Useless Crap

Time To Move On...

2008-03-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

I never thought this day would come, but I never thought I would become so powerful an influence that I would gain the attention of Google, the most powerful corporate force in the world. But apparently what I've been saying doesn't flow with their conservative cut-throat corporate ways, and they're trying to shut me down. But it's of no use. You can now find me at Helpful Hints For Living a Happy Life, where I will continue in my unwavering quest to kill corporate greed exemplified by groups like Google, and give this country back to the working man, exemplified by great Americans like Lou Dobbs.

It ain’t Dylan Going Electric, But…

2006-11-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

In my days as a young tyke, I like many other children out there felt there was no better feeling in life than the fourth quarter/ninth inning comeback. Surely there was nothing better, and why would anyone waste their time trying to achieve anything else? This, of course, was before I discovered sex, music, drugs (nothing too hard) and the like. But the end-of-the-game comeback was the most pure pleasure I could have enjoyed. The adrenaline was like nothing else, and that was all I wanted out of life.
This is the story of many kids of all generations. We worshipped those who were paid for the experience (paid disgusting salaries, as a matter of fact), and that’s why Sports Center probably has had a bigger influence on me as a person than perhaps any other show, song, movie, person in through all kinds of media. The eternal debate back then was whether it would be good to comeback on the road (the advantage of silencing 60,000 people all at once) or at home (the obvious advantage being that the 60,000 people are louder than anything on Earth and it’s all because of – and for – you) was the most partisan argument you could find.
The reason I look back at the hours spent watching Sports Center as a positive influence is because of the people who were at the helm in those days. I had come to expect news anchors of all stripes to be serious, pompous, humorless jerks. The anchors on Sports Center showed me that it could actually be fun and work at the same time. Keith Olberman and Craig Kilbourne brought a sense of humor to a medium that had long catered to undereducated, self-righteous stuffed shirts and ex-athletes who knew nothing more than who the third string right tackle was for the 1965 Oilers. Their personality didn’t translate to the real world, and therefore it was hard to relate to these people. Certainly, if I shared the same passions as these people, I was going to be in a lot of trouble (I do realize that Olberman and Kilbourne were not the first sportscasters with a good sense of humor, but they were as far as the scope of my experience reached, so BACK OFF!). It was watching them that I realized I didn’t want to be a professional athlete; I wanted to be the guy who makes smart comments about the professional athletes. They looked like they were having fun, and without the crippling injuries (if you don’t count career injuries, which we will discuss).
So it is needless to say that I was disappointed when I’d heard that Kilbourne was leaving to start “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. First of all, I didn’t like to stay up to 11 back then, and second, the idea of such a talented man doing a show on a network whose flagship show was old reruns of “Kids in the Hall” seemed like a terrible waste of talent.
Kilbourne would earn mild success with “The Daily Show,” a fact that has been pulverized by the immense success of Jon Stewart’s takeover of the show. I never watched Kilbourne’s version, but it sounds like his sense of humor didn’t translate too well to the political arena. From there, his luck worsened as he had a sturdy, but ultimately unsuccessful run backing up Letterman. He had built his own following, but it was perhaps a little too much like Letterman, with his eccentric sense of humor that “not everyone gets.” Kilbourne didn’t last too long, and it’s a damned shame. He was so talented where he began, but he was blinded by the big bucks, and it spelled his downfall (Of course, for all I know, he could be living in a mansion in Jamaica with a beautiful Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, that would be a pretty smooth downfall). I would imagine Jon Stewart’s success with a crossover to the sports world would be similarly successful. It’s good to want to enter new areas of knowledge, but it can be dangerous.

As for Olberman, it took him a few more years to move on from his day job. I guess he figured that once they started letting Stuart Scott in the studio, it was time to move on (No, that wasn’t meant to be a racist joke, it was simply a slight nod to those of us who remember Scott as a reporter out in the field; always talking in an empty stadium/arena, and never really doing the big stories; known better as “that guy who looks like Carlton from Fresh Prince.” Believe me, I was applauding the day that Carlton became an anchor…I swear!).
To MSNBC Olberman went, slowly finding a niche as one of possibly three liberal television personalities on cable news. I started watching him every once in a while, and I realized that this guy is pretty good. He says interesting things; his sense of humor does translate to the political arena, and whomever he talks to, whether he agrees with them or not, he isn’t sitting on a mike-cutting button that he can pounce on when needed. Olberman’s a good shit, and now that he’s found a niche as a small-time commentator with a loyal following, it’ll be interesting to see how long they wait to cancel him due to low ratings. What may be even more surprising is that Joe Scarborough doesn’t seem so evil now that he’s not on Fox news. I really don’t know what’s going on in the world when I can stomach five minutes of him.
But I’m talking about Keith. His show, Countdown, revolves around five main stories, and he likes to talk about in depth, usually with little outside commentary (which I think is a good thing, because when I really want to watch two adults act like five-year-olds, I’ll hang out my parents). He has two features that he uses on almost every show: The worst person of the day award (he also includes two finalists, the worse, and worser) and his long drawn out soliloquies at the end of each show. They are usually spoken in the second person and directed for the most part at the president. Whoever writes his scripts is very good, and he’s not afraid to use big words; the sign of a true Democrat.
His speeches are given with just a hint of anger, but mostly, you can tell Olberman is just trying to get through his tirade without botching any words. But he almost always gets through them, and you find yourself not only agreeing with him, but admiring the way he is able to lend voice to what many of us are thinking, but are having a hard time saying. Don’t get me wrong, Olberman is not a genius. He’s just good at what he does; something that will eventually get him crucified as soon as he becomes famous enough.
So the old Sports Center crew is batting .500, not bad by any standards. Scott is still doing football with Berman, a man who would love to switch media arenas if he could only find another use for the “He could…go…all…the…way…” line that he is probably sick of using by now. Maybe there’s a reality dating show that could use his commentary.

So, what made me think of this? I was listening to Olberman’s speech at the end of the day, and I had an epiphany that I’ve had a thousand times before, but I think is important to remember. There really is no difference between what Olberman was doing ten years ago, and what he’s doing now. And, why is that? It’s not because he’s an anchor, and it’s roughly the same job, it’s that the material is roughly the same. I mean, how different from sports are politics? They both have a bottom line contest, a zero-sum game of winner and loser. If it’s a win-win situation in the House or Senate, no one gives two shits about it anyways. What also makes these two competitions so similar is their importance to our lives; as in none.
Now, I should clarify here, because I hate when people talk about how voting is a waste of time, and no matter what happens, my life won’t be different. That’s not true, and anyone who says different is too lazy to care whether or not they benefit from the taxes they constantly bitch about paying to get off their ass and walk a few blocks to the precinct (and if you live in Oregon, you’re really lazy). What doesn’t matter is the process, what does matter is the result. In this manner, the sports arena is contrary to my theory. Take a college football game being played by two similarly ranked teams. It is a very well played game and the winner isn’t decided until the final seconds. Ask yourself how much who the winner is really matters. In some ways, it doesn’t matter at all. It was a close game, and sometimes the difference can mean a stiff breeze, or a blown call (just ask Oklahoma). Both teams are really the same skill, and watching them arrive at that final point is a beautiful thing to see. The end is always fun to watch, but the process of watching the two teams is incredibly interesting, and that’s why we watch football.
In politics, the process is the ugliest thing you will ever see. I watched a House race debate in Indiana (I think) and it literally took less than a minute for the two candidates to start calling each other names. Attack ads have become racist, sexist, dishonest and senseless in all manner of speaking. Pundits bitch about how they’re worse than last time, and they’re probably right because these people have absolutely no shame. Unlike football, watching a political race is like watching a train wreck (that’s why I watch it). People don’t even blink before politicizing the fact that a House member should probably be in jail for molesting underage children who wanted little more than to work at the Capitol. That’s fucked up.
It’s a disgusting thing to watch, but that doesn’t mean you should stop, I certainly have no intention of doing so. What I do think we need to do is separate the shit from the shit. It’s possible that I’ve become so callous that I can follow a race like this without becoming emotionally invested (it also helps that I’m not in a state with any key races this time, or any time for that matter) in the outcome. But maybe that’s what we need. Maybe, only then will this shit stop working, and maybe the shit will stop all together (pause for laugh). I wouldn’t mind. I could always watch the WWF, or whatever they call that pageant these days.
To finish (yes, finally) I would just like to say that when I spoke of the process earlier, I wasn’t talking about the most fundamental aspect of elections; the actual act of voting. This is probably the most important part of our government (at least, that’s what they told me in 4th grade), but the shit that surrounds it forces us to forget this. I should also say that while I may not think the outcome of the election is important, it is still important to stay engaged. That’s the only thing that keeps these scumbags from completely forgetting about us. Whoever “wins” tomorrow, little will change, but just going out there and saying, “Hey fuckers, I’m watching you” will do mountains of good in keeping us from getting too screwed over. I’m done with the serious shit; I’ll leave the rest up to Puff Daddy, or P-Diddy, or whatever the fuck his name is.

I wanted to talk a lot more before the election, but apathy prevented me from doing it. I wanted to talk about how Glen Beck is the most annoying dickhead in the world; the one guy who followed in President Bush’s tracks as the “Folksy” president, and runs a news show with the premise that he knows absolutely nothing about reporting the news…brilliant. I also wanted to discuss how John Kerry once again showed that the Democratic Party is comprised of the biggest group of pussies in the world. But neither of these revelations will come as a surprise you guys, and if you’re anything like me, you just want to get back to CNN.com, MSNBC.com, and any other semi-legitimate news site for election returns. Happy hunting, and whatever the outcome, just remember: little will be different tomorrow, and that’s a good thing.

School is Back in Session

2006-10-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I’m back again. Let’s be honest. I always say I’m not going anywhere, and then I leave you, my faithful readers, to a life with no direction. I’d like to say this is the last time I leave, but I can’t make that promise. You want the truth? Really? The fact is I’ve found something better. That’s right; it’s called a real job. Actually, it’s almost a real job, but it’s something that I can live comfortably off of, and who needs anything else? So I’ve resigned myself to living a wasteful life. Like Bob Dylan, I’m deserting my followers, and opting for a life of peace and quiet away from all the craziness. But like Mr. Dylan, I haven’t been able to stay away long.
Sure, it’s true. I’ve left my lowly position in the mailroom for a more glamorous, rewarding life as a staff assistant. I don’t just deliver papers anymore, I make photocopies of them, put tabs on them, and sometimes they even let me read them. But those are only in times of great desperation. So, you can see why I have no need for my millions of adoring fans, and vast sums of money coming in from advertising revenue. I have a rewarding career (for about a year) working for a noble cause (construction contracting) in a noble field (corporate law). Life is but a dream.

But no matter how sweet my little life gets, something keeps drawing me back here, and it’s so fundamental and so obvious that I sometimes look right through it. There is nothing more rewarding keeping you, the voter, abreast on the great issues of the day. It is that for which I was born, and it is for that purpose to which I will put my abilities. But I can’t help you until you learn a little something about where I’ve been.
It’s been an exciting summer, that’s for sure. Actually, that’s not true at all. It was in fact a relatively boring summer. Sure there were some scandals here and there. More recently, North Korea tested a nuclear missile in possibly the biggest cry for attention the world has seen. They wanted to knock us off track, but they were not to prevail. They just don’t get it. We’re not going to give a fuck what the Asians do as long as they don’t have something we want. But in reality, it was a pretty scary moment. Talking heads dared to bring up the possibility of World War III, while Bush feigned interest in between campaigning and ridding the United States of habeus corpus. Our disdain for all words Latin knows no limits.
But otherwise, it’s hard to find anything of note that happened in the past three months worth note. True, there’s this Foley guy who was an adamant voice against homosexual rights, confusing it with pedophilia. He, of course turned out to be a pedophile himself. Who could have seen that coming?
It was also the end of a golden era of Hollywood megastars who thought they ran the world, or at least a world. Mel Gibson got caught making some unseemly comments after throwing down a few too many, and Tom Cruise was released from his contract with Paramount theatres after his erratic behavior started to confuse even Sumner Redstone, the man who owns cable television. In a particularly scathing press release, Redstone cited Cruise’s bad publicity as of late as being the reason for his dismissal. It’s a rare glimpse of truth from a group of people who are as petulantly noncommittal as politicians. The thing separating Cruise from Gibson and Foley in this case is that he didn’t feel the need to “check into rehab.” The sad thing is that he probably needs it more than the other two combined. I don’t know what they give you in the church of Scientology, but when it causes you to become violent towards Oprah, the most lovable person in the world, there has to be something wrong with it.

And that’s everything that happened last summer. As for me, I went to Kansas City for a week and saw how the other half lives. It’s not bad. They really eat well. I also spent a lot of time exercising. If the previous summer was the summer of lying in the sun and drinking myself to sleep in the warm air, this was the summer of biking, playing tennis, and even lifting weights every chance I got. I really miss the drinking myself to sleep part. I think I’ll have to go with that next summer. But that’s all that really happened. I think we’re pretty much up to speed.

And it seems that I’m back not a moment too soon. Midterms are two weeks away, and I’m just as jazzed as I was two years ago. And if my mild hopes of winning last year resulted in failure, my strong assurances of victory this year will surely yield some mild results. We may even win enough to take back the House, provided we don’t screw up in the next two weeks, and that is one monster “if.” Republicans can’t figure out what’s going on right now, and neither can I for that matter. The fact is that it’s time for the chickens to come home to roost (one of my “farm terms” I picked up in Kansas) and Republicans have to pay for all the shit they’ve done the past six years. It’s quite a large bill too. But if you are an elephant, you have to be happy with the way things have gone. The conservative agenda has left a burn on this country that won’t heal for a long time. The Atlantic Monthly thinks that it will take at least thirty years, not as long as Nixon (which we are still apparently paying for. Jesus that guy was a dick) made us pay, but a long time nonetheless.
But what has me and so many others baffled is that we don’t even know who we’re voting for. I mean, I know the name of my guy, but that’s only because he’s been with us for eight years now. I have no idea where he, or the party for that matter, stands on many issues. Howard Dean was on CNN this morning, and he gave three typically Democratic responses to such a question: Better health-care, ethics investigations, and raising the minimum wage. And that’s great, but weren’t we going to do that six years ago (except the ethics investigations to which they were more likely the subjects)? I guess you have to give them credit for sticking to their guns. Or maybe they’re just that bad at what they do; they can’t even come up with a clear plan, the same problem that’s plagued them for so long.

So there are thirteen days left, and we will have to see what happens. Will Nancy Pelosi become the second most powerful politician in the country? Will Dennis Hastert even have a job after the Senate Ethics Committee meets? Will anything change should the Democratic Party win one or both chambers in congress? Tune in, and maybe I’ll have enough motivation to keep you up to date. Goodnight.

When The Music’s Over…

2006-06-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

Having lost faith in this country several years ago, I have been baffled in the past few weeks as to why President Bush’s approval ratings have been so low lately. I figured it was just a brief period in a cycle that miraculously sees more ups than downs. After all, like everything else in life, presidential approval ratings seem to be cyclical, especially in the second term where our most recent presidents seem to have the bulk of their problems. For Clinton, it was Lewinsky, for Reagan, it was Iran Contra, and for Nixon, it was Watergate. The list goes on and on. You can only hold the damn back for so long and those lucky enough to do if for four years are rewarded with four more, though these tend to be much more humiliating and less productive.
Bush hasn’t experienced any one giant scandal like his fellow two-termers, but rather small problem after small problem after small problem. Many of them have spilled-over from the first term. He held back the wrath of his sins as long as he could, but the music’s over and it’s time to pay the piper. After all, the piper played so well.
Times are tough, though, and Bush knows this better than anyone. His ratings have reached an all-time low, and are now matching Nixon’s ratings just before he left office. Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, and Trent Lott have all played a role in this. Condoleezza Rice is still as creepy as ever, and no one knows what Rumsfeld and Cheney are going to do next, though one can be sure that bloodshed will be involved either directly or indirectly. All these people have plagued the president lately, but a wise man once said that presidencies are won and lost on one square foot of real estate (the brain, if you don’t already know that one), and Bush has no one to blame but himself. He’s tried to blame other people, and other people have been more than happy to take the bullet for him. It is their duty after all. However, all the white house aides in the world won’t be able to shield Bush from the novenas he has to make these days. Something has to give.
Bush has really tried to turn things around lately. He staged a highly publicized “shake-up” of the west wing, which was little more than a transparent attempt to give the impression things were changing by replacing radical conservatives with even more radical conservatives. These people would run for office themselves if they lived in districts with voters who would have elected Adolph Hitler if he hadn’t tried to kill all of us. But they live in terrible times, and are forced to serve a mumbling jackass who can’t get his shit together. So they do it the best way they know how, they steal what they can and run.
Aside from this radical staffing change, Bush has tried to implement some new policies. He decided it would be wise to invent the word “compromise.” It’s a crazy notion where you find a middle ground with someone you disagree with and that way you can both go away satisfied. Bush used this novel new method to end the immigration debate, and is using it with Iran. Rice announced today that the Bush administration would be entering into talks with the Iranian government. It was either the need to raise his ratings, or the fact that there are no soldiers left to fight that made Bush want to talk to these people. It would be nice to be a fly on the wall during these talks, but it probably won’t happen. After all, I don’t expect much talking to be going on. There will probably be a lot of yelling, and even a few fistfights, but nothing will get accomplished. But maybe I’m wrong, Perhaps Rumsfeld will break the Iranian military attaché’s legs, and feel bad about it. He will apologize by taking him out for ice cream at the insistence of Cheney where they will slowly start to talk and come to an understanding, and dare I say, gain a respect for each other. It will be quite the Kodak moment.

If you’re like me (a Democrat) you’re probably praying every night that this slump will last through November, and God willing, we will take back the house due to overwhelming concerns over the state of the GOP. However, our problem is that there is even greater concern on our side over the state of the Democratic Party. Senator Harry Reid, a way too silent leader of the party is in trouble for accepting boxing tickets from the Nevada gaming industry, and now faces accusations of bribery. Rep. William Jefferson’s (D) office was seized by the FBI, making it the first time that has ever happened at the capitol, and he’s not giving up without a fight.
We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, to say nothing of the fact that we have no plan, like Newt Gengrich’s “Contract with America” that the press has been so eager to draw parallels with.
So what do we do about this? The answer seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but we’ve all gone deaf, and no one can agree on the exact dialect of that answer. People bicker about abortion and gay marriage, and all the democratic topics that get our hearts a thumpin’, but we can’t come up with one steady message, and that will be our downfall.
I say we do what FEMA is doing. Pack it all in, start from the beginning, and pretend the last six years didn’t happen. Who’s with me? “Democrat” has been made into a dirty word anyways by the Republicans and we’re letting them. So why not come up with a new word? How about “moth?” The moth has a short memory and we’ll have no problem forgetting our past. So who wants to join the Moth party? Anyone? Fine, have it your way.
In all likelihood, we’ll win some of the house seats back this November, but not enough. We’ll spend two more years in misery, and then we’ll probably lose to someone who isn’t as bad as Bush, but still makes us cringe. Why fix it if it’s only three-quarters broke?

However, I could be wrong, and we may make a turn around before long. Anything’s possible. Either way, I think it’s important for us to think about the past six years. What was it that actually happened? I believe the answer to this lies in an analysis of Bush’s public persona. I’m not about to say anything new here, but it’s the first time for me, so just deal with it, or stop reading. I highly recommend you do the latter.
Bush is playing the role of the strong alpha male. He is stubborn, strong in his beliefs, and doesn’t waver. One only has to spend an evening watching television to understand that the strong male is what we American’s worship. Tony Soprano is probably the best example. He’s stubborn and strong and knows how to lead. But probably the most important thing to remember is that he’s not stupid. He doesn’t have book smarts, but he’s shrewd and knows how to get what he wants. He uses his charm and it always works. There’s no middle ground with this man. You’re either for him, or against him. Any time spent thinking is time wasted. If you can’t make up your mind in fifteen seconds, you can’t make up your mind. And never in a million years admit you’re wrong. Tony Soprano is the best example, but there are hundreds on television. And what do you think President Bush has been doing the past six years? He was certainly not governing. No, he’s been watching television and taking notes. And that’s the man we see on television every day. It’s why he walks like a gorilla in front of the cameras, and it’s why, until recently, he hasn’t wavered on any of his policies. It’s also why I believe this latest scheme of compromising will fail. He may not have been doing well in the polls, but he was winning them where they counted, and now that the curtain has been pulled back to reveal a spineless flip-flopper (I hate that word, but I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine) with no scruples of any kind. No one will be able to respect a man like that.
So I may have misspoken earlier when I said we Democrats are doomed. We may only be partially doomed. And with that, I will let you go. I apologize for today, it was not my best day, and I hope to return next time with something to say worth saying, and maybe you’ll forgive me. Of course, I’ll have my self-confidence back then, so I won’t really give two shits either way. You can all go to hell. Good night.

