Holiday Inn in Wasilla
Like a pitbull in a china shop
Like an African Gorilla
wearing lipstick and a thousand-dollar suit
throwing shit and thinking it's cute
With a wink and a grin
you did yourself in
and took down your running mate
to boot.

Oh Sarah
Words just can't describe
what you did
You interviewed like your
Down Syndrome kid
And the more your mouth was open,
the more you had us hopin'
you'd keep saying more;
You showed us
what satire's for
And, doggone it,
they can say that I'm mean,
label me obscene,
call me contrarian...
But if there's one thing I know,
You betcha it's so
that you've succeeded in destroying
the idea of men enjoying
the fantasy of the sexy
librarian.

* * *

GIMME AN O!

2008-11-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

WE DID IT!
WE EFFIN' DID IT!

Not only do we finally have an actual President instead of an evil babbling idiot; not only does the rest of the world now realize we aren't as completely retarded as a nation as they thought we were, but now I don't have to move to Canada or kill myself!

As everyone knows, I'm far from a religious man, but HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!

Me so very happy right now, I could French kiss a pig...

* * *

Denial

2008-10-27T23:57:00.001-07:00

Recently some genius in a lumbering sport-futility vehicle backed over the hood of my car. While I was in it, minding my own business, waiting for the behemoth in front of me to move forward – not, um, backward. I assumed I was just waiting for the light to change -- I say 'assumed' because I couldn't SEE the light; all I could see was this massive waste of sheet metal in front of me.

Obviously the guy didn't see me back there either. From his absurdly elevated perch high above the clouds, he no doubt had a lovely panoramic view of much of the city, but alas, he was unable to see the small economy car waiting patiently behind him. Despite sideview mirrors rivaling the Hubble Telescope, his monstrous machine simply didn't allow him to observe his environment in a way that was not dangerous to the rest of us on the street. Or maybe he just didn't look.

I just sat there, incredulously, honking my horn but unable to get his attention, and wondering if he was going to just back right over the top of me like it was some Oklahoma City Monster Truck Rally. In the back of my mind I could hear SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! BE THERE! WATCH THE PUNY LITTLE MAZDA DRIVER GET SMASHED BY THE FURY OF BIIIIGFOOT! Did I mention that I live in San Francisco, work from home and mostly take public transit — in other words, I drive my car once in a blue moon, and this guy randomly decides this is his moment to back over the top of someone. Wunderbar. I couldn't figure out just WHY the oblivious fool was suddenly BACKING UP in the middle of traffic. It made no sense to me at all, but then again, at that moment I was mostly just wondering if I was about to die.

Luckily, at some point he figured out that something didn't seem right, and he stopped. Halfway over my hood. I looked up and saw, inches from my windshield, something beautifully and perfectly ironic, almost like it was a sign from some supernatural prankster. Right there on the back of the SUV was one of those plastic silver Christian fish symbol thingies, and right next to it was the shiny chrome emblem of the vehicle – and I could swear it said, in big bold macho letters, D E N I A L.

As the panic receded and my eyes began to refocus, it was clear that what it really said was 'DENALI', a General Motors monstrosity named after a National Park in Alaska. They like to name those things after places in nature that they will never actually see, since mostly they're used as urban assault vehicles – which could be considered rather ironic all by itself. Perhaps I was in shock, but the juxtaposition of the fish and the too-easily transposed name of the massive metal beast put me in a state of transcendent jocularity. I momentarily pictured myself on YouTube, the camera view mirroring mine as the two Symbols Of Utter Denial presented themselves defiantly before my awestruck eyeballs.

By now I was really just grateful that the guy had actually stopped short of crushing my head, so I got out calmly and asked him if he would mind giving me his insurance information. Actually, he was more shaken up than I was, and when I then asked why on Earth he was going in reverse instead of forward like everyone else, all he could stammer out was "I-I-I'm sorry; I-I-I d-d-didn't see you."

I took down his info, convinced I was dreaming the whole bizarre event, and he was fully cooperative (and rather distraught at the wreckage he'd made of my little car), so I really couldn't get all that mad. The poor guy had likely just watched too many commercials and saw himself scaling windswept mountains in his indestructible all-terrain Galactic Cruiser, only to end up with way more vehicle than he was capable of handling for his daily commute to some shitty cubicle. Denial, I chuckled to myself, wondering if my car would be considered fixable or totaled.

And then he said it.

He really shouldn't oughtta have said it, especially not to ME of all people (but of course he couldn't have known that), but he said it nevertheless. The one thing I just can't bear to hear, ever.

He said, "Praise the Lord that nobody was hurt." Yeah, that's what he said. No doubt he thought it was a nice thing to say. Anybody else might have agreed with him, or at least just let it go. But, you see, my mind went right back to that stupid chrome fish, right next to the word DENIAL, and I just couldn't let him get away with it.

"Praise the Lord?" I said, "PRAISE THE FUCKING LORD?"

I had so much to say, so many things to yell in his face, but none of them were coming into my mind. The absurdity of it all was clouding my frontal lobes and all I could do was shout, over and over, right in his face, "PRAISE THE LORD, OLD MAN? PRAISE THE GODDAMNED LORD?"

Nervously he climbed back into his truck and clumsily drove it down off my smashed hood, and all the while I was standing there, throwing random stuff at him (pieces of my headlights, some kid's discarded sippy cup, a pocketful of small change), screaming louder and louder, "PRAISE THE LORD? PRAISE THE LORD, YOU STUPID IGNORANT FUCK?" I'm pretty sure I scared the shit outta the guy. I think he thought I was nuts. Maybe he was right.

All I can say is, at that moment I came face-to-face with everything that is wrong with this wacked culture we live in. The guy was probably sixty years old, driving a ridiculous environmental disaster of a vehicle (and driving it inexplicably backwards). He came this close to turning me into the meat in a steel sandwich, and instead of having an epiphany that maybe he's doing it all wrong; maybe while driving his DENALI he's actually living in DENIAL — instead of anything sensible like that, he chalks it all up to Divine Intervention and goes on his clueless merry way.

OK; sure — I had his license number, his contact info, his insurance policy number. I probably should have called the cops but they likely wouldn't have shown up anyway, and in all likelihood I could count on Mister Christian to just accept the blame that was undeniably his, and the insurance companies would hash it out and fix my car.

But I just couldn't get past the surreal absurdity of it all.

Deep denial is a powerful force. It operates in the realm of Religion, obviously, and it also has its hand in the multilayered nachos of greed, waste, and entitlement. All of which seem to have become American values, replacing the more sustainable ones I remember being taught as a kid (thrift, trustworthiness, pragmatism, etc).

Denial plays its role in Nationalism/Patriotism just as fiercely. Hence the whole Bush=America nonsense, in which criticizing an administration means you hate America. Any moron can see that criticizing a particular administration is in essence saying “hey man, you are not acting like American government was set up to act” and is therefore a powerful display of patriotism (these days often risking oneself to do so), while blind subservience to whatever agenda the powermongers set is the opposite of patriotism.

Of course, in the secular realm at least we have a Constitution to fall back on, one that was written by men we are familiar with, whose other writings are available, all in relatively plain English that is only occasionally ambiguous due to the unforeseen changes taken place since it was penned. No one claims it was handed down by some mysterious supernatural force, and it is a living document, open to being changed as necessary. Surely there are, as there is with anything else, differences over differing interpretations of those gray areas, but at heart it is a document we can stand behind with reason rather than blind faith. (lately this doesn’t seem to matter much, as the status quo renders the Constitution ‘just a piece of paper’, but my hope is that it will still serve as a grounding to return to when the usurpers are defeated — or else we will have simply proven to have been a failed — and rather short-lived, by historical standards — experiment).

The religious crowd, however, relies on a cobbled-together and endlessly edited (in secret by Church scribes with agendas) collection of medieval and prehistoric tales that have mysterious origins and often contradict each other, with no way to verify any of it other than to refer back to the circular reasoning that somehow it’s from ‘God’ because it says it is. On top of that, each of a zillion sects has its own set of interpretations, many in complete opposition to the others.

So...praise the Lord that the ol' Clueless Christian elderly tank driver didn't kill me while he was busy being self-absorbed and self-centered. Thank God that He was watching over me when one of His many moronic followers went about his usual business of acting like he's the only person on the planet. Hallelujah that I got to be a metaphor for the senseless destruction wrought by those who needn't take any responsibility for the stupid things they do, because God is on their side and whatever they do must surely be His will. The Lord works in mysterious ways, doggone it. You betcha.

* * *

The Last Daze

2008-10-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

The bizarre paradox of fundamentalist Christians eagerly awaiting their ’salvation’ via ‘Rapture’ and yet fiercely resisting perceived 'signs' of impending ‘One World Government’ and crap like that, is endlessly both horrifying and deeply fascinating.

I recently received some email drivel passed around amongst the fundies (I still know a few, and they send me stuff in the hopes of ’saving’ me), and in one particular round of religiospam, I found the following:

1) An email claiming that Barack Obama — besides being a ‘Muslim’ and a ‘Marxist’ and whatever other bullshit GOP smears that the sheeple blindly buy — is the notorious ‘Antichrist’ as supposedly prophesied in the Bible.

2) Another email, this one about Sarah Palin being the person who will lead the way toward confronting our ‘Ultimate Foes’ (it used to be Communists; now it’s Muslims) at the final battle which will bring about the Second Coming of Jesus. Obviously, this is supposed to be a GOOD thing.

Now, granted, these emails were probably not originated by the same person or group. But given the general fundamentalist obsession with ‘prophecy’ and all that, I think the two emails are related, and revealing.

So we can talk all day about the ’scriptures’ and ‘prophecies’ and all that absurd bullshit all day, but what I’d rather focus on here is the odd little conundrum that fundies evidently find themselves in with their ‘End Times’ obsessions.

Because technically, if the Bible actually says that an ‘Antichrist’ will rule the world, and THAT will bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming, blah blah blah — and if, absurdly, Barack Obama IS that guy, then by their own beliefs, isn’t it inevitable (and, actually, a benefit to them) that he wins the election? What are they afraid of, if he’s fulfilling the prophecies? Jesus will defeat him (and the rest of us infidels) in the end, and everybody will get golden halos and sacramental-blood-flavored lollipops, right? So, really, they SHOULD vote for him, in order to start the festivities, right?

OK, so on to Sarah Palin. As stated, the email about HER was basically saying the same thing as the one about Obama — that this person will bring about the series of events that will lead to The End Of The World, and of course we all know that to fundies, the End Of The World is a GOOD thing. I think that’s why they’re called ‘fundies’, as in FUN+DIE.

Paradoxically, however, Palin isn’t called ‘the Antichrist’; rather she’s cast as the ‘good guy’ for bringing about Armageddon. Well, folks, which is it? Is The End good or bad? Seems to me that if you believe in an ‘Antichrist’ and you believe that he (or she) will rule the world before being defeated by Jesus (I’m not making this shit up — it comes straight from the junk that Palin’s church and a zillion others preach, based on a REALLY loose and convoluted interpretation of several disjointed passages from several books of the Bible, especially Revelation), then, um, well, you can’t pick and choose your Antichrists and your prophecies. You can’t warn me NOT to vote for Obama because the prophecies say he will be the bad guy, unless you believe you can override the aforementioned prophecies (and unless you WANT to override them, which, according to the Palin email, you don’t).

Now, I personally don’t believe in any of this Antichrist claptrap — I was raised in the tradition, but then I grew up and took a much closer look and realized that all these people had fed me a bowl of horseshit — but it seems to me that IF you believe in said prophecies, then really what you should be doing is kicking back and letting them happen. It’s not like you have a choice, if it’s God’s Plan From The Beginning. Right?

So — if the Palin email is CELEBRATING her potentially ‘fulfilling’ the prophesied events, and the Obama email is essentially WARNING that he will fulfill the prophesied events, what does this say about the generally confused mental state of believers at large?

I think what it says is that the fundies are both eagerly anticipating the End Of The World and afraid of it at the same time.

And in case that sounds like I just don’t know what I’m talking about, I will repeat that I was raised — steeped, if you will — in the world of fundamentalist apocalyptic Christianity. Basically a good number of these folks are generally convinced that the ‘apocalypse’ — or whatever you want to call it — surely represents the violent end of THIS world, but it also represents their salvation. You can’t have one without the other, right? I mean, what if they go ahead and start ‘Armageddon’ which results in horrible suffering everywhere, including here in Disneycountry, with martial law and starvation and disease in the streets, culminating perhaps in nuclear winter or something equally terrible — but Jesus never shows up?

If you gave a typical fundie some truth serum, they’d probably admit to being scared out of their minds because the Bible is completely ambiguous. It’s not like it says anything straight-up about the so-called ‘End Times’ — it’s all garbled and open to interpretation. So down deep inside, you’ve gotta know that many of them aren’t sure what to believe. I mean, they might believe in Jesus with all their hearts, but can they say for sure what the Book of Revelation really means? Can they say for sure it was talking about NOW? After all, my parents once believed that Henry Kissinger (among others) was surely the Antichrist and that Armageddon was around the corner thirty years ago. I remember spending my childhood waiting for the ‘Rapture’ that was going to come ‘any day now’. So c’mon; even if you believe in all that crap, you know down deep that you can’t be sure when it’s gonna happen — so when things get REALLY tough out there, I think that Christians get rather nervously excited. They want the Rapture to come save them, but what if it doesn’t? What if it’s just another ugly period in history like all the others, and they’ll have to go through the whole thing without being rescued? Oh no! So I think that they relish the actual ‘End’ because they have faith Jesus will save them, but they can’t ever be sure that ‘this’ is IT. Such is the road to insanity.

There are seemingly 2 basic kinds of fundies in this respect — those that are content to wait and see what unfolds, having faith that God has it under control (these people are not the problem; though as a fan of Sam Harris, I will agree that they SUPPORT the problem) — and those that are so friggin’ convinced that their hundred-year-old interpretation (yes, sorry to tell ya, folks, but the whole ‘Rapture’ thing was conjured up in the 19th century) is absolutely true and absolutely imminent, and that somehow God needs THEIR help in making it all come about.

The latter represent a seriously psychopathic wing of the Religiotards, and their narrow worldview reveals an astounding level of arrogance and ignorance — as it places so much faith in a fairly recent set of beliefs so as to literally risk EVERYTHING to follow it to its conclusion, and yet, since they evidently don’t think God has it under enough control that he doesn’t need their meddling, it’s a complete paradox. I mean, if it IS the ‘last days’ according to some ambiguously worded prophecies, why don’t they just chill the fuck out and watch? Why do they need to set the shit in motion? Why does Sarah Palin on the one hand believe so fervently in God as Omnipotent Being With A Plan, and yet also believe that somehow in order for that Plan to come to fruition, God somehow needs the likes of HER to go start World War Three? It doesn’t make ANY sense unless you’re a megalomaniacal sociopath who believes themselves to be instrumental in God’s Master Plan.

Which brings me back to the two emails.

Both follow essentially the same premise: that God’s Plan and His timing can be manipulated by humans. And not just humans, but specifically AMERICANS, since this particular brand of Christianity is absurdly America-centered. I know fundies who can find all sorts of shit they purport to be about the USA in the Bible, which would be truly extraordinary if it could possibly be true. But one look at the passages they mention, and you realize just how deluded they are.

But, of course, if America plays a prophesied role in Armageddon, we just HAVE to be the good guys, right? Because how can we be the bad guys? We’re AMERICANS! We’re GOOD! Well, except for them evil commie gawdless libruls.

So if Obama wins, he’s the Antichrist and that’s bad. So we need to vote against him — but then again, if he’s the Antichrist, then voting against him won’t do any good, because, well, it’s been prophesied, right? And besides, if he’s the Antichrist, then all the Christians are about to be Raptured, right? And that’s what y’all WANT, right?

Then again, if Sarah Palin wins, she’s the AntiAntichrist. I don’t remember even reading about THAT, but whatever. None of this makes any damn sense anyway.

Religion is just Mass Insanity.

* * *

Palin My Ass

2008-10-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin.
The illegitimate lovechild of Gidget and Joseph Stalin.

Or, as I like to call her, Claws Barbie. The history majors among you will likely get the reference. Sadly, far too many will have to look it up. But anyway.

This religiofascist bitch must be stopped. And if Christians think she’s on their side, whatever THAT means, they are mistaken. Separation of church and state is what PROTECTS Christians and other religions from EACH OTHER.

Most of the victims of the Taliban, for example, are other Muslims — those who just don’t seem pious enough, or who have a slightly different interpretation, or try to be less vicious to women, or whatever. Theocratic rule is a horror story for EVERYONE, religious or not. That’s why the founders of this country sought to erect that wall a long time ago, never to be torn down.

It’s one thing if a candidate PRACTICES a religion or belief and keeps it private — JFK was not interested in instituting a Catholic Theocracy. It’s quite another matter when the tenets of the church a candidate follows advocate the indoctrination of the masses in their particular dogma, and actively seek to put representatives in high governmental offices to do just that. I too was raised in a fundamentalist environment (as I've mentioned many times), and I can tell you that I’ve listened to enough of their sermons to know unequivocally that Palin’s mission is to destroy the traditional separation and work as hard as she can to institute a government based on the apocalyptic beliefs of her particular sect. She has basically admitted it in so many words.

Any of you who think this is a good idea need not look further than your local library (or the daily news from Muslim theocracies) to see what a disaster this would be.

Wake up, people. This is not what our country is supposed to be about. You think gay marriage and equal rights and abortion and all that is somehow a threat to your way of life? Well, let me tell ya — regardless of how you feel about those issues, they are NOTHING compared to THIS one.

Don’t take MY word for it; read your history books! Pay attention!

Fundamentalist Christianity has infiltrated the political spectrum in an attempt to gain real power — including MILITARY power. And to a large and alarming level, they’ve succeeded. And how have they succeeded? Through the support of mild-mannered masses of good people just following their faith, swelling church ranks, voting for candidates based solely on their religious fervor and attachment to pet religious-based oversimplified issues, and contributing vast amounts of cumulative wealth to psychos like Falwell and Robertson and others, to the point where they are able to buy and wedge and crowbar and threaten their way into positions of authority that men of their caliber could get no other way.

And their influence has severely damaged our country. To the point where both candidates of our already pathetic two-party (if even that) system are forced to pander to the Jeezuz contingent in order to get anywhere.

Anybody with half a brain knows that theocracy, or even a hint of it, is a bad idea even for the followers of the prevailing sect. Why? Because as has been shown in every theocracy ever, not only is it unconscionable that one particular dogma could dictate the rights of sovereign individuals through coercion or governmental law, but quite simply, setting a precedent of theocracy means that at any given moment, a different sect could grab the reins, and suddenly all those who followed the dogma of the previous theocratic power structure are suddenly heathens. And make no mistake, history shows us what happens when you give the self-righteous ‘god on our side’ theocrats of ANY religion access to military power, what once may have been petty ecumenical differences will surely turn into a bloodbath. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So after they imprison and/or kill all us ‘unbelievers’, guess who’s next?

As Sam Harris implies in The End of Faith, while as an average hardworking, non-threatening, even kind-hearted Christian you can personally claim innocence — the same way the average Cambodian or Spaniard or German or Byzantine could in their day — the fact is that you are potentially a moral and financial supply line to a system that produces megalomaniacs hell-bent on supergluing the church to the state, with all the bloody consequences that your history books should have warned you about. So if you're gonna be a follower, be ever vigilant as to whom you are following.

If you can’t see that, plain as day, well, all I can say is I’ll see you in the camps.

* * *

This is the end. Beautiful friend, the end.

2008-09-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I've pretty much had it up to here with the dolts in this country.

Obama is nobody's messiah, but Jeeebus; compared to McPain he most certainly is. And don't even get me started on that psychopathic smug little moron Palin. Ugh. Those dipshits will be the end for sure, and if they don't end up destroying the world in a newkyuhler war, they will at the very least ruin what's left of this always-flawed but once-great country.

I'm holding my breath until November 4th (or 5th), and if somehow that nightmare McCain/Palin ticket manages to pull it off, I am going to take what's left of my money and I am going on a trip. I will travel around the world, attempting to enjoy myself in between having to apologize and explain to the befuddled that at least half my fellow Americans are mentally retarded, and I'm sorry but I tried. Yada yada...like 2004 all over again but worse.

And when the money runs out, I will then commit suicide. I will attempt to do it in a very public way that will not hurt anyone else but will call attention to the reason I did it. maybe I'll do it on YouTube or something, with my manifesto as The Last True Patriot mailed to all the news outlets ahead of time. I dunno; something that will get attention. I wanna be remembered as the guy who repeated the words of Patrick Henry and actually meant them.

* * *

Take out the traysh

2008-09-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or is this whole ghetto/trailertrash 'chic' thing gotten way past annoying? You know what I'm talkin' bout, right? I'm not going on some racist rant here; it's not about that. I mean, can anybody explain to me why Amy Winehouse has fans? The whole Cleopatra-as-crack-whore-who-got-gang-banged-while-passed-out-in-a-tattoo-parlor thing is, um, interesting how? Her voice reminds me of a fighter jet crashing into an animal shelter, and she looks like what would have happened if Carly Simon had been beaten up by Mike Tyson and ended up an extra on 'The Addams Family' instead of a crappy songwriter (yeah I know I'm making a lot of nonlinear assumptions about the spacetime continuum here, but work with me).

And speaking of dumpster chic, don't even get me started on the whole Britney/Lindsay/Paris thing either. Regarding the latter, I wasn't aware Gucci even made trailers. But I'm sure they're nice. To be fair, Hilton went up a (small) notch in my esteem with her unexpectedly articulate video smackdown of McCain -- but all that proves is that she can be coached and taught to read convincingly.

The point is, where are the Grace Kellys? The Lena Hornes? The Audrey Hepburns? Or even the Kate Hepburns? Am I just getting old? I mean, it's not like I'm 70 or something, ya know. I've got a good 25 years before retirement, assuming I can pull it off without having to move into a trailer myself and live on cat food (but that's a whole other discussion).

And what's with all the thugspeak? I mean, OK, let's just say for the sake of argument that the whole 'real' thug culture is a product of all the racial oppression, war on 'drugs' and institutionalized poverty that lead to gang violence, etc. Fine. Rap gives me a headache, and 'gangsta' rap pretty much ratchets it up to a brain tumor, but fine. OK, we've got angry black youth shouting about smacking up their hos and popping caps in each other's asses. Right. Except for one thing:

THE PRIMARY AUDIENCE FOR THIS CRAP IS MIDDLE CLASS WHITE KIDS.

Yeah, we've all seen 'em. 'Wiggers' they're called, as a 'white' variation on the dreaded N-word (the word that hordes of civil rights leaders went through hell to try and eliminate, and they must really be happy that their kids and grandkids call each other that, but anyway). I just don't get it -- what is the point of all the white kids trying so hard to be black -- and not 'normal' black, but quasi-scary ghetto thug black? What's with the hideous clothes? When, for the love of Gawd, is the ridiculous GIANT PANTS pulled halfway down thing gonna go away? I mean, shouldn't it be passe by now? Please?

Let me be clear on this. I used to love black music, back in the day. Marvin Gaye; James Brown; Richie Havens; Al Green -- I loved those guys. But none of us white dudes tried to be black; we just tried to be open and multicultural and get along with and understand everybody. We tried, anyway, some of us. But how stupid would it have been if I'd attempted to dress up like Havens? A Dashiki just wouldn't work on me. Somehow it worked on him, but no way would it have looked anything but silly on me. These days the thug fashions look pretty stupid on the black rappers and wannabes that wear them, but they look even stupider on the white kids that try to emulate them.

Sorry; I just can't deal with the whole glorification of the lowest common denominator. The whole "keepin' it real" thing has just gotten way too out of hand for me. I mean, if you REALLY wanna 'keep it real', get rid of your TV and your endless 'bling' (40 pounds of gold chains and a 'grill' that makes you look like a complete retard) and your $400 sneakers, quit talking like some shuck-and-jive stereotype, read a book or two, and for Gawd's sake, turn down the bass on your piece of shit car stereo, willya? Jeebus.

I really hope Obama wins the election for a LOT of reasons. One of which is that he's not McCain. But maybe, just maybe, having a black President will give all the young black guys a reason to be a little less angry, and a little less...ghetto. And since the moronic white kids who want to be black will follow their lead, maybe they'll all be just a little less annoying.

Nah, who am I kidding? But vote Obama anyway, so I don't have to come pop a cap in your ass.

* * *

Park yer carcass

2008-09-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

Anybody who lives in a major city will no doubt have endless complaints about a lot of things, from crowds to violence to panhandlers to noise to having their front porch used as a toilet even though they pay as much rent as Warren Buffett earns in interest every month.

And yeah, as a San Franciscan, I can tell you stories about all of those things, and I have the dried shit in the tread of my Chuck Taylors to prove it.

But the one thing that really chaps my ass about living in a city, and this one in particular, is the parking situation. In case you don't live here or nobody has explained it to you, it just plain sucks ass.

First of all, it's a small city area-wise, with a lot of people crammed into it, and despite our California Liberal reputation of being all greenified and all that, way too many of those people have big gigantic stupid gas-pissing SUVs and such, taking up way too much room. So parking is at a premium.

The commercial areas are all dotted with parking meters and overpriced hourly lots, and that's fine. The city gets a shitload of revenue from the meters (mostly when they're expired and the Parking Nazis get to write the tickets they so love to write), and the unknown tycoons who own the lots and garages can likely afford their own private helipads. But whatever. The problem is the residential areas, where I live in my little Victorian flat with my two overindulged and overly furry feline roommates. Yeah that sounded pretty gay. Get over it.

Anyway, here's the thing: there aren't usually meters in the residential areas (yet), but there are inexplicable red zones everywhere, and you can't park in those without costing yourself so much money that I'm embarrassed to admit I know the amount. And you can't park ANYWHERE for more than 2 hours without getting a ticket. I think it's fifty bucks but it's always going up so I'm not sure of the current ripoff amount. To bypass this IF you're a resident, you can buy an annual permit sticker for the neighborhood you live in, for some significant coin. So far; so good -- it's hard enough to even FIND a parking space around here (and I have a tiny car), so if it weren't for the permit requirement, it would be IMPOSSIBLE, so I'm willing to pay for that. But the whole thing is really a racket, so it gets much more complicated. See, every street has alternating days on which you can't park there because of 'street cleaning'. Now, I've lived here for well over 20 years and I've never seen a street that was actually 'clean', but they do have these trucks that come by and swirl the crap around a bit, once a week on each side of the street. If you're parked there on that day, you get a ticket. Cha-ching. But am I complaining about that? Not this time. Not even when they randomly and without notice, change the days on which said 'cleaning' is to occur, putting up new signs here and there but not really making much noise about it so that inevitably they can ticket the folks who were too busy LIVING THEIR FUCKING LIVES to notice the slight sign change. Trust me when I tell you that the whole 'street cleaning' racket makes this city a TON of Benjamins every month, from all the folks who forget to move their damn car so the truck that swirls the crap has to drive around their parked vehicle, even if the 'street cleaning sign' had been quietly changed the night before. Yes, it's true; I've seen it. Hell, I've PAID it. Don't get me started...

But no, this blog posting isn't even about THAT particular travesty. No, it's about a certain city ordinance that one has to find out about the hard way. It seems that, regardless of the fact that you pay annually for a permit to park in your own neighborhood, and even if you carefully observe the sleight-of-hand magic they call 'street cleaning', they have an ordinance to make sure they get you anyway, no matter what you do. I think it's called the 'We're The Government So Go Fuck Yourself' ordinance. What it says is that if your car is parked anywhere, permit or not, for a minute past 72 consecutive hours, they can tow your car away and you have to pay not only an $80 ticket but right around TWO HUNDRED a day in storage fees to the tow yard. Yep. And this is assuming that you actually know you've been towed, since many of us city-dwellers walk or take public transportation and don't drive our cars every day, so -- you guessed it -- it can take a few days before you discover your car missing. So you frantically call the cops, not sure whether you prefer it was towed or stolen -- because nobody tells you. That's right; they take your shit and then don't even tell you about it. Like a week and a half later you get something in the mail saying your car was towed, but what good is that? By then you owe your life savings to the tow yard, so you'd better hope you made the discovery already.

This means, of course, that if you want to, say, fly somewhere on vacation for a few days, you have to be sure and have a friend agree to move your car for you. This means you have to be the kind of person who would do such a thing to their friend, knowing it will mean they have to spend a third of their day trying to find an available space -- one that won't conflict with any 'street cleaning' days while you're gone, or be out of the range of your permit that only covers a few blocks in either direction. And Gawd help them if you've got a car that's bigger than mine, because I can park the little fucker in a lot of places that other vehicles can't (which is one of the reasons I have it).

Anyway, so yeah, I got effin' towed. Altogether it cost me close to 500 smackers. And I can't even kill anybody, though I want to very badly.

* * *

Goodbye, yellow prick toad

2008-07-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a bad blogger. It's true. I suck. Not at writing, mind you; at that I rock like a black leather jumpsuit on Jessica Alba. No, I suck at actually sitting down and consistently producing. It's sad, because I tend to spew wretched brilliance on a pretty frequent basis, whether it's in casual conversation or commenting on OTHER people's blogs -- but when it comes to my own, well, the cobbler's kids have no shoes.

Yet here I am. So you know there must be a reason -- an important reason, even. Though it's likely that nobody will even read this, since any fan base I could have once had has rightly evaporated like so much Everclear on a pie plate in the Arizona sun. But that's okay, because, you see, I'm here for ME. That's right; this one is a joyous celebration of life. And death. Because, my friends (if anyone is listening), not only is Jerry Falwell STILL dead, but now that bastard Jesse 'Caveman' Helms has joined his old bosom buddy in the Great Beyond.

Another evil Hypocritical Religiofascist Neanderfuck gets crossed off my list, and I was here, alive -- gloriously alive -- to see it.

Next time I encounter a cockroach crawling out of a sewer drain, I will pause and reflect, perhaps letting it live another day instead of crushing it in disgust -- because maybe reincarnation exists, and if so, I want you to savor your new life, Jesse. And your new diet.

Otherwise, RIP, asshole. Luckily for you, there's no such thing as Hell -- except for the one you and your kind created here on Earth for the rest of us.

* * *

December 21, 2012

2008-04-30T01:06:00.000-07:00

That day is soon going to be on everybody's lips, as The Stink-of-Money-Detecting Media picks up on a meme that's been circulating for awhile, recently fueled by Internet Buzz, that the day has some sort of Great Significance to a growing number of people who believe that the final day of the Mayan calendar represents some Harbinger of Doom. As my pal The Butcher notes, many people see this date as The End Of The World, and indeed, when troubled times seem to coincide with mysterious dates that seem to have held some significance to some group of people somewhere, those believers are known to attract followers. I of course have no idea what the meaning of 2012 is -- or if there is any. I know the Maya were skilled astronomers, in a time when astronomy and astrology were one and the same. They created an intricate system based on their observations of nature both terrestrial and cosmic, and they amassed a level of strikingly detailed knowledge of the way the Solar System operates, apparently without anything approaching tools that would come into play in Europe a thousand or more years later. We still don't know of what their available technology consisted or where it came from, but much of what they observed and recorded is now, via all our equipment to observe the Heavens, considered remarkably accurate.

Their calendar used the astrological constellations and movements, and described 'Ages'. The beginning of the calendar is a mystery (as the beginnings of calendars are wont to be), and so is the end -- but given the distinct Ages described in cosmic terms, the end of the Mayan Calendar is simply the end of the Piscean Age. What does it mean? Will there be devastation of some sort? Some traditions certainly point to that, and they are often traditions way older than the 19-century story that makes up much of Christian Dogma today (I'll explain this shortly, for those who don't know). Prehistoric legends abound of cataclysmic events marking the passing of Ages, and often the fossil record bears them out. As to whether the fossils and the cyclical events in the sky coordinate, that I can't say -- though I'm sure there are better-informed people than me out there on both sides of the argument, assuming there is one (isn't there usually?). Anyway, back to the End Of The World...

The 'world' -- meaning Earth -- is a big rock orbiting a star we call the Sun. This particular star will succumb to the fate of all things and all stars -- which is to die, likely taking the rocks that orbit it along with it. But this is, according to the estimations of modern science, about 50 gazillion years away. So if there is a thing which might be called The End Of The World, that would most likely be it.

What is generally referred to, however, as The End Of The World is variously referred to within certain religions as the day when whatever god decides to reboot his or her creation, often accompanied by some Judgement Day claptrap. In more secular circles it is generally the moment when the planet can no longer sustain life -- or at least Human life -- whether through a natural disaster such as an asteroid collision or, more likely, through a confluence of man-made disasters that are always, at least in modern times, looming on the horizon.

So The End Of The World, then, is for all intents and purposes envisioned as The End Of Humanity, because as much as we might love animals, the thought of not being here, even for their sake, is tantamount to picturing yourself obliterated, and, as a thus-far successful carrier of that DNA thing, we all have a hard time dealing with the idea of our own extinction. Well, with the exception of some Goth kids, a few crazy (as in, waaaaaaay over the top crazy) Animal Rights advocates, and way too many members of The Christopocalyptical Conspiracy (otherwise known as Fundamentalist Christianity), that is.

Anyway, I digress.

