LiteraryLicense.

Vegan January: Day Twenty-Two

2012-01-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

1:30pm: Two servings of vegan lasagna, same stats as yesterday.

Vegan January: Day Twenty-One

2012-01-21T18:23:00.001-05:00

2:30: Big lunch at the local Mongolian fusion all-you-can-eat: one bowl with white noodles, edamame, mushrooms, black beans, peas, carrots and various hot sauces. Second one features spinach, cabbage, mushrooms, broccoli, eggplant, squash, brown rice, tomatoes, and teriyaki and jalapeno ginger lime sauces.

5:30: Two cups of green tea, one with about one ounce of Hennessy.

10:00pm: Two large servings of vegan lasagna (pasta, tomatoes, spinach, onion, garlic, tofu, swiss chard); about five bottles of ale.

Totals: days, 21; miles walked, 180.

Vegan January: Day Twenty

2012-01-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

9:30am: Rice Chex with soy milk and one whole grapefruit. Coffee with non-dairy creamer at work.

6:00 pm: Three pints of ale at the Carolina Ale House. First beers of the year. My lord, they tasted good.

8:30: four tacos with black beans, brown rice, tomatoes and avocados, followed by one burrito with the same filling. Probably a bit much, but hey, it's Friday.

Vegan January: Day Nineteen

2012-01-20T00:51:00.000-05:00

Busy morning with no breakfast. Had two cups of yesterday's reheated Earl Grey tea with soy milk.

4:00 pm: A large serving of snack mix (peanuts, dry-roasted edamame, Rice Chex) and a large salad (baby spinach, carrot, parsnip, tomato, mushroom, artichoke hearts) with some balsamic vinegar and black pepper. Parsnips are vile uncooked. Will not make thar mistake again.

Around midnight: Bowl of black bean and tomato soup.

Totals: days, 19; miles, holding at 180. This is the first time I've officially dropped off the pace for the month. Lame.

Vegan January: Day Eighteen

2012-01-18T16:33:00.000-05:00

9:30 am: Two pieces of rye toast with chopped tomatoes, salt, freshly ground pepper, and maybe a tablespoon of olive oil; one grapefruit; two cups of tea with soy milk.

12:30 pm: About a cup of snack mix, shelled peanuts with Rice Chex.

10:30 pm: Two bowls of tomato/vegetable soup.

I'm incredibly tired and the semester is getting busy, so no walking. The 300-mile January is beginning to look increasingly unlikely.

Totals: days, 18; miles, 180.

Vegan January: Day Seventeen

2012-01-17T16:14:00.000-05:00

8:00 am: Juice of three-quarters of a pineapple, one grapefruit, two tangerines, about six ounces of cranberries, plus two slices rye toast with sriracha. Had three cups of Earl Grey tea with soy milk. I hadn't slept much and needed some caffeine.

1:30 pm: About one cup of a snack mix consisting of shelled peanuts and Rice Chex. Took six-mile walk around Greenfield Lake, later another three-mile walk with Rachel and dogs Downtown

10:30 pm: Two bowls of vegetable soup (collards, tomatoes, mushrooms, edamame), with a handful or Rice Chex here and there as a snack.

Totals: days, 17; miles, 180.

Vegan January: Day Sixteen

2012-01-16T11:21:00.001-05:00

Well, folks, we have officially crossed the halfway mark on my radical January austerity program. There are a couple of observations that I've noted on the transition from the juice-only diet (days one through ten) to the return to solid food and the reintroduction of caffeine. First, I assumed that weight loss would level off, and it has. I neither had the weight to lose nearly a pound a day for very long, nor is it especially healthy in the long term from what I understand. It can cause the body to produce hormones causing food cravings while storing fat more efficiently. This is, obviously, the opposite of what most people on diets are looking for, and the last thing that I wanted to do. My goal was to have a second phase of diet change. The first has already occurred in the last several years when I eliminated pork and beef altogether and asked (with exceptions here and there) that we only eat poultry that was humanely raised, and eggs from the same. Nevertheless, a lot of cheese and eggs were still around as a result of this, and that's something I'm looking to severely curtail in this second round of modified eating.

Second, I realized that use of black tea as a cheap and effective stimulant is something that I can completely live with. Even when we are well-rested, the natural circadian rhythms of the body provide natural lulls during the day, and I've found that I'm remarkably unproductive during those periods. Caffeine in reasonable doses helps considerably with this, and is about 1,000 times better for you (okay, that may be an unscientific assessment) than Red Bull or those bottled Starbucks drinks that either have 300 calories or toxic levels of artificial sweetener. The trick with caffeine, of course, is not to use it as a substitute for proper rest.

As a third note, should I make it until sunup tomorrow, this will be the longest I have gone without a drink of alcohol in over ten years. I have no plans at present to give it up permanently (or even to give up drinking in large quantities when the occasion strikes me), but this has been a fun experiment in seeing if the one-day-at-a-time stuff that AA has popularized works: it does. One needn't envision never doing something again, so long as one can envision simply delaying it until tomorrow. This nifty psychological ploy allows one to build success and goals retrospectively rather than going forward. Thinking that one can go without something that has been a constant companion (be it booze, cigarettes, drugs, or whatever your demon of choice) seems impossible when we envision going cold turkey and as yet have no experience of successful abstinence. Imagining going 20 days, however, when one already has 16 seems perfectly reasonable.

As is any successful program of change, it's important to look at change as a concurrent opportunity for gain rather than simply a sacrifice. Otherwise, we're likely to be glum about the entire experience and sour on it quickly. As such, seeking to integrate many more fresh fruits and vegetables into my diet has spurred new methods for shopping for them so that the food bills don't skyrocket. Vegetables are typically not expensive, but the added quantities required to provide calories as well as their generally poor shelf stability can make them compare unfavorably with various dried and canned foods.

So to address the cost issue, we found a small local produce shop that buys the less-attractive food off the truck and then turns it over at prices below those at the supermarket. They will also sell us whole boxes of blemished items such as peppers or tomatoes at a huge discount, to be immediately washed and sorted at home or turned into a batch of soup.

The issue of variety has simply involved the inclusion of things that I hadn't thought to eat before: parsnips, cranberries, kiwi, different types of lettuce, locally raised cabbage and greens, etc. In its own strange way, learning to know the history of the food that you eat can be empowering, and watching the 80-year-old who runs the radiator shop down the street pick greens from his garden and hand them to me is a fun experience for a lifelong city kid.

Anyway, on to the show...

1:30 pm: I boil some tomato skins and shredded collards left over from juicing a couple of days ago, add a few mushrooms, a carrot, and some spinach, add cumin, freshly ground black pepper, salt, and have at it. It comes out a sickly brown color, but tastes pretty good. This one's not for guests, I suppose. I have two small pieces of rye toast (the heels) with some sriracha sauce as a side.

No cardio for me today, as my legs are ridiculously sore and need a day off. I go stand for two hours watching the MLK parade, which begins a block from my house. It's the closest we're getting to walking anywhere. I intermittently do sets of free weights throughout the day in an attempt to compensate.

9:30 pm: Rachel makes an incredible tomato soup with the puree from the box of ripe tomatoes I brought home on Friday. I have two small bowls, the second with dry-roasted edamame for added texture and flavor. It's a good trick, and one that I'll use again.

Totals: days, 16; miles, holding at 171.

Vegan January: Day Fifteen

2012-01-15T17:28:00.001-05:00

1:30: Bowl of Rice Chex with soy milk, one grapefruit, 800mg ibuprofen. Followed by eleven-mile brisk walk. Took second walk (three miles) with Rachel and puppies from 6:45 to 7:30.

9:30: Bowl of stir-fried veggies (carrots, parsnips, broccoli, edamame) with brown rice.

Totals: days, 15; miles, 171.

Vegan January: Day Fourteen

2012-01-14T17:06:00.002-05:00

Okay, after a ho-hum kind of yesterday, we're getting back on the fitness horse. We'll begin with something totally unrelated, adding some yeast to a small batch of beer that I began brewing yesterday, so that there's something to look forward to in the month of February, or, as I shall geekily rename it, Febrewary. Ha! Wasn't that funny? Okay, I'll stop. Many miles to walk, and I have to perform rehab exercises on my shoulder today lest I have to pay extra money in evil co-pays for physical therapy.

12:00 pm: Quart of tomato, collard green, spinach juice, with 800mg ibuprofen. Followed by 15 mile walk (two jogging mixed in).

7:30 pm: A healthy serving (maybe 1.5 cups) leftover wheat penne with a tomato/veggie ragout.

10:30 pm: A small bowl of veggie soup--carrots, tomatoes, red potatoes. Had Dan and Becca over for some Rummicube. I have to say, sitting around playing board games with company while everyone else drank alcohol and ate cookies was probably not one of the more fun experiences I've had in recent memory

Totals: days, 14; miles, 157.

Vegan January: Day Thirteen

2012-01-13T21:43:00.003-05:00

Today was a bit of a letdown from the pace of late: idiotic planning (setting my alarm this morning for 7:30 pm--well done, genius) made me badly late for work, so I had to install a new battery in the scooter on the fly and ride in instead--no walk for me. Since we went out to dinner (first time going out to eat since the fast began) and didn't get back home until Downtown would be populated by weekend drunks, that effectively killed the possibility of a late-night walk with the dogs, so I have my first essentially zero-exercise day since the beginning of the month. Lame.

12:30 pm: About a cup of snack mix consisting of Rice Chex and peanuts.

8:30 pm: Dinner at Ida Thai, a restaurant at Carolina Beach with Rachel's boss and coworkers. Had fried tofu triangles with sweet-and-sour sauce as an appetizer, and a fairly large portion of pan-seared tofu, bell peppers, onions, green beans, and zucchini with steamed white rice and a garlic black bean sauce--still vegan, so far as I could tell. It's not the healthiest day on record, I suppose, but hell, it's Friday. Can't be a Buddhist monk every moment.

Totals: days, 13; miles walked, holding at 142.

Vegan January: Day Twelve

2012-01-12T20:05:00.001-05:00

12:30 pm: About a cup of a homemade snack mix consisting of dried edamame, peanuts, and Rice Chex, chased with 8oomg ibuprofen. Followed with 10 miles of walking (Downtown to UNCW and back). Got home around five and realized that I'd left poor Iris in the backyard! I am the worst dog parent ever. It was cool and dry today, so the only harm done was that she probably annoyed the neighborhood significantly with her relentless baying.

5:30 pm: A second cup of the same stuff above, plus one grapefruit (eaten, not juiced) and a couple handfuls of red grapes. Later took a three-mile dog walk. Legs are tired from walking long distances in boots rather than athletic shoes. Ah well.

11:30 pm: One (largish) serving of wheat penne with tomato sauce.

I'm considering setting a new exercise goal--300 miles in January. Given that schools and work have started back up, that's going to be difficult to achieve, so I'll have to think about it.

Totals: 12 days; 142 miles walked.

Vegan January: Day Eleven

2012-01-11T11:27:00.001-05:00

Dear everyone,

I know that no one in his or her right mind would read someone else's dietary blog on a regular basis, so you may all be forgiven for that. In fact, I would probably think you a bit odd if you did follow the dietary blog of a stranger with any great passion. As an educator, I can, in fact, recommend many better, more entertaining, and more informative reading resources; you need only ask.

That said, I have decided that I rather enjoy both the therapeutic function and record-keeping aspect of dietary blogging, so while the juice fast ended with breakfast (in the literal sense) this morning, I've decided to keep a dietary journal going at least until the end of January, to record the longer experiment with veganism.

8:30 am: Juice fast ends modestly, with a smoothie: one ripe plantain, about a cup of soy milk, and some frozen blackberries, along with 800mg ibuprofen for the fubarred right shoulder. This is followed by a brisk five-mile walk from Downtown Wilmington to UNCW. Since I did not sleep much (up working on the cursed PhD applications), I immediately decided to jump off the juice fast's "no caffeine" policy and had a cup of yesterday's reheated coffee. Ugh. I could have done without that for another ten days. It did its job, though.

12:30 pm: About one cup of Rice Chex mixed with salted peanuts.

5:00 pm: Two medium-sized carrots, cut into sticks, served with sriracha sauce.

9:00 pm: One serving of whole wheat pasta penne served with a tomato sauce made from yesterday's juice scraps. I think we get extra green points for finding soup and sauce uses for the leftovers instead of tossing them, an option now that I'm eating solid food again. Woo!

10:00 pm: Two-mile walk with Rachel and dogs.

Totals: 11 days; 129 miles.

Day Ten: Reflections

2012-01-10T15:39:00.001-05:00

Dear Juice Fast,

It's actually been pretty cool getting to know you. We got off on the wrong foot, it is true, and I though that I was going to hate you and possibly only stand you for a day or two, but like a proper shitty Hollywood comedy, we made our differences work to great hilarity.

In any case, here I am at day ten, and although the juice diet has let me drop between eight and 10 pounds while still feeling all right about the world, it's time to let it go. I have no plans to abandon juicing altogether, as I've learned that it's a delicious and incredibly healthy way to have breakfast or a light lunch, but I like eating dinner, and, come to mention it, I like eating fruits and vegetables as well, and not just drinking them.

So here is what I'd like the diet going forward to look like: grapefruit and other miscellaneous juice in the morning along with rye toast topped with diced tomatoes and perhaps a little salt and olive oil, three to four days a week. Other days: Rice Chex with soy milk, at least until we're out of it.

Lunches: Salads with mixed greens or baby spinach, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and one can of white tuna on days when we're not having fish or shellfish for dinner; tomato and greens juice or plantain and soy milk smoothies on other days.

Dinner: Whatever Rachel feels like making, with an emphasis on beans and pasta with veggie sauces.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can walk to school (five miles) every day and have that work with out overall household schedule. It would be, hands, down, the easiest way to integrate daily long-distance walking into my routine. Setting aside free time for these things is difficult and annoying, which means, in practice, likely to fail.

In any case, and without further ado: day ten...

9:00 am: Eight ounces of pomegranate juice from a bottle (yuck) to wash down the 800mg of ibuprofen.

3:00 pm: Following a ten-mile walk (to and from UNCW), about 20 ounces of grapefruit, strawberry, cranberry, red grape and tangerine.

9:00 pm: Following three-mile walk with Rachel and the dogs, had quart of juice: mustard greens (better than I was expecting), romas, mixed salad greens. This is the last obligatory meal of the juice fast, but I may keep going until dinner tomorrow. We'll see how I feel when I wake up.

Totals: days, 10 (!); miles, 122 (!). Both goals reached successfully.

Day Nine: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

2012-01-10T00:48:00.001-05:00

Trip to the student health center today to meet the sports medicine specialist and see if we can't figure out what the hell's wrong with my right shoulder. While waiting, I helped myself to the scale in the hallway, and clocked in at 167--probably about eight pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the fast, which is right about what I was expecting based on the reduction in my waistline. So, I'm completely satisfied with that, and although I'd like to get down to a trim 160, that will happen (if it happens) while gradually reintegrating solid foods into my diet and taking down the exercise from 80 miles a week on foot to more like 30 or 40. A pound a day is, after all, not a sustainable weight loss strategy in the long term, so I'm shooting for more like a pound a week from here on out.

Walked five miles to the campus med center, pushing the total to 106. News from the doctor sucked--likely an old rotator cuff tear that has since accumulated scar tissue and inflammation known as Adhesive Capsulitis, or "frozen shoulder." This typically requires a combination of steroid injections (boo!), anti-inflammatory meds, and physical therapy (can't afford copay) in order to avoid becoming permanent, so that should generally blow all around. It could be a million times worse, I know, but that's not the same thing as being good.

In any case...

6:30 pm: About 20 ounces of juice: Red grapes, strawberry, cranberry, grapefruit, granny smith apples. Yum. I hadn't done strawberries since day two or so and had forgotten how wonderful they are juiced. Took three mike walk with Rachel and the dogs between about 8:30 and 9:15, followed by a pint of sparkling water with lemon and lime. It's one of the best on-the-cheap appetite suppressants that on is likely to find. Thank you, San Pellegrino! (Perhaps they will offer me money for this ringing endorsement. One can dream, after all.)

11:30: About a quart of juice, mainly romas with mixed greens and a couple of carrots. I've noticed that I'm accidentally using less juice than I'm allotted for the day, and wondering if this is good, bad, or indifferent. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much, as tomorrow is the end of the all-juice diet and the beginning of using juice as an additional part of a diet that was already pretty high in vegetable intake.

My plan is, as it should be, to ease the solids back in slowly over the course of a couple of days so as not to make myself sick. Some toast with diced tomatoes Wednesday morning sounds good, as does spicy cabbage and rice for dinner. Rachel and I are planning to do January all-vegan, as a separate-but-related kind of experiment, before I go back to regularly eating fish and shellfish in February.

Totals: days, nine; miles walked, 109.

Day Eight: One Goal Down, One to Go

2012-01-08T10:53:00.001-05:00

Awoke feeling splendid this morning. Since we're at 83 miles, one huge effort will get me to my goal two days early. I'm shooting for it, but who knows?

11:00 am: About a pint of juice: cranberries, a green apple, one grapefruit, one tangerine, some red grapes. Followed by walk of 18 (!) miles. One toe is bleeding as a badge of honor. That, however, put me at 101 miles, and while I have no plans to spend the next two days sitting around doing nothing, I could if I wanted to, as I'm pretty sure that there are no negative yardage plays in life, and the mark is secure. Uncork the sparkling carrot juice! Wait, what? There's no such thing? Damn.

6:30 pm: About a quart of tomato (romas and hot house), mixed salad greens, carrots, and a habanero. (Incidentally, Blogger keeps underlining the spelling of that pepper whenever I write it to indicate that it's spelled incorrectly. Dear Blogger, that is how you spell the word for a commonly eaten pepper in two continents. Update your dictionary.) Mixed in some sriracha sauce for spice and variety.

Skipped the late meal, even though I had some juice allowance left. Sometimes you just don't want to clean the damned juicer one more time before bed. On that note, has anyone else noticed how stray vegetable matter clogs the pipes? I had not included a Drain-o allotment in my juice fast budget, but perhaps I should have.

In any case, onward and upward to day nine, already drooling about spicy cabbage for dinner on Wednesday. Did I say dinner? Okay, drooling over Spanish toast and a plantain-and-soy-milk smoothie for breakfast Wednesday. Okay, I know that these are things that few people drool over, but: A) about damned anything sounds good when you haven't eaten in ten days; and B) none of this will have done me much good if I have a glass of oatmeal porter with a six-egg omelet come my first day of freedom.

Weigh-in at the doctor's office (for something completely unrelated) tomorrow: days, eight; miles walked, 101.

Day Seven: Still Standing

2012-01-07T19:57:00.001-05:00

Still around for another day, as the finish line begins to appear in the distance. I have no scale and hence can't tell with any certainty (I never would have viewed daily weighing of myself as a priority, anyway), but I imagine that I've probably lost about five pounds through the first six days. Once again, I'm looking to trim the waistline and to look and feel healthier, so the pounds were never really that big of an issue for me. Because I've heard that various severely low-cal diets (which, after all, is what this is) can cause the body to consume muscle while leaving fat, I've been using free weights and noting the results to make sure that I'm not losing any strength (I'm not).

Following yesterday's poorly chosen distribution of juice, I went back to the format that I'd been doing previously: roughly three servings, around noon, 5pm and 9pm.

12:00 noon: About 20 ounces, juice of three-quarters of a pineapple (ungodly delicious), one grapefruit and some cranberries--a fine start to the day. This was followed by a walk/occasional sprint at the beach with Rachel and the dogs. While technically this only counts for two miles, walking and running in sand burns off considerably more calories than moving over hard and level pavement, so I think I did okay.

6:45 pm: About 20 ounces juice of a number of hot house and roma tomatoes, two carrots, and some mixed greens (spinach, lettuces). This was followed immediately by a three-mile walk downtown with Rachel and the dogs. Rather than walk the loop around Greenfield Lake, which is how I usually pile up the ridiculous mile totals, I decided to give the legs a light day and to push for a higher total again tomorrow. Afterward took a three-mile walk downtown with Rachel and puppies.

10:30 pm-ish: Another pint-or-so of tomato juice (more like puree, as the juicer was acting up) with a habanero and some worcestershire and freshly ground black pepper. I wasn't actually hungry any longer (I'm usually not in the evenings), but don't want to drop the calorie content too low and sacrifice necessary energy or nutrients. Plus, had to get rid of the giant box of tomatoes purchased a couplle of days ago on discount before they all rotted, and to make room for the new box of romas that I just bought at the same place.

So that does it: days, seven; miles, 83. See you on day eight.

Day Six: The End is Nigh!

2012-01-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

Today was managed somewhat poorly, leading to hours of hunger and a very irritated me. I should have remembered that having a large juice first thing in the morning simply makes me hungry faster later in the day, but I had a meeting about one of my new work tasks at 10:00 and I didn't want to go without anything at all in my stomach.

9:00 am: 20 ounces of grapefruit, granny smith, cranberry. Went to my work meeting, was picked up by Rachel at 11, then went to Costco, so I could walk around hungrily surrounded by cooling food while Rachel ate samples and then made me buy her a piece of cheese pizza. If I had to pick the worst plan for an early afternoon imaginable, well, it would have been worse, but perhaps not by a lot.

Walked 14.5 miles (no breaks) from about 2:15pm-6pm. Following walk, had liter of sparkling water with lemon and lime and passed out for two hours. Awoke feeling hungry and crabby.

8:30 pm: About 48 ounces (I was ridiculously hungry) of tomato, carrot, radish, parsley, lettuce, spinach, and a single habanero for some spice.Followed with a few minutes of free weights, interior bench and reverse curls.

Nevertheless, the end is coming into sight and I'm well ahead of the 100-mile walking pace.

Totals: six days, 78 miles walked.

The Juice Still Pours: Day Five of Ten

2012-01-05T13:52:00.002-05:00

Hello all, and welcome to another rousing tale of what I'm not eating today. Oddly, this is getting easier. I'm not sure if the decreased hunger is a good or bad sign, though, as it may mean simply that my metabolism is slowing down to conserve calories. I always considered this possibility, but figured that ten days couldn't really mess anything up that badly. I was never really looking to lose more than about 15 pounds anyway, and the essential purpose of the fast in the first place was to see if I were capable of fairly radical behavior change.

Let me explain a bit: my girlfriend and I have a diet that is probably about 80% vegetarian to begin with. Mine is closer to pescatarian/vegan, in that I eat mostly plant foods with several weekly servings of fish or shellfish, whereas she has an attachment to dairy products that I don't share. Knowing how animals are treated in factory farms (horrible beyond measure), she tries to keep her animal product purchasing decisions ethical, buying from producers who use local and sustainable farms as their suppliers. Every once in a while we'll pig out on the local Indian buffet, including the chicken that was probably bought from one of the evil farms mentioned above, but nobody's perfect and it's generally best not to get too preachy about these things, anyway. It just makes everyone think that you're superior and obnoxious.

So why am I doing a juice cleanse? Last semester, due to scheduling difficulties and an upper arm injury that I sustained, I quit going to the gym altogether. Given that I'm a student and that all of my jobs are sedentary academic jobs, and given that I love to drink beer like it's oxygen, I started to gain more weight that I'm comfortable with. I'm not technically overweight, and only have been once ever in my life. Nevertheless, motivated by plain vanity or a legitimate desire for self-improvement (you pick it), I've decided that I would like my 17-year-old waistline back and a body that is generally fit and athletic. This takes a lot of work at 38, and I thought that a juice fast might be one way of both getting started and testing to see if I have the discipline for any kind of sustained change. So there will be no tales of how I lost 30 pounds in ten days, because if I lost 30 pounds I would look as if I belonged in a cancer ward. This is simply about losing some belly fat and segueing back into a healthy lifestyle that features regular sleep, reduced caffeine intake, moderate alcohol consumption, and regular exercise.

A second reason is that I have three weeks off between semesters. With some travel mixed into see the respective families, I usually spend much of this time drinking beer and playing PS3 continually until five in the morning. So we're reverse-engineering the plan from previous years, to see if I can come back from the holidays in better, not worse, shape than when I left. On that note...