Jews Never Had This Problem

2006-05-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

It seems these days that marketing companies insist on sinking their fangs into the most unholy of places. Nickelodeon is the highest grossing cable network on television, mostly because advertisers are so eager to cater to this immense market demographic. Children spend more money on unnecessary crap than millionaires and old people do who, lets face it, might as well spend it while they’ve got the time. This is probably because most children don’t have to worry about providing for the basics in life, shelter and whatnot. Moreover, I imagine that many parents have bought into that line of crap that raising children is the greatest reason for existence. That belief has manifested itself into providing monetary extravagance for their children, whose wants are often unconventional by adult standards (I mean, honestly, who else would spend five dollars on a bundle of cardboard vials filled with flavored sugar?). Giving in to the constant nagging of a child who has no shame and is perfectly comfortable whining for hours on end if for no other reason than to see what kind of weird voices he or she can make with his or her young vocal chords may also be a reason.
But another marketing demo being exploited these days by both advertisers and politicians is the evangelical Christian 18-45 group. These people are gaining a lot of influence, and it’s either by God’s own will, or their ability to convince themselves they are right and all others are going to hell that they’re their voices are being heard, and therefore must be sucked up to. But we must be careful when looking at how politicians and advertisers are exploiting the theologically faithful, because it isn’t just the straightforward, say what they want us to say, method that’s getting the job done. Just ask Dan Brown. He’s using religion to exploit his book’s popularity by insulting the religious and getting them to create his own media campaign that bashes his novel, but will certainly ensure that millions will read it. All over the world, people are fighting for or against the legitimacy of “The Da Vinci Code” by debating a question that both answers itself, and yet has opened a world of conflict wherein both Brown and Christian leaders can profit: is a work of fiction factual?
Now I know what you, my faithful readers, are saying right now, “I would have thought you’d be on Dan Brown’s side. After all, aren’t you a staunch defender of the first amendment, and the right for everyone to be heard, regardless of what they say?” Well, I am, and fuck you for questioning my judgment. As the voice of the people, I am obligated to preserve the right to free speech, whilst ensuring that all are heard, and the truth is found. I am, after all, a man of science. And what more fundamental concept is there in my world than the search for truth? It wasn’t until tonight that I was turned around on Dan Brown. There have been a flux of articles in the past few months about “The Da Vinci Code” and I read them all. But it wasn’t until I read a New Yorker piece that I discovered Brown to be staunchly defending the facts stated in his book. Before I heard this, I assumed that Brown was going with the same argument Tom Hanks and Ron Howard had used, that this was a fictional story not to be taken seriously. Whether facts used in the story are true is insignificant. But Brown is now saying that his book is well researched and what he’s talked about has some truth to it. But the problem is that he fails to draw a line where the factual part ends and the fiction begins. He has created a very hazy middle ground, and decided to use both sides for protection. Of course he’s shouldn’t be questioned. This is a novel after all. But he can now also say that what he’s saying has some historical basis, and is to be taken seriously.
This is dangerous ground for a species with such a wild imagination, and a willingness to believe in anything (including the existence of an all-knowing being that created our universe). We love our tales to be as wild and improbable as possible, but there’s nothing we love more than when these tales have a hint of truth to them. That just gets us frothing at the mouth.
Hence, the tendency of movies to slap the “The following is based on real events” tagline at the beginning of a movie is becoming more common than ever. Does this violate Aristotle’s laws of impossibilities and improbabilities? It’s hard to say. After all, if a probable impossibility is preferable, wouldn’t the fact that it’s just a little bit truthful add to that impossibility? Can something true make something seem more false? It’s a question for serious men, and I’ll take care of it at a later date.
But that brings about an even more serious question; does it really matter what is perceived as true and what isn’t? I would argue that it does, but I’ve been wrong before. There are several thousand members of Opus Dei. If any of them commits murder, then they’ll surely be prosecuted and sent to prison for it. Outside of that, what does it matter for the other 5,999,950,000 of us who have absolutely nothing to do with any of this nonsense? Imagination fosters progress. If we are so easily whisked away to a world where an albino monk murders in the name of God and the preservation of truth, a world where Tom Hanks can get a girl like Audrey Tautou with hair like that, why must we be brought back when our imaginary world will never intersect with the harsh strains of reality that seem to offer little interest? Interesting things happen every day. Is it possible that “The Da Vinci Code” is factual? Absolutely, as much as it is possible the entire story is bullshit. I live in Portland, Oregon, and the only time I was at Westminster Abbey, I never ran into Ian McKellen as a cripple, staging a climax of a thrilling story near the Isaac Newton sculpture. Therefore, I don’t care if it’s real or not, and it shouldn’t matter whenever you open a novel (a poorly written one, I might add) and look for a good time.I was planning on talking about gay marriage tonight, but it’ll have to wait, because I found a crack in my airtight argument while I was writing it: why on earth shouldn’t Dan Brown create this kind of stir? He may be right or wrong, but he has created a debate about truth that needs to be had. He has also created, or at least perpetuated, a mythology that has captured our imaginations beyond that which can be done in a novel. The mythology of the Da Vinci Code has entered our public lives, and seeped into areas of life where fiction is rarely able to travel. Casual conversations on the bus, theorizing while on break at work, and musing about possibilities of a world outside our own everyday lives where crazy things may or may not happen. Most discussions overheard at my office usually regard television programs, mostly American Idol, and these do so little to get us to say more than whether we liked something or not. Brown has also got over forty million people to open a book and actually read it (although they should really read the epilogue before flying to Scotland to find the Holy Grail for Christ’s sake). Few people have or will ever achieve such an accomplishment. Brown should be praised if only for that reason. Step two: teach people the difference between fact and fiction. Good Night.

Lou’s Not Here

2006-05-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

I’m sure if one were to trace the lineage of one Mr. Loud Dobbs back to the beginning, he or she would find his family’s existence in North America to date back before the Mayflower, and even the lost colony of Roanoke. His family surely must have existed before any “Native” Americans crossed the Bering Strait. Certainly the Dobbs clan dates back to when North America was part of one giant continent, and surely his must have been the only family to actually have survived on this piece of land after the great quake. It must be, because that’s the only way he would be entitled to say the shit he’s been saying about illegal immigration. In the great tradition of failing television “news” personalities, Lou Dobbs has picked a hot-button issue and taken a controversial stand on it in order to win some ratings. He has spent the past few weeks whining about the immense problems illegal immigration has caused lately, and his dog and pony show seems to be working. News outlets spanning the continent (mostly CNN, Dobbs’ own network) have been talking about the controversy this man has stirred.
I have a funny past with Lou Dobbs that seems to emulate many of my first experiences with television personalities. I thought he was all right at first. I watched his show a few times, and I thought it was balanced, and that Dobbs wasn’t trying to be inflammatory, or outrageous like so many other news personalities do. They usually do this while boasting their complete lack of journalistic standards as if it was the way news should be and that whole “objectivity” thing was just a fad, something your daddy was into when he was growing up but is now square, and only for people who wear white pants and spend their time feeding the pigeons at the park on a fair-weathered afternoon. Levelheaded objectivity has no place in this world. We want infotainment, with more of a focus on the “tainment” part. But I digress, and this is an argument that has been staged a thousand times, we need not go there again unless we decide to fix it. The point I was starting with was that Dobbs seemed like a good shit there for a while, but I guess he wasn’t really blowing the advertisers’ skirts up, so he had to go medieval and it will probably work for about five minutes. After that, his ratings will plummet just as fast as they were a month ago, and Dobbs will have no preserved soul to speak of when he’s a copy-editor’s bitch in Poughkeepsie.

It takes a man to admit something like this, but I had a similar experience with Bill O’Reilly. I need to be clear that this was when he was first starting out on television and his reputation as a world-class prick had not become common knowledge. I had never even heard his name before this, so you can understand why it may have taken me a while to come around. But Bill O’Reilly was impressive to me the first time around. He violated every code of journalistic ethics in one show, but I was getting used to that. What impressed me was that I couldn’t tell if he was conservative or liberal, something that’s usually all too easy to find out, and I was relieved to hear someone who spoke their mind and didn’t cater to any one political ideology.
He covered a story about how the show “The Sopranos” was violent, but still important to watch as it carried some valuable lessons, though not suitable for children (liberal). And then he spent ten minutes bitching about a service in Las Vegas where rednecks can pay $10,000 and hunt naked women in a forest (While people in general probably have a problem with this, his argument was tailored to the conservative mind). No, they didn’t use real bullets, they used paint balls and the women would pretend to die when they were hit, wherein the men would be able to walk up to them, and inspect their quality as if they had just shot a ten-point buck. O’Reilly railed on the women who did this degrading thing, and on the owner of the company, though I think the men paying that kind of money for what is obviously a Freudian issue playing itself out on a scale the size of which we have never seen should probably be using that money on a world class team of psychologists. But as you can see, O’Reilly wasn’t promoting one political side, but his own opinion. Not too bad, eh?

But as I would soon learn, that was all bullshit. I must have caught him on a bad day, because it certainly didn’t happen again. I can’t watch for ten minutes without throwing something at the television, and I almost threw my parents’ cat last time. These guys win you over with their quaint old-fashioned ways, but then they are anally raped by the ratings-nistas to steal a line from Colbert. The same happened with Donny Deutsch, but the fact that he uses reading glasses as his way of distinguishing himself (like Tucker Carlson and bow-ties) should have been my first clue on that one.
So Lou Dobbs is on my douche bag list, which is getting pretty long. But I saw something else that made me upset as well. Two Latino radio DJ’s are offering someone $500 in gifts to name their newborn Lou Dobbs. They’re doing this in protest of Dobbs’ stance on immigration, so as the voice of the people I am obligated to ask what their point is exactly. I assume they’re trying to taunt him in some way; the idea of sharing a name with someone you despise can be frustrating. After all whenever you hear your own name, you will be met with conflicted feelings, certainly a terrible situation.
But I have to say I think this plan will backfire. I had to pay someone to name their kid after me, and it cost a lot more than $500, believe me. It was great though. I now have my own heir, and I don’t even have to raise her. I know what you’re saying, I’m not a girl. Let’s just say I should have asked for a sonogram before forking over the money. So I’m not sure what these two guys are doing, but I think they should find a better way to pick on Dobbs. Besides, he’s just the kind of conceited prick to get a god-complex from this. Who knows what kind of sick shit he’ll say tomorrow.
But I’ve been rambling, and you’re probably bored by now, so I’ll leave you with just one more thought. When the hell did the Clippers become a good basketball team? Did I miss a meeting? I’m a man of the twentieth century, and there a some things we can be sure of: The New York Yankees will always buy their championships, the Raiders will always play dirty, and when you talk about L.A. in the playoffs, you’re talking about the Lakers. So you can imagine the surprise I was met with last night when I turned on the television and saw Jack Nicholson in his usual seat, but on the wrong side of town. The Lakers were bounced by the Suns last week and now the Clippers are in the second round. It’s going to take me a few days to get my head around this, but I think in the end, my decision will be that the Clippers still suck, and no amount of playoff victories will change that. It’s like the sun rising in the east. If we wake up one morning to find the sun rising in the west, who knows what might happen. What we do know is that it won’t be pretty, and neither will my mood until this is all figured out. Ciao.

The Boys Are Back in Town

2006-05-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for my extended absence from my writing. I was offered a slot at the last second to roadie for the Def Leopard/Journey tour over the winter, and you don’t say no to that kind of offer. It was a pretty sweet six months. We spent four of them waiting to see if there was actually going to be a tour. That one armed drummer from Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall was demanding more money for his work. Since losing his arm, the band insisted that he only be paid half his previous salary, because he was only doing half the work. He complained because the group had failed to take into account the fact that he used both his feet as well, and therefore was really doing three quarters of what he had previously done. Their lawyers met for months, and a secret agreement was finally made.
While this was going on, I felt it would be good to get in shape and be prepared for what was an opportunity of a lifetime. I measured the distance from the backstage area to the lead singer’s microphone at sixty feet, and started doing wind sprints at that length. After a few hours of this every day, I got to be pretty fast. Also, I spent a lot of time building up my tolerance to drugs as well. I started by smoking pot and drinking, but soon realized this would not suffice. So I started doing cocaine and acid. Surely the rock stars were still doing this kind of stuff. Why, when I was touring with Thin Lizzy, we would finish off an eight ball on our way to a show before even arriving at the venue.
But I was wrong. I broke out my bong on the bus only ten minutes after heading off on tour, and had the shit kicked out of me by the bassist from Journey whose name I can’t recall. Apparently these guys have gone straight. “It’s about the music now,” claimed the rhythm guitarist for Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall, “and if you’re not down with that, we’ll drop your ass off at the next town.” I couldn’t tell if he was an American speaking with a terrible English accent or just English and slightly retarded. Either way, this meant I was going to have to go cold turkey on my new, strongly developed addiction to pot, cocaine, acid and alcohol. By the third show, I couldn’t even get on my feet to pick up the mike when the lead singer dropped it while attempting to do Axle Rose’s crab dance. You’d be surprised how spry you have to be to execute that move correctly.
We were in Wichita, playing a county fair when I was asked to leave the tour…in a manner of speaking. I couldn’t stop staring at the one armed drummer. It just looked so funny, and the fairgrounds did not live up to its reputation as the most exciting place on earth. The Ferris wheel was about fifteen feet high, and the ticket girl gave terrible head. I spent much of my free time during the concerts on the side of the stage, laughing at the one armed drummer. I think the shock of going through sudden detox after developing a drug addiction so rapidly sharpened my sense of humor. My laughing must have been really loud, because the bassist from Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall came back stage while playing that “sugar” song, grabbed me, and threw me into the crowd. Rednecks beat me senseless with beer bottles after the lead singer told them what I’d been doing. Honestly, these are the same people who not one hour before had spent twenty minutes marveling at the bearded lady. When did laughing at one kind of deformity become so worse than laughing at another?
By the time I came around six hours later, the tour bus had long since left, and Blue Oyster Cult was setting up their gear for the next night’s show. I felt it was time to return to the Rose City, but I was broke and without any means of survival. I would be forced to walk back to Portland, and walk I did.
It only took me a couple of months to return. It may have been quicker, but I was picked up by the wrong people while hitchhiking. If you ever go hitchhiking and someone has a sign in their car that says “Ass, Gas or Grass, no one rides for free,” make sure you have money for the last two, because the “ass” part of the deal is not necessarily what you think it is.

But I’m back, and not a moment too soon. You leave your post as the voice of the people to fulfill a lifelong dream, and look what happens. President Bush is having a little trouble with those enviro-Nazis regarding gas. First, they want us to be independent of oil, then they start to bitch when oil prices sky rocket. You’re like a bunch of women. I also heard a thing or two on the road about some sort of hurricane last year, but don’t those things happen every year? Who gives a shit? We’re obviously not focusing right now. The importing thing to remember is that President Bush is sorry for what he’s done and now he’s trying to make up for it. Surely you’ve read about the “Whitehouse shakeup” going on. It’s all over Fox News and CNN. All kinds of important people have resigned or been indicted. And now I know what you’re thinking, “oh, these people were forced to resign in order to give the appearance of change to raise President Bush’s dipping poll numbers.” But you’ve heard the man say he doesn’t pay attention to poll numbers. He’s above that, so what the hell are you talking about? And wouldn’t he fire these people if he wanted to give an impression of change? It just doesn’t make any sense. Even the head of the CIA has resigned. Something about poker games, strippers and limousines.
It sounds like honest to God change to me, and I for one am looking forward to a productive final three years. Maybe we’ll finally be able to stop those goddamn Iranians. We should have no problem surprising them, what with all our troops already being strategically situated in Iraq. You have to hand it to Donny Rumsfeld, he really thinks ahead. I bet he’d be good at chess.

There’s so much for us to discuss, and so much for me to fix, and I plan on doing it all in the next few months, or at least until I get bored with this again. Oh, and sorry about the Summer Serial, for those of you just dying to finish it, the main character died the next day. No one went to his funeral.
Oh, and when we get a chance, someone will have to fill me in on this whole immigration thing. Is it true that people are crossing the border illegally? How did we not know about this?Anyways, you can rest for now. I am back at my desk, drinking again, and listening Charlie 97 FM, only the greatest music stretching over the entire span of the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Right now, there’s this great song I used to listen to while making out with my dry-hump friend in the back of the family Previa in college. It’s called “Don’t Stop Believin’” by some group whose name I can’t recall. Good night.

Summer Serial: Part VI

2005-07-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

Ray wasn’t as pissed off as I thought he’d be. He didn’t yell at me, or call me any names. He was more worried about whether anyone knew I was using prostitutes. He felt I had to be squeaky clean, or we’d be in big trouble fast. He was damned if he was going to be brought down by someone who was too pathetic to get laid without paying for it. So we talked about who knew, and who didn’t. The only other person who knew about any of this would be Tito, the drug dealer outside of Young Neil. He’d seen me picking up women before on Beale Street. He works there in the evenings after all the yuppies have left the business district. Tito usually sold cocaine downtown, but crack was much more lucrative on Beale.
Ray wasn’t too worried about Tito. It isn’t often that one is brought down by a drug dealer. As far as I knew, nobody else had seen me picking up prostitutes, and I had a hard time believing that anyone would pay enough attention. Hookers are well known on Beale Street, and nobody is surprised when they see someone picking one up. They look like you’d expect them to look: bald, unattractive, usually in suits (making a quick stop on their way home). The sight becomes so common that one usually files it in the back of his or her mind as casually as a Budweiser billboard.
Ray was also concerned about Henry being offended, but even Henry seemed to understand. We met the next day and I explained everything to him. I apologized profusely, and he shook it off like it was no big deal.
My first impression of Henry was one of disappointment. I was expecting him to look like Ray Liotta, but Hill was actually pretty short and pudgy. He was balding and hunched over most of the time. He basically looked like a weasel. I shouldn’t have been too surprised; after all, this was the guy who ratted out some of his life-long friends. He didn’t seem like the loyal type.
Right away, I could tell that Henry was high. He kept sniffing his nose, and fidgeting with his drink. He chewed on the straw until it was nothing more than a crumpled piece of deformed-looking plastic, then he took the straw out of my drink and started chewing on it. Everyone knew that Hill was still doing Cocaine. As I said before he was just busted for trying to deal again, but he was confident about beating the case. He said he had his own ways of defending himself. I was sure that he meant he bought off the jury, or the judge.
“Fuckin’ whores, they’re ain’t a decent one out there.” He was speaking so fast I could barely understand him. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me, but I’ve had my fair share of women fucking me over, if you know what I mean.”
I smiled and nodded. It wasn’t like he was being subtle about it. I tried to steer the conversation back to business. I didn’t want to relive the ugly parts of the past anymore than he wanted to talk about all the friends he fucked over. Besides, I’d been a union leader for several weeks, and I still hadn’t done anything. I asked Henry how we should start. The first thing he said truly shocked me.
“Well, if we’re going to make any money out of this, we’ll have to threaten to strike.”
I wasn’t aware of the moneymaking aspect. We’d done illegal things before, but I just told myself that it was to get our feet in the door. After all, in this day and age, one has to do something at first or that person will spend the rest of his or her life living at the bottom. But deliberately manipulating the unions, and the employees we’ve pledged to fight for seemed too blatantly wrong…at first. But, what else could I have expected? He was a gangster. Ray didn’t bring him in to do accounting.
“What exactly will we strike for?” It was all I could think to ask.
”What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we’re going to strike, won’t we need some sort of grievance? We can’t just up and say we’re pissed off and that we won’t work until we’re not pissed off, so what’s pissing us off?”
”Wow, Ray said you weren’t very bright, but this is ridiculous.”
“What.”
“Forget it. Basically, all we need to do is make something up. How much were you paid at your job?”
”Minimum wage.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t a very diff…”
“NO!”
“…No?”
“NO! Minimum wage is a travesty, a fucking shame, a goddamn crime against humanity. How many pieces of mail does the average lawyer get at Young Neil every day?”
”…About five, maybe more depending on…about five.”
”Multiplied by how many lawyers?” I was beginning to see what he meant.
“A couple hundred.”
“And would you say that some of these letters were pretty important?”
”…I guess so. Sometimes they’ll receive really impor…”
”And if you don’t deliver these letters, who will?”
”I dunno. Somebody…”
“At what they’re paying, I don’t fucking think so. You’re providing a crucial service to these people and all they want to give you is the bare minimum. What we need to do is show these cheap bastards just how much they need you. Can you imagine what would happen if all mail service just shut down at these big places? Things would be terrible. Lawsuits would be lost, clients would be lost, and the firm would go broke in a day.”
“You may have a…”
“Face it. These guys should be thanking God every day that you were there for them. Minimum wage, shit.” He leaned back, attempting to look exhausted from grieving his startling revelation, but the cocaine was betraying him. Unfortunately, my eyes were too greedy to see it. He could have read that speech monotone off a cue card, and I wouldn’t have cared, I bought hook, line and sinker.
“You’re right. After all I’ve done for them, what’s in it for me? I deserve profit sharing, medical benefits, and all that other stuff.”
”When we’re done, you shall have it my friend.”
I was so excited at the idea of actually getting something out of these lawyers who have made me feel like nothing for so long that I forgot about the moral flexibility I would have to acquire to achieve the goals Henry wanted me to achieve.
He went on to say that the beautiful part was that we would be able make one of our demands a donation to the Teamster’s pension fund. That money could easily be used for other things, and no one would notice; at least, that’s what Henry said. So we set out to strike and claim our own piece of the pie. Even then, I was only thinking about how much of that was going to into my own bank account. I had forgotten that there was such a thing as mailroom employees. All I cared about them now was that they promise not to do their job until our ‘demands’ were met.
Anyone who thought that Henry was going to stop at having workers strike for personal benefit was wrong, and no one knows it better than I. I didn’t think that it was a one time thing, and I never thought that it couldn’t get any worse. I just chose not to think.

To Be Continued...