I don't generally buy into the whole Apocalyptic Prophecy thang, except where the post-postmodern irony of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy comes in. It's sorta like reading The Secret and then reading The Book Of Revelations, and then positive-thinking your way to Armageddon so Jesus will save you. And by the way, I'm being symbolic when referring to The Book Of Revelations, because if you give that book to someone who hasn't had it explained (with spoon-fed presumed interpretations), it doesn't make a damn lick of sense at all. That person would look at you like you just gave them a Chinese menu in Mexico, at a Middle-Eastern restaurant. All that crap about Jesus Coming Back To Rescue All The Perfect People is all made-up wackjob crap from as recent as the Nineteenth Century, man. Do you know that? 99% of the interpretation of Revelations that is taught as Hardcore Literal Dogma in Fundie Christianity, is from crap cobbled together from several books and re-interpreted into a farfetched and not particularly Biblical philosophy from the 1800s. Yes, folks, you guessed it. From the same era as Paul Bunyan and Babe The Blue Ox With Gigantic Testicles. So all you self-proclaimed knowledgeable and yet curiously illiterate Evangelical Types out there aren't spouting a bunch of shite from the Holy Mouth Of Jesus; you're echoing a primarily hundred and fifty-or-so-year-old patchwork of misinterpretations by people you would most certainly call crazy if they showed up today.

So in other words, all you geniuses that think bringing civilization to collapse will result in your Miraculous Salvation, I've got news for ya: 2012 seems just about right, thanks to y'all. And there ain't gonna be no Second Coming, no Rapture. Just those of us who manage to survive in roving gangs viciously taking out the clueless Middle America NeoCon Religious Hypocrite Idiot Fuckers who got us into this mess.

* * *

BeneDickShun

2008-04-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

So the Pope is going to give a speech addressing the rampant child abuse scandal brewing in his worldwide religious ponzi scheme. Or, rather, he's likely going to do a George Bush style whitewash on all of it, because too many media outlets, while willing to play ball with their Corporate Masters over American Political Hegemonic aspirations, cannot resist (Thank Gawd) the lure of tabloid journalism that ensues When Religious Hypocrites Attack!

Gee, I wonder what pablum he's gonna spew? What could he possibly say? I mean, it's awfully telling that the situation has gotten so much bad press that His Hypocriticalness Himself will even acknowledge it -- but what can he say about something that has been an endemic, institutionalized and methodically protected part of Church history for over a thousand years?

My guess is that he's going to go the 'few bad apples' approach, and announce that the Church is 'actively purging itself of these wayward individuals' or something like that. Blah blah blah. More Scooter Libbys. More Wide Stances. Same old bullshit. Can't tell whether the Neocons learned from the Bishops or vice-versa. Or maybe they're all the same guys. Probably drink the blood of Jew babies together while dining on Endangered-Species-Kabobs every Friday.

What His LuckyMotherFuckerness SHOULD be saying is that many factors have contributed to this scourge, and the blame for ALL of them should be placed squarely at the Church's feet. A Pope denouncing child molestation is tantamount to denouncing the robe he's wearing -- it's part and parcel an integral element in the history of the organization, and it goes back to the very beginnings, stemming partially from adopted Pagan practices and largely encouraged by the absurdity of forced celibacy AND the rush to cover up every incident that gets leaked, instead of publicly and thoroughly castigating those responsible. After all, they were probably themselves originally young 'proteges' of the very clergy who end up quietly sending them where they can do their molesting in less public surroundings. It's been the Church's Dirty Little Secret since the Middle Ages at least.

So what Ol' Eggs Benedict SHOULD be saying is 'This is all our fault and we've virtually encouraged this behavior because it has served our interests (keeping 'celibate' priests from 'straying', keeping the abused victims forever secretly bonded and beholden to the institution -- many of them grow up to be priests, and abusive ones at that; it's a form of Stockholm Syndrome), BUT we are now adopting a zero-tolerance policy whereby all priests accused of such behavior will be handed over immediately to secular authorities for trial, with those convicted being stripped of their connection to the Church and handed on a platter to the mercy of the secular courts.' He should be saying that 'We are establishing a joint Church-secular task force which will have as its sole purpose to root out all of the perpetrators regardless of their rank, and NO ONE will be protected from accusations that the task force determines are legitimate. It's time for this sorry legacy of our ancient past to be put to an end, as was the Inquisition and having to memorize Latin and such other horrors. In the name of God I will not tolerate one more child abused under my watch, and I vow to destroy this insidious infection at its very core, whatever it takes.' If I were Catholic, I would accept nothing less, and I would back up that expectation with my quickly moving feet out the gilded door, slurping a dixiecup of holy water along the way, rinsing and spitting. But alas, anything short of that is complete spin and utter bullshit. And the Pope is a politician, so I expect nothing but drivel from Him. Luckily I'm not Catholic. If He's supposed to be God on Earth, then God's got a helluva lot to learn about consistency, integrity, and other such quaint ethics that some of us mere humans inexplicably value. Luckily I don't believe in God either. If I did, I might be inclined to be a complete bastard and emulate Him.

And hey -- while he's on a roll, Das Pope might as well publicly apologize for Catholic complicity with the Third Reich and its horrors (yes, it's true -- look it up), as well as the disaster that the One True Church's anti-birth-control stance hath wrought upon the so-called Third World. And that's not even taking into account all the other abominations throughout the millennia, such as heretic/witch burning, the ethnic cleansing of the so-called New World, and the alarming proliferation of plastic dashboard Jesuses.

* * *

Kewpie porn

2008-04-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

There are simply no words fit to accompany this.

I hope I don't get in trouble for posting it.

* * *

Well, it's finally started...

2008-02-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

Evidently, Evil Pink Africanized Killer Rabbits have begun taking over the world. The corporate-owned media isn't reporting it because, well, Rupert Murdoch -- as it turns out -- secretly had a Killer Hare up his ass all along. But somehow this clip managed to make it past the pestilent vermin. And the rabbits.

You have been warned.

* * *

Recession Depression

2008-01-28T12:38:00.000-08:00

Well, folks, I can smell the poop and I can hear the fan. It's really up to physics now. The bender doesn't end until the liquor store stops accepting your money, but, well, we seem to be down to that 'order more checks' slip in the national checkbook. So, it's hangover time!

Congratulations, America, on being a beacon of Denialocracy all these years. Evidently we've been robbing Peter to pay Judas. Who knew? I mean, besides The Eliminati and those of us with eyes and ears? Turns out the crazy guy with the 'End Is Near' sign was right all along -- but then, he had to be, yes? I mean, the odds were always in his favor, as long as you use the word 'near' in a Big Picture context.

Oh, by the way, speaking of depression -- do NOT, under any circumstances, regardless of what some jerkoff with a medical degree tells you, do NOT try Cymbalta. Just say no. Antidepressant, my ass -- it's not just an SNRI; it's an SFD. That's Slow Fucking Death. Poisonous shit, man. Trust me. Learn from my pain.

Anyway, back to the whole reason I had to start taking that crap in the first place: The Persistent Horror Of Impending Doom. Will it be a recession? Or GreatDepression2.0? You say tomayto; I say ketchup. What's the difference, really? The bottom line is that all empires crumble eventually, like tears in rain. Time to die.

* * *

Paranoia: its the new sane.

2007-12-28T16:52:00.000-08:00

Fierce Tuneage

2007-11-29T07:57:00.001-08:00

Hey I just need to announce the first CD release of my good friend and goombah Jeff Titus, a fantastic guitar player who also does these amazing things with a harp sympitar, definitely a unique instrument. If you're a fan of the late Michael Hedges -- or Michael Manring, Alex DeGrassi, Andy McKee or the amazing Kaki King (hear a bit of her great tapnote style in the new mediocre but musically great film 'August Rush'), you'll love Jeff's stuff. They all do; they're good friends (and fans) of his.

Anyway, check him out at HarpSympitar.com, and buy his brilliant, epic, and shiny new Wood Dragon CD!

* * *

Online Story Generators Are Fun

2007-10-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time about a month ago in my bedroom. I was eating a sardine sandwich when I realized that I was a vampire. You have probably had that experience before. I felt like a million dollars, and I knew that soon I would have to go to the bathroom. My friend Destiny had called me the previous day, and told me all about Jason's problem with the stray dog that was acting strangely, and I was a little worried about infection. Then, all of a sudden, I saw creeping towards me what I realized was the thing that I most feared, and right then I knew I was in love! I remembered what my karate teacher had told me about a situation like this. It was very important that I not throw up all over everyone. Very calmly, I ate another bite of my sandwich and started screaming for help. Before I knew it, I was deliriously happy, and I knew I really liked being naked. So you see, I really needed to thank my math teacher, and I decided I had to tell you all about it.

* * *

Go Ron Paul

2007-10-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you read me right. For all the Right-Wingnuts that consider me the Antichrist for my Liberal tendencies, know this:

If Ron Paul manages to win the Republican nomination -- and if there are any Conservatives remaining out there with a brain and the interface to use it, he will -- then I will vote Republican for the first time in my life.

Now, for those of you morons who still inexplicably think Bush is your personal Jesus, you will no doubt think this says something negative about Dr. Paul, that one of us 'Liberal Moonbats' would vote for him. And those other morons on the Radical Left of the spectrum (the ones who inspired the 'Moonbat' terminology in the first place) will likely consider me a traitor. To this I say, Fuck Y'all.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that any one man -- or 300 Spartans and a Jedi Master, for that matter -- could save us from the astonishingly multilayered mess that we're in as a nation. Personally I think we're as screwed as the Pope's favorite altarboy. But at this point I don't care about abortion, gay marriage, foie gras, alien abductions, bad Chinese food or crazy bearded Muslims with boxcutters -- to me the absolute most important thing to consider in this election (if Bush doesn't manage to declare Martial Law and suspend the election altogether) is to restore the primacy and authority of The Constitution of the United States of America and attempt to preserve what is left of our Republic.

And there is only one candidate in this election who is even discussing this topic. I don't agree with all his viewpoints, but I believe he is a man of integrity and he believes wholeheartedly in the Constitution; something that, I hope, most of us -- Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Amish, whatever -- can agree on. He is either the most honest politician I've seen in my lifetime, or the best liar in the history of the world. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have to. Ron Paul 2008.

* * *

sand

2007-09-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

i feel the desert
chewing at my boots
i feel the desert of my soul
i breathe the sand and the flies and futility
as the radio spits out the daily death toll
and every dead child
turns a thousand more against me
and i see generations
born as my enemy
and if i survive
i can never go home
because no one remembers
the lessons of rome.

you keep on praying
to the same god they pray to
but he doesn't seem to be listening
to any of you
because there is no god
just chaos and silence
and power-mad priests
selling handbooks of violence

when your children starve
in your hiding-place
and you beg for an end
to this endless war
when you're inches from hell
in your patriotic cell
remember who voted
to
deadbolt
the
door.

©2007 briosphere

* * *

911 is the loneliest number

2007-09-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

On this, the 6th anniversary of the destruction of the WTC and the beginning of the Fourth Reich, I call for a moment of silence -- not for those who died in the attack, who have already had their share of memorials -- but for the Bill of Rights, a document destroyed not in the rubble of the World Trade Center, but in its short-sighted, horribly corrupted aftermath.

Here's to you, Constitution, wherever you may rest. We took you for granted, and we will miss you more than we can even begin to imagine.

* * *

Even More Bus Stories

2007-09-11T16:54:00.000-07:00

Today was, evidently, Emo Day on the bus. Now, for those of you too unhip to know what Emo is, I'll give you only one hint. It's NOT a large aggressive bird native to the South Pacific. But you're close. Hit up Wikipedia, because I don't have time to educate wannabe loser dweebs like you. That was a joke, by the way. A very Emo joke.

Anyway, practically the entire bus was infested with youngish males wearing skinny-leg pants, huge belt buckles, so-ironic t-shirts and women's jackets from the '80s, with huge sunglasses and greasy-choppy hair combed partially over their face, in that Spend 4 Hours In Front Of A Mirror Trying To Look Like I Don't Give A Shit style. Now, this would be completely typical on a Wednesday or Thursday night (weekends are SO Bridge-and-Tunnel, not True Emo), but this was a Tuesday morning, a work and/or school day. At first I thought there might be some free daytime concert somewhere by some band that I'm too old and not remotely cool enough to have heard of, but then I realized with a big DUH that Emo Types, just like Goths, wouldn't be caught dead at a daylight event. No, these are generally creatures of the night, with the exception of those who work at record and/or thrift shops, or the 'poseurs' who work at other retail establishments.

By the way, the difference between True Emos and poseurs, I am told, is difficult to spot until the music starts. The ones who are dancing -- more than a barely perceptible bobbing of the head -- are the poseurs. Another way to tell is to ask them, "what do you think of the band?" If they ignore you, or if they say in a monotone voice, "it sucks" -- then they are the real deal. Of course, there are those who will tell you that the poseurs are the ones who show up; that the only True Emos stay in their room in their parents' house writing suicide notes. But I digress.

OK, so what was up? I wondered. Did some trendy, rarely hiring used record store put out a 'help wanted' sign? I never found out. No point in asking one of them, because if he answered, I'd know he was the wrong one to ask.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago on the bus, I was sitting in the seats near the front that face each other across the aisle -- the ones you're supposed to reserve for seniors and the handicapped and really really fat women who take up three seats but think they can squeeze in next to you. There was a decent-sized crowd on the bus, but it wasn't anywhere near full, and there were plenty of seats left for the handicapped so I didn't feel guilty.

Across from me was a lovely young semi-hippy chick -- you know, the ones who wear long gauzy skirts and have blonde dreadlocks and nose rings but they shave their armpits and take showers. Yeah, it's rare that 'hippy' and 'sexy' go together but she was one of those. Probably 20 years old though, so I should have been ashamed at myself for repeatedly glancing in her direction. Bad dawg that I am. She smiled at me at one point, though. It was probably the mushrooms.

Anyway, her stop came, and she stood up to exit the bus. Only problem was, she was stepping on her long gauzy skirt, and when she stood, in an instant it was pulled down to the floor. Not a good day to have chosen not to wear underwear. Gave the whole bus -- including lucky me, across from her -- quite the show. She scrambled, obviously embarrassed, to untangle her skirt from her flip-flops and pull it back up, and I'm sure her face was beet red as she ran out the door -- if only I'd been looking at her face.

Did I mention being a Bad Dawg?

* * *

Speaking of which, I swear to Gawd this is true: on a different day, my buddy The Butcher and I were standing there holding on for dear life as the probably drunk bus driver careened around cars and pedestrians with abandon, when I noticed an overly clean-cut young guy sitting quietly in a seat nearby. He was wearing a tie, and I immediately recognized him as a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. You know, the Morons. They just have a look about them; even a smell. Anyway he was staring straight ahead, oblivious to my scanning of him (or deathly afraid I was some gay devil worshiper trying to make eye contact to suck out his soul or something), and I noticed his little plastic badge perfectly aligned right above his perfectly pressed shirt pocket. Sure enough, LDS. But then I couldn't help myself; I pointed out the badge to my friend and we both just started laughing uncontrollably, so much that he looked up at us nervously and people around us backed away just a little, perhaps thinking us just a couple of the crazies that frequent public transit. Why were we laughing, you ask? Well, the name on the badge said: ELDER POUNTAING.

For those of you who, shockingly enough, might not know what 'poontang' is, may I lovingly present you with the definition.

* * *

OK, so this one is not technically a bus story, but those last two reminded me of an event several years ago, when I was interrupted in the shower by the doorbell. I was almost done anyway, so I wrapped a towel around myself and, dripping wet, ran downstairs to the door. I peered through the peephole, and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but two solemn-looking old ladies holding 'AWAKE!' pamphlets. Jehovah's Witlesses. It was just too good to be true, and it wasn't even my birthday. I turned the knob, swung the door open wide, and dropped the towel.

"Won't you come in, ladies?" I said, with a cheshire cat smile. But neither one was looking me in the eye. Needless to say, they politely, if nervously, declined my invitation.

I wonder if they ever spoke of it, or if they pretended nothing had happened?

Gawd, I love fucking with The Religious.

* * *

Tap, Tap, Tappin' on Heaven's Stall...

2007-09-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ah, the pungent smell of irony. The whole Larry 'I'm Not Gay' Craig debacle, even more than the rest of the NeoCon Hypocrite Downward Spiral, is a work of staggering perfection that only a collaboration between, say, John Waters, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam could produce. After all, the screenplay is quirkily brilliant: rabidly anti-gay, virulently homophobic Republican Senator gets caught trying to cop some action in a mensroom from...wait for it...an undercover cop, in a 'sting' operation that is wholly unconstitutional and yet wholly in accord with tactics the NeoCon-hijacked Republican Party has been supporting for years. In other words, be careful what you wish for, Larry. If the NeoCons weren't hell-bent on making sex -- especially of the homosexual variety -- a crime, and if they weren't also hell-bent on eliminating due process and turning the Bill of Rights into -- ahem -- toilet paper, then ol' Senator Craig would be happily tapping his foot with the sovereign confidence and freedom that our forefathers intended. So while most of the Republican leadership tries to distance itself from poor Larry the Loo Lizard, primarily because their ranks seem to swell with his closeted compatriots who live in fear of being the next one outed, now we have some of them crying 'foul' at the very notion that such 'overzealous police profiling and entrapment' should occur in our precious Free Country. They're even calling for a boycott of the Minneapolis Airport where the 'incident' occurred, saying it's tantamount to a 'war on the West', whatever THAT is supposed to mean. Gosh, imagine that. An overzealous cop...in AMERICA! This is an outrage!

Of course, the thing is, I agree with them. Larry didn't do anything wrong; he simply tried to pick up on someone -- something that happens every five seconds in every bar, restaurant, gas station, grocery store, and, yes, restroom. To call it 'entrapment' isn't even the point, though that too plays a role, since entrapment is a tactic fomented by an overall disdain for the spirit of the Constitution. The fact is, it's not a crime to cruise for a date -- even if you're a creepy old ugly guy, and even if you are clumsy at it, as long as everybody's over 18. Nobody was harassed or threatened beyond the normal course of what we have to deal with from occasional creepy/clumsy fellow citizens in a free Republic, and basically the man was arrested for nothing -- unless, of course, you believe that homosexual advances in and of themselves are abhorrent and therefore wrong, and therefore should be illegal. Which, of course, is the stance that Larry Craig and other hypocrites like him have publicly espoused and attempted, in some cases successfully, to legislate. So one could say that, right or wrong, Craig is a victim of his own policies. What we here in California like to call KARMA.

So the lesson in all this, which unfortunately no fascist hypocritical NeoCon will likely learn, is that if you plant enough landmines, you might just find yourself stepping on one of them. Ask not for whom the foot taps, my friends. It taps for thee.

* * *

Welcome to the Mortal Majority

2007-05-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

JERRY FALWELL IS DEAD.

I guess I'm supposed to put 'The Reverend' in there somewhere, but I prefer to reserve that prefix for people with a soul -- like Al Green.

Normally I'm not the type to wish DEATH on someone, even as generally caustic as I proudly am. But in this case, I wish to express my utter joy in the same mean-spirited way that the fat smug hypocritical bastard saw fit to spew on the world while he yet breathed OUR oxygen.

So goodbye, Fuckwad. And good riddance. The birds are singing a little sweeter today, and the air seems cleaner somehow.

Makes me wish there were a Hell, just to imagine the surprised look on your smirking fundamentalist face when you woke up there. And makes me think maybe there IS a God, and a whole bunch of us have finally had an answer to our prayers.

* * *

I propose a new preamble to the Constitution...

2007-03-19T15:43:00.000-07:00

"WE THE SHEEPLE, in order to form a more convenient, seemingly safer, economical and inoffensive consumer culture; protect those who have from those who have not; and ensure the illusion of domestic security; provide for the defense of corporate interests that rarely if ever coincide with our own; promote the general welfare of those who maintain the status quo at the expense of everyone else's; and secure just enough liberty for ourselves and our posterity to remain enslaved in a system we feel powerless to change so we'd might as well take whatever crumbs we can get from it in the misplaced hope of actually winning some nebulous national lottery they cleverly label The American Dream; do ordain and establish this Constitution for The United States of Amerika."

* * *

Nukyuhler Whack-a-Mole

2006-10-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

I love the headline:

NORTH KOREA THREATENS NUCLEAR WAR OVER SANCTIONS

Um, OK.
I mean, we know the guy is crazy, but war with WHOM? even their buddy China is against them in this. Are they gonna take on the entire world?

Their first obvious target would be Seoul, yes? Or maybe somewhere in Japan. Surely that would be terrible, BUT within minutes the entire country of North Korea would cease to exist. All they would have to do would be to use nukes ANYWHERE and that would be sufficient to evoke a response that would be overwhelming. There would be a big, smoking, radioactive crater where the North used to be. And NOBODY would even protest, aside from maybe that smirking Kenny-Loggins-looking motherfucker in Iran -- but at that point he should be shaking in his boots because once his pals in NK put the nuclear option back on the table, it becomes not so Unthinkable to use it again, at least for the right-wing hawk types.

So...if it's posturing, it's not going to be very effective. And if it's serious, it will be suicide for that nutjob bouffant-haired midget and his starving subjects, yes? But the biggest worry here is that once we break the ice and use nukes, what then? Once the hawks get proof that nuclear war IS winnable, at least when it's so overwhelmingly one-sided, and when you combine that with the whole preemptive strike doctrine that has served us so well in Iraq (har dee har), how much of a stretch will it be to drop a few missiles on Tehran? Especially when we could have Israel be the bad cop and do it FOR us, and then back them up if they need it?

Our conventional forces are evidently stretched to the breaking point, or so I keep hearing -- which is of course what all the wannabe-boogeymen like Chavez and Kim Il Monkeyboy are counting on with their plastic sabre-rattling. But once somebody ELSE uses the dreaded nukes, suddenly we are King of the Mountain again, because who's got more nukes and better delivery systems than we do?

Of course, this plays right into the hands of the drooling hawks with their fingers on the big red button in anticipation, because what easier solution to everything can there be than to simply unleash 'The Unthinkable' on anybody who gives us grief? Hell, we can reduce a whole bunch of the world to an unlivable wasteland and still go in there with protective suits to drill for oil.

We just need to make it 'thinkable' again.
And, thanks to Kim Il Hairdo (or BadMood Ahmadinejihad), Hawks Incorporated may get their wish.

* * *

I'm not dead yet

2006-05-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, Lazarus has returned. Not quite mercury-free, but better off than a bluefin tuna. At least until the blinding flash of light, that is. But then, I'm wistful today; make of my mood-inspired free associative abstractions what you will.

Living in this place and time is strange and mundane and magical and beautiful and hideous. We're all waiting for something...or maybe just I am, but it feels like a communal emotion. Or perhaps I'm caught in a feedback loop.

Here in San Francisco it was so beautifully sunny out there today; easy to forget the semi-elected Emperor Of America (TM) waving Old Gory at this week's Threat To Our Way Of Life while the 20th century's chickens come home to roost and the CIA-trained consumerism-funded Zealot Machine keeps feeding more young fools to Allahburton, to whom hemoglobin and oil are both just fuel. After all, gods and sport utility vehicles are always thirsty.

Black gold; Texas tea: In a brilliant twist of irony, the Cubans are getting in bed with the Chinese, and we've banned ourselves from the bed. So our long-pointless embargo is now against none other than ourselves. Brilliant!

And the sabers and scimitars rattle at each other and all Options Are On The Table though the table was made in China from the last quarter-acre of rainforest timber and bought on credit with a home equity loan on the World Trade Center. Is it just me, or are the Vandals gathering around Rome as we speak?

But there's good news! I just saved 15% on my car insurance by switching to Geico.

Mercurial

2005-09-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

You're probably all wondering what in the proverbial fuck happened to ol' Bri, yes? And if you aren't, well, I'm going to tell you anyway. As a public service. Because what I am about to say is very important, and yes, I am serious. I've been going through my own little personal Hurricane Katrina, and I don't even get any news coverage.

Ready? Here it is: I've been out of commission for several months now, due to the effects of 'acute mercury toxicity' or, as I now call it, 'incompetent medical establishment syndrome'. Yes, it's all true. Read up on it here: www.amalgam.org, among many other places.

For a couple of years now, I've been having more and more weird inexplicable symptoms, and, not being the hypochondriac type, I tended to dismiss them as a product of turning forty. But eventually they became annoying and severe enough to seek medical attention. Since I am self-employed and thus have exhorbitantly expensive and completely worthless insurance that will essentially only benefit me if all my limbs are severed in a bizarre cockfighting accident, I did not relish the thought of going to the doctor, but eventually I had no choice. I found myself regularly doubled-over in abdominal pain, among many other symptoms.

But alas, upon finally submitting my every orifice to the world-renowned brilliance of the American Medical Establishment, I was thrilled to discover that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, according to all the generic tests that the overeducated fuckheads perform according to their Pocket Guide to Illness or whatever they use. Several Medical Professionals and a couple thousand hard-earned shekels later, I came up empty. "You're perfectly healthy," they would say, handing me yet another bill for services unrendered.

Don't get me wrong; I was overjoyed that no cancer or some such horrid thing was found. I certainly didn't want to be sick; but Jesus Freekin' Christ, I wasn't making this shit up, and I wanted an explanation for why I could barely get out of bed in the morning other than "well, you're not a kid anymore." Hey I'm forty-three -- not eighty-three! And besides, if my clients come to me for services and I CAN'T HELP THEM, I also can't CHARGE them. How come doctors can stick their finger up your ass, pronounce your bloody diarrhea 'all in your head', and charge you $200 for the whole sordid experience? Huh?

OK; OK; you couldn't pay ME twice that amount to stick my finger up YOUR ass (unless you're Jennifer Connelly), but that's not the point. These guys are immune to this stuff; they do it all day long and make bank in the process -- which is fine, but if you're gonna take my money, at least HELP me, for cryin' out loud. Is that so much to ask?

Anyway, I proceeded to visit several doctors, going through the whole explanation of my problem over and over again, each of them trying some other PPO-approved set of worthless tests. Every one of them seemed callous, distant, preoccupied and in a hurry to get me outta there so they could see the next wallet -- I mean patient.

They all found nothing. And in doctor-land, if they don't find anything with their little bag of tricks, you must not really be sick. Or else they give you one of those meaningless diagnoses like 'chronic fatigue syndrome' which means essentially "we don't know why you're so tired but we'll take what little cash you've been able to scrape together since you can't work much."

One doctor, late in the process, actually said to me, "You're healthy as a horse." Whereupon I replied, "Then you'd better shoot me, because I can't manage to get my ass off this fucking table." He laughed. I told him it wasn't fucking funny. He offered to write me a prescription for anti-anxiety meds. I told him he'd better write himself a prescription for pain pills. I was ushered to the cashier window with extreme prejudice.

By this time, several months had gone by, and I wasn't getting any better.

Constant fatigue. Occasional nausea and dizziness. Dysfunctional gastrointestinal system, resulting in various lovely effects that I will leave to your imagination. Frequent severe abdominal pain, due to said gastro problems. Migraine headaches, at least once a week and sometimes more. Skin rashes. Tremors. Muscle aches. Kidney stones (ouch!). Weight loss, peculiarly paired with a swollen gut from aforementioned GI tract issues. Nervousness, irrational anxiety and panic attacks, combined with sudden confusion and short-term memory loss on par with very-early-onset Alzheimer's. That last part is some seriously scary shit, believe me. { Insert obligatory '80s Heavy Metal joke here to lighten things up }

Are we having fun yet?

OK, so finally, after practically tearing all my hair out, I was recommended to a preventive medical clinic where they do traditional Western AND holistic AND Eastern medicine. They're all MDs, but they've broken out of the narrow-minded stupidity of the insurance-dominated medical establishment, and they approach things from a more cause-and-effect perspective. This of course means that insurance companies refuse to pay for ANY of it -- but since mine hadn't paid for much anyway, and since by this point I'd been beaten down by the process and just wanted to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me at any price, I made an appointment.

To their credit, these folks took me seriously and actually seemed like they wanted to help me rather than just go through the motions and send me a bill. They ran tests that nobody had run before; they took about a gallon of blood and every other fluid and secretion, and even took some hair to test for whatever. That was a first for me. My arm was starting to look like a junkie's by now, but nobody had taken any hair samples before.

What came back was a comprehensive report, detailing all sorts of things that the Doc went over with me, one by one. It showed that I was lacking in several key minerals, which seemed ridiculous to me since I take handfuls of vitamin and mineral supplements and such every day. In response to my incredulity, the Doctor said that it was possible that I had an absorption problem, which would likely be due to the presence of toxic heavy metals in my system -- and that my other symptoms were in line with this as well. So they injected me with some 'provocation chemicals' and had me piss into a jug for a day.

Well, when the next test came back, I got a phone call. "Can you come in today?" they asked. It sounded serious. Kinda freaked me out, actually. I said, "am I gonna die?" Interestingly, the possibility of death was almost a relief. It meant I would never have to spend an entire week in the bathroom again.

The test results were astonishingly simple. All the metals were listed, from antimony to zinc. A bar chart indicated measured amounts, and all were well within the 'safe' zone except two: silver and mercury. Both were through the roof.

High levels of silver in your body are not a particularly wise investment, but the mercury was the killer. There is no 'normal' level, but due to environmental factors in our golden industrial age, they expect to see a level three in the average person. Level nine is considered toxic. My level of mercury measured out at just under twelve.

There are many sources of mercury poisoning: air and water pollution, eating fish, exposure to solvents and paint, household products containing mercury-based preservatives, and others. But there is only one likely source of a high mercury AND silver level, unless you work in a mine. And it's a very controversial source, one that the medical/dental establishment refuses to take seriously: silver amalgam fillings in the teeth, which are 50% poisonous mercury that is supposedly inert but really isn't. It has been proven, though the ADA refuses to accept it, that mercury leaches out of these fillings and into the body over the years, causing all sorts of potential problems including Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, Cancer, Alzheimer's and other 'incurable' degenerative horrors. Look it up; this subject is all over the web.

I had five such fillings from childhood, up until a couple of years ago when my dentist replaced them with plastic composites, ironically because of the longterm risk of mercury toxicity. The problem is, as I've discovered in my exhaustive research on the topic in recent months, when they drilled out the fillings, they likely exposed me to a ton of deadly mercury vapors, which I inhaled, and particles which I swallowed. There are procedures they should have followed to minimize this, but they didn't. Proving this would be a daunting task, given the stance of the ADA in general and the fact that my mercury levels BEFORE the replacement are unknown. But I know there is a connection. There has to be. That's right about when my symptoms started, for cryin' out loud!

So anyway, I've been on a regimen of a zillion additional supplements in addition to some chelating agents that are supposed to bond with heavy metals and gradually flush them out of your system. I'm overjoyed that I finally have something to blame all this weird shit on, but it's no picnic. As they warned me it would, it has gotten worse before it can get better.

The chemicals bond with the metals, but not perfectly. And they also bond with important minerals and leach them out of the body -- and replacing the minerals can be difficult because the mercury is still interfering with absorption. The liver and kidneys can only process a small amount of the stuff at once, so a lot of the toxic metal gets reabsorbed into the body before it can be flushed out. This causes whole new problems. The entire process is therefore laborious and difficult, and can take a year or more, during which time there can be constant symptoms. It's been three months since they found the mercury, and I've been going through absolute hell during that time. Some days I'm fine, and some days I can't get out of bed. I haven't gone out much at all, and I take several handfuls of pills every day in addition to watching my diet and trying to eat as nutritiously as possible. The only thing that helps with the stomach problems is weed, which thankfully is medically legal here in semi-enlightened California, at least until the Feds decide to attack us.

So anyway, I'll be okay. I just wanted everyone who reads my rants to know that I'm not dead; I've just been too sick to sit at my computer for anything other than necessary work, which has been piling up and making me want to crawl under the bed. I'm feeling alright more days than I have been in awhile, and so I hope to get more work done and post more regularly as well. Keep your fingers crossed.

And for Christ's sake, GET YOUR SILVER FILLINGS REMOVED, and make sure they take precautions (throat damming, etc -- look online) to make sure you don't get poisoned in the process.

Toxically yours,
Bri

* * *

European Vacation Part Five: Prague 2

2005-06-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

When last we left our intrepid adventurer, he had just landed in the beautiful medieval city of Prague, in the Czech Republic, formerly Communist Czechoslovakia, of the former USSR. You can still smell the stagnation of those days; still see Russia's bloody Stalinist footprint on the foreheads of the older folks boarding the bus in the bleak Soviet-Era outskirts. But in the city center these days, it's all about tourism.

There I was, surrounded by breathtaking thirteenth-century architecture -- housing American fast-food franchises and souvenir shops, mostly. Ah, how Capitalism has begun to flourish in the sixteen years since Communism collapsed there. It would bring a tear of joy to my eye, if I were one of those True Believers in the so-called American Way (TM). But alas, I'm...not. It's bad enough that we've turned the entire North American continent into one big ugly homogenous strip-mall-infested suburb; I really hate to see it happen to the rest of the world.

