Speaker's Corner West

Happy Birthday Uncle Sam's Miguided Children

2011-11-10T14:19:00.001-08:00

Semper fi'!

Tippecanoe and Tyler too!

2011-11-07T08:53:00.000-08:00

Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Isn't that fascinating?

"The world is my chew toy!"

2011-11-05T23:01:00.001-07:00

Who's next?

2011-11-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

First Matty Alou, now Andy Rooney.

These things happen in threes. Didja ever wonder who might be next? What famous figure will complete the triumverate?

The Alou Brothers were Felipe, Matty and Jesus in order of age. They were altogether large figures in my boyhood of being an obsessive San Francisco Giants fan. I was too young to see them all play in the outfield together in the same game, the only time it ever happened in major league baseball. I was too young to see Matty play for the Giants because they traded him to Pittsburgh after 1965, as they did Felipe to Atlanta, but we still had "Haysoosaloo" and the brothers were always Giants to us. As an eight year old I had no understanding of things like having too many players at one position, or the use of players as bargaining chips. All I knew was that it was so cool to have these three brothers who were all good, playing for my club. On top of which we had Mays, McCovey, and Marichal. (We won't be discussing the Dodgers pitching staff here, or what swine they were to continually do down the Giants) How COULD they trade those guys away. I remember a feeling of almost satisfaction when I saw Felipe play right field for Oakland in 1970 or '71. Then Matty appeared for the Athletics in 1972. It wasn't quite right, but OK. Things were made somewhat right again when Felipe was hired to manage the Giants.

In a larger sense, I had a feeling of gloom when I read about Matty Alou. It's been addressed many times by much better writers than me, but I feel my boyhood slipping away. It might be nonsense for a 53 year old man to think in these terms but there are times when I still feel like a boy. I guess I should be thankful for that, but the flip side is made up of moments like this when an icon of something that made you feel alive passes on. I thought of Matty and I had an immediate memory of the first time I stepped through the entrance to the stands from the concourse around the first level at Candlestick Park. I will never forget the vast immaculate expanse of green outfield and Willie Mays casually tossing those long slightly underhand throws to whoever was playing left field that day. Some infielders were playing pepper with a coach in front of the Giants' dugout. McCovey looked about 9 feet tall at first. It really sunk in, and a good thing too because it was never duplicated.

People rightly criticize the 'Stick because it was a nightmare, and now it's a shithole, but for me, then, it was the End in All. It contained heroes, and meaning, and Matty Alou was part of that even though he was gone to Pittsburgh.

Oh well. At some point I might be forced to accept old farthood in full measure, but let's hope the lasting impact of the Alou Brothers and their fellow ballplayers will prevent that.

Giving you a SMOKIN' Herman!

2011-10-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

This is just creepy (scroll down the page for video)

It ain't the smoking, though that is a little outre these days and I believe that guy about as much as I ever believed the average track tout. No, it's Mr Cain at the end. Not sure if he's sizing us up for some twisted sexual adventure, or grinning because he's convinced we can't stop ourselves from voting for him.

He is, without doubt, one of the strangest hucksters we've seen running for president in recent times . . . and he's ahead!

Wow.

Here's my entry

2011-10-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

I made a deal with my son. If he writes every day, so will I. Wellll, he wasn't for the longest time, but suddenly took the offer a couple of nights ago, inspired by "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." I've gotta say, he's doing a great job, and even adds original cartoons to the mix. Last night, upon realizing he hadn't seen me doing any writing, he said, "I'M doing MY diary but I don't see you writing anything. Remember? You made a deal with me."

Smartass.

Still, he's a right smartass, so here I go.

I had a great post all set months ago about Marina Del Rey and Venice, where I go several times a year to see in-laws. I just couldn't get it right, so I bagged it. Every time I read the thing it seemed stale and obvious. I tried different angles, and nothing rose to the top. It's a peculiar, dark place. It runs on fear of indifference, and fear of nothingness. Human husks, like shedded spider skins are blown along and seem to gather on Venice Beach, one of our great public scumpits.

Who cares? My son has discovered that he likes to write. Who gives a damn about Venice Beach?

Summer's flown...

2011-10-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

...and the time is right for grumbling in the dark.

Not really. Life is good. We have a new puppy by the name of Kona, a hearty little girl with teeth like needles and happy way with them. She bit my earlobe last week and it took two hours to stop the bleeding. I even tried a clothes pin and that only slowed it down. Lots of veins in your earlobes. Remember that when you go for a home ear-piercing session.

Summer went by slowly because the heat seemed unremitting. Being a Berkeley boy, despite my high desert birth, I like my foggy mornings and sunny afternoons. Here in our inland valley we did get fog, which I worried about because I didn't think they allowed it here in the suburbs. Lo! and Behold! the fog regularly flowed down to us from the ridge along the cut into which they fit the road over to the Bay. Still, when it gets hot here, it stays hot, unlike Berkeley where it cools in the evening. As I get older, I like the cool. Just the way I roll, Baybee!

Summer went by quickly because it was the busiest summer in recent memory. There was one thing after another, and rarely any time to sprawl and let time plod by. I desperately wanted to lounge in my backyard and read, occasionally sipping my drink and breathing deeply through my nose. But no. No, there were birthday parties to attend, a house to clean, relentless organizing. Shit, you could organize until the cows came home and it would still only last a day.

The job provided no rest. Odd how you can look forward to going to work to get a break from the hurly burly of home. It didn't work that way this summer. We're all doing a job and half now. No rest for the wicked. Or even for bureaucrats.

Mass Extinction anyone?

2011-06-21T10:20:00.001-07:00

Recently I wrote speculatively that something was coming to get us. Well here's one thing for sure, and it isn't wasting any time.

Of course, it's probably just a plot by Al Gore liberals, but you never know.

At the risk of sounding French and gay, we better wake the fuck up and get on this, or our grandchildren will be facing starvation.

Swine but not swine

2011-06-20T16:51:00.001-07:00

Every now and again you run into a situation where you encounter a person who's appealing on some level, but reprehensible on another. I know just such a person now. They are a colleague whom I'd like to see disappear as soon as possible, but oddly, I don't mind helping them find a new spot and not entirely to hurry the process of getting them out of here. Strangely, when they request that I help them go over possible interview scenarios, I experience this urge to help them out. Perhaps I just feel guilty way down deep for wishing this person would just go away. Perhaps I feel some weird gratitude for their being here to help out so I didn't have to do two jobs. The trouble is that it went from light to dark in short order. They went from getting a rave review to the edge of being damned with faint praise. Perhaps its just that nearly everyone has a good side and part of me sees it even though my inner curmudgeon grumbles and swears under its breath.

I can honestly say that they are a good worker, really smart, and could probably do the job fairly well after about a year. They are also pushy, don't follow directions and are a pain in the ass. Perhaps I just want to have a good constructive exchange with them. Most of us want to do positive things, and have a situation end on a positive note. That could be it.

Shit man, they're leaving, so let's not slam the door too quickly after they leave. We can wave and smile and quietly click shut just the screen door, instead of scowling and and waving the back of the hand and slamming both doors shut and locking them. It's the decent thing to do after all. Ain't it?

Springheel Jack RIP

2011-06-13T08:08:00.001-07:00

The world's greatest dog (well, don't we all feel that way about our own?) has spun off the mortal coil after 14 years of a life well-lived.

The old boy was afflicted with laryngeal paralysis and we had to put him out of it. Man, oh man, what a rotten day last Friday was. We took him to the vet to see about his rock eating habit, and he was hit with a crisis of this paralysis and there was nothing else for it but to send him off. He was trying to breathe through a passage of about 1/8 of an inch, this after all the drugs possible to take down swelling and ease his stress. He couldn't cool himself off and his tongue was turning blue.

He killed many vermin in his time, and chased away a burglar. He scared gangbangers and caused them to go to the other side of the street. He was also as mellow as the day is long and in the classic way that big dogs have, tolerated the loving "attention" of two little kids, while making sure that no one who shouldn't come near them ever did.

He 86 pounds of love, and power and total peculiarity, and we had him for two more years than we thought we would; a testament to the hardiness of mutts. We all miss him, but all dogs go to heaven, right? He certainly should.

It's Coming For Us

2011-05-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

Can you feel it?

There's tension in the earth. It's not like the immediate sense that it's about to rain. It's more than that. It's been building for a long time. It's hard to know where to start with this. It's hard to know where the line is between just the ebbs and flows of life, and the beginning of something that feels ominous. It's hard to pinpoint when it began, for me anyway. Maybe just knowing what's happening to the oceans is enough to trip my imagination into thinking that we're building up to something really ugly. Even without obvious problems like the death of coral reefs and ocean acidification, I feel tension. It's as though a large bass string is being slowly stretched by a cosmic finger, and when it's finally plucked we're all gonna get it. The trillion pound shithammer will come down and that will be it.

I can only speculate about the US, and really only about what I've seen in California and the West, and a few states back east, but I think we are into a societal case of terminal bloat.

We drive huge vehicles... alone.

We ride huge motorcycles.

We have families with no more than about 2.33 kids living in McMansions that would comfortable hold families of 8.

We eat enormous servings of food that offer next to nothing nutritionally, or at best layer on so much fat and sodium and processed sugar that the vitamins and proteins and needed carbohydrates are drowned in a miasma of ill health on a plate. Make that two plates.

I have to say I'd love to have a British sports car in my garage that I could take out on the weekends and drive through the East Bay Hills. I'd love to have a couple of more rooms in the house, with a bigger yard, and we only have 2 kids. The .33rd kid just ain't gonna happen. It'd be great to have a library to which I can retreat to read or play my pipes. On the other hand, I fear The Bloat. If we had more, we'd have to look after it. If we had more we'd consume more, we'd pollute more, and I am nearly certain I would not experience less tension day to day. I know I would still feel the tension that is building. The Bloat is responsible for the tension. We are becoming a societal Mr. Creosote.

At some point The Explosion will occur. There will be nothing left. The thought makes me want to live as though we are on a small ocean going boat, with minimal gadgets, everything lashed down but ready to use, food supplies and water supplies properly stowed, everything electrical solar powered, and no Irish pennants flapping in the breeze. The urge is to flee, but where would we go?

I suppose I could just be cool and philosophical about it all and drawl knowingly about cycles of existence and so forth, but fuck that. I am in it. I am part of it. I am leaving my footprint too and it's too deep. There are days when I feel calm and cool, days when I get weird and vengeful and annoyed, days when I feel oppressed by all of it. What is it that makes everyone so rabid about having things, having them first, getting there first? Why do drivers on the freeway suddenly step on the gas if they see you are about to change into their lane ahead of them? There's always someone ahead of them? What difference does it make? Why do they tailgate you for miles when they could pass you on either side, whenever they want?

That's the metaphor for what's happened to us. There are so many of us, at least in CA, that we are compelled to chew on each other. We drive each other into the dirt and we don't even know why. Hunter Thompson wrote back in 1971 that Americans go out on the highway and drive themselves to death in huge cars. Our whole style of liviing is that huge car, and we're just stepping on it and the Devil take the hindmost.

Happy Summer!

My Leg Turns to Hamburger and My Coffee goes South

2011-05-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I tore my left gastrocnemius, the muscle that forms the calf. Here I was, wandering up and out of the garage, feeling that since it was a pretty Friday morning in Berkeley I had no reason to hurry. No one else was hurrying, why should I? Besides, I was tired and still a little bleary despite having driven 22 miles.

My left foot then became too lazy to properly anchor on the step just below the top of the stairs. Just as I pushed up with my left leg it slipped off right at the moment of greatest stress, and "Pop!" went the lower leg as a zap of pain shot through it. My coffee cup flew out of my hand as I reached out to break my fall. I found myself on the pavement exclaiming, "Ah-! Ah-! Oh shit! Ah-! Gottdammit! Ah-!" and watching my left foot lock at 90 degrees from its leg.

Instead of warming my gizzard, and bringing the next level of awareness, my coffee was coloring the pavement. I had a moment of thinking that I'd be unable to get back my car. It was a moment of thinking I might be helpless, which is something that truly worries me. Guys my size aren't supposed to be helpless. I felt vaguely embarrassed and the tiniest bit of panic fluttered through my gut. I eased into a sitting position on the little curb near the top of the stairs and took a few deep breaths and realized it didn't really hurt. I called the job and told the boss I'd be out that day, got up slowly and let out a yelp of agony as a I put a tiny amount of weight on the ball of my left foot. I somehow descended to the car, drove to the Dr. and found out there was nothing to be done but ice and elevation and NSAIDs. I drove another ten miles to pick up some crutches then another 20 miles back home to follow the Quack's advice, which proved he's no Quack.