Summer Serial: Part V

2005-07-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

As I said before, Allen was able to escape the wrath of June Reid. Ray had him moved to another bed while June was having her sponge bath, and he sent her flowers, chocolate, and all kinds of other gifts. She was still intent on finding out who had crashed into her, but her thirst for this information was somewhat lessened by Ray’s generosity.
June gave a vague description of the perpetrator, and she wasn’t able to give much of a description of the car. All the police knew about the guilty party was that he was a white, bald male in his early thirties. The only reason the police weren’t able to connect his accident with hers was because he was able to partially flee the scene, and convince the police that he was the victim of an assault (something that sounded very unlikely, and probably unbelievable, but for the generous bribe Ray had offered to the officers). The officers convinced June that the person got away, another thing that wouldn’t have been possible if Allen hadn’t stolen the car he was using. It ended up belonging to one of the partners at Young-Neil. Allen used to steal employees’ cars from our company parking lot, and take them for a ride on his lunch break. I guess everyone needs hobbies.
So, that tragedy was put behind us for the moment. The only thing we would have to do is make sure that Allen never show up at the office when June was around. We were lucky that she hadn’t recognized him from work, and we didn’t want to push our luck. The problem was that June was insisting on meeting with me every week to talk about ”business,” and if you couldn’t tell already, Allen was a very impulsive person. So I started to have Tim watch Allen every time I met with June and notify me if he was ever on his way to the office.

Having gotten over that, I could go back to selecting a team. Tim and Allen were the only two major partners I’d been able to bring on. Ray felt that someone with more experience would have been useful, and I was happy to comply.
Henry Hill, as most people know, made a name for himself as being a wiseguy in the mafia during the 1960s and 70s. He would save his own ass in the 80s by turning in some of his best friends. He spent his time testifying at trials, working with the FBI, and selling cocaine. Obviously, it was the cocaine part that got him into trouble. He was busted in Seattle in 1985 for possession, and was again arrested not long ago on the same charges. The most recent charges had been of some concern to Ray, but Henry was able to pay off the judge and get the whole episode behind him. Hill had been so useful to the FBI that they turned their heads to his extra-curricular activities; Henry used this to his advantaged.
So I have to admit I was a little worried when Ray ordered me to take Hill on as my chief advisor. I agreed, but it was only after the strictest reassurances from Ray that Hill had mended his ways that I agreed to take him on. Ray’s speech about how he owned me, and he was the boss also helped me make my decision. We scheduled a meeting for a week later where we would talk about what Hill could do for us.
This next part I must say is a little embarrassing for me. Those of you reading will tell me how much of an idiot I am, but I only ask you to try and see this one from my point of view.
Imagine that you’ve spent the last four years working in the mailroom of a law firm after having graduated college. You spend your entire day where people don’t know that you have some intelligence beyond memorizing what floor accounting is on, and where docketing information goes. You spend your days working hard, and nothing ever gets noticed. When you do your job right, no one knows that you’re doing it, and that’s the point of your job. You give the people their mail, take whatever they have, and deal with it without screwing up.
It’s a thankless job, and you have a thankless boss who knows perfectly well how thankless your job is, and he couldn’t care less as long as you do it right. You do all this making minimum wage, and you wonder whether life is worth living. That’s when you go home to your crappy apartment and watch TV until the next day when you do it all over again. You work hard, so you rarely screw up, but no one’s perfect and every once in a while you make a small mistake. It’s then that some secretary screams at you for being a total dumb ass and writes up a complaint to your boss. Your boss, of course, welcomes this news with open arms because he knows that enough of these complaints will get you fired, and there’s nothing your boss likes more than firing people.
So you walk home from work along one of the seedier streets in the city, and you come across all kinds of people including drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless. You look at all these people as if you’re better than them, but the only real difference is that you have a job, and you’ll be doing it for the rest of your life. But, these prostitutes intrigue you, and you see them every day, every day that you spend your life in quiet desperation, wanting nothing more than to be noticed for something positive.
You live a life of insignificance, and there’s nothing you want more than feel like you make a difference in someone’s life. You think a girlfriend would make your problems go away, but she ends up faking a pregnancy, and when you find out she’s lying, she dumps you because you’re too desperate to dump her. You live a life of insignificance, and the idea of a prostitute doesn’t sound too bad too you. So you buy one once, and you wake up the next morning feeling better. It’s not because you’ve been laid, it’s because someone has seen you outside of your invisible role at work, and it gives you an excuse to act like a social person again.
So cast all the judgment you want on me, but just remember that you don’t have my job, and if you do, you probably don’t have my life, and if you do, then you might want to try getting a hooker, it makes the pain go away.
I had a run in with Allen the day before the Henry Hill meeting, and I was fuming. I had to use some of the company funds to bail him out of jail for the second time in a week. The first time, he was in a bar fight, and he’d accidentally taken a swing at a policeman. The second time, he was driving drunk in a farmer’s field just outside of town. I had no idea how he’d gotten there, and neither did he for that matter, but there he was, and the cops took him in again. We got in a long fight that ended up with him punching me in the gut, causing me to spit up blood. It was a nasty occasion, and I’d started to feel insignificant again. So, I went to Beale Street to find a prostitute.
I found a new girl who I’d never seen before. She was gorgeous (she looked like she hadn’t been a professional for very long) and better yet, she was cheap. Alarm bells should have been ringing, but it wasn’t like I did this every day. I wouldn’t know what the alarm was when it went off. We went back to my place where she suggested that we have some fun with handcuffs. Now, just for the record, I’ve heard about the Seinfeld episode with George, and the woman who ties him up and takes his clothes many times since this has happened, but I hadn’t seen it then. You spend years watching Seinfeld reruns, and you figure that you’ve seen them all. But there’s always one that you just happen to miss. After all, you can’t watch it every night.
So you probably know what happens here. I realized while I was sitting for eighteen hours, tied to my bed with no clothing or telephone within reach, that the reason I’d never seen her before and that she was so cheap was because she did this with everyone. I felt more insignificant at that moment than at any other time in my life. It wouldn’t be until the next night that Tim would think to look for me at my place. He busted the door down (it took about half an hour, he’s pretty weak), went straight to my closet for some clothing, and he threw it to me without looking. I went straight for the phone to call Ray. I had missed the Hill meeting, lost all my money, and had humiliated myself. I was about to call a man who cared about me just enough to make me feel like a total loser for what I’d done. I was not looking forward to making this call.

To Be Continued…

Summer Serial: Part IV

2005-07-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

“I fuckin’ should have known. It’s always the most successful ones who are the most corrupt.” Ray was in as good a mood as I would ever see when I told him what happened. “You fucked it up, but you still managed to land on a pot of fuckin’ gold.”
I quit my job a week later, and was getting ready to represent the mailroom workers of America on behalf of the Teamsters. Ray left most of the day-to-day responsibilities with me. But just to be sure I didn’t screw up too much, he put Tim in as my assistant, knowing that Tim wouldn’t hesitate to inform him anytime I screwed up. I reluctantly took on Tim, but it wouldn’t be enough. I decided to hire on a few more people from the mailroom, and Ray was there to help me make my decisions. Allen wasn’t so much of a choice as it was extortion. He knew what went down, and he wasn’t about to see the train leave without him. I wasn’t sure what job to give him, so I appointed him “Special Agent Man In Charge Of Research And Opposition.” Allen liked the sound of the job, especially since it meant having nothing to do with filing paper. I also knew that his skills for inflicting pain might come in handy later on. It had been a fast month since I left Young-Neil, but I was learning plenty.
Not long after I started working, June Reid contacted me to set up a meeting. I brought Ray along just to make sure everything went well. I was so happy with my newfound fortune, and I didn’t want to do anything to screw it up. June also found the world of the ethically challenged an easy one to become acclimated to. She demanded a monthly payment of 2% of our earnings. I wasn’t sure exactly where we would get these earnings from, but Ray assured me it wouldn’t be difficult. She gave us a bank account number and instructions on when and where to wire her the money. I didn’t want to do this at first, but Ray assured me I had no choice. “Besides,” he went on to say, “We’ll find some way to get rid of that heartless bitch. It just might take a little time.”
I figured it would be a good time to give Al his first job.
“My name is Allen you pansy, not Al. Call me Al again and I’ll kick the shit out of you.”
“Sorry, Allen. I have your first job for you. I want you to look into June Reid’s background and find anything we could possibly blackmail her with. I don’t want to use it yet, but I don’t trust her, and neither does Ray.” Allen once told me while I was buying him lunch that he’d done some shady investigating before he went to prison. No one knew why he wasn’t still doing it, but we didn’t dare ask.

”You mean Ray doesn’t trust her, and you’ll do what he says you fuckin’ bullshitter.”
“Wait a goddamn min…”
“Don’t say another word. I’ll kick your fucking teeth in. I’ll do this, but I’m going to need a bonus.” Allen had already ‘negotiated’ a salary that was almost twice my own. Ray said that it was necessary to hire someone like Allen, and that he’d cost more. I tried to plead with Ray, claiming I wouldn’t be able to control him, and he wouldn’t do anything unless I had some leverage on him. But Ray assured me that he’d fall into line.
“How much more do you want. You’re already making more than anyone here.”
“I want as much as I goddamn please, now give me another five grand and I’ll find out if this woman fucks donkeys.”
I reluctantly gave him the money, but I also warned him that I needed the information before I made her first payment. Allen gave me an indifferent look and left the room.

While I was taking care of intelligence, Ray was taking care of finance. Now that we were officially affiliated as a legitimate chapter of the Teamsters, we were given a monthly operating budget. But Ray wasn’t satisfied with that. He said that we would have to earn supplemental income to keep people like Allen and our shiftier employees around.
“I say we take some fuckin’ bribes.” His words hit me like a rock. Already we’d done more illegal things than I was comfortable with, and now he wasn’t even trying to hide what we were doing. But Ray could see I was uneasy, and he did his best to comfort me. “Don’t piss your fuckin’ pants, Suzie. You don’t have to do a fucking thing. Just know that I’m going to be doing this, and without it, your piss poor operation wouldn’t last a week.”
That was about as much as we would discuss regarding bribes. The only other time I brought it up was when he asked me to have some mailroom workers in Sacramento strike. He wouldn’t tell me why, and when I asked them if we owed someone a favor, he slapped me in the face and walked out.
“He doesn’t mean to hurt you,” said Tim who had witnessed the whole thing, “he just gets a little up tight sometimes.”
“Fuck off, Tim.” I had run back to my office after the incident and started crying. Tim came in without knocking for which I threw a paperweight at his head. I guess he was used to abuse because he barely blinked when it happened. He was trying calm my nerves and make me feel better, but I was in no mood for it. I just didn’t want to look at his monkey-ass anymore.

Allen hadn’t reported to me since we discussed his first assignment. I just assumed all was going well until the night I had to wire the money to June Reid. I waited until the last possible second, but I still hadn’t heard from Allen. I finally gave in and wired the money anyways. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. If she were planning on turning us into the authorities, the only leverage for blackmail would be my word against hers that she took eighty thousand dollars from us (finally built up the courage to ask Ray how much we tried to bribe Jack with, and he reluctantly let me know). She was a successful partner at a very successful law firm, and I was a semi-legitimate union organizer. We had a Republican state government at the time, so there was no doubt as to who would be fighting on the low ground here.
The next morning, I found Allen at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. He suffered a broken collarbone and leg. When I was finally able to get in to speak with him, I demanded to know what happened.
“You know you’re paying for the hospital bill, asshole.”
“That’s fine, but what happened with June Reid?”

”That fucking bitch. I couldn’t find a goddamn thing on her; so I thought I’d create something we could black mail her with. I crashed into her car, knowing that if I were injured, she would just flee the scene. Then we’d have her by the balls. I got these injuries from the crash.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? What made you think this would work, you fucking idiot?!”
“When I get out of here, I’m kicking your ass.”

”Where is she now?”

”She’s in the room next to me. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. I think I broke her arms, and one of her legs. Hey…do you think we can black mail her with that; failing to use a seatbelt?”
I was too distraught to say anything more. Ray came in and saved the day. He brought June a gift basket and made sure she didn’t know who had hit her. He paid Allen’s bills in advance, and escorted me home. On our way out, he said, “That Neanderthal shithead friend of yours doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. We should limit his functions to fuckin’ blue-collar work from now on. You got that, you fuckin’ fuck up?”

To Be Continued…

Summer Serial: Part III

2005-06-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

Our second attempt at a rally was much more successful. Realizing that I didn’t possess the organizational skills that Ray did, I let him pick the day of the event. He took pity on me and sold me some new signs at cost for the rally that hadn’t been written on already. We held the rally on the Thursday before independence Day Weekend, thinking that most people who were planning on taking a long weekend would probably go into work the day before. To go with the forty mailroom employees I’d gathered together (though many of them were reluctant to trust me again), Ray brought in some outside help from other cities, making the rally a lot bigger and more effective.
The strategy worked, and we got the attention of our employers. Along with managing partners from McElroy-Levine, and LaPine-Waits, Jack showed up towards the end of the rally with our Managing partner, June Reid. I agreed to meet with Jack to talk over the possibility of unionizing, and he agreed to encourage other mailroom managers to do the same.
I was flying high that night. It had been a large victory for us, and it looked like we’d finally get some satisfaction. That night, I went drinking with Ray and a few of his trucking buddies. He introduced me to his assistant, Tim, who had been working with Ray since the 1980s.
Tim was bordering on suicidal when Ray found him. He was in the trucking industry after having spent ten years as a car dealer for Jaguar. Tim went through the training that all employees went through. This included seminars on how to sell the product, informational classes on the quality of Jags, and all other kinds of lessons designed to make him into the kind of salesman that the good people at Jaguar wanted. One of these classes taught employees to “look the part.”
“A good salesman will show the utmost confidence in his product,” went the crappy instructional video. “He will dress sharp at all times, own the car he’s trying to sell, and even prove his faith in the company by having it repaired at the dealer. “Such is the confidence of a Jaguar salesman in his product.”
Tim was probably the only person who bought that crap. With his shite salary, he leased a brand new Jag at an employee discount $500 under the sticker price. It had all the accoutrements, and he bought a couple of $1,000 suits on a credit card with an interest rate he couldn’t afford, and even rented an expensive apartment he didn’t have the money for. He told himself that by looking the part, he would have no problem earning enough on commission to support this lifestyle. After all, why would the video lie?
In the first three months, Tim’s car broke down, and like a faithful, confident employee, he took it to the dealer where they were able to fix it at the charge of a regular consumer. The second time it broke down, Tim was forced to give it up because he couldn’t afford all these things. He made his monthly quotas, but someone neglected to mention that rookies don’t receive commission until their second year (in which they would cease to be rookies). Tim’s tenure with Jaguar would end six months later when he would be fired for “not exhibiting the pride and class that goes with being a Jaguar employee.” Bankruptcy would strike three months later, and Tim would be forced to move to a crappy basement studio apartment (a few doors down from me, coincidentally) and give up the Rabbit he had used to replace his Jaguar. To this day, Tim is giving half of his paycheck to the IRS who will never be satisfied with the amount of money he gives them. Tim, as I like to say, is shark bait.
But perhaps that’s why I liked him so much. There was a naïve innocence that my mother used to sum up as having “blood in the heart, and shit in the head.” It was from her that I inherited my rapist’s wit. While people like Tim and I are constantly berated for our innocent nature, we have the luxury of never having to be trusted by anyone. Neither of us has had to deal with responsibility beyond the responsibility for ourselves, and neither of us could handle it if we did. I was starting to see why Ray liked me so much; I was just another schmuck he could push around.
But I didn’t mind at the time. I was more intent on getting my union. Over drinks, Tim, Ray and I discussed the best strategy for this meeting would be.
“I fucking wish I could go to this thing. I really hate to see you fuck all this up.”
“Thanks, Ray.” I was getting used to his blunt lack of faith in me.
“The problem is that they can just say they met with you, and not give you shit,” said Tim.
“Men are talking here, asshole. Shut your fucking mouth and you might learn something for once.” Ray didn’t allow Tim to talk; he was more of a listener. Ray continued, “The goddamn dilemma here is that they can fucking sit and smile nice at your dumb ass for an hour, and then piss off without having actually fuckin’ listened to you.”
“Can’t I promise to strike if they don’t compromise with me?”
“Fuck, no. You can, but they won’t give a shit. A team of monkeys tomorrow could replace you wet-heads and no one would notice. The only reason they don’t is for licensing reasons.”
“Well, what was the point to all of this?”
“Don’t fuckin’ question me, I’ll tell you what the point is. If you were to walk into this meeting with that asshole tomorrow and accidentally drop a bag of money on his desk and then leave, who knows how those conversations could have gone?”
“You mean, a bribe?”

”Don’t act like a naïve bitch, cocksucker. Yes, a bribe.”
“What if I get caught?”
“You give him the right amount of money, and you won’t have to worry about that.”
“But, I don’t have that kind of money.”
“True. But the Teamsters pension fund may be willing to make a considerable donation to your cause if you promise to cooperate with us in the future.” I looked uncertain, so Ray showed me a softer side for the first and last time. “Look. I know it’s a hard fuckin’ world out there, and this isn’t really your type of thing. But just think, you’ll only have to do this once, and you’re home free. You’ll get your union, and we’ll have a lifelong partnership, working to make your trade a better one.”
“And you really think this is the only way?”

”With your negotiating skills, I can’t possibly imagine another fuckin’ way.”
And so it was agreed. Ray got me the money the next day, and I went to the meeting with a large duffel bag full of god knows how much money. I figured I’d tell Jack it was a few hundred thousand if he asked.

The plan didn’t work in the way I’d hoped it would. It could be argued that my failure was due to my lack of skills in negotiation, but I would urge that person to consider the fact that Ray’s plan wasn’t sound to begin with.
I showed up at the meeting and sat down. Jack immediately wanted to know what I was holding in my hand.
“What do you think it is?” It was all I could muster. My palms were sweating and I’d been breathing very heavily. I could feel the blood from my ulcer rising in my stomach, but I struggled to keep it down.
“I don’t know, is it for me?”
“Yes.” I sheepishly got up and handed him the bag. He opened it and stared at if for at least a minute. He started thumbing through it.
“How much is in here?”
“A few hundred thousand.”
“Bullshit. How much, exactly.”
“About…four…teen…hundred.” Jack looked up at me. I knew I should have counted it.
“You have no idea, do you?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re pathetic.” He placed the bag back on the desk. “Well, I’m fairly certain there’s a lot more in there than fourteen hundred, but I’m still going to say no.”
“What?”
“That’s right you idiot.” He started walking for the door with the bag of money in his hand. “You know, just because I don’t give a fuck about you brain dead animals, it doesn’t mean that I’m corrupt. I’ve wanted to get rid of your worthless ass for a few weeks now, and now I have a reason. June is going to hear about this.”
He made his way for the managing partner’s office with me in tow. I begged with him not to tell her. I begged him to give me my job back, and I promised to not to bother him again about a union, but he wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until he reached for June Reid’s door and knocked that our fortunes finally reversed. As we waited for June to get to the door, I begged him some more, his face started turning red, and he fell on the floor.

At first I thought it was a heart attack, but Betty, June’s secretary, would later inform us it was a stroke. She watched the whole thing happen. She watched Jack collapse. She watched me stand there without a clue as to what to do. She watched June open the door, look at me, look at the money, pick up the money, place it in her desk drawer and instruct Betty to call an ambulance. Jack would spend the next three days unconscious, the next three months unable to make an audible sound, and by the time he would be able to finally speak of my indiscretion six months later, I would be long gone from Young-Neil. We were in.

To Be Continued…

Summer Serial: Part II

2005-06-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

Starting a union wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult, given that groups were legal and even encouraged, but I was wrong. I started off by doing some research into what my options were. I discovered that I could register with an association, even if they hadn’t traditionally worked with people in the service industry.
I started out with those who were most likely to help us. I tried everyone from the AFL/CIO to the American Bar Association. I know that last one was a stretch, but I was getting desperate. It wasn’t until a representative of the Teamsters contacted me that I felt like I actually stood a chance of being selected. His name was Ray Pistone, and he’d been the local representative of truckers in our town. He’d been around for years, starting out as a truck driver, and soon finding that he had a knack for organizing people. He’d started his local chapter in the 1960s, and had been running it ever since. I was a little surprised that he wanted anything to do with me, but when I spoke with him, he let me know he felt that mailrooms were an untapped resource.
“You guys have been working under the oppressive arm of some of the country’s sleaziest fuckin’ people. You take all their shit, and you do it with a fuckin’ smile. I think this particular episode with your boss shows just how much you fuckers need some fuckin’ representation. It’s a dirty goddamn world out there, and we want to get your fuckin’ backs.” Pistone was born in New Jersey, a fact that was obvious both from his accent and his colorful vocabulary. But he said all the right things, and I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do.
“Go in and talk to this fuckin’ jagoff boss of yours. See how his shit turns when you bring up the fuckin’ idea.”
“See how his shit turns?” This wasn’t a local term.
“Yeah, goddamnit. See what the fuck kind of goddamn fuckin’ shit this asshole takes from you when you piss on his goddamn sense of self respect…goddamnit.”
I didn’t understand that last part either, but I sensed that he wanted me to talk to Jack, and see if he’d agree to our unionizing. So I went and brought my idea up with Jack. I didn’t mention that we had already found the Teamsters when I spoke with him. I wanted to see what he was going to say first.
“Only on the coldest of cold days in hell when Satan himself freezes his nipples off, and has to come up to earth just to keep from freezing solid will I agree to this. You worthless people don’t need this crap and you’re a dime a dozen. I could find three monkeys to do this job better than you ingrates, but the lawyers won’t let me do it; something about working in a dangerous environment. So if you think you can strong arm me into this crap, you’re dead wrong my friend.”
It wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for. I was crushed at his reaction, and I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want this for us. After all, wouldn’t it mean that he could get better trained, more qualified employees? I was surprised at what he’d said, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I went to Ray, and he suggested that I hold a rally. “That’ll turn those ambulance-chasing pussies on their ends. There’s nothing these shyster-bastards want more than to keep their name intact. They’ll fucking do it, the fucks,” were his exact words.