1:30 pm: 20 ounces of juice, mostly tomato with two carrots, seasoned with some worcestershire and black pepper. It's going to be a tomato-based few days, as (see yesterday's post), as I bought a box of blemished/soft tomatoes from the local produce shop that don't have a lot of time left in this world, and, lest I not get my three bucks worth out of the purchase, I have to juice as many of them as possible before the reminder gets thrown out.

7:00 pm: Following ten mile walk/hike to my university and back, 20 ounces of tomato, radish, carrot, green onion and spinach juice, followed by a pint of sparkling water with lime. As a way of being less wasteful, Rachel's going to put the leftover pulp and skin from the juicer into some lentils for her dinner, to see how well it works. Composting in the side garden was another idea, but the dogs will inevitably just get in there and eat it, and a lot of human produce ranges from vaguely upsetting to mildly toxic for them, so that's a no-go. took second walk of roughly two miles with Rachel and the dogs around 9pm.

12:00 midnight: About 12-14 ounces of the same juice listed above (leftovers from earlier). I'm noticing considerably less hunger in the pm hours in particular, and really only finished the juice because I wasn't sure how well it would keep uncovered in the refrigerator. Since few temptations seem to lie between me and bed in an hour or so, we will consider day five successfully completed.

Totals: Five days, 64 miles walked.

Still Juicing: Day Four

2012-01-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

Despite my threat in yesterday's post to abandon juicing in favor of a fruit-and-veggie-solids-only diet, I've decided to stick with just juice for at least a little while longer, trying some different kinds of foods to see if I can't make it work the way that I would like to.

Woke up shortly after six this morning, having fallen asleep only five hours earlier, but felt refreshed nevertheless. There's a legend that these diets make people require less sleep, but thus far I'm going to chalk it up to coincidence and remain skeptical on that point.

12:30 pm: Following 14-mile (frequent breaks) standard-pace walk, had 32 ounces of juice: one granny smith apple, one orange, two small, ripe bananas, one ripe plantain, cranberries, two oranges, three tangerines. It was delicious, but I now have to budget my two remaining juices or else have them both for "dinner" around nine. Incidentally, the long walk takes me to 50 miles--halfway home!

5:30 pm: Following a two-mile walk, stopped at the local produce shop for some radishes, a pineapple, and the whole box (probably seven or eight pounds) of the blemished tomatoes that they doubtless either take home or throw out at the end of the day. The incredibly cool Mexican woman who runs the shop sold me all of them for three bucks, so I have at least several days worth of juicing tomatoes before they go off. Drank about 25 ounces of tomatoes (roma and hot house), radishes (which produce more juice and taste better than I thought they would) and spinach. I may cheat a little (I have walked 16 miles, after all) and go slightly over the daily 64-ounce limit by having some more yummy tomato juice with worcestershire, hot sauce, and freshly ground black pepper later--a virgin mary nightcap, if you will.

Totals: four days, 52 miles walked.

Still More Stirring Tales of a Juice Fast: Day Three

2012-01-03T22:50:00.000-05:00

12:00 noon: As we enter the waking hours of day three, I have to admit that the times I like best about this program are the ones in which I am asleep. That noted, sleep takes its usual appetite suppressant effect, so that once again I wake up feeling all right and not hungry. The prospect of getting a lot of walking in today, however, is looking iffy based upon the fact that it's about 29 degrees out. We'll see how tough I'm feeling after some brunch juice and waking up a bit more.

Weirdly, the accidental reading choice of Hesse's Siddhartha is a perfect fit for the austerity program that I've put myself on. Perhaps I'll try to pair book selections with the program deliberately to see if it helps lend perspective.

1:45 pm: 16-20 ounces: two tangerines, two kiwi, red grapes, cranberries, two carrots, one granny smith apple, plus 800mg ibuprofen.

6:00 pm: Following ten-mile (medium pace) walk (I toughed it out), twenty ounces juice: apple, grapefruit, tangerine, two carrots, cranberries, followed by pint of San Pellegrino with lime and 800mg ibuprofen.

9:30 pm: Following three-mile walk, quart of juice: canned tomatoes, two oranges, one tangerine, two carrots, red lettuce, spinach, followed by pint of San Pellegrino with lime. Based upon review with the girlfriend, have concluded that this may be the end of the diet in liquid form. Since I regularly eat fresh fruit and veggies anyway, I'm going to see if I can simply finish the ten days consuming them in solid form. It's few-to-no additional calories, and may leave me less hungry, given the presence of indigestible roughage. Other rules remain the same: no caffeine, no alcohol.

Totals: three days of juice only, 36 miles walked.

Tales from a Juice Fast: Day Two

2012-01-02T13:37:00.000-05:00

Went to bed late and woke up around noon. Not feeling especially hungry nor in a bad mood. These are, given yesterday, good signs. The plan today is to have 16 rather than 32 ounces of juice at a time, spaced out through more even intervals.

1:00 pm: Following three sets of bicep curls, had pint of juice: strawberries, red grapes, cranberries, two kiwi, a granny smith apple, a carrot. One 800 milligram ibuprofen for the tendon injury in the right arm.

5:00 pm: Following brisk ten-mile walk, 16-20 ounces juice: red grapes, grapefruit, cranberries, a carrot, two tangerines. Followed with a pint of San Pellegrino sparkling water, flavored with a slice of lime.

9:00 pm: Following three-mile walk with Rachel and dogs, had quart of tomato, carrot, red lettuce, spinach, (one) habanero, grapefruit (plus another 800mg ibuprofen). Tasted better than it sounded. Followed with pint of sparkling water with lime. This actually kept me full for about three hours.

Totals: days, 2; miles walked, 23. This was better then yesterday, due to better pacing and distribution, but still no walk in the park (despite the long walk in the park). The idea here, of course, is to keep the body provided with nutrients while depriving it of calories, assuming that the combination of that and a good deal of exercise will cause my metabolism to start consuming fat. I haven't noticed this happening yet, but it's only two days.

Notes on a Juice Fast: Day One

2012-01-02T02:20:00.002-05:00

Weirdly inspired by a documentary film, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, that on some level is essentially an infomercial, I have decided to attempt a ten-day diet of nothing but the juice of fresh fruits and vegetables. This will roughly equate to 64 ounces of juice daily, based mainly in grapefruit, apple, carrot, and tomato with various smaller fruits and leafy vegetables thrown in for variety and nutrition. To be specific, as part of the fast, I will also refrain from caffeine and alcohol. This is not going to be easy.

As a supplemental program, I'm going to attempt to walk 100 miles over the same duration. This is less difficult than it sounds, as I already have intermittently done long-distance walking for several years as an easy-on-the-knees form of cardio.

I'm in a position to do this because all three of my part-time jobs are attached to my university, leaving me with three-plus weeks of down time between fall and spring sessions. With a nod to tradition, I've decided to run the experiment from New Year's Day to the tenth of the month, provided that I have the will to survive that long.

9:00am: Slightly hungover from New Year's Eve celebrating, I juiced two grapefruit, one tangerine, two granny smith apples and two carrots. This produced roughly a quart of juice, which I consumed all at once. Bad idea. I was already hungry again by eleven, something that might have been avoided had I split up the servings or started later in the day.

2:00pm: Following a 3-4 mile walk with Rachel and the dogs, I have roughly a pint of juice: spinach, carrot, fresh tomato.

6:00pm: Following a second, brisker, six-mile walk I have an additional pint of juice: one 14oz can of tomatoes (technically, I suppose this is cheating, but we have a giant surplus from a recent sale), two large carrots, baby spinach, red leaf lettuce.

On the whole, this sucks so far. I'm hungry, irritable, and using ibuprofen to fend off the inevitable headaches that come to me from caloric deprivation. Large glasses of water following the juice help stave off hunger for a little while longer. Will attempt to ration juice better tomorrow to reduce periods of hunger.

2:00am: I have completed the first 24 hours. This was more difficult than I would have imagined, but it is encouraging to know that the whole thing is already 10% complete.

Wombs and Tombs.

2006-07-06T19:48:00.000-04:00

In this world we are plucked rudely from a warm dark hole and subsequently lowered gently into a cold one; the terse interregnum between we call life. It is a stumbling, shambling, generally accidental state of affairs that, like a roller coaster ride or disappointing sexual tryst, is over ere we even figure out what it’s about. As biological life is best intuitively discerned as a wayward insurrection of material physics, it isn’t actually about anything at all, of course, but that’s a rather disappointing way for sentient beings to look at things, so humans conclude that it must be about something, because designating purpose and order is among the most curious compulsions of our pattern-recognition-obsessed brains—we’re here for a reason, damn it all, end of story, and those who so vehemently contend that we simply consume, eliminate, copulate, rest, and expire need to be ostracized for ruining the party and bumming everyone else out.

Hence theism exists, and worse still, persists. It transcends, utterly, primitive superstitions about the natural world, although those are its root and sometimes flower—sky god make thunder, etc. It transcends even projection of our own material beings—the idea that since we are conceived, loved, and parented, the earth and universe must be as well—onto the cosmos. No, religion at its worst is more insidious than all that, in that it is a rejection of that most central principle of mathematics that everything happens in generally precise accordance with the probability of its happening: if you roll a four-sided die for long enough, the numbers one, two, three, and four will come up with astonishingly dull similar frequency. Religion, as commonly practiced, is the idea that the casino is a friendly one, that the odds makers are on our side. (Incidentally, this fact is the most compelling evidence to date that the existence of religions significantly predates that of casinos; no actual gambler, besides an insane or inebriated one, feels that the deck is actually stacked in his favor.) Religion is the concept that we get a metaphysical assist, that there is a substructure underlying and supporting observable reality, and that it is, for whatever peculiar reason, favorably disposed toward humanity and its lot. We like to ascribe totally comprehensible, if not yet comprehended, events, ranging from plane-crash survivals to recoveries from debilitating and generally fatal illnesses, to beneficent miraculous interventions, yet puzzlingly do not typically apply the converse: if a loved one dies in a bizarre accident or particularly grisly homicide, we seldom hear folk explaining matters in terms of an angry Yahweh smiting them. And even when we do, the next assumption among the bereaved and the lucky alike is that good and ill fortune correspond to some mysterious and unrecognized, but unquestionably extant, celestial blueprint, rather than just being a roll of the dice.

Now, not being omniscient, and all, I can’t dismiss with total certainty the possibility of a divine intelligence (an intellectual courtesy, by the by, that agnostics extend to theists without any reciprocity at all). However, were such an entity to exist, it would extend so far beyond the reach of mammalian intelligence as to render our assumptions about it criminally idiotic; it would be akin to your pet hissing cockroach passing the day coming up with theories about your ideological intentions. A thing that could engineer a universe would be so many orders of magnitude more bright than all of humanity collectively that crafting assumptions that it loves us and is on our side, let alone its requests and demands of its creation, makes considerably less sense than animists worshipping trees; the trees provide shade and firewood, after all.

So for me, the question of a higher power is not a question about the entity itself, which either doesn’t exist or exists wholly beyond human comprehension, but rather about the perverse emotional greed of those demanding that such a thing not only be manifest, but exists to advocate for themselves, their families, their nations, their political causes, etc., and moreover is a widely published author of spiritual texts for the moral edification of the masses. I’m curious about what biological and cultural drives motivate beliefs that, given any standard of objective logic, are so utterly counterintuitive as spiritual reincarnation, virgin births, physical resurrections, and, perhaps most academically repulsive, all forms of creationism. The idea that things come from nothing, or as bad, in (among others) the Christian creation myth, that they come from things wholly unrelated to them (e.g. humans from mud, which, as an aside, is to me entirely less flattering than the proposition that we come from hairier apes) is spectacularly daft; it isn’t really even a thing worth debating, as we can witness birds hatching and marsupial young crawling into pouches and human infants being birthed, but no one has ever witnessed fish being born of water or birds of air or flies of garbage or people of mud—nihilo ex nihilo.

This entirely simple premise—that things come from like things, and not from nothing or from unlike things—gets cleverly appropriated by creationists, who in turn argue that things stay the same forever. It goes something like this: since a human cannot be born of a chimpanzee, or vice versa, we must, as different species, be unrelated, and hence have always existed as we exist now. But this idea is infantile; one only need witness children playing the telephone game in school to know that a single message, passed across many ears and mouths, becomes a different one gradually. Claiming common human descent with chimpanzees is about as bold an assertion as suggesting that American baseball and English cricket, common products of popular stick-and-ball games played in eighteenth century England, might end up even more radically different sports given six million additional years of being played separately. Singular sources differentiate given enough time and space; Latin is dead as a vernacular language, but its DNA is perfectly alive and kicking in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. At the end of the day, evolution is easy to understand and breathtakingly obvious.

So back to the question: why all the willful obtuseness? What is it about conclusions derived from inquiry and evidence that makes them popularly subordinate to ones drawn from wild speculation and ancient myth? If we get back to Genesis, we find one of the world’s oldest recorded assertions that ignorance is, in fact, bliss: if we’d just stayed naked, stupid, happy and supine in that garden, rather than aspiring to knowledge, we wouldn’t have any of these here darned inconveniences like old age and death. A pox on that snake, I say. But it seems that the propagation of ignorance is one of religion’s core tenets; fundamentalist Christianity has been fighting material science tooth and nail for three centuries now, and fundamentalist Islam is, amazingly, much worse, frequently limiting the education of its societies’ young to that repellent little field guide for world military conquest. It is no accident, then, that societies steeped in Western secular material inquiry produce nanotechnology while cultures steeped exclusive in the Koran produce suicide bombers.

So then, religion, as it has been widely practiced throughout history, has been, and continues to be, a minus on the human scorecard. Sure, it has accounted for acts of charity, but on the balance, religions atrocity-to-charity ratio is about up there with armies and major corporations, which is to say not so good. And even when religious people do act charitably, the price exacted is usually the indoctrination of the aid recipients in that religion’s particular flavor of ignorance and dogmatism. It’s a mixed blessing, at best. Really, Marx had it about right when he concluded that, wholly apart from the question of God’s existence, religion was most often a way of selling people on the virtue of their miserably poor lives.

Any system of thought based on the philosophy of an individual that had been used as justification for sexism, racism, military conquest, and environmental exploitation would be denounced as folly and madness, much as we now rate the worldview of a Hitler or Pol Pot; yet the moment religious folk of all stripes invoke the will of the almighty, all bets are off: the Bhagavad-Gita justifies war and poverty through reincarnation, Leviticus excuses slavery, and the Koran offers a happy hereafter of kiddy porn for taking the infidels to hell with both lapels a-blazin’. Essentially, belief in divine justification leads us, as a species, to do profoundly stupid things, and to perpetuate archaic and imbecilic ideas. Belief in human knowledge and investigation leads us to do remarkably clever things, and to advance fresh angles and innovative solutions. One of these systems has the potential to save humanity, rather than the ability to comfort it in the face of its own failure and gradual destruction. It’s a terrible, terrible shame that that one is still badly losing the ratings war.

Reading Stuff

2006-04-10T15:12:00.000-04:00

C.S. Lewis, of whom I’m a fan, did not feel that atheism (in my case, better labeled agnosticism) and Christianity were compatible.  In Mere Christianity, he asserts that “Either [Jesus] was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. […] But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.”  While my respect for Lewis and his oeuvre are here recorded, I do not agree with his assertion.  Let me explain why.

The Sermon on the Mount, as presented in Matthew, is, to me, as Carl Sagan once wrote in Contact, “one of the greatest ethical speeches ever written.”  It defines the holiest of human philosophies—that we should love others not because they deserve it, but rather because loving those nominally undeserving is what separates any real concept of love from mere reciprocity: “If you love those who love you,” says Jesus, “what merit is there in that?  Do not tax collectors do as much?”  And it is important that we distinguish love from reciprocity: if we feel that love is paying for what you get, than love is as mundane as buying lunch and as altruistic as revenge.  No, love, according to Matthew’s rendition of this sermon, is transcending the facile human idea of just deserts; it is about loving all equally with the impartiality of a sun shining on all people alike, withholding from neither the good nor the bad.

Now, to return to Lewis’ assertion, one need not believe in the divinity of Jesus the Nazarene to hold with what I’ve just articulated: one need only look at the particular words of the sermon and not any extracurricular mythologizing that any of the disciples add to the rest of the narrative of his life.  Lewis holds that Jesus asserted his divinity, and that the words of the evangelists must be fully accepted or wholly rejected.  I don’t buy that dualism for an instant.  Accepting that Jesus is divine is, after all, not accepting the words of Jesus, who never by anyone’s contention wrote anything, but the words of his followers that wrote about him.  And frankly, the words of the sermon, whoever wrote them, are astounding.  Whether we take them to be verbatim recitation of Jesus of is largely irrelevant to their value, just as taking the words of Homer or Hesiod or Plato or Lao Tsu or the Buddha to be the words of one man is unnecessary in appreciating their majesty.  If, as some suggest, the plays of Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford, it would not make for less great plays.  To phrase the matter differently: should we sacrifice the luster of a gem to ascertain the biography of its maker?  I can, and do, think that the walking-on-water, rising-from-the-dead stuff is almost certainly a bunch of bunk, and yet can read Matthew and see the profound wisdom in the teachings of Jesus.  Contrary to what Lewis believed, I only have to view the latter as deity or loon as much as I believe Matthew an accurate historian, which is to say not very much.  And whether or not I view Matthew as accurate biographer, as distinct from historian, I can (and will) still cherry-pick the brilliant piece of rhetoric that  is his record of the Sermon on the Mount, without having to buy and consume (or reject) his larger narrative as a whole.

Ultimately, it is not so intellectually problematic as is argued to believe in the divine inspiration of a text (concluding that there is universal utility in its message) without believing in the Divine Inspiration (incontrovertible literal truth) of a text: the Bhagavad-Gita is my favorite book, yet I do not believe it to be a terribly accurate report of any ancient world battle, any more than I see Homer’s siege of Troy as an accurate representation of an ancient world battle, nor the Odyssey as an accurate portrayal of a man’s journey home.  Myth exists and is (justly) revered for its intellectual and spiritual benefits, but certainly not for its historical accuracy.  Jesus can be, and in fact is, profoundly inspiring.  That I must choose to accept that a man blighted fig trees and raised the dead, or instead that he was a lunatic with a God complex, is a ridiculous choice that I reject out of hand (sorry, C.S.).  One can find inspiration aplenty in myth, without having to subscribe to its literal authenticity.  I would argue that literal subscription is precise evidence that one has missed the inspiration.  One can see wisdom in fable, and understand that to be the principal value of fable, without having to sign on to orthodoxies about apostasy.  Atheists and agnostics can love the great spiritual books of the world by believing in their philosophical, enduring, human truths without believing in them literally.  Even scriptural literalists, on some level, know this: because what Swift or Dickens or Joyce or Faulkner wrote is not true in an actual sense does not mean that it lacks truth in a more permanent sense; truth often comes packaged in tales, as Jesus himself seemed to know through his frequent use of parables; and it is folly to assert that fact and truth are always the same—the myth of every age and place has demonstrated the contrary.  It is odd that a man like Lewis who wrote his own epic fable about Christianity (y’all know the one I mean) would assume so fervently that men 2,000 years earlier had not done the same, for similar reasons.

Stirring Tales of Withdrawal

2006-04-03T19:30:00.000-04:00

I felt, folks, that as a beneficent fiat to the public, it was just about time somebody put out a good, reliable guide to dealing with alcohol withdrawal after a solid six months straight of binge drinking, just in case anyone was sorely in need. Further, as a gesture of my renowned magnanimity, I have decided that the person delivering these words of wisdom ought to be none other than your own humble narrator. Ready?

User’s Guide to Seven-Day Self-Detoxification.

1) Learn to enjoy sleep deprivation. You won’t be seeing Mr. Sandman for several days, and if you try, he’ll just send you semi-somnolescent nightmares that will make you sorry you did. (Eaten alive by wild dogs, stuff like that.) Unless you have a valium prescription, which you’d have combined with alcohol by now if you had, you should just accept this and try to cope productively. Lying in bed feverish, sweating and frustrated is really no way to spend the night. Take the odd hour nap when you must throughout the day, but for chrissake do something productive during the forlorn, restless hours of darkness. One of the few things worse than not sleeping is lying in bed bored and pissed off because you can’t sleep. Give up. Your body will sleep sober when it’s ready, in 72-96 hours minimum. The good news is, there’s absolutely not a goddamn thing else to do at four a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Everyone sober is asleep and everyone drunk will annoy the piss out of your surly, fiending self the moment you hear their slurry, jocund voices. Try ironing, or reading, and those other things that people who don’t spend their lives rotting their livers on low-rent draft beer in a shithole dive bar with Brad Paisley on the jukebox.
2) Take diarrhea, stomach cramps, headaches, shaking and irritability as a badge of honor. You were obviously on a prodigious and ultimately successful bender for it to proceed for so long. Accept your suffering with the knowledge that you must have felt awfully nice for an awfully long time to feel this bad now. Besides, what’s the sense in whining? It’s about as appealing to others as those freaks missing jaws from decades of chew making documentary videos to inspire fear and pity in grammar school children. You did the crime, now do the time. No one wants to hear you complain. Deep down, you don’t even want to hear it yourself. Like anyone on death row, you have a pretty good inclination why you’re where you are right now.
3) Don’t answer the phone or the door. You will power stands at this point like a Japanese pagoda before a hurricane. The merest suggestion from another person that you go out drinking will have you in their living room before they can close the flip phone. Possibly before they even finish the invitation. After about five days, when the (at least presently) silky voices of PBR and Smirnoff begin to subside, you may exchange pleasantries with elderly family members and MySpace friends on the other side of the country. Until then, bolt the door and drink plenty of water.
4) Under no circumstances consider smoking marijuana to alleviate your suffering. Withdrawal brings a Keouac-y, Hemmingwayish sense of sleazy literary merit. Pot just makes you high and annoying. Additionally, if there’s anything sorrier than a person groveling with booze-lust, it’s a stoned person with flecks of Little Debbie about the maw, trying to avoid looking like they’re groveling with booze-lust.
5) Drink lots of caffeine. That way you can claim that your hands won’t stay steady because of the caffeine, which is true. There is no need to mention that they would not have done so in any case. As a corollary, do not consume chamomile, melatonin, kava-kava, valerian, or any other herbal crackpottery aimed at inducing calm or sleep. It won’t work and then you’ll be back at the angry-at-the-pillow stage of things. See (1).
6) Realize that you have a problem. Your problem is that you live in a world so pathetically backward that: A) You are forced to assiduously consume alcohol to supplement its inherent inadequacies; B) Science is so miserably primitive that it cannot synthesize a non-addictive variant of ethanol; and C) There is a host of preachy moralists out there that have to sit in church basements chain smoking and eating Dunkin’ Donut holes thinking that they know something that you don’t. Find them, when you are allowed out, and kill them.

Politically Incriminating Photos

2006-03-21T19:43:00.000-05:00

Since I know that you're all dying to know what I've been doing, I'll let you look at heaps o' bad, blurry photographs from my spring break. Let's see when you ask again, now.

Adventures in Grading.

2006-03-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

My favorite line from student papers so far this week: "When his father died, Hyde's mother gave the physicians permission to keep him alive."

That was mighty generous of her, student guy. That was mighty generous.

An Open Letter from Wasabi Peas

2006-02-21T20:02:00.000-05:00

Evil Jeremy,

I see that, spineless jellyfish that you are, you’ve yet again gone crawling back to that rotund slut black beans.  I see that once again, I’ve been used and thrown away as if you’d picked me up for $1.49 in a store.  Well done, Jeremy.  You’ve made me feel like a complete whore—a little snack on the side not worth being the main course.

But Jeremy, will you ever stop telling me lies?  “Oh no, wasabi peas,” you whine to me, “black beans and I are through this time.  That tart and I have parted ways; I’ve had enough of her and her gas.  I mean it—done and over.”  And I, silly, stupid little glutton for punishment that I am, believed you.  Again.  I gave up my goods to you one more time, thinking that maybe this time you’d really changed—that you could finally realize that black beans isn’t right for you, that my crispy, piquant goodness is worth twenty of her.