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking. 'If you're not with us, you're against us.' Blah blah blah. Jesus Herbert Walker Christ, how I grow weary of American Simpletons and their sound bites. Read my lips: NOTHING IS THAT SIMPLE. Got it? No? OK, I'll say it again, slowly: N-O-T-H-I-N-G--I-S--T-H-A-T--S-I-M-P-L-E. In the typical us-versus-them mentality that permeates our culture like an antibiotic-resistant bacterial strain, there always seems to be a simplistic black-or-white dichotomy to EVERYTHING. So-called 'good' versus so-called 'evil'; so-called 'Communism' versus so-called 'Capitalism'; left versus right; red versus blue; 'tastes great' versus 'less filling.'

The irony is that Americans are known far and wide for demanding options; for wanting it all -- when in reality a large percentage of people in this country prefer very simple choices, handed to them by the equivalent of a benevolent dictator. That's why they elected George Bush -- hell, the guy's a simplicity machine; feed him the most complex global problem and within minutes he shits out a simplistic dogma consisting of five mispronounced words or less.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah. Prague.

The city -- at least the old part of the city -- is magnificent. I highly recommend the place, though it was probably much cooler to visit back in the nineties, before it became such a huge tourist destination. It's a bit like Disneyland at this point, except that the castle is real and there are crucifixes everywhere.

Yeah, Prague was once an important center of the Holy Roman Empire, so there is an endless procession of Dark Ages-and-beyond iconography of the often morbid, always Catholic variety. Much of it is extraordinary, from an artistic and historical perspective. Religion gives me the heebie-jeebies, though, so while admiring the beauty and history of the ancient stone statues and images, I kept wondering how impressive it would all seem if I were a peasant about to be burnt at the stake for some trivial transgression against the One True Church...

Ah, Bri...can't even relax while on vacation. Sigh. Anyway, after a large dose of wandering the musty stone canyons of the old city, Rachel and I were getting hungry. So where do we end up? A steakhouse. With maps of Texas on the walls, and other assorted pseudo-Americana scattered here and there. This wasn't on purpose; I don't normally even eat red meat. But once we were in there, we decided to stay and have a bite. It did smell good.

Rachel had a steak smothered in some kind of mushroom cream sauce; I had some chicken with the same sauce. Not exactly exotic and certainly not the least bit Czech, but both were actually pretty delicious. On top of that, the prices were a welcome change from Western Europe -- I'd paid around 20 bucks for a sandwich in Paris, but this entire meal was less than that for the two of us, including several glasses of Pilsner. Beer is dirt-cheap in Prague; in fact, it's cheaper than water. They don't serve tap water in the restaurants there; you have to buy bottled, which is still pretty cheap but since beer is only around a buck for a decent-sized glass, most people quench their thirst with beer.

Not being a big alcohol drinker, I kept a couple bottles of water with me -- but I still ended up drinking a lot more beer than I ever do at home. I mean, damn, it's almost free!

Speaking of alcohol, this brings up a wacky little story that those of you who know me will consider absolute vintage Bri. OK, so over the past year I got inspired to explore a bunch of anachronistic, Victorian-era vices just for the hell of it. Had a few interesting adventures, to say the least (ever smoke opium? drink laudanum or coca wine?); perhaps I'll write about them in another post at another time. But this particular story is about Absinthe.

Absinthe is an alcoholic beverage made with a bunch of herbal ingredients including wormwood, a substance that has been used medicinally for millenia, but can be toxic in large doses. The wormwood imparts a powerful chemical known as thujone to the drink, which creates an entirely different effect than that realized by consuming alcohol alone.

Absinthe was banned throughout the Western world about a hundred years ago, mostly due to paranoia and the beginnings of the movement that would culminate in the US with the disastrous policies of Prohibition (and continues today with the expensive joke we euphemistically call the War on Drugs). The ban was later lifted in many European countries, but even though alcohol prohibition in the US ended in 1933, Absinthe remained illegal to be sold in the US, which it still is today. Interestingly, it is not classified as a drug and is thus not illegal to possess or consume -- just to sell, because thujone is classified by the FDA as a poison. Of course, alcohol itself is technically a poison -- as are nicotine, caffeine, sugar and mayonnaise, for the most part.

Anyway, with the advent of the Web, you can pretty much get anything shipped to you, so I decided to give the evil drink a try. Experimented first on myself, then introduced friends to it, and the bottom line is that this stuff has quite a kick, but nothing that remotely justifies it being banned. It's a nice high, much nicer than being drunk in my humble opinion (it's pretty high in alcohol and you COULD get quite drunk on it, but the thujone hits you way before the alcohol does -- and thujone doesn't give you a hangover). The only problem is that it tastes absolutely like shit.

If you like Pastis, or Sambuca, or Jaegermeister, you might like it -- or at least not hate it. The taste has a very strong licorice quality that comes from anise, one of the herbs used along with the wormwood to counteract the latter's bitterness -- but to me, it just adds a sickly-sweet edge to the mostly bitter flavor. It makes me gag; I have to suck it down quick and chase it with something, which really only only dilutes the taste so that I don't throw up. But I like the effect enough to deal with the nauseating taste.

Ok, so why tell this story about Absinthe? Well, because it's legal in Prague, and in fact has become somewhat of a novelty for tourists -- there are window displays everywhere with a zillion different bottles of the stuff prominently displayed. Thus I was eager to try the local varieties, and having talked up the stuff to Rachel, she was eager to give it a shot too. So we went around trying to find someone who knew something about the beverage, who could recommend the best of what was available locally. This proved to be a fruitless task; while most people we encountered in Prague spoke English, for some reason the liquor store owners did not. So we just looked around at all the various brands and took a guess.

Rachel wanted to go for the one with the coolest bottle, but I knew better. If the stuff's good, they don't have to distract you with a pretty bottle. On the other hand, the cheapest one with the plainest bottle is probably no good either. So we opted for something in the middle. They had a few different sizes, including those cute little bottles you get on airplanes, so we grabbed a couple of those. Picked up a bottle of Coke and some chocolate (together, in my experience, a fairly decent chaser for this noxious fluid), and put it all in our hotel room for later.

Fast-forward to nighttime. Downed the works. Waited a few.

The verdict? Tasted just as shitty as the French stuff I had originally, but the effect was MUCH weaker. Definitely felt it a little bit, but nothing like I'd felt before -- and of course, Rachel hadn't tried it before so she was rather unimpressed. We decided to try a different brand. Found a little sidebar in the Timeout guide that talked about it, and a specific brand was mentioned as being the best the Czechs could muster. So we ran all over town trying to find it. No dice. Bought some other stuff, which was just as lame as the first batch. Bottom line? Czech Absinthe sucks.

So what does one do in a situation such as this? Why, one goes and gets some gelato, that's what one does! And the place for gelato in Prague is called -- I kid you not -- Cream & Dream. Now, I don't know about YOU, but the phrase 'Cream & Dream' doesn't immediately conjure up images of ice cream cones -- or at least it didn't before I went to Prague. But if you can get the Nocturnal Emissions images out of your head while you're ordering up a waffle-coneful of gooey creamy sweetness, the place is pretty good. I just think they're gonna have to re-evaluate their branding strategy if they ever decide to open a shop here, unless they put it in the Castro...

(For those of you who don't know, the Castro District is the neighborhood that gives San Francisco its reputation as the Gay Mecca of the US. Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

Another potential branding issue was parked across the street from our hotel. Yes, Mazda apparently sells a wildly popular, very...um...yellow little car in Europe that it calls the Lemon. You do enough traveling, you pretty much see everything...

Speaking of seeing everything, I was surprised to learn that Prague is, like Amsterdam, a bit of a European Bangkok -- that is to say, there's a whole lotta bangin' goin' on. The town has hookers and sex clubs galore, and it's all legal, at least as far as I could tell, since I didn't actually partake in any of it. No, really, I didn't. But I DID pick up a couple of brochures, just in case I ever go back...

One brochure of particular interest is for a place called 'Club K5, the Special One in Prague.' Inexplicably, the logo for K5 consists of what looks like the silhouette of a young boy standing in profile, with what appears to be a cloud coming out of his ass. Don't believe me? Well, see it for yourself. What did I tell you? I don't make this shit up.

There are so many things wrong with that logo, I don't even know where to begin. It could be the logo for Neverland Ranch, except that not even Michael Jackson was ever accused of having a flatulence fetish. Ugh. Don't get me started.

Anyway, regardless of the mysterious logo, the brochure happily contains no reference to little boys with irritable bowel syndrome. In fact, it claims that Club K5 has a 'restaurant, cocktail bar, sauna, steambath, massage, manicure/pedicure, solarium, 15 rooms, stripshows AND girls, girls, girls escort service!' And -- get this -- everything's on camera. You heard that right. There are video monitors throughout the place, showing what's going on in all the rooms for all the voyeurs in the house. Seven of the aforementioned rooms are 'theme rooms' such as a 'sultan's harem', 'the mountains', and my personal favorite, 'the igloo', which includes a real, gigantic, stuffed polar bear with bared fangs overlooking the bed. Um, yeah. If god forbid I ever suffer from erectile dysfunction, it's going to be because of a huge polar bear looking hungrily at me while I try to fuck some Czech hooker on camera in a club with a sick little boy for a logo...

Speaking of sexual depravity, our next stop was the Museum of Sex Machines.

Unlike the Sex Museum in Amsterdam, this one was not crowded. In fact, very few people were there at all, and no giggling could be heard -- except for ours, of course. And while the Amsterdam museum had mostly cheesy porn from other eras and even cheesier displays of broken mannequins engaging in sordid and sometimes questionable activities, this one actually had the goods. Everything from a collection of antique vibrators to a whole bunch of homemade mechanical devices from the Victorian Era, there in all their stupefyingly prurient glory. Some of the machines were not to be believed -- some had completely incomprehensible functions, and others were a thing of beauty, pure genius, ingenuity far ahead of its time. There were old chastity belts that seemingly defied any kind of hygiene; there were anti-masturbation devices that adolescent boys were forced to wear, looking and operating like something from the Spanish Inquisition. There was a gear-and-spring-operated teeter-totter with a dildo protruding from each seat, found in a barn in England and dating from the late 18th century. We were amazed. And all this for the Czech equivalent of five bucks for the two of us.

We had accomplished a great deal that day. Satisfied, we wandered through the charming cobblestone streets; Prague is the most beautiful at night, the old buildings aglow with lights, window displays of blown glass, original paintings and beautiful green bottles of crappy Absinthe all lit up to tempt the cash-laden visitor into a return in the morning.

That morning came, and, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and free of hangovers, we opted to pretend we were typical tourists and do a few of the standard tourist things. The obvious first must-see was Prague Castle, which towers imposingly over the city like the Eye of Sauron. Our hotel was located at the foot of a long and winding road that ascends toward several ornate buildings at the top of a high stone precipice. The first of these is guarded by a pair of impressive-looking chaps dressed like Donald Rumsfeld's wet dream, standing perfectly still just like the guards at Buckingham Palace but without those silly fur hats. All I could think of was what a lousy job that must be, standing there all day. Try to picture it: you're a trained military man; you've endured rigorous combat exercises and succeeded at countless difficult tasks in order to get such a prestigious assignment, guarding the castle that symbolizes your country's rich history. You must get up every morning before the sun rises to make sure your body is taut and ready and your uniform is crisp and perfect. And then you must stand perfectly still in the heat or cold, rain or shine, all day long, while stupid tourists take pictures of each other posing next to you with big grins on their fat gelato-smeared faces. Ooh, sign me up.

Much of the original thousand-year-old castle is gone, destroyed and rebuilt a hundred times, and what is left is preserved in a museum that is part of the castle itself. Most of the existing structure is only a couple hundred years old, with older segments here and there in the walls, floors, doorways, and grounds. The main cathedral seems to have more of its older structure intact than the rest, though it has obviously been restored as well. Like most European cathedrals, it is magnificent; like all European cathedrals, it gave me mixed emotions. After all, these places were designed to inspire awe, and their historical significance only increases that sense as the centuries go by. One doesn't have to be a believer to appreciate the beauty of such an amazing work of art, built in a time long before modern machinery. But then again, one who knows his history can't help looking at all the breathtaking, ornately carved woodwork covered in gold, the acres of stained glass, stonework, mosaics, lush fabrics and other lavish riches and wonder how many poor believers starved to death in its shadow, or suffered under its oppressive dictates and punishments.

It was then that I knew I had to see the crypt under the cathedral, where the kings and the priests are buried with all their worldly shit. Death, the great equalizer. No matter how high and mighty or holy and righteous you think you are; no matter how many people are forced to bow at your feet while you breathe, in the end they throw dirt on you like everybody else. That's why they had to invent the concept of Heaven and Hell, so people wouldn't come to their senses and kill all the priests.

The crypt contains the earliest remaining walls of the castle, originally wood but rebuilt repeatedly of stone; various centuries are represented by various wall segments dating to Roman times. At the end of the winding passageway is a stone vault, protected from visitors (there were only a few of us down there) by a locked gate, wherein lay several metal coffins -- yes, metal. Apparently the remains of King Wenceslas I and a few other long-dead Czech bigshots were relocated there in recent times, and new coffins were built for them. This was a weird thing to see; usually the crypts under ancient cathedrals are filled with equally ancient stone coffins where rulers of church and state spend eternity as icons and tourist attractions. One older visitor was more confused than I; he kept asking his tour guide over and over again, 'Are there skeletons in there? So what you're saying is that if I opened that coffin, I would see a skeleton?' After about the fifth time asking this same stupid question, the tour guide was visibly annoyed and I could picture her saying, 'Yeah, old man, not only are there skeletons in there, but it won't be long before one of them is YOURS. Now shut the fuck up!'

I've been to a few European castles and have been amazed at what has survived the centuries in some of them; Edinburgh Castle being a superb example. I expected to see more of this one, as it looks pretty impressive from the town below. But most of what towers over the town is the cathedral, which is truly massive. The rest of the castle is mostly long gone, replaced by eighteenth and nineteenth-century structures, which by European standards might as well be brand-new. It's still awesome, but it didn't take very long to see all there was to see. We ambled down a beautiful path that brought us back down to city level. In front of us was an Asian couple that had apparently bonded with several baby ducklings, which followed them down the path. The mother duck was nowhere in sight, and the couple kept trying to shoo the ducklings away but they just kept following them, peeping sweetly. I was suddenly filled with horror. What was going to happen to these poor little orphans? Where was their mother? Why had they imprinted on a human couple? And was it significant that they were Asian? After all, everybody knows what happens to ducks in Chinatown...

It was at that moment that I remembered eating the baby duck hearts in Paris. This had the curious effect of horrifying me even further, while at the same time making me ravenously hungry. I turned to Rachel, and her eyes told me all I needed to know. We put the poor doomed baby ducks out of our minds and made a beeline for something to eat.

Amusingly, Prague is wall-to-wall pizza places (perhaps thanks to the old connection to Rome?), so we grabbed a slice. It was underwhelming. Didn't taste bad, but neither did it taste good. Pretty much like a big cracker. So much for Prague pizza.

Our next stop was the Museum of Communism, ironically located between a McDonald's and a casino, in a very ornate and beautiful building that the Communists surely would have labeled 'decadent.'

The museum was interesting enough; it contained specifically a history not of Communism itself, but of Soviet occupation of the country since WWII, with a short background of the Russian Revolution thrown in for context. Czechs by and large never did quite accept the ideology of the USSR, but they didn't have much of a choice until the Prague Spring of '68 (a short-lived but glorious moment of populist reform that was subsequently crushed by Russian tanks) and then the collapse of the USSR in '89, which they took advantage of immediately. The museum contains all sorts of Soviet-Era mementos, from propaganda posters to military uniforms and even a jet engine from a Soviet MiG, all accompanied by written placards in several languages, documenting events and describing objects to form a big-picture view of what life was like under the Communist regime. The only problem is that the English reads almost as badly as, say, a George Bush speech. Spelling and grammar are a complete mess, and it's hard to understand what they are trying to say in several passages. When it IS understandable, it sounds like a third-grader wrote it. I wanted to volunteer to rewrite all their signs, but I thought better of it.

Went back across the beautiful Charles Bridge, passing all the various buskers playing bad music, and the beggars bent over in mock supplication with their heads on the ground and their hands holding cups in front of them in the hope you'll put something in it. Those guys just creep my ass out; I'll give a beggar a buck now and then, but if he's gonna get all disturbingly dramatic like that, I'm gonna take a pass. Jesus, man -- it ain't India; it's Europe. Eat a goddamned pigeon.

Don't remember if I described the Charles Bridge before, but it's the main bridge across the river between the oldest and second-oldest parts of town, and aside from all the buskers and bums, it's lined with some of the most detailed and amazing religious statuary I've seen. Saints and nuns and angels and Christians and infidel Turks are everywhere, frozen in their sometimes mystifying poses that used to mean something to everyone who crossed the bridge. Most of them are blackened by pollution dating from the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, and some of them are beginning to crumble from the acid rain brought by modern pollution. There is an almost life-sized crucifix, with a morbidly suffering Christ haloed by a gold-plated inscription in Hebrew. Curiosity drove us to look this up; apparently at some point in history a Jewish man was convicted of showing disrespect for the graven image, and his penalty was to pay for the golden inscription, praising Christ and written in Hebrew so that everyone would know it was from him. Now, I'm not a big fan of Christianity (or Judaism or any other organized Ponzi scheme), and surely there was some anti-Semitism involved here somewhere (the guy was probably guilty of nothing other than being a Jew) -- but all other things being equal I have to say that, in the spirit of letting the punishment fit the crime, this was a master stroke. It beats being broken on the wheel, anyway.

Well, for the rest of the day we took in the sites, wandering aimlessly and relishing the amazing beauty found unexpectedly around every corner. Accidentally came upon the John Lennon wall, a cool little tribute to John and all things Beatle, covered in colorful graffiti-painted lyrics, several portraits of Lennon, a huge yellow submarine, and various other related images in a secluded, lovely setting next to the river and beneath some ancient overhanging trees. Found a pub around the corner that the guidebooks recommended for authentic Czech food, and this being our last night in Prague, we decided to go for it.

The pub was a very cool place, with a grotto-like atmosphere lent by Roman-style brick vaulting inside. Long communal mahogany tables filled the room, and a fire roared in the fireplace. Altogether a perfect ambiance. Drank a few one-dollar pints of decent dark beer, ordered a few exotic-sounding items to share off the very affordable menu and enjoyed a relaxing, uncrowded evening (the place was off the beaten tourist path, slightly tricky to find). What did we order? Well, let me see if I can remember...ah yes: potato pancakes with cream, deer meatballs with some sort of strange sauce, and a whole roasted duck with dumplings and cabbage. Sounds interesting, eh?

Well, it wasn't.

The potato pancakes weren't bad; I've had better, but they were tasty enough. But it was all downhill from there. The deer meatballs had no taste whatsoever. Kinda like the pizza earlier in the day. They didn't taste bad; they just didn't taste like anything. And the thing is, I generally don't eat mammals. I stopped eating beef, pork, lamb, all that stuff a few years back. I DO eat poultry and fish, and I don't like tofu or wheat gluten or any of that fake meat crap. But when traveling, especially in Eastern Europe, I will temporarily suspend my eating preferences rather than be a prima donna, and eat whatever. But all I could think of was that here I'd done this rare thing and ordered friggin' DEER; some poor forest creature had to die so I could eat something that for all its lack of any taste whatsoever, might as well have been tofu, or styrofoam for that matter. Ugh. There goes my karma, for NOTHING.

And the duck was all dried up. It was like duck jerky, or vulcanized rubber. I practically choked on it, no matter how much beer I swigged with it. And then it hit me, all of a sudden. Karma. Ducks. Of course. The universe was in perfect order; everything made sense now. We had eaten the baby duck hearts. Then the lost ducklings came along, and we had our chance to redeem ourselves. We could have at least TRIED to help them find their mother; the Asian couple wasn't going to do it. But we didn't. We just left them there, and went for tasteless pizza.

And now the universe was paying us back with styrofoam deer and rubber duck.

Well, at least the beer was good...and oh so cheap. Ah, Prague, I will always remember you. But not for the food.

* * *

European Vacation Part Four: Prague 1

2005-06-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

After hearing about a thousand times how Prague was this amazing pristine ancient city untouched by all the wars, yada yada yada, I became convinced that I had to go there. So that became the third destination on my whirlwind trip.

Thus after an uneventful train ride back to Paris from Amsterdam, followed by another lovely but expensive day in the City of Lights, Rachel and I boarded a swissair flight to the Czech Republic, with a quick stopover in Zurich.

It must be said here that, unlike on the typical American-based flights I've taken where they come around once with a measly little bag of pretzels, on swissair flights they bring you chocolate bars every five minutes and you can grab as many as you want. Therefore swissair can have a link from my blog any day of the week. They freekin' ROCK.

Anyway, at first I was a little peeved that we had to spend a few wasted hours at the Zurich airport waiting for a connecting flight, but I'd never been to Switzerland before, and the scenery out the airplane window was worth the layover. The Alps and then the lush green rolling hills, followed by an impeccably clean city -- what a beautiful place. I don't know much about the Swiss, but their chocolate and their cheese are pretty damn good, and those Swiss army knives are a thing of beauty I remember from my boyhood. The cuckoo clock thing aside, I can't say one goddamned bad thing about Switzerland. OK, well, there's that little unresolved matter about collaborating with the Nazis when they were supposed to be neutral and all that, but why let the horrors of history spoil my little reverie, eh? After all, I don't wax so euphorically positive very often; why not enjoy it?

While waiting at the gate for our connecting flight, I found myself bemused by the arrival of a very large man in full cowboy regalia. He wore a gigantic cowboy hat, a western-style pale orange gabardine shirt, a silver cow-skull bolo tie, Wrangler jeans, a ridiculously oversized and overdecorated oval belt buckle, and of course, cowboy boots. Everything but a pair of sixguns. To reiterate, we were in Zurich, Switzerland. In the airport.

The man approached the check-in counter, and I heard him say, in a deep, rumbling, throaty twang, that he was from Texas.

Well, of course he was from Texas. Duh. I could have guessed that; from where else could he possibly be? But the absurdity of it all was just too much; when one encounters such a walking stereotype, such a hollywood-perfect, over-the-top insipid cliche, one cannot help but be awed by the perfection with which nature provides food for the comedians of the ecosystem.

I mean, is it really necessary, Hoss, to dress up like the Lone Fucking Ranger wherever you go? Isn't it bad enough that you wear your ridiculous little outfit to drive your Ford Expedition with factory-installed gun rack around the Dallas suburbs? Do you really have to embarrass normal-looking Americans in airports the world over with your inner five-year-old's Western fantasy ensemble?

Luckily there was also a statuesque Teutonic blonde in a mini-skirt and gogo boots to look at. Rachel was convinced that the woman was a hooker, but I insisted that she was probably another Cheese Rep, handing out free samples of poisonous cheese (see Part Three).

The flight to Prague was quick and easy, aside from the extra-chunky American woman who spoke quite loudly to her equally-chunky child the whole trip. Hey; at least the kid wasn't screaming.

Hopped on a bus from the airport to the Prague metro (along the way, horrified and fascinated by the proliferation of American gas stations and fast-food joints lining the roadway), took the metro a few stops and from there took a tram into the center of town; then began to search for our hotel. Wandered aimlessly for awhile, and then suddenly some guy walked up to us and said, 'Hey, is your name Rachel?'

This, as one might assume, freaked Rachel out a bit. But, as we quickly discovered, the guy's name is Chris, and he works for the hotel we were looking for. How he found us at that exact moment in a sea of wandering tourists when we hadn't even called to announce our arrival, we may never know. It was like something out of Harry Potter. But anyway, he proceeded to lead us to where we needed to go. Luck be a lady tonight.

Aside from having to climb about eighty flights of stairs and unlock several different doors, our hotel room was decent; and certainly a LOT cheaper than the one in Amsterdam had been. Had to share a communal bathroom and shower, which was annoying, but still better than many of my travel experiences, let me tell ya. We were both eager to drop off our stuff and get to exploring this medieval city, eat some local food and drink some ridiculously cheap beer.

The guidebook said that the best way to get started in Prague was to take one of the trams, which wound around most of the more picturesque sights and would help us get the lay of the land, so to speak. So we climbed aboard Tram 22 and sat down, filled with anticipation. The tram took us over one of the many ancient bridges and past some extraordinary buildings from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries; then the architecture started getting newer. Seventeenth century. Eighteenth. Nineteenth, with more and more graffiti marring the charm (ugh -- graffiti on historic buildings; don't these little Czech gangsta-wannabe bastards have any self-respect?). Oy. Soon we were getting a glimpse of Communist-Era Prague, outside the old city. Cinderblock buildings, mostly cheap utilitarian housing. Concrete everywhere; no trees anywhere. Graffiti -- and not even the artistic kind -- covering everything. It got uglier and uglier, until just one word came to mind: Bleak. Like the nastiest parts of Detroit. Just Bleak.

We came to the end of the line. We were all alone on the tram. All around us was post-Communist Bleakness. It was kinda scary. And it was the end, where the trams turn around and go back, so we had to get off and get back on. We decided to go back on a different tram. That turned out not to be the brightest of decisions.

Yes, Prague is beautiful. Old Prague, that is. But outside of the old city center, I'm sorry to say, it's ugly as hell. Did I say Detroit? It's uglier than Detroit. It's ugly in the way only a former Soviet satellite can be. It's Chernobyl-fucking-ugly. And there's a lot of it. The second tram took us in a completely different direction, deep into Bleakville, as we affectionately named it. We kept our fingers crossed that at some point things would start to get all pretty and charming again, and we could get off the tram without thinking we would encounter any depleted uranium or old friends of Stalin.

Eventually the architecture started to get interesting again, so we took a chance and hopped off the tram. After walking a bit, we managed to make it back to the Prague of the postcards and calendars and snowglobes. I doubt that Bleakville will be showing up on any postcards anytime soon...

To be continued...

* * *

European Vacation Part Three: Amsterdam

2005-06-24T02:33:00.000-07:00

There we were. Sitting in a Paris train station, hot and sweaty from running in vain to the train we were supposed to be on as it pulled out on its way to Amsterdam. Luckily there was another Netherlands-bound train leaving a mere 4 hours later, and, luckier still, it had available seats. We could have wandered around Paris some more while waiting, but we had all our bags and the lockers in the station were like a zillion euros an hour. So we just hung out.

People-watching in a train station is always interesting, and Paris is no exception. There were all sorts of dramas playing out around us, from the 'stranded' guy hustling money for a 'return trip home' (isn't there ALWAYS one of those guys?) to the bald-headed eyebrowless evil-scientist-looking man who never blinked, to the woman with the gigantic silver sunglasses who looked like a big housefly and who constantly kept changing seats. I could swear she was making buzzing noises under her breath as she moved closer and closer to us, sending a chill up my spine and prompting me to wonder if I had unwittingly ingested some sort of mushroom. Finally the time passed and we got on a train, just in time to avoid the fly woman, who proceeded to feast on the living juices of some poor girl who had fallen asleep next to us in the waiting area. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.

After a brief stop in the middle of nowhere because of some protest on the tracks or something (we never quite figured out what it was, but there was some sort of strike going on, as there usually is in France), we were on our way. The landscape from Paris to Amsterdam is rather unremarkable; I'm sure there are interesting things to see in Belgium, but you don't see them from the train.

By now my jetlag was wearing off and I started to feel somewhat human, so I knew something bad was going to happen. By now you should know my life well enough to understand why. That, however, didn't stop me from eating the cheese.

At some point -- I think it was somewhere in Belgium -- a couple of tasty-looking EuroChix from some cheese company's promotions department boarded the train and handed out free samples of packaged cheese. Gotta love Europe for stuff like that; it just wouldn't happen here unless you're a doctor and they're pharmaceutical reps. Anyway, since we had planned to be on the earlier train, we hadn't eaten much in awhile and I was famished. So I woofed down the whole package of cheese, which was actually quite delicious. I think there were six jumbo slices in there -- not bad for a free sample.

Too bad it was poisonous.

OK; well, maybe I'm exaggerating. Nobody else seemed to have a problem. But within an hour we were pulling into our destination and I was looking a little on the purplish side with a tinge of green around the edges. I couldn't breathe very well, and I felt uncomfortably edgy and anxious, like I was having a heart attack or something. So all I can think of is that I had an allergic reaction. Don't have them to food very often; probably only a couple of times in my life, but this was definitely one of them. I was sure I was going to pass out, as I staggered out of the train and the station and into the cold, wet air of Amsterdam in the Spring.

Cheese has never bothered me, and if it did, I would expect it to be more of a digestive thing -- but this was definitely tweaking my cardiovascular system, and of course I couldn't tell just how bad it was going to get. As Rachel and I climbed aboard a bus to the vicinity of our hotel, I could barely get air into my lungs and my hands and feet were feeling all tingly. I've often thought Amsterdam wouldn't be a bad place to spend my final days, but I had hoped to actually get to see the place first.

Somehow made it up to the hotel room, which was up about 20 narrow flights of stairs, wheezing and gasping the whole way like it was Machu Picchu or something. I'm sure Rachel was wondering why she had opted to travel with this pathetic invalid as I coughed out, 'I'm not g-gonna make it; b-better go on without me. Save yourself.' Surely she had read what had happened to me in Madrid?

Took some antihistamines. Crashed on the bed for awhile. Color came back. I'd live another day.

Still don't know if it was the cheese or what, but I can't think of what else it might have been. But I was rather sniffly for the rest of the trip, thanks to some unfamiliar pollen or whatever flying around. I don't know what planet I'm from, but I seem to be overly sensitive to this one. Jesus. I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway and instead I turned out to be Woody Allen.

The hotel was a decent little place right in the center of town, above a headshop and a Chinese restaurant that proudly offered 'ALL YOU CAN EAT IN ONE HOUR' for 7 Euros or so. The restaurant was devoid of conversation; all you could hear from the doorway was slurping and chewing, as the patrons tried to cram in as much food as they could in the allotted timeframe. I figured they were probably Americans. I saw lots of people with Canadian flag stickers recently applied to their backpacks; I figured they were probably Americans too.

Amsterdam was beautiful despite the weather, which started out partly crappy in the morning and progressed to mostly shitty by mid-afternoon. the cold and wet were not particularly conducive to sightseeing, so as a result we spent most of our time in the -- ahem -- coffeeshops. If there could possibly be any of you who as yet aren't familiar with this terminology, go ask one of your pothead friends, who will probably just laugh at you. Let's just say I don't generally drink coffee.

Our stay in The Netherlands was thus a hazy one, spent floating and/or stumbling around in a perpetual daze, wandering around quaint cobblestone streets and looking for warm places to hang out. There being a coffeeshop every fifteen feet or so, we managed to visit quite a few of them, striking up interesting conversations here and there that both of us only vaguely remember. One guy looked like a pirate. He kept mumbling incoherently to us, and we acted as though we knew what he was talking about. One time a pair of identical twin females, both rather husky and with crazy big-ass kinky red hair out to here, dressed alike and each looking a bit like a cross between Carrot Top and a Viking, came in and started playing checkers while sharing a gigantic joint. I looked at Rachel, who nodded as if to say, 'Yes, there are two of them. I see them too.'

We decided that it would be prudent to visit some museums, so that when people asked us later, 'Did you visit any museums?' we wouldn't have to say, 'No, we just wandered around stoned.' So we wandered around the Van Gogh Museum stoned -- which was not advisable since they had an Egon Schiele exhibit, and his stuff is just too fucking miserable to look at while high. I mean, I'm no fan of the guy anyway, but with a potentially semi-paranoid headful of Northern Lights, he's just way too disturbing for words to describe. We wandered around the Tropenmuseum stoned -- which was hilarious, because that has got to be one of the saddest, tackiest little excuses for a museum I've seen yet (with the possible exception of the Roy Rogers Museum, on the way to Vegas from L.A.). The current exhibit of note was called 'Het Kwaad,' which means 'All About Evil' in Dutch. And evil it was indeed. Kinda like a haunted house at an elementary school. Amid backdrops made of cheaply-painted cardboard and aluminum foil, there were all sorts of representations of 'evil' from throughout the centuries displayed, from ancient gargoyles to pictures of goth fetish models. Ooh, scary. My favorite was an obviously cobbled-together five-foot mannequin of Darth Vader, complete with black rubber rainboots -- yes, rainboots -- and an undersized head that obviously originated on a much smaller model of The Dark Lord himself. The overall effect was as if Zippy the Pinhead were seduced by the dark side.

Upstairs in the same museum was the Permanent Collection -- a disjointed and confusing walk through Dutch colonial history, with strange wax figures of Dutch colonialists engaging in various indecipherable activities, along with all sorts of items of questionable origin and even more questionable value. There was a life-sized re-creation of what looked like an Apartheid-era African township. No, I'm not kidding. Mistaken, perhaps. But kidding? No. At any rate, it was one sorry-ass exhibit.

Didn't go to the Rijksmuseum. As an artist and former art student, I've seen enough Rembrandt and other Old Masters to last a lifetime, thanks. But we DID go to the Sex Museum, which was mostly anticlimactic coming from a place like San Francisco, but I can see how it would be shocking if I were from, say, Kansas. The real fun of that place was watching everybody else get all giggly and embarrassed at the goofball displays. You just haven't lived until you've watched a middle-class Japanese family pose for pictures next to a giant fiberglass erect penis.