So, three weeks later I can't run, I can't kick in the pool, I can't walk quickly up stairs. I can walk, I can swim with my arms only. I can drink coffee. Thanks God!

Don't ever do what I did. It's only an accident, but the timing of it, and the results serve to make me too aware of my age, too aware of what I can't do. Despite how quickly its healing, I am haunted by the experience of my wife's good friend who at my age pulled a hamstring and it took months to heal properly. In my dour moments I can't shake the feeling that this is only the first in a series of nagging injuries that will leave me hobbled in another ten years. At the age of 62 I will look like Jabba the Hutt with a white moustache, licking my lips obscenely as women 40 years my junior walk by with a sidewise glare that tells me to keep away, dammit (eeuuwww! creepy!).

Of course, when its early morning and the day still feels clean, I ignore the stiffness and think that this is merely sneeze, nothing more than the orthopaedic equivalent of a loose eyelash. I will swim that day and climb along that eternal black line. I will walk miles on end. I will eat oatmeal and do pullups and pushups and annoy the hell out of everyone. In ten years I will be tanned, lean and leathery and I will lick my lips obscenely . . . .

He breeches!

2011-04-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

I feel like an old whale emerging from the depths after a two year dive. I just decided it was time to try again, though I think no one will read this anymore. Still, I will persist and see if I can reawaken something that once had opened its eyes and started walking. It walked for a few years before it was overtaken by a blizzard of bizzyness that no one should have to suffer. Rock on, with yer bad self!

2009-10-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

The minutes ago I looked out the window and it was dry out there. Five minutes ago, I looked out the window and it was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock. Now it's just kind of dribbling out there.

Just thought I'd lend that visual to anyone unlucky enough to stumble across this blog. I had a couple of free moments and realized it had been seven months since I put a few words on here. Who has time for these things? Who has time for Facebook? Like many I am under a continual barrage of people requesting me to become their friend. It's the weirdest damned thing and coming from a generation that got no more virtual than a note on paper sent by US Mail, I find it impossible to become fully a part of it. It's the next step after all the hopeless swine who wander the malls of Merka with cellphones glued to their ears, yet they never talk.

Horrible. Horrible.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh

2009-03-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Or Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all you non-Gaelic speakers. It's a beautiful day around the Bay.

It's Springheel Jack's birthday. The old hound is 12 today. He's a great dog and lets Mariko and Dayton pull his tail. He don't hear too well and he has trouble getting up in the morning, but he's earned his dotage.

I am sitting in my bureaucrat's chair, chatting about Zoroastrian equinox festivals (beginning of the Persian New Year). listening to Leo Rowsome, the greatest of Uillean pipers, and dreaming about the silken caress of Jameson's as it slides down my Irish gizzard.

Sláinte!!

Cherry Blossoms. . .tortillas?

2009-02-18T09:16:00.001-08:00

Daring Dayton has discovered that cherry blossoms smell like corn tortillas.

How 'bout that!

Wilkins goes to the Great Beyond

2009-01-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

Another of my boyhood heroes passes over the threshold.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/09/DDQS15665F.DTL&type=entertainment

I knew that if Hefti had died, Wilkins had to follow soon. Creature Features was the greatest, and now we are bereft of anything as entertaining, though Mystery Science Theater 3000 came close. Sigh.

I once asked him, at the Federation Trading Post during an appearance by James Doohan, attended by Don and myself, why he didn't show "Nosferatu." He peered up at me through his glasses and replied that if he showed a silent movie people would turn up the volume on their TVs and when a commercial came on, their TVs would explode. HE couldn't be responsible for such a thing.

I wonder if I will ever again be able to watch "The Horror at Party Beach."

The National Anthem

2008-11-20T16:38:00.001-08:00

There is nothing like our national anthem sung straight, with dignity, by an Irish Tenor. I commend to those with I-Tunes the perfomance of John McCormack from an album called "Greatest Irish Tenors." It is sung as I would like to hear it every time I go to the ballpark. I used to enjoy the occasional melismatic performance in an R & B vein, but it's gotten to the point where it's barely recognizeable, and despite hopes and dreams, no one is the second coming of Aretha Franklin.

Wesley Clark on McCain

2008-10-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpsI-RBTvFg

Here is something I alluded to earlier in some other post somewhere. I agree with General Clark on this. Scheiffer is incredulous, but Clark's argument is a good one. There's a lot of other things Clark could say here, but doesn't, I suspect.

Neal Hefti

2008-10-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

The composer of my favorite song when I was 8 years old has died. He also composed the tune "Gotham Municipal Swing Band" which was the theme to "Creature Features" when it debutyed on KTVU in January of 1971 showing "The Horror at Party Beach."

Sigh. There's nothing like that on TV anymore, at least not in the SF Bay Area. There's no local fun anymore.
There's nothing tongue in cheek like "Batman."

Balls.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/10/14/entertainment/e204936D54.DTL&tsp=1

Yet Another Political Rant

2008-10-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

Why is it that Obama doesn't seem substantive? Is it because people who don't really want him to be president have said so?

I can understand someone not being sure if they are positive about him, but if you actually look at what he's done in his professional life, it is quite substantial. He has an enormous amount to offer. He is clearly a thinking individual who knows what he's about, works at undestanding a problem, and has great analytical powers to apply to a solution. What the hell do people want? I keep hearing the comment that he hasn't really made clear what he would do. That's nonsense. He's made it abundantly clear, both in debates and speeches and on his website.

He also has the obvious capacity to lead, to inspire and to manage large group efforts. Someone on the radio this morning said that he has less experience than only 20 other presidents in our history.

As for McCain, I recall Wesley Clark questioning the idea that McCain's Vietnam experience qualifies him to be Commander in Chief, and Bob Scheiffer being incredulous at the thought. However, Clark was right, and if you look at it why would being a POW qualify you except on the basis of knowing what it is to suffer on that level? That's certainly part of it, but nowhere near all of leading a nation's forces at war.

On the economy, McCain makes me think he has no real idea what's happening in a global sense. I don't want another goombah in there who only understands enough to make himself and his pals a profit. His outlook, and his reliance on boilerplate expressions and hoped for zingers to make an impact leave me with my jaw hanging open wondering if we will ever do better than that. Obama brings me back to thinking about things. He has an intellect that he's not worried about displaying. McCain isn't as far down the slope as Bush, but he's also not inspiring at all.

What has come through loud and clear to me in these debates is that McCain is fundamentally a man of the past, the Cold War. His day is come and gone. It's partly his age coming through, but it's also his outlook that leads me to that. There are those who age and grow wiser, and make you believe that the times they live in are of no real consquence to their abilities and vision. McCain ain't one of those for me.

There is something forward looking about Obama, and static or backward looking about McCain. If I were a more deft commentator, I might be able to articulate this. In my late afternoon torpor, that's the best I can come up with. I do not feel safe at the thought of McCain managing foreign relations in a crisis that potentially will turn military. I do not feel safe with McCain having the final say in economic decisions. Social issues under McCain will go backwards or nowhere.

This post was inspired as a comment to a post on What is Hip, but I thought I should just post it here 'cause I rarely do these days,and things have slowed down a bit here in the calabozo known as my office.

Wow

2008-09-18T17:01:00.001-07:00

Ahoy, matey!

It sure has been a while, Sal recently pointed out. Well, I could lay out a ton of excuses, but I ain't a gonna. I miss this thing, but there's just been no time.

So here I am, keeping my hand in, having nothing in particular to say except Obama in '08!

Yes, Neighbors! The choice is clear!

OK, all for now. Meantime, I leave you with this happy image.

Goodbye Jock and Sir Ed!

2008-01-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

As Don has noted, George MacDonald Fraser has passed on, and we'll never know what Flashy really did during the Civil War. Ain't it enough to know that he saved India not once, but at least twice, for the Empire? Not so great perhaps if you're Indian, but if your a Victorian Englishman what could be a greater achievement? Fraser sent me a note once in response to a letter of mine. He was very gracious and glad I liked "Flashy" as he referred to him. Little did he know....

Another hero of mine as also passed on. Sir Edmund Hillary has died at the age of 88. See the obit here.

I've never been any kind of climber. Indeed, I suffer from a stout case of acrophobia on static objects. Low altitude rock climbing can have my palms sweating and me thinking about how much nicer it would be to just take the stairs. Still, Hillary's exploits were the stuff of romance for me as a kid. His adventures went along with the voyages of the Yankee, Thor Heyerdahl, and Colin Fletcher as engines of my imagination. The desire to sail among the islands of Micronesia, or walk the length of Africa, or sit at Everst Base Camp and stare all still simmer within and I have Sir Ed to thank for much of that heat. You never know, one of these days I might actually have "an adventure."

Good night Sir Ed, wherever you are.

Been a long time comin'

2007-12-05T16:42:00.001-08:00

I just don't have time to do this much anymore. I am like the one-legged man in the ass-kicking contest at work. Some days I get so busy it's tough to find time to go to the head and sit in a few moments of skanky, odoriferous quietude. It's a bit of a rough go when the men's toilet is your refuge.

Jayzus!

What would Mr. Miyagi say? He'd tell me to breathe. In...out...in...out. Wax on ...wax off. He'd be right.

I also say, stare at a picture of my beautiful baby girl and it all just floats away....

Tommy Makem, RIP

2007-08-02T17:02:00.000-07:00

Tommy Makem has died of lung cancer in Dover, NH.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/02/obit.makem.ap/index.html

Makem was a big figure in my childhood. First heard his voice on "Hearty and Hellish", borrowed from Don at some point in the late Sixites (?). Makem's way of singing influenced me heavily as a piper. Much of the way I interpret music comes right from Makem. More than nearly any other singer, certainly any other folk singer, he could make a song really live. There was something fierce and intense about his singing, even when it was a sad, slow air. If you want to hear a voice that gets inside of you quickly, find an album of his, or the Clancy's and Makem, and listen for a while. I guess he had to go sometime, but he seemed like on of those that wouldn't...not really.

Dead Behind the Eyes

2007-06-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

Well, not really, but it feels that way. As every new parent knows, the flip side of a delightful new baby is the lack of consistent sleep. So, I walk around daily feeling like perception is ending at the back of my eyeball, never reaching my brain. there are times when I am not entirely sure how much I am processing. I long for a cup of coffee that will make a difference, or for cigarettes that don't do you any harm but still give you that kick. Ain't no such bird, and the coffee props me up about as well as a broken crutch just held together with a fraying ace bandage.

Don posted a link to what I think is a howling piece of paranoia, but I was never able to hook into it because I'm just too dull these days. Duller than usual. My wit is no longer a foil in the spring steel right hand of Basil Rathbone. It's more like a club in the hands of the cave troll from Lord of the Rings, and it frequently misses.

Well, enough whining. I am doomed to be an unorganized, grabasstic piece of amphibian shit for a while. That's just a small payment for having a beautiful baby daughter; yet another weird example of the coexistence of light and darkness. Oooo....

Happier Topic...MUCH Happier

2007-05-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

Here is our new daughter, Mariko Anne. She's a mellow little tyke, eats an enormous amount, and has the brightest eyes (though they're a bit sleepy here). Two weeks old tomorrow. She has enormous hands just like her older brother.

Reflections on Torture and Us

2007-05-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Here's an article from the Washington Post by two former Marines. Worth a read. If Bush and his Mob had any honorable intentions in pursuing war in Iraq, these guys and people like them would've had some impact. Anyhow, this gives me some faith that there are still professionals in the military who retain some sense of what we thought we were as a nation, and how those ideals might still play a role in what we face now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602395.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

IsweartaGOD!

2007-04-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just when I think that the Bush Administration can't get any weirder, or more incompetent, or any more obviously beyond redemption, something like this comes up:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/10/AR2007041001776.html?hpid=topnews

I thought this is what the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were for. Maybe they should just hire the CEO of Blackwater, or Dynecorp. AFter all,l they have enough of their guys 'n' gals in Iraq and Afghanistan now. They can just outsource the strategy as well as the boots on the ground.

What the hell has happened to us?