But you couldn’t just crumple me up and throw me in the trash, like any disused old bag, could you?  You had to tell the whole world that you were groveling back that skanky bitch, didn’t you?  Well, she can keep you this time.  You are cut. The fuck.  Off.  Wasabi peas ain’t playin’ no mo, playa.  You wanna keep black beans as your dish and still have a little sumpin sumpin on the side?  Call that low-rent, wanna-be-tangy spicy peanuts trollop.  Yeah, see if she be so hot she can make your eyes water.  What’s that?  No, I didn’t think so.  Or better still, call that fat ho cashews.  Yeah, you and her always looked real good together.  Oh yeah.

But fool, I am done with you.  I come from the imported foods store, playa, and I can hold out for a whole heluva lot sweeter sugar daddy than you, EJ.  Take your dirt broke, black-bean-eatin’, cashew oglin’ ass back under whatever rock it was you crawled out from under.  Wasabi peas ain’t havin’ this shit.

F.O.A.D.,
wasabi peas

An Open Letter to Black Beans

2006-02-14T15:25:00.000-05:00

Dearest black beans,

I sing a song of your body electric, of your low-carb, high fiber, saintly virtue—free from the ungainly taint of trans and saturated fat.  I raise aloft a frothing flagon of mead to your delectable, slow-cooked goodness, demurely cloaked by only a slinky sprinkle of diced green onion.  Black beans, as you exude the erotic perfume of rosemary, oregano, garlic, and the occasional diced turkey sausage, I know that  must be mine, now and always.

But black beans, I am but a weak, profligate man; you must forgive my dalliances with split pea and lentil—those hussies mean nothing to me, black beans, and in their presence I could only pine the more for your warm, caraway-and-basil-infused embrace.

I know, black beans, that we met long ere our love blossomed.  As you coyly nestled within a Chipotle barbacoa, your charm remained safely stowed away from my obdurate gaze.  Overshadowed by braised beef, salsa, and guacamole, you eluded my childish, cloddish understanding.  But now, dear beans, I should come to you were you immersed in the foul turpitude that is a writhing mass of kidney beans!  Lima beans, even, I dare say!  I would rescue your gentle soul from the clutches of those slimy hags!

Black beans, there are some who will assail our love, deeming it a transgression, a monstrous miscegenation.  They will say that we sin against our respective heritages; they will wonder why I could not have loved white beans, or at least have tried to mask your Nubian splendor with dull, white saltines.  Black beans, pay them no heed—they do not understand that I love you not despite your blackness, but because of it; that your blackness embodies to me the very presence, the chaste embodiment, of presence and life itself.

How do I love thee, black beans?

Let me count the very ways.

Addendum to NYR, 23/b4.

2006-02-11T18:51:00.000-05:00

I seem to keep forgetting to remember, or something like that, to post "hey, I'm still alive," type posts while in the midst of large, ugly academic projects that take up my blogging time. So hey, I'm still alive, having failed utterly since the last post to die in a fiery plane crash, OD, or be killed by a disgruntled J.D. Salinger fan. My blogging absence would certainly be more interesting if one of those things had happened, but no. I am in fact just lazy and very, very busy.

I'm off, now, to write a paper on Charlotte Bronte's Villette, which I put myself through in the span of three days (it's 715 pages long) in the hopes of gaining some miraculous insight into Victorian women's fiction. I certainly learned one thing well enough, and that's she wrote about a third of the goddamn thing in French, with the apparent understanding that everyone worth her time to write for would read the same. Charlotte, babe, I take exception. I liked your book, really I did, but I'd have liked it so much better if you'd have kept it in one motherfucking language. That's right, Charlotte: I am an English major, and if your treatise is going to find its way onto my comprehensive exam reading list, you could have at least written it in my native tongue.

Fucking Victorians. I swear.

Yes, Still More About Me.

2006-01-31T21:58:00.000-05:00

The Wicked Vague has meme-tagged me, and so now I must tell all of you things about which you doubtless had an unslakeable curiosity, before tagging some of you in return. Yes, that was meant to sound tawdry.

Seven movies I have loved (in no particular order):

1. Dr. Strangelove: This is not a bold choice, but neither is it a poor one. It's hard to go wrong with Kubrick.
2. Memento. Enthrallingly original.
3. The Empire Strikes Back: Yeah, that's right. And I'm not even going to apologize.
4. Ran. Still the standard for Shakespeare adaptation.
5. Being John Malkovich. That flick was whack, yo.
6. Pi, the best utterly-low-budget flick I've seen. Hollywood should really corrupt that Aronofsky boy (and yes, I'm sure I spelled that wrong) and be done with it.
7. True Romance, director's cut. Best. Supporting cast. Ever.

Seven books I like:

I here simply regurgitate Vague's idea: Why should we love movies but only like books? Where is the meme authority that I must sue to in opposition to this phrasing?

1. Grendel by John Gardner: the smartest, funniest reimagination of an old story ever penned.
2. The Bhagavad Gita translated and edited by Eakneth Eswaran. So much shorter than the Bible. So much less daft than Leviticus.
3. The Tragedie of Tragedies by Henry Fielding. Funniest drama in the English language.
4. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway. Make fun of my simple choice; Hemmingway rules.
5. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. I'm sorry, Douglas Adams, but he's just better than you.
6. The Revenger's Tragedy probably by Thomas Middleton. 'Cuz there were other guys that wrote stuff besides Will, you know.
7. One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse. I need one philosophy book to sound reel smarte.

Seven things I say:

I'm not really sure I listen to myself well enough to list this, but:

1. Pigfucker.
2. You've got to be kidding me.
3. What up dawg/bytch/homey/g/(insert affected ebonicism of choice).
4. Well, you gotta do something with your time.
5. Did I talk to you last night?
6. Well, aside from that...
7. Um, this paper has some things we need to work on.

Seven things that attract me to a city:

1. A large body of water. Of late, I prefer salt water.
2. Less than six inches of annual snowfall.
3. Some kind of ethnic dining scene.
4. At least one four year university.
5. I can afford to live there without charging my rent.
6. (Stolen from Vague) Smoking and drinking still allowed.
7. Is not in Darfur.

Seven things to do before I die:

1. Quit smoking.
2. Visit China.
3. Donate an enormous sum to charity.
4. Drive an exotic car (it doesn't have to be mine).
5. Live on a houseboat.
6. See a tornado.
7. Impersonate a police officer.

Seven things I can't do:

1. Whistle.
2. Blow bubbles.
3. Snap my fingers.
4. Dance.
5. Get up early.
6. Drink Bud Lite.
7. Appreciate modern country or R&B.

Seven people to tag:

1. Chad
2. Claudia
3. Brian
4. Natalie
5. 'Zilla
6. Jason
7. Sarah

Undergraduate Composition, and Attendant Madness.

2006-01-30T20:32:00.000-05:00

I have been buried in wretched sophomore composition papers of late, and have had little time to post. Go read The Onion or something until I get about passing along the meme I've been tagged with by the evil Alfina Vague. As if meme-tagging were the kind of thing that we civilized academic types were wont to do. So soon, you will all get to once again read more about me in list form, as if we hadn't had quite enough of that thing around here. But you will read, lest you be tagged in return. Mark my words, and hark and lo and stuff, and maybe even a "verily I say to thee." So please be patient while I read 100 handwritten pages of uninhibited spew from my kiddies.

On Avian Anatomy, Curious Notions Regarding.

2006-01-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

I understand, fully, painfully understand, that we live, in these great United States, in a highly thick society. High school children cannot find their home states on maps; more people believe in a character from ancient Hebrew myth named Satan than believe in the scientific principle of evolution. I grade papers from college sophomores whose musings, with the unleashed war-dogs of MS Word at their editing disposal, nevertheless elevate Dick and Jane into canonical greatness by contrast. Dick and Jane at least had linear narrative and avoided the indefinite “you.” (From all the direct references to “you,” in their essays, it is clear that my students feel that they have an awful lot to teach me.) In general, America’s grasp on science, geography, and the written and spoken word of its most popular language, is abysmal.

However, there was a time, once, in the shrouded annals of history, or fifteen years ago, when the English language had mutually agreed upon monikers for parts of the animal anatomy. Appendages on bipedal and quadrupedal animals, used principally for support and propulsion on the body at large, were referred to as legs. Primates, having prehensile hands enabling their forelegs to grasp and manipulate objects, were said to have arms. But we didn’t stop there—heavens no. In response to bipedal mammals' confusion at the prospect of upright walking creatures with forelimbs employed for aerial propulsion, we came up with a third category of appendage that in English was once called a wing. A wing, you see, was a bit like an arm in that birds do not use them for support, but mostly not like an arm as birds practice all dexterous tasks using the beak and feet. The word seemed a happy compromise, describing this thing that was neither arm nor leg. It was a wing as soon as the bird had hatched, albeit a naked and useless one. It was a wing when it propelled its owner to lofty avian sabbaticals, and it was a wing when it flapped uselessly at the side of a chicken. It was even a wing when you shot the bird, cut it off, plucked it, cleaned it, and threw it in a deep fryer for seven minutes at 350 degrees.

That was all, of course, before the revolution in anatomical nomenclature ushered in by Buffalo Wild Wings and Domino’s Pizza came about, for the edification of the unversed masses. It began innocuously enough, but in retrospect bad things were afoot from the get-go. When one ordered a bucket of tiny chicken parts doused in barbecue sauce, someone came up with the clever idea of marketing them as “wings,” even though half of them, even to the untrained eye, were quite clearly legs, and hence not wings. I could perhaps sympathize with the pressing need to rename one animal part another, in order to clarify its eminent edibility, were it not already commonly known that chicken legs were, indeed, quite edible. In fact, food nomenclature had already bestowed them a name apart from biology’s: they were called drumsticks for their, well, drumstick-like shape, later cleverly truncated simply to drums. It isn't as if they were attempting to push fried gizzard here. They weren't bad names, and I do not recall any inchoate militancy protesting the unfairness of it at all. And yet, seemingly overnight, a small leg was now a wing, as if human infants were born with wings.

Yet the Movement for the Obfuscation and Revision of Our Nomenclature, as they came to be known, was far from through. Turning legs into wings was but the appetizer: it was not until the late 1990’s that their dark culinary think tank produced the piece de resistance, the oh-so-daftly entitled boneless wing. I hoped against reason that this was a joking reference to a strip from Gary Larson’s Far Side comic series of the 1980’s and 90’s, which pictured a barbed-wire enclosed field upon which flopped limp, invertebrate poultry. The caption read “boneless chicken ranch.” Alas, the world of delivery food had no such irony in mind. A boneless wing, you see, was a piece of flesh taken from the rib area of the bird, sliced into smaller pieces, breaded, deep fried, and served, even though the box these things come in is invariably marked "rib meat." And once again, there was already in circulation an extant and perfectly utile name for this part of the chicken called breast meat. It was not as if you might say to a restaurant clerk “I’d like some breast meat chicken,” and receive a look of confusion or offense. The term had place in the cultural narrative that was widely and mutually understood as well as value-neutral.

I am afraid of the larger implications of this rhetorical movement, on several grounds: will I soon order a porterhouse and be served a hamburger, and then have it explained that it’s a boneless porterhouse? Will flank steak and chuck suddenly start calling themselves filet mignon, hoping that no one will notice? And really, really, dire portends arrive for the prosthetics industry if humans start conversationally referring to our limbs interchangeably.

So today I launch the Take Back the Wing movement, boycotting and beginning a letter-writing campaign toward all restaurant chains that call things other than wings wings. In this fight, you are either with me, or you are with Domino’s. And did you really want to be stuck with Domino’s for the rest of your life? I even have a motto for my newfound social activism: Let's Call Wings Wings Here—‘Cuz, Really, Weren’t We Goddamn Stupid Enough Already?

Whaddyall think?

My Towns

2006-01-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

Cleveland winters are a rolling damnation, leaving a heaviness on the soul in their wake like stones left behind in a glacial moraine. Spending three weeks in the midst of one was all the reminder that I needed or ever would need as to why I left that sad, dying place so many years ago.

It isn’t just the weather, mind you, or exclusively the frigidity of it. This December of ’05 was unseasonably warm, rain being the precipitation of choice, interspersed with cold grey bouts of sleet. One’s hands and face froze, to be sure, but the bone chilling ache of Cleveland’s coldest vintages was a year behind or ahead. Old Man Winter had been lazy, and stayed in Canada for the holidays. Without question, weeks of unbroken overcast skies drain the spirit from without, but Cleveland’s decay sprawls well outside the bounds of the merely natural: the death of heavy industry in the Great Lakes has blighted the place (as it has in Detroit and Pittsburgh and Buffalo) in a way no mere brush, or many brushes, with hard weather ever could. There was salt and there were slow plows and there was an abundance of that unquantifiable commodity, human perseverance, once, enough to survive the coldest night of a power outage or the heaviest blanket of snow. The rust just complemented the character of the place, served as a backdrop for the cacophony of labor that gave the city life.

To be fair, there are certainly plenty of livable, functioning neighborhoods on the city’s outskirts, and I grew up in one of those. But the plows and the salt and all the will in the world can’t seem to fight endemic poverty and population drain that consumes my hometown from the center outward. Blocks upon blocks of abandoned factories and warehouses, closed schools, condemned strip malls and the occasional oddly placed local business (hair and nail salon? pet kennel?) are the telling features of too many once-thriving industrial blocks of Cleveland. Like most manufacturing port cities in the North, Cleveland really wasn’t prepared for the feeding hand of Big Steel to be abruptly pulled away from it; it had no fallback plan and has never really recovered. It is fighting proudly, with warehouses being converted into hip artist’s lofts, old ethnic enclaves becoming neo-boheme collegiate haunts, and exotic immigrant culture spawning ethnic eateries that a few New Yorkers might envy. The inner city has hitched its future to the religion of Urban Renovation, and I wish it and its denizens all the good fortune in the world in their struggle to resuscitate this once-stalwart town. But at this point, the sweet spots are parts of a fruit otherwise overtaken with rot, and it is not a place I could yet see being my home again. I visited and left a town that is harbor to my memories and my formative years, but might never again house my personage and belongings. Cleveland doesn’t miss me, of course. Too many souls have fled the area for it to take note of one with so little accomplishment defecting. But I miss the idea of that place, the smokestacks poking fun at the sky, the salt telling the elements exactly what it thinks of them, and would that for all the world I could revive it from its fallen state. It was a town of unadulterated defiance once, dirty and ugly like a mean old codger, vivacious and spirited and too tough to die.
………………………………………………………………………………………………

I am taking a walk in my new town, now, where very different things happen. Wilmington, North Carolina, is a place where Old Man Winter is frightened to even visit. Just north of Myrtle Beach, it is a place where he makes exploratory expeditions, only to be repulsed by a sunny thaw when he believes he has established a beachhead. As I trek from my apartment down to the bicycle shop that is my destination, I notice the shoots of green wild grass poking up through the dead brown of the previous, brief freeze. This place never sleeps long in winter, yet is just far north enough to give winter the illusion of momentary advantage. It’s got to confuse the hell out of the migratory birds, who just can’t be sure whether to set up camp or keep moving. The smells of the resilient shrubs and damp earth on a warm January day are the irrefutable rhetoric of nature that Old Man Winter will occasionally vie with this seaside town, but cannot really hope to win. I’ve worn a pull-over sweatshirt out today, stupidly forgetting, as I begin to sweat, that the direct sunlight would quickly compensate for the tiny chill in the air. Wilmington is, in many ways, the small-scale opposite of Cleveland, a rapidly growing burg in the new South, assiduously bursting its bounds and sprawling everywhere in an attempt to contain the burgeoning film industry and expanding population that are its charges. I know already, five miles from the ocean and a world away from whence I came, that in my perfunctory tour of the Atlantic coast and the South, that I have already taken them both in my heart as my own. A walk down the street on a bright, gentle winter day does things for my temperament that the shores of Lake Erie could never provide, try as they may.

And yet I feel guilt and loss in this enjoyment, being just another industrial Yankee having jumped ship for fairer climes and better seafood. It’s ridiculous, I know, to feel a loyalty to a region as if I had, Genesis-like, been raised forth from the earth there. But human identity is in no small part corralled from our earliest surroundings. As much as I love this new home that I’ve found, I cannot divorce myself arbitrarily from the place that I came, from its gritty resilience and its symbols of rejection of all that is coastal and trendy and fashionable, from the Cleveland Browns and bars that serve Polish sausage and POC beer. So as I arrive at the bike shop and realize that it’s gone out of business a week earlier, and that I can’t possibly be disappointed because it’s such an incredibly beautiful day, I feel that preternaturally Catholic guilt telling me that life shouldn’t be so happy and that I should pack up and move back to a place with so much more fitting levels of adversity and strife. I have no intention at all of doing that, but that some part of me will forever nag me to do so tells me that my mind will never be but a house divided, an entity that struck out on its own to find a place better suited to it, that will never cease to pine for things familiar, and all that it has left behind.

Will Somebody Steal my Goddamn Bike?

2006-01-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

Apparently there are things one can’t give away. About a year ago I bought a $99 Chinese bicycle from Wal-Mart. This was, in hindsight, not an altogether sound idea. The bike itself may not have been defective, but it is important to note that it was assembled by the lowest paid and most demoralized legal work team in the United States. I will spare the reader any more facile Wally World bashing, as there’s plenty of that to go around, but the fact remains that their staff sucks and I should have taken the bike home in a box rather than ride off on their floor model. That, and I should have noticed the rear axle grinding from the first time I got on the bike. I should have also noticed, while we’re on the topic, that guys who pursue advanced English degrees have less dating success than guys with money, but it’s a bit late for that.

So, naturally, the rear wheel locks up on the bike around eight days after the warranty expires. I tried to repair it, but lacking any experience, available replacement parts, technical support, or bicycle-specific tools, I just broke the thing worse. Having striven and failed, I wisely decided to get rid of Chiang the Accursed, made in China. I went on Wilmington Freecycle, a Yahoo! group where everybody in creation with defective junk attempts to pawn it off on their neighbors in the guise of higher environmental ethics. I have seen used pet food successfully given away, but I could not unload an almost new, probably repairable bicycle. I left it unlocked on my deck while I went on vacation for three weeks, hoping someone would steal it. Instead, I found that a crew of construction workers had rebuilt 2/3 of the stairwell leading up to my apartment and worked around the goddamn thing, even though it was quite obviously in the way, rather than confiscate, move, or throw it away. I’ve now left it out on the ground floor, conspicuously unlocked, across the street from an unofficial crackhead halfway house, and I still can’t get anybody to have off with it.

So that’s it. Environmentalists may point at me in scorn and horror until the end of time, but I’m throwing this headache in the dumpster. If no one wants it for parts, scrap, repair, or anything else, then I certainly feel relieved of the obligation to keep it as décor. In the dumpster it goes. I hope white elephants are biodegradable.

Gas Encore, pt. 1

2006-01-10T15:02:00.000-05:00

I realized while editing the Gas Guy book that some of the stuff wasn’t as good as I’d previously believed, and even if it was, the book’s a bit too short. So I’m adding a few new stories, which will air here. To eliminate any confusion amongst anyone who missed last year’s controversy: Gas Guy is not autobiographical journalism; it is an autobiographical work of fiction, taking certain liberties with chronology, names, and geography.

There is a new Marlboro display, shorter than the old one by several feet, hence no longer blocking the rear view of the store. It hasn’t yet developed the epilepsy-inducing flickering fluorescent bulbs that the old one had, and for that I am sincerely grateful. We stacked the RJR products on it when we first got it, but when the Phillip Morris people took note of that, they swept them onto the floor in a huff. Capitalism, I swear.

About five feet to the left of the counter, there’s a slushee machine featuring blue raspberry and strawberry as the flavors: given the sweetness of the end product, it is almost unfathomable that it is five parts water to every one part concentrate. I am convinced that imbibing the undiluted concentrate would send the hardiest constitution into instantaneous diabetic shock.

These two features are the only physical changes, additions or otherwise, that the store has undergone in the seven months that I have worked there. This record might not appear so grossly negligent were everything else not twenty years out of date. It is a three-legged, one-ear-bent, aging mutt of an establishment, and today is my last day working in it. My time here has been sometimes enlightening, and sometimes depressing, infuriating, and painfully dull. Beyond its meager pay, the job has, of course, had experiential value; all jobs, no matter how ostensibly pedestrian, do. Probably foremost amongst these is that I got past a lot of the unease toward black people and immigrants that growing up in a lily-white, provincial Irish Catholic neighborhood in Cleveland had instilled in me. There aren’t really different kinds of people in the world. There are people who dress differently and that speak different languages and dialects, and that can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated, but patience and time changes a lot of that, if a fella’ keeps an open mind about it. That lesson should be painfully obvious, but it wasn't for me, and I suspect it isn't for a whole lot of other people who pretend that it is.

But because I can change a little is no indication that Gas Center #2 has any intention of changing at all. The cash registers look as if they could have been designed by Atari; it lacks exterior cameras, essentially begging people to drive off without paying for their fuel; it has no email or internet access in its office. (That’s right: they actually fax memos from the corporate office to the stores.) The place is an architectural and functional testament to commercial mediocrity in practice, to choosing a good location and then constructing a business barely efficient enough not to implode upon itself, with the knowledge that foot traffic will save the day in the face of incoherent management.

But the museum, changeless quality of the place isn’t limited to the woodwork and the equipment: the same woman, a high-school drop out with the neurotic tendency to leave notes everywhere instructing the staff just what they’ve done wrong, has been running the place for 23 years. She’ll probably still be there in another fifteen. While the faces have changed and will change, illegal immigrants from points southward will be trying to break the $50’s and $100’s they get paid with on thirty cent purchases until the end of time, to the ubiquitous consternation of the present staff. The current staff of people with questionable references, criminal backgrounds, and the abject inability to pass a drug test will move along to be replaced by others in the same straits. It is as if the place itself is an extended middle finger of glass and concrete, proudly held aloft to let the world know just what it thinks of change and progress.

Gas retail is, like bars and restaurants, a cyclical rather than a linear trade: at the end of the day no project has been completed; nothing has been done that will not swiftly be undone. People will get hungry and thirsty and sober, their vehicles will use up their fuel, and they’re they’ll be again, at that doorstep with debit card in hand, with high gravity malt liquor and strawberry blunt wraps and low-octane fuel on their minds. All that changes, principally, for my clientele is this month’s drug of choice.

I go to stock room in the back of the store around seven P.M., where Mike, now the assistant manager, has just opened a 22oz bottle of Corona, taking a break toward the end of his long day shift. Since it’s a slow Saturday, there’s a second cashier, and, most importantly, it’s my last day, I feel morally compelled to join him. I stick to the 12oz version of the same beer, as I do have five hours of work left to do. This becomes the theme for the evening, as Mike and I invent excuses to restock things in order to drink more beer about once an hour. Like I mentioned a long time ago, working for Mike when he was in jail to keep him from getting fired was a thing that I knew would eventually come back to me, and so it has.

As I drink one of these beers, I reflect back on what I have witnessed in my time here: I know that there are people in combat zones who have seen far worse things than me. There are people like you and me who have seen children blown to pieces, who have watched close friends die. Having prostitutes hand you their business cards, and watching people walk away disappointed because my store doesn’t carry their improvisational crack paraphernalia—looking at an endless parade of abandoned single moms and lost potheads and homeless alcoholics—doesn’t compare to the horror that a lot of people face every day; in fact, it pales badly in comparison. But it does not mean that these things are not horrible—only that they are not the worst things in the world. Because the chapter in the human drama that I have witnessed in not humanity at its most elementally debased and disgusting does not suggest that it is not disgusting at all.