Speaking of erect penises, I guess I expected the prostitutes in the red light district to be skanky. Man, was I wrong. They have certain streets designated for legal hustling, and they're lined with these sliding-glass doors all lit up with various colors of neon, mostly red and pink. Standing behind the doors were some of the most gorgeous girls I've ever seen, all regulated, taxed and supposedly disease-free. I was taken aback, to say the least. Never thought of myself as the sort to consider paying for some action but to be completely honest, I must admit that the thought crossed my mind. Must have been the dope. Yeah, that was it.

Anyway, rather than give Rachel the dubious choice of waiting outside or joining in, I kept my lascivious fantasies to myself.

Instead, we went and found a nice, warm...coffeeshop.

To be continued...

* * *

European Vacation Part Two: Paris

2005-06-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Landed at Charles deGaulle Airport without incident. It's a quick flight from Heathrow; low altitude, over the English Channel and then the beautiful French countryside. I imagined myself part of the D-Day invasion in a B-24, looking for Nazi tanks to annihilate below, but the quiet empty beaches of Normandy ruined the illusion. At least I THINK it was Normandy...

Descended rapidly to the runway, thus ending my fantasy of being a young, dashing bombardier in 1944 France. And the sexy French whore who was about to hide me in her armoire after I was forced to eject behind enemy lines turned back into, well, the one cute stewardess on the plane. Sigh. The captain turned off the fasten seat belt sign and everyone stood up. A woman right behind the first class curtain stood up and slammed her head into the plastic overhead light assembly. Hard. That had to hurt.

Once again, the International Bureau of Airport Ineptitude was on the job, and we were herded into a passageway that spiraled around and opened into the passport control area. But unlike in London, there were no lines. Just a mob. The signs ordered us to stay behind the yellow line, but there were no lanes to queue up into -- just a single open passport window, with about 400 people crammed together trying to get in front of each other but behind the aforementioned yellow line. I heard obvious profanity being exclaimed in about thirty different languages, including a few I even recognized. I didn't wish to enter France as the stereotypical loud, pushy, Ugly American, but I was quickly getting shoved further backwards in the crowd by people with gigantic bags, dogs, children and beards -- so finally I angled my slender bod in such a way as to form a wedgelike warhead, a human torpedo, and I forced my way through the swearing, sweating, wildly gesticulating masses until I plowed smack into the broad back of a large Arabic gentleman with hands the size of ceiling fans. I knew if I stayed right behind him in his wake, I'd get somewhere -- nobody was pushing HIM around.

After jostling around this way for a good 20 minutes with no sign that the Frenchies were going to open another window, I finally made it to the front and was welcomed to France with a grimace from the obviously unamused Passport Control Gendarme. Wound my way around to the huge waiting crowd where my friend would hopefully be waiting to escort me away from this ghastly place; luckily she spotted me, and we ran off toward baggage claim together. Ah, my vacation begins...

My friend Rachel is originally a New Yorker, but she's lived in Paris for five years, teaching English and translating and such. Her French is perfect, while mine is nonexistent, so besides babysitting my ignorant ass and giving me a place to stay, she was a great resource in oh-so-many ways. She lives right where the Bastille used to be, which is pretty dang cool if you ask me. We went on all kinds of little sightseeing trips, and I took all kinds of crappy pictures with my brand-new digital camera. Yes, I said crappy pictures. Either this camera sucks, or I do -- and since the camera can't defend itself, I'm blaming IT.

OK, so I met a bunch of Rachel's friends, who were all interesting and nice, including the charming British expat Ralph Fiennes type who collects sports cars and Classic Rock Memorabilia and who had just bought his cute blonde American girlfriend a pair of Gene Simmons panties on EBay. Not sure what they thought of me, since I spent my first few days in a complete coma from jetlag; hadn't been able to sleep on the plane and had thus lost an entire night's worth of shuteye and didn't really catch up until Amsterdam (see Part Three). But together we ate a bunch of expensive bar food made even more expensive by the appalling value of my 21st-century American Dollar against the Euro, to my dismay. I could maybe afford to live in Paris for about three months, and that's if I sold my car. And the food's good, but I have to say that in all my travels, Paris included, I haven't found a city that can touch San Francisco for food quality, variety, and (compared to Western Europe) even price. Besides, as good as the food might be in Paris, it might as well be dogshit with all the smokers puffing away at every table in every restaurant. My face was a lovely shade of green the majority of the time, and my food usually ended up tasting like the Marlboro Man's pillowcase.

Ah, but Paris is beautiful. The Seine, the ancient architecture, the magnificent history, the willowy, pouty-lipped girls clicking around everywhere in high heels over ankle-destroying cobblestone streets...

Paris is the only place you could get me to eat a duckling heart. Yeah, a cute little baby duck heart. We had a handful of 'em. Tasted like metallic bridge mix. Here I would be ashamed to eat that, but there I was just glad it was less than a hundred bucks for dinner. Actually my normally somewhat politically-correct dietary leanings became completely violated, obfuscated and nearly obliterated on this trip, as you shall see later in the story -- but that's one of the things traveling does to you. Makes you eat weird shit, and be okay with it. Kinda like being Catholic; I eat something I would normally never consider, but then I say a few 'hail marys' to my inner Buddha and all is forgiven.

I found out in Paris that a 'suzette' is a lollipop, BUT it is also, appropriately enough, slang for 'blow job' -- a fact I relayed excitedly to my friend Suzette just yesterday. But for some reason, she wasn't as amused as I was by this delightful bit of trivia. Go figure.

You hear a lot about how rude French people supposedly are, especially to Americans, but I didn't experience this. Either they weren't rude to me at all, or else they were rude in French and I didn't understand them. They could be saying the French equivalent of 'Your face looks like an orangutan's ass with smallpox' and I would respond with something like 'Oui madame, the croissants smell excellent.' I guess one could say that the beauty of not understanding a language is being immune to its insults. Makes me wish that sometimes I couldn't understand English.

In fact, one such time was when some American tourist with an East Coast-ish accent stopped us and asked if we par-layed eeng-less, and if we knew where the 'Emily' cafe was. I was baffled for a moment until I remembered we were in Montmartre, where the film 'Amelie' was shot. The girl in the film works at a little cafe; apparently it and many other of the locations in the movie have become tourist attractions simply by virtue of being featured in it. Hey, it's a great little film and I like it a lot -- but come on, people. Jesus.

Wandered aimlessly around Paris for awhile, taking in all the sights, navigating the Metro, eating out too much and resisting the temptation to buy a tiny metal replica of the Eiffel Tower. Checked out the cemetery where my heroes Proust, Wilde, Jim Morrison and Leopold Fucker are buried, which is one huge cool crazy spooky place, let me tell ya. Repeatedly passed incarnations of the Tex-Mex restaurant chain known as 'Indiana.' Why anyplace ostensibly serving 'Tex-Mex' food would call itself 'Indiana' remains quite beyond my comprehension. Maybe 'El Paso' was taken?

I'm thinking of opening up a French restaurant here in town and calling it 'Scotland.'

OK, so I could talk all day about Paris and how great it was -- except for the weather, which tended to be rather chilly for June, even by San Francisco standards -- but anybody who's been to Paris knows how fab it is, and anybody who hasn't ought to get their ignorant lazy American asses out of the barc-o-lounger and do some traveling, for Christ's sake! The world's bigger than Michigan, Bucko!

To be continued...

* * *

European Vacation Part One: Getting There

2005-06-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Ya know, a vacation is a funny thing. You go because, well, you need a break. All work and no play, blah blah blah. But then you come back, and you're tired as hell, and you have work piled up into a menacing heap. Within a day and a half, you need another vacation. And another. And soon you descend into the spiral of Vacation Addiction.

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a Vacation Addict. And I'm not in the least bit upset about it. But then again, I haven't gotten my credit card bill yet...

OK, so between vacations and out-of-town guests and catching up on an insane workload, I haven't had the chance to regale you all with my latest tales of adventure until now. But here I am, back on West Coast time and wishing I were lounging carefree in an Amsterdam coffeeshop but alas, I must morph back into the white-collar slave to the dollar that this particular human epoch has assured I will be for awhile.

But for a moment, just a few short weeks ago, I was soaring high into the friendly skies in a United Airlines seat that was only slightly bigger than a baby's carseat, not a care in the world other than poor circulation, muscle cramps and the strange smells that appear out of nowhere in the recycled air of a pressurized cabin.

The flight took ninety-seven hours, or so it seemed. I brought drugs to knock me out but they didn't work. Yeah, I knew the expiration date was sometime in the mid-nineties, but I figured they'd do SOMETHING (greedy pharmaceutical companies with their planned obsolescence). Bastards. So I read 2 books, watched some horrid inflight movies (that godawful sequel to 'Bridget Jones' made the first one, which I also saw on a plane, seem like 'Citizen Kane' by comparison), squirmed around, and tried in futility to sleep. No dice. The ever-present constantly screaming baby made my earplugs useless. Why don't they have special flights for people with babies, huh? And while they're at it, they should have special rows for fat people too, with just one big seat and no armrests. Fit 'em in there according to ass size, like in a church pew, as many across as needed for ballast.

So anyway, what's REALLY nice on international flights now is that they have those little video maps and timetables you can check periodically, so that you can see that five minutes has passed since the last time you checked it. It's like your inner child going 'are we there yet?' in your head every few minutes. Maddening. And they encourage this.

OK, so after weeks in the air, landed at Heathrow Airport in London for a three-hour layover. Yeah, that was all I could get. Three hours (or so I thought) to wait for a one-hour flight across the channel. Not only that, but Heathrow, like many airports all over the world, is run by complete idiots. Yes, even though airplanes come and go day in and day out from all over the planet, it seems that when the employees of Heathrow go to bed at night, they forget all about just exactly what it is that they do, and they have to start over each morning.

There were signs pointing in opposing directions, saying the same thing. There were crowds of arriving passengers completely confused as to where to go next, and no one to tell them. I could swear that nobody worked there at all. The atmosphere was one of complete chaos. A recording kept playing over the intercom, apologizing in a female voice for the confusion, but not explaining why. But there were no flesh-and-blood humans to be found, other than travelers trying desperately to figure out why the single line they were forced to stand in that snaked through the entire airport was not moving at all. Several people in line with me missed their connecting flights while standing there; it was then that I became grateful for my 3-hour layover. Turns out they were short-handed, with one security checkpoint for ALL arriving flights, and nobody to tell anyone the situation. Lovely. Three hours later, I barely made it onto my connecting flight to Paris.

To be continued...

* * *

Did ya miss me?

2005-06-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hey folks -- I'm back in town. Went to Paris, Amsterdam and Prague; had a great time but now I'm jet-lagged and cobblestone-footed. I'll post all about my trip as soon as I get my internal clock back in gear and get my brain to remember what the heck I've been up to during my adventures. Besides the timezone thing and the 12-hour flight home, I think I'm still pretty hazy from Amsterdam, if you get my drift...

In the meantime, had an absurd crazy dream last night I thought I'd share. Not sure what the heck it means if anything, but I'm sure some shrink would have a field day with it. OK, here goes:

First I seem to be in the desert at Burning Man, only I apparently didn't expect to be there since I have NO supplies, food or water or anything. So I'm desperately running around from camp to camp, begging people to give me some water. Quite weirdly, I'm carrying around a female mannequin's hollow leg and asking for it to be filled with water -- I'm extremely thirsty, but nobody will give me any. OK, so this is all pretty bizarre, right? Well it gets better. Suddenly I'm in a different dream, like changing the channel on a TV. I'm living in a tiny, crumbling apartment somewhere with a pregnant wife -- I don't recall who she might be or what she looks like, but suddenly she starts giving birth. To triplets. Yeah, three of them, all girls. I was prepared for one, but three freaks my ass out. I say to her, "OK, now I'm really gonna kill myself." Probably not a good thing to say to a woman while she's giving birth to your kids, but whatever.

Anyway, so as if all that weren't weird enough, it gets weirder. One of the kids doesn't cry -- instead, every time the bottle falls out of her mouth, which seems to happen a lot, she starts screaming "fuck! fuck! fuck!" until I pick up the bottle and give it back to her. Then she's fine.

Another one of the children doesn't seem important to the dream; she just sits there quietly. But the third one, who looks like a toddler version of Nicole Kidman -- yeah, really -- sits on my lap in a reclining chair, while she and I spin around and take turns pointing out all the crappy things about the tiny apartment. The place is disgusting -- the paint is peeling off the walls; the floor has big holes in it. It's a complete slum. But she and I are laughing about it. Weird, eh?

Right about then I woke up.

Not sure I wanna know what sort of garbage is going on in my head to explain this fucked-up dream, but anyway, there it is. Maybe I need some medication or something. Bueller?

:)

* * *

Born a Ramblin' Man

2005-05-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hey folks -- yeah, I've been slackin' on the postings. Sorry. Been in and out of town, was sick for awhile, etc. And now I'm going to Europe for a 2 week vacation, first thing tomorrow morning. I'll post all about it when I get back -- I promise -- but I won't be near any computers while I'm gone. Why? Because my computer is one of the things I need a vacation from.

Got a friend watching my place and my cat -- and she's a kung-fu expert with a PCP habit so I wouldn't mess with her if I were you. Just in case there are any unfriendlies -- burglars or terrorists or whatever -- reading this.

Word.

:)

* * *

Stupor-stitious

2005-05-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

Hey I'm back, back in the New York groove. Did y'all miss me? Hey I've been busy; cut me some slack. It ain't easy being so popular.

OK, so it's friday the 13th. Big deal, right? I don't normally believe in that superstitious crap. But the way my day went, I'm starting to believe.

Woke up to a parking ticket on my car. This being San Francisco, that isn't unusual. Parking tickets provide this city's main source of revenue besides Alcatraz sweatshirts. But the problem is this: the ticket was for not having a parking permit sticker, which I in fact have, as prominently displayed on my bumper as it has always been. Apparently I was targeted by a blind or retarded meter maid. Now I have to go downtown and explain to the idiots at the Department of Parking that one of their idiotic employees made a mistake. Chances are, after standing in line for several hours, they will take a look at my paperwork and decide that I am right. Or maybe they won't. You never know with those morons. Either way, I get to waste some of my precious time dealing with this shit.

But if it ended there, it would not be anything unusual; just annoying. So as you might suspect, it doesn't end there.

I couldn't get my laser printer to work all freekin' day. It just wouldn't print anything. Kept getting an error message, 'printer not responding.' I tried everything: shut it down, restarted it; pulled all the cables and reconnected them; opened up all the doors and checked for jams; etc. Nothing. It worked fine yesterday, and it suddenly started to work again a few minutes ago. But during my critical get-shit-done hours, it seems to have been on strike for better working conditions or something. Who knows? Musta been gremlins or something.

Then my DSL decided to go down halfway through the day. This is not helpful. I do a lot of my work online. So I called my ISP, sat on the phone for awhile, only to be informed that there appeared to be nothing wrong with the line. The oh-so-useful tech support grunt suggested I reboot my system, which of course I had already done about ten times before making the call. A 'trouble ticket' was established, meaning that some time within the next week or two I would get a call from someone to discuss my problem. Nice. The line didn't work for a few hours, and then it magically began working, out of the blue. Gremlins again. I'm sure I'll hear from someone at the ISP someday, and perhaps they'll have an explanation. Most likely they'll say "What did you expect? It was friday the 13th."

Had a dinner date set up with someone I like a lot. The plan was to make some of my world-famous Chinese stir-fry. Yeah, I really mean world-famous. Sometimes I get a knock at the door and it's people from China wanting to come up for dinner. I think I'm in the guidebooks or something. Anyway, I went to the corner store to buy all the ingredients, one of which is of course white rice. Now, white rice wouldn't seem like a difficult item to procure, right? Except that for some reason, the corner store was completely out of it. Why? I don't know. Asian gremlins? Perhaps. So, OK, no big deal -- I head to another local grocery store, where they have shelves and shelves of brown rice -- but no white. Now, I happen to like brown rice, but I knew (from paying attention) that my soon-to-arrive dinner guest does not.

"You've got to be fucking kidding," I said out loud to nobody. And then I went home, deposted the items I had bought, and promptly climbed aboard the light rail to the big Safeway store a few stops up the line. Sure enough, Safeway had plenty of white rice, so I grabbed a package, went swiftly through the express checkout line, and got back on the train, confident that I could at last begin to prepare a proper Chinese dinner.

Got home. Started chopping things. Opened the bag of rice, ready to measure out a cup or two into the rice cooker. Opened the cabinet overhead, to get out the measuring cup. Only it would seem that items in the cabinet had mysteriously shifted during flight, and a torrent of glass bowls immediately toppled out onto my head and the countertop. You can probably guess what happened next, right?

Now I had a relatively painful, walnut-sized lump on the right side of my head, but this was not in fact the problem. Because, you see, one of the bowls had shattered into a thousand tiny glass shards all over the counter and the floor, and another had knocked the bag of rice over, dumping every last grain onto the glass-laden linoleum. Yes, there was not one teaspoon of white rice left in the bag. it was all on the floor, intermingled with glistening crystalline fragments of glass. Not good. I began to laugh -- or maybe cry, or maybe both.

After carefully sweeping up the now-deadly rice/glass/dirt mixture and tossing it uselessly into the garbage pail, I contemplated my next move. My guest was due in half an hour. Should I just make a Chinese dinner sans rice? Is that even legal?

No, I decided, this would not do.

So I heaved a large sigh -- the kind that is usually reserved for getting stuck in traffic on the way to a blind date with a dead cellphone battery -- and re-boarded the train to Safeway. The express checker gave me a strange look as I bought my second bag of plain white rice, and I gave her a look that said "don't ask."

Dinner went well.
Dessert was even better. ;)

But next time I make a date for friday the 13th, we're going to a goddamned restaurant.

* * *

Intergalactose Intolerant

2005-05-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

Well, tuesday night I did something I swore I would never do again.

Yes, I sat through another kindergarten masturbation session by George Lucas. A friend of mine is well-connected enough to have gotten me a free pass to a sneak preview of the latest 'Star Wars' episode, and since I am particularly fond of this friend, and since I am rarely known to turn down anything with the word FREE in it, I decided to go.

Besides, technically what I had said was that George Lucas would never get any more of my money -- and technically he didn't. So I guess I slide by on this one, yes?

Anyway, so I went. And I saw it. And it was about what I had expected. More of the same. Better than the worst of them -- well, I refused to see Episode II after Ep I made me pine away over the hours lost and money spent. It's the hours, mostly. I mean, that's a couple of hours of my life that I will NEVER get back. Lucas stole them from me, like a succubus. But I guess I must maintain SOME responsibility, since I continued to see them of my own free will up through that point.

The original 'Star Wars' was cool, if only because I was only 15 and not so sophisticated (or, as some would say, jaded), and besides, the special-effects were better than anything before it, with the exception (in MY opinion) of the work of Ray Harryhausen. Now THERE was a genius before his time who went largely unappreciated, though prolifically employed at least.

Yeah I still love stop-motion animation, especially when it's done so well. There's a quality, an energy to the work that gets diluted by the sometimes too-slick, too-smooth, intricate but sterile ethic of computer graphics. Maybe it's just the knowledge that someone so carefully hand-crafted the sculpted models and carefully bent them into position over thousands of frames of camera work, taking hundreds of hours of precise labor and shaping something inanimate into a living, organic experience for the viewer. I can certainly appreciate beautiful, complex and realistic computer-generated imagery, especially given the amazing things one can create with such powerful tools -- but I appreciate it in a different way.

OK, so enough blabbering about that. 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,' as 'Star Wars' flicks go, isn't horrid. That is to say: considering the syrupy, cliche-ridden Happy Meal and Action Figure commercials that have passed for 'films' in the series, this one is decidedly less annoying. The buzz on the street has been that it's too 'dark' for kids, which is rather ridiculous if you ask me. It's dark in a campy, 'Space Ghost' kinda way, rather than, say, a 'Silence of the Lambs' way. Anyway, if you want to know just exactly what's too 'dark' for kids, just turn on the news. What's going on in the world is way scarier than ANY movie, even the ones with that 'Jason' dude in them.

But I digress.

The movie continues telling the backstory to the first movie, as if George Lucas had this burning need to wax etymological about the supposed origins of all his characters. It's as if he picked up Tolkein one day and said "Holy Christ! I wanna be like this guy!" and decided to retroactively create a history to explain how a complex series of events shaped the rather trite, simplistic universe of his first movies. Kinda putting the Falcon before the Millenium, if you ask me. I mean, Tolkein was a creative genius; Lucas is, um, not. A marketing genius with lots more money than me? Certainly. But wealth doesn't make Donald Trump anybody's hair model, and neither does it make George Lucas talented. It just allows him the luxury of THINKING he is. Tolkein came up with a whole world, developing it more and more and growing branches of complexity further and further outward, using well-chosen words and intricate hand drawings of maps and such. Lucas is obsessed with legitimizing his pop mythology by giving it a history that we're supposed to believe was in his mind when he got (extremely) lucky with the original movie. He seems to consider himself a brilliant artist, and instead of hiring screenwriters and directors with actual skill, he uses his considerable following as proof to himself that his inane, stilted dialog, weak-ass plots, contrived character names and just plain bad directing are in fact pure brilliance. But everybody over twelve knows it's the special effects that separate all his films from being as intolerable as infomercials.

The original 'Star Wars' was no great piece of cinematic art. The dialog, the script, the acting were all mediocre at best; one step up from the old-time serials the film was meant to emulate. But it was an achievement in its use of realistic special effects, and it visually combined a futuristic world with the grit of rust and entropy in a believable way, unlike the sterile, clean futurism depicted in previous 'space' movies like '2001: A Space Odyssey' (which, this being 2005, feels a little weird to mention). 'Star Wars' was a cross between 'Buck Rogers' and "Roy Rogers' -- a western shoot-'em-up in space. And, at 15 years old, that appealed to me. I don't know if it would have if I'd been twice that age, but maybe it just might have. I know it was the right kind of flick at the right time, at least for my generation. It sure beat crap like 'Logan's Run' -- try watching that one sometime.

But just because Lucas managed to create an icon in spite of himself with the first movie didn't mean his shit didn't stink. And in my humble opinion, we've been smelling it ever since. The man with the Bob's BigBoy haircut and the even bigger bankroll is the cinematic equivalent of George Bush (with his 'political capital' to spend even though half the country wants his head on a TV tray). When will this man stop? Well, when we stop paying for his delusions. And I could be talking about either George here.

Speaking of which, about the only redeeming quality of 'Episode III' was the inclusion of some almost charmingly innocent jabs at our political system in its current incarnation. The jabs are gentle, though from a certain perspective, quite pointed -- It's almost as if Lucas didn't even mean them to be timely, but universal -- and yet they are very, very timely.

The Chancellor Palpatine, in the earlier-but-set-later films more of an evil, all-pervading, almost spiritual presence, here is a manipulative politician, with powers he hides until the right moment, and then springs a rather nebulously-explained trap on the 'Council' that represents 'democracy' (a word uttered much more in this one than in past episodes). The Council, made up of Jedi masters, is supposed to be a balancing force to ensure the FREEDOM of the galaxy, which was once apparently ruled by ruthless Sith overlords until the Jedi overthrew them. Palpatine, however, is secretly a Sith Lord himself, and is able, through his trickery and the ridiculously effortless manipulation of his highly-trained-yet-still-retarded apprentice Hayden Christiansen (as the young Anakin Skywaker AKA Darth Vader), to seize control of the entire galaxy and turn it into a Sith empire. He does this single-handedly, with Vader as his main hit man, and with thousands of formerly loyal-to-the-Council soldiers who suddenly become unquestioningly loyal to the Chancellor-turned-Emperor.

In writing it doesn't really translate, but in the film there are several moments that feel eerily like the Republican/Fascist takeover that is happening all around us in this country. There are several pieces of dialog -- not GREAT pieces, as I don't thing Lucas could write a great piece of dialog to save his life -- but pieces, nonetheless, that seem to be decrying our loss of checks and balances, and the threats to our freedom that are being touted as necessary due to the greater threats of war. In the film, the war is essentially of the Emperor's making, so that he could exploit the situation and acquire absolute power. Hmmm...sounds familiar. Not new, certainly; it happens all the time, and has for millenia. But since it's happening again, here, now, and in a manner that is very close to the heart of the story of the film, one wonders if Lucas is starting to take a stand against the excesses of the other George. We can only hope. Because if a guy is going to have all that money, all those resources, and all that effortless box office draw, the least he can do is have a worthwhile message -- even if that message is written and acted like a fourth-grade Thanksgiving play. It's better than just blowing stuff up -- BOTH Georges desperately need to learn the futility of that.

* * *

Straight up in a dirty glass.

2005-05-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm a big fan of the Pulp Fiction literary genre (you know -- the one that spawned Film Noir), and sometimes I have a lot of fun waxing over-the-top quasi-poetic in the style of a Chandler or a Hammett in my writing. Yeah, I'm a dork. Kiss my ass. Anyway, awhile back I posted a personal ad in this style, and started a back-and-forth correspondence with a woman who got my drift. It was ultimately doomed, because she turned out to be about five times my size -- but it was fun while it lasted. So I thought I'd share. Here's the ad and the correspondence it generated:

AD:
He was lean, tender, and clean-cut like a New York steak with blue eyes and he was tired. Tired of games. Tired of lonely nights. And tired of low-class dames with a chip on their shoulder. Where could she be? You know the one. Whip-smart. Pretty as a Christmas dinner. With eyes that burned her initials through the well-worn dirty cotton of his button-down dress shirt and into his soul. Was she a blonde? Brunette? Redhead? He couldn't remember. All he knew was that somehow she had stolen the air from his lungs until every breath was a longing sigh and every thought consumed by a face he had seen only in his dreams...

RESPONSE:
Who was this mystery man? She wondered as her fingers tapped away and the words floated out into the ether like an SOS from a ship's last known radio signal. And would she be able to get his attention? Her eyes could burn, alright; they were burning now, as she stared through this electric window and imagined him watching her from the other side. Who was he? What did he look like? She pictured him with leathery skin and smoker's rough hands and dark eyes. She thought of him sitting in some dive bar, offering her a drink as he looked up and down the length of her Liz Claiborne stretch pants.

ME:
He was the guy wearing his heart on his sleeve, right over there, across the bar. The one with the big soulful steel blue eyes, grimacing at the crap they're playing on the jukebox and wishing somebody hadn't broken the only pool cue in the joint. The eyes narrowed and reddened like a couple of streetlights just before another drunken dawn in the Big Easy, and he casually scratched at his nine-o'clock shadow with hands that trembled ever so slightly at the momentary thought of gently touching her with them...

He was watching the swirling black and blue where she sat, but it was too dark to see her and the smoke made him dizzy. He'd never been a smoker, and he wondered why she'd insisted on meeting him in the only smoky bar left on the whole Barbary Coast. For a bullet train second, the cheshire cat sat on his shoulder, a ghostly barracuda grin spreading whitewall-wide -- maybe she was hiding something, over there in the shadows and the smoke. Clever dame, he thought, waving a poorly self-manicured hand across his collarbone like a fly swatter. But she couldn't fluster him; his own killer instinct was too finely honed from all the years of female-inspired nail-biting to break on the waves of any mermaid's wake. No dame had yet to jump through his allegorical hula hoops before surrendering, spent, in his arms. He grinned, squinted, and waited for her to emerge from the dark like a polaroid so he could get a good look at that drop-dead moviestar mug of hers...

HER:
He knew how to write; she gave him that. But she was too shy to be the first to show her face. He was probably way too old for her, from the sound of his experience; after all, she was only thirty just last week. He was a stranger to her, and a lady didn't just show all her cards to a stranger without good reason.

ME:
Thirty, eh? Almost brand-new. He had a grizzled decade over her, and maybe that was too much. She moved closer, into the red light of the grimy bar lamp, and laughed at him. The girl had 'tease' written all over her. And the word hung like thick velvet drapes in the empty air, clinging to her invisible curves like a Porsche on the Autobahn in the fog. He could feel himself starting to sweat jacketed .44 slugs from his forehead and reached for a cool drink. But everything in the room had heated up as she whisked past him in the pitch black, and the last vapors of steam swirled out of the dirty tumbler as he vainly picked it up. Had he been intrigued? Sure. She could be a bombshell, but he'd been hit by his share of duds -- always gussied-up like high-society pinups, looking like Betty Grable but leaving him face down in a pile of Betty Rubble. But she had him at a disadvantage, and that didn't sit well. Would she fly straight, or wait til the bombay doors were open and -- blammo -- blow the whole flying fortress to Kingdom Come?

He sent his mugshot and waited for the air raid siren...

HER:
She stared at his picture for a long time. Handsome, she thought. And younger than she'd suspected. This intrigued her; how could such a young face seem so worldly-wise? Nothing made any sense anymore; what was he looking for, anyway? She didn't know what to tell him; where to start. Maybe he was just out for a good time, and that wasn't what she wanted. She could have that at any gin joint in any town...

ME:
She'd called him handsome; she knew that would do the trick. Yeah, looking like a baby-faced kid was a double-edged sword. It meant he could get away with a lot of things, and yet it also meant he got away with nothing. Like a Pilgrim's gift of pox on a savage baby's blanket. Pass the cranberries. He'd seen forty-one Januaries so far, each one different like snowflakes or bone fragments, some leaving their imprint like icebergs in a riveted steel hull. He'd surprised her, he guessed; she wasn't expecting to see his face so soon. She wasn't prepared with her own; she kept it in a sealed envelope marked 'confidential', like a young black-veiled virgin waiting to show her new Afghan husband what he'd bought. He watched the ice melt in the tumbler and wondered aloud when the veil would glide spiraling to the dusty concrete floor like the first pitch of baseball season. For now, he'd assume she was worth the wait. After all, he'd been waiting forever already...

He'd been knocked around, put through the ringer, wore his best suit to a wedding that turned out to be a funeral. Made a fixer-upper-sized fortune and lost it to a bunch of ritalin-addled prospectors who'd forgotten their pans; built a skyscraper out of playing cards that fluttered to the floor when somebody dialed 911. But the game wasn't up yet -- that would have been too easy. Moved up and down the left-hand coast 'til the highway signs blurred into blue snakes spitting road rage reflectors at his halogen high beams -- and asked the dashboard a hundred times why he'd been asleep at the wheel when he wasn't even tired yet, not expecting an answer because after all, it was a rhetorical question.

He'd had it all and seen the empty underbelly of what 'all' meant. Now he just wanted somebody with sparkling eyes who'd kiss his hands when he brought her flowers in butcher paper soaked with rain.

HER:
She blushed at his words; they stirred something within her. She'd never done anything like this before -- writing to a stranger. She mostly kept to herself, staying out of trouble like a good girl. Sure, in her old short skirt days she'd been to the bars looking for that kind of trouble, but not anymore. She came from old-fashioned values. Lassie movies. Apple pie. Everybody had their rebel moment, but now she was back to her roots, and he could prove to be bad news. And yet she couldn't deny the trembling of her fingers as she searched the air for the right words to say to impress him, and she wondered if that was even a wise thing to try and do. So she took the chance; she sent the picture. It was a couple of years old and a couple of pounds lighter than she was now, but a man like him would see through all that, wouldn't he?

ME:
The blush gave her away, but she wore it like Coco Chanel in a Turkish bath. A little dollop of demure could be the icing on the layer cake now and then, but this wasn't the time for cake. Too easily sliced up and spread around. Besides, she was barely thirty. Still shiny, like a dime in the laundry. And yet her faraway misty-eyed reverie spoke like a gravelly-voiced veteran recalling the good old days on Canal Street. So she'd chased a lot of Trouble and she didn't want any more, eh? He'd bet dollars to donut holes she'd found more than a corner-pocketful of it. Short skirts are Trouble magnets; just ask any young girl's mama and see if you don't get sucker-punched for even thinking about it.

She probably had one of those names you'd expect to see on the Beantown Social Register, right between the local parrish priest and guy who inherited the hardware chain. But here she was, in his mailbox, talking about hard-boiled gimlets and moviestar dogs. All dripping goodness and virtue on his secondhand mud-stained Sears and Roebuck welcome mat -- yet her eyes told a different story, one that would no doubt send Lassie running for a stiff drink and two pair of concrete shoes...

She'd never done this before, she said. Maybe he was Bad News, she said. That's when he noticed how hot it had gotten in this fleabag joint...and he fixed himself a cold glass of irony.

Still, there she was, looking like a brand new car in a bad neighborhood. He knew a gamble when he saw it. But that never stopped him before. Her hot breath smoldered through the dark strands of her hair as she stared back at him; she did look familiar, like someone he'd seen in a movie...or a dream. He took a long look at his aging, but still handsome reflection in the blacked-out window of the bar. A wry grin began to crack across the unshaven glass.

Staying out of Trouble, she had said. And yet she had just walked right up and tapped Trouble on the shoulder...

HER:
His words sounded so perfect. Too perfect. She had to ask. Did he borrow them from somebody? The words were just so familiar, like she'd read them before in some dime novel. Was he playing her for a fool?

ME:
So the dame had the nerve to ask him where he 'borrowed' his words.