Just a Copycat

2007-03-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

Don did it, and I've never followed these mem thingies, so now I am:

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1) Paperboy - SF Chronicle
2) Dairy dessert products marketing specialist (scooped ice cream at Swensen's in Berkeley)
3) Export Letter of Credit negotiator
4) Graduate Affairs coordinator and overall fixer

Four movies I would watch over and over (and have):
1) Lawrence of Arabia
2) Casablanca
3) Out of the Past
4) The Four Feathers (Korda Bros. version from 1939, not that cheap trash of a few years back)
5) Dr. No. (Fuck it. This category needs five!)

Four places I have lived:
1) Barstow, CA
2) Camp Pendleton, CA
3) Yuma, AZ
4) Berkeley, CA

Four TV shows I like to watch(Jeez, there ain't many):
1) Unwrapped - food channel
2) Spongebob Squarepants (I have a three year old son! Besides, it's brilliant)
3) Keith Olbermann
4) Reruns of the Addams Family

Four places I have been on vacation:
1) Ireland
2) Mo'orea, French Polynesia
3) Lone Pine, CA
4) Kualoa, Oahu, HI

Four of my favorite foods:
1) My lovely wife's panko-breaded baked chicken breast
2) Grilled tri-tip
3) Grilled or poached salmon
4) A perfect navel orange

Four of my favorite animals:
1) Our dog, Springheel Jack; a strange and magnificent beast
2) Peregrine Falcon
3) Those weird little brilliant blue fish that thrive around the big coral heads in the lagoon near Cook's Bay, Mo'orea.
4) Arabian horse

Four places I would rather be right now:
1) Typing this in a time share at the Club Bali Hai, Cook's Bay, Mo'orea
2) On a grassy hill in the Himalaya, staring at Everest, on our way up to Base Camp
3) London, at the Queen's Birthday Parade, Trooping the Colour
4) Somewhere on the western slope of the White Mountains, staring out at the Owens Valley, CA

Petal Envy

2007-02-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

This morning I envied flowers. They just sit there, they know naught (or so we think) and worry not. No stress. I could do with a bit of that.

Fer cryin' out loud!

2007-01-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

There is nothing worse than being mugged by a student wanting help when you are on your way into your office, but not there yet.

It has been horribly cold around here, by Bay Area standards (which would make someone from a place like Philly chuckle briefly then snort in derision..."You don't know from cold, pal! This ain't cold.") Whatever. I hobbled in at the end of my hike down from my parking place in the hills, feeling like my face had died six years ago. I clutched my donut and coffee, and mumbled to myself that I could make it if I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. In my mind I saw Nick Nolte at the end of "Who'll Stop the Rain," counting cadence as he stepped his life away on that Mexican railroad track in a grisly homage to Neal Cassady. Oddly enough, I couldn't channel the blazing heat portrayed in that scene.

I had death on my mind as I entered the building and who should loom out of the hallway shadows but one of our classic "Everything is a problem" students. This is a nice person who continually struggles with seemingly everything. So much so that I begin to think most of it is self-generated.

Instead of sneaking into my office by the back stairs and plunging into caffeine and deep fried fat and sugar and nutritionless dough, I had to stand there listening to the same old litany of how hard life has been.

Fuck!

All I wanted was a nice, quiet start to the day. Just 30 minutes of mindless munching and gulping, and reading the SF Chronicle online, and maybe one or two other things. That would give time for my face to thaw, and my upper back to loosen up and thus also my mood. But no. I had to pat this person on the back and tell them to just soldier on and not to worry and blah blah blah blah. In my mind I was screaming "Fuck off!" but out my mouth came "Well, don't worry about going fast, just do what you have to at your place and let others worry, etc...."

I tell ya what! There are moments when I could almost wish to be a sociopath just for that one moment.

Ah yes....

2006-12-12T10:53:00.000-08:00

Daring Dayton loves the Addams Family.

We rented to dvd collection of Addams Family TV episodes, and he's hooked. Chip off the old block, or as Gomez might say,

"Capitol!"

"They're creepy and they're cooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're altogether ooky,
The Addams Family."

Fun with a palm frond

2006-11-17T16:24:00.000-08:00

A Rainy Night in Berkeley

2006-11-13T17:16:00.000-08:00

...and there's nothing quite like Vince Guaraldi's "Moon River" to accompany the rain on a walk to the train...in the dark...people rushing past....

Honoring the troops

2006-08-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

Let's see, redeploying forces presently in Iraq in order to be more effective in fighting terrorists around the world would be dishonoring the sacrifice of our brave men and women, but slashing the budget for research into combat head trauma injuries does not, I guess. It's OK to feed them into the Anbar province funhouse, or any of the others, to get their brains shoved around by IED explosions, but research into how to help them recover from concussive brain injuries is too expensive. The $14,000,000.00 current budgeted is too much...especially when stacked against the 2 Billion (?) per month we are spending over there. Uh huh.

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2044177.php

These people defy description.

I damned near...

2006-07-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

...forgot about this thing.

Go swim off the North Carolina barrier islands if you get a chance. The water, at least this time of year, is warmer than Tahiti. Wild.

The traffic is terrible, and it's the south, but do it anyway.

I have nothing much more to say. I am jet lagged, not motivated to carve out more work, and my day is nearly over. I yet harbor dreams of writing something worthwhile, and as yet haven't finished a coherent work longer than three paragraphs, or so.

If anyone ever reads this thing again, I'll count myself lucky. The rest of you can fart in the wind and see how far it gets you.

Selah.

Well said, or written...

2006-04-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29062

Wish I could express it this well. In this case, Johnson speaks from me. I never thought I'd say that about someone who clearly admires Reagan, but this is how bad it's gotten. We are losing this country, and all it supposedly stood for.

Here's a Comforting Article

2006-03-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-06-guards-homeland-security_x.htm

Especially the part about shaking the white powder out of the envelope.

Wackenhut were the people hired to guard Area 51. Hmmmm....

Something just isn't working quite right. (The hell you say, Harry!) I get the feeling the federal government is just hanging out now, hoping the facade won't crack too much farther before the present administration is booted. After that they can blame it on whoever follows.

What the F**K!!!!

2006-03-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

What the hell happened to America? This is not the country I've lived in for nearly fifty years!

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06

I know this question has been asked many time over the past 5 years, but this completely blows my mind. We are well down that slippery drainpipe, heading for the sea of boiling animal waste that awaits the legacy of the Founding Fathers, and all the ideals that made this country a place people from all over the world wanted to be a part of.

I've been way too busy to get on here, but this just couldn't be pushed aside. This is almost the ultimate Orwellian occurence.

What will it take for people to wake up and smell the manure?

Oh, Come ON!

2006-02-09T14:09:00.001-08:00

Is anyone else out there wondering how anything like this can be taken seriously at all?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/09/bush.terror.ap/index.html

Is CNN so starved for attention that they actually put something like this out there as though the plot was real? this is the second announcement of this plot, timed no doubt to divert attention momentarily from things like new revelations in the Plame Case, or Alberto Gonzalez babbling incoherently at the Senate Committee, or anything else that's currently making the administration look like a gang of corrupt, lying scum.

A bomb to blow off the door to the cockpit. Oh brother. George is really scraping the bottom on this one. the scary thing is that a lot of people will put hand to mouth as they gasp, and they will wallow in The Fear just like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney want them to. When will someone with real political stature just start hitting the circuit and blasting these people in the public prints and airwaves for the lying clowns that they are? It needs to be more than Murtha, more than Howard Dean. Jayzus, I wish I had an answer. 2006 can't come soon enough. There may just be a chance to restore some balance to the government. As an American citizen, I am stunned that the public, the press, and most of all the Congress just keeps letting the administration get away with it.

I'm runnin' outta gas....

2006-01-12T17:50:00.000-08:00

Yes, a sword of Damocles hangs above my head in the form of hundreds of applications from people desperate to be professional intellectuals. They endless sheets of paper in hopes that they can come be abused by the system, faculty, older students with an eye toward becoming one of the abusers someday.

Maybe that should be termed, "The Mailbin of Damocles."

It doesn't help the motivational level to listen to "Blue Moon Nights" by John Fogerty. Its a perfect song of desperation of another kind; the kind that has the singer no longer looking too hard at people who have found the love of another, but hoping for it just the same. He's asking the world for a hand, as though its his last chance. Life is rolling on, but maybe not for long. He's asking for someone to see him through it. It's sadder than hell, made all the sadder for the rockabilly rhythm that just hops along. It takes me right to another song, "Blue Days, Black Nights" from Buddy Holly. Same wistful melody and anguished lyrics in front of a pleasant, danceable rhythm.

Jeeezus! Where's my bourbon?

MERRRRRY CHRISTMAS, ONE & ALL!

2005-12-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

That's right. Even if Christmas ain't exactly your thing religiously or otherwise, I still hope you have a merry one. Couldn't hurt, could it?

Health and happiness to you all at the end of another trip around the sun.

Hey Roy!

2005-12-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

Epiphomatic Machinations seems to have disappeared. Anybody know why? Roy? Are you reading, if not writing?

No time for more. My ride's here.

Split Second Decision

2005-12-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

I am not a supporter of the Iraq War, but here's some proof that our troops over there can display humanity and political acumen all at a moment's notice. This from an article in the SF Chronicle about veterans views of the war, concerning a Marine Corporal Squad leader in Ramadi. Samarov is a Marine Major from SF:

"Samarov told the story of how a group in his unit rounded a corner one day and came on an Iraqi funeral procession, which, in traditional fashion, featured both gunfire and shouts. What to do in such a case? Draw your weapons in defense? Protect the procession in case there is violence? Disrupt the procession by passing? Such a situation isn't covered in any field manual. Making a split second decision, a young corporal ordered the troops to lower their guns, remove their helmets and bow. The Iraqis, after a pause, broke into applause. It was a brilliant stroke. Samarov said there was never again any problem in that neighborhood. And it was the result of trying to pull the best possible idea out of thin air and hoping it is the right choice."

Semper Fi'.

Black and Orange Blues

2005-12-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

The SF Giants have officially cut their ties with JT Snow, having not offered him arbitration. This is the end of an era. As a columnist in the SF Chronicle sports section wrote, it's the end of a Golden Age. Snow was far and away the best defensive first baseman in the game. His fielding percentage was a point higher than Derrick Lee's, who won the Gold Glove for some reason. He was a real pro, of the type that really makes up the majority of long time major leaguers; a veteran who showed other players how it's done.

He was my favorite player. I have a soft spot for defensive geniuses, and especially for great play at first base. I love good hitting, home runs, and so forth, but love it more when its combined with great play in the field, as though the batter has earned his at bats. Snow did that and more. Bonds is exciting. Omar Vizquel is astonishing. When he's on, Schmidt is an executioner on the mound, but the Giants without Snow will be much less than they were with him. This is nearly as bad, for different reasons, as the departure of Matt Williams in 1997.

I guess nothing lasts, but Snow's Era didn't have to end yet. One more year would've been enough. He could then have retired as a Giant. Once again the business end of major league baseball has intruded on the game like a big, stinking bag of trash spread across the diamond.

General Clark's Opinion

2005-12-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting piece by Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.) reprinted from the NY Times. While I'm against this war and I completely distrust the motives of our morally bankrupt administration in invading Iraq, and I go from wanting us to pull out to not wanting us to pull out, I appreciate Clark's more dispassionate look at it. From a brutal realpolitik point of view, it makes more sense than some vaguely defined "strategy for victory."

Shlickita-Shlickita-Shlickita!

2005-12-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

I once had a dream wherein I had great, neatly delineated sections of flesh flensed off the back of my hand, and underneath was a bony shell, rather than an intricate network of tendons and nerves and veins. On this bony shell were Don Martin cartoons. They were set in as though the bones had developed with the cartoons forming along with them. While I'm a huge fan of Don Martin's work, this was a deeply disturbing dream for some reason.

Storm's a comin'! Bettah head for the cellah!

2005-12-01T17:06:00.000-08:00

A brief moment now to post something.

We're finally into the first good, brutal storm of the season here in the SF Bay Area. For some twisted reason I'm digging it. Of course, I don't have to walk around in it because my wife gave me a ride to work and will pick me up any minute. Still, there's something about the first real heavy blast of wind and rain that gets me rolling. I get to see if the mink oil on my Red Wing boots is still good, or do I need another coat on there? In moments of lessened rain, or no rain, I notice water dripping off foliage that is somehow much greener in the few hours since it started to rain. I'll notice on the weekend that our back lawn, which normally suffers greatly from neglect, is getting some payback and is flourishing, green and thick. I will be reminded tonight how Springheel Jack doesn't give a damn if it's blowing a gail...he MUST be walked. I won't mind. Walking the rainy, nighted streets of northeast Richmond with a canine force of nature dragging me along excites the imagination. Some of the images may survive to get posted here. Most probably won't, but I'll have seen them in my mind's eye for at least a moment. In that regard, I'll take what I can get.