The shift, this reflection in tow, proceeds uneventfully, aided by the cheeriness of my growing buzz. I converse pleasantly with Archie, the other cashier I mentioned, and with the English-speaking customers (and even a little bit with the Spanish speaking ones, from whom I’ve acquired the basic phraseology of small talk over time). At the end I lock the door, take the till to the office to count it down, then open a 22oz Budweiser, open the back door for ventilation, and light a cigarette. Some very hard questions present themselves: Have I really learned anything from this experience? Or were things that struck me as epiphanies into the human condition arbitrarily defined based upon my mood swings? To my left in the darkness behind the building are poorly stacked, dirty plastic soda crates awaiting pickup by the Pepsi and Coke delivery drivers, enclosed by an ugly, filthy cinderblock wall. To my right are the rusting cardboard and trash dumpsters, with the smell of stale urine wafting forth from the homeless folk that use the place as their latrine. It is a panoramic view of human waste and irresponsible consumption, of which I have been a principal purveyor for the last seven months.

But then something else comes to me: I am in such a foul mood, and inclined to spin such profound negativity, because I love this place a little bit and will miss it. It is not a love like a spouse or a sibling, or even a good friend, but like a cherished pet that I have raised to my liking and which obeys my every command. I have had the run of the place since shortly after receiving the keys, free to follow or disregard the rules as I saw fit. I had total mastery over my given work; its absolute lack of challenge was something that I maligned in the past but perhaps underestimated as a tool for freedom of thought. Not too many MA students choose to work in gas stations, and so I have been given an advanced degree of trust and autonomy. Did I use it well? Who knows, really? Sometimes yes, and most certainly sometimes no. I take one last long, agnostic look out into the darkness, and shut and bar the door.

I turn out the office light, step around the corner, and prepare to set the alarm. Archie is waiting at the front door, his cab running outside.

“You ready, Arch?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve asked him more than I’ve realized: I’ve asked him if he’s ready for me to set the alarm, but I’ve also asked him if he’s ready to part with someone he hardly knows forever, for another human being to drift from view, as we all do to each other eventually, leaving us, in our hearts, alone. It typically seems no tragedy to me that we pay remarkably little attention to one another in our brief time in the flesh, and yet today it does.

I punch, a bit more slowly than usual, 8…0…7…0…2 into the keyboard, a red light goes on and a series of loud, monotone beeps tells us to get the hell out of the building. Archie unlocks the front door, and I follow him out as he locks it behind us.

“It was nice working with you, Archie,” I say. And it was. I only knew him for three weeks, but he seems like a nice guy and I wish him well.

“Thanks,” he replies, “and good luck to you.”

But luck is not what I need right now: alcohol is what I need. As I trudge off into the chilly December night, full of a strange, small loss and a fair amount of beer, a question from the guy I steal half my questions from slowly slips into my thoughts. It’s a bit dramatic, to be sure, and lends tragic dimensions to what was a menial job, but seems oddly fitted to the conclusion of my tenure here:

Is this the promised end, or but the image of that horror?

I am Such a Tard.

2005-12-13T16:30:00.001-05:00

I have been non-blogging as a retributive sulk against three commentless posts in a row, one of which I put quite a lot of time into. I seem to have forgotten that I enabled the "comment moderation function" which forces the administrator to preview comments before they get displayed on the blog, hence none of your comments appearing. My apologies.

As my brother Andrew said, "No, long-term consumption of alcohol doesn't hurt your brain at all."

100 Things About Me: Alternately Titled, a Prolific Waste of Your Time.

2005-11-23T16:03:00.000-05:00

Ready to indulge in 3,000 words of my total narcissism? Good. There’s a beer involved somewhere if you make it to the end.

1) I once had an opportunity to throw a cheese scone at Margaret Thatcher’s head, when she was five feet away from me in London’s British Museum, having, as café supervisor, a bowl of warm cheese scones at my disposal. I would have made international news had I done so; the fact that I chickened out is one of the greatest regrets of my life.

2) I have been a bartender in three separate countries.

3) I broke my right big toe kicking a wall on a frustrating day in a restaurant kitchen; it never healed properly and is still crooked. Some Christians came over my house one day and prayed to fix it, but it seems not to have worked.

4) I once wrecked a 1973 Triumph Spitfire convertible into a 1993 Cadillac. I still view the matter, given the 1:3 weight ratio I was working against, as a profound victory for the little guy.

5) I did not fly on an airplane until I was 22. The experience still terrifies me beyond measure.

6) My brother Andrew made a sincere effort to drown me when I was eight years old. I’m not sure if I can still press charges.

7) I’ve hauled the same six-stringed acoustic guitar around through fourteen separate residences over the course of sixteen years. I can presently only play about seven songs, badly, on it.

8) I smoke cigarettes while drinking, and at no other time whatsoever. An absolute on/off switch seems to be in operation. And if I’m indoors and no one else is smoking, I don’t do it then, either. Perhaps I should quit.

9) I am the rare person that has no dog/cat ideological leanings: I like well-trained animals, and dislike disorderly ones. I could care less about the species.

10) I daydreamed through all of primary school, and hence am self-taught on penmanship. My print script looks like that of a left-hander, even though I am right handed.

11) I only appreciate and understand baseball as a sport, viewing all others as an elaborate fertility metaphor governed by clocks, goals, and yardage. (Live hockey is kind of cool, though.)

12) I have made three separate batches of beer, two of which were awful, granting me transcendent respect for German braumeisters who mastered this stuff in the first place.

13) I’ve had five distinct weblogs, one of which cast me as a fictional character in Tennessee, which, oddly, was the most popular. I also have six active email accounts.

14) I went on Buspar, a mood-evening psychotropic for a few weeks; while I quickly grew bored of the deadening effect it had on my personality, I did get to tell a patently deranged, screaming woman at my retail job that she lacked manners and should take her money elsewhere, calm as a cucumber.

15) I once watched an adult female gorilla, a bit confused as to how to get a shiny soda can that someone had thrown near her enclosure, into her hands. She picked up a stick and dragged it to her. It remains, to this day, the most incredible display of animal intelligence that I’ve ever seen.

16) I can eat, and in fact enjoy, eating food so hot that it makes other people cry and sometimes vomit. Prince Charles’ son-in-law, Thomas Parker-Bowles, has done this exercise with me and can attest to the veracity of my assertion.

17) My free-to-the-public weblog, My Life as a…Gas Station Attendant, drew attention from a staffer at The Atlantic Monthly.

18) Because I am slightly built, I constantly wear Docs or Sketchers that make me appear two inches taller than I actually am. Although I am six feet tall, I am haunted by the understanding that short and skinny is hard in this world.

19) I am an ardent Marxist in an era and a country in which Marx is decidedly out of favor. I really wish that everybody would get over the Cold War. It’s done, people, and the guy was really smart.

20) I once defeated the antagonistic school bully by lessons gleaned from The Dukes of Hazard: I was being abused, by said bully, on the way home from school, and threw a wild roundhouse at his head, expecting him to duck, like it went on the show. He did not duck, and took the blow full force in the jaw. He ran inside crying and never bothered me again.

21) I have as much music on vinyl as I do on C.D. My C.D. music only gets played on my crappy T.V. which, lacking cable, only plays music and DVD’s. I don’t feel morally superior about my “kill your television” lifestyle, although it is assiduously tempting to do so.

22) I was a published author at seventeen, and not yet one since. I cannot explain this profound incongruity.

23) Although I support, principally, the rights of hunters and gun owners, I have neither ever hunted nor discharged a firearm.

24) I am a huge Rolling Stones fan, and am bewildered that the recent album A Bigger Bang, easily their best effort in 27 years, has met with such popular indifference.

25) My kindergarten girlfriend, Robin, got knocked up by my older brother’s friend, John, at thirteen, and hence had to miss our eighth grade graduation ceremony.

26) I was utterly horrified of bats as a child, not aided by the fact that bats would sneak into our home during every two-week summer vacation to Saint Louis. My siblings would play upon this fear by throwing black socks or other pseudo-batdoms into the air around me as I tried to sleep.

27) I have been to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and am truly puzzled as to why a small, badly engineered structure in backwoods Italy is part of the Western historical cannon.

28) I am an agnostic who despises the intellectual hypocrisy of theists: I allow the possibility of God, given sufficient evidence; they would not allow for the possibility of atheism were it the most empirically provable thing in the world.

29) I have been to eight foreign nations and yet only seven domestic states.

30) I did not see any ocean until I was 23 years old, on the south coast of England.

31) I once met a Frenchman, an the deck of a castle in Naples, who confirmed every known stereotype about Frenchmen: he was short, smelled of B.O. and heavy cologne, addressed a complete stranger (in Italy) in French, and, upon identifying me as an American, lectured me at length on the evils of the Bush administration.

32) My younger brother, his friends, and I once held a burial service for his deceased iguana, Butthead, in my parents back yard, in which we marched in funereal procession with spades and quoted from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as the internment Mass.

33) I can neither whistle, nor blow bubbles with chewing gum, nor snap my fingers, despite years of trying to correct these glaring inadequacies; my attempts at fly handshakes with black people end in inevitable disappointment and failure.

34) I met Jim Koch, “brewer and founder of Sam Adams,” and thanked him for helping American beer not suck so much anymore. He sagely replied, “I just wanted something I could drink.” I liked that guy.

35) My brother Jason once lodged his head between the railings on my maternal grandmother’s porch, when I was seven and he was five. I tried to tell the cackling adult female hens who were suggesting medieval birthing techniques like bacon grease to extract his head that they merely needed to turn his body sideways and pull him through the long way; no one would listen, and when they figured it out hours later I cried because I had seen it and no one had taken the time to let me speak

37) I was given, as a gift, a brown lambskin blazer, by a friend in New York that had been given to him by his girlfriend as a sample item from a prominent clothing company. I wore it to a friend’s house in Columbus, Ohio, to find that his English fiancé, who had previously worked in New York, had designed it. Small world.

38) I once flipped over a go-cart, at a public track in Cleveland, Ohio. From what I understand, this is not a common occurrence. We weren’t allowed to ride again after that.

39) There exists a game called “Shell Shocked” on many versions of the Megatouch machine popular in many American taverns. I am invincible—I have made it to round 24. I have no idea why this is, but am willing to prove the assertion.

40) Once, in Chillicothe, Ohio, I watched people line-dance to Nirvana. The horror is seared into my memory.

41) Without much provocation, I have had three loaded weapons pointed at me in my life. The last instance convinced the police to ask a bartender to give me and my companion Jaeger shots at 3:45 A.M.

42) I know more about beer, wine, and liquor than 90% of the human populace and yet spend most of my free time drinking Miller High Life and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

43) I once haggled over a pair of Doc Martens in London; the clerk didn’t have my size, so he went into the back of the store and found it after agreeing to my price. Only later did I realize that I’d been Jedi mind tricked; he gave me the same shoes he’d walked away with (too small) but lowered the price a bit. I destroyed them within weeks trying to break them in despite their painfully incorrect dimensions. Score one for the Jedi mind trick.

44) My father did not marry until 33, and seems to have established a blueprint for his four sons, who at 35, 34, 32, and 29, are all still bachelors.

45) I find Christian philosophers Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas Merton, and Anthony de Mello some of the most profound minds in the English cannon, and yet find Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson disgusting hacks perverting the entire idea of Christianity. Jesus would not approve, I suspect.

46) I am deeply competitive regarding games in which I’ve only modest skill: I equally hate losing at darts (awful), foosball (abysmal), air hockey (competent), chess (decent), and dice (hopeless).

47) The fact that some very intelligent people believe in astrology is utterly dismaying to me. I’m a Leo, by the way.

48) I was casually associated with the Russian mafia for a bit. Four of them, who I played cards with at an after hours party, later made it into U.S. News for getting caught importing a BMW full of ecstasy into New York.

49) I love living alone and could not imagine a roommate that I wasn’t sleeping with.

50) Light-colored eyes are captivating to me; I’m not sure I could marry a brown-eyed girl.

51) I compulsively dislike disposable lighters and use matches instead for everything I possibly can.

52) I went out for a walk during my first hurricane (Ophelia), just so I could say that I’d done it. It was a rush.

53) I rarely eat other mammals, out of a weird ethical sense of relation. Birds, fish, and shellfish are pretty stupid and hence fair game.

54) I am one of the few remaining individuals of my generation with no piercings or tattoos. The latter are going to look really goofy when those people are 70.

55) My elementary school’s ethnic makeup featured: one Asian boy, one black girl, one Afghani girl, two Lebanese boys, and about a trillion white kids, 90% of whom were of Irish descent. I had no real concept of ethnic diversity until college.

56) I’ve ridden in a 1993 Ferrari 348 and a 1998 Porsche Turbo. The Ferrari, while easily the slower of the two, was ten times as cool.

57) If my first novel gets published, the first thing I’m doing is buying a houseboat.

58) I absolutely love vampire and zombie movies, usually even the awful ones.

59) I have watched The Empire Strikes Back at least 100 times, and can recite large swaths from memory. As I enjoy having friends, I do not do this often.

60) I think Bud Lite may be the most revolting beverage ever to call itself beer. If Anheuser-Busch put ten percent of the imagination used in their very funny ads into their brewing, perhaps that wouldn’t be the case.

61) I like the female names Melanie, Amanda, Melissa and Marissa. I may have an “m” fetish. Kate, Amy, Kim and Jennifer should be banned from the record for at least thirty years do to their grotesque overuse in the 1970’s.

62) My first car was a 1981 Plymouth Horizon. It was such a piece of shit that it has given me a lifelong prejudice against all Chrysler products, German or not.

63) I am bewildered by people’s love of ice cream. Watching them eat it grosses me out the same way watching someone eat lard would.

64) I have remarkably dexterous toes, and once changed a tape with them just to prove that I could.

65) The more formal learning I acquire the more bewildering the world becomes to me; I’m going to feel like a drooling ‘tard by the time I get my P.H.D.

66) My former roommate Joe used to leave dirty dishes out in our roach-infested college apartment. We started leaving them on his bed because he wouldn’t stop after we told him not to.

67) I have been written on with permanent marker, had me nails painted, had ice put in my pants, and had my legs shaved, among other things, while passed out drunk at teenage parties.

68) I have wrestled (and lost) in one of those sumo suits; everyone needs to do this at least once.

69) When I was ten, I dove forward off the front porch of my parents’ house, breaking my two front teeth on the driveway. I think that I really though that I could fly.

70) I despise the Helvetica font; it annoyed me all the years that Apple used it as their default.

71) I love living by the ocean and am not sure I can ever live inland again.

72) I am usually a happy drunk, rarely a sad one, but never belligerent. I think habitually belligerent drunks should be shot.

73) I think people who respond to ten degree weather and two feet of snow by celebrating “all four seasons” are bloody insane.

74) I can’t dance at all. I feel bad about this, but never do anything about it.

75) I was a promising artist and sculptor as a child, but gave them both up for no reason that I can remember.

76) Any pet that I own has to have a Shakespearian name. This is trickier than it sounds; naming your dog Othello or Horatio makes a person sound like a complete wanker.

77) I lost an entire semester’s worth of graduate writing when the hard drive on my three-month old laptop failed. That really sucked.

78) I went to three different high schools in four years despite living in the same place; I thought about having tour T-shirts printed up.

79) I changed my birthday from August 22 to March 13 one year just so the kids at my high school would decorate my locker and give me stuff. They did.

80) I skipped out on paying my rent at an Irish youth hostel by lowering my bag to the ground from a third floor window with a piece of twine and then walking past the front desk without it. I feel kind of guilty about that.

81) I had 36 drinks once in a day that took me from an airport in Dublin to an airport in London to an airport in St. Louis to a bar in Cleveland and then to an after hours party. I did not feel good when I woke up.

82) I once ordered dinner in Basil, Switzerland despite the fact that we spoke no German and the staff understood no English. I ordered in French from out Turkish waiter. It was kind of surreal.

83) I think Northwest Wales is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

84) For my 23rd birthday, my British flatmates surprised me with a ferry trip to Cherbourg, France. We stumbled around the entire day publicly drunk on red wine, so maybe #31 was actually karmic retribution.

85) I attended and graduated from Ohio State without ever attending a single sporting event.

86) My favorite tea is Earl Grey.

87) I think squirrels are really, really evil looking.

88) I despise fluorescent lights; they give me a headache and make it difficult for me to concentrate.

89) If I could meet anyone from history, it would probably be William Tyndale, the guy that wrote that contentious little document called The King James Bible.

90) I think Mahayana Buddhism is the coolest name for a religion ever.

91) One Tree Hill is shot in my city, and the cast can be seen about town regularly during the production season. Oddly, I find nothing exciting about this whatsoever.

92) If I could be wounded and survive with a scar and a cool story, it would clearly be by shark or crocodile bite.

93) The bar I hang out in was an ammo depot for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

94) Tom Willis (real name Franklin Cover Jr.), the white guy married to Lenny Kravitz’s mom’s character from The Jeffersons grew up in the house next door to my parents. He’d come to visit his folks and I and my siblings all harassed him for his autograph.

95) Things on my essential list of lifetime to-do’s: hang gliding, sky diving, and riding in a hot air balloon, just because each one would terrify my nearly to death.

96) Bars in Ireland often stay open well past legal closing time. My ignorance regarding this fact caused my brother and me to miss the last train and walk twelve miles on a cold, damp night back to our hostel.

97) I was once brutally beaten by three guys in defense of a girl that ended up sleeping with my friend Pat. I’m still a little bitter about that.

98) I find comedy sketches involving fake severed limbs and spurting blood to be indescribably funny. I’m not sure what this says about me.

99) I am compulsively finding other people’s lighters, pens, and sunglasses, balancing out the mathematical ratio for all you people who are always losing the same.

100) Anyone who actually read through this entire list gets a cocktail of choice from me in any city we might ever mutually be.

Tales of yet Another All-Nighter

2005-11-15T15:22:00.000-05:00

As I sit, here in the oh-so-writerly leather armchair, preparing to embark on a new historicist essay on Stephen Crane’s bleak 1893 realist novella Maggie, I must review the checklist that allows me to sit with some psychological comfort, in the knowledge that I will not have to get back up in thirty seconds because I’ve forgotten something:

1) Cup of strong French Roast, made from freshly ground beans, unfiltered, with the electric percolator. Check. I taste it. Damn, them’s good coffee beans.

2) Source text: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York), Bedford cultural edition, with all the wrong passages underlined because I changed topics at the last possible instant, as nearly always. Check.

3) Pencils, to be abused, blunted, and broken; sharpener, to restore care, keenness, and intact status to maligned pencils. Check and check.

4) Horribly bad intelligent design book What Darwin Didn’t Know, by some crackpot by the name of Geoffrey Simmons, M. muthaeffin’ D., lurking at the edge of my vision, leering and whispering, “Read me, so you can turn apoplectic at my bottomless inanity instead of writing your paper. You know you’ll compose better once you’re good and livid with rage.” Uncheck. That book needs to go away. Check.

4) Cigarettes, (check) and lighter (check) which will remain untouched until I put myself down at about eight A.M. with…

5) Bottle of inexpensive red wine. Nowhere to be spotted on the horizon, lest we include the sad, hollow remains of Alice White 2004 Shiraz, evoking fond memories of Melbourne in the Spring…er…medicating myself to sleep at eight o’clock this morning.

6) Backup plan once I run out of ideas: a trip to the grad lab to mine the OED online for arcane essay-padding materials such as the definition of “ruin” as applied in the late 19th century. I love the OED; it makes insipid, underresearched papers so much…longer. Check. The fact that this bluff has yet to be called by an instructor is testament either to its true shrewdness or their own utter disillusionment and cynicism toward essay-grading.

7) Something reasonably intelligent to write about the 19th century discourse of women deflowered prior to marriage: nope, still working on that bit. It shall require…

8) Second cup, French Roast coffee, English strength, black. Ah, it’s good to know that my blog post is now as ideologically strip-mined as my new historicist essay. And with that, I shall say…

9) Bye now. I gotta write a paper.

Tropical Thanksgiving

2005-11-09T18:02:00.000-05:00

So, perhaps this aside will be yet further incontrovertible evidence that I am a Yankee, with all such ill-mannered and cold-weathered associations that such entails, but can anyone point out any good and sensible reason that the high today was 81 degrees Farenheit an freakin' November ninth? I am thoroughly accunstomed to all insects being deceased at this point in the season, yet instead I have been compelled to buy a screen so that 19 different species of them do not invade my open front door each night. Insects are not supposed to be alive on November ninth, and I am not supposed to require my front door to be opened because it's too damned hot in my apartment. I must retreat north across the Mason-Dixon line, and soon, before I start getting fool ideas about never dealing with the abhorrent wretchedness that is snow ever again.

Oh yes, and people in Southeastern North Carolina tell me--really folks, they do--about how cold it is every time the thermometer dips a shade below forty. They all need to be interned in the Great Lakes region for one, just one, Winter, and we will see if that criticism is ever uttered again in a place in which half the trees never bother to change color. Well, assuming that that the Confederates survive the experience, that is. You Southern folk and your cold. Bah! I scoff at thee, December-hoodie-wearers. You would not know Winter should he--ah, never mind, y'all just don't know what Winter is. Come with me to Cleveland for Christmas, my children, and I will show you Winter, oh scarfless and earmuffless Carolinians. And you will tremble in fear and, oh yeah, cuz' it's ten below.

On Supreme Beings, and Such.

2005-10-30T15:01:00.000-05:00

Sorry folks—this one’s a bit long.

I have an issue, folks, a serious issue with these Intelligent Design people. My issue with them isn’t ignorant, either: I keep reading their books, and, mostly, their books (Denyse O’Leary’s By Design or by Chance, Geoffrey Simmons’ laughable What Darwin Didn’t Know suck—tautological junk that presupposes a personal god and ignores or dismisses the overwhelming evidence toward the randomness of reality. Intelligent Design is based on a certain principle: because Darwinian Evolution Science contains incompletion and inaccuracies (the source text The Origin of the Species was published in freakin’ 1859, ferchrissake), there must be an Intelligent God behind this entire thing that we collectively refer to as “the universe.” This argument is akin to espousing that because 2+2 does not equal 5, that it must reflexively equal 723; it suggests that because a rational argument is incomplete and perhaps slightly errant, that a ridiculous argument is necessarily its antidote.

Well let me tell you a little something: flaws in a theory do not, and have not, and cannot prove another theory correct. This idea is a logically invalid argument, akin to my saying, “I don’t fully understand jet propulsion, so I should immediately convert to Judaism.” I will, now, put my biases on the floor: I am an unapologetic secular humanist. I’m not an atheist, because atheism is a faith of its own and not really different from other presuppositive faiths. Atheism is firmly entrenched in the business that there is no intelligent god, and hence has its own belief structure supporting that. I’m an agnostic, which differs from atheism in that I possibly allow for the principle of an intelligent god while espousing (quite accurately) that no scientifically testable evidence for that presupposition has ever actually been offered. Basically, agnostics like me are atheists who are still a bit scared of Catholic Hell should we be mistaken.

But here’s why ID, and especially indoctrinating children with it, bugs me (and all true scientists, and all agnostics, and especially all atheists): the scientific community doesn’t demand that subatomic structure or mitochondrial DNA be taught at seminary. Really, we don’t. Every scientific organization that I’ve run across does not actively seek to impose the scientific agenda upon Jesuit theology, on Roman Catholic dogma, or on Christian, Hindu, or Islamic metaphysics in general. Science allows that kind of formulation a certain side of a fence: things assumed on faith are powerful motivational tools for controlling human behavior, but they aren’t science; call it a separate discipline and teach it in a separate classroom. Science proceeds, by its very nature, according to a method; that method asks questions that faith cannot answer: Is your supposition testable? Can that test be repeated? Can, in the face of all this testing, assertions be materially proved or disproved? ID’s logic (that of proving imperfection of theory through critique) can, admittedly, convincingly prove that the internal combustion engine does not run at 100% efficiency on fossil fuels; it cannot possibly, as it tries to do, assert that the same engine might run better on pureed lettuce.

ID can meet none of the established standards of rationality and empiricism, and hence is fundamentally not an empirical discipline. When anyone can introduce a “god quotient” into the language of human science, a manner in which any god, meaning a supernatural force which presupposes, alters, or predicts the forces of astrophysics, geology or biology, that can be measured, examined, and tested—well then, let’s talk. Until then, prehistoric cave myths really ought to stay in the schools privately funded to propagate them.