There were only four of us in the Young-Neil mailroom. I knew I’d need more people to get involved, so I went to some other firms, and approached them with my idea. They were receptive to the idea, getting very excited when they heard about the rally. There’s nothing that people love more than to stand up to their cruel oppressors. I got all the mailroom employees from McElroy-Levine, Rosenbaum-Fouche and LaPine-Waits. All together, we had about forty people.
I was very excited on the day of the rally. I’d been putting together posters that Ray sold to me from his rallying days at a reasonable price. I had to replace “piano tuners” with “mailroom employees,” but it wasn’t too bad. We started as seven in the morning, being sure that people would see us as they came into the office. We started out at our building, and made our way to the other firms’ offices.
I had one of my coworkers, Allen keep tabs on how many people saw us, and how many people came to ask about what we were doing. At first, Allen didn’t really know what was going on. He thought we were there for a picnic, and he’d brought a sandwich and a Frisbee. I had to explain to him exactly why we were there, and he suddenly got very upset. Apparently, he didn’t want to unionize. He was a little slow. He thought it was a gay-rights march, so I had to explain to him that we were in fact not there to support gay marriage. I made a note that he may have some pent-up insecurities there. Allen had come to work at Young-Neil as a parolee from California. He had learned to read in prison, and was now proud of the fact that he could read the newspaper. He’d do it every morning while we were doing his work for him. He knew that we knew he was on parole, and so he used it to threaten us. None of us were interested in going against him, so we did what he said.
The rally seemed to be energetic. We circled the buildings with gusto, and in no time, we had covered half the city before noon. After a few hours, I realized that we didn’t have the kind of audience I was hoping for, but we kept going. I realized that when you do something like this, you want to call the local news stations so they can cover it. It was a mistake that Ray would make painfully obvious to me later on.
Periodically, I would go to Allen ask him what kind of audience we had, “how many people do you have so far?”
“I haven’t been keeping track asshole. Do something, bitch.”
It wasn’t until around two in the afternoon that I saw Ray. He pulled up in a burgundy Cadillac and grabbed me by the arm.
“Are you so fuckin’ stupid you can’t organize a goddamn rally without fuckin’ it up you dumb shit? I swear to god I’ll have to fuckin’ do this myself if you can’t pull your head out of your ass you little fart.” This was obviously a shock to me. I knew there weren’t as many people at the rally as I would have liked, but I thought we were doing okay. “How the fuck do you expect to get anyone’s attention like this you fuckwit.”
“Fuckwit?”
“Don’t get smart with me you little puke. I’ve got a lot riding on this right now, and you’re fucking me up.”
“I don’t get what you’re talking about. I’m doing fine. We’ve got a big rally, and we’re being loud.”
“IT’S SATURDAY YOU LITTLE SHIT! How the fuck are your employers going to see you when they’re not even working? And where the fuck are the TV cameras, you fucking idiot!”
It felt like someone kicked me in the gut. Ray had gone downtown to do some shopping only to find us holding a rally on an empty street. Slowly, people started to realize the mistake we’d made. There was an awkward silence in the otherwise empty downtown block. Some of us subconsciously looked at our watches to make sure Ray was right. After a few seconds, we started to disperse. Allen scrawled something on the paper I’d given to him, punched me in the gut and shoved the piece of paper in my mouth while calling me a shithead. I struggled to pick myself up, grabbing the paper and looking at it. It had two zeros written on it.

To Be Continued...

Summer Serial: Part I

2005-06-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

It’s easy for me to tell you about how all this started now. It didn’t used to be, though. Only months of shock therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous were able to bring me to the point where I could openly talk about the day that started it all. I had just come back from my lunch break where I worked as a mailroom employee at a large firm in a medium-sized city on the west coast. I’ll leave the name of the firm out of this so as to avoid another of many lawsuits I am currently facing (for our purposes, we’ll call them Young, Neil, Crosby and Garcia), but let’s just say that if you’ve ever sneered at a dirty corporate crook being defended by only the most powerful swine in the country, odds are you were sneering at our client.
I returned from my lunch break that day to find my boss, Jack asking me to serve a summons for him. This was the kind of thing we usually had professionals do, but this was a pro bono case, so we had to save money. I refused to do it, begging him to find someone else. I had the unfortunate experience of serving a man whose ex-wife was suing him for custody of their six-month-old child. He wasn’t happy about this, and decided not to shoot the messenger so much as punch him repeatedly and drag him to a ditch where he was kicked a few more times. It was a painful experience, one that caused me to spend the night in the hospital. Jack was understanding of my refusal, though I could detect a sign of resentment in the tone of his voice.
A few hours later, I went to the restroom to vomit. It was the result of a stomach ulcer I had developed as a result of the beating I had taken. It didn’t require much more than taking a few pills every day, and the occasional vomiting of blood. Thankfully, Young-Neil reluctantly agreed to pay for the doctor’s bills, something I wouldn’t have been able to afford at minimum wage. I left the urinal after a few minutes only to find a few of our younger litigators standing in front of the sink, snorting cocaine. It was well known throughout the firm that the younger lawyers were all into that shit. They’d fight a case, work for hours and then blow off some steam by getting coked up and hitting a club, looking for a fight.
When they saw me, I was offered a hit.
“No, thanks. I have to work.”
“Fuck, we’re out of shit,” said Alex Behrne, the newest lawyer of our firm. He’d only been with us for a few months, but it didn’t take him long to adapt to the rest of the firm’s mentality.
“You know the rules, new guy. Find Tito and get us some more blow.” But Behrne wasn’t in the mood, and he quickly realized he had a messenger right at his disposable. I explained to him that I didn’t have time. Not only that, but I wouldn’t know where to go, and I wouldn’t know who to ask. Behrne quickly filled me in on who their dealer was. Apparently, Tito dealt right outside our large corporate office, making it an easy score for our lawyers. The amount of business he generated from our firm alone made him richer than I could have ever hoped to be.
But I was steadfast in my refusal. I had learned a long time ago that you had to know when to say no to these people. They’d never stop making ridiculous requests unless we drew the line ourselves. Buying them cocaine was beyond any line that had ever been drawn before. I refused, so they beat the crap out of me. Behrne, probably eager to impress his colleagues, was the first to bash my head against the bathroom mirror. The other three took turns kicking me in the gut, forcing me to cough up more blood, while Behrne got on his knees and punched me in the face, saying “DON’T FUCK WITH US, FAGGOT.” They left me there with my head in a toilet, half dead.
It’s hard to say if anyone saw me in that condition because I was only semi-conscious. But it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had and chose not to do anything. Things move fast at Young-Neil, and harsh injustices like this often go unnoticed unless the victim makes enough noise. I was humiliated, and in more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life. I knew these people couldn’t get away with this, so I went to my boss and explained to him what happened.
“So, isn’t there something you can do? I know we work for these people, but I could have died in there.”
“What exactly would you like me to do?” I was a little surprised by the lack of sympathy in his voice.
“Maybe you could talk to someone in human resources, and see if I have any cause to sue.”
“So, you would like me to do this service for you?”
“Of course. These people have to realize that we’re humans, you know?” He started smiling out of the corner of his mouth, I could tell right away that I would get no satisfaction. My boss continued rubbing salt in my wounds.
“I just find it interesting that you would ask me to do you a service. After all, it was I who asked you to do a service for me not four hours ago, and you said no. And now you want me to go out of my way to help you? I don’t think it’s something I’d like to do. I’ll tell you what I will do. You look like you’re going to die at any second, and I can tell you that the firm looks unfavorably on you people dying while on the clock, so I’ll give you the rest of the day off. Get the fuck out of my office you douche bag.”
There was nothing for me to do but leave, and sleep off the pain and humiliation. That night wasn’t easy. I spent half the time vomiting blood, and the other half of the time sitting shiver in the corner of my crappy basement studio apartment. It was in a high crime area, and someone had stolen all my furniture the week before, so I’d been sleeping on the ground.

The next day is when it all started to turn around for me. I woke up feeling much better, and I started to plot the deaths of the three lawyers who had done this to me. I was going to shoot them, but I didn’t know how to get my hands on a gun. I was going to strangle them, but I was a smoker, and something like that takes endurance. I was going to stab them to death, but it seemed a little messy, and I don’t think I’d have had the balls to do it.
In the end, I realized I’d have to have my revenge another way. And that’s when it hit me. “I need to form a union!” It all seemed so obvious to me now. I’d form a union for all mailroom employees, and we’d finally have a voice of our own. No longer will we have to deal with harassment from spoiled-shitless lawyers who never put in an honest day’s work in their lives. Our bosses would be forced to listen to us when we had complaints. We would receive total medical benefits and be paid a decent wage. We’d also be able to work without fear of being asked to do something illegal, or have ourselves beaten and left for dead with our heads in a toilet. Yes, we would have a voice, and I was just the guy to give it to us. After all, who better than an actual mail employee with actual knowledge of the trials we face everyday. Life was looking up already.

To Be Continued…

Summer Showers

2005-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with the slightest hope that we’d actually gotten into the part of summer where it’s actually sunny. By noon, that feeling had gone away. Right now, it’s raining pretty hard, and those idiot meteorologists are saying the rain will continue through the weekend. It seems funny to me that despite the fact that we bitch about weather people and the fact that they’re so inaccurate, the first thing you will always here when discussing the weather is what the weather person said it was going to be. You’d have thought we’d learned our lesson right now. Actually, I guess we have because the second thing you will always hear is, “Yeah, but what does that jagoff know?”
And it’s certainly fair for us to get pissed at these people. After all, they tease us with their fucking commercials, saying things like, “stay tuned tonight to find out if a tsunami could be coming towards YOU.” Or they’ll give you just a little bit, but they’ll never tell you what you want to know until the last possible second. I remember when I was younger, I was always frustrated watching those celebrity shows (before they were on 24/7) because they’d always tease you with a story about some hot models in some small foreign banana republic getting sweaty and naked, and of course it was always the last segment of the show. But how can you criticize a winning strategy?
And this is where I’d like to praise the service that the weather channel does for us. It consistently gives us a comprehensive local weather report that is even right most of the time. My favorite part of the Weather Channel is that they won’t just tell you the daily high temperature and the general cloudiness, but they rather break it down in three-hour intervals. And that’s perfect for someone like me in a city like this, because I want to know what the weather is going to be like on my way to and from work. I don’t give a damn what the weather will be like at two, or ten, I want to know what it’ll be like when I’m actually outside, and the Weather Channel gives me that.
I also have to give them credit for being incredibly accurate. I’ve rarely seen a time when they’ve been completely off the mark, and when they are, it’s usually in a good direction. So, kudos and huzzahs to the Weather Channel. Keep up the good work, fellas.
But I still have to say that I’m a little disappointed in the weather here. Now’s the time when some jackass will remind me where we live, and while this jackass may be right in saying it, can’t he/she just give me a little sympathy? Johnny Rivers took to waxing poetic about the virtues of summer rain in his song, “Summer Rain.” It’s a tacky sentimental song, one of those that you grew up with and liked to listen to when feeling nostalgic. But it was nevertheless, an impressive accomplishment for a man who had made a name for himself by covering old 50s standards. His highly melodic version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis" became so popular during his stint at the Whiskey A Go-Go in Los Angeles, that many people today think he wrote it, and not the great axeman. Rivers was sucked into the allure of nature and hippidom like so many mediocre artists in the late 1960s. Unwilling to be written off as just another Joe Cocker, Rivers had the gumption to attempt repeatedly to market his own music. Yes, "Summer Rain" certainly is a success in its own right, and there are few songs that can better this attempt to attach a soundtrack to those rainy Sunday afternoons in July. But one can't forget that Rivers was singing this song from California where rain at any time of the year is a novelty. Johnny obviously never spent much time in Oregon.
Anyways, we do live in Oregon, and that means summer doesn’t start until July. That also means that springtime is filled with what my English friends call “unstable weather.” I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth saying again; there is nothing more demoralizing than unstable weather. Try living with it all your life, and you’ll turn into a crazy, eccentric fool with funny mannerisms and a dry-to-the-point-of-sour sense of…well…I guess what I mean to say is that you’ll turn into a Brit. You leave the house and it’s sunny and 75-degrees out. You get to the corner and you’re drenched in rain. There’s nothing like it. God’s basically telling you that you’re his bitch, and all you can to is bark at him.
But the unstable weather always yields a good two months of intense sun and heat, and there’s nothing I like more than Portland in the summertime. There are all kinds of events and locations to go along with the general laziness that one feels in this city when the mercury is pushing 90. It’s the perfect weather for doing nothing, and no city has as many places for that as Portland. The waterfront, Council Crest, Hawthorne or basically anywhere in the city opens to slackers with a lot of time and little money.So I guess I can wait for the summer to come, but I’m going to do it with the same amount of bitching with which I wait for everything else. And one more thing to anyone who still wants Portland to buy a baseball team, I would remind you that we’re coming up on the end of June and it’s still raining on a regular basis. An open air field would have caused a rain out on almost every day (just ask the Beavers) and what the fuck are you people thinking anyways? Have you ever been to a Beavers game not on a Thursday? The seats are empty, and even when they’re not; no one cares what’s happening. We can’t afford to pay the little amount of educating that we do, but let’s go build a new stadium in a city with no more room, and buy a team that will only lose us money every year. I know that Portlanders don’t make the best business-people, but even I can see that this would be a tragic mistake. Baseball is a dead sport anyways and I say we should invest in the future; cricket. I know, you laugh now, but we could be at the forefront of this revolutionary game. All it takes is a flattened baseball bat, a couple of sticks made out of unused baseball bats, a baseball and a dream. I leave you with that to ponder, and also to mention that along with soccer, cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world. They like it everywhere except here. Maybe we should think about that. I should also mention that a true cricket test lasts up to five days. That’s like ten times the excitement. Imagine that. And until next time, this is the Wolfman howling out to you. Selah.

Useless Waste Of Time-Gate

2005-06-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

“If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you’d better be prepared to produce the pig.”
-HST

We Americans love our scandals. There’s no doubt about that, and anyone who doesn’t agree only needs to look at the great trials and scandals of the past forty years, and think about just how important many of these news items have been. Perhaps the most surprising revelation will come when one sees the lack of overlapping that has occurred within the scandals. We only have enough time for one thing. When the eyes of the world were focused on Robert Blake, our attention only lasted as long as it took for us to find a more attractive murderer with a more attractive victim. Scott Peterson stole Blake’s spotlight, and to this day, I have no idea what happened with his trial.
Michael Jackson was acquitted today, and I couldn’t care less. Before that, it was Scott Peterson, and before that, it was Robert Blake succeeding the mother of all trials, Orenthal James. The press was fishing around a story of Phil Spector waking up with a dead girl in his home, but as soon as they saw there was nothing there, the media stopped listening. Skip back a few years, and one dares to remember Monica-gate. Our President had been fooling around with the help, and with his position as a moral leader, the American people felt an explanation was owed. And of course, Monica-gate was one in a series of political scandals that have occurred over the past thirty years.
There was Whitewater, Iran-Contra, and even the story of a senator with a missing aide. Keep going back, and one will eventually happen upon the mother of all gates, Watergate. Perhaps it’s a cruel reminder of our sick fetish with scandals that the ghost of Watergate pulled back the curtain last week to reveal an old, sickly man suffering from dementia. Former Nixon staffers cried out in disgust at the idea of a G-Man going to the press rather than keeping the fight within the family. News outlets left and right praised the dying icon of a once idealistic time when the press was doing its job, and they had the power to bring down a President. These same outlets simultaneously bemoaned the disdain people have for the press today. Yes, we certainly love our gates, and we love the heroes of those gates. Without a doubt, an anonymous source will one day tip off a young reporter about a study done by the NSA that looks into walking styles and tendencies of terrorists and how that information can be used to deport Arabs to Guantanamo Bay in the middle of the night without a reason in the world other than that they walked kind of funny. We’ll call it Gait-gate (rim shot!).
But make no mistake about it, no matter how much we blame the press, we’re all going to hell when it comes to the scandals. The press may be a bunch of filthy-capitalistic bastards, but capitalism only exists when there is an open market, and the rash of people coming to me today to inform me of the Jackson verdict did nothing more than prove my case, we love anything that makes us feel morally superior. When someone asked me why people had such a ferocious hate for Bill Clinton, I couldn’t answer him, all I could do was confirm his thoughts.
“But Clinton was a moral leader who has to lead by example. His actions are viewed by everyone and he sets an example for the rest of us.”
“Well, tell that to our current President who has been busted for possession of cocaine, as well as receiving two DUIs.”
My comment was met with the kind of eye-rolling that I do every time I see Jessica Simpson on television, or everytime I hear a Kenny G song. The kid had obviously been learning from the master.
But I stray from my point, and we all know how bad that can be. The question is, why do we have this sick obsession with scandal? Some of you may say that it’s because there’s so much of it, and that’s all there is on the news. I’ll grant the second point, but it’s only because we keep watching, and what do these people have to say about the Canadians who seem to experience political scandal on a daily basis? I know that their scandals have less to do with murders and pedophilia, and more to do with general greed and hunger for power, things that don’t translate so loudly to our ever-deafening ears. But if you’re anything like me, you can’t name any of these scandals, and it’s because not even Canadians care about this kind of thing. When something happens, the problem is taken care of, and life goes on. What I wouldn’t give.
But here I am talking about us wanting to feel morally superior when that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I’ve called an entire generation of reporters thieving pig fuckers, but doesn’t that make us the pig? Perhaps.
People are like snowflakes; we come in all different shapes, sizes and depths (remember that one?) But in the end, we’re all still made of water. Maybe we don’t all share the same lust for blood, but I’ve spent many a night going off on the political exploits of Republicans, and there’s nothing I find more fascinating. Who am I, indeed. Maybe we all need to get a life. When that happens, the sadistic side of our news-addled minds will most likely wither away, and we’ll start to remember the things that are truly important like the fact that Dr. Phil is a fucking asshole.
Maybe this will happen, and maybe it won’t. I guarantee you that news-editors all over the country right now are looking for the next scandal, or the next gate. Maybe DeLay will finally get caught in our cross hairs and have to face the American people in court of public opinion. Or maybe some celebrity will murder a group of women after having an S&M orgy with them in the corner of a girl-scout’s bedroom while she watches on in horror. Barring that, any semi-attractive murderer with a hot enough wife will do. We’ll feed our subconscious urges to rape by getting off on the idea of a beauty queen being murdered by her high school sweetheart who just wasn’t good enough to play in the NFL, or maybe he was. Anyways, I can now see that I’m getting a little too dark even for myself, and I’m probably not even making sense anymore. Disregard this last bit of rubbish as a need to get the willies out of my system. I’m up for a happy movie right now, and I suggest you do the same. Something with a happy ending is definitely needed; I think I’ll go with Back to the Future. As for our media woes, Atlantic Monthly seems to be staying away from the swill, as well as NPR (I just put that one in to sound smart). I’m outta here. Don’t take any wooden nickels.

La Dolce Vita My Ass

2005-06-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve been watching a lot of foreign films lately, and it’s starting to feel kind of weird to me. When I was growing up, I laughed at the idea of people watching those stupid artsy fartsy films that didn’t make sense to any normal person. I had to watch “Meshes in the Afternoon” for a film class, and it made me want to puke. There’s a great scene in “Annie Hall” where Woodie Allen is complaining (surprise) about some pretentious jerk who can’t stop boring his date with his insight into Fellini films. I just saw “La Dolce Vita” and I have to say I don’t get it. There seems to be some pretty basic messages about fame and its effects on people, but I can’t help but feel there’s a bigger message I’m missing. Can someone help me with this?
I’m not one of those jack asses who feel that foreign films aren’t for real men, or that only snotty wine-drinking, New Yorker reading fancy pants can understand them, but I just spent the weekend watching films I wouldn’t have been caught dead watching a few years ago. A few years ago, I would have been watching “National Treasure” and the third “Blade” movie, but now I can’t find any that I like. What happened to the good mindless movies, like “Die Hard” and “Pulp Fiction”? I spent hours watching that crap and I’m dumber for it, but damnit, I was happier. Two drugged up gangsters acting out terrible stereotypes is much more interesting than three hours of a reporter in Rome who wanders aimlessly from scene to scene, hitting on every woman he can, and looking really cool in his Italian sports car. I guess that’s the only kind of sports car they had in Italy back then, but still, talk about a cliché.
And what happened to those feel good movies that weren’t very good, but there was something about them that you liked? They were all around when I was in college. You couldn’t turn on the Turner-owned stations without running into one. Now, it’s all “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and other such nonsense. I remember when “Shawshank Redemption” was on TV at least four times a day. That’s what I call good programming, but I guess the times they are a changin’ as the fella once said.