To top it all off, I will need to facilitate the drying off process with a small glass of bourbon and a handful of almonds. Gotta warm up on a darrrrk, and storrrmy nicght!

The Rumbling

2005-11-29T16:34:00.000-08:00

For quite sometime there has been a rumbling coming from somewhere deep in the building. Some moments its very loud and my ribs vibrate. Other moments its more a thought than a sound, but there nonetheless. Imagine that a large number of people are pounding on the ventilation ducts with large padded drumsticks. The volume rises and falls.

At first I thought it was a jet. I leaned out my window, but the sound immediately subsided. I leaned back in and closed the window and it rose to great volume. The rhythm was frenzied. I wandered the building and could find nothing. I was thinking maybe a Native American group was holding a ceremony in the museum downstairs. No sign of that, unless they are behind closed doors. I put my ear to several and heard nothing, even though upon retreating from the door it would sound as though the deep, malevolent sound was emanating from within that door. That happened at several doors.

It's barely audible now. There's louder noise coming from my computer, which is rather quiet. Still, I know they haven't stopped. There! I hear it again. What in God's name are They doing? Where are They doing it? Do They even exist in this world? Am I hearing the a manifestation of some ancient Coastal Miwok ceremony? No one else seems to hear it. When I go into the hallway, it seems to come from the walls, ceiling and floor all at once.

I have this vision of a hole opening up, deep on the lowermost level of this building, well below ground level. As the drumming proceeds, the hole gets larger. The edges are blurred and in fast motion as though if you stepped close enough you'd be instantly sucked down into it, only to emerge on the slopes of some distant moutain. Perhaps in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, when all is quiet, this building will be swallowed by Mother Earth, to be followed in coming days by the rest of this place. Maybe Whatever controls this place has had enough.

Why do I hear it?

To All

2005-11-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

Here's hoping that Thanksgiving is a day off for you to do exactly what you want. Gorge, or gorge. Guzzle, or don't guzzle. For meself, I intend to gorge and guzzle. I think I can handle the attendant stomachic and intestinal suffering for a day or so, in a completely guilt free manner. Whatever your style, enjoy yourself to the fullest.

More Abuse of Power

2005-11-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

However, this time it's not the Bush Administration, fount' of all things bad in the country today, indeed the world, mostly perpetrated by the secretive and generally abominable DICK Cheney and his brutish minions.

No, this time I refer to the UC Regents, who approve the things described in a series of articles recently in the SF Chronicle.

Start here, then go here, then here, then here, where a measure of questioning finally takes place.

I have a personal interest in this whole thing since I am a mid-level campus administrator. I can't complain too loudly lately because some breaks have gone my way. However, none of us had any breaks at all for years. I know some people on this campus who just got their first raise after nearly seven years. More and more students are having to consider dropping out because of the expense of attending. More and more employees are suffering layoffs, which is something no one around here ever had to worry about until about 14 years ago when the first such occurred, one of which happened to me.

Here we have people layering on the perks under that old saw about getting the best talent. Nonsense. With all the talented adminstrators lurking just below these levels in the UC system, are we supposed to believe that none of them, who could be paid at a much lower rate, are unable to fill these positions? About twice a year, we all get an email from the President of the system via Chancellor's Office. It always says a few words about a few major achievements (implying that we should all be proud because we've all contributed, etc.), then it says something about how things are slowly getting better, and no effort is being spared to see that the staff get major improvements. They know it isn't enough, but gosh darn it, they're trying their best, blah blah blah blah blahaaghghghagaaaagggghghghghghghg!!! We got one just recently, just before these revelations. Interesting timing, no? What did the president know, and when did he know it?

As you can see if you read those articles, it's major hogwash. As I said, breaks have gone my way lately. I've been lucky. So I shouldn't complain? Balls. That's the point. I had to get lucky to get anywhere. All my ability, hard work and honesty have mattered only enough for me to not get fired. Otherwise, those qualities have been as much worth economically over the years as dried ball of pony dung, slowly eroding in the winds that sweep across the Gobi. I can live without automatic cost of living raises as a consequence of a bad state economy, but it really is too much to have to swallow what these people have done when I couldn't even earn one fucking more dollar by being good at what I do and working hard at it and staying with it. On top of which, this place deserves better. It's a great institution staffed by professors who are brilliant, and provides an incredible education if you want it. As a result of this kind of greed, it's staffed by a staff that is deeply, thoroughly demoralized. Either the Jefes don't know, or they don't care. It's, it's...I don't know. I'm too pissed to put it clearly. Shame on all of them.

If an actor in CA...

2005-11-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

...why not a rocker in NJ?

Here's weird thing.

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002473.html

Can you imagine serenading Senate hearings on cover-ups with "Born to Run?" I can hear it now, Sen. Springstee saying something like, "Wolf, I gotta tell ya, this is something that all 'Mercans 'spect from their gov'mint. So we gotta, we gotta, we gotta make it happen."

Keeping my hand in ...sort of

2005-11-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've been assailed with impressions lately which I wanted to use to launch postings. There's never any time to sit and post something. Not even now. So I list a couple of things. Maybe someday I'll come back to them and use them like I originally intended.

This time of year, and its differences with earlier times of year struck me with more than usual force the other day when swimming. I haven't been in the pool for nearly a month for various reasons, otherwise I maybe wouldn't have seen it so vividly. The angle of the sun has lent a completely different feeling to the water, the exercise itself. Rather than staring down at us from on high, the sun now cuts across at a lower angle as we've made our way to the autumnal side of the rotation. There's a sharp, brassy feeling to the sunny Noon Hour now. It's warm, but incomplete. The water is cool, then warm, and it feels good to get lost along the black line, but a strange lack of joy follows me into the shower when I'm done. I reflect on this and it just feels all wrong, even though it isn't. Normally, I feel like King Kong after a good swim, as though I could pick up Sproul Hall and hurl it all the way to Tiburon, but not now. I've decided that its just the angle of the Mother Earth to Old Sol that has me discombobulated. I hope I'm right. If I am, then the feeling will go away. If I'm not, I will continue to have the impression that I'm in some color photo of a swimming pool from about 1952.

The time change shut the lid on the day rather abruptly. On November 2, the first day after the change that I walked across campus after work on the way to my car, I was struck with how oppressed everything felt. It was a combination of a leaden sky and reduced light, and timing that had me walking across campus when not too many others were. It was incredibly quiet. It seemed as though every conversation I passed was being whispered. I couldn't hear any traffic. There were no planes of choppers overhead (or maybe there were, but they were being muffled by some otherworldly force or some anomaly of wind and moisture). It was almost a stunned silence, as though Stanford had just won the Big Game with a last second 70 yard field goal. The trees didn't move, bicycles made no noise, dogs loped by nose to the ground, not wanting to be noticed, not playing with each other as dogs do. You could've thrown a frisbee and the most enthusiastic frisbee-catching border collie wouldn't have given it more than a sidelong glance before quickly slinking away. A strange kind of night came too early.

Beyond the Pale...or not.

2005-10-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is, at first glance, a shocking thing. Here we have a sitting vice president pushing for torture to become a legally allowed instrument of war, essentially, for the United States, bastion of freedom from oppression and purveyor of democracy. Uh huh. Yeah, then when I think about it, it isn't really a surprise. It isn't really Beyond the Pale. It's yet another sign that this administration is something from beneath the Pit. Cheney, whom I never thought cared a wit about the American People, doesn't even try to hide it anymore. He is fully exposed as something cold, brutal, and calculatingly vicious; a walking betrayal of things we were taught in school our nation stood for. Where does the President stand, that guy that just plain folks might like to have a beer with more than they would John Kerry? Where is his comment on this? Their ain't one, padnuh! Well, shoot! I guess we shouldn't be too shocked by that, but still, what the hell happened here? How did we get from being a nation much of the Free World gravitated toward because we didn't throw people in gulags for things they read or said, to being a nation that not only condones torture, but whose executive branch seeks to legalize it? Not saying the CIA hasn't engaged in all kinds of dirty things under several administrations, but now this White House wants it made official that its OK to torture prisoners. Does anyone need to know anymore about the outlook of these people that have slithered into office? Is there any reason to wonder why so many people distrust and dislike these swine? This country is being taken away from its roots in ways that should alarm everyone who thinks that the foundation built over the last 200 + years is worth anything at all. John McCain has his drawbacks, but at least he's drawn a line in the sand. Thank God someone did. Let's hope the Senate stands firm against the threatened veto, and enough representatives see the value in what he's trying to do.

This from the Washington Post (in full so you don't have to wrassle with their registration page):

"Vice President for Torture
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A18
VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.
His position is not just some abstract defense of presidential power. The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication. CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.
It's not surprising that Mr. Cheney would be at the forefront of an attempt to ratify and legalize this shameful record. The vice president has been a prime mover behind the Bush administration's decision to violate the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and to break with decades of past practice by the U.S. military. These decisions at the top have led to hundreds of documented cases of abuse, torture and homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cheney's counsel, David S. Addington, was reportedly one of the principal authors of a legal memo justifying the torture of suspects. This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.
The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."

What's made milwaukee Famous

2005-10-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

...has given me a headache.

Today, fully intending to go to the gym at Noon and swim, I found myself explaining the vagaries of applying to grad school to a well-intentioned, nice person at whom it would've been hard to growl "Come back at 1!"

So, I did the only rational thing. I went to the bookstore and bought a copy of HST's "The Great Shark Hunt: The Gonzo Papers Volume 1" and went to the campus pub for three White Castle burgers and a quart of Pabst. You know, a little excess in the gonzo tradition.

It was perfect. I was left in peace to swill large gulps of cold, cheap beer, and read about the Kentucky Derby and the impending downfall of Richard Nixon (all the while mentally comparing that era with notes from the present day). Since my drinking has diminished greatly, the beer worked its magic and it took a while before I knew for sure that the sidewalk was really under my feet as I strolled back to the office. Just what I wanted.

The kink came around 2PM when I realized that my trapezius muscles along my upper spine had squeezed and a significant, dull throb was working its way up my neck, over the top of my head and down onto my forehead. Aaaiiieee! I had forgotten to drink enough water before guzzling the beer. I cursed my bad planning and immediately drank much water, but the damage was done.

Now we are nearly at 5PM, the ache has disappeared as long as I don't turn my head. Water and coffee have lowered its volume.

What's the lesson here? Always be prepared! The Coast Guard is, and so should all lunch time beer drinkers be!

Selah.

St. Louis Blues

2005-10-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today on my way back from lunch I came upon a group that once called itself, and might still, The Spirit of '29. They advertise as being available for market collapses, bank failures, dustbowls, and repeals of temperance laws.

They play jazz from the Jazz Age. They were playing a bumptuous cover of "St. Louis Blues." They had a banjo, a bass clarinet, a slide trombone, an e-flat clarinet, and a cornet. The banjo and the bass clarinet thumped and honked melodiously along, while the trombone, e-flat clarinet and the cornet wove themselves around the melody in an oddly happy way for such a blue tune.

Instead of striding back to my office I should've been leaning against a nearby lampost waiting for the train. I'd be as natty as possible in my threadbare pinstripe suit and Arrow shirt, with my grey fedora back on three hairs, and a Lucky Strike hanging from my lower lip. I'd be wondering about a job, thinking about a cold mug of beer, and hoping the Cubs could make a dent against Lefty Gomez in the second game of the 'Series after being shellacked by the Yanks 12-6 in the 1st game.

Ah, but ya' can't have everything, so here I am. As an old friend recently said, "I hate modern life."

Regarding Interrogation....

2005-09-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701527.html

This guy says it well, with background that qualifies him to say it. Why, indeed, do we wallow with the swine when we don't have to? Nice to see a veteran of the latest wars with this kind of view.

This is good....

2005-09-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a rare one, even for the Second Bush Administration:

They are going to "get a download of his proper experience" with Hurricane Katrina. I wonder what will spill out of this. Are they looking for what not to do? Haven't they already figured that out? Things with Hurricane Rita seemed to indicate that.

Hey! Maybe they are keeping Brownie on payroll to keep him quiet about other things. Hmmm, yesss, a conspiracy perhaps? What else did Brownie know, and when did he find it out? Does he have the goods on Chertoff? What does he know about the Valerie Plame case?