Science asks some pretty hard questions of Faith: Where is god (or the Designer, or the Creator, or any other paraphrase one likes)? How can god be measured? Is god predictable? Is experimental proof of god repeatable? Faith, as it argues itself science, offers not even hypothetical responses to the inquiries of actual science. The Faith/Intelligent Design/Creationist community offers a purely negative and circumstantial rebuttal: because evolutionary science (which argues random chance) cannot fully explicate at present the origins of the physical universe and biological life, a wholly different explanation (an animal intelligence) must necessarily be the alternative. That dualism is false and ridiculous—it is akin to suggesting that because modern forensics sometimes (or often) fails to solve crimes, that we should use crystal balls to solve them instead. It replaces the newest and best model of procedure with an ancient, pragmatically useless one.

Science, however, allows for the possibility of god; it merely demands a kind of proof that has never been offered by the teleological community. The teleological community, on the other hand, seeks to undermine the presuppositions of science based on…generally nothing, without even the reciprocal courtesy of allowing that there possibly is no god. The community demands that its presuppositions be given equal time in the forum of educational classroom science without a shred of verifiable evidence that any of its presuppositions are true. And that burns me up. Anyone with a paper in the works proving the existence of a higher power without the childish and facile straw man tactic of attacking 146-year-old data from Charles Darwin is free to disagree. Everybody else ought to shut up and do their homework.

Hatins'

2005-10-17T08:16:00.000-04:00

I have a confession for you, dear reader (and the singular may be oddly appropriate, as I am sometimes my only reader), one that has languished deep in my heart for many years, and that only now will I exhibit the temerity to unveil: I don’t much care for loud music; usually, I find it a bloody lot of racket that gets on my nerves and inhibits my ability to think clearly. That’s right: all this time you thought that I was a hip, cool longhair (or not, probably having never seen me and/or given the matter no consideration at all), and now you find that, well before my time, I am a stodgy old man who deeply appreciates peace and quiet and solitude. I rather like hearing the clamor of mosquito wings and distant generators; such offer me the comforting illusion of knowing what the bloody bejesus is happening.

But what can I say? I used to try to read and study to music, before I realized how utterly distracting it was, and tried to sleep to music, before realizing that everything written outside of Simon and Garfunkel occurring after the year 1900 just keeps me awake instead, and tried to work to music, until I got that it just made me pay less attention to what I was doing, ultimately concluding that I prefer the noise and rhythm of the everyday environment in almost any social situation.

Now, this probably reads a bit queer, as it certainly writes a bit queer, so perhaps I should clarify the premise: I quite like (especially of recent) making music; I quite like listening to music in specific contexts that I have freely chosen, like going to see a show or agreeing to listen to a novel new CD (or classic old one) with friends on a road trip, or at a party. But I’m very discerning with what I listen to, and to when it’s listened: this pervasive idea of music being the ubiquitous and requisite background noise to one’s life just, well, strikes a bad note with me. The radio would be the primary bitch-target: it sucks, no matter what genre one prefers, unless a lass or lad has a college or indie station from which to pick, and even then there’s not much guarantee. And I don’t, and mosta y’all don’t either. This supposition is fundamentally true, or else the need for CD burners and other individual sub-selection to reduce the generally horrid broad swaths of publicly-broadcast music never would have come into existence: partly we tailor and reward our individual tastes via mechanized recording because we are individuals, but partly (or perhaps concurrently) we do so because any commercial station attempting to please a large audience will usually displease any of us with its unselectivity and general administration of drivel.

But I’ve wandered afield: I do, in fact, love the music that I love (Stones, Pixies, Bowie, Beethoven, Wagner, Lucinda Williams, Jonnie Cash, Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, whateverthehellelse) when and where I have the time to relax and love it. But live music in bars, unless I was specifically there to hear it, just interferes with conversation—and I generally love conversation a lot more than music. When I’m out in public, I’d rather hear the din of traffic or the crash of the ocean; the buzz of streetlamps or the cadence of the crickets and the cicadas; the whistle of the breeze or the cacophony of background human chatter. These things are themselves musical and rhythmic and, frankly, noisy enough—plenty of evidence that our sphere is one of life and motion and not a dead, silent space in the cosmos.

Has this address (particularly that last paragraph) been clichéd and pedantic and trivial enough? Probably that and more so. But the intention that informs it is sincere: there is precious little quiet left in the industrial world, and all the noise for the asking. The societal dependence on electronically supplied music seems to me just another symptom of a restless place, a place that doesn’t pause to hear heartbeats and breathing, that can’t intuitively process aural information rather than be dragged off into a cacophony of iPods and car-systems and, well, noise. For chrissake can’t anybody understand the relaxing benefit of reflection?

My protest is my own, and unquestionably anachronistic and ridiculous, but, hey, you’ll have that. I am, in the terms presented, just a music hater, in the same sense that I’m a TV hater: physical reality provides a deeply entertaining, base sensory context, with nary an additional industrial sound needed to improve it. I’m all happy for light bulbs and modern civilization and all, but…Could you please turn that goddamn radio down? I’m trying to think here.

My Brother Stole My Title.

2005-10-12T20:06:00.000-04:00

So it was midnight, and I was walking to the library (Just how many stories, you ask, might I begin with “It was midnight, and I was walking to the library? I have, I reply, as a noted American patriot/Led Zeppelin bassist once mentioned, only yet begun to fight) and there, on the sidewalk, was this thing which people do not typically see on your average sidewalk: it was a snake, slender and black, still in a manner that instinctively told me that it was dead. I’m a big believer in instinctive judgment, and from everything that I know about snakes would expect one to move with a 155 lb. animal bearing down on it, but also new to the region and devoid of any knowledge about the potential venomousness of local serpents. (I knew I meant to ask for Venomous Snakes of North Carolina for my birthday. Why didn’t you remind me?) So I decided to locate a stick to make sure that the little fellow was in fact deceased and hence unbothered by my continued intrusions into his private affairs. I scrounged around until I found a fallen branch near the gully from one of the many pines planted around the campus. I prodded the snake a few times, able to tell almost immediately from the weight and structure that this was a real animal and not a rubber toy left as a joke, and quite dead, and then dragged it until we were underneath the streetlight and I could get better look at it.

He (or she, as I believe one needs to be a certified herpetologist to tell the difference) was about 24-28 inches long, and all black except for a little patch of white underneath the jaw. There were only a few insects around the spot that I found it, and no smell of decomposition, so I gathered that it couldn’t have died more than a few hours earlier. Closer examination revealed that what I had initially assumed to be sidewalk dirt clinging to the middle of the animal’s body was in fact some kind of innards poking through the side. It could have been defecation, as I don’t know where a snake’s backside is located, but looked to me more like intestine that had come through the skin. Likely answer equals: my reptile friend was trying to cross the street (which people drive down at like 50, so that I, much quicker than the snake, have problems crossing it myself) and fell afoul of an unwary motorist, who almost certainly had no clue what he’d done, and the sidewalk was as far as it got afterward before giving up the ghost. Poor little thing, I thought.

I kept on looking, as far as the dim yellow light of the streetlamp would allow me to see: scales covered the entire body except the tiny head, which was glassy and smooth, and I wondered why and how that worked. After getting over my initial “Mom told me not to touch dead things” aversion (hey, I can pick up a chicken breast, right?), I ran my finger a few times across the snake’s skin, warm as the surrounding air, rough as an ancient creature, protective enough to deal with things not as crudely-but-powerfully engineered as automobiles.

I left the snake there, that it might satisfy someone else’s curiosity, or at least make some undergrad girl shriek, the thought of which lent me a childish chuckle. It didn’t even seem appropriate to give it some kind of symbolic burial by throwing it into the drainage ditch, as snakes certainly don’t do that sort of thing for one another. It was still there when I returned from the library at three A.M., and again at seven A.M. when I was on my way in again. But by sunrise a group of various and competing insects had pitched camp at the feast and were busily enjoined in nature’s cleanup work. Among them were a group of tiny snails, perhaps a quarter the size of one’s thumbnail, attached and engorged on the snake’s outer body. I’d never seen this kind of animal before, and was happy for them and their good luck in wandering upon such an abundant caloric source. And then I giggled inwardly, at my morbid curiosity and the scene lain out before me. Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, I thought: that’s what little boys are made of.

I! Live! Again!

2005-10-11T01:14:00.000-04:00

Or whatever it was that Mum-Ra said. I have discovered, under sufficiently exigent circumstances, three items with which one may badly play an old, banged-up, six-stringed acoustic guitar. (Yes, I'm afraid it's true: all longhairs do play the guitar, if ineptly and infrequently. This is an undiscovered law of physics, and only my humility keeps me from penning a genre-shattering essay on the matter.) They are as follows:

(1) One's thumb, lest we overlook the obvious.
(2) Plastic paper clips found discarded at the local collegiate library.
(3) A penny, which actually sounds really tuff on metal strings, if conspicuously upping the volume to a point at which the neighbors might begin to notice how bad I suck, as well as imperiling the general unbrokenness of those same strings.

Why the sudden need to improvise? Thank you for asking. This not being a particularly large burg, and one still (for the moment) featuring a number of Mom & Pop local franchises, the stores don't tend to be open as late as I'd like or am used to. Rushing out in search of guitar picks at 9:48 PM doesn't yield much in terms of results, unless coming back to the house with a bag of egg noodles and a story advances the cause of music much.

Why don't I have a pick? Because the one that I inexplicably managed not to lose (mostly by not playing) for several years has broken in half and fallen into my guitar itself, where it is waging an attrition war with my patience regarding the liklihood of its ever being retrieved. Picks are inanimate and require no food, so I'm afraid it may have the upper hand in our struggle.

Why don't I just complete the long, tedious, plainly evil library assignment I'm putting off and stop playing inaccurately transcribed Bob Dylan songs that I've cribbed from the internet? Let's not be rude, now. I don't take you to task every time you waste a bit of time thinking that your duties might just, this once, execute themselves if you simply avoid them for long enough. Mind your own business, like Momma taught you.

I, for one, have to go play "The Times, they Are a Changin'," now. With a penny.

Does Whatever a Spider Can.

2005-09-28T21:54:00.000-04:00

The following post is dedicated to my academe blogging superhero(ine), Alfina the Vague, from whom I plagiarized, openly, the thematic material, and even a little bit of the style.

I was walking to UNCW last night around midnight, for the following three reasons: (1) there are not herds of shambling undergrads in the library between midnight and three, and hence I have less cause to fear inane cellular phone banter, or my laptop being thieved; (2) all the reference texts of which the school only possesses one copy, which is to say nearly all of them, are typically not in use by another MA student and are subsequently likely to be on the shelf at midnight; (3) I walk the earth by dark and crave the flesh of the living. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? Sure, inexpensive draft Miller High Life can slake my undead hunger and thirst for the quick, but I cannot deaden, er, liven, my need to walk under the moon and the stars. But neither can the spiders, lovely things that they are, as compelled by their nature as any vampire or zombie.

I believe that the variety of arachnid that I stumble near, and across, and sometimes into, on these nocturnal fact-finding probes is a relative of the European garden spider. It’s too far south for it to be of that exact grouping, but it matches the picture and the characteristics pretty well. I understand full well that my walking into the nets of one of these is going to cause me no greater harm than a tremendous sensation of ick, but, c’mon, don’t we all have enough ick in our lives, already? And the damned things like to build across sidewalks, half the time, as if one of them really thinks that it can take me down. No, spider, you’re going to annoy me, making me put aside my higher, self-aware, spiritual bond with all other animals and ergo cast you to the ground and squishify you. No, that isn’t a word. Luckily for the spiders, the street lamps tend to help me pick up their nasty, tenacious practical joke before I wreck their homes and then have to kill them before witnesses arrive.

But I am ambivalent, I must admit. My reaction to anything lacking a spine that crawls on eight legs and builds things by its own organic secretions, my being a vertebrate and all, is natural enough: it’s a bit like looking at your ruralite uncle’s unrestored ’73 Monte Carlo, and thinking “that’s actually your car?” Only in this instance, the antiquated item is a billion or so years older than me, the new model, and so I feel weirdly impelled to destroy webs and ant hills as a satisfying affirmation of my animal modernity. Call me vain.

But I really am rather captivated by orb-spinning arachnids, and the sheer amount of work that they get done in an evening. Were the next hurricane to level my apartment, rather than merely tear the siding off it and remove my address, (as Ophelia did, hopelessly confusing all shipping companies and taxi drivers), I’m entirely certain that I wouldn’t be able to rebuild it in a day. Given the proper materials, I’m not certain I could rebuild the spider’s home in a day. I’m not much with a loom, I fear.

Additionally this variety seems to have a certain developed level of instinct: if I toss leaves into their webs, they do not immediately react; they seem to be waiting to see if the caught object will struggle or not, differentiating between edible and inedible captures. They eventually will move to the leaves, cut them from the web, and drop them. It’s really quite remarkable.

If only they’d just stay in the bushes, and away from the sidewalk, I’d simply enjoy the show and leave well enough alone. But I walk the earth by night, you see, and so do they, and inevitably we must brush against one another. So before I mash the next arachnid I mash, I’d like to sit him down and have a talk, about how I’m acting within the precepts of nature, extraneous to the confines of invented human constructs like “ethics” and “justice.” I want my spider to understand, in his little spider logic, that this is the way this hard world works, and unfair as it is: you—ancient, stupid, small, bug; me—modern, vertebrate, intelligent, large primate. I hate to say it, but there’s just not room for both of us in this town.

Under Contruction III.

2005-09-19T17:32:00.000-04:00

The sidebar has been reorganized to form a sort of "greatest hits" compilation based on the more enduring and less irrelevant posts from the archives. I'm letting a few Tennesseeans tiptoe over here, so I figured I would spare them the trouble of slogging through the New Orleans soup of useless political and sports posts of old and point them toward the occasional decent essay. Anyone else is free to brouse it, of course, though I'm not so silly that I expect anyone to take me up on that. I just wish I remembered where I put that post about roasting a frog when I was a kid. That one was pretty darned funny, if I do say so myself.

The Stones!

2005-09-14T05:53:00.000-04:00

I bought the new Stones album off of iTunes after I read eight seperate good reviews and heard another one on NPR. Oh, my god: it actually doesn't suck. This may be their first consistently non-sucky album of original material (since 1981's Tattoo You was outtakes) since Some Girls in 1978. They sound like they actually care and aren't mailing in a performance so they can get richer off the ensuing tour: Mick's vocals sound better than they have since I was crapping myself and Jimmy Carter was President; Keith and Ronnie and Charlie (who, it must be said, never sucked even when the rest of the band did) sound like they're jamming in somebody's basement--you know, like a rock n' roll band and not a dull corporate megolith, like they have for ten-or-so straight albums with the exception of a few decent tracks on the otherwise sucky Voodoo Lounge. They've somehow managed to shake off the glitzy, polystyrene overproduction that has poisoned two decades of their musical efforts and managed to sound like they're having fun again. It's blowing my mind. It's not just a good Stones album, which means a better-than-average effort by a washed up bunch of geezers: it's a plain good album, as in it would be a good debut album for a band starting today. It's as if somebody kidnapped those bored old men who still put on a great show and replaced them with actual musicians. There's funk and blues and fighting and fucking and cursing and drinking, you know, the Stones before they decided that selling celebrity was a lot easier than making good music.

Go check it out. Really. I wouldn't lie to you.

Cataracts and Hurricanoes.

2005-09-11T16:32:00.000-04:00

About four thousand moleskin points, as my brother Jason would have it, to anyone that can identify the titular reference without a Google search.

Ophelia, which is, oddly, another reference to the same guy, is coming my way. She's presently a category one hurricane, which means a few roofing tiles get blown off and some power lines get knocked down and the people living in the beach communities have to go to a hotel for a couple of days. What exactly were they thinking by living that close to the ocean, anyway? I've filled up a bunch of bottles with tap water and have some canned food, so I'm not terribly concerned about a possible power outage, which is ultimately about the worst thing I'm likely to encounter. My apartment grounds are probably at least twenty or thirty feet above sea level, and I live on the third floor, so it would essentially require a tsunami to drown me.

Since this is not New Orleans, and Ophelia is not Katrina, and I am not in any great danger of anything more severe than a day off from school, I have to admit a guilty little pleasure: I'm a bit excited to see this. I want to sit somewhere where I can hear the howl of the wind and watch debris whip by at fastball velocity, I want to watch the rains fly sideways into everything until the whole world is drenched underneath the darkened sky. The winds have already begun to pick up and ravage the Atlantic, creating a surf so frothy and violent that it has driven all but the die-hard surfers into pacicked retreat. The gale is trumpeting the show to follow, telling me that Nature, while not enraged, is feeling a bit cranky today, and is coming to Wilmington to let me know all about her unhappiness. I've never seen this before, and I absolutely can't wait, the potential failure of my air-conditioning be damned.

Truth, and Opinion.

2005-08-29T00:09:00.000-04:00

Let me opine, for a moment, on the folly of opinion, with a single caveat, the one the doctor gives you before injecting a needle into your skin: depending on how deep the insanity of your delusions runs, this may sting a bit.

Imagine any opinion that you have; the more strongly held it is the better. Okay? Now imagine that you meet a person who is brilliant—really, truly, absolutely brilliant, a person that knows twenty times what you know about the subject of your opinion. Unless you are a Nobel Prize winner, do not kid yourself: that person exists. That person inquires after your beliefs, patiently allowing you to present and develop your points, taking notes and asking thoughtful questions all the while. Now imagine that when he or she is finished listening, that individual, calmly and without anger, effortlessly tears every one of your arguments to shreds. He or she demolishes your rebuttals without any voice-raising or wild gesticulation, calmly as a computer demonstrating to you that everything you believed was wrong.

You’d be grateful, right? You’d thank that person sincerely, shake hands and be happy that the veil of ignorance had been lifted from your eyes, go forth with the recognition that you no longer have to live in illusion and misguidance. Wouldn’t you?

Bullshit. Chances are, if you are like everyone else, you would be deeply, deeply angry about this. You would be hurt and confused and threatened, awash with despair and embarrassment because someone hurt your feelings by telling you the truth. You would despise that individual, plugging your ears while screaming “La, la, la, I can’t hear you!!”

That’s how attached the crazy monkeys of humanity become to their ideas. We would rather feel good and proud and self-important about being wrong than suffer the humbling experience of correction. We would rather live vain, empty existences of flattering delusion than face the beauty and the terror of truth. Turns out that ignorance really is bliss.

Let me give you a compelling example: for eons, Hebrews, and then later Romans, Europeans, and Americans, were guided by a transcription of centuries of oral Hebrew myth regarding the origins of man. God raised man up from the earth and blew the breath of life into him. That’s a pretty flattering story, that a mighty sky god made us in his image and likeness, instead of the reverse. It’s no wonder that people bought and buy into it so readily and happily, even aside from the trouble of having to find a theory less utterly preposterous.

In 1859, a brilliant naturalist who had spent his entire adult life in careful, detached observation of natural phenomena, proposed a very sane and sensible theory, that man evolved from lower mammals, and that different species all come into existence by the slow-but-sure combination of nature and time. 146 years of subsequent science has affirmed his key contentions, adding volumes of data and an ever-growing fossil record to flesh out the idea that man is just a highly intelligent animal, and not a thing apart from the animal kingdom. While this version of the story is true, it is quite the opposite of the other one: it is decidedly unflattering.

The same 146 years later, we have demented monkeys clinging to the book of nomadic herdsmen, prehistoric savages that knew virtually nothing about the world around them, because the silly, primitive lies of that book make them happy, and the cold, unflattering clinical truths of Origin of the Species make them sad. That’s what this is all about, you know. Science is factual and provable, and Hebrew myth is factually and provably mythical, but very many people are so in love with hearing the lie that the sky god breathed life into clay that they plug their ears and shout out the people telling them that they are just nature’s newest model of primate. As Jack Nicholson once said, they cannot handle the truth.

An opinion is not a means of inquiry, of truth seeking. It is a gesture of arrogance and self-aggrandizement, apes beating on their chests to ward off fistfights that they aren’t sure they can win. You thought you were informing someone? No, you are, through the rhetorical force of your opinion, attempting to gain power over someone, to convince them of the rightness of your ideas so that they will act in accordance with your desires. All this time you thought you were showing others the light through the prettiness of your words, when in fact your tone of voice was telling other men to fear and respect you, women to mate with you. What you thought was an elegant verbal exercise was little more than you trying to control territory, climb the rungs of animal power hierarchies, and get laid.

Now my version of what an opinion is, being itself an opinion, is all of the things that I just told you. So even if you agree, don’t take it too seriously. Don’t ever take anything anyone tells you for granted without holding it aloft like a jeweler, exposing its facets and flaws to the invasive light of rigorous scrutiny. The fact that people don’t do this is how they get talked into so many damned fool ideas about things, without even knowing that they’re being indoctrinated.

Because that's just, I'm afraid, the way we are.

Positivity.

2005-08-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

Late, as nearly always, I step into my English 501 seminar for the first day. There are only two seats left surrounding the collection of folding tables bunched together, surrounded by office chairs in the Knights of the Round Table kind of setting the grad courses all use.

I take the one directly to the left of where Dr. Walker is going to sit. While this once would have been intimidating, I’ve been rather relaxed of late. There’s the added bonus that this is my third class with the guy, and the fact that I, half the faculty, and most of the English grads got roaring drunk with him on Friday night at the “welcome, new grads” party he holds annually at his house.

Two seats to the left of me is Jessica, the gorgeous new feminist theory student who I saw at the party, perpetually surrounded by nine guys hitting on her at once. Homey don’t play that, so I stayed out of the feeding frenzy. If there is meant to be a time, I think, there will be a time. I just look over at her and offer a smile.

We move class over to the library, where we’re to be instructed on how to use the electronic informational sources. I make pleasant small talk with Jess on the way over. I already know all of this library stuff, of course, because I had to do all of it last Spring, when I started here, with no instructional course at all. I learned by screwing things up and cursing until I figured matters out for myself, a hard but effective method of learning.

I begin to zone out from boredom, thinking instead about this delightful young woman next to me. She’s from a tiny little college, and is a little intimidated by the bigness of this place, the huge library and sprawling campus. Perspective is a funny thing, because coming from a 50,000 undergrad population like Ohio State to here, I was taken aback by how quaint and personal everything seemed. Objects on the ground look small, hanging from the Buckeye tree.

As the lecture winds down, a tiny kindness pops into my head. “Would you like a tour of the library,” I ask Jess, wishing someone had done that for me.

“Sure,” she says, with a look of pleasant surprise. Most people, I am beginning to conclude, don’t say things like this. I didn’t until rather recently.

So we tour the huge two floors of William Randall Library, going through the alphabetized journals she’ll need to use so often, the reference, the café—upstairs, through the sprawling stacks, seeing sections of the floor that I’ve never seen before because I had no cause to see them, seeing study rooms along the periphery I never knew existed. When we’re through, we keep talking, and so I suggest we do so outside, not to bother the people trying to study in quiet. We find a park bench and then, when it begins to rain, sit under a stone awning to wait it out. We’re talking about serious things, like God and physics and anthropology, and not-serious things, like Irish dive bars and singing drunk. She laughs at something that I say, leaning over and touching my arm lightly. This is, from everything I’ve read, a Good Sign.

“What are you doing Thursday,” she interjects. Those stereotype-busting feminist girls, I tell you.

“Nothing. You want to hang out?”

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to sit in on the class I’m a T.A. for.” My heart sinks, just a little. “But I’d like to hang out, too.” My tail perks up slightly.

She’s late for dinner and I’m late for class, so she scribbles down her number before I can even ask, hands it to me with a coy smile and hurries off. A very smart, pleasant, beautiful 22-year-old woman has invited my company, all because I took a moment to do something legitimately nice, without the sleazy taint of ulterior motive. I remind myself to do this more often.