But do we really need to hear about this crap? I didn’t think so. Raging Bull just came out on DVD, Platoon can still be seen once a day on channel 57 (whatever the hell that channel is) and if you can’t afford to rent a movie on your own, just call the man with the yellow phone.
The real news is what we’re here to talk about, not this movie business, and it is in that spirit that I’d like to announce that Newsweek has finally hit a new low. After mistakenly reporting that troops at Guantanamo Bay had been flushing Qu’rans down the toilet, they recently retracted their story, wrote an apology, and then went on to write in the same issue about how bad confidential sources are these days. It was a shameful game they were playing, and someone has to slap them around. As the voice of the people, I feel it is my responsibility. When you fuck up by being lazy, you should have at least a one-month moratorium before you get to blame it on other people. Of course anonymous sources have ulterior motives, and of course they’re not always accurate, but you’re the ones who are dumb enough to print the shit before proving it.
In the same article, the writer claimed that the two-source standard for reporting something is a myth that was started during Watergate. What a bunch of horseshit. If you can’t fucking get it right with one source, you’d goddamn better get another one. What a fucking dolt.
But speaking of idiocracy (yeah, I made up a word, live with it) I think I’m a little less concerned with Newsweek’s lack of journalistic standards, and a little more concerned with their lack of common sense. Has anyone at the magazine seen a copy of the Qu’ran? They’re huge! Even the dumbest of dumbass soldiers knows you couldn’t fit that thing down a toilet. I’m sure there was plenty of abuse of the good Muslim book along with the kind of abuse that actually matters, but reporting that anyone would try to flush a three-square-foot book down a toilet really isn’t doing their fact checking.
But, being a blogger, I shouldn’t be too hard on these guys. I know the pain of living up to the standard that the legitimate print media has to, and it isn’t pretty. My stories are dissected word by word, and even the smallest of errors (like claiming that something happened in Montana instead of Minnesota, honestly) spells credibility castration. I’ll never know the love of a devoted reader again.But let us move to an inside source, and two reporters who know how to keep a secret. Mark Phelps (I think) has come out today and said he was Deep Throat. I was astonished to find out at work that not a lot of people know who that is. Granted, we have a lot of Republicans in our office, and this is one of those things that goes in the selective memory bin, but Jesus, they hadn’t even heard of Deep Throat. This guy kept a secret for over thirty years, that’s friggin impressive, and there’s really not much I can say about it. I’m happy as a little girl tonight, and I think it’s good to end on a happy note for once, so kudos and huzzahs to FBI leakers, and I’ll see you again soon.

Live In The Now!

2005-05-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

“My dick would make a better vice-president.”
“My wife’s bush doesn’t fuck me so hard.”
-Scrawled backwards on a bathroom wall

I’m currently taking an undergraduate-level course on social psychology. I didn’t want to take it, but a last second shift in my schedule left me with few options, and here I am today. Our class is in a sad state of affairs right now. We have two weeks left in the term, and our professor is running out of things to talk about. She is too conscious of ending class early, and that means we end up doing a lot of little activities that end up wasting time, and teaching us very little.
It’s kind of weird reverting back to that kind of class. None of the students want to be there (but for the required attendance, I don’t think there’d be more than ten people in each session), and when we have group activities, the discussion quickly veers from what we’re supposed to be talking about, to impassioned debate about the pointlessness of group activities.
I am one of those who believe that working in teams is great. When you get several people together who are interested in doing something useful, the results can be quite inspiring. But no one in our class seems to care about our activities, and why should they? The transparency of our professor’s efforts to fill time is pretty demoralizing, and I think most of us would rather be assigned extra reading and homework than have to sit there and babble on about inanities. But such is life for the undergraduate. The graduate level courses have been much more interesting, and the students are easier to get along with. They want to be there, and the professors are usually much more engaging. I look forward to a time when I don’t have to waste my time with multiple choice tests, and mundane text books. But until that time comes, I’m just going to have to bitch about my current position in the educational world.
Speaking of bitching, we had a tense moment in class last week when one of our students took a strong political stand. School and politics usually mix with touchy results. Political science courses will always force some sort of opinion, but taking one side too vehemently can be disastrous, as was the case a couple of weeks ago.
This particular incident included a student who was still coming to terms with Bush and his handling of the Iraq “situation.” Probably thinking that an urban college would be a safe place to make a liberal view, he asked our professor where the psychology of the recent war fit in the current thinking on aggressive behavior. Our professor was quick to assure him that he was thinking on the right track, at which time, the student in question put to rest any doubts of where he stood. “WHAT THE FUCK!” was all he could muster. The ambiance grew tense that very second. More students chimed in, all agreeing with the offending student. After about five minutes, someone had the balls to ask if we could get back to the subject. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but you could tell by the sound of her voice that she was very annoyed.
And so was I for that matter. I agreed with everything said, but I’m just so sick of hearing this bitching, and I certainly don’t want to waste anymore time sitting in class than is absolutely necessary. A wise man once said that his education was disrupted many times by school. I think this is what he meant. I also think it is time for us to start focusing on the present issues. Iraq happened, and it was terrible, and it still is terrible, but there’s not much that can be done about it now. Marty destroyed the time machine at Eastwood ravine, and no one’s made a believable time machine since. We can talk about how pissed we are in four years, but right now, there’s fighting to be done.And that’s what these people do. While we’re fuming about the last atrocity brought on by this president, he’s out committing another one behind our backs. We need to focus, and fight the wars at our front door. This whole filibuster thing couldn’t be more important, and what the fuck happened to Tom Delay? We didn’t just let him off the hook, did we? Anyways, I have to cut this short tonight, but rest assured, we need to keep our eyes on the prize. It’s the only way to get there. Good night, and good-bye.

A New Hope...

2005-05-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with the strangest feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I had a sudden rush of energy, and my heart started pumping rapidly. I was sure something was wrong with me. What else could it be? I ran to the mirror in the bathroom to make sure everything was in order. I wasn’t missing any body parts, and everything was where it should be. So I went back to bed, and huddled in the fetal position. I laid there for over an hour, going over the various possibilities. But it then hit me like a sack of moldy tangerines; I was feeling optimistic.
Yes, it was the first time I’d experienced anything like this in a while, and I still can’t say for certain what exactly I’m feeling optimistic about. But I was vibrant the rest of the day. Even the evil queen of the mailroom couldn’t ruin my mood. I was floating on air.
But as the haze, and excitement of this ordinary day wears thin, I am left wondering what it was that could put me in such high spirits. I’ve been weighing the possibilities, and nothing is for certain as of yet.
It could be that the third Star Wars film is coming out, and everyone thinks it’s a good one. A.O. Scott of The New York Times said it was incredible; even better than the first. Like so many other people who grew up with the original trilogy, I was severely disappointed in the last two. I was always planning on watching the third one, just to see how Lucas decided to wrap it all up, but I wasn’t going to wait in line with the “there but for the grace of Obi Wan Ken obi go I” crowd. I’d done it once at the release of the first movie. It was what our older generations liked to call a happening. I called it the biggest let down of my way too-short life (which has been filled with many, many let downs, mostly self-fulfilling). But this one is to be different. There’s no hype for this one because of the last two. Any review given to it is as objective (if not negatively leaning) as possible, and it is with that knowledge that I so look forward to seeing it.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Lucas still has one foot in the shitter with a lot of people, including me, and I’m not throwing my life’s dreams away to see this thing. I’ll wait until I can get a ticket and sit in a reasonable seat like a civilized person, and then we’ll see how this thing adds up. Plus, I’m interested in hearing what the nerds have to say about it. Flip on any news channel tomorrow morning, and you’ll see all kinds of stories gauging reaction by the few and faithful who wasted the last six weeks of their lives sitting in front of a theatre outside a suburban strip mall without a shower, job, or any sense of pride for an event that will last two hours, and will be viewable many more times over the next few months. These will be the true critics, because they’ve got so much invested in it.
How do you tell your kid that you spent six weeks in line to see the unbelievable piece of shit that was Episode One? It won’t be easy, I assure you. They need to come away with a story that doesn’t sound like they received countless strawberries from ignorant bullies in high school, and Episode Three is going to be their mother’s milk. I almost want the movie to suck, just so I can see the look on their eyes when they come to the realization that they’ve just wasted another month on total shit. Call me sadistic, but I say that’s where the real fun lies.

But I have a hard time believing that this sudden rush of happiness came from this upcoming major motion picture event. After all, I have bigger things coming up on the horizon. I can’t wait for the Republicans in the senate to pull out the nuclear option, and ban filibustering. We’ll see a shut down of government that hasn’t been experienced since the Republicans decided to stop the wheels of democracy in 1995. Clinton had luck on his side that day, and the spinsters wound up in his corner.
The stakes are a lot higher now. The President is holding all the chips, and like Matt Damon said in Rounders, once you’re in that position, all you have to do is lean on the other guy. There’s no doubt that this petty bickering will result in little more than an all out public relations war. In the past, the Dems have had the upper hand, mainly because we’re better people than they are, but we’re playing against a real pro this time. He plays for keeps, and you’d better be prepared to go all the way, or you’re going to lose. We’re talking about abortion, guns, taxes, and the whole shebang. It may sound like I’m exaggerating here, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Historically, second-term presidents have been slowed down due to lack of trust. The same thing was happening with this President, but he isn’t going down without a fight. This fight is the political equivalent to losing a gun battle, but saving whatever strength you have left to raise your arm, and take your opponent down with you. Bush doesn’t want to win, but he certainly isn’t going to be the only loser. They’re playing a game with our lives, and in the end, we’re all losers.

Despite that last negative part, I am excited about the fight. But it can’t be why I’m so excited. The truth is, I’ll probably never know why, and that should be okay. I may wake up feeling like shit tomorrow, and the least I can do right now is bask in my happiness. These things are always unexpected. I bottomed out emotionally two years ago thanks to our lovely unemployment rates. You all know what I’m talking about. But the turning point for me was so concise that I can place the exact time and location that it happened. I had given up on the idea that Bob Dylan had anything new to offer me. But a slew of albums I had previously belligerently disregarded as crap showed me that there are no limits to the things we can do. Monkeys will head up SWAT teams, Mexicans and rednecks will get along together, I’ll stop complaining, the moons of Jupiter will align, and we will all achieve that unspeakable goal of beauty, accomplishment, and great sex. Then, we will all be winners.And if you buy any of that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Tip your waitresses.

I'm Down There With The Rest Of You

2005-05-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just had to write a one-page paper on what causes road rage for a sociology class. That’s right, one page. Don’t tell me that scholastic standards are falling. That shit was double-spaced as well, and our professor will take points off for being too verbose. What a bunch of bullshit. It’s impossible to be too verbose. I read a story about how Harvard standards are falling down the tube as well. While this isn’t very surprising, you’d think something would be done about it. But there’s a lot of pressure on the professors coming from all over. The students are giving them shit about the assignments being too hard. The parents are spewing irrational crap about being unfair, xenophobic, sexist, snobbish and all other manners of sin. The administration is coming down on them to raise the profile of the school’s intellect, while actual intellect becomes a thing of the past. No one goes to Harvard for the great education; they go for the stigma that goes along with it being Harvard.
But I’m preaching to the choir here. None of this is new, and we’ve once again strayed away from the subject. The question originally put forth was about drivers and road rage. What causes it, and why? Sure, there are the obvious things. Heightened frustration and stress as a result from a number of different things can increase aggression while driving. Heat can also add to this frustration, making something like air conditioning a welcome inhibitor. But I disagree with that. Air conditioning is nice, but I think having abnormally cool air shot at your face while the sun is beaming down on you actually has the opposite effect. It’s like a little five-year-old poking you repeatedly. The frustration gradually builds up, and you just explode without warning. Air conditioning is nice, but it still pisses me off.
Another factor involved could be the phenomenon of deindividuation. I know, it’s a big word, but you’ll probably never have to use it again, so don’t worry about it. Deindividuation is the idea that giving a person the feeling on anonymity will cause him or her to lose his or her inhibitions, something that could affect his or her driving while he or she is alone in the car. It can also occur in large groups where one’s presence is less noticed. It explains the riot caused by hundreds of men in New York one day. They got drunk and increasingly belligerent until all heck-fire broke loose. They fondled women, tore their clothes off, and didn’t even buy them a drink. It’s a pathetic breakdown of moral standards, and I won’t stand for it. But I think the media has done a good job of putting the fear of psychotic drivers into our hearts to the point where deindividuation is impossible. I know I’m scared of the time when a big, greasy, shit-kicking redneck decides to cut me off and I flip him off. He’ll run me off the road in his Toyota F350, drag me out of the car and proceed to beat the living shit out of me, ending it with a curb job (there’s nothing that scares me more than a curb job). This fear and one or two close encounters have kept me from being too demonstrative behind the wheel.
But the same can’t be said for everyone. I once saw a man get cut off downtown by a woman in a mini-van with two infants in the back seat. The man was so pissed off that he rolled his window down and started screaming at her while her children were watching. I saw a guy so pissed off once at his tail-gater, that he pulled into a Safeway parking lot, waving at the other guy to follow so they could kick the shit out of each other. I have a friend who is willing to double back when he gets cut off just so he can scream at the offending driver. Madness in every direction.

But I think it’s time we all look at how ridiculous this all is. Think of Coolio, and how cool he looked while cruising in his drop-top caddie on his way to the beach. He certainly was on a fantastic ride, and we can all be that way if we realize how petty our little frustrations can be. I think much of this is posturing. Our society (for men anyways) is very much dependant on having implied social rules, and when those rules are broken, one has to stick up to the rule-breaker. If he doesn’t, he feels like a coward and a pushover. No one wants that next to their name. I was at a Dylan concert when a fan wanted to stand and dance. It seems pretty obvious that people would want to stand at a rock concert, but those sitting behind him didn’t agree. They spent half the concert yelling at him. These pathetic bastards couldn’t get over such a small inconvenience, and they were more than willing to let it ruin their evening instead of ignoring the small annoyance, and appreciating the concert anyways. Getting cut off in traffic is frustrating, and you want the offending driver to know he pissed you off, but is it really necessary to have an aneurysm every time someone slows you down by less than ten seconds? I didn’t fucking think so.
I’m starting to sound like my parents, and that’s the last thing I want. But it’s important to remember that it’s mostly the adults doing these things. There’s nothing more frustrating than driving in the West Hills and being slowed down by some middle-aged jackass who thinks he can make the world a better place by driving twelve m.p.h below the speed limit. I’m begging all of you people to stop that, it’s not working. But these people are doing the same thing. A juvenile driver once wronged them, so they’re going to take it out on all kids who come across their path.
I must be becoming an honest to god blogger now, because I have officially started bitching about the pettiest things. I always said I wouldn’t become one of those people who write these inane posts about shit no one cares about. They try to be like Jerry Seinfeld, finding humor in everyday situations, but they aren’t anywhere close (I assure you none of the Portland to Taiwaners fit this description, except me, perhaps). I was going to have fun with this shit, and I knew that taking myself seriously even just a little bit would spell doom, and I still believe I’m right. I was thinking about discussing next time why smokers don’t get a fair shake in life, but it would only get worse after that. Next up would be my tirade against companies who produce right handed scissors, as if scissors have to have a hand preference. I apologize for this tangent, and I hope not to do it again. As vox populi, I have let you down. But even the voice of God isn’t perfect. He leaves that up to the big man himself. Until next time my friends.

Heroes And Villains

2005-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time bemoaning the terrible traits of our government and our people. Week after week I bring you sad stories about evil people out to ruin us, and I am left with the impression, as I’m sure many of you are, that this country is filled with a bunch of lying scum; dirty swine that would step over their own mother to get their hands on even a small piece of the proverbial pie. These people rape and pillage, both figuratively and literally, and there’s little that can be done about it on our side.
So it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you a group of people on the other side of the moral spectrum. How many of you are asking yourselves why we have to endure this savage disease that is illegal immigration? I know I spend my evenings in thought, wondering what my life would have been like if I hadn’t been laid off to create work for Paco, or Jose, or whomever. This terrible scourge is running a burn on our fair nation, and there are few who are doing anything about it. So we can only thank God that we have the Minutemen looking behind our backs and across our borders to keep the great Mexican threat from realizing itself.
These tireless freedom fighters give up time from their obviously busy lives to patrol the southern borders of our sacred land in hopes of catching the godless infidels who reside directly below us in the act of tyranny to freedom. We are, after all, the greatest of the great nations; the city on the hill. And no one should have to endure the pain suffered in losing his or her bean-picking job.
Oh no, the INS isn’t enough these days. We need twenty-four hour patrols of our virgin lines, just waiting to be penetrated by some criminal, some thief in a poncho. So there they sit, just waiting for the chance to call the real law enforcement on some dirty miscreants, frothing at the mouth over the idea of living in a land such as ours. These patriots are doing us all a favor. They sit there on the line, facing danger, but never wavering from the fear one can only feel when faced with the possibility of fighting a national security threat. Don’t let the fact that they’re tired, weak, and starving fool you; these guys came to party.
I know I couldn’t do such difficult job. I go knock-kneed at the very thought of it. And yet, I can’t help but be thankful for the service being provided by these men, these heroes, these modern day titans of the south. Why, only the other day I saw one on television. There he sat, on his pedestal atop is 1979 Toyota pick up, nothing but beer and a transistor radio to keep him company. His war-mask was his facial hair, which he let grow out in an effort to seem scarier, and boy did it work. His mullet was an obvious homage to one William Wallace, the Scottish freedom fighter, not unlike our own, who wanted nothing more than the English to go home. And like the English, the Mexicans shall not prevail. The William Wallaces of Texas, California and New Mexico will not allow it.
And how can we thank these people? I am reminded of my time spent two years ago in the depths of unemployment. I applied for every bean, grape, strawberry, blueberry and huckleberry picking job this side of the Mississippi, but to no avail. Undoubtedly, there would always be a less qualified Mexican there to take the job that was rightfully mine, and all in the name of affirmative action. Fucking Kennedys with their liberal, communist ideas. Didn’t they know that some people are just better than others, and nothing’s going to change that? I guess not, for they otherwise would not have decided to mess with God’s ultimate plan.
But, there I waited for a job. Eric Schlosser knew the pain of immigrants all too well. His well-documented history of working in slaughterhouses exposed the pain to which good old Americans such as myself have been exposed to. Upton Sinclair also knew of the greatness of American slaughterhouses. Don’t listen to the naysayers. They’ll try to tell you that slaughterhouses are unhealthy, even deadly places to work with an injury rate triple the national average. These are happy fun places that provide a steady employment and lifetime support for the whole family. The middle class was built on slaughterhouses, and now the Mexicans have those as well. They’re being bussed in by the hundreds; taking our money and our benefits.
I really can’t say enough about these people. They obviously work hard all day at their fortune 500 companies that are being taken over by Mexicans, and they probably get a little frustrated when some crazy Mexican cuts them off in a Dodge Dart filled with fifteen of his family members. Who among us hasn’t known the frustration of going to Taco Bell and not being able to understand the guy at the take out window? Sure, some of it is because of the reception, but Chet at Wendy’s comes through 5X5 when I take the family there, and he talks better American than anyone I know.
So lift your drinks to your local Minuteman. He’s fighting the good fight, and if he succeeds, the world will be a better place. The essence of God will return to our hillsides, women will go back to the kitchen where they belong, Toby Keith day will replace Martin Luther King Jr. day, and we will all be able to wear ten-gallon hats without being subjected to public ridicule. Are you an urban cowboy? I know I am.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I think it’s time we address a serious topic. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any, so I’m going to regale you for the next few minutes with some stories that nobody cares about. This one will crack you up. Apparently, in the event of a nuclear attack, the United States has insufficient protocol for how to react. Our first strike response is woefully behind the times, according to some senate investigative committee. But I am again forced to ask the question; in the event of a nuclear attack, won’t we all be pretty much killed instantaneously? It’s like hiding under your desk during a bomb raid. Your fucking desk isn’t going to do shit. The fact is, when the big one drops, we will all die before we’re able to turn to CNN to see what’s happening, which won’t matter because CNN will likely be one of the first things to go. But you have to be happy about that. If it happens, it happens and there’s nothing we can do about it. So why not just sit back and enjoy the light show. I should have a pretty good view from my bedroom window.
One more thing, I live near a hospital, and I frequently hear ambulances speeding by my place. Being that my mind has been trained by television to think crime when I hear an ambulance, I get the picture of my neighborhood being some dirty ghetto full of gang violence and other unmentionable acts. But that simply isn’t the case. My neighborhood is as safe as any place in Portland. So, my question is, when people make movies and they use an ambulance siren to paint a picture of a crime-ridden neighborhood, do they ever consider that those ambulances might be going somewhere rather than arriving from somewhere? I think not. It’s one of the many things in life that I’ll have to worry about (there goes an ambulance right now! And I can guarantee you it’s going somewhere, not arriving from someplace) whether I like it or not. I’ll leave you people with that thought. Sleep tight knowing our borders are being protected by the few and the brave.

Woe Is Me...

2005-05-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last week was a rough one. I won’t beat around the bush, though. I’ve abandoned you people. I left you without a voice for a week, and God only knows what kind of damage was done in the process. Once again, I was wrapped up in my own pathetic little life, unable to look at the big picture, and incapable of making the ultimate sacrifice for the people.
Midterm week is now over, and I can’t say I’m very happy with the outcome. I already know I’ve failed in one of my classes, and I’m worried that I’m about to hear the same thing about the other one. I do have to say that the idea of a number two pencil makes me sick. When we were in school, we always heard about the dangers of not using a number-two pencil. We were told to fill in the bubbles completely and leave absolutely no marks outside the lines. Most kids worried more about creating some number-two pencil catastrophe than they were thinking about their own studies. No one thinks about who signed the Declaration of Independence when they’re gearing up to take a history final anymore. They’re too busy planning the route to the pencil sharpener should some unthinkable disaster occur.
I was lucky enough to avoid any such mishap, but an essay exam left me with a crippled left-hand, and I was shat on by a bird right after the drama had ended; the perfect end to the perfect day. But my troubles weren’t over after that. It appears that I may be homeless in the next few months, and that’s to say nothing of the fact that I’ve spent almost $3,000 on schooling that may turn out to have been a waste of time. Like I said, it’s been a rough week.