By request

2005-09-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

This shouldn't count for the leg shot, 'cause you can't really see 'em. Also, I only wear the Nazi outfit for The Hipster, so no requests.

Hmmm...a moment of peace.

2005-09-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

Yassss, nothing is happening for the moment. I can dig it.

This morning on the way here I heard the evil squirrels chirping that bubbly sounding chirp that signifies evil intentions. They were behind and above me, and I could almost feel the tiny wafts of their fetid breath hitting the raised hairs on the back of my neck. I made it through unscathed, but tomorrow, I may have to call upon the corvids to watch my back.

I note that the administration, particularly the VP, is further beneath contempt than even I thought they were. Here's an example:

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050911/NEWS05/509110304

One could argue that the NE needed power, but how much more did they need it than hospitals in the affected area? This reeks, as do many things surrounding the "response" to the predicted hurricane.

Here's an interesting thing

2005-08-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

I am also inclined to agree with Hagel:

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-08-19T164653Z_01_WRI960027_RTRIDST_0_POLITICS-IRAN-USA-DC.XML

This is an opportunity for GW to let his inner statesman come out. Forgive me if I nearly collapse with laughter at the thought of an inner statesman in GW, but I could be wrong. I was wrong once years ago about something. Can't remember what, though. ; - )

Anyway, I think Hagel is right. Hip mentioned something along these lines just yesterday, I think. Hip, you should work at State, not that Rice would listen, but you never know.

I'm inclined...

2005-08-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

...to agree with E. L.

http://archive.easthamptonstar.com/ehquery/20041028/col5.htm

Okie Dokie

2005-08-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

This picture, which originally appeared on the cover of "Songs of the Doomed," kind of represents my mood these days.

Just keeping my hand in. Thought I should post something, if only to remember my password. There's just no free time on the job anymore! Posting from home is nearly impossible, so when it gets busy here, I go dark. Not that my personal brand of "wisdom" shines any kind of light on the world.

The job has gotten much busier, and if I don't get a raise out of it I won't rest until I am in another job.

I remain afflicted/blessed with weird daydreams, and astounded at our lame and pathetic administration. Lately I have thought I've reached the point where I just shake my head and wonder why 2008 isn't here yet. Then the shrub does or says something that has me wondering and going back over how the little fart got elected in the first place. Then I get pissed off and reach for the nearest Hunter Thompson. All this happens after the little one goes under, so there's not much time to fester and boil and think "What the Fuck?"

Oh well.

One a these days, life will calm down, and I will actually post something semi-creative on here. Wiggy, I might even put a picture of my legs as you requested. Only for you . . . and Hip but he wouldn't admit it. ;-)

Pizza!

2005-07-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

You will bring me pizzaaaa! You will do this now! You are powerless to resist my command!

Strange Dreams

2005-07-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

One waking, one sleeping.

Early yesterday evening, as I watched the Giants game broadcast from Dodger Stadium, a tableau arose in my mind's eye. I suddenly imagined the family hanging out in an LA back patio, sometime in the late Sixties or early Seventies. It would be somewhere like Glendale, or Eagle Rock. Over the back fence we'd have a minor view, through the dirty brown air, of distant grey palm trees that should be green, of the occasional large building rising up through the postwar sprawl, and here and there an airliner on approach to LAX or Burbank.

A bbq flames and smokes and crackles as fat from the hamburgers drips onto the hot coals. We're talking serious fat here. None of this 98% lean jazz. Two of them are crowned with multiple slices of Kraft American Cheese (cheese food product!) and the sideboard has Kilpatrick hamburger buns, French's mustard, and Heinz 57 ketchup, a stack of paper plates, plastic utensils, and a huge bowl of potato salad. Daring Dayton and friends frolic in the slightly dirty kidney shaped pool. My Wife reclines in a reclining lawn chair, sipping ice tea and reading Ladies Home Journal, and I sit in another with my icy cold can of Oly, staring out at the smoggy late afternoon over the bougainvillea that covers the back fence, wondering why they won't leave Dick Nixon alone fer chrissakes, 'cause he's the only guy who can get us out of this Vietnam mess with honor and deal with all these damn kids who are running amok at places like Berkeley.

I sat there on my couch on a foggy evening in Richmond and could actually feel the warm air, and the hopeless suburban torpor. I could even hear the Frank Sinatra music coming through from the hi-fi record player. I was nearly overwhelmed, and immediately fetched an Orion beer from the refrigerator, I mean, the 'fridge.

Early this morning, I had another dream, a nightmare really, that I've had before at a less developed stage. We were in a nicely appointed but sparse house, with a long narrow laundry room in back. We were keeping watch through the windows of this room for something ominous. I remember a feeling of extreme anxiety, as though if it comes we have almost no chance. Then we saw it outside the laundry room back door. I can't describe "it." It was never clear. I just remember that our only chance was to cover ourselves in blankets of meringue...not the hard shell stuff, but the meringue you find on lemon meringue pie. As "it" broke in to the house, we all scrambled underneath our blankets of meringue, but it got mine and was pulling it off and I began to panic. My soul was at stake. An indescribable horror awaited me if I didn't somehow fight it off, and I was losing the battle. In the dream I began to yell "No! No!" and then I awoke. My Wife said I was hyperventilating and muttering "No! No!"

The dream never returned, but this morning I feel exhausted. I'll think about this one for awhile. I wonder if Frank Sinatra was coming to get me, or maybe Nixon. Now I wonder, can I muster a large enough army of crows to fight them off if they come again?

Danny Boy

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

There is nothing like Jackie Wilson's cover of "Danny Boy." How many could've turned "Londonderry Air" into a gospel freakout? Get it, hear it, and go beyond.

Longing for...

2005-07-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

...the Library.

We were driving in this morning along Oxford Street at the eastern edge of downtown Berkeley. As we crossed the intersection of Allston Way and Oxford Street I was seized with a moment of nostalgia for the hours I spent with my nose deep in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the reference room high atop the main branch of the Berkeley Public Library. Generally speaking, at times like that I should've been in class at Berkeley High School a block to the west, but why bother? There was nothing compelling in class, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there was a treasure house of strange facts and fuel for the RE Howard knockoffs I was continually starting and never finishing. I could wander into the reference room, grab one of the volumes of the chronicle and instantly find myself in some west British swamp in the year 733, clutching a battle axe and waiting for sounds of the approaching enemy. Having survived the resulting melee, I would then be surveying the Severn Estuary from the north coast of Cornwall, on the lookout for Irish pirates. How could algebra possibly be more fun than that, I ask you? Yes indeed. Thus the agony and confusion of being a socially inept teenager afflicted with acne and fear was swept away.

I have happily left behind that kind of agony and confusion, but the nostalgia remains. Just the impact of that total escape is nearly impossible to recreate now, and there are moments when I could really use it for just a little while. Libraries are not at all the same around here. The mustiness is gone, which some would say is a good thing, but not if you fancy yourself to be a character in a Lovecraft story, studying certain rare and arcane formulae. You need the smell of dust and old wood, and the creepy quiet of the darkest corner of the reading room. You need grey, silent people padding about. You can't reach that place in a modern, mechanised, computerised place like the library at Cal. Perhaps I'll wander downtown one of these days and see if they even still have the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I can't really go back, but I might catch a glimpse. That might be good enough.

Springheel Jack

2005-07-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

Here we have the famous protector of our household, and all around strange animal. this is a photo taken by the esteemed animal photographer, Hip Liz.

Damn this thing

2005-07-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

For some reason this post never saved. It was supposed to be a diatribe about losing about 150 carefully thought out words on another post. Now this! What the hell?

Slipping His Moorings

2005-06-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Last week on my walk to work I finally encountered a individual I'd been avoiding and ignoring for weeks as I walked past his truck. Every morning I've seen him sitting at the wheel of a small white pickup truck, parked across from a small city park in North Berkeley. The truck has a bashed tailgate and the bed covered over by a blue plastic tarp, lashed down with that weird plastic rope. The passenger side is piled with white plastic garbage bags and green canvass haversacks stuffed with various things. I have seen him shaving in the rearview mirror, and emerging from the public toilet in the park. Sometimes he writes vigorously on a clipboard. In other words, it looks like he's living out of a pickup truck with no shell.

This particular day, he happened to get out of his pickup just as I walked by across the street and glanced over. He looked right at me and rather than just brazen my way past without betraying any recognition, I was compelled by some weird impulse (guilt, probably) to greet him by name, walk across and offer my hand. I later temporarily regretted that move, but I assume that people will recognize me just when I don't want them to. I seem to recognize nearly everyone I've ever met in my life, so I assume others do too. Not that I'm necessarily recognizeable, but I just figure people remember faces. Anyway, I felt like I couldn't decently just blow by and not say hello, and I confess to being curious. His fate has been a mystery to some of us over the years, and certain of my mates have been urging me to talk to him and get some gouge.

He looked at me for a minute, clearly not recognizing me right away, but then said, "Hey, I know you!" For a moment, everything was quite normal, though it quickly became clear he hasn't been doing well lately, at least on the economic front. His voice was much deeper, but he basically hadn't changed his appearance from late teenage years. His face was more lined, and he wore wire rimmed glasses instead of the Buddy Holly specs he used to have. Otherwise, he was exactly the same as when I last spoke to him, probably 25 years ago. He even dresses exactly the same: jeans, white t-shirt, tennis shoes, and a blue jacket over all. He looked clean, and he didn't smell bad (which was an improvement over his teenage years). He was clean shaven.

We exchanged the usual "How ya' been" pleasantries, and I betrayed little of my circumstances, seeing as how 25 odd years is a lot to cover in a few moments on the way to work. Then I asked, "How 'bout you? What're you up to?" This opened a deep, dark can of worms, as I should've known it would. He didn't really know where to start. He kind of waved a hand at the truck and said "Wellll, politics, bad management...it's been tough."

"Oh?" I said, immediately thinking I should've just said, "Well, endure, and live for a better day!" and headed down the road. However, curiosity got the better of me and stayed to listen to a long, monotonic dissertation on his brother and family, the machinations of his mother's conservators, one of who has a mind smaller in scope than his, and how the bastards just don't understand deep down how valuable a guy like him can be. Each thing led to another tangent, and his tale grew more branches than the surrounding redwoods. At some point I had to start detaching. I launched a few verbal cues for ending the conversation, but they weren't picked up. He was rolling and he had much to say. I think maybe it had been a while since anyone had asked how he was doing. I remember mentally shaking my head, thinking that he's had it, he's drifting and can't find the pier. At his age, no one will hire him for much of anything that pays a living wage, and I got the impression that his claims of computer expertise were possibly unsupportable, but that's hard to say. On the other hand, he was always kind of a personally grandiose individual, perhaps in reaction to the knowledge that he was ridiculed widely, even by some of us who purported to be his friends.

I felt real sympathy for him, but also a revival of the grinding irritation that he used to engender when the gang used to hang out. His innate pomposity has survived the years, but it's joined by a pathetic, apologetic self realization that he annoys people. Deep down, he's a nice guy, and always was. He used to compliment us in a genuine, unaffected manner, mostly just because you should compliment your friends. He was doing his best in the face of some serious social handicaps, and couldn't bust out of his retro-conservative mode. I remember him becoming enraged and stomping out of the house when he saw the Beach Boys on a TV show, and they all had beards and long hair. Incidents like that kept us shaking our heads. We all wondered what had become of him. I used to see him at a distance once ever five years or so. There were rumors that he was keeping bees for some old guy who was keeping him. That came from his brother. We chuckled cruelly over that, but who really knew the truth? We were wrong to be that way, and we probably all knew it, and hopefully we've grown a bit since then.

Eventually, I had to say goodbye and get to work. I interrupted a long description of how city governments work with a overly obvious glance at my watch and said "Look, I really gotta be running along. Good to see you, and I'll probably run into you again sometime." He began to apologize and I just held up my hands and shook my head and said, "Not to worry. No problem. Hang in there. OK." I turned on my heel and strolled south. He headed back to his truck cab.

I will undoubtedly see him and talk again. Not for any great length. However, now I'm interested to see which way he'll go. Will he hang in there, will he endure and live for a better day? Will there be a better day for him to live for? I hope so. He deserves it as much as we all do.

Pride goeth before a fall, I hope.