As Sri Krishna, the disguised Lord Vishnu driving a chariot, said to his passenger Arjuna, “Focus your mind in the Lord, free from selfishness and I will give you the thing you desire.” Vishnu has been good to me today.

Tales.

2005-08-21T20:05:00.000-04:00

Before the dawn of literacy, we know that societies passed on the wisdom and the learning of their elders through oral recitation, just as the surviving preliterate tribal societies remaining today do. The elders had taken the stories from their elders, who had done the same from theirs, stretching back so far that no one had any idea where the stories began, or how much they had changed. But they quite probably understood the lessons the stories were attempting to impart, wise, practical, instructive and cautionary anecdotes about how to conduct and not conduct oneself in this life.

One of these ancient, tribal, tales was about a time, far, far removed from the present, when people in this particular tribe did not wear clothes. They carried no shame about it, as the word for the concept had not yet been invented. They worked and spoke naked, made love unhidden from the other beasts, lived carefree, naked lives in a simple, innocent, uncorrupted world.

Over time, as more and more words were invented and passed on, as the knowledge of worldly things grew, concepts such as possession and envy and jealousy, guilt and shame entered into the language, corrupting the paradise of ignorant innocence and sending people forth into the larger, harsher world of knowledge. They began to conceal themselves with clothing because they had lost the paradise of natural ignorance and learned a terrible thing called shame. They had learned that knowledge carries a high price.

This is a brilliant, wise parable, told by wise, practical people living lives of immediacy, in the presence of what they believed was their god.

Fast forward who-knows how many millennia later: deranged children in adult bodies are now teaching fairy tales and fables as literal truth to normal children, in an effort to ensure that they grow up to be deranged children in adult bodies like their teachers. They are teaching them that humanity arose from a man named Adam and a woman named Eve, who were kicked out of a material, actual, geographical garden by an angel with a sword. They have lost every bit of practical wisdom that the story contained for hairy Neolithic people wandering the desert of Israel, and turned it into a cruel, poisonous, murderous lie, a filthy pollution of the minds of innocents. It would be better that they were taught that the world is flat; at least that lie is harmless.

The whole world is mad that way. All scriptures should probably be rounded up and burned 100 years maximum after they are written, before everybody loses the point completely and starts believing in tales that the people who heard them originally weren't even supposed to believe. And the most disturbing thing of all is that the problem is getting worse, and not better. The more science advances knowledge, the more it, seems, evryone else ignores it.

Food Chain.

2005-08-21T14:01:00.000-04:00

My mind has made an inquiry recently about of the kind of body that it sometimes governs; like any insight, it has called into question some of the practices that this body has learned to employ—to seriously investigate their ethical justifications and necessity.

My body is that of an upright-walking primate, a mammalian, male ape that is the product of between two and six million years of hominid evolution. In previous incarnation, it looked, probably, much like the thick, swarthy, furry, dark-skinned things, the few remaining holdovers from a prehistoric, nearly-bygone epoch, that have been transplanted from Africa into modern zoos and that we call, in our highly-refined, rarefied, mammalian language, gorillas.

A long, long time ago, this ape’s ancestors began walking more on their hind legs than the other apes, using their forepaws more. They, very slowly, became versed in simple tool use, and for a few million years this was possibly all that separated them from their slightly-less-intelligent gorilla relatives.

But, slowly and surely, a strange thing began to happen: the higher intelligence of the tool-using apes succeeded as a formula, their bigger brains giving them an applicable advantage over their contentedly stupid cousins. But those brains, those things that consumed so much electrochemical energy, demanded fuel, a kind of fuel that leaves and shoots could not provide: they demanded an intense caloric source that could not be found in the vegetable kingdom--they demanded protein.

And so a certain kind of ape, or rather, as nature works in diversified fits and starts, certain kinds of apes, began to transform from predated to predating creatures, suddenly making other creatures, insects at first, but then others slow enough for them to catch and eat, and sometimes, if we believe what we have found, each other, deeply uneasy about their motivations. We started killing things for their caloric value, having no idea what caloric value meant, because these apes felt much more satisfied by a bit of flesh-eating than they did by hours of snacking on leaves.

This strategy was an effective one, leading to more sophisticated primates that used their hands to walk even less, and eventually not at all, with even bigger brains, making even more kinds of animal fear their needs, ultimately even the very big ones. The apes sent gigantic, hairy, tusked creatures into extinction via their unslakeable thirst for flesh and its embedded protein, and their intelligent ability to collaborate against things more powerful than any of them individually. They became collectively formidable animals, dispatching animals with lesser intellectual abilities, living by their need for calorie-intensive food so that they might continue their upward quest toward having even bigger brains and more dexterous forepaws.

My existence is the offshoot of all of this evolutionary social climbing: my body is that of a mammal, a highly intelligent, upright-walking, anthropoid ape of the genus Homo. It does ape things, has ape desires, and yet through the power of its magnificent capacity for communication through an elaborate system of complex utterances, has learned to name things and remember the names of things that other primates have taught it. It speaks; it hears.

As that of a protein-lusting, hominid ape, my body wants things from me. It has a brain and a nervous system that experience instinctive impulses and, through the power of its advanced capacity for language, and hence symbolic thought, learns names for the impulses. Instinctive aversion to something, in the dialect of an ape in North America, Britain, Australia, or South Africa, is called fear. We have other words like love and grief, to describe chemical bonding, attachment and bereavement. But mostly, my animal wants the flesh of other animals, so that it can be satisfied, a thing we call hunger, so that, consequently, future apes can have even bigger brains and still-more-dexterous forepaws.

Life lives by killing. This truth is inescapable. But now, at this juncture, I must choose what I kill, or merely to have killed by others, in order that I might obtain my protein.

A pig, as we have named a certain animal in English, is an intelligent mammal that experiences the same sensory impulses that my animal does, has instinctive understandings such as fear and joy, like my animal, communicates to other pigs by primitive language, and can learn things by memory and hence transform its existence into something that it was not at birth. It can learn names and commands, develop aversions to situations not naturally unpleasant, become depressed, suffer loss, attach itself to mates. It is smarter than the dog that we have come, in this culture, to adopt and love as family. It does not experience any of the qualities that my animal does in the refined sense that my animal experiences them, but that does not mean, contrary to conveniently constructed fictions, that it does not experience them at all.

I cannot kill and eat this animal anymore; it is to close to my own.

Sure, in the modern world, I am two or three steps removed from the actual slaughter of any pig, but by purchasing its flesh, I am participating in the slaughter as surely as if I had done it myself. The trauma and the terror it experiences, knowing that it is about to be culled, as higher animals always do, is something I can no longer abide. It is, for me and only me, a sin in which I may no longer take part.

I apply the same standard, now, to cows: not nearly as smart as pigs, but still too intuitive for me to kill and eat in good conscience. This is painful; I love to eat beef steak. But, unfortunately, from my saddened perspective, my consumption of it has to go.

We move to chickens: chickens are flightless birds, derived from ancient reptiles, with a program so based in the nervous system that if one severs a chicken’s tiny brain from its body by amputating its head, its body continues to run about until it dies of blood loss. They are scavengers, so stupid that they, in captivity, peck the eyes out of other chickens, believing the eyes to be insects. Chickens, I conclude, are still on the menu. Naturally and logically, so are their eggs.

Fish, I think: fish are primordial ancestors to amphibians, that can be taught nothing, that exist in their inherent capacities to swim, fertilize eggs, and die. Tuna steak, I concede, goes on the menu as well, right after the chicken-wing appetizer. There will be, it appears, no problem fulfilling my body’s call for protein, after all.

Shellfish are enormous insects, some closely, genetically related to cockroaches. They act on a prepaid chemical agenda not terribly different than that of a tomato. I can still go to Joe’s Crab Shack, I comfort myself.

Nuts, while having nerve endings and experiencing pain when eaten, have nothing resembling brain matter, and hence as much awareness of what is happening as if I had chosen to eat rocks. Even PETA lets me eat cashews without guilt. Okay, there we have it.

I have seen things differently, and must act accordingly. I may no longer eat things that have the intuition to be frightened of me. It seems an act of cruelty, an understandable and perfectly natural one, but not in any sense a necessary one.

R.I.P. Scotty.

2005-08-18T22:38:00.000-04:00

James Doohan (1920-2005), sleep well. As Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, the Canadian Doohan put on a fine Highland trill, treating us to inimitable deleveries like, "Ahem gevin 'edr ell she's gah, Ceptin," from his constantly embattled seat in the ship's engine room. He didn't much care for the fact that he would spend his entire acting career typecast by the role, but that didn't stop him from sucking it up and making a nice living from four seasons of television and seven movies as Scotty.

He gave 'er all she had in real life, too, fathering his last child at age 80. Watching his reruns on TV growing up was a pleasure I still remember, and so, while happy that his long battle with Alzheimer's is at an end, think that perhaps the world should slow to warp factor four, just for a day, in his remembrance.

The Light.

2005-08-17T21:04:00.000-04:00

I have had a day, unlike any day that I have ever had before, in which I have seen things that I never knew I could see, all because some interpolation into The Mahabharata called The Bhagavad-Gita suggested that I try sitting up straight with my chin up and breathing deeply as a means to achieve perceptual clarity and relaxation.

Try this for long enough in a sitting position, and then see how long you can keep doing it while in your daily activities, and you will come to some insights that you didn’t realize yourself capable of: you will begin to realize that that bitch Jane at work was never the person bothering you; she never did anything wrong to you at all. You created that situation in your imagination. What Jane, or Bill, or Sancho, or whoever did was stand too close too you, causing your ancient, primate brain to start producing panic hormones which in turn causes your breathing to grow shallow, which creates more panic chemicals because now your brain is telling you that there is a threatening animal standing too close for comfort and that it isn’t getting enough oxygen. But no—for most people Jane’s just a bitch.

Breathing deeply calms the panic of the brain, which allows it to fall in tune with the senses, to become aware of the body in way it probably hasn’t been since the creation of an egotistical identity in early infancy. In turn, it begins to recognize things that were causing it be uncomfortable, that all this time the created identity of the ego was misdirectedly blaming on people and things outside of it. That’s right, you’re angry at Tom because you didn’t wipe well and have got an itchy bum; Juan is an asshole because you skipped breakfast; your boss is a tyrant because you’re hung-over, sleep deprived, nervous from the caffeine, winded and exhausted because you’re out of shape. You don’t need to change a single one of those other people, and you wouldn’t stay happy for very long if you did, because they weren’t the ones causing your unhappiness. You were and are causing your unhappiness. You are the problem. The world is fine, doing its own thing, as it has been for 4.5 billion years. It’s you. Get in touch with that idea.

Keep breathing, as you go out into the world—into Wal Mart, Costco, the local stadium, anywhere a lot of people can be found and just keep breathing, holding your head up, and looking at every single person that you pass. You’ll be able to do this now, without looking away, because you’re breathing and heart rate are going to tell your brain that you are calm and unafraid. Keep looking into the eyes of every single stranger you encounter, free from the chaotic maelstrom of your preconceptions, your ideas, your opinions, your past and future. Just look at them, and watch how their eyes shimmer and twitch. Keep breathing and don’t look away, stay in this place for as long as you can. Don’t worry; 90% of them will look away in terror in less than two seconds, because you have just issued them a challenge by rules of their DNA, by their long evolutionary history, stating that prolonged eye contact is a challenge to fight or mating overtone, just like it is for dogs. Just smile if they do look back, and you may unexpectedly find yourself in a very pleasant conversation. Do this for at least half an hour, carefully looking at the eyes and face of every person you encounter, the movements of their lips and nostrils. Don’t get scared; breathe.

No go to the zoo, or if you haven’t got that, the library to pick up an issue of National Geographic, or watch The Nature Channel. Start looking at apes and monkeys, the way their eyes move, the way they maintain or avoid eye contact, the way their eyes shimmer and twitch. If you can do this calmly, it’s gonna hit you like a ton of bricks: that’s right—you’re an ape, and I’m an ape, and you’re looking right at your-not-as-precocious cousins.

The incredible thing about the human brain is that its capacity for imagination and memory are so powerful that it can manufacture for itself an identity, commonly termed the ego, which believes itself separate from the larger organic entirety. To our knowledge, we are the only primate capable of doing this, but that’s only to our knowledge—because we can’t teach chimpanzees to speak or write. We can, and have, taught chimps sign language, and when we do they invent new combinations of words, including vulgarities involving bodily wastes and sex organs, just like their smarter cousins. Evolution is as real as the air you are breathing, but our imagination’s capacity for fiction is so powerful that billions of upright-walking, hominid apes, Homo sapiens sapiens have talked themselves into some crazy mass denial of what they are and where they came from, to a point where only scientists and philosophers are privy to the truth.

But because we can talk and write, drive cars, erect buildings, and have successfully outlasted all of the other hominid races, silly, vain, religious sects begin to craft the outlandish lie that they never existed at all, that the extensive and growing fossil record of their existence is all some kind of plant by a fictional character from Hebrew myth called Satan, or a persistent error on the part of deluded P.H.D. anthropologists who, after all, spend their whole lives studying the matter. The writing and the building and the talking just make us very smart apes with very dexterous forepaws, which is why evolution’s verdict is that we will eventually be the only apes, because that’s just how things work.

Something followed with this understanding, that these same “religious” folks’ understanding of the concept of God is so primitive, childish, and stupid that they deny evolution based on some crackpot belief in magic, that poof, one day man appeared, just like a group of nomadic Jews, eons before the dawn of science, living 5,000 years ago in a desert, with a language too primitive to contain punctuation, and hence impossible to accurately translate, concluded, without necessarily even believing that it was anything other than a convenient myth. They believe that an omniscient and omnipotent God could not possibly have had the foresight to include anything as wonderfully subtle, as splendid and democratic and fitting as natural selection in His divine plan. Idiots.

So there I was, an ape that took 32 years to recognize what it was, walking home from Wal-Mart, when it began to rain, rather hard. My rent check and a utility bill were in my knapsack, and my cell phone was in my front pocket, and so, rather than sulk, my ape brain wisely pointed out that perhaps my ape body should seek shelter. It did, finding, an awning attached to a building that once housed an office of some kind. The awning had a dry bed of straw underneath it, the perfect place to sit and wait out the rain, or at least the heavy rain.

We fight because there are too many of us.

It was like being struck by a bolt of lightning, but more painful. We fight bar fights and skirmishes and World Wars, thinking that we are fighting for France or Allah or Democracy or the Celestial Empire, when we are fighting because we are in a state of perpetual unease about being too close too one another, in a population so dense that 2 million years of hominid evolution is already telling us it is a state of territorial invasion, that we are already at war with one another based on violations of our instinctive, animal ideas about space. We are fighting because all territorial animals pushed too close to one another erect hierarchies of power, to dominate or submit to that which it can no longer escape. We’re monkeys flinging poop who have concocted the greatest delusion in all of the history of the natural world, that our capacity for language and hence accumulated learning makes us exempt from the rules that govern all other mammals, that we are enforcing and defending Higher Purposes with our wars, that only animals engage in wars over territory, that we are Human Beings, with names and jobs and iPods. Human Beings couldn’t possibly create imaginary verbal justifications for things we were naturally predisposed to do. Never mind that we look like primates, eat like primates, copulate like primates, eliminate like primates, share nearly all of out DNA with chimpanzees, and if you’ve ever seen too untrained guys slug it out, fight just like any other ape. Our reasons are different, because we say they are, and because we have the capacity that no other animal has—to tell lies to ourselves and others.

All this time, I was taught and came to believe, due to the belief’s very flattering nature, that I was something other than what I am. Today I have seen something with eyes that have never before seen it, that I am just a very smart ape, and so is everyone else, decorating ourselves to attract mates, fighting over whose patch of grass this is, living chemically dictated lives that we distort into the twisted logic of language. I cannot explain how terrifying and simultaneously liberating this understanding is.

Choices.

2005-08-17T04:43:00.000-04:00

Toby is a man, who has chosen the path of the warrior: he is a marine, 46 years old, fit and strong, now serving as a contractor for the armed forces, and who has done terrible things in the defense of the interests of his country. We talk, frequently, at the local bar that I retreat to after long days of work.

I asked Toby, recently, if he was haunted by the ghosts of the many people he has killed. “Why do you think I am here, drinking beer with you,” was his response. Fair enough: I felt a profound pity and admiration for Toby, all mingled into one—he has been a slayer so that other people don’t have to be, and yet must sleep with the fact that he has deprived families of fathers, bereft wives of their husbands, taken life so that other life may prosper. That is, doubtless, a hard burden to bear. It is a weight that has destroyed his marriage, cost him his children, and now, plays itself out in conversations with a man he hardly knows.

There is no need to dovetail into the greater divisiveness of politics, an art I presently find so distasteful that I quickly wash my hands of it: Toby and I might not see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, but he has been the man on the wall, as Jack Nicholson, in a mediocre film, described him, guarding the gates of civilization, dealing with the unpleasant, violent realities that such duties entail. Such has, in return, leveled and ruined him. Now, a basically naive graduate student with little direct knowledge of the chaotic world he speaks of is the outlet for his entirely justified resentment.

I am, it should be noted, a patriot—not in the modern, nationalist, jingoistic silliness of the word, but in the sense that a Washington might have understood it: I believe that what has been built here, this nation, is a thing worth defending rather than an object for worship, and would drive an ambulance, recite a broadcast, run supplies or build fortifications to preserve it. I could not, and would not, take another life to preserve it.

Toby is a man who has had to make a harder choice: whether to obey orders, save his own life, and advance a cause he believes in by watching other human beings die in front of him by his hand, or to be a victim, dying by the like in return. He has done what he has had to do, badly disrupting his personal life in the process, and I am grateful to him for it.

But I do not envy that decision.

Caves.

2005-08-16T02:36:00.000-04:00

I am walking across the campus of UNCW late on a Monday evening, cutting through on my way back from the store, content with the sultry evening air and the twelve bottles of PBR by my side, breathing deeply and trying to block out the pain in my aching left knee, which is probably ticketed for a date with a surgeon’s knife that I can ill afford right now. I am inhaling and exhaling, taking it all in: the rhythmic chirping of the cicadas, the stately conifers which dominate the campus, the humming of the utility lights and a generator in the distance, the smell of the earth and the trees, the frogs exploring the night in search of food. I am feeling calm and serene, quintessentially alive and present. I adore these meditative, solitary moments, in which I am myself and not the bundle of neuroses and expectations that I so often allow myself to be made into.

A strange thought pops into my head: Early Man got to experience these moments so much more than I ever can, in those pre-verbal days of branching out across the valleys and savannas of Africa. I feel the oddest sensation of envy for creatures that lived and died 100,000 years ago. They actually knew what it meant to be alive, and I only get it in fits and starts, moments of lucidity between epochs of confusion and disunity.

Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for the marvels of technology that mean that I will sleep in a sound structure with air conditioning on this hot night, that I have lived a healthy 32 years due to the wizardry of modern medicine, that my torn ACL is not the death sentence that it would have been so long ago, when constant movement was essential for survival. I do not envy Early Man’s stomach full of parasites, his painfully short existence, or his near total ignorance of the world surrounding him. But I envy the wonder of discovery that each day must have brought, the profound focus that must have been the everyday when humanity was still very far from the top of the food chain, when daydreaming was not an idle luxury as it is now, but an invitation for large predators to consider you fair game.

The power of memory, of imagistic storage and abstract thought, has been, without question, an evolutionary boon to us. It is what allows information to be passed from generation to generation, for glittering cities to be built, for science to move forward. It is what makes us a unique animal, one that can improve its own condition extraneous to the intolerably slow drip of natural selection. That can’t be a bad thing, right?

But it is also what makes us think about what we’re having for dinner while we’re cutting the grass, spend the entire day fuming over a perceived insult that happened hours earlier, wake up angry and discontented about things that transpired before or, even worse, haven’t occured yet. In the dizziness of abstract and mnemonic thought, immersed in the distant, bygone, imaginary worlds past and future, we so often react to the people and activities that we are dealing with in the here and now as an irritant, a nuisance—a distraction from our distraction. It’s the hurried, harried kind of thinking that makes us rush out the door without our car keys, bang our shins on things that have been in the same place for time immemorial, forget about our loved ones and our obligations because we’re too wrapped up in ourselves. And that can’t be a good thing.

So I’ve been studying Hindu scripture and practicing meditation, on someone else’s suggestion, to try to maximize the frequency of those here moments, when I’m looking at what I’m looking at, talking to whom I’m talking to, and not being bothered or pleased with something that happened ten minutes or twelve years ago, or might happen tomorrow. This is the fourth time I’ve gone the route of seeking out spiritual practices to correct my naturally whiny, selfish, petulant temperament, and each time teaches me something that the previous ones didn’t. Well, obviously, since I discontinued all the previous attempts.

But Early Man didn’t need this route. Before language, he couldn’t translate sensory input into words, and hence didn’t have to go through elaborate rituals to stop himself from conceptualizing and compartmentalizing immediately compelling and fascinating phenomena. Before the word “tree,” there was just a mass of cells standing in front of you that had to be dealt with on its own merits, much like when, today, we watch our cats sniffing for enthralled minutes on end around new additions to our household like, say, a cardboard box on the floor, which we dismiss in seconds as mundane and forgettable. Early man lived with a perpetual and assiduous sense of wonder, the riveting focus of nothing—not food, not shelter, not safety, not health—being guaranteed.

I feel it significant to note that I do not wish to join the folly of others, typically silly, spoiled, misguided college students, in romanticizing tribal existence. Those that live in it now, like those folk in the dawn of prehistory, live brutal, hard, brief existences. I would change places with them for a spell, for the amazing perspective that it might convey, but at the end of the day am happy to have shelter and utilities, stable government and the blessings of Western modernity. I am no leftist moonbat, crowing about a lifestyle I know almost nothing about and probably could not stomach, preaching a gospel that I have no intention of living. But as I walk across the mini-forest of my university, taking in the residual wildness of a tiny piece of the American South, I am alerted to a truth: Early Man and those that have inherited his desperate, clannish poverty in the modern world, may not live long—but they certainly do get a chance to live. Would that we all have that.

As William Wallace, at least in the version Mel Gibson created of him, once said, “Every man dies. Not every man ever lives.” Wise words.

Perspective.

2005-08-13T00:49:00.000-04:00

It was toward the end of a long day off, and I was hungry. I’d had a good, productive workout in the mini-gym my apartment complex features, followed by a vigorous swim in the pool. I had paid my utilities, breaking myself until payday in the process. I had, this is to say, earned myself a Hardee’s Thickburger. I checked my wallet: two dollars. I scrounged up 47 cents in change, and then found one of the coupon sheets that my mail is bombarded with daily, carefully tearing out the “1/3 pound Thickburger, $1.99” selection. Since one of those babies probably has about 1,500 or so calories and 100 grams of fat, I figured that and an ice water ought to just about do it for the evening.

I walked along the grass beside the ditch (there is no sidewalk, as Wilmington is not, as I have mentioned before, particularly pedestrian-friendly) looking forward to my rare ground beef indulgence. I could probably give beef up altogether, were it not my down-to-the-DNA, uncontrollable urge to occasionally have a very bloody NY strip or rib eye. I just can’t help it; I love steak. But today a ground angus Thickburger was sounding just fine.

As I reached the door on the drive-through side and pulled, I was rather surprised and dismayed to find it locked. As I walked to the door on the other side and got the same story, my surprise and dismay flooded into my temples in a rush, transforming itself into anger with deft alacrity. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. How on earth could a place that sells food 24 hours a day have a dining room that closed before ten?

Hardee’s dining room, like White Castle’s before it, used to be open round the clock. That they both stopped doing so is to me one of the most disgustingly irresponsible business practices in current use. I can see so more effective way to put thousands of people under the influence of alcohol and marijuana on the road than to cater directly to the late-night munchies inherent to each drug, and then tell them that you’ll only sell food to people in cars, all so a company can save six nightly hours of minimum wage by staffing one fewer cashier.

I’ve been feeling rather serene of late, and this incident had made me lose my temper for the first time in several days. As I started to walk down to Taco Bell, I could feel my thought process swirl and muddy, my face grow hot and my blood pressure escalate. How dare they refuse me my…Thickburger?