But you didn’t come here to hear this shit. My problems are my own (and mostly built up in my head) and after all, I’ve been neglecting the faithful thousands who have done so much to make me the great man I am today. So let’s talk about what’s going to affect you.
I was reading an article about the noble deed the senate ethics committee did this week: their job. Apparently, they’re going to rescind a law that would have provided Tom DeLay some cover from his problems. It will probably be the second time in three years that DeLay will have been reprimanded for his sins. The bastard certainly has it coming, and now even the Jesus that Republicans have adopted as their new poster boy can’t save DeLay from the frothing vultures that is the House Ethics Committee.
And what about Bill Frist last week with his sermon to the people on those nasty, reactionary, liberal, tree hugging, godless, homosexual, transvestite, drug using/dealing, judges who have taken the law into their own hands? That’s right, folks. Nobody has to worry about the Klan coming around anymore. Instead of worrying about the men in white robes, we should worry about the ones in black. They have no regard for the Republican agenda (the agenda of God) and they even think it’s wrong to force religion on others. I’d like to know where the hell in the U.S. Constitution, that little piece of paper we put so much faith in, does it say that we are not a Christian nation. Seriously. Where does it say that? What? Oh…right at the beginning? But isn’t it obvious that the framers had Christianity in mind when they wrote this constitution? No? SINNIER!
But, seriously folks, I know the constitution was written along time ago, and the people from that era kind of talked a little funny. But I don’t think the first amendment’s that hard to read. After all, most people can understand what they say on Fraser. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me, and yet, some of our most tenured leaders are having a hard time seeing it. Senator Bill Frist sure as shit can’t see it. He sermonized on the liberal judge epidemic on a Christian television broadcast from a “Mega” church. Where the fuck is the senate ethics committee when you need it. This fucking guy makes me want to puke.
President Bush made his own news this week when he announced that he’d be trying to screw us over. What I don’t get is that every poll I’ve seen in the past few months has said people oppose the privatization of social security by at least 60% of the population. That’s a lot, and I guess I just don’t see why no one is calling this fucking guy on it. I’ll accept that there are some things that we aren’t smart enough as a nation to grasp. I’ll admit that social security is in trouble, and I’ll even admit that Bush has balls for bringing it up at all (although he wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t granted a “mandate” by the people), but what I’ll never get is that the press lets him get away with this shit without so much as a whimper of opposition. The President himself has said that privatizing would lose people money, it is almost a given fact that privatizing would do more damage than good, and yet the Bush Administration is rolling on like a machine, and no one’s trying to hit the “off” button.
I’ll leave you with that. I’m pretty pissed off now, and frankly, I’m a little disgusted with all of us. Selah.

Chinese Anatomy And Aging Bears

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

It’s pretty hard to believe, but even the most exciting of times has its slow news days. We can only chose to care about so much stuff, and there are only so many celebrities out there raping and killing women and children, and something’s got to happen in between. If it didn’t, what would CNN, the other CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Court TV, Network News, Local News, C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 do? They’re very good at filling the in-between times with shows headed by crazy assholes ranging from failed politicians (Pat Buchanan) to failed comedians (Dennis Miller) to your basic, everyday, all around failures (Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborogh, Hannity and Colmes, Larry King and Keith Olberman to name a few). What would we do without these people? I can only fathom such a terrible existence.
Without 24-hour news channels, we would only get to hear the news a few times a day, which would mean some things would have to go. I may not have learned what Michael Jackson’s accuser’s mother said in court the past four days, or why the Germans are pissed off at the British for hinting concern over the election of a former Hitler Youth to the papacy. There are so many things that I wouldn’t know were important unless Wolf Blitzer told me (say what you will, the man has the best television name in history with the badass facial hair to back it up). But, thankfully, this will never happen, because Reuters has a special section devoted to the inane, yet somewhat entertaining part of the news world that simply doesn’t matter in any way shape or form. So, without further delay, here some weird fucking stories.

For those of you who have been looking down on Chinese people because of the fact that your dick is so much bigger than theirs, I have some bad news for you. According to a recent study, the average Chinese penis is only very slightly shorter than ours, and is almost on par with the international average. In my life, I would have never thought I ‘d live to see the day where someone would go to the effort to prove that their dick was, in fact, not small. But taxonomists are allowed to have senses of humor, and there’s no reason why a person shouldn’t feel like they can’t get over their inferiority complex through the use of scientific data. Americans, however, were not the largest. We lost out to the Italians (go figure) whose average size was about 3.54 inches, compared to our pathetic 3.46 inches. As Woody Allen once said, “I knew there was something in that pasta.”
But we have to ask ourselves who exactly was giving this data. After all, we Americans come from a myriad of different nationalities, and if we’re only measuring those of English descent, then I want a recount. The real victims in this colossal waste of time were the Israelis, Turks and Filippinos, all of who measured in at lower lengths than the Chinese. I used to say that my buddy had a dick smaller than a Chinaman (I know, not the preferred nomenclature), but I guess I’m going to have to change that to Filippino, giving people yet another reason to call me xenophobic. As if they didn’t have enough reasons already.

I used to hear about how the military was developing unmanned vehicles that could fight our wars for us. It was supposed to be the ultimate in life-preserving warfare. Our military strength would drop below 1,000 and we’d still be the strongest force in the world. This will all work out great until the machines become smarter than us, start wondering why the hell they’re fighting our wars for us, turn on us, and start hunting each and every one of us down like a bunch of…well…you’ve seen The Terminator.
But apparently, someone in Phoenix has come up with a less practical, yet wholly backward-ass idea that is almost like the unmanned vehicle idea, but far worse. He wants to train monkeys to work on SWAT teams. That’s right folks, the next time you’re held hostage by some suave European terrorists pretending to be idealistic freedom fighters, but who turn out in the end to want nothing more than the 14-million dollars in negotiable bearer bonds stashed in your super high tech vault that can only be broken by a laser-wielding computer nerd with a wit as sharp as the suits they’re wearing, and a good sense of humor, you may see Coco the Monkey busting through the door carrying an Uzi and wearing black fatigues and night-vision goggles, just itching to fuck someone up. There’s not a lot I can say about this idea that doesn’t already speak for itself. Maybe we should just let it drift.

A man in Alaska was mauled FOR THE SECOND TIME by a bear. The first “mauling” occurred thirty-eight years ago, and apparently, God wasn’t done with him yet. It’s the first time this has ever happened in recorded history, according to the grizzly old curmudgeon who works with the U.S. Geological Survey in Alaska. I’ve never been savagely beaten by a bear, but I can’t imagine it would be the most pleasant experience in the world, and I’d like to think I’d learn from my lesson the first time. I know it sounds weird that you should sing when hiking so as to scare off any bears within ear shot, but if I were mauled by a bear, and some inexplicable force of nature ever led me outside civilization again, to which I would be kicking and screaming, and I had to sing to ensure there were no more bear maulings, even 100 years after the original attack, I would fucking do it. I sympathize with a man who’s been mauled by a bear once. But if it happens twice, you must have done something to deserve it.
But that’s not what I think. I think the man was just the victim of the same ill-tempered bear. I think that bear saw a man who he’d worked over in his youth, and wanted to see if he could still cut the mustard. This is a bear mid-life crisis if I’ve ever seen one, and probably the worst luck a living human in Alaska has ever had.

Finally, a story all Oregonians can relate to. A woman in Bangladesh is selling one of her eyes to help feed her child. Yes, it is that bad over there. I’ve tried to rent out my body several times, but to no avail. Hell, I’ll even rent for free, but still no takers. I guess selling it is the only way to go.
This is why I’ll never have a kid. The woman is just fulfilling her maternal duty, something a lot of mothers with plenty of money aren’t able to do. I say kudos and huzzahs to her. But still, why not lose a kidney? If you lose a kidney, fuck it, you still have another perfectly good one (unless she’s already sold that). But if you lose your depth of field, you’ll never get through life. Not to mention, you’ll look a little odd. Thankfully, I’m sure the publicity stirred by this woman will earn her more than enough celebrity credit in Bollywood to buy plenty of food. Crisis averted.By the way, not to change the subject here, but have you heard about that kidnapping victim who just hired a publicity agent? No? It’s so fucked up. Apparently, life-threatening trauma now requires professional representation. She’s going to get a book deal, and probably a movie of the week. Some people have all the luck. But if you want to make the victim thing work, you have to act like all the money and fame is just some by-product of being able to make your case to the public. Such blatant greed is disgusting to me, but its part of the new century. Nothing’s a surprise anymore. This woman will milk her tragedy for all it’s worth without the least bit of effort to hide her greed, and be used up like a cheap hooker on crack. She’ll cash her check, and spend the rest of her pathetic life wondering what more she can do to gain from her “unfortunate tragedy.” What a bunch of bullshit. Anyways, I’ve strayed again and it’s time for me to head off to bed. Have a good one, people.

Enough With The Pope Already

2005-04-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hello my faithful followers. I haven’t been around for a few days, and I apologize, but it couldn’t be helped. I was held up with some personal business, but let’s stop fucking around. A lot has been going on, and the world seems to be falling apart without me in the captain’s chair, so lets get right down to it.

For those of you who were as worried as me about the Papal vacancy, we can all now sleep at night. A new pope was selected earlier today in Vatican City, and already we can see the world around us is looking a little safer. Selecting a pope wasn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t something that should be hastily done. It takes the right blend of understanding of the faith, and a nose for international diplomacy. The pope has to be able to lift the spirits of an entire world, something that requires an understanding of all races and creeds. The new pope needs to be benevolent as well as charitable. And that’s why I’ll rest easier tonight knowing that our new pope is a very conservative German who served as the last pope’s advisor.
I’ll be the first to admit that he wasn’t my first choice. The egalitarian side of me wanted Cardinal Francis Arinze from Nigeria. He’s a little old to be pope, and that’s saying something, but I think enough is enough with the Europeans. Let’s get a little international flavor in this mutha. Cardinal Arinze not to your liking? How about Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodrigueq Maradiaga from Tegucigalpa? I don’t know where that is, but the guy looks like a pretty nice person to me. I think the fact that he’d have to shorten his name would be reason enough to support this guy.
But we could have certainly done worse. Cardinal Godfried Danneels from Brussels is a polished, sleazy, hand shaking/baby kissing douche bag with no real feeling, and the less said about Cardinal Claudio Hummes from Sao Paulo, the better. In the end, I think we’ll be okay, but we certainly could have done better. I always thought a pope from New Jersey would be great. Who wouldn’t be able to keep from laughing at the sound of someone from the bridge and tunnel crew with a casual relationship with English grammar give the annual Easter speech from the window of the pope-pad. But I can only imagine what kind of controversy an American pope would bring out. After all, we’ve been so good with international diplomacy in the past. It’s what we’re known for. And I know there’s no one who loves us more than the Italians. They like us almost as much as the French. Plus, the charges of sexual misconduct from slutty women who were once innocent little alter-girls would be a sad reminder of the previous five years regarding the Catholics in the United States.
I do have to give credit for the new Pope’s name, though. Benedict is so much better than the boring-ass names like John Paul, and John, and Paul. The name choosing is the first, and some say, the most important decision a newly crowned pope has to make. It can make or break an entire papacy and I think that Benedict is ballsy. We’ll have to see if it pays off, but I myself can say that such a bold move has induced me to switch religions: that, and the confessional. Who can’t love a religion where you can get out of going to hell by telling some nameless, faceless person what you’ve done? I’m sold, where are my rosary beads?
I hate to be the person to bring this up, but is it just slightly possible that we’re making too much of this pope mumbo jumbo. The last two Newsweek covers were about the pope. NO ONE gets two Newsweek covers, not even me! Why should some Pollock with a kind heart get two covers in a row? I’m fucking nice! We must really be bleeding our news sources dry, because there isn’t shit going on. Congress has even decided to hold Steroid/Football hearings to see if there’s any funny business going on there (anyone who needs senate hearings to tell them there is steroid use going on in football is too stupid to live). I was enjoying life more during the Terri Shiavo thing…okay not really, but it wasn’t much worse either.

But that isn’t all that happened in the land of which we care little about. A parliamentarian in Iraq has accused a U.S. soldier of beating the crap out of him. The scuffle happened outside Iraq’s parliament where the man was going for a meeting. The soldier claimed he didn’t have the right parking permit, and beat him down when the man refused to move his car. This obviously looks bad, but can we really blame the soldier? I think this was just another case of misplaced aggression. How many of you have wanted to kick the shit out of your congressman/woman? Me too. I know I wouldn’t hesitate at the first opportunity to smack David Wu around for a little while. Come to think of it, there are a few congressmen outside my district who I’d like to mess up as well. I should be so lucky. (By the way, I don’t think David Wu is our congressman, but I know he is an Oregon Republican, and there can’t be a worse kind.) So hat’s off to this Unknown Soldier. He took the bull by the horns, and just did it. I don’t think he could have gotten away with it in the U.S. but no one knows what’s going on over there. PFC Bryan Kopra could be running things for all we know. It’s a zoo, and I say if someone feels the need to take out a little aggression on a person in a similar position to a sleazy greedy asshole over here, then so be it. Castrate the bastard, but let him live.

We’re starting to get side tracked here, so I’ll just leave you with one more little note. It turns out that some biennial report card ranking 49 of the states came out today (I’d like to know what one state had to be a bummer and not participate. Probably Alabama, they knew they wouldn’t like the results), and Oregon is thought to only be average.
“Although Oregonians may see themselves, like the children of the mythical town of Lake Wobegon as above average, ‘we’re actually average in comparison to the rest of the nation.’” The Oregonian gave this deliciously clever quote. The report measured all kinds of areas ranging from the environment, to education, to poverty and all that other crap. I’d just like to say right now that I think if Portland were its own state, we would be number one. We are by far the GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD, and those toothless losers down south are fucking up our Chi (is that how you spell it?), cramping our style and all that other stuff. As the voice of the people, I feel it’s my duty to start a movement to get Portland to secede from the union that is Oregon. After all, what exactly would we miss? Eugene? I don’t fucking think so. No, we’d be better off on our own, or better yet, we could join Washington. They’ve ranked higher than us in many of these areas, and they have really good apples. Anyways, I leave it to you, the voter to decide. As for me, I’m going for a ride in my new German-made car. Ciao.

I'm Having An Unusual Day

2005-04-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of time today, so I'll make this short and sweet. There's a giant 15-foot red rubber ball making its way around downtown Portland. I first saw it three days ago blocking the entrance at City Hall. I just saw it again nestled in between conjoining beams at the World Trade Center. The first time I saw it, I was willing to chalk the whole experience up to being dead tired on a Tuesday morning. Surely, I was seeing things.
But my worst fears have been realized, and all I want to know now is if I'm seeing things or not. I've seen no mention of this in the papers, and no one seems to know what I'm talking about. But I can't be going crazy, it just isn't possible.
The balls remind me of the movie version of It, one of those crappy four hour Stephen King movies produced by USA in the 1980s that they only show now when they're waiting for the next crop of Stephen Segal movies to come in. There are a couple of scenes where these geeks see a bunch of red balloons that inexplicably blow up, spewing either blood or red paint all over the place. I think we're supposed to think it's blood, but that's a moot point. I don't know if this red rubber ball has paint, blood, or air in it, but I'd like to know. So if someone can alleviate my fears, I would be forever grateful.
While we're on the subject of It, I'd like to know what demented asshole invented the clown as a way of making children laugh. I'm a grown man (technically) and clowns still scare the shit out of me. Maybe it's the movie, but I don't think so. Everyone has their fears, and mine is of clowns. But we needn't worry about that today. It's a discussion for Statesmen such as myself, and we will have that discussion one of these days. As I've said before, I'm pressed for time, so I'll leave you with one more thought. If this red rubber ball thing is done in the name of artistic...Whatever, why couldn't they make it a less intimidating, more pleasant color? I prefer dark green, how about you?

What Consists of Chinese Breakfast?

2005-04-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

I remember a few months ago, a colleague remarked to me that we were going to lose World War III to the Chinese. I thought it was poppycock. But he was insistent, claiming that they were in the process of building up their military, and it wouldn’t be long until their armed forces would be able to overpower ours. I couldn’t see it then, and I’m still having a little difficulty with it now. After all, these are people who still haven’t been able to grasp the technology of the fork. They were farmers and modest merchants. How could they even afford to build an army of that size?
But, according to an article in The Washington Post, China actually is building up their military strength. Not only that, but much of their budget is going to technological weapons that are far more advanced than our own. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was known to be concerned over this, and now, so am I. I just realized how many people there are in China. If they have the same ratio of citizens to soldiers as we do, we’d be fucked.
Plus, these so called super human fighting machines with the power to outsmart the smartest of smart bombs will be far superior to anything we have. They even have a missile that is capable of traveling only four meters above water. That’s awesome. I want to see one of these things. Preferably, I’d like to see them shot at someone else, but if it has to be us, so be it. I always thought it would be cool to experience a tidal wave first hand, and if that’s how I’m going to go, there are worse ways. The missile thing would also be cool. Of course, there’s nothing to shoot at us around here that would warrant the expenditure of one of these amazing hovering missiles. Maybe I’ll have to move closer to a military base. What they really need are missiles that can both hover, and turn around a corner. If you really want to hit New York where it hurts, Rockefeller Center’s the only way to go, and I imagine you’ll have to weave through a few skyscrapers to get there. Trust me, it’ll be worth it in the end.
But I digress, as I am known to do from time to time. The important thing to remember here is that there isn’t a lot of reason for China to attack us. Plus, the idea of America is a pretty big force in itself, so the Chinese are probably just as scared of us as I am of them. But that could all change. Some dumb asshole signed a treaty with Taiwan that says we have to intervene if China decides to cross the South China Sea and kick a little ass. I’m sure when the treaty was signed, it sounded like a good idea. The Chinese were probably still fighting with carbines and cannonballs. We could intervene, and not even have to send troops over. It was a win-win situation. We could defend the little guy, and you know how much we Americans love a good underdog story (so long as we ourselves aren’t the underdogs). We could protect that mysterious island of which we know nothing about, and every four star general holdover from the cold war could get a hard at the sight of defeating the Commies one more time. It would be glorious.
So, what I’m thinking now is if China can kick our ass, what’s to stop them from invading Taiwan, putting those cocky bastards in their place? And, what I’m further wondering is whether someone in that nation of one billion people is going to ask themselves why we shouldn’t invade the U.S. Sure, defeating us in Asia, and invading the U.S. homeland are two entirely different things, but if you can make a missile travel only four meters above the water, while going God knows how fast, you can pretty much do anything.
So that one treaty will set off a chain reaction of events that will have us all speaking Chinese by 2050. But is that really so bad? I put it to you, the voter. After all, everyone likes Chinese food, so our culinary lives wouldn’t be too affected. Plus, I always felt the China life would be a sweet life. They don’t seem to be too stressed about anything, not like those tight-ass Japanese across the pond. Plus, I’ve always liked those hats that they wear. Not to mention, I think everyone, men and women, can get together on the fact that Asian whores are awesome. We’d be crazy not to let them rule us for a while. So let them come; I’m sure we’ll put up a good fight, we’ll at least make it look respectable. Perhaps we can even send off a few nukes before they get hold of the button. As the voice of the people, I think it is my duty to encourage us all to go quietly. Don’t delay the inevitable. If you’re that worried, move to Canada. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

But the news need not be all that daunting. The Oregonian reported today that the state’s unemployment rate went down from 6.4 to 6.2 percent last month. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s supposed to be the largest drop in unemployment in our state’s history. I can see what’s going to happen now. Those inconsiderate pricks in Washington who chose to forget about us for the past few years are now going to come back and claim that it was all their doing. The fact is, this was the result of a natural cycle, one that could have shifted much faster if those bat-shit crazy douche bags have pulled their heads out of their asses a long time ago. I could be two years younger right now. But instead I have memories of working for a chemical lawn distributor as a pamphleteer in NE Portland, while living with my parents, dead broke. It wasn’t a fun way to live, and I can only thank God I’ll probably never have to experience that again. Some greasy, gold chain-wearing jackass with an IQ of 12 would hand me a stack of forms with addresses on them, and I’d have to go to do “lawn assessments.” I’d have to cover over 150 houses every day, and if I didn’t make my quota, I’d be dropped like a bad habit. I should have been so lucky.
The job only lasted a week, and it actually had some good parts. I saw both the worst and the best parts of Portland within a mile of each other. Alameda is disgustingly rich, and all the shit heads I went to high school with who bragged because they were from THE EAST SIDE were fucking hypocritical pussies. MLK Boulevard around Ainsworth was a different story. I went to drop off a “lawn assessment” one day at a house that didn’t have a lawn so much as it had a dirt area with a few weeds. A kid about my age came out of the house wearing very expensive clothing and jewelry, demanding to know what the fuck I wanted. After explaining that I wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness, he gratefully took the pamphlet and left me with a cruel warning not to walk south down the street because there were gang members shooting at people. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Unfortunately, my car was parked in that direction, so I had no choice but to proceed. I thought about how pathetic it would be to be shot to death while shilling for a bogus chemical lawn company (they targeted the uneducated and destitute because they knew such a cross-section of people were dumb enough to buy this shit); it wasn’t the kind of obituary I was hoping for. It was actually probably the most depressing thought I’ve ever had. So I shoved it back to my subconscious, and I proceeded…very fast. I got the hell out of there, and haven’t looked back since. Actually, I’ve been to the neighborhood a couple of times. It looks dangerous, and maybe it is, but I don’t like the idea of not going where I want to go…not that I would ever want to go there…but tell a man he can’t do something, and it becomes the first thing he wants to do.
But, once again, I digress. I’ll just end by saying that the last thing you ever want to do is work for this company. They’re heinous.