2005-06-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

This whole story is a perfect illustration of the kind of political arrogance and swagger that just annoys me to my last nerve. It's smug posturing on a grand stage. Rove is affectionately known as "Turd Blossom" by Gee Dubya. I think they should drop the "Blossom" from that, to make it more fitting, you understand. With any luck, while not the whelp of a beaten cur, this is the sniping and whining and strutting of one who sees the unraveling of an agenda. The Bush Administration has ridden on the wings of this kind of crap for years. Now perhaps the wings are beginning to melt in the heat of a continuous stream of bad news. There will never be an apology from this vile scumbag, as there will never be any public owning up to reality by Dick Cheney, et. al. Still, I remain hopeful for some kind of payback for this kind of thing and the lies and double dealing these swine have troweled out for the last five years.

Mother Ocean

2005-06-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

Well, Daring Dayton finally made it into the ocean. In Pacific Grove, CA there is a wonderful crescent shaped beach protected from the wind and weather by Lover's Point. Toward the end of a long stressful day, we wandered down there for a half hour of sun, sand, and collllldd-d-d-d ocean currents.

At first, he played with the sand in the time honored fashion: thrusting his little hands into piles of it and making fists full of sand then hurling it into the air with a yell. Mommy and Daddy stood around with cousins and felt vaguely envious. We weren't really equipped to get fully into the beach scene, but Daring Dayton was wearing his jams, and and had bare feet so he was set. We waited to see how long it would take before he headed toward the waves. After about five minutes of sand hurling, he stood up and stared at the ocean and shreiked, just on general principle, then wandered toward the surf line. I wandered over there with him and he had his first experience at running away from the half inch deep foam. He was into the game from the start, shreiking and laughing and sprinting at top speed for the dry sand as the sets came in. For me it was no game since I still had my shoes on. At some point, curiosity took over and Daring Dayton lived up to his name as the edges of the northern Pacific Ocean washed over his feet. The look of alarm was immediate and classic, but it was quickly replaced by a grin, as he proceeded to pound the water with the flat of his hands and get completely soaked. By this point my shoes were off and I was fighting the urge to take off my shirt, hand my wallet and keys to my Wife, and hurl myself into the drink. The water was calm, and the waves were cresting at about 6 inches. Perfect. However, I limited it to bare feet and nothing ever felt so good in living memory. After a day of toting around the effects of a recently deceased uncle, letting the salt water wash over my toes, and watching Daring Dayton laughing and yelling and splashing and falling over was all I could've asked.

We regretfully retrieved the tyke after about 20 minutes because we had to get back to Richmond. He was soaked and had weird little black sand particles plastered to his skin and his diapers were full of sand, but he was blessed by King Neptune and he was Salty. A perfect end to our little vacation.

This says it...

2005-05-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

...rather well.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5427823.html

Friday PM

2005-05-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

My eyes have sunk into my head by about an inch. I am looking out at this screen through a tunnel of exhausted, darkened flesh. I want nothing more right now than a cool breeze, a rum and coke, and some hopelessly silly humor. I'd love a long weekend of slow pace, and minor but great achievements, like the garage being half emptied. It would also be nice to go out to Drake's Beach with My Lovely Wife and The Little Buccaneer. He's never seen the ocean up close, never seen the waves break or had cold sea foam wash over his toes. He loves the water so perhaps he'll take to the beach like a gull. Who knows? Perhaps we are raising the next Laird Hamilton, but don't know it yet. Or, he could be like his old Dad was as a little kid, and get a huge rise out of running from the freezing cold water as it runs quickly up the beach. In any case, I would be happy if he just dug the sand, in all the ways you can dig something. Dig? Crazy.

"Once upon a Time,
In the Land of Ooopapadow...."

- Jazzbo Collins -

Uncle Fester

2005-05-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

My head feels like it's' in a vice. I have a cold. Not a bad one as colds go, but I only get about one a year, so they have an impact. I feel as though I'm sitting in a hot room with a giant holding my head in his two hands and just pressing them together. Everytime I think of this, I'm reminded of Uncle Fester on the Addams Family TV show and how he used to put his head in a press and have Lurch turn the wheel until the "Pop!" was heard. Then he'd say "That's great, Lurch!"

I stayed home from work a couple of days back and had that great feeling I used to get in grammar school when I had a cold and could just stay home and play. I didn't sip coffee and surf the net back then, but doing that two days ago sufficed for the morning. Sure, I could've done that at work. The mosheen is better, faster and has a bigger screen. But why? I sounded like hell, and was blasting indescribable things from my bronchial tract all over the area. At home, all I had to do was get my own goodies, and lean down and scratch the dog behind the ears now and again. He was into it until he noticed something furry in the backyard, then all hell broke loose. I got him out just before the back door gave way. He's a good dog, though, and large. I'm pretty sure that anyone who broke in would regret it in a hurry.

I done been tagged!

2005-05-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged by Hip because he likes to harass me. How nice! So I gotta lis a few things heah!

Total volume of music files on my computer?

I have no idea. I don't even keep track. I just copy cds into a media library and make mixes and ride through my job on wings of song. Who cares how much as long as its a lot?

The last CD I bought was:

Without a Net - Grateful Dead

Song playing right now:

Up Around the Bend by Creedence. I must have my Creedence, just about everyday.

Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

Up Around the Bend - CCR
Brown-eyed Girl - Van Morrison
Cast Your Fate to the Wind - by anyone. Something about that melody has completely burrowed into me.
La Mer - Charles Trenet (or Beyond the Sea Bobby Darin) Again, the melody....
Semper Fidelis - US Marine Band. Sousa swings as hard as anyone, and I grew up in the Corps.
This Time its Real - Tower of Power. So I listed six. So sue me. Five ain't enough. Six ain't enough, but I'll stop there.

Which 5 people are you passing this baton to, and why?

Just two. Roy, because I don't think he got it yet, and he's a righteous picker, and Wiggy because I'd like to read what she says. Otherwise, I don't really know anyone here...yet. Ones I'd pass it to already passed it to me, or got it passed to them. I's behind the curve here. So there we are.

Oil for Food...HAH!

2005-05-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Is this part of the March to Democracy? I guess you could cynically rationalize this as assisting the Iraqi people, even though everyone knew that Saddam was pocketing the proceeds with the Iraqi people still hanging off the shit end of the stick. I put this in the same category as Halliburton (then headed by Dick Cheney) subsidiaries doing business with Saddam Hussein at the height of sanctions. It is a stark reminder of the hypocritical nature of the thing our government has involved us in. It also leaves me questioning even more why we went to war. What was the real reason? First we facilitate the machinations of Saddam, going back decades, making major bucks off him. Then we whack him for invading our ally, then we make more billions of dollars off him. Then we whack him again, for good, for . . . what? The inspectors were doing the job, so it wasn't as though he wouldn't let them back in, he didn't have WMD and they basically knew that before the trigger was pulled, and he wasn't part of the 9/11 plot. So what was the real reason?

Mellow, Man...

2005-05-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

...don't harsh my mellow. Like...wowwww.

What a fine day it turned out to be. After reading with mounting, teeth grinding fury more about our devious administration, I somehow managed to lay it all aside and flow into the day. I became part of it, as it were. When swimming I imagine myself as something like an oil slick on the surface. I try to become part of the upper layer of water. It's uncanny that whenever I manage to do that, my hips rise, I rotate better, and any strain or tension disappears. In fact I speed up, which ain't saying much, but still... The world becomes a bright blue thing accompanied by a gentle bubbling sound. Now and then a human torpedo passes by soundlessly, not seeming to move at all, yet rapidly growing smaller as they move down the line.

So I tried this today in the office and it worked like a charm. Things to seemed to flow past me as I flowed past them. Somehow, before they disappeared, I completed the task. Why, oh why, can't I do this everyday? Could it be that it only works on Friday the 13th? Does it only happen with a new moon? Does it only happen at the end of the semester? Is it an ancient technique that I have actually stumbled upon, where if I develop it enough I can disappear at will?

Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice...

2005-05-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece from the Washington Post, via the SF Chronicle. Here's the memo in question.

More evidence of heartless abuse of power, of lying out right to the American people on an issue of life and death, based on some kind of megalomaniacal power/resource grab and perhaps other motivations as well which may have nothing to do with politics or national resources.

Well, there is no security there now such that the resources can be tapped. Iraq isn't paying for its reconstruction, we are. Even though in May of 2003 our goofy child president said major combat operations had ended in Iraq, there is a Marine regimental combat team engaged in a major operation in NW Iraq, to try to whack the insurgency near the taproot, two years later.

Of course, one can say, "Well, of course things are fucked up. It's war, Man!" Uh huh. A war that didn't need to be fought; a misplaced effort when the real effort had to be continued elsewhere, when other threats loomed far more dangerous but were less conveniently dealt with. Bush got his war, American and Iraqi families are smaller or gone altogether, and where are we now? Al Qaeda remains, Bin Laden is out there somewhere thinking up his next vicious move, North Korea thumbs its nose at us with probable nucular weapons, Iran does the same but perhaps not with weapons yet but with more proven ties to terrorism than Saddam ever had, and our forces are stretched such that they are beginning to break down. Iraq is a shambles, victimized by corruption even after Saddam was long gone. The American taxpayers dollars have been wasted in the billions and they have been lied to yet again. I could go on and on. I didn't even mention government sanctioned torture or the grinding into the dust of civil liberties in the US.

The whole of the administration that perpetrated and continues to perpetrate the Big Lie should have all their pay and pensions assigned to military families that have lost loved ones in this war. They should have all their stock dividends diverted to the reconstruction of Iraq. They should then be forced to clean the halls of government through which they have trod with small, old toothbrushes and paint thinner to help get rid of the smell. Then they can go home.

I know, it'll never happen. They have screwed us all to the wall and will get away with it. The American people will demand no real accounting and these liars will duck hunt and diddle their money into whatever oblivion awaits them, perhaps while some other administration deals with the Second Korean War.

There are days...

2005-05-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

...when I wish I were a large dog. Then I could run around naked and sniff things, and no one would care.

By the way, this Lucas cat's got nuthin'. The last two "Stah Wahz" movies have been rubbish. The third one will be as well. Hang it up George.

Finally A Friday

2005-05-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Indeed, and why am I making an entry? I can't really think of anything to write about. I just figured I better get something up here, or Hip Liz will make me do pushups, and rightly so. I inflicted this thing on the blogosphere, so I better use it, huh?

I miss it, but lately I have been busier than the one-legged man in the ass kicking contest. It just never ends. Well, it does end. The semester ends. Yeah. That. It just doesn't seem like it. My mind lately has gone into that halting mode. I have...a...thought. Almost as though William...SHATNER! has taken over my thought process.

Thank God for Baseball, or "Bay-tall" as Daring Dayton refers to it. I will hopefully sink deep into the televised version tonight, and attend the same Giants vs. Nationals game that Hip will be attending tomorrow. All the bushwah surrounding Barry's knee, and angst over the fortunes of the bullpen will be moot. I will lose myself in the expanse of green and the hum of the crowd. I just want to see the ball rocket across the diamond as Edgardo Alfonzo calmly throws out a runner by half a step, smoothly making a throw that would cripple my shoulder forever. I want to see Omar Vizquel lay out, snag the pill deep in the hole, and still throw the runner out from a sitting position. I almost don't care who wins. I just wanna see it happen.

The Nationals are an interesting story, aside from the shameful tale of political brutality they suffered at the hands of Major League Baseball when they were the Expos, just because of the name. There was a Washington Nationals club that played in the mid-19th century. Then, they were known as the Washington Nationals from 1905 through 1956, even though they were an American League club also known as the Senators. First in war, first in peace and last in the American League.

Right now, my computer is playing the Marine Band playing "Semper Fidelis." I love JP Sousa, particularly "Semper Fidelis." People around here have been somewhat taken aback by this, but to hell with 'em all. Sousa is quintessentially American, and swings waaaay down deep to boot. Besides, it's "The President's Own" playing the music of their greatest conductor. All other considerations evaporate.

Happy Friday, and semper fi'!

Paralysis

2005-05-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

I have sat here for one and a half hours doing almost nothing useful. I have sent two brutal emails regarding a certain event or which I have wasted an enormous amount of time in the service of my clientele, and the faculty, only to have equivocation and caprice rule the day. I won't go any further with it. I can't. I'll go stark raving mad and start singing "Le Marseillais" out my window, badly off key.

This place has sucked the motivation out of me. They have attached a vacuum cleaner to my heart and turned it on full.

Maybe I should just get in D. James Brown says he can't get down if he doesn't get in D. Funky D! Down D!