I was getting all fired up over something called a Thickburger.

I stopped suddenly, and took several long, deep breaths. I wasn’t bothered over drunk driving and bad business practices. I was upset because I was exhausted and hot and hungry, and had to walk a few extra blocks to get something to eat. My mind had, as it so often does, read a few physical indicators like skin temperature, blood sugar level, and food content, and concluded that I was righteously indignant over the wicked commercial habits of a 24-hour fast food chain. Funny how the mind does that, and how so often we don’t realize that we’re angry about something when actually it's just a convenient substitute for something much simpler.

A Thickburger. People go through life paralyzed, blind, severely retarded, maimed by war, horribly burned in house fires, living with cancer, victimized by rape and sexual abuse, and maintain daringly positive attitudes while I’m busy getting hot under the collar over a hamburger, and one with a ridiculous name at that. I thought of myself looking back at my earthly existence from the hereafter, and bookmarking this very instant as being a profound and revealing testament to why I wasn’t any happier.

I breathed for a little bit longer, feeling the dizziness of my anger and excitement begin to melt away. I laughed briefly at myself, something I’m finally learning to do after far too many years of taking myself seriously as a judge, and went to foist my two-plus dollars worth of business on the still-open Taco Bell. The food tasted good and the staff were nice. There was nothing really wrong after all, no problem but the one created in my imagination.

On my way home, I saw a beat-down, 1980s Ford Thunderbird with tinted windows and the bass banging away, followed closely by a Wilmington Police cruiser. I put two and two together and immediately concluded what was about to happen. As the Thunderbird pulled into the right turn lane (never do that when a cop car is riding your tail; it’s guilty-looking and asking them to throw the lights on), the cops followed them and promptly threw the lights on. Since they weren't speeding, I suspected that the cops had run the plate and got back something of note when they did. I further suspected that the population at the New Hanover County Correctional Facility was about to go up by one or two.

Now those guys have a problem, I thought.

Passing.

2005-08-09T04:08:00.000-04:00

Peter Jennings, rest in peace.

Peter Jennings could tell a story, calm as the eye of a hurricane, witty as John Cleese, insightful as the Buddha, while the world, and his newsroom, undulated and contorted around him. That's genius, folks, and whether you agree with his version of any narrative or no, you should at least agree that genius of his kind is a rare commodity in this world. Peter Jennings was a prodigy, witty and photogenic, eloquent and puissant, a man with natural and acquired gifts so overpowering that he ruled the air for decades, dispensing his charisma as if it were penny-candy, speaking his news as if it were the very truth of God itself.

A man, a single Canadian-born man, told me things with wit and candor for many years for ABC television. I will miss his stories. You may tell me that they're all lies, and we can debate that another day, but you can't tell me that his stories weren't polished and magnificent. He was, as the most enduring and important writer in the English language described someone like him, a man, take him for all in all--we shall not see his like again.

I am saddened by his passing.

Killing the Cat.

2005-08-09T03:06:00.000-04:00

I was stumbling home from the local pool-hall/tavern that occupies the bulk of my free time here in this wonderfully, blessedly, sultry and hot, coastal North Carolina Summer. I’d stopped drinking at a good point, at which I was euphorically high, happy and inquisitive, and, as always, a mere 300 yard walk from my apartment.

As I promenaded down the cut-across walk that takes me through the seedy Campus Edge apartment community to my slightly-more-reputable Campus Walk across the street, I saw a frog occupying the sidewalk just ahead of me, minding his own business as only a frog can.

But I was not in the mood to mind just mine. I love frogs and have been fascinated with them since I was a little boy; a compelling, childishly curious impulse came over me, and I swept down upon the frog, captured him, and raised him aloft to examine him. I had no intention at all of hurting him, though 400 million years of amphibian evolution was, without a doubt, giving him the very opposite impression. In the wild when a creature with 600 times your mass rudely snatches you skyward, chances are that your final place on the food chain has just been brusquely and irreversibly established.

So I understood the frog squirming a bit, although he had about as little chance of escaping as if I actually had intended to eat him--it's not hard for a 155lb adult human to contain a four-ounce animal. But I just wanted to look at him for a minute, observe his markings, monitor his increasing panic. Amphibians are much more perceptive than reptiles, sharing many features of their tiny brains and nervous systems with humans. I watched his breathing grow more rapid and his eyes shift more suddenly, and wondered, seriously wondered, what level of cognition was at work there? Did his fear in any aspect resemble the kind of fear that I would have if a 90,000lb colossus rudely plucked me off the ground one evening? Or was it simply a primal sense of self preservation?

As he evacuated what seemed to be a quart of fluids onto my arms, I learned that we at least would have one action in common in the situation. Who knew a frog could hold that much liquid? I dropped him into the grass like he was radioactive, where he doubtless scampered away while I just thought, yuuuck.

And then I started laughing, a slow laugh building into a hysterical cackle, that would have made anyone in the vicinity immediately question my sanity, with possible good cause. I got exactly what I deserved: I wished to observe a small creature’s terror, like a Greek god playing whimsically with humanity, and the last-ditch natural defense of a little, Mesozoic amphibian did exactly what it was earmarked to do; it made me let him go.

As I was at my kitchen sink, exerting five minutes of furious scrubbing to cleanse the frog-filth from my arms, I wondered about the concept of inquisitiveness, about how the higher mammals’ natural need to investigate is both our greatest strength and most prolific source of predicament. I was reminded of an aphorism, wise and utile, and like most things wise and utile, perennially neglected.

Sometimes, curiosity does kill the cat.

On Writing.

2005-07-27T16:47:00.000-04:00

A while back, at one of the other ABA (may the celestial light of the heavens be forever upon it) blogs (Nigela’s, I think, but not sure), someone was kicking around the idea of what it means to be a writer, and offering some successful writers’ quotes on the topic. I was thinking a bit about this myself recently, and decided to post a highly belated response.

So what does it mean to be a writer?

To be a writer is to be a searcher, seeking the small in hidden and overlooked places, the shining grains of sand trapped between the floor tiles. It is to extrapolate the grand from the minute, appreciate and describe the wonder of the grand, and be able to see each quality in the other.

To write is to be yoked, enslaved, to your imagination, leaving it nagging you for attention, distracting you from more immediate affairs, to be partly here and partly somewhere distant. It is an unquenchable need to explain the inexplicable and encapsulate the boundless. It is an incurable sickness, an obsession, a disorder begging for order but frequently attaining only release—creating vacancies for the next bout with intellectual anarchy and chaos, seeking the calm between the storms at sea.

Being a writer involves indulging and subsequently denying the unslaked and unslakeable thirst of the ego: it entails being as selfish as an only child, yet as giving as life. It involves feeling, indeed immersing oneself, in the pettiness of everyday existence then ultimately transcending and denying it; it is the Hindu god Shiva, the creator and the destroyer. It is a craft and a construction of saws and hammers, that measures and binds, builds and fastens, yet also rends and shatters.

Writing is a fortress unassailable, locked and fixed, ironclad and frozen; it is also an invitation, aglow and inviting, into the open door of the author’s mind. Writing is a unique art, active and passive at once, that can be fully realized in the doing, but also in the observing: it is as inseparably tied to reading as night is to day.

Writing burdens and unburdens the author; it weighs like a bundle of sticks on a pack mule, yet feeds like repast to the famished. It begs and offers alms, based on its author's and reader's interwoven demands.

The actual practice of writing is much like shooting free throws or lobbing darts: the way to accuracy follows on the heels of the error-laden wreckage of incompetence and defeat. Great writing requires the patience of a saint, the discipline of an athlete, the boldness of a smuggler, and the shy, retiring, terror of a recluse. Small wonder, then, that few are up to the task.

To write well is to see the world in terms of the secret places in your heart, your loves, your dreams, your fears and desires, to be a passionate advocate for your values and concerns—and to also see the world in the very next moment as if you never existed at all, as objective and detached as a stone watching clouds pass overhead.

Writing involves painful honesty and clever deceit, the courage to reveal one’s innermost self and the challenge of selling him; it is the recklessness of abandon and the calculated balance of form, like a tightrope walker falling off of and advancing forward on a rope at the same time. It is a bundle of paradoxes and contradictions as essential to each other as partners on a trapeze or comrades in arms. It is the sparing austerity of Hemmingway and extravagance of Dickens. Writing hides the truth among lies and lies to tell greater truths, bending and shaping reality by bending and shaping the mind describing it, like a malevolent force that tempts and conquers by offering the conclusion that it can be itself conquered.

Writing is a club and a scalpel, rudely bashing and bludgeoning and then cutting lines as straight and fine as a surgeon’s, cutting so that she can heal. It is also a paramour’s caress, a friend’s humor, an avuncular kindness, sage words of advice interspersed with harsh words of rebuke. It is a labor of the heart’s love and a vent for the spleen, a place of profound justice, a place of whim and caprice. It is a force alternately logical as mathematics and then suddenly, cruelly random and arbitrary as the will.

The printed word, beyond anything, is an unreachable illusion of perfection, a desire to catch and cage a fantasy version of yourself that will ever remain one day beyond your grasp, “so close, and still so far out of reach,” as the prophet Tom Petty once wrote. Writing involves angst-ridden, constant revision of sentences and paragraphs that rewrite themselves into something unintelligible the moment you aren’t looking; it is a hungry dog waiting for you to drop the food scrap of an idea so that it can run off with it and never return, a blind alley down which one chases ghosts.

Being a writer is humbling, and often humiliating. It is throwing everything that you have at your subject and sometimes failing hopelessly for lack of skill. It is looking at things you wrote only weeks and months earlier as if they are telegrams from a different dimension, the constant need to blush and think aloud, “I actually put that in print? But it is also the satisfaction of getting it right, the moments when you do not blush, and think the same sentence with a very different emphasis: “I actually put that in print.

To write is to produce words and ideas sometimes topical and transitory, fleeting and ephemeral, and to sometimes manufacture constructs as permanent and rigid and enduring as a mountain; at its rare best, writing does both.

To write well is to have a gift that demands recompense, a possession that owns its owner. It is using the mind to traverse the soul, the very human tendency, as the brilliant John Gardner put it, to “map out roads through Hell with their crackpot theories.” It is an endeavor ultimately as fruitless as trying to understand water by breathing it, as richly rewarding as a dream in which we can breathe under water.

And that’s what I think about writing. How about you?

Cave Dwelling.

2005-07-26T18:10:00.000-04:00

At least I still have electricity, I thought. Yes, I still have that.

I’m one those rugged, trailblazing, 21st century types who has cut the cord: I haven’t owned a phone with a land-line attachment for at least four years. It’s simply a matter of practicality: with cellular phone technology continually improving, the difference in sound quality is becoming less and less noticeable. Besides, the standard-line service I got from Ameritech in Columbus, Ohio (the last place I had it), was so wretched that it would take a complete fool to persist in it: long distance fees (what year do we live in?) and a $65 penalty just to relocate from one residence to another? Please. Someone threw a switch in an office to relocate my number, which I usually wasn’t even allowed to keep, and I’m charged as if a specialist came to my home and performed delicate work? That is, in a vulgar if beautifully descriptive word, bullshit.

So I’ve been Cordless Guy, dealing with the occasional dropped call and poor connection, because the alternative is plainly inferior: more expensive, exponentially less versatile, and a general pain in the ass. Why, exactly, should a person deal with a terrestrial account less flexible and more demanding than a cell phone can provide?

But cell-phone-only people take risks that land-line people don’t face, like, say, being the moron that takes his phone into the pool with him, because his swim trunks (inexplicably) have pockets that he might have put his phone into when he isn’t paying attention, before quickly and painfully realizing that said moron is suddenly without a functioning phone. Not that we’re talking about anyone in particular, mind you.

So I let it go that I had no phone for a bit. That’s not really a big deal: writers are, by nature, solitary and introverted types that can deal without the buzz of human contact, e.g. phone calls, for a significantly longer time than most others. It’s not as if anyone ever wrote War and Peace in the middle of a Russian vodka soiree. Writers, weirdly, like isolation. Shunning, the equivalent of the death penalty for the Amish and the Mennonites, by which an immoral individual becomes invisible to his peers, holds no power over us. The whole world can go away, but I’m still here.

And yet, we live in a world of practicalities, so I headed down last Sunday to the Suncom store to trade in my destroyed phone for a new one. They were closed, because they’re closed on Sunday. You might ask why I didn’t call ahead to verify their hours: because I didn’t have a functioning phone.

I could have looked their hours up online, but an electrical storm the Thursday after I murdered my phone took out my home Internet access: I had no phone, and I had no Net.

Moreover, during this troubling period, I managed to overdraw my bank account, which is a topic of no small contention, and yet one for another day. So I had no web, no money, and no phone to protest any of the prior two conditions. Christ almighty, when a fella’ is being beaten down, one of the most sincere avenues of release he can hope for is protest, and I didn’t even have that. No phone. No Net. No money—no voice.

As I walked that mile to the store, in the blazing Summer heat, because I sold my car shortly before I moved here and the bicycle I replaced it with died three months later, I couldn’t help but lament just how broken everything in my life had become. Rivulets of sweat were pouring down my face so I could walk in 98 degrees with the heat index at 110 to pay a $129-plus-tax penalty for being stupid, as the legendary Gas Guy once said. And what was coming next? Phone calls to my bank, my phone company, and my ISP to pick fights with them for ripping me off. Can a person really look forward to this? Can anybody in the business world play fair anymore? Is grad school in a neo-hip little town on the Atlantic coast and a master’s degree worth living like a dog?

And so imagine, so long as your imagination contains some truly filthy words, my reaction to this store being closed when I arrived. The force of the f-bombs would have left Little Boy, or whatever that demented horse’s ass Paul Tibbets named the thing he dropped on Hiroshima, aglow with envy. As I made my way back home, the swirling heat and anger slam-dancing in my brain were calling for blood, but actually needing something soothing—deeply, deeply calming, like a housefire craving wood and souls but needing water. We were clearly going to have to haul out some of the big guns today. I picked up my slowly yellowing copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, v.1, sixth edition. George Herbert was going to talk me down from this ledge:

I struck the board and cried, “No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My life and lines are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I still be in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink, and would not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s head there; tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load.”
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methoughts I heard one calling, Child !
And I replied, My Lord.

And I realized that my breathing had slowed a bit and that the reflections of a conflicted seventeenth century Anglican clergyman had restored some measure of perspective on the kind of day I was having: the world is bigger than me and my troubles. The last two lines of The Collar reminded me that there is a bigger picture, a larger world to which I owe service, and that in this panoramic view a bad day and a row with the utilities companies are, really, just that and nothing more.

And I think that’s why everybody has a George Herbert, or a Bible, or a Bhagavad Gita, or Tao te Ching, or long walks or night skies—those moments of perfection that remind us that we are an infinitesimally tiny part of a grand cosmic whole, a bit player in a universally majestic drama. It is in these better moments, and not in the heat and bustle of plans and self-importance, that we realize how silly we must be to curse at locked doors at the Suncom store as if the doors could hear it and care, or to revel in the importance of our transient opinions, or to glory in the presence of or lament the want of material things that we have or don’t. All these things are finite, locked in tiny slivers of a history rolling forward with the sweep and grandeur of a tide foaming onto the beaches of infinite reality. That’s something to be concerned with; breaking a sweat to replace my broken phone is, in the general hierarchy of concerns, a somewhat trivial matter.

But damn, if it isn’t still hot outside.

After Dark.

2005-07-20T17:41:00.000-04:00

Wilmington, NC, like many places in the United States, is not a walkable city. In my alacritous hurry to flee from Columbus, Ohio, to this coastal enclave in the South, I assumed that it was, based on its comfy geographical area and small population. So now I live five miles from downtown on the Cape Fear River, and five miles from Wrightsville Beach on the Atlantic Ocean. In short, I live in a sidewalkless, motor-necessary stretch of suburbia in which the very idea of traveling on foot involves crossing major state routes that time the traffic lights to kill you when you attempt to do so. It’s Frogger, for those who can remember and identify with the concept.

So I, motorless, took the Wal-Mart bicycle to the beach (and everywhere else) for a while, before the rear wheel bearing locked up, three post-warranty months later, and told me to never buy anything from Wal-Mart again. Live and learn. But, being famously stubborn, I will still walk three miles for diversions that other folk merely drive to. And so I discovered wonders of the walk in the dark.

There’s a town-center mall, of the kind that’s all the rage these days, about three-plus miles from my apartment. A bus goes there now, but I’m remarkably bad at adhering to schedules, so I missed it and decided to walk there the other day. I’m also bad at reading movie time postings, so I got there after Batman Begins had already started. 50 minute walk, on a North Carolina Summer day, all for nothing.

And so I walked back home. Long walks are neither alien nor burdensome to me, as I walked home from my senior year of high school five miles from my school, which my grandparents’ suburban address had allowed me to attend after I had been expelled from the second Catholic school that I had unsuccessfully attended. (Some folks just don’t do rules well, and I was a remarkably obstinate teenager.)

But something that I did get to experience was…darkness. As a lifelong urbanite whose memory bank is immersed in the buzz and glow of streetlights, I don’t really see much darkness of the inky, rural variety: it’s something that I may have experienced, long ago, on camping expeditions as a Boy Scout, but something that I truly don’t remember.

When I walked home from the Mayfair Theater, I understood darkness.

There are no streetlights on rte 74/76/Eastwood Road when you walk down it after 9PM. There weren’t any to begin with. But a city kid can come to understand the idea of blackness, the notion that besides the headlights and the traffic lights, there is simply no artificial light at all, and hence, on a cloudy night, virtually no light. And so I looked at my feet, because that was about all I could see with any degree of clarity, so that I wouldn’t trip over anything.

I came to realize that in the dark, you are free. You react to the frogs and the deer and the palmetto bugs at the last instant, because that’s the first instant in which you can actually observe them. The remainder of the time, it is you, and darkness. The dangerous, thrilling tenuousness of blackness all about drags one into an immediacy so powerful that a quickly-beating heart and the understanding that you’re invisible to the cars whipping by at 55mph becomes a blessing, a reminder that you’re alive. I felt so focused and so vibrant that everything circling about in my addled brain actually shut up for a moment, told me to see what is, because that’s what was going to get me home safely. In the dark, there is no space for daydreaming and conjecture.

Eventually, nearly an hour later, I arrived home, having navigated the blackness into the lights of urban sprawl, the glow of an area sprung forth near the university from I-40’s expansion into Wilmington. The air-conditioning and safety of my apartment were comforting, but they were also, oddly, disappointing. In the dark I was alive; now I merely subsisted. Then a quote about darkness intruded into my reflection:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Granted, MacBeth's take on the dark was none too uplifting, because he had used darkness as a shield and a cloak to disguise his own inner lust and greed, and like any force too powerful to be manipulated, the darkness had turned on him: as Birnan wood came calling, and his stolen time ran short, he realized that there was a bill to be paid. But darkness is a thing of beauty as well as a thing of terror--it suspends the illusory quality of the visual world and leaves us in a place of compelling presence. It reminds us of the brevity of existence, without doubt, just as we understand the brevity of a day. But understanding the brevity of something is also to understand its value--to realize that time and effort are things not to be squandered, that life is fragile and ephemeral, a wondrous thing to be admired and appreciated all the more for its transitory nature.

I won't take that walk again, for the reasons I cited initially: it's bloody stupid and dangerous to cross a six-lane road with cars travelling at interstate speeds when it's pitch black out and no one can see you. But I am glad that I took it once. Darkness hides a lot from us, but it also reveals much. Cloaked in the rural no-man's-land between two small pockets of urban light on a sultry Southern eve, I felt unified and alert, no longer distracted and distant. If the dark can grant that gift, who knows what other subtleties, what undiscovered lessons it holds? Like anything mysterious, the dark can seem ominous and forbodeing. But looked at through a different lens, it is merely a different landscape, in which bats and deer, frogs and insects pick up the slack for their resting diurnal cousins, among them the sleeping world of humans. In the abyss of the night, when the air is quiet and the anarchic cacophany of day recedes, the absence of light can create a light of a very different kind--the light of dawning awareness.

Book Response: The Thief of Time.

2005-07-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

Terry Pratchett, as I’ve mentioned before, is my hero—and one of the most enjoyable novelists in the English language. Imagine the wit of Douglas Adams, the learned imagination of Tolkien, the satiric prescience of Kurt Vonnegut, and the mythic and historical knowledge of Joseph Campbell. Got your brain wrapped around that? Now go read 2001’s The Thief of Time. You won’t be sorry.

The plot of TTOT is that in Discworld, a parallel planet a lot like earth but much, much, funnier, a young prodigy of a clockmaker is commissioned to build the world’s first truly accurate clock—a clock so precise that it keeps time with the cosmos itself. Unbeknownst to Jeremy, our young horologist assigned to the task, when finished the clock will arrest time completely, which is what the universal auditors who commissioned him to build it have wanted all along, so that they can catch up on all the paperwork of counting everything in creation. But, as critic Barbara Mertz points out, “trying to summarize the plot of a Terry Pratchett novel is like describing Hamlet as a play about a troubled guy with an Oedipus complex and a murderous uncle.” They’re works that one must simply read first, as description of good satire usually fails to impart its value, or, in doing so, gives away all the juicy bits.

And juicy bits abound: there’s a weapons master who creates inventive new armaments and gadgetry for the history monks Lu-tse and Lobsang-lang who are sent to prevent the clock’s completion. His name? Qu. It took me two pages before I got the joke and then another thirty seconds to stop laughing. But laugh-out-loud moments abound, especially if you’re paying attention and versed in a little history. The latter isn’t required, though. If you’re a human being that finds humor in the folly of human beings, TTOT will be right up your alley.

On one level, the novel is a “beach read,” as my friend Hamel likes to describe enaging-but-light fare that one blows through quickly. (But, then again, that’s how a contemporary audience would have viewed The Tempest.) It’s plot-driven, rather than character-driven, as satire often is, but it’s also much, much more. Like all Pratchett novels, it’s a funhouse mirror held up to humanity, making us realize how ridiculous we can be by simply fictionalizing and distorting an image of us that is penetratingly, hilariously spot-on and true. In short, it’s a novel that entertains and diverts while investigating serious questions about what it means to be human and the nature of perception. Not too many writers can pull that off; Pratchett does it with nearly every book.

Grade: A-. (“A’s” are reserved for enduring classics in the language, and I’m not sure that this is one of those.)

Film Review: George Romero's Land of the Dead.

2005-07-14T02:47:00.000-04:00

The problem with George A. Romero's Land of the Dead isn't that it's a bad, film, really. If it were his first zombie film, it would probably have garnered more critical sympathy. But it isn't, of course; it's his fourth. That's also where it ranks in quality and importance among them. But what makes the film seem even more lightweight is the fact that a generation of filmmakers who grew up watching Romero's original trilogy now execute the genre with more skill and aptitude than he has. Danny Boyle's creepy 2002 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's wickedly sly and funny 2004 remake of Romero's 1976 originalDawn of the Dead both blow the doors off of their mentor's current effort. It's as if the old teacher showed up to give the younguns a final comeuppance, only to discover that they've far surpassed him in ability.

I'll admit a touch of bias: I love zombie movies. They have a unique horror potential that, say, slasher films do not in that they are not about middling, small-scale stuff like campground killers in hockey masks and disfigured pedophiles invading dreams: they are about hell backing up like sewage and spitting forth the apocalypse onto the world. You know who's going to win in a zombie move--it's as inevitable as the end of the world, and the sheer force of attrition--you just don't know how they're going to win. This ever-darker, running out of places to hide stuff, done well, can be pretty unnerving.

But it's anything but terrifying in LOTD. The plot is serviceable enough: the evil Kauffman (an either utterly dispirited or washed-up Dennis Hopper) owns and manages a lily-white skyscraper community known as the Green in a fortified segment of (perhaps) the last human city. He employs a salvage operation led by Riley and Cholo (Simon Baker and John Leguizamo), who both collect trash from the Green and moonlight making supply runs with Dead Reckoning, their armed-to-the-teeth garbage hauler, into the zombie-infested outlying areas. Our new twist is that the zombies are learning to work cooperatively, making life increasingly dangerous for the salvage team and the enclosed city itself.