Plagiarism? He laughed out loud. If he was gonna steal something, it would stack neatly in his well-worn billfold. Or beat feverishly behind a woman's breasts. He glanced over at the past-its-prime creaky futon he called a bed. Hell, it had never had a 'prime'; in all likelihood that's what 'futon' meant in Japanese: Bed That Never Was. Goddamn sneaky Japs. First Pearl Harbor and now they'd sold him an imaginary bed. For a San Francisco minute he imagined those Liz Claiborne stretch pants of hers in a crumpled yet still somehow stretchy pile on the floor next to it. His XXX imagination was getting the better of him again.

X. X. X. There was that letter again. It haunted him, filled him with a thousand crisscrossed memories like arms folded over the chest of a former head of state. His life was filled with Xs, from the XX of the eyes of the men who'd crossed him, to the X-wife that gave him most of his scars, to the X next to the signature of every contract on which he'd signed his life away in exchange for a few bucks that lasted a week and a half.

His words flowed and coagulated like sour milk from the leaky squeeze bottle in his ribcage and the noisy typewriter in his skull. 'Borrowing' somebody else's would make about as much sense as Porky Pig eating a ham sandwich. He grimaced at the bad pun, but sent it anyway; after all, she wanted the real deal, right?

And at this point, so did he.

HER:
An ex-wife, eh? She knew there must be a story there; a painful one. She must have done him wrong; she must have been like a drug that was cruelly taken away and left him alone with the withdrawals. She wondered if he was over that pain, and if he would be ready for a girl like her. Or was he still addicted?

ME:
Yeah, it was an addiction. The smell of her skin, the shine of her hair in the reflection of the neon moonlight outside the third-floor window where he gazed into emptiness and saw the swirling smoke from the street begin to dissipate and form a face. But it was only a night like all the others. The peeling paint around the window brought the reality of his solitude home, and he turned to switch on the fan and blow the fog back into the chilly soup it came from. In the other room the aging refrigerator hummed a dissonant etude; downstairs the crazy neighbor shouted at ghosts. But the night swam slow laps around him like it always did, and the unspoken longing sat beside him like an old friend. Withdrawal symptoms on an endless loop, almost comforting in their familiarity. Yet there were no tracks in his arm. The tracks were on his soul...

The pillow was soaked through to the well-worn mattress when he woke up. Dazed, he ran his fingers along his temple and glanced at his hand. Sweat. Not blood. Relieved, he grabbed the other pillow; the one that always sat with its smiling creases like a sated vampire against the cracked plaster above the futon. It still smelled like her. The one that got away.

What time was it? How long had he been out? He stood over the cheap cultured marble sink and looked in the mirror. His face looked like the linoleum floor of a Chinatown laundromat. Taking a nap was supposed to be good for you, or so they said, whoever they were. He stepped into the shower and coaxed the leaky pipes to pay their chlorine-scented liquid tribute. Within moments he was back to normal, whatever that was.

He wondered what the dame was doing right now; whether she was out painting the town red or staying home blue. He wondered what she looked like up close, and if he'd recognize her from someplace. He wondered if she'd be the one to finally take him down.

* * *

Mumbo Jumbo

2005-04-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

I had a realization this past week. Not quite an epiphany, because that would imply some sort of world-altering, revolutionary shift in perspective, and that would be a bit of an overstatement.

No, my realization had more to do with the overall state of things in Corporate America. It was what you might call a Dilbert(TM) Moment. I was in a meeting with a client, and I stood up and said the following:

"YOUR CRM NEEDS TO BE IN SYNC WITH YOUR ENTERPRISE API SO THAT YOUR MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATION METRICS ARE ON BOARD TO MAXIMIZE YOUR ROI AND INCREASE SHAREHOLDER VALUE."

Everyone in the room seemed to understand this. They all nodded in approval, and we all shook hands. I had no idea what the hell I'd just said, but whatever it was, either it made complete sense to all those present or they were each too terrified of being the only one to not understand it, and so they all pretended.

On Monday I will send them an invoice. I am certain they will pay it.

So...what was my realization, you might ask? Indeed, I will tell you.
To quote a Tom McRae song, "Falling feels like flying...until you hit the ground."

We're all on a great big airplane, and the pilots are monkeys throwing shit at each other while we gradually run out of fuel.

* * *

Bush and Dick

2005-04-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

If, when I was but a wee lad, you'd asked me if I'd live to see the day when fascists would take over the US government in its entirety, rendering the Constitution utterly meaningless and turning the clock back a few hundred years to pre-Age Of Enlightenment serfdom, I would have said two words: "Nixon. Duh."

But alas, though I was merely a youngster during his ill-conceived, paranoia-driven reign, I'm starting to miss ol' Tricky Dick. Sure, he was one of the main architects of the McCarthy Era, practically coining the oxymoronic concept of 'Unamerican Activities' himself. Sure, he barely skirted responsibility for his corrupt-to-the-bone behavior by the skin of his teeth on several occasions before Johnson's big cop-out and Bobby K getting bulleted gave him his unlikely entree into the White House in '68 (thus ushering in a new era of psycho-fascism that started the clock ticking toward what we are, regrettably, experiencing now). Yeah, he campaigned almost entirely on ending the Vietnam War "with honor" and then proceeded to escalate it by attacking the sovereign nation of Cambodia from the air* and thus dragging the war on for another five long years. Sure, he created the whole useless and expensive 'War On Drugs' when the nation was finally leaning toward more progressive and effective drug policies, and yes he was in fact the "crook" he so adamantly claimed not to be, as he resigned in disgrace from the office he'd coveted for so long that he'd forgotten why.

But Nixon had his good points. He opened up relations with China and improved relations with the USSR; that's the achievement everybody usually talks about. That was no mean feat, and the irony is that he was able to do it precisely because the autocratic Chinese and Russian leadership at the time saw in him the ruthless paranoid tyrannical tendencies they themselves possessed -- in other words, he was their type of guy. After all, none of the Chinese or Russian leaders in those days were really 'Communists' -- they were all dictators, which was exactly what Dick Nixon wanted to be.

Dick was a power-hungry, borderline megalomaniac; with Bush I wouldn't use the word 'borderline.' Dick didn't give a rat's ass about religion, which is how it should be, according to the Constitution and the spirit of its founders; we all know that Bush is either a real or opportunistic rabid fundamentalist, using religious biases and narrow-minded Dark Ages superstition to further his agenda. Dick made lists of friends and enemies; Bush makes lists of friends and considers everyone NOT on the lists to be his enemy by default.

But the bottom line is that Nixon was only despised here at home. That's what I miss about him. He didn't make everybody else hate our guts. He didn't make the terms 'American' and 'ignorant Asshole' interchangeable. And believe me, it took a lot to make me miss Nixon. Reagan didn't do it. Bush Senior didn't pull it off. No, I didn't like those guys much, but they were a cut above Nixon. But Junior? All I can say is, he makes me pine away longingly for Richard M Nixon. Doesn't that say it all?

* * *

(*Yeah, just in case you thought, as a friend of mine did before I straightened his ass out, that Bush Junior was the first US Prez to start a war with a trumped-up, largely false pretense, the reality is more complex. That's precisely how the Spanish-American War started under President McKinley, and the Vietnam 'Conflict' itself became semi-official with LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based on bullshit reports of attacks on US warships that never happened. Then Nixon came along and carpet-bombed Cambodia, Vietnam's neighbor, because Viet Cong troops were hiding in the jungles there. Never mind that this was completely against international law; such a concept has never meant anything to fascists. I DO believe that Dubya is the first US Prez, however, to carry out a full-scale land invasion of another country without anything more than a few nebulous accusations as provocation. Thus the point of my posting).

* * *

Online Dating Nightmares 1: Psycho Therapist

2005-04-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

As someone who is self-employed at home, I spend a lot of time by myself with my cat. This is not very conducive to meeting new people, and while I have a lot of affection for my cat, there's just something missing in our conversations.

Thus I have found myself more than once dipping into the dark, dank well of the online dating world.

Yes, it's true. Charming and devilishly handsome as I may in fact be, that long line of lovely women outside my front door is deceiving -- they are merely waiting for the bus. Friends have fixed me up occasionally, but I'm usually left wondering what the hell they were thinking. "Well, you guys seemed to have so much in common." Like what? That we're both single? That we both have to shave above our upper lip?

So I have ventured forth into the grab-bag dreamscape of half-truths, unrealistic expectations and downright squalor that the online dating experience can be, if only you'll let it.

Now don't get me wrong; I've met some wonderful folks that way. Some of them are even my friends to this day, and are no doubt reading this missive at this very moment. And I am happy to have met them, surely. But GOOD experiences make for boring stories, mostly, so I am going to concentrate on the BAD ones. OK?

And so, without further ado, I bring you: PSYCHO THERAPIST.

I met her on one of those matching sites that shall remain nameless. You can probably guess which one. No, not that scary E-Harmony thing; the guy in the commercials freaks me out. Would you want to date anyone that guy fixed you up with? I didn't think so.

Anyway, so she wrote me. She sounded cool enough, and her picture was cute enough, so we exchanged a few notes and decided to meet up. Grabbed a drink at a local pub, and it was obvious she wanted me bad. That should have been my first clue that something was horribly, horribly wrong. Call it the Groucho factor if you want, but though I'm certainly not an unattractive or uninteresting chap, I find that the ones who want you right away are usually Bad News.

But did I listen to that inner voice of mine? The one that is almost always right about shit like that (though it can't seem to remember where it left my keys at any given moment)? Nope. Of course not. I listened to the bulge in my 501s, like usual. Goddammit -- I don't want a vasectomy; I just wanna remove the damn thing's vocal chords.

OK, so I played it cool and ended up back at her place. Duh. Rule Number Two: if you're both over 30 and she lets you go to Pootie Town on the first date while claiming to want a Serious Relationship, you are asking -- no, begging -- for trouble. See my 'Male Sexuality' posting for more on this exciting topic. Yeah, the wise, quiet voice in my head said "she's gonna stalk you, man" -- but the Loud Voice Down There said "Me want penetrate something NOW." Guess who won? What a stupid fucking asshole I am.

We dated for a total of approximately 30 days. The first week can actually be considered 'dating;' the last three weeks consisted of me attempting to exit the situation gracefully and without any permanent scarring or vandalism on my car.

The woman (we'll call her K, which can stand for a lot of things but in actuality was the first letter of her name) seemed interesting at first. She was/is a therapist, working with troubled teens. We were around the same age; we had similarly eclectic taste in music, film, and other things that interest me. She seemed pretty intelligent and got my jokes. Even laughed at the really awful ones, seemingly sincerely. That was a good sign; can't be with a woman who doesn't find my shit funny. That's just me. We'd get stoned together and watch 'Plan Nine From Outer Space' with the sound turned off and Iggy playing loudly while we danced on her coffee table and pretended to be Glam Rockers. It was fun. For about a week.

Then her constant sniffling (which she attributed to a sinus infection) turned out to be the telltale sign of a coke problem the size of Conan O'Brien's head. And her constant complaining about the parents that were apparently alarmed at the way she was 'treating' their young daughters in therapy began to smack of denial.

On top of all that, she needed constant affirmation and instant intimacy. In other words, I was supposed to shower her with compliments and romantic gestures on a regular basis. After a week. Call me crazy, but after a week I could barely remember her name -- and she expected me to hire a crop duster to write it in the sky. I mean, she was nice and all, and she had a first-rate body, especially for forty. She worked hard to keep it that way. But simply saying "you look nice" wasn't enough; like I said, she needed CONSTANT affirmation, and she would fish for it in the middle of conversations about unrelated topics in which other people were involved. One time she met some of my friends, and during a discussion about music or something, she said, out of the blue, "Brian really digs my tits -- don't you, Bri?" Everyone sorta laughed it off uneasily.

I dunno. I thought that was weird. Maybe you don't.

Anyway, it turns out that she was all coked-up for the entire time I knew her, which explained a lot. But It took me awhile to figure this out. I hadn't done any powder in like 20 years, but she offered me some once and I said "OK, what the hell" and did it. But this was apparently her green light, since after that she was offering it like every fifteen minutes every time I saw her. Sorry, but I ain't no Tony Montana, babe. Once a decade or so is fine with me.

On top of that, she was on anti-depressants. All I can say is, the synergistic effect was intriguing from a scientific perspective, but not much fun from a dating standpoint. It was like going out with a cartoon character. I forget which one was Ren, and which was Stimpy -- but she was sorta like both of them together in one package. And if she got pissed at you -- oh holy christ you were so unbelievably screwed. She was the type to make a big scene in a restaurant -- which she did, in my favorite place, on my birthday. Because I hadn't complimented her on her new dress. How could I know it was new? I'd known her like 2 weeks. And anyway, I distinctly remember saying something good about how she looked earlier in the evening, but it had been a whole hour since then and she was apparently feeling neglected while I focused on carefully slicing my ornately-presented Chilean sea bass.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I decided it just wasn't working out, and tried to extricate myself from this doomed quasi-relationship without too much collateral damage on either side. I used a variation of the 'it's not you, it's me' approach, coupled with the 'not quite over my ex' approach. The first one was a lie. it most definitely WAS her. But as to the second, I can honestly say that one of my fatal flaws is that I never stop loving anybody, so I can pick an ex at random in my head and still feel a tiny twinge of longing for her, when it serves my purposes to do so. Like an actor, crying on cue in a movie by thinking of something that really makes them sad. Did I call it a flaw? It probably is. But I like to think it adds to my charm as half hopeless romantic and half curmudgeonly jaded bastard (which is really just a hopeless romantic with a few sucking chest wounds to show for his trouble anyway).

OK, so we had The Talk. After all, it had only been a few weeks; surely she hadn't yet imprinted on me like a baby duck, right? Surely she'd be able to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams and move on without too much of a fuss, right?

You know better than that. That's why you're still reading.

She called me day and night. Left messages alternating between "fuck off you bastard!" and "please come back; I'll change." Sent long, rambling, coke-addled emails that were difficult to decipher and seemed to have been written by around 14 completely different personalities, like the Old Testament. She called my friends, who had only just met her a few times and didn't really know her or care to -- and begged them to talk to me about her. How had she gotten their numbers? Well, apparently she borrowed my phone and, um, copied them when I wasn't looking. Yikes.

So finally I was forced to get nasty. I called her up and said, "listen, you're freaking me out, ok? So leave me alone and especially leave my friends alone, or else I swear I will call whatever board is responsible for handing out therapists' licenses and I will tell them everything I know about you, which is way more than I wish I did. OK? Thanks."

Apparently the thought of losing her career was enough of a wake-up call. I haven't heard from her since. I've often wondered if I should have turned her in anyways; after all, she's an insane cokehead who works with TEENAGERS. But then again, if I had to deal with teenagers all day, I'd probably become a drug addict too.

* * *

La Ducha No Trabaja

2005-04-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

OK, allow me to take a break from the whole crazy-mother nightmare. We'll undoubtedly come back to that later, as it is a long and ever-continuing story. But for now, the whole travel thing reminded me of an interesting adventure I had, far away from the insanity of my so-called family.

A few years ago, before the whole 9/11 ordeal, I took a trip to Spain -- just me and my backpack, without much of a plan. I'd studied a few guidebooks for sure, and had a few must-see sights on the list, as well as some decently-rated but cheap places to stay in various cities, but no reservations or solid commitments other than a railpass. I landed in Madrid, expecting to spend a month traveling the whole country, or most of it anyway, at random. Wherever the wind, the trains, and my very limited Spanish language ability would take me.

So, after an interminably long flight next to a fat guy who should have had to pay for half my seat since one of his thighs pinned me to the window, there I was in the airport in Madrid, staring at the conveyor belt long after all the other passengers had retrieved their baggage. I hadn't even brought a carry-on; just the clothes on my back and my passport -- yeah, stupid me. Everything else was in my backpack, which was now apparently somewhere other than Spain. Mine was, it would seem, the only bag lost on that flight.

So I approached everyone I could find who looked official, trying to explain to them in my toddler Spanish that everything I brought with me was in that pack -- clothes, guidebooks, maps, my camera, toiletries, sunscreen, etc. As they were airport employees and thus used to this sort of scenario, they were rather unsympathetic. Especially since in Spanish I probably sound like Rain Man. So basically the final word was that I was to contact them when I found a place to stay, and then they would try to find the backpack and get it to me where I was staying.

Having flown from SFO, I was wearing a leather jacket, long-sleeved shirt and jeans. In Madrid it was around a hundred degrees fahrenheit (don't remember what that is in Celsius -- maybe 40?). I had nothing else. Since I didn't have my guidebooks, I had no idea where to find a hostel or anything, so I simply got on a bus to downtown Madrid, which is a bit of a trek from the airport.

I got off the bus and walked around until I spied a hostel, but of course I didn't have a guidebook to tell me if it was a good or bad choice. But I was really tired and very upset at myself for being so stupid as to not bring a carry-on to a fucking foreign country, and pissed at the idiotic airlines for losing my bag -- just mine; nobody else's. That's what REALLY hurt.

But I figured they'd get me my pack in a day or so, and thus I decided to make the best of things. I went into the door of the building and boarded a tiny, clunky elevator to the third floor. I got out and there was this grimy door with a sign on it saying the name of the hostel, and I rang the buzzer. A three-hundred year old man answered the door and I asked "por favor, tienes una habitacion?" The answer was a complete mystery to me, but his gestures indicated that yes, there was a room available. So I followed him down a dimly-lit hallway to the very back of the building. The room was around two square feet. maybe three. There was a sink, a stool, and what some people might describe as a bed. The light was already on. There was once a window in the room, but it had been bricked up. Asking "why" seemed like a futile gesture, since I wouldn't understand the answer anyway.

There was a communal toilet, and shower, in the hall, but I was informed that the shower "no trabaja." Which means that it doesn't work. At a certain point in my desperation I attempted to turn it on anyway, which was a very large mistake indeed, but I will get to that later.

I was informed that the room would cost me the Spanish equivalent of seven dollars per night, and that I had to pay in advance for three nights. I was certain I wouldn't need three nights; that I would get my pack the next day and be off to a much better-rated hostel, but I was relieved at the low price and so I just paid it. Haggling didn't seem like it would be productive, and he looked like someone who needed the money anyway. Boy was I naive.

Okay, so I pay for the room, and I splash my face and head out into the city, still pissed off but relieved that I have a place to sleep. I get some change and find a payphone, call the number the airport employee gave me, and realize that, while conversing in Spanish is rather difficult for me in person, it is IMPOSSIBLE on the phone. So they spend several minutes on the other end trying to find someone who speaks English to talk to me. Meanwhile, I am discovering just how expensive the telephones in Spain are, as I keep having to put coins in the thing (everybody in Spain uses prepurchased calling cards, or their cellphone, but I didn't know this yet). Eventually I run out of coins, and just as some woman finally says "Hello can I help you, sir?" in English, the phone goes dead and I have to go find some more change. So I call again and try to explain that I was just talking to someone in English and the phone cut off, etc -- so finally I am talking to the woman who speaks English, and she is very nice. Before practically running out of coins again, I manage to give her the address of the shithole -- I mean hostel -- where I am staying, and she politely informs me that my bag should be arriving from New Jersey within a couple of days. NEW JERSEY? I scream, COUPLE OF DAYS? Then, of course, the phone goes dead again.

Turns out that when I switched planes in Newark, my pack didn't follow me. Why? Because God hates me. Anyway, now all I could do was wait. and wait. And try to remember I was on vacation and didn't have a care in the world. Yay.

So I bought a couple of those yellow disposable cameras and went out into the Madrid heat in my long-sleeved shirt (left the black leather jacket in my so-called 'room') to try and make the best of the waning afternoon. I saw a few sights, took a few pictures, learned my way around the Madrid metro and bought a pass and a map. I stopped and ate at many little places, and had some gelato and later some tapas, sangria, and Estrella, Spain's version of Budweiser. Cheap piss-beer.

I liked Madrid, but it was hot and very smoggy, and as I may have mentioned before, I used to have asthma as a kid. I've mostly grown out of it, but if I'm in a really smoggy place I sometimes have to use one of those over-the-counter inhaler thingies that I still keep with me, just in case. Only this time, it was in my pack. Which was apparently in New Jersey.

After awhile I went back to the hostel to crash after a long, wearying day. I went up the creaky, coffin-like elevator and Señor Yoda let me in. I went back to my room, turned the key in the door, and turned on the light, which I had turned off earlier. What I saw then made my blood run cold.

When the light flickered on, the room became alive. There were hundreds of them. Maybe millions. Or maybe there were only ten. But they were the biggest cockroaches I'd ever seen, and they scattered across the floor and the walls as soon as I turned on the light. Each of them was around two and a half inches long. I swear. you could actually HEAR them.

I was dumbfounded. I wanted to throw up. But there was nothing I could do; I had given the airlines this address, and the last thing I wanted was to confuse them by moving, perhaps never seeing my backpack and its contents again. Besides, it was now around ten at night, and there wouldn't likely be much of a chance of getting a different place until morning anyway, assuming I could find one.

I decided that I would get drunk, and then I wouldn't care about the bugs. Those of you who know me are surely aware of how little I drink as a rule, but it had been a difficult day. So I went back out to the street and found a bar, ate some more ridiculously cheap tapas and shared a pitcher of sangria with one of the very few ugly women in Madrid. A couple of times I considered trying to go home with her, because I kept thinking that she was downright attractive compared to what awaited me in my room. But I noticed several men at the bar looking over and laughing at us, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I remember wondering what Papa Hemingway would do, but then I realized that Hemingway would have brought a carry-on, a flask, and a gun.

Okay, so I drank as much sangria as I could stand without throwing up, given that I am a serious lightweight, especially by Spanish standards. Alcohol is NOT generally my poison of choice.

I said adios to La Señorita Fea, and I staggered back up the street to face the giant roaches, now filled with liquid courage. I boarded the now-familiar coffin, and woke up ol' King Tut, who let me in with a grumble, something about extranjeros, which I knew meant 'foreigners' -- and I headed back down the hall to the Amityville Room. I paused at the ancient porcelain bowl to rid myself of some of the sangria, and noticed that my chest felt quite heavy, even through the haze of cheap fruity wine that filled my head. I wondered if the grungy stuff that passes for air in Madrid had gotten to me. I turned the skeleton key in the door of my room and flipped on the dreaded light. There they went -- it seemed like there were fewer of them this time, which made me feel a little better until I realized they were probably all gathered in the bed, waiting for me. This thought immediately indicated to me that I hadn't drank enough sangria; that there simply wasn't enough sangria in the world to do the trick. But the room was spinning around by now, and so I plopped onto the bed. there was no need to lift up the covers; it was about two hundred degrees in there, and I really dreaded what I might see under there anyway.

I could swear I heard and felt things crunching under my back as I lay down, but perhaps it was my imagination.

Anyway, I left the light on all night, thinking the little bastards would stay hidden. It worked for awhile. Soon I was lying there wheezing, my lungs unable to fill with air. It got worse and worse, until it was intolerable to lie down. Right about then, the monsters under the bed started getting used to the light, and scampering out for a looksee. I sat up against the wall on the bed, and for a few minutes I watched them all begin to crawl out of their hiding places. I knew they were coming for me, and I couldn't even breathe. Maybe they knew that. Maybe the door would be locked from the outside. Maybe there were bones under the bed, hundreds of them, picked clean. Maybe that's why I'd had to pay IN ADVANCE. The old guy was their stooge!

The room was still spinning, and I felt sick to my stomach, and I could barely breathe. I could smell the day's sweat on the clothes I was trying to sleep in, the only clothes I had. NEW JERSEY? I thought, A COUPLE OF DAYS?

Bugs crunched under my hiking boots as I sprinted clumsily to the door, half-expecting not to be able to open it. But it opened with a creak, and I dashed down the hall and into the elevator and out into the street, which had cooled off to about 80. It was around two a.m., my first night in Madrid.

I don't know if you've ever had an asthma attack, but it feels a lot like drowning. You simply can't get enough air. You panic, which makes it worse. Lying down increases the pressure, but walking around makes you need to breathe more. And wandering around in the smoggy air that caused the problem doesn't really help either.

I sat on a bench for awhile, watching rather seedy-looking men walk by, and worried about the ones who paused in front of me, fumbling for a cigarette or a switchblade or something. Then I would get exceedingly uncomfortable and I'd walk around a bit, trying to relax. Spain is a late-night kinda place, but there don't appear to be any 24-hour drugstores. Nothing was open except bars and nightclubs and places to eat. I wasn't hungry, I didn't need a smoky bar, and dancing wouldn't have been very appealing either.

So I spent the night alternating between sitting on benches, lying on the grass in the park, and wandering the streets, knowing there was nothing I could do until stores opened in the morning, whatever time they open in Spain. At around eight a.m. I became somewhat rejuvenated in spirit, as I'd made it through the night and I knew that soon I would find relief. I had already made note of several farmacias within a reasonable distance. No Walgreen's; no Rite-Aid. Places I normally denounce as symptoms of The Chainstore Virus -- but oh, how I longed to see those welcoming neon lights and windows full of OTC medicines and cheap trinkets.

Soon the streets were teeming with people. I wandered back and forth between the farmacias, none of which had hours posted in the windows. At ten o'clock I spotted one of them opening its doors, and I almost got run over crossing the street to get there. Of course, as soon as I stepped foot in the store, whoever had opened the door disappeared into a back room somewhere. I tried to call out for someone, but by now I could barely speak above a whisper, and I'm sure my lips were probably blue. There was no little bell to ring. So I waited. and waited. The Spanish are rarely in a hurry; normally I admire that about them. At that moment, however, I would have killed for an annoying uptight anal American pharmacist.

There was a chair, so I sat down, my eyes moving between the counter, my watch, and the other farmacia across the street and a block down. At ten fifteen I was about to take a trip over there, when a man with thick glasses said something in a deep Castillian voice that I assumed meant "can I help you?" since the word "ayudo" (to help) was in there somewhere.

I looked at him pleadingly, with blue lips, bloodshot eyes, smelling like sangria and old sweat. It didn't seem to faze him, but neither did my attempts to communicate through a desperate game of charades. "Favor de dame medicina! no puedo -- er -- como se dice BREATHE? I can't...breathe!" I flailed my arms, tried to mimic spraying an inhaler in my mouth, put my hand on my chest and wheezed horribly...no response. He must have thought I was just crazy or something. He fired off a long string of heavily-lisped Castillian and began to return to the back room when I screeched "Asthma! Por favor? Entiendes? ASTHMA!" Apparently, "asthma" is the same in spanish, though spelled differently, and so that stopped him in his tracks. He actually laughed a little. "Oh, asma! Veo, veo..." Then he mumbled something and reached behind the counter, pulling out a little box of what appeared to be a cortosteroid inhaler -- normally overkill for a condition like mine, which hardly ever appears unless I'm in a foreign country with no pollution laws and without my baggage, but I would have been overjoyed if he'd pulled out a gun and shot me in the head, so I grabbed it, threw a thousand peseta note (this was obviously before the Euro reached Iberia) on the counter and ripped the box open. as I sucked down the gas like it was lobster risotto with white truffles, he placed a five-hundred note in front of me as change. Five hundred pesetas. About three fifty. Drugs are cheap in Spain, I thought to myself, as my breathing returned to a normal state I almost didn't recognize. I thanked him with every Spanish word I could remember, and I took my smelly self out into the brilliant new day. Even the powerful sangria-induced headache I was just now noticing wasn't going to keep me from a state of euphoria. I had survived my first night in Espana, a place I wouldn't normally think of as all that dangerous.

I spent the next two nights sleeping in the park, my money and passport in the bottom of my hiking boot. I couldn't brave the bugs, and my pack hadn't shown up yet. I tried to use the shower at the hostel on the second day, and when I turned it on, at first nothing happened. Then there was a low moan, which turned into a rattle, which became a squeal. Then a trickle of brown water dripped out of the showerhead, and then everything became kinda foggy and surreal. From what I could tell, the showerhead shot off and just missed my head, and I was doused with foul-smelling brownish liquid. Then I heard the frantic voice of the old man screaming what must have been Spanish obscenities aimed at the illiterate little foreigner who was trying to use his obviously broken shower. Not having a towel, I ran past him, completely naked and covered with rusty fluid. I toweled off with my already foul shirt. I left the building, and found a lavanderia and washed my shirt once, but I still couldn't find a place to shower, so I went back and used paper napkins at my little bug-infested sink. The geezer just glared at me as I walked by, noticing that he had put chairs in the shower with several signs taped to them.

On my fourth morning in Madrid, I awoke early and went to have what was now my favorite thing about Spain, chocolate a la taza for breakfast. It's warm liquid bittersweet chocolate, and it is better than any I've had anywhere. I now had five disposable cameras filled with pictures in my room, and two more in my pockets. I already had the beginnings of blisters on my feet that would make for more stories later in my journey.

That morning, almost four days after staring forlornly at an empty conveyor belt, I took the elevator up for the last time. When King Ferdinand opened the door this time, he was chattering excitedly about something, and I assumed it was because I hadn't paid for a fourth day, and I would need to check out. But then I noticed the backpack sitting on the floor by my room, glowing like a Rennaisance painting of the Baby Jesus. It WAS just like Christmas morning. I have never, before or since, been so happy to see a pair of my own underwear.

I changed clothes even though my body was filthy, and I brushed my teeth for the first time in four days, even though the water was brown. Then I hoisted my pack up onto my sticky back, waved adios to the old Spaniard, and began my vacation, feeling like I'd finally reached Base Camp and could now climb the mountain...

* * *

Hell is for Children

2005-04-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm back home and quite glad to be here. Did y'all miss me?

Well, I'd like to be able to say I had a wonderful trip, but that would likely make for a boring story, right? And one in which the word "Hell" probably didn't appear in the title. And since obviously my existence is solely for the entertainment of whatever sick and loathsome deities and masochistic mensroom attendants are in on the joke, who am I to question the meaning of it all anyway, huh?

It all started serenely enough. A visit to the family down in the Sunshine State, as they call it. They call it that because it's ostensibly sunny all the time, like Celine Dion. Actually Celine has a LOT in common with Florida -- long, flat, ugly, annoying, makes me wanna throw up, etc. Visited a couple of friends too -- both of whom moved there from the West Coast years ago for unknown and unfathomable reasons, and neither of whom is old enough to live in Florida. I think you have to be old to live there. Or retarded. I think it's the law -- you have to be one or the other. So maybe my friends are there illegally, or perhaps they're older (or more brain-damaged) than I think they are. I don't know. They both read this blog, so I'm sure we'll all hear about it.

Anyway, I hung out with them a bit, which was nice. We went to this area of Tampa called Ybor City, a contrived little "historic" district that was once an old run-down, dilapidated red-light zone that some planners decided to revitalize into a deliberately run-down, pseudo-dilapidated red light zone. It is attempting, consciously, to be a cross between New Orleans, a Santa Monica open-air mall, and Tijuana. It's wall-to-wall bars, clubs and shitty restaurants, all with scantily-clad underage girls standing outside with signs saying "cheap beer!" and "free jello shots!"

As we all know, The Sunshine State seems to be a huge tourist destination for some reason. Well, okay, the beaches are nice -- but we've got nice beaches here too, so that's a non-event for me. I guess if you live in some cold, landlocked place like the Midwest, it could seem like a little slice of Heaven down there -- but then again, so could Afghanistan. Anyhow, Ybor City is where all the Spring Break crowd goes when it's not Spring Break. The later it gets, the more crowded the streets get, and the younger the crowd gets. I don't think any of them actually LIVE there, because like I said, I'm fairly certain you have to be around a hundred years old to get Floridian citizenship. But at night in Ybor, it's post-adolescent partytime. OK, slightly post-adolescent. I swear, some of those half-naked girls walking around freezing (it's chilly at night this time of year) are barely out of diapers. Which doesn't say particularly flattering things about me, since I wandered around gawking at them.

Anyway, I suppose if I were still a teenager or twenty-something, I would enjoy the drunken, sex-crazed MTV atmosphere, but being too old for any of these girls yet not old enough to live in Florida, I felt a little out of my element. I mean, girls half my age look nice, especially when they're wearing the equivalent of a napkin and a pair of chucks. But I feel kinda creepy-uncle staring at them like that, especially when I know that the only ones smiling back are probably prostitutes. I have a feeling that the Hooker Contingent in Ybor is fairly high. You can tell the ones who aren't by the fact that they're walking around with some drunk steroidally-enlarged fratboy or three. So it's basically water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Alright, on to the REAL adventure.

Got to see my new baby niece, which was the main reason for the trip. Cute kid, but only a couple months old, so basically a squirming larva at this point. And she cries nonstop. I mean, NONSTOP. I think maybe she realizes where she lives.

And my nephew's cute too -- he just turned two. So he doesn't cry that much. I can deal with that. Played with him a bit; that was fun. Highlight of the trip; it was all downhill from there.

Food; we should talk about food. basically, the food in Florida SUCKS. Everything is breaded and fried, even the silverware. Nobody eats vegetables. It's like one big Denny's. And yeah, we ate at Denny's once, along with several other horrid places. Grease, fat, grouper, and breading. Those are the four food groups in Florida. What's 'grouper,' you ask? Well, it's a fish. A bland whitefish that is ubiquitous down there. Everywhere you go, their special of the day is fried grouper. Anyway I came home feeling like a bloated fried fish myself, and my skin is all broken-out like a teenager's. A few dozen Miller Lites and I'd fit right in at Ybor City.

I guess living in the Food Capital of the United States has spoiled me.