Maybe I should just disappear on some mysterious "errand" and catch up on the latest at the local magazine stand.

Maybe I should set up nine pins at one end of the hallway and organize a match for the staff.

Maybe I should just try to do something, anything, to justify a paycheck that happily just got a bit bigger. I'd really like to. I am not the bitter, hopeless bureaucrat yet. There is still a spark of fair play in there somewhere that tells me I should earn what I get. I should perhaps have a spark-ectomy. It seems to be getting the way of my cavalier time wasting.

Yet More on Suppression

2005-04-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Go here and read and be concerned. You'll have to get past Salon's free pass, but its worth a minute or two of annoying ads. This is a very serious matter for which there can be no excuse. Once again, the Big Lie inherent in Bush's babble about the spread of democracy is exposed. Again, I wonder...how can anyone in this country go along with this? How can they get so cranked up about a badly done attempt at covering up a blow job, and not even peep about something like this? Are we that far gone? Anyway, its stunts like this that have me convinced that the second Bush presidency is as bad for this country as just about anything else we've ever experienced.

A Quickie

2005-04-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Wow. That brings a lot of things to mind. Now, get your mind out of there. This isn't about those things.

Today they held a memorial for Alan Dundes, a monument himself in the field of Folkloristics. It lasted for about two and a half hours. Not long after, a tropical front moved in and it rained like hell for about half an hour. It would have to be the hardest rain yet this season. It's still dark and weird out there. It reminds me that three days after my grandfather died, the grandfather clock in the foyer of our house fell flat on its face.

Hmmmm....

Acanthus

2005-04-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've had a certain affection for acanthus bushes since we moved to Berkeley in 1965. They are large and solid and have those great big waxy leaves. I used to hide inside them when I was about 7. They were big enough, and I was small enough that I could get in under their arching stems and be invisible to my older brother. Any advantage was a big advantage in those days. Being that he was 9, he was much bigger and stronger than me, and didn't always balk at reminding me. To be fair, he wasn't a tyrant. Still, to have a friend like the acanthus was now and then a wonderful thing.

Chunks of Flesh

2005-04-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

This morning was a classic early spring morning in the SF Bay Area. The Berkeley Hills were slighty damp and freezing cold as the sun had not yet topped the ridge. The air was clear as a bell, and snappish in that refreshing way that makes nightcrawlers late sleepers wave their hands in derision and make the vomit sign with their forefinger. That's OK. As Neal Cassady said, never knock the way the other cat swings. Or , as he supposedly said. Anyway, a morning like this makes you feel good.

I was striding down the road, enjoying the smells of grass, flowers, and a breakfast being cooked somewhere. Dogs were barking in Live Oak Park. Crows were swooping around looking for some nice succulent garbage. Then I saw the squirrels skittering around, running from me, and after each other. Perhaps one had a golden acorn. Then a dark image took hold, and I haven't been able to shake it yet. A picture arose in my mind of a fence line topped with perhaps fifty squirrels, all cute and cuddly and staring at me. All of them. I was seized by a hypnotic force and backed up to a parked car, against my will. Try as I might I couldn't break away. I stared at them, and they stared at me. Then an especially fat and malevolent squirrel began that horrible ragged chirping noise they sometimes make. All the squirrels joined in. The racket became intolerable. Suddenly I knew what was coming next but I couldn't move. I was to be the object of sacrifice for 4 dozen squirrels to appease whatever god they worship. They leapt down from the fence en masse, and before I knew it, great chunks of my flesh were being stripped off my legs by the leaping fat, furry little devils. I screamed even but could barely hear myself above the horrible chirping and squeaking. I went down swinging, finally able to move. Squirrels flew in every direction and the crows swooped down to take them as they hit the pavement. Ah yes, crows are my friends. The squirrels scattered, squeaking in fear as the corvids fell on them with relish. When I recover I will moblize an army of them and ravage the squirrel population from Richmond to Oakland. I will have my revenge, and the crows will have a feast. Ahhhh hahahahahhahaaaaa....

Game called....

2005-03-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Another great change has taken place. My neighbor in this stark hallway, an internationally renowned Professor of Folklore, collapsed while teaching yesterday and never came back. He was a truly wonderful neighbor to have. He respected the staff here in an old style that many faculty have no concept of. Nevertheless, he had academic stature that many of them will never achieve. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Giants fan, going back to New York days. He knew what is was to watch Willie Mays turn the cavernous centerfield of the Polo Grounds into his front lawn. He and I had many great conversations about the Giants, about folklore, and jokes bad and good. Humor was one of his many fortes. Clearly, he was a rich man on many levels, and I am richer for having known him as superficially as I did. I will raise a glass to his memory, and certainly the first overpriced beer I drink at SBC Park this spring. I will listen to Giants games as always and remember him stopping at my door to check the count and the inning. If I'm lucky, I will still hear from somewhere a deep baritone comment on the action, and be thankful.

More Suppression

2005-03-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

Here are more reasons why I am convinced that the Bush administration is as harmful a presidency as we've seen so far. This kind of thing is clearly something that all Americans should be concerned about. The media needs to be more diligent in reporting it and pressuring the White House, but as RFK, Jr. said, they are "stenographers for the White House."

Here's where I got it, with the attending links, and that annoying Salon Day Pass. Scroll down to "Dissent Will Not be Tolerated." Is it not ominous to people? Here's links they have in that article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10969-2005Mar29.html?referrer=email

http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/98/118/01_2.html

The third link just leads you back to the same page. Does anyone really care that this kind of thing goes on? This is important no matter your political bent. Remember, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in October of 1964, while driven by left wing impulses, was joined by the entire political spectrum. Berkeley College Republicans marched alongside Youth Socialists. What does the administration want to hide? If they are in the right, they'd have nothing to worry about. This suppression of free speech is far more dangerous than anything in the foreign policy. It corrodes our republic from within, and boldly underlines the Big Lie of encouraging democracy abroad. Bush is not interested in getting the word out to ALL the American People, he's interested in getting stroked for the cameras by crowds of adoring dingbats who live in fear of the approaching hordes of married gays, abortion doctors, and insidious brown people with fiery eyes and foreign oaths on their breath. Look out, 'cause if we don't return to the values of the McKinley Era, we're all doomed. You, me . . . everybody. If we allow free speech and criticism and questioning of the governement, the American Way of Life will end.

Wait a minute! I thought free speech was one of the foundations of the American Way of Life. What the hell has happened? What would Nixon do? Would Ike go along with this? Would TR?

The Great Change

2005-03-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

We are at the cusp of the disappearance of the previous generation in our family. Well, the physical disappearance anyway. None of these people will ever be truly gone. My father died ten and a half years ago at the age of 77. His older brother lived on. He was born in 1916, and will be celebrating his 89th birthday in a couple of weeks. We just had Easter dinner with him. My mother was there as well, now 80 years old herself, and going strong. My uncle is not. The decline lately has been rapid. Just a year ago he was a bit crankier about being on time, but still witty and charming as ever, and full of conversation. He's a widely educated man, an Episcopal priest, with a degree from Harvard Divinity School. This particular holiday, it came out only in flashes. The smile is there, and the dapper Irish tweeds, and the handshake still firm, but the voice is weaker and up a couple of registers. The conversation was harder to get started just because he always did. Old habits die hard, so now we need to get it started and its tough for some reason.

In any case, this whole scene just started me thinking about the passing of the baton, so to speak. Our parents generation is disappearing slowly but surely. Now we are they, and are we up to it? How many gazillions of times has THAT question been asked? We are self sufficient but we aren't. I think back on the home my parents created for my brother and I, and I still wonder just how they managed it. I feel utterly incapable of doing it as well. At some point, confidence will take over, and I'll worry no longer. Right now, I am scratching my head with a furrowed brow and and muttering, "Oh brother...."

Hole in the Wall

2005-03-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

Against the blinding granite cliff, the black hole of the cave entrance yawned to the rising morning like the mouth of a dead man. Philo recoiled involuntarily from the idea of going in, but he knew he had no choice. He had reached the end of the climbable slope. Above him rose the wall of granite. As it ascended it leaned toward the east, creating an overhang he was not equipped to deal with. Perhaps his friend Mac, the human gibbon, could have climbed it, but Philo was not cut of that cloth. No one else was, only Mac. Philo was strong and lithe but he had his limits. Exhaustion was setting in as well after a night of being pursued through the Mojave and up the Owens Valley. He'd intended to get to Lone Pine to Mac's place, but his truck had thrown a rod, and there had been nothing for it but to head for the hills.

To the east lay the southern spurs of the White Mountains, dark grey against the rising sun. 1500 feet below he could clearly see the ribbon of US 395. Pulled over on the western shoulder was the old Chevy Apache pickup he had driven down from Oakland, and just behind it the two surplus jeeps that Morris' henchmen had driven on his trail. About a mile west of the road, at the bottom of the slope, the six gunmen were fanning out and looking for his trail. They hadn't spotted him yet, but it wouldn't be long. Philo thanked his lucky stars the girl had waved goodbye about 20 miles down the road. Lucy Morris was worth a little trouble, and he knew he'd never regret dancing with her at the roadhouse in Amboy. That dance, slow and hot, had led to another, longer, sweeter dance in his motel room later on. Somehow, probably from one of her twisted cousins who'd no doubt been drinking at the bar, Morris had found out that his daughter had wandered off into the night with a tall stranger; his sainted, pure daughter, who'd probably shagged half the young studs from Baker to California City. Philo wondered if this kind of thing always happened when she decided to have a little fun. Were all her paramours now laid up cold on some remote cliff in the high Mojave?

Philo shivered in the morning chill and touched the revolver he'd strapped on before abandoning his broken down truck. He traversed the face to the cave entrance and set a foot inside the lip. Just then a fusilade of rifle shots cracked below him, and bullets smacked sharply into the stone around the cave mouth. A shard of granite sliced a gash across his face before he could dive into the darkness.

The On/Off Switch

2005-03-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

My Wife was burdened all afternoon and evening by grading final exams. So it fell to me to keep The Little Buccaneer entertained for most of that time. We were out in the late morning doing errands and, having played all morning, he naturally fell asleep in the car seat, like a good boy should. We laid him out on his Spongebob futon while we ate lunch. Sometime around 12:30 he popped up, rubbed his eyes and grinned. Then he stomped on his personal accelerator and left daddy in the dust, and the legos, and the dinosaur puzzles, and plastic turtles until around 6:00 PM when he climbed into his highchair and yelled, "Hasenpfeffer! Where is my HASENPFEFFER? Bring it! Now!"

Well, he doesn't know, but he got chicken and yams instead. One day, he'll figure out that it wasn't hasenpfeffer. Hopefully, he won't resent us too heavily for that. Anyway, he inhaled most of it, and hurled the rest across the dining room, with a huge grin, laughing through an orange mouthful of yams. Then he wanted down, in no uncertain terms; crying through that same mouthful of yams. We released him from the bondage of his tray table and put him on the floor and away he went, and again I tried to keep up. I actually managed to do that and eat an excellent beef bourgogne My Wife had made earlier. Oh boy. We put Shark Tale on the dvd player and Daring Dayton stopped for a few moments. Only a few. Somehow, we corralled him long enough to give him a bath, after which he ran naked but for his bike helmet through the house, yelling and screaming when I caught him and took him back to his room to get into pajamas.

Ten minutes later, before we could even get a bottle between his teeth, he was as asleep as anyone can be; sitting in my lap snoring to beat the band. His off switch had been hit and he was off. This is where I deeply envy him. I can't switch myself on and off like that. In the morning, I fade into consciousness like a broken reostat At night, I sometimes can't keep my eyes shut no matter how tired I am. Daring Dayton merely rubs his face one or twice and shuts his eyes and within a minute, he's out. Same thing in reverse when he wakes up. This leads me into questions of why I don't do that anymore. Sadly, there's no time for it now. Gotta work for a few miunutes. More next time.

A stream

2005-03-18T16:18:00.000-08:00

The tennis courts outside the window are awash. Rain has returned as if to slap us all upside the head for thinking that late spring had come early. We were all fooled. No one listened when the stand up comics who do the weather on the Lidless Eye told us it wouldn't last. So now it spits rain and coeds are all "Like, this SO sucks." Makes me yearn for a real South Pacific squall, such that you can't see 100 feet for the rain alone. Makes me want to see these coeds running and squealing for cover as they lose their balance and stumble and drop their ipods. I often wonder if the people on the other end of the cell phones would hear a voice distorted by a strange bubbling sound.