P.S. In this week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon us, what the fuck is up with The Ultimate Warrior? He was a boyhood idol of mine. I was so proud the day I saw him pin Macho Man Randy Savage in the cage of…whatever. But I just found out from one of my esteemed colleagues that he’s one jack-boot shy of being a Nazi. Apparently the guy likes to make fun of Middle-Easterners and gays. Okay, I know a lot of people like that, but none of them are big enough assholes to do it in public where people are listening (of course, just how many people were listening? It couldn’t have been that many). The Ultimate Wanker is now suing a website for making these accusations. What’ll they think of next? I suppose they’ll have a Republican/pornographic website star with White House press credentials, and no conscience.

Lessons From Our Ancestors

2005-04-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

In early November of last year, a popular British newspaper asked how fifty million Americans could be so stupid. I couldn’t help but admire the way in which the paper was able to put forth such a condescending question. There really is nothing like British elitism. I’ve been asking the same thing for four years now. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.
It’s easy to dislike the English. They sit over there on their little island, looking down on the rest of the world with their tea, and their marmalade, and their superior linguistic skills. Their women are as ugly as their men, and they don’t like visiting the dentist. They’re like Canada, but with more balls. Calling Americans stupid seems to be very indicative of the stereotypical English mind. We may have the power, but we’ll always be those immature little punks who are trying to get back at the world for being rejected from Europe four hundred years ago.
The paper was referring, of course, to the recent reelection of George W. Bush. The British weren’t the only people wondering how such a thing was possible. All around the world, jaws were slackened at the sight of the world’s most powerful nation displaying such immense incompetence. But the British shouldn’t be so quick to judge. The latest edition of the London Review of Books contains an article where critic John Lanchester bemoans the imminent reelection of Tony Blair.
The situation with the Labour party in England is fascinating, because there is a close resemblance to the Republican Party in the United States. The main difference is that Labour is the most powerful liberal party in the country. Tony Blair has been in office for five years now, and there is little similarity between his politics now, and what he campaigned on when the Labour party originally took power from the Tories. He was a progressive liberal if ever there was one, and people couldn’t have been happier when he won. But that was so long ago. Since then, Blair has made moves to the right that would make Gordon Smith blush. He’s proposed a series of moves that would put many of the social programs in effect today into the hands of the private sector (sound like someone we know?). His staunch support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq two years ago was also a surprise to the loyal public who knew as much as anyone how damaging a move like this could be.
Blair is obviously not the most principled liberal in the world, but he’s one of the smartest politicians England is likely to see for a long time. Backing Bush has won him few friends in Britain, but it doesn’t seem to be making any difference. I’m fairly certain that Blair holds as much resentment for Bush as any Democrat in the country. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when those two met. Blair’s eloquence and intelligence having to take a back seat to a trigger-happy redneck with a true appreciation of disengagement would be a tough needle to thread for a man who’s obviously used to getting his way. But as I said before, Blair’s a smart politician, and he knows that you sometimes have to hold hands with the devil to be led to the promised land.
In the absence of true leadership, people will follow the next best thing. I’m not sure who originally said that, but it seems to be a universal truth, if not the only truth. How many of you voted for John Kerry? How many voted against George Bush? Me too. Britain is unique in that it doesn’t have a strict two party system. The many political parties in England that may not have as much power as the Tories and Labour still have some power. One would be a fool to compare them to Libertarians, Greens, or the Nazi Party. Perhaps England’s best hope is that they’ll follow the progressive line to the next liberal party, whilst the Tories shrink from existence. I’m not sure that’ll happen, but one has to like their chances better than ours.
But this all has to be shocking to an American Democrat. We’ve seen ourselves as the virtuous party for a long time now, and little has happened that would to debunk the sentiment. Our last President was pretty much martyred as a Democrat wanting to do the right thing, and it was that, and not his predilection for kinky sex with a cigar, that ruined him. Republicans of the nineties, and today, are demonized as cruel, evil assholes who believe in upholding the law, so long as they don’t have to abide by it themselves. But only demons can be justly demonized, and no one has more demons in their closet than the Republicans. We Democrats tell ourselves today that we may be weak pushovers with little or no influence in the country we used to rule as a vast plurality, but we’re good people, and in the end, we do the right thing. Seeing another liberal party go the way of the elephant may be demoralizing. Many of us will say that we’re not like those pansy-ass fancy boys who’ve pushed aristocratic tendencies so deep into the national psyche that all who grow from that soil will be infected throughout the rest of the nations sordid time spent on earth. But I would argue to those people not to be too snooty about it. After all, we don’t want to be like them, do we?
Lyndon Johnson is probably the closest Democrat we’ve had that resembles Blair. He turned on the war in Vietnam after a legendary career in the Senate, and a shaky time while playing second mate to the Party’s most popular Democrat ever. Johnson was elected once because of his association with Kennedy, and his opposition to the war. But when he flipped on the war, he gave both of those luxuries up, and the party would never forgive him. I thought for the longest time that he was a Republican because of the way that people spoke of him with such contempt.
But Blair, so far, hasn’t had to suffer the same fate. He’s holding strong with his base, and nobody’s going to be able to oust him this time. Rumors circulated last summer that Blair wouldn’t even be running for reelection. All the major papers covered what was thought to be his final year at 10 Downing Street with gusto and great interest. But Blair was quick to deny any rumors of the sort, and what was once a promising possibility a year ago has now vanished, and once again, people are feeling themselves to be without a true leader.The point I’ve been trying to make this whole time is that those fucking pointy-eared snobs across the pond shouldn’t be too quick to point fingers. We may rule the world right now, but they still look at us with contempt. We’re like the son who’s trying to get his alcoholic father to like him, while the father tries his best to hate the son even though the two have more in common than either would care to admit. We weren’t able to learn our lesson last year. But it doesn’t look like our older and much more mature counterpart will either. As the voice of the people, I would be careful to judge the mighty British empire, but I think a little nose thumbing isn’t out of line. Adios.

A Great Man Questions His Self Worth

2005-04-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

"Why are all our heroes so imperfect?"
-?

I had a nervous breakdown last night. I tried to fly too close to the sun on wings of wax, and the following is a cautionary tale to all who attempt the same. I am not proud of what I wrote last night, but I think it's important for those you who so ardently follow my writings that you see just what can happen to even the best of men. I apologize to those of you who I let down, and I hope you can forgive me. I am a lot more sane right now, and I can see that what I wrote was pure crap. I was trying to achieve the heights that I had so many times before, and I failed miserably. I ended up lying in the fetal position in the corner of my bedroom, sweating and babbling to myself in Elvish. I didn't even know I knew Elvish.
Not all of this was written in order. I started off trying to explain my terrible state, but it just led to more pointless babbling and saber rattling. Anyways, enjoy:

I've been tired for the past two weeks now. I had to work a ten-hour shift at The Firm to cover people who don't want to show up when they're supposed to. The weather had been shit with the exception of the past few hours, and I spent four hours last night in a class with a bunch of spoiled little shits who were less interested in learning what we were supposed to be learning, and more interested in bitching about the fucking length of the class. The professor is okay, but it feels like she's just trying to fill time, and while I applaud her passion for her job, the redundancy of going over what we had already read as if we'd never heard of the word "psychology" isn't good for anyone. Today was a terrible day of work. We're short-handed, short tempered, and short sighted (I just needed a third short thing to make the sentence flow better). But I was determined to write an installment today, being that it is my duty as the voice of the people. Unfortunately, what spilled forth was a page of the vilest shit one could hope for. Note the cunning lyricism that ensues when a genius such as myself is unleashes his potential on the world. Express awe at the grand manner with which I dispel so many titillating tidbits of information (Being that you can't read the tone of my voice, I'll tell you right now I was being sarcastic). I am personally ashamed to be myself today.
So read ahead, if you've got some time to kill, along with some extra brain cells that are getting in the way of dessert. I've decided to bless you people with three installments a week, and I assure you this is going to be the worst one you'll ever have to read. I wouldn't even bother if I were you, but I wrote the fucking thing, so I may as well post it. I apologize before hand for the time you'll never get back. Buona sera.

I have been accused on more than one occasion for being a "Negative Ned." Some people find my comments to be cynical and fueled by a deeper anger at life in general, a side condition that tends to come with never getting the girl. Well, this entry is dedicated to all of you. I've spent the past two weeks talking about whatever topic made me fume, and I'd like to say now that I'm not completely negative when it comes to my areas of interest. I'd like to think I'm actually a pretty optimistic person, and it's the system that has let me down. If that doesn't satisfy you, then fuck off motherfuckers, I never wanted your advice anyway. Being the representative of a generation isn't easy work, but someone has to do it. I was given natural ability, and a voice to pass on my many years of wisdom to those who don't contain the foresight that has made me the voice of the people. So lets move on, my friends. I will try to be a little more positive from now on, but if I'm not, you can just lick my balls.

But in keeping with this newfound spirit of optimism, I would like to focus on some of the more promising things that have happened in the past couple of days. President Bush's approval ratings have hit an all-time low, according to the most recent Gallup Polls. Last week's poll had his ratings at an all time low of 45%, and while those numbers have risen in the past couple of days, they are still even with his disapproval ratings, and there isn't much happening right now that's going to change it. According to The New York Times, the president doesn't share the values of the country. While Bush is trying to push his social security plan forward, the vast majority of the population disagrees with what he wants to do with social security. 67% of people polled feel that the economy is in a poor condition, and 59% feel the same way about the state of the country.
I was really worried when I heard about this new plan to "fix" social security. Bush has been talking about it since before he was elected in 2000, but I never thought the bastard would be crazy enough to try it. His "mandate" that he was awarded after his "victory" last fall has given him a "big" head, which has "caused" him to bite off more than he could chew. I'm what people in the history department call an "old-lighter." I'm one of the last few unfortunate people desperately clinging to the idea that social programs like social security, and welfare are a good idea. I don't know enough about FDR to speak intelligently (at least compared to how incredibly ingenious I usually sound), but he seemed like a good man, wheel chair or not. And I don't see why getting rid of one of the few successful social programs, along with the sentiment it introduced to a cynical world, is such a good idea. Old-lighters like me are a dying breed, and our voices are dying along with us. But it looks as though there's hope after all. Of course, the President doesn't "listen" to the people who he considers to be nothing more than a "focus group." It's not like we elected the guy to do what's best for us.
We now turn to the blooper reel where we find that someone in Washington severely fucked up. Republican Senator Mel Martinez from Florida was caught with his hand in the cookie jar a couple of days ago when a memo of his was leaked to the public. The memo outlined ways that a politician could benefit by politicizing the Terri Shiavo debacle. Martinez claims that he knew nothing about the piece of paper, that it was written by an aide against his strongest wishes, and that he'd find out which aide it was, have him/her taken out back where the New Jersey delegation will kick the shit out of him/her, Teamster-style. Oh, how I miss the good old days. Martinez claims that the memo ended up in his hands without him even knowing it, and that he had no intention of using it in any way. You have to love it when a U.S. Senator's excuse is one step above the old "I'm just holding this cigarette for a friend" routine. Martinez was about as shocked as Lt. Renoir was when he learned that there was gambling going on a Rick's.
While I've been enjoying this story throughout the day, the sad part is that there is very little surprise expressed both in the media, and in congress, over this occasion. Actually, I'm not that surprised. It's not like we had a lot of faith in these people before.
Finally, our good friend Tom Delay is back in the news. Apparently, he is appalled at the witch-hunt going on within The New York Times regarding his shaky financial records. It seems that Delay was caught having taken illegal money once again from a political action committee, and now he's doing what all Publicans do best, playing defense with offense. He is absolutely disgusted with the way the papers have handled this story, which is obviously nothing more than a ruse to weaken the GOP. Every Jew Congressman Democrat has apparently done Delay harm by not coming to his aid, and exposing this terrible smear campaign for what it is. After all, doesn't everybody do it?
This was all happy news to me. It is likely that nothing will come from any of it, and the direction in which we are heading will likely stay its course. But if you can't laugh at life every once in a while, what's the point of going on. At least that's what my shrink tells me.

Disclaimer: On a less sincere note, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all of you who feel I'm focusing too much on politics. I thought about writing another memorandum telling you to kiss my ass, but it wouldn't do any good. My fragile ego isn't able to stand up to this kind of barrage, and I'm considering packing it all in. Okay, maybe not, but if anyone has a problem with what I'm saying, I'd like to let it be known from here forth that all criticism will be taken with the most of concern. I will not blow up at anyone, or chew anyone's head off. Someone criticized my baseball installment last week, and I threw a Molotov cocktail through his window. This was a terrible thing to do, and I'd like to apologize for my horrific actions. I knew you were speaking out of fear and ignorance, and that I shouldn't be listening to what you say.
As for the politics thing, I do it because it's fun and those of you who don't like it can eat shit. I talk about what I want to talk about and you'll listen goddamnit, because it's in your best interest to do what I say. Why don't you trust me? It sounds to me like you're the one who is being selfish. Politics is about as real as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but we pay attention to them because they keep us interested, and shift the focus from the fact that our lives are all heading to hell in a handbag, and there isn't a fucking thing we can do about it. I like talking about this shit, and while it doesn't mean a goddamned thing in the end, I'm going to fucking do it anyways, and you will like it. You got a problem with that shithead? I didn't fucking think so (I'm back, baby).

P.S. But seriously, I'm having an off day, and I will return to you next week with all new tales of interest and insight. If you want to do yourself a favor, forget that you ever read this, and thank God you're not dead right now. I honestly don't know what the hell I'm doing anymore. Maybe I should just stick with being negative.

P.P.S. I'm thinking about getting a fish. Any advice?

Mighty Casey Has Struck Out

2005-04-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

”If you’re a fan, you’re a fan, and you’re willing to overlook and forgive all the other nonsense.”
-Steve Greenberg

Only a really desperate asshole would make a comment like that. But Greenberg, the Deputy Commissioner of Major League Baseball is running out of options. This defensive comment was made in regard to the fact that baseball is under the microscope in Washington right now. He wants people to know that the only way to be a true fan of the game is to not ask questions, and just move on. Steroid use, after all, isn’t that big of a deal.
I’m not a big baseball fan. I grew up watching the Athletics, and when they started to suck, I followed the Blue Jays. After they won their two World Series’, I shifted my focus to the promising Yankees, who would go on to do me proud by winning the World Series more than a couple of times. I am that most despised of creature when it comes to professional sports, a front-runner. I was never proud of this fact, but I’ve been able to limit my spineless tendencies to just baseball. I stopped caring about baseball when I realized that the Yankees were obviously buying their championships, but even I was offended by Greenberg’s comment.
Greenberg is going with the Bush strategy of bullying people into liking baseball. Either he’s adopted Karl Rove’s strategy, or he’s beefing up his resume in an effort to get a job with the “Jeb Bush for President, 2008” campaign. This quote is the equivalent to a man beating the shit out of his wife and then saying, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t focus on the fact that I just sent you to the hospital, but rather on the flowers that I bought you on our first date fifteen years ago.” But, Greenberg won’t be anymore successful than the 95% of baseball organizations who have failed to turn a profit in over five years. Major League Baseball has cashed its check.
There is very little legal consequence to these baseball hearings. The hearings have started on more than one occasion with a committee member kissing the ass of the players on the record. They all start by saying, “First of all, I’d like to say that I and my son are big fans. Little Joey has grown up watching you….” They claim to be true fans of the game, and maybe they are. But only scum sucking swine would suck up to some spoiled athletes, while accusing them of ruining a game that is supposed to symbolize all that makes America great. We are dealing with the senate, after all.
No one is going to jail, and no one is going to lose the remainder of their career, along with the millions of dollars they’ll make, playing a game for a living. If congress weren’t a total joke, things may be different, but I’m laughing my ass off when I look at Capital Hill. The real problem, as is always with athletes, is in the public relations realm. It doesn’t help that the average baseball game lasts over four and a half hours (up over two hours from its inception), now the landmark events that we wait so patiently to see have turned out to be a sham. McGuire didn’t hit 70 homeruns, steroids did (I am, for the purposes of this paper, and common sense, declaring guilt). Bonds isn’t going to break Aaron’s record, the cream that he rubs all over himself will (with his injuries, and financial troubles, he may not reach that goal saving the lives of anyone hoping to profit off of baseball in the coming years). I’ll never watch a race between two titans like McGuire and Sosa again without wondering which one of them is willing to risk their hairline more to achieve greatness. I could probably hit a homer today off the weak ass pitching without that shit anyway. Defense is unimportant these days.

But the bigger P.R. problem is that these people aren’t who we thought they were. Actually, Bonds was always kind of a dick, but McGuire had this squeaky clean Christian image that did so much for him. I was a Bash-Brothers fan like anyone else on the west coast in the 1980s; and just like me, I’m sure nobody had a problem noticing that he’d ballooned about five sizes since that time. He was a completely different person. Seeing Mark these days is like seeing a man who has just made employee of the month, but had to suck every dick, kiss every ass, and alienate every friend just to get it. The victory just doesn’t matter for him now. I guarantee you he’s praying that he’ll never have to endure an induction ceremony into the hall of fame. The guilt will kill him before the drugs do.
As for Barry, I don’t know whether to kick his ass or shake his hand. He’s the biggest dick there is in professional sports, and you’re talking to someone who lives in the same city as the Trailblazers. Bonds is so bad for baseball that Bud Selig and our friend Greenberg are both praying he’ll never beat Aaron’s record. Aaron wasn’t a saint, but he was a good man, and no one could argue that he didn’t deserve what he got. But Bonds is the worst kind of spokesperson for a sport that is struggling with image problems. He’s rude to the press; he alienates himself both emotionally and physically from his teammates, and he’s being investigated for cheating on his taxes. This guy is a world-class prick. Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan are known to be total assholes when it comes down to business. But these are two geniuses at the peak of their medium who simply have to have it their way. They want it their way because they know their way is right, and they’re correct most of the time.
I wish I could say the same for Bonds, but tax evasion doesn’t fall within the scope of artistic genius. But, I like that he’s a total dick. It’s not like he’s the first. There aren’t that many athletes unlike him. But he doesn’t even try to hide it. We don’t see Bonds doing commercials in an effort to raise money for homeless babies with diseases. He doesn’t give a fuck, and he really doesn’t care who knows that. He’s looking out for number one, and while I think it’s pretty disgusting, at least it’s honest.

Like all other things, this kind of childish, petty behavior has existed for over a century in baseball. Those longing for the good old days are referring to a time when we didn’t have the kind of media coverage we have now; where every little aspect of a player’s life is known. Mantle used to drink a pint of bourbon, fuck a stripper, and bet on the ponies all during the seventh inning stretch. He’d get his drugs from Dick Shapp, and shoot up with anyone from either team who was willing to throw in on the bag.
The reason we have an American, and National league these days stems from the conflict of the early nineteen hundreds when baseball players protested the minor wages they were earning (their wages were nowhere near the comparatively silly amounts of money paid to ballplayers today, but it was still a hell of a lot for a game). “Wee” Willy Keeler and “Mean” John McGraw were both the victims and the instigators of this petulant arguing between the players and the brass. Keeler was the last person in baseball who would have played for free if he had to, and McGraw was the meanest asshole in the world. Together, the Baltimore Orioles dominated baseball through the late nineteenth, and early twentieth century. But, as a result of the strike, Keeler was forced to retire and die broke and alone in his Brooklyn home where he was born. McGraw switched sides, managing the N.Y. Giants in what would become known as his grumpy years. He taught his players how to slide with their cleats up, crushing whatever balls a second-baseman had dared to grow. He encouraged his pitchers to throw at the batter if he gave them any shit. He ran a training camp that Navy Seals would be scared about. He made Ty Cobb look like Mr. Rodgers; he was to Major League Baseball what LBJ was to the Senate; a borderline psychotic dictator with sociopath-type tendencies who always got the job done.
One would think that we could learn a lot from these two people. Both Keeler and McGraw had a true love for the game, and it showed every night in the way they played. Steroids obviously didn’t exist in those days (I don’t think), but just a hint of that shit in the Baltimore dugout would have led to immediate castration by Keeler for the pusher, shortly before McGraw would stomp the shit out of him like a Klansman at a Civil Rights rally. Eventually, even those two gave in to greed. They voted to strike right along with the others, but they would have never tolerated the junk.
Whether things have gotten better or worse today is insignificant. The more concerning issue is that most people don’t care anymore. W.P. Kinsella writes novels about baseball with a Gabbie Marquez-like sense of magical realism. His fluid prose added a feeling of mystique and beauty to a game with no boundaries and mythical history. Today, those stories are all that remain, and the pro-business, fuck everyone attitude perpetuated through generations has finally reached the end of its rope. Baseball is now like that broken down crack-whore we all know (maybe too well); she may have been a great piece of ass in her day, but the greed and addiction has made her look ragged, and ugly. There’s nothing more hideous right now than the state baseball is in.

A Quick Correction...

2005-04-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

One of my many faithful readers took it upon himself to correct an error from one of last week's installments. The school shooting that took the lives of ten students happened on a reservation in Minnesota, not Montana (by the way, you misspelled Minnesota, how you like them apples, bitch). This silly bastard is obviously too stupid to realize that I did it for a reason. I don't make mistakes, I use subtle metaphors. If you can't understand them, I can't waste my time explaining them to you. But thanks anyway...I guess.