OK, so now we come to the fun part of the visit. You see, like most people's parents, mine are a little bit insane. I realize that most people probably can't hang out with their parents for more than a couple of days without becoming all itchy, but I think I have an extra-special situation, as I am about to illustrate.

My mother, if she were to possess enough introspective qualities to actually visit a therapist, would surely be considered severely bipolar at the very least, and put on some heavy-duty meds. But alas, she has managed to live for sixty-some-odd years without ever having her completely psychotic tendencies ever officially diagnosed as such. And in fact, she seems to have gotten worse over the years. It takes very little to set her off, and then she just starts wildly screaming at you with a self-righteous energy that you would never guess she had (if you weren't related to her and thus didn't know better). Normally, just walking around, she's as sweet as cherry pie -- overly so, in my opinion, but the other old people don't seem to notice. She's got lots of friends down there, and I'm generally happy about that.

Except that none of them know her at all. You have to be her husband or one of her kids to trigger her psycho side. Which, unfortunately, I did.

Mom lives in a little fantasy world; a fascinating little melodrama right out of some Tennessee Williams play. She came from a pretty fucked-up family herself, and escaped into my dad's arms at an early age. Only problem is, my dad came from a pretty fucked-up alcoholic white-trash background himself, so he wasn't exactly equipped to help her. Enable her, yes. But help? Um, no. She basically browbeats him over every little thing, and has done so for so long that now he is just used to it. He might even enjoy it in some weird deep-seated way. Reminds him he's alive or something. At any rate, he can do absolutely nothing to make her happy, and neither can the rest of us -- but he lives with her, as he's done for forty-three years now, and I feel sorry for him. I only see them occasionally, at which time I'm reminded why I continue to live three thousand miles away.

So anyway, my mom has spent every dime they've ever managed to cobble together. What does she spend it on? Crap. Knick-knacks. Stuff with which to decorate every square inch of whatever house they're currently living in until there's no room left for people. She attempts to create some sort of Family Heritage. There are old tin-type pictures of SOMEBODY'S great-grandparents on the walls, intermingled with pictures of us. We have no idea who these ancient people are, because she found the pictures in antique stores. But it's obvious that a visitor is supposed to assume they are related to us. There are NO pictures of any REAL grandparents to be found anywhere.

And to make matters worse -- as I've mentioned before -- these people are Fundamentalist Christians. Well, Semi-Fundamentalist anyways. Not as rabid as they used to be, simply because they're tired, and Jesus didn't come back soon enough for them to avoid Old Age. I think they might be a little disillusioned by that. But they're still die-hard Believers and they definitely voted for Bush. Ugh.

Well, as their standard of living has gotten forcibly lowered, my parents' living quarters have gotten smaller. But that hasn't stopped my mom from continuing to cover every millimeter with overpriced junk that they can't afford. I have no idea what her monthly knick-knack budget is, but it probably approaches their mortgage, and it's all on credit. Since they moved to Florida a few years ago, her taste in crap has taken on a nautical flavor. I counted 87 tiny plaster lighthouse sculptures, which she buys every time she sees one in every crappy souvenir shop they go to, in every little town they can afford the gas to drive to. They all have the name of some little town in Florida tacked to tiny brass plaques on them, and they all have little paper tags stuck to them with a little story and the offset-printed signature of whomever designed the mold that was then sent to China for mass-production. I'm not making this up. She also has a HUGE Barbie doll collection, most of which she got on Ebay for whatever they're CURRENTLY worth. After all, what better place to put your money? Stocks? Bonds? Real Estate? Gold? Fuck all that; when times get tough, what people are REALLY gonna rely on are their Barbie collections!

OK; I could go on and on about Mom's obsessions with junk and her obvious financial savvy (after all, these are investments), but I think you get the idea.

I swore, like I always do, that I would keep my mouth shut. I swore to myself that I would do nothing; say nothing -- nothing that might have the slightest chance of pissing off Mom. But I failed. She knows how to push my buttons, and she kept pushing them until I slipped-up and actually responded. I took a deep breath, said something along the lines of "Mom, you don't have the right to say that to me. Please take it back and apologize." I really said it that nicely, because I was trying really hard to avoid the inevitable nightmare. I keep forgetting that this is a crazy woman and I should just ignore everything she says, no matter how nasty it is -- like some insane person on the street.

So, as in hindsight I should have predicted, she freaked out. You see, my mom is NEVER wrong about anything. She has never taken anything back or apologized in her life, no matter how terrible or unwarranted the thing she did or said. She's a victim, and everybody is out to get her, and she is simply defending herself from all the attacks. Therefore, how can she be wrong? It's YOUR fault for upsetting her in the first place, and once she's upset, there are no rules. All bets are off. She starts bringing up shit you supposedly did when you were twelve. Or five. She makes stuff up; twists other stuff around. She stands there screaming things that any stranger would be aghast to hear. And all you can do is stand there and take it, walk away, or scream back. Normally I have the good sense to ignore her, knowing that if I don't say anything to make it worse, eventually she'll get tired and start crying and lock herself in her room for a day or so, and then everything will be fine, as if it never happened.

But I was already sick of being in Florida, and I didn't feel good from all the bad food, and I was annoyed that I hadn't been laid in weeks and I'd just spent an evening walking around looking at underage poontang in Ybor. So for a minute I just forgot that my mom is crazy, and instead of going to my Happy Place, I did the unthinkable. I yelled back.

I didn't stoop to her level; I didn't bring up the past, or call her names. I didn't reduce her to the quivering mass of jelly I most certainly could have, by simply pointing out her massive failings over the years: how she nearly destroyed my sister to the point where she hasn't spoken to the family (except me) in years; how she cheated on my father when I was very young and totally screwed-up my trust in women for far too much of my life until (thank god) I figured out the source; how she has spent all their money on useless crap and assured that they are going to be forced to retire in squalor VERY soon. No, if I'd said a few well-chosen pointed words, I could have given her immediate kidney failure right then and there. After all, I learned this vicious technique from a crazy-woman, and I'm smarter -- and more articulate -- than she has ever been.

But I yelled back at her, just the same. I told her she was self-absorbed and mean-spirited and cared about nobody but herself. I told her she was destroying -- or had already destroyed -- her real family while displaying a fake one on the walls. I told her she needed help, badly, and soon. I said that that I knew exactly what she was going to say at any minute because I'd heard it all a thousand times and she couldn't hurt me anymore. I just told her the truth.

My mom has kicked me out of her so-called life before. There have been times when we haven't spoken to each other for as long as three years. But I do believe this time will prove to be the Big One. I could tell by the look in her bitter, pain-filled and childlike eyes. She refused to say goodbye when I left, even though I tried to say I was sorry (even though she was the one who started it). I really WAS sorry; sorry that I had a lapse of judgment and made the situation worse. Sorry that I responded at all to someone so obviously mentally ill. Sorry that I increased the pain in her bitter heart, no matter whether it was my fault or not. I was ashamed that I let her get to me, and that I allowed myself to get in a fight with a miserable old woman who simply doesn't know how to love because she wasn't raised with any.

My mom doesn't know about this blog, and she wouldn't read it anyway.

But Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your life has sucked so badly, and I'm sorry that there was, and continues to be, nothing I could ever do to make it better. I'm sorry that the only gift I could ever truly give you would have been to simply put up with your shit like my poor dad does, and that I failed so miserably at that task.

But mostly, Mom, I want to thank you. Thank you for giving me a wealth of material to write about, and an edginess that makes people seem to find my catharsis entertaining. Thank you for showing me just how crazy I could have ended up if an introspective nature and a particularly nasty divorce hadn't thrown me a serious dose of reality and sent me into so many years of therapy that, despite my aforementioned edge, I'm surely never going to end up like you.

* * *

Nobody puts Baby in a corner

2005-04-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've got a brand-new baby niece. It seems all the rage these days, this reproducing thing. Everybody's having babies. Everywhere I go, freekin' babies everywhere. This morning I went to this little French Boulangerie down the street for a quiet brunch, and it was packed full of screaming, drooling brats -- and all of them had babies with 'em. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I like kids and they like me. But when they get too noisy or too smelly or too expensive, I hand them back to whomever is responsible for their helpless little stanky asses and get on with my happily childless life.

Anyway, I may not get around to posting for a few days. Why? Because I'm heading to Florida, Our Nation's Flaccid Penis of a state, where my folks and my brother live. My folks retired there, and my brother follows them wherever they go. I, on the other hand, like to keep a respectable distance -- although I would have preferred they move to that other old-people-mecca, Arizona, which would be a hell of a lot easier to get to and wouldn't suck as much when I got there.

But anyways, my brother just had his second kid, less than two years after the first one, whom I visited last year. All I can say is, I hope he understands the mechanics of why this keeps happening. My brother tends to do things without giving much thought to them. I'm left wondering if he's gonna have a kid every year and joing the swelling ranks of the welfare rolls that suck up whatever tax base there can possibly be in a state where everyone is retired and/or lives in a trailer.

But hey; I'm not THAT much of an asshole; I'm excited to see the little tyke(s). I mean, I'm an uncle again, and if there's one thing I really like being, it's an uncle. My other niece is going down there with me -- she's fifteen, and absolutely The Bomb. We've been best pals in the first degree since she was a little tyke herself. But the new one is only a couple months old, so really she's still in that larval stage where they just sleep, cry, and make their own cheese. Who I'm REALLY excited to hang with is the nephew, who is turning two this month. Two's a great age, as long as you can get away from 'em when they stop being fun and switch into EVIL SPAWN OF SATAN mode. That's when I'll hand him back over to his dad or grandparents to deal with. But it should be fun until those moments, anyway. 'Cuz kids are like puppies -- they're the coolest thing in the world until all of a sudden you realize they ate one of your shoes and you only brought one pair.

So -- first thing, early morning (which is why I'm writing this so late -- no sense going to bed when the SuperShuttle is picking us up at four AM). Gotta get to the airport in time to stand in line for the body-cavity search, thanks to all those fucking terrorist jerkoffs out there. I mean, I wanna be safe like anybody else; I don't want somebody to pull any of that whackjob terrorist shit on a plane I'M on -- but thanks to those assholes, I gotta wait two hours in line so I can bend over and spread 'em while some incompetent Federal employee shines a flashlight up my ass looking for box-cutters and toenail clippers. Thanks, guys. You couldn't stick with blowing up schoolbuses? That wasn't fulfilling enough? Or how about THIS crazy idea: you sit down, read your Koran, and underline all the parts that talk about peace and love, okay? Yeah, I read the damn thing -- and just like all the Christian idiots who think the word "Rapture" is actually in the Bible, these jokers seem to think "Go blow people up and get yourself 70 virgins" is in the Koran. I got news for ya, kids -- it ain't in there. Read it again. Slowly.

Anyway, I'm the first one to admit that it was American foreign policy that made us targets of these deluded bastards, but that doesn't mean they don't piss me off anyway. And it's time, in my opinion, for Muslim leaders to stand up and denounce terrorism. If most Muslims are peaceful, which I believe they are, then they oughtta take a stand, and the clerics should denounce these radical fuckers as heretics to their religion, instead of encouraging them in their horrid behavior.

So? What about it, Mullahs? Huh? Do me and Salman Rushdie hafta come knock some sense into your asses? Oh shit; now I'm starting to sound like Dubya. And I really don't wanna sound like Dubya.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Babies. All I can say is, since I'm getting on a plane in the early morning hours in the middle of the week, I hope to Allah there aren't any screaming babies on the 7-hour flight (got a short layover in Chicago, 'cuz the airlines like to justify their high ticket prices by taking the LONG way). There is only one thing worse than a terrorist on your plane, and that's a screaming infant. In fact, rumor has it that on 9/11, the whole thing happened because the kid in back of Mohammad Atta wouldn't shut the fuck up and kept kicking his seat.

But anyhow I can't wait to go play with my new niece and nephew in that backwards-ass limp-dick of a Red State they live in. I'll be sure to bring you all back an alligator, or at least a pink plastic flamingo.

If I manage to get online down there (my folks' place isn't exactly wired for the 21st century; it barely makes the grade for the 20th), then perhaps I'll post again before I'm back. Otherwise, au revoir until Monday.

Kiss kiss.

* * *

Bad dog; no biscuit.

2005-04-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

My bad. I must retract a statement I made yesterday. Alas, there comes a time in every man's life when he must step up to the plate and admit he 'accidentally' screwed the pooch. Yes, folks, even I make the occasional error. I know it's hard to believe.

I was, for some time, laboring under the mistaken impression that my old buddy Sir James was a huge and loyal fan of that oasis of slime known affectionately as Lost Wages. Apparently, I was -- ahem -- wrong.

No, my beloved friend only goes there to play some game called 'Texas Hold 'em' (something that sounds vaguely like what happens to farm animals in remote parts of Dubya's home state, but I digress). Otherwise, he hates it. Probably not on the intense, visceral, lunch-regurgitating level that I do, but nevertheless I accused him of loving the place, and he only goes there for the Poker. He also only reads Playboy for the articles, but that's another story which I have already related.

Anyway, sorry, amigo. Next time I put my foot in my mouth, I'll wash away the toe jam first.

* * *

No fear; just loathing.

2005-04-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

Can't post much today. Too busy. I can hear all the wailing and crying now, from all five of my fans.

Anyway, my friend Carol just got back from Vegas and wrote about it, which reminded me of how much love I have in my heart for the place. Ah, Vegas. Seeing those lights in the desert is like being a bitterly thirsty, dying man, crawling with his last bits of inner fortitude toward what seems like a mirage of splendor, a paradise unmatched by Eden itself, a fountain of exquisitely living and breathing water from the Gods, dancing in an endless loop to the golden-throated tones of a digitally-remastered Sinatra from his red-leather booth in Heaven itself...and finding it's actually a big glistening pile of lizard shit.

My best friend Jim actually DOES love the place, and so does this girl I've been crushed-out on for years who shall remain nameless (if you're reading this, hiya P -- yeah, you know I got it bad for ya, despite your inexplicable love of LoserLand). And since I highly respect these people, I have to accept that there must be some redeeming quality to the place that I just don't get.

But to me, if you aren't a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, frivolously-shopping, hooker-renting gambler and you don't like crappy buffets and really bad shows that even a hundred bare breasts can't save, Vega$ is just a neon nightmare. After 2 hours there, I start feeling like I suckled from a garden hose in Guadalajara.

I mean, I don't drink -- not enough to make even the free drinks worth it, anyway. I don't pay for sex, even if it means I go without. I don't like magic shows, or cheeseball animal acts (though I would have liked to have been there when that Sigfried guy -- or was it Roy -- got his head bitten off. That would have been nice imagery to add to my already twisted mind). Anyway, gambling seems like just a great big losing proposition and you can lose BIG fast. I mean, sure, people win now and then -- but only as a marketing device so that everybody else will keep losing. How do you think they pay those electric bills, eh? Usually people who win in Vegas are the type who have already lost ten times what they're all excited to have won, whether it was this trip or the last five combined. The house still wins in the end, or else they'd turn off all those lights.

So what is it? What makes that place so utterly irresistible to all these people, among whom my friends number so I can't make any sweeping generalizations about American collective insanity?

I just don't know. But to me it seems like Vegas represents capitalism at its most disgusting extreme, laid bare without pretense to some bucolic "American Way" or anything like that. People go there to take a big economic shit in public, without pretending there's any point to it at all. In a way, Vegas is America at its second-worst, minus all the bombing and flag-waving. It's squalor encrusted with Christmas lights; it's fast-food that doesn't pretend to be nutritious; it's human excrement spray-painted gold and put in the window as a fishing lure in an ocean full of spandex-leopard-print-wearing bottom-feeders.

OK, I guess that WAS a sweeping generalization. But then, this whole posting is hypocritical anyway. You see, I'm one of the few people who have actually ever WON -- I mean, long-term, NET -- in Vegas. Jim talked me into meeting him there one weekend, and I put three bucks in a slot machine and won $900. Just like that. The only time I gambled the whole trip, and one of the few times I ever did at all. Go figure. Vegas likes me.

But I still fucking hate the place.

* * *

An Open Plea to Women

2005-04-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

Attention, Women of the World:

I love you dearly; I really do. Even when you piss me off, I easily forgive you, because you melt my heart. Just looking at you makes me happy; even the ones who eat too much and then try to wear spandex belly shirts and hip-huggers. I'm so glad you're here; without you, well, we wouldn't be here either.

And this is my point.
I need you to help me -- us, actually. All of us, yourselves included. because it's all in your hands. Are you ready? OK, here goes...

Women are fucking-up evolution. Yes, you are.
Neanderthals were supposed to die out, but they haven't. Why? Because you keep breeding with them.

Everything you complain about; all the stuff men do that pisses you off and messes up the world at large -- you know the stuff I'm talking about -- all the shit you say is wrong with "men" in general: smacking you around, drinking too much, cheating on you with your friends, leaving the toilet seat up, blowing up villages full of children, etc. This is because you keep choosing Fuckheads to breed with. And their kids can't help but have some Fuckhead in them, so when your sons grow up to be Fuckheads, you don't understand. You ask yourself, "how could this happen?"

But you keep choosing Neanderthal Fuckheads to sleep with, and many of you then get pregnant by them, and thus the cycle is perpetuated. Endlessly. And then you blame ALL of us. As if it were ALL men who caused you grief, instead of just your CHOICES in men.

So, my friends -- my dear, female friends, just stop.
Please, just STOP.

Thank you.

* * *

Surreality Check

2005-04-09T00:10:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, it was Opening day at SBC Park, our still-new local baseball stadium. It's an impressive place, and that whole part of town has been transformed from low-rent broken-down industrial outskirts to Gentrification Central in the past few years. Lots of brickwork and ironwork and cobblestones and such. I barely recognize it. Not being a huge sports fan, I don't get over there much. But back before the Stadium was built, I did a lot of work down in the area. Now it looks a little like Lower Downtown Denver but with a waterfront, and the newly-high rents have driven out most of the small businesses I used to work with. But it looks quite nice, if you like that sort of thing. A few too many tourists for my particular taste, especially on a game day. But not as bad as some of the REALLY touristy parts of town -- the parts that everybody outside of California associates with San Francisco: Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, the 'crooked' part of Lombard Street, and all those other horrid Vegas-like places that people who actually live here avoid like the plague.

Most people who visit here never see the real San Francisco; they see the Rice-a-Roni version.

Anyway, there I was, getting off the light rail by the Park -- not to see the game but to see somebody in the area about something unrelated, and suddenly the entire Earth seemed to rumble, my very bones rattling and my ears popping from the force of some seemingly impending disaster of Biblical proportions, and I jumped out of my skin.

Was it an earthquake? The Big One, the blind fear of which (thankfully) keeps people in hurricane, blizzard, flood and tornado-prone regions from moving here? No. It was just a tradition. The Blue Angels, the US Navy's Official Propaganda Team, did a very low overflight at insane speeds as the crowd cheered and some sort of metallic confetti filled the air. Opening Day! Baseball! America! Yay!

But call me clueless; I didn't know it was going to happen and I just about wet my pants. The awesome power of those four F/A-18 Hornets careening in perfect formation a few hundred feet above my head was enough to knock my ass onto the concrete, and I nearly had a heart attack -- as did several other unsuspecting people around me, who subsequently pointed to the sky in awe and pride.

Now, the Blue Angels are some talented flyers; and those airplanes are indeed a wonder. One could endlessly gasp at the technological progress they represent in barely a hundred years of powered flight. Watching the spectacle of their performance could be an exhilarating experience in the context of pure testosterone-driven lust for power, and certainly in appreciation as well for the beauty and grace of machines that seem to defy the bounds of nature. I AM a guy, after all. When I was a kid, I loved stuff like that. Part of me still does.

So why, as my heartbeat quieted to a healthier pace and the crowd around me clapped and roared with delight, did I feel so DISTURBED? Sad? Even a little frightened? Why were my eyes welling up, and why did I feel like an alien in an alien world as I made my way in reverse against the game-bound masses toward my destination up the block?

Simple. I'm just not like the others. Not anymore, anyway. If I ever was.

Because, you see, while everyone around me howled in excitement and American patriotic pride at the splendor of Game Day and the overflying supersonic circus of blue-painted steel, part of me was cringing. Part of me was imagining myself a terrified man in Iraq or elsewhere, frantically searching for his children in the chaos as these fearsome machines blasted across the sky, not in fours but in hundreds. I imagined the deafening roar multiplied a thousand times as buildings exploded around me and the panicked tears that streaked my face blurred images of blood-spattered wreckage and twisted limbs and dead animals and babies blocking my path. I imagined falling to the ground and praying to whatever god would listen for it to stop, please just stop.

And I watched in slow motion as all the happy Giants fans scurried by in an endless parade, all waving banners and wearing their colors and marching toward the stadium without a care in the world on this beautiful sunny Opening Day of baseball season, rubbing my eyes and pushing through the crowd as I wept silently for my country and my world and my fragile yet powerfully self-destructive species.

And I felt more alone than I've ever felt in my life.

* * *

O Canada/Dead Pope Society

2005-04-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, I learned some valuable lessons this past weekend. I learnt them from a Canadian girl who shall remain nameless. Yes, I said "girl" -- because she's only 12. OK, technically she's 28. But on the inside, she's 12.

I was going to write the whole story, but that would be giving her that much more of my time, and she already wasted a few of my hard-earned American dollars and an entire weekend of my busy life that I will never get back. So instead, I will delete her from my cellphone and my memory, as if she never existed. Poof!

But I WILL take one thing away from this that is probably a very valuable lesson, and that is this: people are fucked-up everywhere. I guess (strangely enough for a cynic such as myself), I was naively laboring under the misconception that, because it is we Americans who are currently creating the most havoc on the planet, that somehow there must be something inherently wrong with us alone. But no, I realize now that there are assholes and idiots everywhere, sprinkled among the teeming masses within every imaginary border, and especially in the strange grab-bag netherworld of the online personals.

And so, my former friend from the Great White North, whose Scrabble skills and character fall far short of my own, I bid you adieu and I wish you the best, knowing that your confessed lack of self-worth is quite truly warranted, and I can only hope that someone someday will be as kind to you as you have been to me.

* * *

Now, on to more important matters.

OK, so the Pope is dead. Those of you who know my deeply religious convictions will no doubt think I am sitting here in sackcloth and ashes, mourning his loss. Well, I scraped my bong for some ashes, but I couldn't find any sackcloth, so I gave up on that. Instead I'm selling authentic organic-hemp replicas of the Shroud Of Turin, handmade with care in China, with a limited number signed by Jesus Christ Himself. Write me for more details -- act now, before I raise the price and put 'em on ebay. All proceeds will go to benefit the starving bloggers of San Francisco, or at least ONE of them. What does this have to do with the death of the Pope, you might ask? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Because I'm going to explain it to you.

Way back before my folks became nutcase fundamentalists (see my 'Dogma' posting), we were raised Catholic. I was pretty young and didn't really fathom the whole thing, but I remember sitting in those uncomfy pews saying "and also with you" a lot. Then we'd have to kneel on the little cushioned collapsible prayer thing-a-majig (does anybody know what those things are called?) to pray silently and cross ourselves over and over again in an apparent attempt to beg for our worthless little lives from some deity who was always on the verge of crushing us for our evilness. But then they would talk about how God was Love, and Forgiveness, and Grace, and all that -- unless you pissed him off, which you were bound to do every five minutes because you are Scum. We weren't always Scum, you see, but that nasty bitch temptress Eve (from whence comes the word 'evil') force-fed Adam the only fruit he wasn't supposed to eat. You know the story, right? If you don't, I ENVY you.

Anyway, we've all been Scum ever since. Original Sin, they call it. Or at least that's what they started calling it after Saint Augustine had his fill of fun and decided his own lusty tendencies weren't his fault; they were the fault of Eve and her wicked hold over Adam. Personally, I can totally relate to Adam -- a beautiful naked woman hands me something, and I will just fucking eat it. Like Jack Nicholson said in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' when you have that little pink beaver in your face, you don't ask it any questions. Or something like that.

OK, so here we are, all Scum, subject to the Vengeful Wrath Of God at any moment, with the only thing standing between us and Eternal Damnation being a bunch of self-appointed Ambassadors To Heaven, all wearing some variation on the Funny But Holy Hat. One must NEVER laugh at the Hat, no matter how Funny. In fact, the Funnier the Hat, the Holier the Wearer. This had to be an act of ironic brilliance on the part of some medieval Merry Prankster Scribe Guy, the idea of the Funny But Holy Hat. Because whomever he was, he had to know that it is nearly impossible to avoid laughing at a funny hat when it is worn seriously. When a drunk guy wears a funny hat to be funny, he just looks stupid and you try to avoid him. But when such a hat is worn in complete earnest, especially with some sort of implied reverence, it is fucking hilarious. And so the nameless inventor of the Funny But Holy Hat, whether intentionally or otherwise, created the perfect ploy for the endlessly repeating mobius strip-like phenomenon of Self-Loathing that is essential to the perpetuation of any successful religion.

Because laughing at the Hat, even to oneself, makes one feel guilty and fearful, and one must sprinkle oneself with Holy Water and cross oneself over and over, and pray the rosary, and beg for God to forgive and not boil or roast us or break us on the wheel for the fowl of the air to pluck out our eyeballs, etc. And, of course, God is not only a Forgiving God, but He can also be bought off, so we put our hard-earned cash in the collection plate in the hopes that God in His mercy will forgive us for snickering ever so softly at the Hat.

Which brings us to the Pope, for centuries the wearer of the Funniest And Therefore Holiest Hat of all. You see, I have no problem with the Pope himself. I'm sure He, like other Popes before Him, truly believed in His office as the representative of God on Earth, saving souls and collecting money to fund the Second Coming (because we all know that such an event would be ridiculously expensive these days, making a typical Presidential campaign look like a Mississippi baby shower). But from MY perspective, as Bono so eloquently put it in 'Bullet the Blue Sky,' "The god I worship ain't short o'cash, Mister." So His Holiness the Pope can be as sincere as a fly laying eggs in shit, but that doesn't make it any prettier. Get me?

After all, that Hat is surrounded by opulence that Donald Trump couldn't make a downpayment on, and all at the expense of desperate, fearful little people who for centuries have watched their children starve in the shadow of the Hat because God's Chief Spokesman refused to allow them birth control while He bled them for ever more protection money in a racket that the entire Mafia could never hope to match. Suddenly the Hat doesn't seem so fucking funny anymore.

I remember when Sinead O'Connor did her little ripping-up the picture of the Pope anti-publicity stunt. I say 'anti' because, while we all know that in the music biz, any publicity is generally good publicity, I do believe that little episode DID actually hurt her career. I got what she was trying to say, but I don't think it was well thought-out, kinda like Michael Moore's diatribe at the Oscars. Choose your battles, and choose where to have them. Otherwise you're just masturbating in public, and unless you're Angelina Jolie, nobody wants to see that.

I remember seeing footage of John Lennon publicly 'apologizing' for his statement that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ," though I think his explanation was deliberately, brilliantly ironic. He was one smart cookie, and he knew the dry British humor of "I meant 'more popular' because there are more people now than there were then" would be taken literally and seriously by clueless American audiences. The Beatles were forgiven their 'blasphemy' and went on to become the legends we all consider them to be. Now THAT was some nice spin. It was a guy like Lennon who invented the whole Hat thing. Maybe they were even related.

Madonna did it twice, first with the whole 'Like a Prayer' controversy and then by becoming Jewish and pushing the whole Kabballah thing. Brilliant. She's the only single individual in the world who does better marketing than the Catholic Church, and she does it without selling guilt. And she's never had to apologize, which is more than I can say for Sinead or even Lennon. But I'm getting off-topic.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The Pope. What, did they think he was gonna last forever? The guy was like two hundred years old! Of course he's dead! He's not God, people! If you want your Popes to last longer, ya gotta do like they do with the Dalai Lama -- he's reincarnated into some little kid, and they find the kid, and voila! The kid is the new Dalai Lama. That way, instead of starting with an old guy, your Spiritual Leader is all fresh and spry, but with the wisdom of the ages behind him. I think I'll write a letter to the Vatican and suggest it. I was there once but didn't see a suggestion box. As a matter of fact, that's a whole other story I need to mention: my trip to the Vatican, when a guy with a submachine gun threw us out after we waited in line for 2 hours in hundred-degree heat, because my girlfriend's shirt fell just slightly short of her belly button. Yeah, they don't let you in there if your belly button is showing, at least not if you're an adult female. Maybe if you're a preadolescent boy, they let you in naked, and you get a backstage pass to meet the Pope Himself. I don't know; I'm just guessing. All I know is that God, or the Pope, or whatever, isn't supposed to see your belly button -- the scar left by your umbilical cord, which SHOULD symbolize your birth into this world, right? I mean, I'm sure Jesus had a belly button, right? The belly button is almost a holy thing (ooh, bad pun) -- and my girlfriend had a pretty nice one too. She's gone now, and I really don't miss her for the most part, but I DO miss a few parts of her, one of which was that oh-so-perfect belly button.

Anyway, I started arguing with the guy, but like I said, he had a submachine gun. Not smart of me. I can see the headline now: MAN GUNNED DOWN BY VATICAN SECURITY IN ST PETER'S SQUARE; RAISES BELLY BUTTON CONTROVERSY. Actually, they'd never let it get out like that. They'd simply say I was a terrorist trying to take down the Pope, and my name would go down in infamy, while my girlfriend would be locked up forever in some Vatican dungeon to keep her quiet. Actually in retrospect, considering how unceremoniously she ended up dumping me later, that might have been a cool way for it all to have ended. Call me vindictive if you must, but vindictive is pretty romantic -- and besides, while she'd be suffering in the same ancient vaults as prisoners of The Inquisition itself, I'd just be dead. She'd have the rest of her life to enjoy a (small, confined) part of the rich history of the region.

So...finally we walked across the piazza and down the tourist-tchotchke-lined street (what is it about Religious Kitsche, anyway? It's a whole crazy multibillion-dollar industry that rivals Catholicism itself!) and bought a big scarf, which she wrapped around herself and then we returned to the line and waited another 2 hours to get in. What can I say? She wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. Of course, she didn't realize that you need binoculars to see the fucking 900-foot ceiling from the crowded floor. I knew that, but I didn't want to pee on her parade after the whole belly button ordeal.

So anyway, what I'm trying to say is, "Hey Pope, buh-bye! I hope it's everything you thought it would be, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. And, oh yeah -- you forgot your Hat."

* * *

Let’s talk about sex, baby

2005-04-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

OK, so if you've followed my annoying little rants at all, you will know that I was raised by fundamentalist Christian parents who were more fucked-up than The Manson Family, but with slightly better intentions. And hey, I love my folks -- because, well, they're my folks. If I had the opportunity to choose them in advance, I don't know that I would have picked them out of the catalog, but I'm sure they're not even close to the worst I could have ended up with. A cursory rapid-fire remote-control click through all the various daytime talk/freak shows assures me of this. besides, I'm all grown up now, or so I like to believe. So in retrospect it's all pretty fucking funny.

Case in point:

When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. I'm not sure why; I think my parents were descended from nomadic tribespeople or something. I attended so many different schools, it's amazing I ever completed an assignment or passed a test. They'd pick me up in the middle of class and throw me in the car, where I would notice all our shit packed carefully in boxes. I think I remember once asking if the buffalo-hunting grounds had changed again or something, and I think I remember getting smacked for it, so I never questioned again. I just accepted the constant change after awhile, and it became an adventure of sorts. The weird thing is that we never moved very far -- like around the corner, or 3 blocks down. Always just barely inside the zone of a different school. Weird. One time we moved from out in the boonies (Simi Valley when it was still a big cow pasture) to The Valley, which was quite a distance. That one I understood; my dad was sick of his commute. Otherwise, the rest of it was a mystery to me, and I've even asked about it as an adult and gotten no coherent response. It was probably economic, or else some really complex, HUGE case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some people have to have their desk arranged a certain way or they freak out. We just had to keep moving. Somebody once told me that perpetual motion had yet to be invented; I begged to differ.

We also went to church or some church-related function almost every night of the week in addition to the usual Sunday stuff. Because we moved around, we always ended up trying out different churches that were close to home. Even if we'd only moved a block. I guess laziness is next to godliness. Anyway, It was at one particular church that I met my good friend (and fellow blogger) Jim, whom I've now known for just about a lifetime. I was already becoming a bit of a Bad Seed at that point, while he was still a good little PK (preacher's kid, for those of you fortunate enough to have been raised outside of the church world). I can still remember that annoying little fucking halo around his blonde head. Anyway, I was what parents, Christian or otherwise, like to call a "bad influence" on him.

OK, so we were both teenage boys, right? So despite all the fire-and-brimstone crap we were getting on a daily basis, we still had wild fantasies about every girl that walked by and many more who didn't. And, of course, they taught us that not only was sex outside of marriage a sin, but even THINKING about it was a sin. So I knew that if there was really a Hell, they had a red-leather barstool there with my name engraved on it. Because I thought about girls 24 hours a day. I woke up with sticky sheets every damn morning, and my mom wondered why I was so conscientious about doing my own laundry. I think she thought I had a bedwetting problem or something, and didn't want to embarrass me by asking.