I wonder, did anyone ever get washed into a storm drain before they started putting grids on them? Did they always put grids on them? Not entirely. I remember riding over one and the front tire of my bike going strraight down between the metal slats. That was a bad one. Nothing broken, but plenty of blood. Then some bright bulb decided to put cross bars on them, and we were in a whole new world.

Still, what would it be like to travel through the storm drain down what's left of Codornices Creek and into the Bay? In Riding Giants, they show crazed Southern California surfers riding cardboard through the Huntington Beach storm drain. It seems like it was a hell of a ride for them. But that was Huntington Beach in the early 60s. You'd probably come out of there now with a whacking good case of typhus.

Oh well. Better stick to weird fantasies for now.

So many books, so little time?

2005-03-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

Not on a desert island.

I've been tagged by Hip Liz, so I am forc-ed, in the name of the leuaw, to make a few choices. It's cool, though, 'cause it's way more fun than working.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Welll, let's see...not unless the women painted by Frank Frazetta , especially this one (though not for obvious reasons), for the covers of Conan books and E. R. Burroughs adventures count. Much like Hip Liz, I mostly read Tolkien, RE Howard, and Lovecraft as a young 'un, and a lot of history. So, I suppose those women aren't fictional literary characters, but they represent them, and, uh, you know I, uh, wasn't all that deep about things like that, especially as an adolescent. I remember being captivated with a photo portrait of Winston Churchill's mother, but well...you know.

The last book you bought is:

Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness--Modern History from the Sports Desk . Of course, I am doubly glad I bought it due to the subsequent weird passing of its author. Thompson appealed to me deeply. It sometimes didn't matter what he wrote about, I just wanted the slash and burn of his style. I was introduced to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in college by a wise and far seeing roommate, and there was no turning back. Though I'd grown up a lot by then and become someone who could join a crowd, I still had the habits and the bent of the basic social outsider that I'd become in high school. I suppose Thompson showed how powerful that could be. That's a weird thing to say considering that his modus operandi was to become part of the story and write it from the inside out. Still, I felt he was speaking to the outsider inside me. Still does. Always will. As he often wrote, "We're not like the others."

The last book you read:

I get so little time to read. Essentially, I do all my reading these days in the very few minutes between going to bed and falling asleep, or when sitting on the head on weekend mornings. Crass, you say? Yes, but honest. I think the last thing I actually completed was Michener's South Pacific. I have to say that after I'd finished I sort of felt like, "Well, that was pretty good in spots, but what was all the fuss about?" I much preferred his Rascals in Paradise. There's a great read. That book transported me completely out of the mundane. I felt the tropical heat and torpor, and the amazing caress of tropical lagoons which are neither warm nor cool, but somehow both, just when they need to be. If I had my way, I would have the gelt to take my family and wander around the South Pacific for a couple of years. Ahoy! Now I have to read it again.

What are you currently reading?

Two things...The Garrett Files, and Quartered Safe Out Here. The former I find tedious, but I told someone I'd read it. He was enthusiastic and knows that I am into detective fiction and film noir, especially Out of the Past. This one started out so well, but it just keeps going, and going, and going, and well, it's like an interminable tough guy act which progresses just a bit faster than Mendenhall Glacier. Having said that, it's got some good passages and creates visions the way a good book should. I just wish it would hurry up and get to the denoument.

The latter is one of the most absorbing and gripping books I've ever read. It isn't scenes of combat, it's the minutiae of soldiering and the image Fraser gives of being in the last manifestation of Mr. Kipling's Army. It's Fraser's characterizations of his squad mates. It's the swagger inherent in the men who fought in Burma in the forgotten corner of World War Two. They were up against it and prevailed in the end, and no one could tell them they hadn't gone through the worst offered by Man and the Elements, and come out the other end. Fraser's pride in that and in his mates is evident throughout. Definitely a kind of tough guy's book, but deeply human nevertheless, and honest as they come, I think.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

Wow. This depends on the day. There's probably no way that next Wednesday the list would be entirely the same as today. Two things come to mind, though, for any day. One would be either the latest edition of the National Geographic Atlas, or the Times Atlas of the World. My Wife says its nerdly, but I like to sit and read the maps, for no particular reason. My Wife is right, but I don't care. If I can't go there, I can at least see where it is and plan a trip that may or may not happen. That's only the first reason to sit and gaze at the atlas. The list is endless. It is my fondest hope that Daring Dayton feels the same as he one day (hopefully) sits with one in his lap and gazes at it for hours.

Another would have to be The Lord of the Rings, if only because it is a monolithic literary. . . thing in my life. I read it and its appendices over and over and over. It is indescribable in its importance to me. You can assign to that statement any speculation you like. For some reason, right now I am unable to go further with that.

For the rest, today's list would be The Great Shark Hunt, by HST. See above on why Thompson.

Goodbye Darkness. World War Two was my father's war. He too served with the Marines, briefly in the Pacific, throughout the war. Happily, he was invalided stateside with a tropical parasite or I might not be here. All but 4 members of his company of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines were killed, most at Tarawa in the tragic fourth wave. This is another heartfelt war memoir by another incredible author. I see names of people and places I used to hear at the dinner table. I first read this when my view of things like this was changing from a Childhood/Hollywood viewpoint to something more complicated that I haven't really figured out yet. There's repulsion that anyone goes ever through this kind of thing, along with a sense that for some, like Winston Churchill, it's a great adventure. How would I react?

Last but not least, Silent World, by Cousteau. I first read it as an assignment from a friend who was certifying me for Scuba diving. It was great motivation and Cousteau's image of flying underwater helped relax me when some tiny hitch, real or perceived, in the air flow would give me the woolly boogers. Presumably, if I'm on a desert island, I would have access to the ocean and the urge to swim in it and under it would be irresistable.

Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?

Good God. I 've no idea. The only people I really am connected to here have already passed it to each other. Sending it to anyone else feels kind of presumptuous. Roy passed it to Hip Liz who passed it to me. Aha! I pass it to Jean Lafitte, just because most everything else he's written is interesting and worthwhile and I knew him way back when.

Now, HL, when next free, bear west by southwest and make for the whisky cabinet well back from the Contra Costa shore. We shall sing songs of plunder and guzzle and swill laugh at the devil. Oh yeah, you can read the books too.

A thing

2005-03-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

Here's a thing that really fries my grits. I guess we can take small comfort in the fact that the Post is reporting on it. Still, you can bet your bottom dollar that nothing will ever come of it, and the White House will continue to do what it wants and ethics be damned, openness in government be damned, and accountability be damnedest of all.

Here's a key phrase, a quote from the GAO Comptroller:

In an interview yesterday, Walker said the administration's approach is both contrary to appropriations law and unethical. "This is more than a legal issue. It's also an ethical issue and involves important good government principles, namely the need for openness in connection with government activities and expenditures," Walker said. "We should not just be seeking to do what's arguably legal. We should be doing what's right."

Here's the White House mouthpiece:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that federal agencies have used video news releases for years. "As long as they are providing factual information, it's okay," he said.

Here's another:

"Congress has got to settle it -- either Congress or the courts," Walker said.

Well, someone is watching out for these things, but you can see the White House attitude. They simply will obfuscate, obstruct, or blow off any attempt to hold them accountable for anything.

The press doesn't generally help. As RFK, Jr. just said here at Berkeley, the press have become stenographers for the White House.

A Friday Afternoon

2005-03-11T17:05:00.000-08:00

Roy has posted something which he says is boring, but it isn't really. The thing is, the comment function won't let me leave one, so I'll leave it here. Roy, your post was not boring. Interesting comment about Chi. I live every working day in a roiling cauldron of negative chi and only escape to generate positive chi at lunch and at 5, or so. Now I want to look at old photos of Kansas City.

Today, I didn't swim, although it was a fine, hot Noon hour and I could always use the time in the water. I went and drank/ate lunch that was mostly beer. Much of it was Moretti, a fine Italian lager. Made me want to sit at a small table outside a cafe in the Italian Tyrol and lean back with a thumb hooked inside my belt, my tyrolean feathered hat on three hairs, a pipe with a lid drooping off my lip from under the massive mustache, and a weathered crinkly gaze looking out with jaded wisdom on the passing scene. I could have occasional obscene thoughts about the young ladies, and crack wise and phony with any impressionable young hot shots that may come around asking for a guide. I would at first refuse, then after taking them down a few stripes, I would agree to show them the way up the mountain, leaving them all in exhausted wonder out how, at my age I can still do it.

OK, Friday afternoon, even a busy one such as this one, is fertile ground for fantasies of this nature. Was it such an afternoon when John Fogerty wrote "Born on the Bayou?" There ain't no bayous in El Cerrito, unless you count El Cerrito High's soccer field.

"My papa said, 'Son, don't let the Man getcha and do what he done to me!' "

Lonesome George....

2005-03-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

There has always been a crowd that thinks that rock 'n' roll is a young man's game. I guess you could make that argument. I argue that it isn't so. There's an element of style there that will always elude the younger performers. I was reminded of this yesterday when watching a dvd of a George Thorogood concert in Nottingham, England. It was by way of being a 30th Anniversary of George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers.

George has aged. He's 53 this year and to his credit, doesn't appear to have tried to hide it. He still dresses in black with pointy boots, and wears his snakeskin pattern scarf around his head. Now, the waistline is larger than it was, and jowls are clearly forming. His eyes are clear, but not clear. They reflect a certain rockbottom understanding of the seamy side of life. In the tradition of Jerry Lee Lewis, they became more feverish as the performance progressed. They became glassy orbs...windows on the fire of sin that he knew was being stoked for all the true believers in the house. The thickened waistline wiggled just as obscenely as it always did and his guitar slide waggled at the audience like Steely Dan on the end of his twitching pinky. Sweat poured off his head and he belted out the blues and smiled that "I wanna do you after the show" smile. There's nothing like that in popular music now and that's a shame. As he said, "There's two kinds of music today, the blues...and that bullshit on TV." The bullshit on TV could use a dose of Lonesome George singing something like "Highway 49." We could have a rebirth of slide guitar rockin' blues, with teenagers across the land rocking and rolling in the old sense of the word, Elmore James slicing out of their speakers, pot smoke drifting through the room filled with empty pizza boxes and beer cans, and the crunching of peanut shells joining in with the squeaking bedsprings.

Ah me. I got a little carried away there, and it's only 9:25 AM.

Something Thompson said...

2005-02-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

...which speaks to one of my original motivations for this blog:

"The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place."

I think almost none of them are on straight. Something about politics turns humans into subhumans. It's a shame.

The Doctor is Out

2005-02-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

For good.

By now, anyone who would care knows that Hunter Thompson did himself in Sunday night.

I had an odd reaction to it, that a few years back I'd have chuckled at. I heard the news about 6AM on Monday morning. I was waking up even though it was a holiday. I flicked on the radio just to get the goods on the coming day. Usually, I just wait to hear the weather report. Yesterday morning I certainly got more than I bargained for.

When I heard the first words, "The Father of Gonzo Journalism..." I knew he'd had it. When the announcer said "...apparent suicide...." I did feel the air go out of me for just an instant. I was struck with sadness, for just an instant, then it went away. I was nagged by something, and it wasn't until later that realized it was the utter lack of surprise. There was something fitting about the exit. Something fitting about Thompson riding a .45 bullet to the next stop. I couldn't really feel badly for Thompson that he would do a thing like that. Why?

I feel badly for all of us who appreciated his outraged voice. For a long time now, since about November 2000, I've hoped that he would find the gas again to chase the goblins and expose them for us like he used to do. I'm convinced that at least part of him cared deeply about our country and its shaky future. Maybe that along with his chronic pain had thim thinking it was time to check off the net. Still, it's hard to concieve of him giving up hope. This is one I will think about for a while, uselessly, no doubt. I will wonder where our next talented, outraged voice will come from. We need it badly, and the best one is gone. It's a stone bummer, Man.

Yes, indeed.

2005-02-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO what a ride!' "

You bet. It's Friday, y'all. Time to get really wild. Order out instead of cook. Rent a brutal thriller. Drink two beers instead of just one. Oh boy!

There it is. It's OK though, because that's as wild as we can get when the first two thirds of any evening are spent keeping up with 18 month old Daring Dayton of the Spanish Main. He's a holy terror, and our house is like a toy store that's been ravaged from top to bottom.

One day, when The Little Buccaneer and his sibling are into their own things and can be trusted to be out on Friday night, My Lovely Wife and I will put this bit of philosophy into practice.