We Need A Twenty-Fifth Commandment

2005-04-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

I have a very ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach tonight. It’s the result of something that I’ve never had to experience in my life, but the dangers of what’s happened over the weekend are daunting to say the least.
News outlets around the world have been covering the long anticipated death of Pope John Paul II over the past few days. I’ve learned more about him from watching ten minutes of CNBC than I had for the twenty-five years during his reign. Numerous stories on the life of the Pope, his triumphs and tribulations have clogged the airways all weekend, and it seems that little else has happened in the world.
With this I am forced to ask: Am I the only one who is uncomfortable living in a world without a Pope on the throne? I know it’s important that we give some time before holding the next elections to reflect on the previous Pope’s work, but without a moral leader, how are we going to maintain order in society? I have a terrible feeling that sodomy and murder are going to rise dramatically until we can fill the vacant seat. Everyone knows you don’t want to have an empty throne in this situation. Even the U.S. Constitution allows for an immediate succession should something happen to the President. People need to know that someone is in charge, ready to kick ass should the shit hit the fan. But there isn’t even a presumptive replacement in line for the papacy. It sounds like we’re going to have another messy election full of mud slinging, stories of kinky sex, push polling, opposition research, shaky financial ethics and one Cardinal who blows his load every time he gets excited. People are extremely panicky, and the Vatican isn’t safe without God’s own Power Ranger to kick some ass should some degenerate sinner show up at the gates demanding to use the john. Am I the only one who’s worrying about this? Yes? Okay…fine.
But the fact is that the world doesn’t stop rotating when the Pope dies. He is, after all, only human. Iraqi insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib yesterday. Eighteen American troops and twelve prisoners were injured in the attack that included both car bombs, and gunfire. Death in Iraq is now becoming a daily event, and it seems that we are sinking deeper and deeper into a situation that we can’t get out of, and one is reminded of our “police action” in Vietnam. The “V” word isn’t something that politicians will ever use. It’s a black mark on our otherwise unblemished history, something that we can’t yet get past. As well we shouldn’t. Many of the geniuses who got us into that mess are still around and in power this very day. They don’t seem to be learning from their mistakes, and while hindsight is always 20/20, I find it hard to believe that no one foresaw this eventuality. Most people don’t think that there’s going to be a draft, myself being one of those people, but when we’re sending National Guardsmen across the Atlantic to “fight the good fight,” one has to ask who’s minding the shop. Thank God we have a wartime President right now. Otherwise, we may all be fucked.
But this is an old song and dance, and I don’t want to bore my loyal followers with what they already know. Besides, it was an eventful weekend, the news wasn’t completely negative, and it didn’t all deal with death. The Washington Post is reporting that Connecticut is very close to recognizing gay civil unions. I like to pick an issue each election, and get really pissed off about it. Gay marriage was my last one. Being the voice of the people, I am forced to push for an egalitarian society. I can’t stomach this shit, and I really want to beat the crap out of a xenephobic shit-brain right now. You have to admire a group that refuses to let anyone tell them what they do and don’t have a right to. After numerous crushing defeats throughout the country, the gay community is getting off the mat, and saying, “Is that all you got, bitch? If I wanted a kiss, I would have gone to your mother.” A lesser group of people would have crumbled under the pressure by now, but not these guys. Keep up the good work boys and girls.
Now that I’ve done the P.C. thing, I think it’s time that I mention one more thing that I’m very concerned about. Trent Lott is back, and it looks like he’s found some new enemies within his own team. President Bush has decided to step up to Lott, and let him know who’s the boss when it comes to funding military bases. I don’t know the details of the story, mainly because I don’t care, which means you don’t either. But if you really want to hurt my feelings The Washington Post as well as other papers give a slightly more detailed account of the story than what I just told you. My problem here is that this ignorant shit-kicker is back. When he made his comments about Strom Thurmond, I thought that was it. But, apparently I was wrong. If being a Klansman these days doesn’t lose you an election, what does? This jerk-off is living in the early nineteenth century, and we want him running the country? What the fuck is wrong with us? Remember when politicians use to be honorable and trustworthy? You knew where they stood, and you could count on them always giving a straight answer. Remember when they devoted their lives to serving the people? Each day they’d wake up, just itching to make the world a better place. Do you remember that? No? You know why? BECAUSE IT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED! I’m going now, ciao.

The Cost Of The First Amendment

2005-04-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

“It’s not often that you get to be affectionate towards something that's German.”
-Larry David

I was doing some research earlier today for a class on interest groups. I was online when I found a listing of all official political parties in the United States. I couldn’t believe how many there were. There were the usual ones that we all see when we’re voting for one of the two parties that actually matter. There was the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Right to Life Party, and the Constitution Party. But then I started seeing parties that I didn’t even know existed. Much to my surprise, there’s still a Prohibition Party. They support strong family values, effective government (go figure) and clean living.
This, of course, is in stark contrast to the Legalize It Society who promotes living in a haze of drugs, and not washing your hair, or any other part of your body for that matter. But I couldn’t believe that a law stricken down over seventy years ago could still have a party representing that idea. But perhaps they support prohibition of all stimulants and depressives. Maybe they want to outlaw alcohol, tobacco, coffee, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and anything else that tastes or feels good (the same probably goes for sex as well). I also have to wonder how demoralizing it would be for members of this party who haven’t had a clear victory since the Hoover Administration. At what point do you just give up, move to Utah and live with the only other people on earth who adhere to your values? Maybe they’re sticking around to see what happens in the next seventy years.
There were all kinds of parties that made me laugh, but the one that made me cry was the Nazi Party. Yes, we have a registered Nazi Party, and they’re allowed to run for elected office. I was shocked when I first saw it, but then I thought it could have just been a misspelling. After all, maybe they meant the Yazi Party, who we all know and hold with high regard. But I had to find out for sure.
Running the risk of having a Webmaster at The Firm stumble upon my visited sites, something that would almost certain doom to my very impressive career as an Administrative Services Clerk, I once again felt the call of duty, and pressed on the link. It was, in fact, the National Nazi Party of these United States. But I wonder why we never see them running for elected office. Maybe they only run where they think they may have a sliver of a chance of winning, like Alabama, or Medford. I could only imagine what would happen to some poor, bald-headed freak who’s been deprived of sunlight for years, and now wants to tell us that Blacks and Jews are running the world and it has to be stopped. I think he would be tied to the back of an SUV and dragged down west Broadway while the liberal socialites are coming out of their Portland Arts and Lectures Series night. People would cheer, spit on the quickly evaporating corpse, and then drive back up into the hills where they can look down on everyone again (hypocrisy? I don’t think so).
The website was about what one would expect from a bunch of ignorant shit kicking, sister-raping douche bags. They try to grab the reader by giving a frightening hypothetical scenario of a sweet, young, virginal girl going on her way to deliver toys to homeless children with diseases when she’s suddenly harassed by some dark-skinned man coming from the shadows of whatever alley he just shot up heroin in. He won’t leave the girl alone and there’s nothing she can do, because this guy’s obviously insane. I know I was hooked. I went out and registered with the Nazi party. I got a black t-shirt in the mail along with some black jeans, black steel-toed boots, and a Bic razor. Mein Kampf is on its way from Amazon, and I can’t wait to read it. Actually, I’m semi-illiterate, so I probably won’t read the whole thing. I’ll just find some punchy quote to repeat every time I kick the shit out of a queer, and rape his girlfriend. Then I’m going to go fuck a twelve year old and slaughter a family of kittens. OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!
I must apologize for my recent outburst. I lost my temper there, and that should never happen with a person who has as much responsibility as I do. I really am sorry. But, while we’re on the subject, what’s up with Bush not saying anything about this shooting in Montana? He took the time to go to Florida because one woman was slowly dying, but ten Native Americans are slaughtered, and he’s nowhere to be found. What the fuck? Is he really so blatantly blinded by politics, that he can’t even see when he’s being an asshole anymore? I think we should talk about Bush’s tendencies towards racism another time. I just felt I had an obligation to mention all of this, being that I am the voice of the people. Who else is going to do it?

A Terrible Confession...

2005-03-31T12:37:00.000-08:00

I’m not wild about Indian food. It’s no big deal; it's just not my kind of thing. I know it’s supposed to be very trendy, the Chinese food of the 21st century, so to speak. And I’m sure there will soon be shops on every corner delivering cheap, microwaved curry for a few bucks a pop. The same people who deliver Chinese food will deliver it, and going out for a curry will soon be as common as going out for pizza. After some time, American’s will make their own versions of traditional Indian dishes, just as we have with many previous international dishes. They’ll be somewhat similar, but more suited to our blander taste buds.
But I just don’t see the appeal. I’m not xenophobic, and I assure you it has nothing to do with the country itself. I’ve heard that India has terrible weather, but I’m sure there are some nice parts as well. George Harrison loved the place, and he was a Beatle for cryin’ out loud. He'd sit around with Ravi Shankaar, strummin' his guitar, drinking tea while floating down the river. Sounds like a good time to me. I haven’t met a lot of Indian people, but I’m sure they’re pleasant enough. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever met was from India. She was actually from England, but her parents were from India, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter where she was born. I figure that any one nation willing to produce such a beautiful skin tone can’t be bad. How do they do that, by the way? Maybe the secret’s in the curry.
But as I’ve said before, I can’t stand the food, and my fear of a boring night in with my friends yielding the suggestion of a night at an Indian restaurant is well founded. They are Foodies after all.

While we’re on the subject, I feel it is my duty as a voice of the people to comment on the recent arms deal made with Pakistan as a reward for their government’s coming down hard on terrorism. I’ll admit that the majority of my knowledge regarding India/Pakistan comes from The West Wing episode with Roger Reese, but I think that anyone within the privileged circle of geniuses to which I belong can agree that this is both dangerous, and stupid. What I do know about these two countries is that they have a passionate hatred for each other going back hundreds of years, and the grudge that these two nations foster is way beyond anything Americans can comprehend. Aside from the fact that we just pissed off India, Pakistan now has more weapons, including brand new fighter jets, not the kind of thing you want a country with an itchy trigger finger to have. But I could be wrong. I do-as I’ve said before-have limited experience with this kind of thing, so maybe I should step out of the ring, and leave it up to the big boys to figure out. I have more pressing concerns anyway; The Surreal Life is starting.

Hurricane Jesus

2005-03-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

"It's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred."
-Bob Dylan

Today, we had what my friends across the pond call "unstable" weather. It was sunny at eight, raining at 9, hailing at 11, and sunny again at noon. The weather remained unstable all day, and it soon became very annoying. But it's nowhere nearly as bad as the shite weather they have in England.
It takes a certain state of mind to survive the ugly summers in the U.K. The temperature can shift twenty degrees in less than an hour, and thunderstorms can cover what was blue sky only 30 minutes prior. No one goes to England for the weather. The beaches (if that's what you want to call them) are just as bad. Vacationers have to hit the mainland if they're looking for anything in the vicinity of a tan. But it's the feeling of helplessness that has the most damaging effect on the British mind. One is forced to face the fact they have no control over their lives, and it's just when you think you have a grip on things that everything goes out of control, and a sunny Florida day turns into an ominous pre-hurricane storm that pounds rain on the poor bastards too stupid to bring an umbrella.
The wind is the one constant regarding the meteorological aspects of London. You can count on it never going away. It's worst along the Thames, but any road you may happen to venture upon could be a natural wind tunnel thrusting air through the city. It's pretty hard to light a cigarette in London.

But, we should return to discussing the important matters. Speaking of Florida, our eyes are once again focused on the state that just can't seem to get it right. Gov. Jeb Bush just can't seem to keep his people under control. Poor Mrs. Shiavo is dying a slow death, and there's not much that can be done for her. I always wondered if she had any idea that her situation was causing so much fuss. She'll probably be Time's Person of the Year (perhaps a bit of a stretch, but those people have made some odd decisions in the past), and she's been in a vegetative state for more than a decade.
The Shiavo debate is a hot issue right now, which should come as no surprise to anyone who can read. Jesus made the cover of last weeks Newsweek, and Mel Gibson finally let his supporters talk him into releasing a censored version of "Passion of the Christ," a fictional film of an alleged incident being treated with documentary-like criticism. Yes, it's true. Jesus is the new superstar today. He's taken over that highly regarded pedestal once occupied by Justin Timberlake, Shai, or whatever the kids are listening to these days. Shiavo has unwittingly opened an opportunity for those greedy freaks on the fringes of the right wing to win in another big-dick contest with the inept left-wingers.
And why shouldn't they win? It certainly isn't a fair fight. The conservatives are using the impending death of this poor woman to accuse all of us who listen to science as being sinners, and degenerate, masochistic sleaze. They're probably right in half the cases, but not all of us think that way. The problem for the Democrats is that they can't say anything for fear of sounding insensitive to the woman's plight. Supporting the death of a brain-damaged woman never played well in a polling situation; not even in Texas where they kill for shoplifting, but never brag about it.
But the Shiavo issue has proven to be a touchy subject for both sides of the political spectrum. In an effort to divert attention from his legal troubles, Tom DeLay stepped in to force the courts to restore Shiavo's feeding tube. He intended to arrive in Florida as a ball-bustin', hard-ass who can get things done. He was going to kick some ass and take some names. The tom-meister was going to throw down. But it didn't really work out that way.
Instead, Tom came off like that guy who works in everyone's office. You know the guy, he has some bullshit title that technically puts him as a higher rank than you, but he doesn't have nor deserve respect from his underlings, people treat him like shit, as well as ignore every order he gives. Tom is on his way back to Washington, hat in hand, where he'll have to face the music. I'd like to think it was all over for DeLay, but Jesus is running our courts right now, and Tom's on the winning side.
Jesse Jackson is now answering a higher call, stepping in DeLay's failed position and hoping to make a difference. And if there's anyone who can make a difference, it's The Reverend. Look at all the progress he made in Florida during the 2000 election. The Publicans sent down 5,000 screaming lawyers with no wives or consciouses, and the Democrats send Rev. Jackson. I'm sure The Reverend is a good man, but he's going to have to accept his inetptitude, and move on. Perhaps he should find a nice small church in a city where there are no formal politics, and spend the rest of his days doing what he does best, being a messenger for God. But that's not where the money is, and it's unlikely that it will happen anytime soon.
As for me, I honestly couldn't care less about this whole thing. The only purpose this whole spectacle serves is to show us what a bunch of morbid freaks we are. We are literally counting down days to a hapless woman's imminent death. All sides in Washington should feel ashamed of themselves. In a week, this will all be over, and the press will be looking for the next millionaire televangelist who likes to rape both kittens and nuns with diseases, so they can beat that to death. And I thought O.J. was bad. Just wait until the next bit of news hits. I'm pretty sure that after that, we'll all be going to hell.

Michael Jackson Wouldn't Like It Here

2005-03-27T20:11:00.000-08:00

SHIT! I just wrote ten of the most eloquent pages of prose, and the fucking computer erased it. I'm not kidding. This was Hemingway and Dickens combined, with a touch of Clinton. We would all be twice as smart for having read it. But now it's gone, and will never be reproduced. Piece of shit Blog! I don't want to spend another hour writing what I said before, and I probably couldn't remember it all anyways, so I'll just summarize.
Mayor Tom Potter made his national debut last week when he gave a quote to The New York Times regarding an article about the lack of juvenile growth in many healthy urban cities like Portland. Potter gave a bullshit quote about his commitment to raising the amount of children in the city. The children, after all are our future. Potter's quote was perfectly benign, just what you'd expect from a perfectly benign mayor. I was very hesitant to vote for him, and now the more I hear about him, the more I regret having done it in the first place.
I was fortunate enough to see Potter and Jim Francesconi in a debate on the environment along with City Council candidates Nick Fish and Sam Adams. I had just returned from England, and was out of touch regarding local politics (mainly because I didn't care). A friend filled me in on what was happening. Francesconi crossed the line and tried to buy the election, spending over $1 million on his campaign. As one might expect, such a trick only works on a national level. The backlash threw Francesconi so far behind Potter in the polls, he could barely see the old man's leisure suit. The election was now Potter's to win or lose, and winning wouldn't be too difficult, all he had to do was say nothing.
And say nothing he did. The only person, in fact, to say anything interesting was Francesconi, who stuck by his guns. In an environmentally-minded city during a debate on the environment, Francesconi was willing to say what he believed, rather than what people wanted to hear. He was acting as how Potter was trying to portray himself; the straightforward candidate unwilling to sacrifice truth in the interest of politics. But in a small city such as ours, buying election is a capital offense for which there is no pardon. Potter and the others told the audience exactly what they wanted to hear, never even thinking about saying something that would ruin their chances for victory (the Adams/Fish race was very close). Potter said little of value all night, but rather opted to sit on stage like a grandfather at little Cindy's dance recital; not knowing why he's there, and not really caring.
Francesconi also showed up fifteen minutes late to the debate, a crime for which the audience would hold him in contempt for the rest of the evening. Every time he said something unpopular, a wave of sighs came from the crowd. He tried to explain his position, and how it may economically effect the city, but the unruly mob wouldn't hear of it. He had to push molasses up a hill, and nobody wanted him to even bother. Francesconi lost the debate, but he did what everyone begs politicians to do, even though they obviously can't handle it: he was honest.
I'm still not sure why I voted for Potter on election day. I knew he was going to win, and nobody likes to be on the losing team (I would obviously know, I'm a Democrat). But I've been regretting it more and more. We could have elected an effective public official who may of played the rules of the big league, but also knew how to kick some ass downtown. Instead, we have Andy Griffith running our city. He may be the people's candidate, but right now, the people have shit for brains (remind you of any national elections?).
It could just be that I'm over reacting, though. The story was bullshit anyways. Of course there aren't any children in the Pearl District. This New York Times reporter has obviously never been there. It's no place to raise a child. Aside from the homeless (which are really very nice to children), there is nothing there but bars, coffee shops, expensive restaurants, and pretentious shoppes. The roads are narrow, the traffic is dense, and there isn't a lot in the way of parks in the area (yes, I know there are a couple, but they're surrounded by more busy streets), Yuppies and soulless assholes generally live there (not everyone, of course), and that's unfortunate because it's otherwise a great place. But it's no kind of place for a child.
We have plenty of livable areas all over the city, I'm not sure why the Pearl District is getting picked on. No one would be dumb enough to raise their child in Old Town either, but I don't hear anything being said about that. Anyways, how can someone want to raise their child in the city when all they hear about is school closings, and over crowded classrooms? Let's fix that problem first, Mr. Potter. You have to spend money to make money, and if we're too stupid to see that, then it's your fucking job to do it anyways, you're working for us after all.
But I've said too much. Education will have to be solved another time It is a discussion for serious men, and goddamnit, I'm just the man to steer the ship. One of these days, I'll devote a week to our largest problem, but I've overstayed my welcome for now. Until next time.
(This is actually about how much I wrote the first time, but the first one was much better. I feel like the metaphors play better when they're off the cuff and I just wasn't feelin' the rhythm the second time around. So just know that you've been short changed.)

Minor Setbacks

2005-03-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

I woke up in a bad mood this morning, and things only got worse from there. The fluorescent lighting in our office has been fucking with my eyes since I started working at The Firm (which is what I'm going to call it for anonymity's sake), and today was one of those days where it got the best of me. I started to get blurry vision in my left eye, and it wasn't long before I was forced to retire to The Firm's "quiet room" to sleep off a migraine. I vomited once and the headache went away, but the overall discomfort has long since overstayed its welcome.
Migraines are an evil thing, and they don't ever completely leave you alone. Even when you're not having one, every quick glance at a bright light serves as a cruel reminder that you're their bitch anytime they want. The post migraine period is always touchy. You're hesitant to look directly into light, drink anything citrus, or even eat anything at all. Sudden head shifts can cause sharp pains in the neck and behind the eyes, and the discomfort doesn't leave for at least a day. There is nothing that makes someone feel so helpless as the unannounced migraine.
This is my way of saying I feel like shit, and am unable to save the world today. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to make some time. But, until then, keep your ear to the grindstone.

One thing I can recommend is that you read a great editorial in The New York Times on how pathetic religious representation is in this country. This guy pretty much hits it right on the nose.

An Era Begins...

2005-03-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

I was at Scooter's one night having drinks with Porter, the bar's resident alcoholic/pervert. Somewhere between our fifth and sixth Jello shots, Porter had his most lucid moment in 25 years:
"David, you're comments are so interesting and witty, combined with an irresistible humor that I find to be engrossing. You should quit your job, write a book of modern philosophy and have it published. You could make millions, whilst making the world a better place."
"Nonsense," I replied. "Why would I want to ruin a perfectly successful career making boat-loads as an administrative services clerk [mailroom monkey] at one of the top law firms in the state? I'd be crazy to throw it all away."
I was right then, and I'm right now. But Porter's poignant comments got me thinking. His observation that I should publish the happenings of my everyday life was a brilliant idea. After all, who better to do such a thing than a man who has traveled the world and seen it all. My adventures in life equal that of Horatio Alger and John Muir. It would be a sin not to crack open one of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century to the world, so we can all gain from it.
And what better format to do it than in a web-log, the greatest invention of the new century? In the past two years, the web-log (or "Blog" to put it in layman's terms) has ushered in a new era of journalistic standards. No longer will these lazy reporters from such old-hatted rags as The New York Times, and The Washington Post be able to sit idly by; asleep at the wheel while those fat cats in Washington slip another needless law through our fingers. These crusty old farts will be held accountable for their actions, as the Blog generation brings us a new form of up to the minute, in your face journalistic standards. They shove messy facts aside, and giving us what really matters, information based on questionable sources with little time blown of fact-checking. We are, after all, in the information age and it's time to behave that way.
So take my hand as we boldly go forth in search of answers to the greater questions in life, test the limits of reason, and perhaps win the heart of one lucky lady. It won't be easy, and I don't expect those ignorant bastards on the Beltway to like what I have to say. But with the political insight that makes Alexis De Tocqueville look like Sean Hannity, and with cunning, razor sharp satire that makes Gallagher look like Carrot Top, we can live up to the promise those old crusty white men handed down to us so many years ago as a nation where all are free to pursue the common goal of a nation where Christians, Jews, Muslims and Scientologists are able to live together in peace. I feel a strong sense of duty as I write tonight, and I now know what Porter was able to figure out in his infinite wisdom on that storied night, I can save humanity.