Anyway, things were different back then. This was the seventies, and there wasn't every conceivable kind of porn available at the push of a button. I don't know how kids today handle the sensory overload of the Web, but back then it was a huge ordeal for a young boy to get access to proper whacking material. Hell, I remember excitedly thumbing through the underwear section of my mom's Montgomery Wards catalog. Yeah, it was that bad. But I was a smart kid. I devised a plan.

Our latest dwelling was this nondescript pink-stuccoed ranch-style house in Granada Hills, which is just another boring suburb in the middle of the suburban Hell called The San Fernando Valley. I've mentioned that place before. It's beautiful, if you're a sewer rat or you just got back from Beijing. But anyway we were constantly getting mail for the previous occupant, some guy named Robert Something-Or-Other, and my folks would just mark it "doesn't live here anymore" and stick it back in the mailbox for the mailman to deal with. So I saved up twelve bucks from my paltry allowance and a few illegitimate teenage activities that I've mentioned in previous posts, and I sent off a subscription card for Playboy magazine. Using the name of the former resident Robert guy so that, just in case my parents ever intercepted the mailbox before I did, they'd think it was supposed to go to him.

All worked pretty well for awhile; a month or so after sending in my card, the magazines started coming, wrapped in a plain brown sleeve. They arrived pretty predictably each month, so I was able to get to them before my folks did, and soon I amassed quite a collection. At last, a virtually limitless supply of naked girl pictures which, to a horny teenage boy in a devout Christian household, was like finding El Dorado. I would go through each one slowly, savoring every luscious photo and stretching out the experience until the next month's arrival. I can remember forcing myself not to look at the centerfold until weeks later, just so I could keep the experience fresh until the next issue without any gaps in the newness of it all. Ah, to be fourteen again...

But then it all came crashing down.

See, naked pics of girls are fun, but it's even more fun to share them with your best friend. And Jim, as saintly as he might have appeared, was the same age as me, and surely he had the same equipment, though it too probably had a halo around it before he met me. Because I was Bad Boy. Black Sheep Christian. And so I shared. Now I know what you're thinking, and you should be ashamed of yourself. It wasn't like that 'Nico and Dani' movie (which is a pretty good film, by the way). Nope, we didn't have any circle-jerks or anything; we just looked at the pictures together. I didn't know what he went and did after looking at them, though I probably would have felt better knowing he was as 'perverted' as me, because I felt pretty alone surrounded by all those supposedly asexual Church People. But I knew what I did. And I thought I was the only one. Not much in the way of Sex Ed back in those days. And it wasn't even Kansas.

Anyway, I'd found something in common with my friend that we couldn't really talk about with anyone else, because, well, Christians aren't supposed to think about naked girls. Or about doing whatever it was we thought we wanted to do to them. I'm not sure we even really knew, now that I think about it. But whatever it was, we wanted it bad. So one day, after several of these 'viewing' sessions, my loyal and trustworthy friend asked if he could have one of the pictures to take home with him, since I had so many. "Sure," I said, carefully ripping out the page that had so enamored him. After all, what are friends for?

Except that the bonehead had folded up the picture, put it in his pocket and forgotten about it. So when his mom went through his pockets before washing his jeans, a typical 'mom' thing to do, she found the offending Graven Image Of Disgust and nearly had a heart attack right there in the laundry room. As far as she was concerned, it was as if she'd found a severed head in his backpack. How could such a hideous, horrible thing have been in her precious son's pocket? Who could have hypnotized him into looking at such filth? Why, it must surely be that Bad Influence Brian kid, the one she just KNEW was bound for the flames of eternal punishment; she could see it in his eyes! Why, oh why, had she let her son be his friend? How could something like this have happened?

For the record, Playboy in 1977 was about as pornographic as a Victoria's Secret catalog is today. Maybe less so. There wasn't the slightest hint of pink anywhere in the publication. But I digress.

The details of what happened next are a bit fuzzy, but I believe that his family held some sort of Crisis Meeting and gently but firmly coerced him to admit that it was indeed I, the Bad Seed, who had given him the picture -- forced him to take it against his will, I might add. Of course, at this point, chaos ensued.

Parents were called. The prayer chain was alerted. I came home from school to find my room ransacked, every vestige of teenage maleness removed, including my oh-so-well-hidden (or so I thought) magazine collection AND the few non-Christian rock records I had formerly been allowed to have (like The Doors and The Beatles, two bands known for their open cavorting with Satanic Messages when played backwards at 45 RPMs). Even my perfectly G-Rated Charlie's Angel's poster had been ripped -- RIPPED -- from the wall, as well as my beloved Raquel Welch poster (from One Million Years' BC -- oh gawd that strategically-torn suede bikini was the main reason I hadn't yet killed myself). That one had been thumbtacked to the ceiling above my bed. But not anymore; now there was just a big white rectangle in the otherwise yellowish acoustical textured crap with the little sparkly things in it. Strange people came over to my house to 'lay hands' on me. All I could think of were two things: 1) the bastard COULD have just lied; he could have said he found the picture in the street someplace, goddammit; and 2) one of the people 'laying hands' on me was a really cute 20-something girl, and though her complexion could use some work and she wore glasses and a 'Jesus Saves' t-shirt, I wanted her hands off my back and on my front.

I had a third passing thought, which was "why aren't they just glad I'm not a goddamned homo?" But I let that one go, because, again, just thinking about shit is, in the Christian tradition, the same as doing it.

OK, so is that the end of the story? No, it actually gets weirder. Are you still reading? Because this is the best part.

My parents never mentioned the incident. Never said ANYTHING. Just tore up my room like it was a crackhouse on 'COPS', had me prayed over like I was Linda Blair, and seemingly dropped the subject. No birds-and-the-bees lecture; no sitting me down and reading Song of Solomon together; NOTHING.

And then, about 2 weeks later, my folks announced they were going on some weekend retreat, and that my bro and sister would be staying with relatives. I, on the other hand, would be going to hang with some really old folks from church who lived way out in the middle of no-fucking-where. Why? I didn't know. This was new. Since at this point I was beginning to consider my childhood as an anthropological and sociopolitical study that must surely have meaning someday though it seemed meaningless in the present, I didn't argue. I just threw up my hands and said every teenager's default word, "whatever."

So they drove me out to Lancaster. If you don't live anywhere near L.A., that name will be meaningless to you. But if you do, you will realize that, at least back then, that was essentially the open desert outside of the sprawl. Just past Lancaster, it was believed, the Earth ended and you could hear, in the distance, the gradually dissipating doppler effect of people screaming " O..H.....S..H...I....T " as their cars tumbled off the sudden drop and into the abyss. I think there may have been a sign with an icon of a car falling off the end of the world, but if YOU saw that sign, do you think you'd stop in time? No, I don't think you would.

As my folks drove away, waving, the sound of rubber tires on gravel ringing in my ears, this very nice couple with very white hair welcomed me into their lovely (ranch-style! what a surprise!) home, even carrying my small suitcase for me. I knew them, at least at the level of attention a teenager pays to really old people who aren't related to them, and I knew they were nice folks. The kind who called you 'son' even though you're not their offspring, and if you were, you'd likely have grandchildren of your own. Yeah, they were THAT old. And what's really weird is, I think they're still alive. Which means that they've gotta be pushing a hundred and thirty or so, both of 'em. All I know is, their house smelled like a combination of freshly-baked bread and a methane refinery.

They set me up in their guest room, which had a desk, a bed, a nightstand, and a vase with flowers in it that were identical to the flowers growing right by their front door. There was a window facing the front gravel driveway, which was right off the main highway so you could hear cars rumbling by, when they came by, which didn't seem that often. And there were books everywhere in the room -- a wall of bookshelves and several books strewn about on the nightstand next to a lamp that was a cowboy boot with a lampshade on it. If I were seven, I think I would have gotten a kick out of that lamp. But I was almost fifteen, and all I got a kick out of was naked girls and science fiction stuff. Neither of these things were in evidence in this house where I was trapped for the weekend.

So I was unpacking my stuff (luckily I brought whatever Sci-Fi book I was reading at the time), and the old guy came in, asked me if I wanted a soda. I said "Yeah. Root beer." And then he said something really weird; something that I was going to hear a LOT as the weekend wore on. He said, "Now if you have any questions, feel free to ask us and we'll talk about it." I couldn't imagine what questions I might ask, other than "Why the fuck am I here?" so I just said, "OK. Thanks."

He took awhile with the root beer; I think it was in the garage and he had to search for it, because when he brought it, it was warm but served in a glass over ice like a cocktail. So while he was gone, I began to look around the room a bit. Everything was clean and prepared for my visit, as if I were the guest of honor or something. In a way, I thought that was kinda nice. Maybe my parents just wanted to help these old people out by having me stay with them; maybe they were lonely and their grandkids never came over or something. I started to feel kinda proud, like maybe my folks thought so highly of me that they figured I was just the kid to make these people's lives fuller, richer. Like a pet. For a minute I wondered if they were ever coming back -- but I quickly dismissed that thought as just my Dark Side coming through. It did that sometimes. Usually got me in trouble. Now it's there all the time, and usually keeps me OUT of trouble. Or maybe I need some antidepressants.

OK, so just when I was starting to feel like this wasn't so bad, Methuselah came back with my kiddie-cocktail and he again said the same creepy thing: "If you have any questions, feel free to ask us." Then he said, "Make yourself at home" and he left the room, closing the door behind him. It was then that I noticed that the door locked from the outside. In a moment of surreal paranoia that one gets as a wisecracking fourteen-year-old Sci-Fi fanatic, I ran over to the door and turned the knob to see if he'd locked me in. It opened. I was relieved. I snickered to myself uneasily. And then I looked more closely at the books on the nightstand, and I almost peed my pants.

Running around the room, I looked at ALL the books that were placed within my reach. The shelves were filled with books, every one of them about something Christian-related, like speaking in tongues or The Second Coming or whatever. Some were more mundane -- like Bible Concordances, biographies of famous Christian figures like St Augustine, daily meditations by Billy Graham, shit like that. But all the ones that were so carefully placed around the room at kid-level, flat on the desk and the nightstand, were about SOMETHING ELSE.

They were about SEX. Or, more appropriately, Young Christian Boys' Guides to Suppressing Sexual Urges. None of them were actually titled that way; they all had prissy little titles that skirted the issue, and they were all from the forties or fifties. Probably seemed recent to these people, who had likely known St Augustine personally. But there were several of them, and they all looked like someone had gone to great lengths to strike a balance between making them visibly available and yet somehow just haphazardly sitting there at random.

So all of a sudden it all made sense. "Oh my fucking god," I distinctly remember thinking. "You've got to be kidding me." The bible was right, after all. I had thought about girls, dwelled on the topic in fact, and now I was in Hell.

Yes, rather than sitting me down for 'the talk' as some parents might, they sent me away, to the house of these ancient people, who had probably last had sex in the back of a horse-drawn buggy, so I could learn the proper way for a Christian Boy To Handle His Urges.

It all dawned on me at once, so horrifying and absurdly funny at the same time, that I started laughing out loud. Whereupon there was a knock on the (as yet) unlocked door and, without a pause for a response to the knock, the old woman came in. And just what do you think she said? "Hi sweetie. If you have any questions about anything -- anything at all -- feel free to ask us, OK?"

"Um, OK. Thanks." I stammered out, not knowing what else to say. I wanted to hurl myself through the window and run screaming down the highway for someone -- anyone -- to stop and pick me up, the shards of glass poking out of my bleeding teenage face perhaps creating the sense of urgency needed for someone to actually pull over and help. She left the room, closing the door behind her, and I thumbed through one of the books just for the hell of it. It was ridiculous. There were even drawings in there, but not detailed drawings, lest they defeat their intended purpose of SUPPRESSING one's urges. Basically, masturbation is bad, and thinking about sex is bad, and the thing to do is think about something else (yes, they actually suggested baseball) and perhaps immersing oneself in cold water. Picturing Jesus on the cross, suffering for your sins, is also presumably an effective way of changing the subject in your mind -- or, from a gay friend of mine's perspective, an effective way of getting yourself a crucifix fetish. Right now there are doubtlessly thousands of gay men who re-enact 'The Passion' as part of their foreplay. It might not be a coincidence that 'stimulus' and 'stigmata' have the same latin root. After all, I don't think I need to belabor the point that the whole Priest/altar boy thing is seeming more and more the rule than the exception. I heard a rumor that they're going to kill 12 young boys and bury them with the Pope, all wearing nothing but swaddling clothes for the afterlife...

Anyway, after contemplating jacking off into every one of the books to make the pages stick together for the next poor sucker who gets sent here, I finally just decided to lie down on the bed and read the sci-fi book I brought with me. I don't remember which one it was. At some point there was another knock, and Moses asked me if I was ready for dinner. "Yeah," I said, both hungry and relieved that he wasn't coming in to ask me if I had 'any questions' again.

So I sat down with the two of them and ate fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. Actually it was pretty good. Grandma could cook, as you would expect. And there weren't any little surprises in the food, like anti-masturbation bible verses printed on the plate under the potatoes. Everyone was real quiet while we ate, except when the Old Guy said grace before we started in -- and they didn't make me hold their hands, which I appreciated. I've always hated that shit; if somebody wants to pray, give thanks for the meal that was handed to them by God after they went to the store and bought all the ingredients with their Social Security money, that's fine. To each their own. But ninety-nine percent of the time, they wanna grab your hand while they're doing it. I don't even really like shaking someone's hand; I don't know where it's been, but I certainly know all the disgusting places my OWN has been and I can extrapolate.

So dinner was overall pretty quiet. lots of crunching and slurping and the occasional "How is everything? Would you like some more?" To which I always replied "Yes" because I was a fairly small but rapidly growing boy, and because as often as I masturbated, I needed the fuel. It's amazing how many calories you burn doing that. Fat guys should quit buying crap they'll never use like the 'Ab Lounge' on TV and instead buy a couple of 'Girls Gone Wild' videos. That'll burn those extra pounds in no time, as long as they use both hands and don't use one to snack on popcorn while they're doing it. Sorta defeats the purpose AND decreases the chance they're ever gonna meet a REAL girl to 'go wild' with.

After dinner, things were a little weird. We were all stuffed, and The Boys retired to the 'living room' while the oh-so-traditional white-haired granny did the dishes. I wondered if we were gonna light up some cigars with Bible verses on them or something, but then it dawned on me that, unlike MY house, which disgustingly smelled like stale cigarettes because my parents were fucking chain-smokers, this place didn't smell like that at all. No wonder my asthma wasn't bothering me for a change. Go figure.

But I could see the wheels turning, and I knew that Old Spice was gonna ask me the question again. You know, the one that asks if I have any questions. I actually DID have some questions, but these were kindly old people, and I really did like them, and I knew their intentions were good even though the whole thing was freekin weird, so I abstained. Because my questions wouldn't have been appropriate. I would have asked things like, "Can you still get it up after all this time?" or "Does Granny like it better from the front or behind?" or "When you guys are going at it, which is really hard for me to picture, do you speak in tongues and shout out 'praise Jesus' and shit like that?" But instead, of course, I was just quiet, except for the occasional "Man, that sure was good chicken, eh?" Then I noticed they had a jar of black licorice whips, which I love, so I asked for some, and they were happy to hand me a couple of whips. All I can say is, never eat candy that old people keep around. The licorice was so hard, I couldn't bite it. It would snap in half easily, but the pieces weren't chewable. These were antique licorice whips. Probably worth some money on that Antiques Roadshow thingy. "Yeah, carbon-14 dating reveals these to be the actual prototype for all other licorice whips. These were the first. Hold onto these a few more years and you can retire."

I've already mentioned this was 1977, and 'Star Wars' had just come out. The marketing was pretty esoteric on purpose, but those of us who were big into sci-fi already had some of the scoop. And we were all excited about it, because it was supposed to have the greatest special effects ever. Yeah, go ahead and laugh, but before that, we had crap like 'Logan's Run' which looks like it was shot in a toy store with a WebCam.

Anyhow, so Father Time asks me if there's anything I'd like to do that night; anything I'd like to talk about. And I could tell he didn't wanna pressure me, and we had all of Sunday ahead of us (which I dreaded) the next day. So I said, "Well, I'd like to see 'Star Wars'-- that would be fun." And he said, "Star Wars? What's that?" And Grandma shouted from the other room, "That's that movie that all the kids are talking about -- the one with Alec Guinness in it." And he said, "Oh, I like him. He's a great actor." So they took me to see 'Star Wars' at the closest theater that was playing it, which was about fifty miles away.

And they both fell asleep halfway through it, so we stayed in the theater and I saw it twice. The rest of the series has been a bunch of happy meal commercials as far as I'm concerned; George Lucas is the luckiest and least-talented bastard ever to create an accidental moneymaking scheme. But the first one will always be a classic, because I was almost fifteen and it was Science Fiction, sorta, and because it saved me from a night of sex-talk with old people.

The next morning we went to church, which was all the way back in The Valley. And my parents were there, and I had never been so happy to see them before. Nobody said anything; I assume that my folks spoke to the old folks and they all figured I'd read the books and hopefully learned about the Facts Of Life from a 1940s Christian perspective, and didn't have any questions. So the topic never came up again. But my Playboys stopped coming in the mail, and I knew I was going to have to go back to using my imagination.

But now I had Princess Leia to think about...

* * *

Meme Shmeme

2005-03-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

OK, so Carol The Ordinary Goddess asked me to do this quiz, and I am powerless before a Goddess because I've already tempted fate way too many times and been bitten in the ass for it. Literally. Hard. So here goes...

Three Names You Go By
1) Bri
2) X
3) Oh Mighty Thrusting One

Three Screennames You've Had
1) brioSphere
2) xwhys
3) rtystyk

Three Things about Yourself
1) I don't use deodorant. My sweat doesn't stink. Really. Chicks dig it. Don't believe me? Come smell me and see.
2) I used to be a Born-Again Christian. Then I decided to be aborted.
3) When I was a kid, I used to steal stamps and coins from a stamp and coin shop, and then I'd come back during a different shift and sell them back to them. And do it again a day or two later. While I was a Born-Again Christian. Bad dog; no biscuit.

Three Things You Don't Like About Yourself
1) I have no tolerance for stupidity. It's like an allergy. And since I'm constantly surrounded by it, I'm constantly irritated.
2) Rejection terrifies me. Why? I mean, it's not as bad as a punch in the face, and I don't walk around scared of THAT.
3) I've let way too many good women slip through my fingers while my head was apparently up my ass.

Three Parts of Your Heritage
1) Russian (So first we invade)
2) French (Then we surrender)
3) Danish (Then we have breakfast)

Three Things That Scare You
1) Fascists
2) People who vote for them
3) Attractive Women

Three Parts of Your Everyday Essentials
1) Sleeping late
2) Working my ass off until the wee small hours
3) Having sex with SOMEBODY, even if it's just myself, like usual

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now
1) An imaginary hair shirt
2) Socks that need to be thrown away
(My feet are colder with them on)
3) My neckchain made from a Scrabble tile with the letter X on it

Three Favorite Musical Artists
1) Van Morrison
2) Maria McKee
3) The Beatles

Three Favorite Songs
1) 'Breathe' by Maria McKee
2) "Without You" by Harry Nilsson
3) "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison

Three Things to try in the Next 12 Months
1) Leaving my apartment/computer for more than an hour
(I work at home)
2) Learning to play a musical instrument
3) Finding a woman who laughs at my jokes and cries at my poetry

Three Things You Want in a Relationship
1) Mutual adoration
2) Mutual respect
3) A mind-blowing spiritual connection that makes sex absolutely insane

Two Truths and a Lie
1) I love women, even the ones who have ripped my guts out and eaten them (you know who you are)
2) I will kick your ass at Scrabble, whomever you are, unless you're my friend Jeff
3) I want to have a threesome with George and Laura Bush

Three Things about the Opposite Sex that Appeal to You
1) Beautiful, soulful eyes
2) Delicate, feminine features
3) A brain that makes my medulla oblongata erect

Three Things You Just Can't Do
1) Buy the bullshit
2) Give blood (I've tried, but the needle thing just freaks me out)
3) Shoot heroin (Same reason, and then there's that annoying addiction thing)

Three Favorite Hobbies
1) Improvisational theater & music
2) Writing
3) Seeing films

Three Things You Want to Do Really Badly Right Now
1) Quit earning a living and just travel the world
2) Go to an all-you-can-eat lobster feed
3) Call Jennifer Connelly and have her say "you need to come over right now"

Three Careers You're Considering
1) Rock Star
2) Ambassador to Uranus
3) Benevolent Terrorist
(No killing, just dosing all the world leaders with MDMA)
(And if you work for the CIA, FBI, DEA, etc, I'm just kidding, asshole)

Three Places You Want to Go on Vacation
1) Amsterdam
2) India
3) Budapest (Those of you who know me will know why)

Three Kid Names
1) Hey Kid
2) Fucko
3) Imprudence

Three Things You Want to Do before You Die
1) Get real sleepy and sorta numb, then float toward the pretty light
2) Find inner peace
3) Find a nice girl, and get in her piece

Three Ways I'm Stereotypically a Boy
1) I'm always thinking about girls
2) I like gadgets
3) I drive like 700 miles per hour. Around corners.

Three Ways I'm Stereotypically a Girl
1) I trim all my body hair, and have way too much style to be so fucking straight
2) Sad movies make me cry like a wet baby
3) I make a mean lobster risotto with truffle oil & roasted garlic

Three Celeb Crushes
1) Jennifer Connelly
2) Jennifer Jason-Leigh
3) Emily Watson

OK, there ya go. Happy, Carol? ;)

* * *

Little-known fact

2005-03-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

97% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Bus Stories

2005-03-28T01:21:00.000-08:00

Last night I went and saw "Prozac Nation" at a local art film house. It was pretty good. Christina Ricci is terrific. I've always had a crush on her anyway. Yeah, I know she's pretty much just a kid. So shoot me. Actually it was a little too close to home, because Ricci plays this unstable girl with serious father/abandonment issues who is unable to maintain a healthy relationship, and gawd knows I've had my share of screwed-up relationships. Maybe it was them; maybe it was me. Probably both. I hope I've learned something from them. I'll let you know, as soon as I find one I can hold onto myself...

But I digress.

Came home on the bus, the way I usually do -- I have a car, but here in San Francisco it really doesn't make much sense to drive anywhere. Parking is abysmal, and you can spend quite a bit of time driving around looking for somewhere to leave your vehicle. And then when you get back home, you have to do the same thing before you can crash out for the night. Consequently, like in NYC, most of us take public transportation or taxis everywhere. When I have a hot date or just get annoyed waiting forever for a bus, I'll jump in a cab -- but that add$ up pretty quickly, so mostly it's the bus for me.

So I was waiting for the bus, freezing to death in an icy, windy downpour, and some grizzled old homeless guy who looked remarkably like Chuck Berry asked me for money. I said "Hey if I had any money, do you think I'd be standing here in the rain waiting for a bus?" He said "I get ya" and turned to walk away. Then he stopped, looked back at me and said "Do you know you look like Jerry Seinfeld?" which puzzled me, because I don't think I look at ALL like Jerry Seinfeld. So I said "Do you know you look like Little Richard?" To which he replied, "No, Chuck Berry. Everybody says Chuck Berry." And I said, "Yeah, HIM. Man, you GOTTA be Chuck Berry!" But did I stop there? Nope. I added "Chuck, my man -- you're my idol. Whenever I'm bangin' some girl, to this day, right as I hit that point of no return, I scream out 'Good Golly Miss Molly!' But I never seem to get a second date though. What is UP with that?" He just shook his head and walked away, laughing and waving his arm at me like I was the best entertainment he'd had all night. Then I noticed he didn't have a jacket, and here I was, freezing my ass off in my black cashmere trench coat -- the kind of coat you'd see Seinfeld wearing while waiting for a cab. And suddenly it all made sense, and I felt sorta absurd and serious, happy and sad at the same time. Ya know?

OK, fast-forward like twenty minutes. I was sitting there on the bus, and some guy went to jump out the door at his stop, dropping something at my feet in the process. I looked down, and it was a syringe. So...what does one do when a guy drops a syringe? Do you say, "excuse me, sir, but I believe you have misplaced your drug paraphernalia?" I mean, I was sure he'd be grateful, but it just felt kinda surreal. So I said "hey man, you dropped something," and he reached down and picked it up with a sheepish grin on his face. Then he disappeared into the night. I wondered if I'd helped him, or if I'd somehow ruined his one chance to change his life for the better. Then again, who am I to judge? I've done my share of substances -- though I've never gone the way of The Needle. Besides, he was probably a diabetic. I probably saved his life. Yeah, that's it.

* * *

One time I was riding on a half-empty bus with a typical, fairly mixed crowd in this diverse city -- a few other whites, a few asians, etc. The back of the bus was filled with a bunch of youngish black kids jostling and laughing, and the front/handicap seats were taken up by a very large black woman and, facing her, a very old, maybe seventy-five or eighty, white woman with a cane and those wraparound cataract-sunglasses that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's ski goggles. I mention everybody's race because it's a big part of the story, as you will see.

The bus soon came to a stop and the driver, a black man in his forties, announced to the old white woman that this was her stop. Apparently, she'd requested that he tell her when to get off the bus, or else he knew her as a regular rider. I guess she didn't hear him; perhaps in addition to being almost blind, she was almost deaf. She was pretty old -- but she appeared to be just a kindly old woman who needed some assistance.

Anyway, after telling her twice, the man reached around and tapped her gently on her shrivelled hand as it rested on the top of her cane, repeating that this was her stop. Or at least he TRIED to repeat it. He got about halfway through with his sentence when this frail, up until now silent old white woman yelled, in a loud voice with a distinctly Alabama accent, "YOU GET YOUR BLACK HANDS OFFA ME, NIGGER!"

Now, I was born and raised on the West Coast, mostly the suburbs up until a decade or so ago when I decided to become a city-dweller. My family was pretty fucked-up in a lot of ways, but overt racism was never something I was exposed to, at least not in such a direct and hateful way. It bothers me to even TYPE that word, and here was this crazy old woman SCREAMING it on a bus where she and I were clearly a racial minority. The driver seemed stunned, like it had come completely out of the blue. The woman across from her had her enormous jaw pretty much on the floor, and the entire bus was completely silent, as if waiting for the riot to start. You could hear the proverbial pin drop as the old lady struggled to her feet, and nobody seemed quite sure what was going to happen next. San Francisco is certainly not a perfect town, and there are racial issues here like anywhere else. But this was a whole other thing; this was like 1950s Birmingham all of a sudden. If it were a guy like me who'd said the dreaded N-word, all hell would have broken loose. But this was a hundred-year-old crone who could barely walk, and so nobody knew how to react.

So the driver started laughing. I guess that was pretty much all he could think of to do.

You would think that the crazy old hag would simply hobble her racist ass off the bus without further comment at that point, right? Wrong answer. While we all sat there stunned, the bus frozen in some space-and-time-warped candid camera study in Jim Crow insanity, the old woman launched into a tirade. Yes, a tirade. Sounded like some meandering apocalyptic bible-thumping Klan speech, about how all "you people" were soon gonna be forced "back where you belong," wherever THAT might be.

At some point I decided I'd had enough, and I was a little worried that my much younger but still lily-white ass was gonna get lumped in with the crazy woman's, and subsequently stomped by the formerly harmless but now probably angry black teenage gangsta-wannabes in the back. I thought of just getting off the bus, but instead I opted, in the moment, to make a bold move.

I stood up and said, "hey grandma, we've all heard enough of your shit."

She turned to me with her ghostly twig-like finger pointed as if to say "race traitah" or "nigga-lovah" or one of those other weird-ass sayings you supposedly hear way down in The Bayou, but I didn't give her enough time. I picked up her purse and her small bag of dog-biscuits or whatever it was, and threw them out the door of the bus. Then I looked into that brown-tinted UV-coated Terminator windshield on her face and said, "now get the hell off this bus before I throw you out and snap every bone in that mummified hateful body of yours."

She seemed shocked that a white boy would talk to her like this, and, mumbling god-knows-what under her breath, she picked up the pace and shuffled down the stairs and out the door. I turned around, looked around the bus at the still-silent crowd, and suddenly everybody started laughing, whistling and clapping. I smiled and sat back down, feeling just a tiny bit like a hero, both disgusted and amused at the strange absurdity of it all.

* * *

Nothing compares, however, to the time when, on yet another miserably rainy day, I got onto a crowded bus near Chinatown, and as the double-doors slammed shut behind me, I was accosted by a smell so putrid it nearly made me gag. The bus was as filled with the smell as it was with people, but it didn't seem like anyone else noticed. My eyes were watering and my stomach was beginning to gurgle uncomfortably; the bus lurched back and forth in traffic and I pushed and shoved my way through the crowd toward the exit door, determined to get off at the next stop and get on a better-smelling bus. Or walk home in the rain; surely that would be better than this.

It was then that I saw it.

As I squirmed through the crowd of riders, I found a pocket of standing room. And right there, on the seat in front of me, was the source of the foul stench. It was, I kid you not, a pile of fresh human feces, exactly in the middle of the only unoccupied seat on the bus. I looked around me, and nobody seemed to think anything of it, other than having created a small bubble of space around it, in which I was now standing. There was an elderly asian woman on the seat next to it, casually reading what appeared to be a Chinese newspaper. Next to a pile of shit.

Now, I've been around the block a bit. I'm an urban guy. I've seen some crazy things, and some ugly things, and some downright hysterical things. But now I knew I had reached what would be the pinnacle of my urban experience. Because at some point, quite recently, in the middle of a crowded bus, someone had simply dropped trou and taken a crap right there on the seat. And all the riders were pretending not to notice it. In fact, many of them had surely seen the previous owner of this horrid little sculpture as s/he created it. Perhaps the creature responsible was now standing nearby, or perhaps it was the woman with the newspaper. Most likely, the fecal performance artist was the only one with the good sense to have actually exited the bus in a hurry already.

All that I knew for sure was that I had to get off that bus, or I'd be adding the regurgitated contents of my own entrails right there next to it, and likely splattered on some of the seemingly oblivious patrons of this vehicle. For a brief moment, I wondered what would happen then. Would they keep standing there while I threw up all over the place, simply ignoring the horrible spectacle? After all, none of them seemed to mind sharing their daily commute with Mister Hanky.

After what seemed like interminable hours, the bus reached another stop, and I pushed my way out the back door, swallowing huge lungfuls of comparatively fresh city air as I scrambled down the steps and watched the bus continue on its journey, crammed with people whose personal levels of sociological tolerance I would hopefully never understand.

* * *

Pissing In The Wind

2005-03-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

So it has been brought to my attention that I've been slacking on my postings. Hell, I knew that -- I just wasn't sure if anyone cared. I was testing y'all. So apparently, people DO read this thing. One or two of them, anyway. I was hoping to hear from Dubya himself; I was hoping he read this thing Religiously (grin) and was disappointed that I hadn't written anything nasty about him in days. Actually, I haven't written anything TRULY nasty about him at ALL yet; I've been afraid of disappearing without a trace like they used to do in El Salvador back when Dub's dad (and his wacky cohorts) were running things. Back in the Good Old Days, something I never thought I'd call that now-halcyon era before that rape of the Constitution known as The Patriot Act reared its ugly opportunistic paranoid head.

So obviously, I'm not a Conservative. Or a 'Neo-Con' -- what does that mean, anyway? I mean, I know what 'Ex-Con' means, as well as 'Con-Artist' and 'Con-Job'. But to me, a 'Neo-Con' looks pretty much just like the rest of the Cons out there. In fact, it seems like an oxymoron to me -- how can people who basically want to return to the Stone Age describe themselves as 'Neo' anything? Huh? Answer me THAT?

OK, maybe Neo-lithic. Or Neo-Anderthal. But Neo-Conservative? Nah, you're the same old conservatives as far as I can tell. The people who supposedly want less governmental interference in their lives, so they make everything illegal. Duh.

Sorry, boneheads, but do you think any of the shit you take for granted as part of your so-called 'freedom' wasn't fought against tooth-and-nail by 'conservatives' throughout the ages? Do you think it was 'conservatives' who brought us child labor laws or food safety laws or women's suffrage (that's the right to vote, not wife-beating, for all you memory-challenged NeoCon geniuses out there)? Nope. According to 'conservatives', every major step forward our culture has made was going to bring about The End Of The World. Ending slavery was going to destroy the economy. 'Letting' homosexuals get married is going to bring the Wrath Of God upon us or whatever. It's always the same shit: I mean, look up 'conservative' in the dictionary. It means, essentially, RESISTANT TO CHANGE. And since history shows us that change is inevitable, that sorta means you're all pissing in the wind, doesn't it?

I DO have to give Modern Konservative Korporate Amerika props (as the kids say these days) for inventing two things the world has NEVER seen before:

1) Fat poor people
Yes, thanks to the fast-so-called-food industry, we have people who weigh 280 pounds and yet are dying of malnutrition. All throughout the entire history of the planet, a sure sign of poverty was somebody whose skeleton you could actually see through their skin. Nowadays, at least in THIS country, that's only the rich models we're supposed to aspire to look like. The people who are truly dirt-poor tend to be big fat pigs, living on piles of 59-cent mad-cow-burgers. What a brave new world, indeed.

2) The most unlikely coalition ever assembled -- that's right, the surreal teaming-up of the fat-cat corporate carpetbaggers and the blue-collar peasantry they exploit. Yep, traditionally there has been enmity between those groups, with the former laughing at the latter all the way to the bank. But now the hayseed-chewing undereducated (yet still underpaid) millworker is in bed with the guy who owns the guy who owns the guy who owns the tax shelter that owns the mill. And the guy who owns the guy is laughing even louder and harder than ever, and all the workers are apparently too busy chewing on their burgers to hear the laughter. Or, worse yet, they're laughing right along with them, too stupid to know what's so damn funny.

And by the way, Bush Junior seems adamantly against (and obsessed with) gay marriage for some unknown but suspicious reason, yet he has no problem giving it to all of us up the ass on a daily basis -- so apparently he has NO problem with gay sex itself. Just not in the context of marriage. Of course, this conflicts with his absurd and anachronistic position on teaching abstinence (which, if it were effective, would have undoubtedly shown some sort of scientific success after all the centuries it has been imposed by The Church -- but people used to fuck each other like crazy when the penalty was a fiery death, so what makes Bi-Curious George think it's gonna work now?) Anyway, I digress. My point is this: if two guys (or grrls) want to get married, that's apparently bad. On the other hand, sex itself is bad -- gay or straight -- unless you're married. And then only for procreation, because we all know that increasing the world's dwindling population is a Biblical imperative. And gays can't technically procreate, so what's the point? So we should stop them at all costs. Why? Because, um, well, God says so. But if we all bend over for Dubya, to whom none of us except LauraBot is married, that's apparently good. That's in the Bible too, I guess. OK, so I guess what The Shrub is trying to say is, "Your ass is mine, and nobody else's. But if you have a vagina, you should share it with your husband once in awhile, but only for the glory of Jesus. Amen."

But um, anyway. Bueller?

A Cold Sweat.

2005-03-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

So I had a horrible dream last night.

I dreamt I was in my car -- or at least I THOUGHT it was my car -- it was very small, which my car is, but it had a backseat, which my car doesn't. Dreams are like that. Anyway, I was trapped in my car, but I didn't have my keys, so I couldn't start it. and I was panicked. Why TRAPPED, you ask? Why PANICKED? Well, because there was a swarm of dogs -- yes, a swarm is the only way I can describe it -- trying to get in. Very small dogs, but a LOT of them. They all had the bodies of Jack Russell terriers, but their heads all looked like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Carl Rove.

I'm not making this up.

So there was this cacophony of barking and howling outside, and all these little politico-headed canines were jumping frantically, Jack Russell-style, all over my car, their claws scratching and tapping crazily on the glass and steel, and their tiny, disgusting little dog-genitals smearing on my windows as they humped away like dogs do. And then I realized, as I listened, that they weren't really 'barking' at all. They were all saying one thing, over and over. It was: "Who's your Daddy?" Just like that. There were so many of them, it was hard to make it out at first, but that's what they were saying. "Who's your Daddy?" "Who's your Daddy?" Yeah, sure, it sounds funny now -- but in my dream, I was scared outta my mind. I didn't know what to do -- if I opened the door to run for it, surely I'd be overcome by the spastic horde of little dog-fascists, and then god knows what sort of hideous things would happen. I've seen Jack Russell terriers -- and the Bush doctrine -- in action. But I couldn't start the damn car, and it was only a matter of time before I'd begin to starve, or perhaps just go insane.

I looked in the glovebox where I used to keep my stun gun, but it wasn't there anymore, and anyway there were too many of them for it to be all that effective. But as I reached over, leaning my body ever so slightly to the right, I got a whiff of -- was that urine? And I thought I heard -- was that panting? -- in the backseat...

I shuddered, not wanting to look back there, and then I heard the voice, distinctly feminine but in a post-op transsexual, contrived sort of way. My shoulders slumped forward, and as my trembling fingers reached to adjust the rearview mirror, it filled with a pair of eyes so hauntingly familiar -- eyes I remember seeing from old drawings of African slavers, tribesmen that sold their own people into the clutches of the white traders.

"Condoleezza?" I said aloud.
"They hate our freedom," she replied, smiling, showing dog-teeth right before she leapt over the seat.

And then I woke up -- in, as James Brown so eloquently put it, a Cold Sweat.

* * *

Now, I'm no dream interpreter, but it doesn't take a UN Weapons Inspector to figure this one out. And I think the car -- my tiny, easily parkable-in-the-city car -- represents San Francisco. I can't really afford to keep living here forever, and I don't know that it's going to matter when the proverbial shit REALLY hits the proverbial fan. But I think I'm stuck here for awhile, because I don't think there's anywhere else to go.

Email Relationship

2005-03-17T00:28:00.000-08:00

OK, so I wrote this awhile ago, but I thought I'd share it. Why? Because I can.

* * *

Meetings. One after the other. Keeping him away from the screen that was his only link to her. Last thing he'd typed was BRB. Now he was a liar, on top of being a workaholic. She didn't live here; her mortgage payment would scarcely rent a studio apartment in this burg. She wouldn't understand his crazy schedule.

Would work never end? They kept dragging him back from the elevator door like vacuum cleaner salesmen with a sure kill. What would he say to her? His brain swelled like a blowfish. She would expect something profound after letting him try her patience so. A thousand trite email jokes fought for supremacy in his frontal lobes. A million unfinished tasks browbeat him. Loose ends and excess baggage poked tiny fingers in his eyes and laughed louder than the pig-squeal of ancient air brakes on what they call public transportation in this town.

A final porcine death cry and the bus coughed a spasm of greasy air at the bottom of the hill it had no intention of climbing. He jumped out like a piece of gristle resurrected by the Heimlich maneuver, and began his daily impersonation of Sir Edmund Hillary...

"Got any change?" Said the scratchy voice from the doorway of the closed gay bookstore. The man looked like Stevie Wonder. He really liked Stevie Wonder. He tossed the guy a quarter.

Okay, so maybe a quarter isn't all that much. But if the guy were really Stevie, he wouldn't need it. Besides, he could swear those shades were the same ones he used to keep in his car, before some crackhead slashed the convertible top...

He arrived late, like usual, stumbling up the hill to the steps to the door to the staircase to the tiny apartment. Intentionally minimalist. Such a walking cliché. Hills and minimalism in San Francisco. And stairs. Miles of stairs. Even the sidewalks are stairs. Coming home every night was like visiting Machu Picchu.

The house was a Victorian, one more cliché, but he liked it because, like himself, it was a survivor. Built before the quake. The Big One, before television news cameras made every quake into The Big One, and every mugging into a crime wave. Before MTV made every kid into a gangsta. Before they stopped using the letter "r."

The house looked embarrassed. Sometime in the 1920s, a dozen or so self-motivated hacks had tried to "modernize" the old houses around here. Not all of them; in fact just a few here and there. Which makes it worse, of course. Surrounded by quaint gingerbread-encrusted dollhouses restored lovingly by people fortunate enough to have bought them before the eighties made everything in the world cost a million dollars. This particular house, all hint of decorative trim cruelly stripped long ago, stuccoed over and painted Warren Harding beige, stands as a monument to a movement that would culminate years later in such innovations as aluminum siding and simulated woodgrain. Better living through sophistry.

Across town some of the most beautiful untouched Victorians stand rotting behind wrought iron cages, their still-salvageable planks covered with what the aforementioned MTV-inspired thug-wannabes consider "art."

All of this he pondered, gazing at the lights of the city from his pseudo-modernist beige front porch. Perhaps if he stayed out here a little longer, it would be daylight and he'd have yet another worthy excuse for not writing. Another alibi.

No such luck, he thought to himself. Surely she would not be fooled. She saw right through him; he was translucent like one of those delicate tropical fish he used to see in the pet section of Thrifty's back in The Day. He pictured himself swimming around in there, the green curry chicken he had for dinner sitting in his clear stomach for all to see, like leftovers in Saran wrap. He turned the key in the two-dollar lock and entered his apartment.

No one quite understood his relationship with the little furry creature that always greeted him at the door; to most people a cat was just a pet, or, at the opposite end of the continuum, a surrogate child. But this cat was different; a familiar, like a reincarnated close friend. They'd been through a lot together -- well, that is to say, he had been through a lot of shit, and the cat had somehow been there to console him. He loved the cat. He believed it was mutual. At the very least, it was a seriously codependent interspecies thing that very few of his human friends could relate to. But then, neither he nor the cat was concerned with their approval. Ngowrr.

One A.M. Still no inspiration. Sitting bewildered and not a little panicked in front of a glowing gray box, the cat purring contentedly on his lap, he played Tetris until the telltale signs of carpal tunnel crept in. Incapacitation. Disability. The perfect excuse. But he knew better. No, that wouldn't work either. She was far too bright for that.

And then, in an epiphany, like an aspiring tax lawyer finding a new loophole, he was struck with a brilliance so staggering that it seemed unlikely he would be able to be its conduit. His fingers began to rhythmically stroke the grungy keyboard like a vacuum-formed Ouija board; his hands trembling with an energy that scared the cat. The words poured onto the screen; postmodern heiroglyphics flashed ones and zeroes in an insane ritual dance of long-repressed microprocessors finally spilling their angst-ridden bodily fluids in an orgiastic panoply of joyful abandon.

And, sated...weary...he clicked Send.

First kiss

2005-03-16T14:00:00.001-08:00

I was fourteen years old, and I had never kissed a girl, but I was always infatuated with one or another, as I had been since I was about five. I was a little Casanova down deep inside, but I was painfully shy, so usually the objects of my affection never knew I existed...

I was completely head over heels in "love," in that insanely intense way that only young teenagers can be, with a girl at my church -- we'll call her 'J'. She was a worldly-wise, street-smart, sassy little blonde a year older than me. I was a clueless little boy with zero experience of the world, afraid of my own shadow. I saw her twice a week, at sunday school and at wednesday night youth group, and occasionally at other church functions at people's homes, etc.

As previously mentioned in my 'Dogma' post, on wednesday nights we were supposed to be out on the street (Van Nuys Blvd -- I grew up in that place sarcastic people refer to affectionately as the 'City of Angels'), talking to people about Christianity. But J had other ideas -- myself and 2 other clueless little boys hung out with her, and we all followed her around while she tried to score pot. I pretended I was a veteran pot smoker, but in reality I tried it for the first time with her, and coughed my lungs out while she laughed her ass off. Same with the other two guys. We all adored her. She was our Goddess. I rarely said a word to her -- I couldn't. She left me breathless; she probably thought I was mute. But I was always staring at her and she knew it.

Anyway, a couple of months before, J's mother had given a church potluck at her house. I had gone into her mom's room and stolen a small picture of J off her dresser, and I kept it in my wallet.

We used to hang out at McDonald's, where we would eat those soft-serve sundaes that they had just started serving, while we waited for somebody to come in and give her the signal that they had the weed. One night I was paying for my sundae, when suddenly J grabbed my wallet out of my hand and glared at the picture of her in it -- and at me. "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?" she yelled, while the other boys laughed. "ARE YOU TELLING PEOPLE I'M YOUR GIRLFRIEND OR SOMETHING?"

I had never stammered out more than two words in a row to this girl that I adoringly followed around everywhere like she was The Messiah, but I just suddenly blurted out, inexplicably, "NO, BUT I WISH YOU WERE, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!"

She stared at me for a second, and then she grabbed my arm. "Come here," she said. and she looked back at the other two boys and said "STAY." They stayed.

She quickly pulled me out the door and around to the back of the McDonald's, without saying a word. I was trembling. We stood there by the dumpster, and she kissed me. Hard. With her tongue and everything. The works. It seemed to last about 2 hours. Then she pulled away. I was dazed.

"Look," she said, "I only date older guys. I have a boyfriend, and he's seventeen, and he has a car. but I like you, so I still want to be friends, OK?"

I nodded, slowly. I was still dazed. I couldn't speak.

She put her arm around me and walked me back to the front of the McDonald's, where the other two stood with their mouths wide open. We all went back to wandering down the street, pretending to talk to people about the Lord.

Since then, I have had my heart broken many times, but never, ever, as gently or with as much class as that fifteen-year-old semi-juvenile-delinquent girl from church.

Holy War

2005-03-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

OK, so it gets interesting when you give people a way to contact you. I see how this works. You get to set yourself up as the next victim of some demented Religious Serial Killer. Hmmm...there's a screenplay in here somewhere.

I mean, Jesus! You simply mention religion and people get all Irritable Bowel Syndrome on ya. Didn't even have the courage to post it as a comment, inviting open discourse. Nope. I got like maybe 2 readers at this point, and one of them turns out to be Max freekin' Cady. Am I being judgmental? Hell, being judgmental is what separates us from the animals, isn't it? Or maybe the concept is an oxymoron and a red herring and a white elephant. It's a straw man, a shell game, an artful dodge. It's an enigmatic paradoxical ambiguity. You get my drift. Hey you, get offa my cloud.

Anyway, I'm not gonna antagonize the freakazoid further by posting his words here, even anonymously -- 'cuz it makes me uncomfy that he might live across the street or something. I think it was Horace Smith who defined courage as the 'fear of being thought a coward.' I always loved the brilliance of that statement. It scares me though.

But the guy seemed to have a fixation on calling me the C-word (no, not Christian -- the OTHER C-word), which seems strange. I watch a lot of movies, and it seems to be only in the UK that guys actually call other guys "cunts" -- but this guy seemed pretty damn homegrown otherwise -- in the way only certain American Goobers can be. Maybe he's a misogynist who's run out of women to abuse, so he's trying to include me in his little fantasy browbeating. Too bad his spell-check seems to be broken; I couldn't understand half of what he was saying, but I detect a definite bias toward a certain snake-handling mentality. Ever guess how many teeth someone has simply by reading their notes?

So anyway, do you know what I told him? I deliberately avoided the topic of religion, because that would be giving him too much credit. I said:

"Well, sir, that was quite the catharsis for you, wasn't it? Allow me to pause while you look up that word. No, not in the Bible. In the dictionary, my Huckleberry friend. D-i-c-t-- oh, never mind. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for referring to me as a "cunt". Since that IS one of my many favorite parts of the female anatomy, a word which in Shakespearean times was not even profane, I will consider it a high compliment. After all, that is where life itself begins, and where I've spent some of my most memorable moments. In fact, one could call it my temple. And therefore I will consider it high praise! But get up off the floor; you're wrinkling that pretty hair shirt I bought you. I seek not another boring supplicant; I seek a pedantic equal to lord over the universe with. A pithy observation is only fun if it can be shared. I want someone to hold my hand and tell me not to be so dramatic right before I die. Unfortunately for you, that someone will be female -- I'm straight. But thanks for your offer of analingus. I'm flattered."

I haven't heard back from him. I wonder if I will?

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

My dogma ate my homework.

2005-03-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

OK, let's see. I should probably get in the habit of posting to this thing every day, regardless of whether anybody's reading it or not. Tree falling in the woods and all that. Maybe I'll get better at it with practice. But what to write? Normally I have a lot to say, especially if somebody gives me an espresso or a couple lines of Columbian Baby Powder. But I find myself at a loss this morning. Hmmm...OK, I'll talk about religion. I can talk for hours about that wacky subject. Especially if you're a qualified therapist...

You see, I was born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father. Neither were devout, and both came from broken homes -- my mom from your basic middle class secular New York Jewish dysfunctional roots, and my dad from a lower-middle-class French/Canadian/New England crucifix-over-the-hot-plate-in-the-double-wide bunch. So technically I'm Jewish enough (but not suicidal enough) to get Israeli citizenship, but I was raised weekend Catholic. That is, until...

When I was around nine or so, my parents found Jesus(TM). That is to say, we ALL found Him, because as the Good Book says, the sins of the father will be dogmatically beaten out of the son[s]. My parents are probably the two most unlikely people ever to successfully breed together -- the equivalent of getting a cat and a dog to have a baby -- and they fought CONSTANTLY during my entire childhood. They were always on the verge of divorce, but they finally collided with destiny when they decided to go ahead and split up. The whole thing was basically in progress when The Son Of God intervened and they became -- you guessed it -- Born-Again Christians(TM). Which meant that we -- my brother, sister and I -- became ReBorn as well. It was, as they say, A Brand New Day.

So I spent the latter half of my childhood being force-fed a worldview that seemed to perpetually contradict actual experience, but empirical evidence was never very important to the One True Church, as I discovered when I, a relatively bright lad, began to question things in my adolescent years. By the way, have you noticed how exquisitely skilled I am at the endless run-on sentence? Perhaps we are due for a short break.

• • • • • • • • • • I N T E R M I S S I O N • • • • • • • • • •

OK, I'm back. Did ya miss me? Where was I? Oh yes...
So I blindly bought the propaganda and merrily went to sunday school and memorized the entire Word Of God (or at least the random scriptures the Church of the Early Middle Ages had decided were worthy of inclusion) and attended youth groups and talked to people on the street in The San Fernando Valley about how they were going to burn in Hell for all eternity without the precious unconditional love of the Baby Jesus that God in His Mercy had provided for them absolutely free by allowing His Only Son to be brutally murdered for the vile unworthy sinful acts they would inevitably commit if they hadn't already.

There we were, little miniature Grand Inquisitors proselytizing on the boulevard of broken noses, risking our dogmatically deranged but youthfully enthusiastic lives annoying people and making Jesus proud.

But then, sometime in my mid-teens, while feeling the constant stirrings of lust and covetousness for every neighbor's daughter that would surely doom my twisted and evil little soul to the inferno, I began to question the validity of statements like "Satan put the fossil record there to deceive us." Oh me of little faith.

The point at which I lost my religion is hazy to me now; there was a moment when I decided that any god who ruled through fear and guilt wasn't a god at all, but a pedantic and whiny little monster akin to the Wizard behind the curtain. But I don't remember the exact moment. I didn't become an atheist; that would have been a reaction as overly simplistic as the infantile orthodoxy I was escaping. No, my attitude was that their probably WAS some sort of Higher Power, but that 'it' certainly would not be comprehensible to mere humans, or reducible to human behaviors and concepts.

At some early point since then, I formed a basic philosophy that 'god' is just another word for 'universe' -- that the universe is made of energy and so are we, that consciousness and energy are one. That, yes, the universe is wondrous and magnificent, which in our limited understanding always implies a creator. But what if IT -- WE are the creator? All of us and everything represents evolutionary levels of development of consciousness OF the Cosmos? We 'modern' humans like to think of life and matter -- or flesh and spirit -- as separate, but that is only due to our limited perceptive ability. If our eyes COULDN'T process color (like a dog's eyes), would that mean color didn't exist?

This all seemed, and continues to seem, like basic common sense to me. And nothing revolutionary; sages in cultures not burdened by Judeo-Christian history have been saying things akin to this for millennia. Of course, throughout much of OUR history, I'd have been burnt at the stake for saying it -- a practice that I hear rumors our esteemed Prez is trying to bring back into vogue. It'll probably be tacked on in fine print in the middle of some 'tax relief' bill somewhere, and we'll each get a check for $82 in exchange for our right to due process...

Anyway, I digress. We'll talk politics another time, after I see what sort of response I get to this little quasi-polemic.
My home address isn't on here, right? Whew!

Male Sexuality Explained

2005-03-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

Hmmm...still getting used to this posting thing, and too busy today to write anything original, at least nothing that would be interesting. So I decided to re-post something I put up on a local community site awhile back, because I got a lot of good feedback on it and hardly any flames, so it will be interesting to see what THIS community thinks of it.

I had done my share of online dating, and I noticed a lot of women posting complaints about men "using" them, seemingly not at all understanding what was happening when it all seemed so obvious to me and probably every other male on the planet. So I decided to potentially bring the wrath of The Playahs on my head for revealing what should be taught to every girl in junior high school. This stuff WILL be common sense to most male and SOME female readers, but y'all would be amazed at how many women have thanked me profusely for giving out this info. So this posting mostly goes out to all the females in the audience (assuming anybody is reading my little dealio here yet; I'm new, after all)...

MALE SEXUALITY EXPLAINED:

OK, so you're a woman, you've just had sex with a guy and you think it's the beginning of something, while for him it's the END of something. Why is this? What sort of foul creatures are these men, eh? Why would they sleep with you, giving you the impression that they think you're special, and then suddenly lose interest?

It's actually really simple.

We men have this chemical called testosterone, in large quantities, flowing through our veins and influencing us in ways that you cannot begin to imagine. It makes us absolutely crazy. Of course women have some too, which is what gives them a sex drive at all. But they just don't have anywhere near the same amount -- not even the really horny ones.

We men are of course human beings. We were once little babies, crying out for affection. Just like you women, we want love. Just like you, we want companionship. Just like you, we need nurturing and caring. BUT unlike you, we don't need any of those things in order to want to fuck you, because we have bulk-rate testosterone telling us to fuck anything that moves.

So...

If you're lucky (and if we are as well), we are sleeping with you as part of an expression of our love and devotion to you. BUT more often than not, that ain't it. Just because we want to fuck you doesn't mean we love you. We might not even like you. We might not even be attracted to you at all.

In fact, we might hate your guts, but still you have a nice body and so we are wired to want to penetrate it. I know this sounds bad, but if a 'hot' woman is a complete bitch from hell, we will want to fuck her just on principle alone -- because then she's a just notch in our belt, and we have taken the one thing we wanted from her. Now she's just a bitch, instead of a bitch with a nice ass, and so now we can ignore the shape of her ass and get on with our work. She now has nothing left that we want, and no power over us whatsoever. Get it?

As we get older and wiser, and if we got enough casual sex to scratch that itch a fair bit and the testosterone starts to dwindle to manageable levels, our nurturing side is able to express itself more clearly, and we long for a loving relationship.

But even then, if given the choice between casual, loveless sex and no sex at all, we will STILL take the former in a heartbeat. Sure, after sowing some oats, proving our "manhood" and attractiveness to women in our youth, at a certain point we will much prefer sex with someone we love. Note I said "prefer". To ANY healthy man of any age (and I challenge any man to honestly dispute this), ANY sex is better than NO sex, which of course makes us very different from women. To YOU (women), a penis is generally all about the guy attached to it. If the guy's uninteresting to you, you probably don't wanna see his dick. To us MEN, a vagina is always beautiful, no matter who it's attached to. See? You COULD take this as a compliment, in a twisted sort of way. Sorta.

The problem for women, of course, is that you don't know if a guy wants sex with you because he LIKES you, or simply because you have a vagina, and he is wired to want IT. Well, I can promise you this: if a guy hasn't known you long enough to really know who you are and really like you, and he tries to get you into bed, he JUST WANTS TO FUCK YOU. Period. You're dreaming if you think it's more than that. Sure, sometimes more comes of it later, but only sometimes -- and usually because the guy's got regular access to sex now, and for a lot of guys that's hard to come by. Until somebody cuter or smarter or just plain new comes along. Sex without substance gets old, even for us.

For men, the sex drive is like hunger. When you're hungry enough, even a crappy fast-food joint will do, and you pull into the drive-thru. You know it's a bad idea, but you do it anyway. But afterwards the stomach ache always makes you say "shit, why the hell did I do that?" Simple. You were hungry, and it was there. So we meet some girl who isn't our type, but she's not hideous; she's acceptable. Maybe she's a little too chubby, or has bad skin, or isn't very interesting or bright. But we're HUNGRY and she's THERE. She probably thinks she's just met her new boyfriend, but we walk away afterwards with a stomach ache, and she realizes she's been used AGAIN. Nobody's really happy, and if he's a decent guy he feels bad about it -- but the hunger's gone for awhile. The end.

If a young guy really, really likes you, he'll still want your body, but he'll likely be willing to wait for you to be ready, if you're firm about it. It won't be easy for him, but he'll stick around even if you don't 'put out' -- as long as he knows you're sincere and not just playing games with him, like some women do. You know, for free dinners and stuff. Yeah, it happens a lot. But I digress; my intent here is to HELP women, not point the finger at them.

If an older, presumably wiser and more mature guy really likes you, not only will he be willing to wait, but he will likely SUGGEST that you wait, because he knows that sex is MUCH better if you truly know and love someone, and, just like you, he'll want it to be special. Of course, if you push the issue, he will likely give in easily and fuck you anyway, because he's a man. We are all slaves to our chemicals.

So the bottom-line is this:
It's an age-old concept that your grandma probably told you, and it's just plain true. If you want casual sex, then go ahead and have it, but don't expect the guy to be after anything more than a fuck. If you truly want LOVE and a relationship, you have to wait until you are sure he really cares about you before you let him go there. You just do.

OK, so why is it YOUR responsibility to say no, rather than his? Simple. TESTOSTERONE. A guy might have the best of intentions; he might know in his heart that he should wait, that it will be better. But the chemicals, especially in a young guy, are going to be too strong for him to resist. I have personally ruined many potential relationships by giving in to my desire to sleep with some girl early on, and then I lost interest in her because there was nothing there but lust in the first place. If we'd waited, maybe nothing would have happened at all, or maybe we would have developed something great, based on mutual interests and such -- at the very least, she wouldn't have had her heart broken by mistaking sex for love. But she let me, and so I did. And so I basically ate dessert first, and got too full for dinner. Sometimes I even knew she was barking up the wrong tree, but I did it anyway. Sometimes, when I was young, I told her exactly what she wanted to hear, and I got what I wanted. Sometimes I even felt bad about it. But I did it anyway. That's testosterone (and immature selfishness, surely) in action.

Yes, SHE has to be the one to say no, because men, when it comes to sex, are just plain weak. The strongest man, one who might rescue a baby from a burning building or wrestle a bank robber to the ground, is still pretty much helpless in the face of his own sex drive. It's just a fact.

As for me, I'm a 40ish guy, who has learned all this the hard way. Pun intended. And it's all very, very true.

So, my female friends, go ahead and sleep around; I make no judgments (double-standards are just stupid) and I don't believe in the word "slut" -- I think women should be able to have as much casual sex as they want, as long as they REALIZE it's casual sex. But if you want real love, LISTEN TO YOUR MAMA, and do NOT sleep with the guy until you have a connection with him that you both feel, however long that takes. And if he won't wait, then, just like your mama probably told you, then he wasn't what you thought you wanted anyway.

Sounds old-fashioned, even to ME -- because I was born in the Free Love '60s. But it's just the way we're wired, and while our uptight puritannical forebears were fucked-up about a lot of things, there's one inescapable fact of biology they pretty much had figured out. Surely they should have given women the equality, respect and intellectual credit they deserved. BUT they DID understand the male sex drive and what havoc it can wreak on an unsuspecting, romance-seeking female.

(Note: I am not excusing men for their/our behavior; just explaining it for those who don't get it. Anyone, male or female, who wants to comment is free to write me, but please be intelligent enough to get what the heck I'm trying to say, and don't just send me mindless angry flames because you hate men or live in denial.)

And I didn't create this situation, so please don't get mad at me. I'm just the messenger.

Thanks for listening. If just one woman has a lightbulb go on over her head after reading this, it will help make up for all the hearts my dick has broken over the years -- including, eventually, my own.

Music. Movies. Books. Yada yada.

2005-03-13T01:11:00.000-08:00

After much gentle but firm prompting by my blogger friend Sir James, I decided to start posting here. but what to post? I have no idea. I can tell you this: these fuckers ask you to list your favorite shit in your profile, but then they limit it to 600 characters. What boring-ass dork over nine years old can fit all his or her fave shit in 600 characters? Maybe the President, but not me. So I'll start by doing here what they wouldn't let me do there. I mean, probably nobody cares, but then again, I'm probably just dreaming all this anyway. So here goes:

fave music:
the decemberists, modest mouse, the postal service, blonde redhead, death cab for cutie, kevin yost, oasis, the constantines, government mule, spacetime continuum, b tribe, sounds from the ground, stargarden, green day, basement jaxx, higher intelligence agency, baka beyond, baby mammoth, american analog set, tori amos, bola, the sea and cake, mica lee williams, cursive, built to spill, tom mcrae, ani difranco, maria mckee, janis joplin, hooverphonic, dzihan & kamien, low, alfie, titan, broken social scene, b ashra, paul van dyk, ian pooley, morcheeba, laika, momma gravy, delerium, beta band, frou frou, mark farina, mull historical society, bebel gilberto, sing-sing, portishead, alpha, john beltran, current, carbon based life forms, everything but the girl, massive attack, talking heads, lowgold, the wisdom of harry, taking back sunday, opus 3, paul simon, turin brakes, the beatles, soulstice, andy caldwell, beulah, king kooba, aphrodite, the delgados, hybrid, iggy pop, fila brazilia, madonna, galaxie 500, goldfrapp, john coltrane, elliott smith, carole king, garbage, funky porcini, chris isaak, peter gabriel, cat power, sigur ros, patsy cline, cocteau twins, yo la tengo, peggy lee, balligomingo, zero one, b-12, thievery corporation, tosca, kings of convenience, frank sinatra, miles davis, apples in stereo, howie day, david kitt, baxter dury, olivia tremor control, mountain goats, stereolab, gol, magic sound fabric, crustation, sebadoh, sleater-kinney, the yeah yeah yeahs, marvin gaye, giant sand, azure ray, entheogenic, the doors, lemonjelly, lemonheads, van morrison, amon tobin, royksopp, adham shaikh, richard ashcroft/the verve, bjork, adam ant, de la soul, white stripes, tanya donnelly, luna, alpha, the cult, sa fred, afro celt sound system, camera obscura, mazzy star, lamb, blue stingrays, blue states, banco de gaia, interpol, jets to brazil, boards of canada, arovane, a forest mighty black, ella fitzgerald, rilo kiley, louis armstrong, sandra collins, ferry corsten, edith frost, now it's overhead, the thrills, deb talan, jaywalkers, the hives, the sundays, i am kloot, the aqua velvets, arab strap, blue states, rickie lee jones, cibo matto, nightmares on wax, mandalay, floex, mark knopfler, tom waits, nirvana, the church, kraftwerk, the pretenders, pixies, billie holiday, velvet underground, brian eno, persephones bees, embrace, cousteau, dave brubeck, dee-lite, tangerine dream, xtc, the weakerthans, tricky, esthero, beck, sly stone, hels fornander, chet baker, johnny cash, st.germain, p.j.harvey, underworld, paul simon, gus gus, aretha franklin, paul oakenfold, john digweed, the cure, the zombies, the zephyrs, nick drake, wheat, richie havens, air, al green, esthero, rolling stones, radiohead, badly drawn boy, iron & wine, innocence mission, neutral milk hotel, wilco, red house painters, the starseeds...

fave movies:
the misfits, 21 grams, dancer in the dark, delicatessen, aguirre: the wrath of god, amelie, citizen kane, the third man, the princess bride, blood simple, brazil, gallipoli, down by law, stranger than paradise, children of heaven, the man who would be king, color of paradise, the doors, american beauty, irreversible, the piano, the ice storm, drugstore cowboy, baraka, xiu xiu the sent down girl, jean de florette, garden state, spun, swingers, cinema paradiso, el mariachi, sid & nancy, donnie darko, empire of the sun, exotica, the sweet hereafter, the princess and the warrior, the godfather series, the hudsucker proxy, jesus' son, la dolce vita, royal tenenbaums, born on the fourth of july, virgin suicides, the year of living dangerously, fear and loathing in las vegas, the meaning of life, apocalypse now, hearts of darkness, shadow of a doubt, videodrome, harold and maude, u turn, 12 angry men, spider, urbania, adam's rib, ace in the hole, the big lebowski, fargo, blue, white, chinatown, the bicycle thief, groundhog day, the pianist, raising arizona, au revoir les enfants, repo man, living in oblivion, oh brother where art thou?, welcome to the dollhouse, mr smith goes to washington, mister death, midnight cowboy, the best years of our lives, sling blade, 12 monkeys, raise the red lantern, life is beautiful, being john malkovich, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, bullets over broadway, 24 hour party people, purple rose of cairo, the last picture show, vertigo, north by northwest, rear window, the big red one, indochine, the deer hunter, the usual suspects, papillon, the manchurian candidate(the original), the man with the golden arm, gone with the wind, blade runner, city of lost children, on the waterfront, bad day at black rock, dreams, snow falling on cedars, casablanca, some like it hot, the lion in winter, the name of the rose, midnight clear, who framed roger rabbit, fearless, il postino, the man who wasn't there, blue velvet, the power of one, the caine mutiny, a very long engagement, breaker morant, motorcycle diaries, vera drake, almost famous...

fave books:
a brief history of everything by ken wilber, the turning point by fritjof capra, jitterbug perfume by tom robbins, a natural history of the senses by diane ackerman, catcher in the rye by jd salinger, the alchemist by paulo coelho, fear and loathing in las vegas by hunter thompson, snow crash by neal stephenson, the seat of the soul by gary zukov, guns germs & steel by jared diamond, tales of ordinary madness by charles bukowski, atonement by ian mcewan, voltaire's bastards by john ralston saul, why i am not a christian by bertrand russell, junky by william burroughs, another roadside attraction by tom robbins, river out of eden by richard dawkins, awakening the buddha within by lama surya das, still life with woodpecker by tom robbins, naked by david sedaris, running with scissors by augusten burroughs, you just don't understand by deborah tannen, the teachings of don juan by carlos castaneda, the soul of capitalism by william greider, the ghost in the machine by arthur koestler, the day the universe changed by james burke, the power of now by eckhart tolle, empire by gore vidal...

Well, that's a start, I guess. Now you can infer all sorts of things about me.