But this isn't a new twist at all. Romero had already shown that zombies were teachable in 1985's Day of the Dead, where a former soldier zombie remembers how to salute and fire a gun. This idea, like the rest of the zombie depictions, is merely a pastiche of all of his earlier work. LOTD isn’t a bad pastiche, necessarily, just as 1993'sVoodoo Lounge wasn't a bad Rolling Stones album. They're both just twenty years out of date, performing work done better and with more enthusiasm by younger artists. The zombies still look good, and the flesh-eating scenes are as creepy as ever, but they were that creepy in 1976. A genre has to evolve to be worth its salt, and Romero's genre, while it has, seems to have done so in his absence.

So with the zombies giving us nothing new or particularly scary, we're left with a passable melodrama and Romero's ubiquitous, heavy-handed social commentary, such as Kauffman's oh-so-subtle, "I do not negotiate with terrorists!" Much of the dialogue explores themes of social stratification, personal loyalty, and group ethics in a world in which everyone’s concern is immediate survival—and these aren’t bad concerns to explore. But the scenes themselves aren’t really written well enough to handle the points they’re engaging. Romero seems to be in a place that he has never seemed in his previous Dead films: in over his head. Sure, it's watchable, and even campily likeable in a few places, but it isn't really what we came for.

Grade: C.

Changes.

2005-07-13T23:09:00.000-04:00

The now-deleted London post wasn't deleted because of anything anyone said. It's gone because I realized later how excessive it was; it's gone because I didn't agree with half the things I'd written when I re-read it; but it's mostly gone because I'm done blogging about politics for now. The end. No more. I'm even changed the absurdly pretentious name of this page, to the working title above until I think of something more catchy. I considered, for a moment, pulling the plug on it entirely and starting over, but I've dropped too much time into the template and I'm kind of lazy.

I've come to realize over time that I've become guilty--very guilty--of something more sensible people make fun of: blogging about politics to sound smart and moral, to have my voice be heard and counted, even if half the time I don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about. And blogging ignorantly about something in hopes of getting attention and approval is really (if we're to be honest) just a little bit pathetic. I look back at many these political rants and realize a first-year law student could blow any of them out of the water, even if he secretly agreed, because I don't have the knowledge to back up my assertions. And no, links are not knowledge, and they aren't evidence. Links are useful, of course, but can't really substitute for informed argument. They're a lazy person's way defer the burden of exposition onto someone who knows what they're talking about.

So there you have it. I woke up one morning to realize that I'm essentially a fraud and a sham as a political blogger, and that reading the NY Times and Wall Street Journal and a few opinion mags don't give me the qualifications to bark about public policy any more than the fat jerk blathering about the game at the office Monday morning is qualified to be an NFL coach. I'm qualified to vote, by both law and my own opinion, and so that booth is where my views are, primarily, getting left from now on. You may see them in your comments forums, but not here.

So I'll write film reviews and book reviews, philosphical reflections, spiritual musings, academia stuff, and notes on baseball, both because I'm on surer ground and because the consequences of being wrong (or even right) make a fella seem like less of a pompous, self-important ass. This epiphany isn't a disappointing one. Rather, I find it quite liberating. Look everyone! Guess what, I know more about politics than a lot of people, but a lot less than I pretend! Look at the prating jackass, exposing his ignorance for whoever chooses to see it! There, I feel much better.

So I'm gonna go read a Terry Pratchett novel, and enjoy it, and maybe write something about it when I'm done. I am already done with the change-the-world stuff in this space. It's probably more efficient for me to start by cleaning my apartment than to rail against distant events and figures. Shouting at the top of the world from the bottom is beginning to seem to me a presumptuous waste of time. There's a universe of life and mystery right around me that demands my attention more than the actions of people I'll never meet doing things that I can't influence. This blog isn't going away, but it is moving closer to home.

Film Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

2005-07-10T05:41:00.000-04:00

How did this film suck? Let me count the ways:

I will begin by admitting that I have watched Empire probably more than 200 times at this point. Yes, I am a dork. It is the gold standard of Starwarsdom, and my favorite film of all time. No apologies.

But I had high hopes for ROTS, (a weirdly appropriate acronym), due to pathologically misguided friendly reviews, word of mouth from my less-demanding compadres, and just my own yearning that George Lucas could make the most important chapter in his sextology not suck donkey balls.

No such luck. This movie is horrible, not despite the fact that it has such cutting-edge visual effects, but more precisely because it bets its wad on those visual effects to carry it. And they don't. Not by a long shot.

Frankly, I must admit, I hate CGI in live action films. It's fine for The Incredibles, a much better movie than this one (which, oddly, has a lengthy Star Wars tribute in it), but that was an animated film aimed at children, for chrissakes. Yet Lucas' demented obsession with it has ruined everything that used to work in his films: Artoo as a glow-in-the-dark CGI cartoon? I'm sorry, was a robot playing a robot, as was the gig in the original trilogy, somehow inadequate to the demands of a modern audience? Yep, sheeny CGI Artoo with cartoonish, unrealistic movements beats the hell out of an actual droid and a midget in a trash can. Computer simulation, after all, looks so much better than actual material objects on film--so real that I sometimes confuse my PS2 games for live-event television.

And the sets! Wow, does a CG forest on the wookie homeworld look better than the Redwoods of California did in Jedi. Come to think of it, the canyon scenes in whateverthehell world Obi-Wan tracks down General Grievous also excel the extant majesty of the Grand Canyon. And the herky-jerky space battle scenes clearly exceed the incredible-looking dogfights from Empire, don't they? Because CGI is newer, it simply must look better than the moving-model stuff of the 80's, right? Gosh, the utterly-authentic looking twists and turns of the Milleneum Falcon wilt before the Scooby-Doo sabotage droids attacking General Kenobi's fighter in the opening scene!

Have I forgotten to mention the Jedi-Sith duels? Heck, live actors with occasional stunt doubles certainly pale in comparison to CGI Count Dooku-style flips and force-manipulations against the Jedi. Oh, wait, the latter look utterly ridiculous.

Let's ask a question: which looks better--is it Lord Vader gliding ominously down the steps he's just beaten his son down in Empire, or the cartoonish battle between Dooku and the Jedi in our present film? I know where my vote is. Congrats, George, you made a better-written, better-directed, better-looking film twenty-five years ago. Good show. It's devolved, even, from The Phantom Menace. Chan-ho Park (Darth Maul) actually did his flips; now we have the guys that brought you Toy Story creating flips for you.

But that's just the tip o' the iceberg. The movie's dialogue is so wretched, particularly during the first hour, that I actually comtemplated walking out. I am convinced that Tom Stoppard's "uncredited assistance" is an abject myth: the guy that wrote Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Shakespeare in Love had about as much to do with this screenplay as Michael Moore has to do with Weight Watchers. Annikin and Padme's exchanges stink so bad that it makes a fella wonder if George Lucas has ever even gotten any.

But that's not all that's wrong with it: let's not forget the (once again) glaring inconsistencies in the story: Leia has memories of her mother in Jedi, remarkably precocious as her mother now dies 90 seconds after her birth. Count Dooku spins like a top at 60, despite the fact that 60-year-old Obi-Wan's "powers are weak, old man," when he confronts Vader in Episode Four. This, despite the fact that he's been in training for twenty years, communing with his teacher, as we find out from the final exchange between Obi-Wan and Yoda. And Yoda goes from being a quasi-omnipotent ninja here to a secluded cripple in Empire, in a mere twenty years? What's up with that?

Could the fight between Yoda and Emperor Palpatine, by-the-way, have been any cheesier? They spend the climax of it flinging pizzas at each other! This is the battle that decides the rise of the Empire? Besides, Palpatine declares that Yoda isn't dead until they find his body after he falls (despite the fact that Jedi and Sith alike can now fly), when we've all already seen that Yoda leaves no body when he does finally die. Watch your own movies much, George?

The film makes so many bad choices that I want, truly, to give it an "F." But I can't, both because it's not in me and because it does, in it's own utterly incompetent way, set the stage for the original trilogy. The final duel between Obi-Wan and Annikin does deliver the goods, because, in a rare moment of sense, Lucas portrays Annakin's defeat as a matter of arrogance and poor choice, and not inferior ability. Ewan MacGregor's Obi-Wan does do a great job of assymilating his personal failure as a teacher while realizing his need to end the threat that he's created and empowered. It presages nicely the rematch of the past-his-prime teacher with the still-powerful tutee in A New Hope. I just wish the rest of this bloated, overlong, badly-written mess could have followed suit.

Grade: C-minus.

Mountainous.

2005-07-01T02:03:00.000-04:00

I discovered a travel tip, a while back, whose source I cannot recall: always, when renting a car (my now-preferred mode of touring), apply for the smallest and cheapest vehicle available. The rental company will almost never have an actual sub-compact when you arrive there, and will be contractually obligated (or perhaps just by policy) to provide you with a larger, better-equipped vehicle at the same price. The worst thing that can happen is that they do have whatever today's eqivalent of a Metro or Sprint is available, and you simply upgrade (unless you had your heart set on an uncomfortable ride) on the spot. It's classically win-win.

And so I found myself in a shiny, new, and comfortable (if a bit thirsty) Ford Escape (their baby SUV, for the unversed) trekking through the unspeakably beautiful hills of North Carolina and West Virginia en route to Columbus, Ohio this past weekend. For a mere 20 dollars a day (thank you, Priceline), at that.

Mountains, as writers from the Psalms onward have noted, have a spiritually renewing quality about them rivalled only, it would appear, by deserts. I'm certainly not one to argue with such authorities; they're breathtaking, if a bit useless for cellular phone reception. But on the latter point, I think it's best to surmise that the mountains are telling me that there are more important things for me to be noticing than my cel phone.

I used to believe that I didn't care for longish drives, but now understand that my 135 mile drives from Columbus, OH to Cleveland were unhappy because: A) the scenery is flat and ridiculously boring; B) I always had a nagging trepidation deriving from my poorly-maintained and sometimes uninsured vehicles; C) I was haunted by the grisly demise of Elizabeth, my beloved 1973 Triumph Spitfire who perished on that same expanse of I-71. Having rectified all of those issues, I was eminently serene cruising the 600-plus miles from Wilmington to Columbus. This is a good thing, as my restive soul has been in need of a little bit of serenity in the aftermath of my Summer grad seminar. It's time to haul out the spiritual and philosophical lit that I emply for personality maintenance.

We all have the restorative rituals, of course: Dublin Saab drives, Hamel bikes and runs, Jason swims, and I read Anthony DeMello, Kalhil Ghibran, the Bhagavad Gita, or David Hume. Okay, that's a lie about me: usually I drink; I read that other stuff at the junctures in which I realize that drinking only induces serenity in four-hour intervals and leaves the mind and soul a confused and unnavigable mess the rest of the time.

Mountains, though, like deserts and oceans, issue a spiritual corrective--not because they are inherently interesting (which they are), but because they are vast, and as the brilliant-but-short-lived John Gardner wrote, "like all things vast, inanimate." Vastness grants perspective, in that in the presence of vastness we are obligated to observe our own smallness and relative unimportance in the universal scheme.

I am reminded of a personal moment of clarity: I was working early on a day shift in a busy restaurant kitchen about two years back; bad scheduling and a call-off had ensured that we would have a puissant and multitudinous lunch crowd handled by an utterly inadequate three cooks. John, my shift manager, was pacing nervously as a caged animal in anticipation of the onslaught. I perceived that he would be worthless to us if he had already lost his cool before the attack even began, and so I offered the following speech before the troops: "John, there are guys getting shot at in Iraq right now, and the worst thing we're looking at is three guys running their asses off for a few hours."

Strangely, this approach worked. John paused for a moment, thanked me for the perspective, and noticeably calmed down. He became suddenly aware that our shitty day at work was pedestrian and whitebread compared to real shitty days at work--that a few hours of sweat paled in comparison to the dangers that many face daily. I wished, deeply and fervently, that I could practice regularly what I'd just so gloriously preached.

But mountains are better and funnier teachers than kitchens. Much like hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, they tell you things that you don't want to hear and yet need to know. Mountains tell you that you can crash your SUV into them at full speed, if you so choose, and that you'll die and your truck will be mangled, and that they won't care at all. The mountains came before me and will be here long after me, they told me. Like the Tao, they are unsentimental; they announce the order of things, and leave subjective human egos to make sense of it.

That's the way things work, of course, and yet most of us live lives assiduaously crafted in denial of our own powerlessness against that which is greater than us. I'm both victim and perpetrator of this ridiculous philosophy. But on a sunny day on I-77, with the mountains about me, I can be, at least temporarily, liberated.

Notes on Terry Pratchett's Small Gods.

2005-05-18T13:52:00.000-04:00

I realized while penning this that some might find it incongruous that I'm writing a book review for a thirteen year old novel. My reply to that would be twofold: first ( and most infantile)--it's my blog, and I can do whatever I want and; I usually write book reviews for 400 year year old plays, so this is in fact pretty cutting edge stuff for me.

I have found a stand-in for my deceased hero Douglas Adams; his name is Terry Pratchett. I've just finished my first of his 30 or so Discworld novels, 1992's Small Gods and was so impressed that I sped down to my school library to get another work from the series.

Discworld is a flat planet (tee hee) that rests atop four elephants, who stand atop a giant turtle swimming its way through the cosmos. There exists a religion that is convinced that the world is in fact spherical and consider the correct flat-planet cosmology a capital heresy. (But is there really any other kind?) And it's that kind of tongue-in-cheek stuff that defines the whole series.

"Series" is a bit of a misnomer, unless one thinks in terms of a television series. The books have recurring characters and the same setting, but are not really sequential and do not require reading in any particular order. Small Gods occurs midway through the series, but one misses nary an important bit of information on that account. The novel is, like all discworld novels, a satire--in this instance an incisive send-up of faith and religion. The action is set in the brutal theocracy of Omnia, a place where philosophical reflection, science, and dissident views of cosmology are all...frowned upon. Our hero is an illiterate novice cleric by the name of Brutha, kind, faithful and obedient, with the peculiar added quality that he has perfect recall of everything he has witnessed since birth. The villain, if he can be called that, is Vorbis, a priest of the Quisition, the body appointed to maintaining theological orthodoxy, mainly by mass torture and executions. Throw in a once-mighty god regrettably trapped in tortoise form, a truly funny parody of ancient Greece, and a little bit of Zen addended for good measure, and you have the makings of a broad but tightly focused and oddly compelling plot. The 357 pages are gone in what seems like the time required for a weekday NY Times. It's something that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books never had; while they lampooned the same theological constructs, the plots were typically little more than a loosely connected series of events used as a pretext for Adams' fanciful digressions. With Pratchett, you get an actual structure to complement the sarcasm.

The genius of this book, though, is how effortlessly and whimsically--yet effectively--it addresses the nature of religion, the natural excesses and peculiarities it accrues with age, the nature of physical versus spiritual truth, the meaning of divinity, and the corruption of human motives. We are asked questions like--what if gods need our belief more than we need their providence? Why are the most unshakeable of faith the most dangerous individuals in a society? How do successful religions come about, and how do established ones die? You won't catch half of it until after you finish, because you've been so thoroughly diverted and busy laughing througout the narrative.

It's as if the reader has been tricked into reading something fairly serious and exceptionally well-crafted against his will. In the end, the effect is like listening to a pastoral symphony: drawn in by the light rythms and pleasant melody, you don't realize how complex what you've heard really is. It's a fine novel and I highly recommend it.

Shopping the Three-Dollar Wall.

2005-05-15T20:30:00.000-04:00

I've never been a code guy. You know, code of the Old West, honor code of the NHL, dress code, Hammurabic Code--that sort of thing. My romanticized self-image attributes this to my rebellious, free-thinking, philosophically skeptical nature, but closer to the truth is probably that I'm juvenile, inattentive, and plain don't like following rules. To live by a code is to have a routinized existence, and I am nothing if not poor at adhering to routines.

But I should probably clarify. I do follow a code; it's just a personal code. Everyone has one of these, whether he acknowledges it or not, and there are plenty of psychological inventories out there that can help one define whatever it is that personal code involves. Still, I have the same problem with my code that I do with all others: I establish fundamental rules and then ignore them whenever it seems convenient to do so. It's a slacker's way of getting through life, and perhaps that's a code in and of itself--the code of disregarding the lessons of experience in the hopes that improvisation will save time and effort. Again, the romanticized view says I reject precedent in favor of pragmatism, but actuality asserts that I cut corners in defiance of better experiential knowledge. Case in point: I shopped the three-dollar wall, and now have grease-encrusted fingernails and a still-broken Wal-Mart bicycle as dividends.

My own code has affirmed, time and again, that one should never shop the three-dollar wall. What exactly is the three-dollar wall? It's both a literal and an abstract concept. Most people are familiar with it in its literal sense: you go to any of that thriving class of discount stores that feature imported knockoffs, ersatz junk, and general gimcrackery, with a sprawling wall featuring such fare for the bargain price of a mere one United States dollar. These retailers like to call it the dollar wall, but as anyone who has gambled enough dollars knows, two of every three procucts purchased off of it either fall apart in your hand after you open the package, or are utterly destroyed during or following their maiden usage. I've bought the one-dollar dartboard-and-darts set in which the board disentegrated in my lap, the one-dollar all-purpose knife in which the corkscrew snapped on its first wine bottle, the one-dollar dashboard clock which lacked any mounts to attach it to the dashboard (and a non-functioning clock--double points), and the one-dollar set of steak knives that rusted in the dishwasher following one meal. Balanced with the few working and/or freakishly amusing items I've procured (like the eerily-matching hair extensions), the mean price paid per useful item procured is right about...three dollars.

Now, it is those retailers' fault for selling me any of that junk the first time. Shame on them. It is only my own optimism and stupidity, or perhaps the realization that three dollars is still pretty cheap, which makes me continue to wager a Washington on something that is, in preponderant likelihood, worthless. Shame on me. That is the literal idea of the three-dollar wall, in a nutshell.

But on to the natuaral extrapolation of this lesson--the figurative sense of the three-dollar wall. This is an important, if bluntly obvious concept. If you buy the least expensive product of any type from the least expensive dealer, understand that: A) you are gambling; B) there are sound economic reasons that this product was cheaper than its competition; and C) you have no right whatsoever to be outraged or disappointed when your stuff turns out to be junk. People who unwisely purchased $2,500 dollar new Yugos back in the 80's and then were angry that the engines blew up are a sublimely illustrative working sample of this idea.

Back in the infant days of this blog, I wrote a gloating and self-congratulatory post about the great deal I'd scored from the evil Wal-Mart on a three-speed, aluminum-framed Chinese bicycle. I even gave it a name. I was so pleased that I'd successfully cheated the system, and that for a song I'd be rolling to and fro from Wrightsville Beach that I sang the praises of cheap imports to the heavens. The wary Giant Bladder warned me of my folly, suggesting that you get what you pay for in these exchanges, but I would have none of it. I figured, "how can something as simple as a bicycle be made badly?"

The rear wheel on Chiang the Chinese bicycle began to lock up arbitrarily a few weeks ago--just past any return date I could have reasonably used to argue with Wal-Mart. Any one who has ridden a bike (and probably anyone who hasn't) can infer certain...externalities associated with this happening. On an elementary level, it becomes rather difficult to get anywhere while fighting with a stuck drive wheel. It also means that, while darting across an intersection, one may suddenly be faced with the unfortunately lethal possibility of a car bearing down, with no immediate escape-type remedy. And then there's the third nuisance of riding in the upright position downhill when motion is suddenly and totally arrested, sending one careening headfirst over the handlebars toward the caprices of the landscape. To be brief, that's no good.

So, rather than surrender in the face of my poor choice, I took to attempting DIY repair this evening. I am not mechanically adept, but I am unfailingly mechanically adventurous, to the point that I will disassemble and analyze things with which I've no familiarity at all. I certainly did learn a lot about the propulsion, gearing, and braking of bicyles--things that I'd taken for granted. As such, the session cannot be viewed as a total failure. But by disconnecting the gearing cable, removing the rear wheel, hosing everything down with WD-40, and attempting to reinvent and reassemble my three-speed bike as a one-speed, I learned the following: I was sold defective garbage that I should have returned before I got it home, as I noticed a strange brake-friction even then. The rear wheel still drags and locks, and I'm likely out the $100 I originally thought was so cleverly spent. Had I the proper tools, I could do more, but acquiring those would probably cost more than trying to replace the defective rear wheel and/or axle. Never shop the three-dollar wall, unless you have no vested interest in the results.

As I was finishing this post (really) I popped open a bottle of a Cotes-du-Rhone white that I got off the clearance table at my neighborhood wine seller. The cost? $2.99. Perhaps I've learned something. I am not at all surprised that it sucks.

Geriatric Jack Flash.

2005-05-15T14:49:00.000-04:00

"I certainly won't be playing 'Satisfation' when I'm 40."--Mick Jagger, 1969.

Well, as I do not believe there was a Rolling Stones tour between July 26, 1983, and the same date in 1984, we must assume that Sir Mick meant that quote literally, and that he was just misunderstood at the time. As has been recently announced, though, he will be singing it this Summer at an age two decades past the fearful four-oh. Henry Fountain at the NYT explains:

But while Mick Jagger, who will be 62 when the tour begins in August, and Keith Richards, who turns 62 in December, may be aging rockers, they are also something else: active seniors.

That's right, the ageless (or merely aged?) wonders from the U.K. will be touring once more, but as this piece asserts, it's just part of the trend of old folks refusing to be put out to pasture. After a bit of thought, I was surprised to find that I don't disagree with this.

People have been yelling for the Stones to hang it up since the late 1970's. Most of them probably did so because they weren't fans to begin with, but we'll give the benefit of the doubt to those who feel that rock n' roll has a shelf life, or, more accurately, its practitioners do. For the latter, though, a simple question: why should they retire? For one, judging by the aging demographic at their shows, those very same people insisting the band call it quits 25 years ago, and probably annually since, are still buying tickets to their concerts. But a better reason still that the Stones continue to lurk, crocodile and tortoise-like, well past their evolutionary expiration date is simply that they are able to.

In 1964, when the Stones jumped into this whole record game, who would have even thought a bunch of sexegenarians would have the stamina or energy to do a U.S. concert tour? (As an aside, the Stones can, in their career, boast five distinct musical mediums under which they have had original work released: vinyl, eight-track, cassette, CD, and MP3. Let's have a look at your resume.) In fact, in 1964, a 62 year-old man in the U.S. or the U.K. had little reason to expect to be healthy, and about seven fewer years left to live than at present. And no one from the Stones has broken a hip in concert, and they aren't forgetting lyrics or dropping their instruments from arthritis. Mick is really the only one expected to move about much, and he does that like a man 25 years his junior. So what is physically too old to rock? I'd say that's up to the musicians themselves to decide.

The Crypt Keeper, and a wrinkly Mick Jagger.

Of course there is also the exponentially more silly argument, that rocking past 40 is a kind of indignity, really something embarassing and unbecoming of an older person. Hey, you know what? Rock n' roll is embarassing, undignified, and unbecoming for everyone. C'mon, if people want to be taken seriously in this world, there's law school for that. Was there really anything that glamorous about local bands playing for beer in dank local clubs with the plumbing exposed, before eight of their friends and relatives? Did the people getting hosed with Faygo by imbecilic acts like Insane Clown Posse think they were on the cutting edge of high art? Do Creed fans think they are basking in the presence of enlightened and reflective spirituality?

No. It's a silly game in which everybody's trying to make a buck at the end of the day. The Rolling Stones have just been better at it than anybody else, ever. I understand that that fact bothers a lot of people, who are tired of watching their four decades of success, and enthralled with the cheap and easy target they represent. But that doesn't make the same jokes, tour after tour, any fresher or funnier, and it doesn't make the shows any less enjoyable.

But we'll close, appropriately, with a quote from another guy who rocked into his later years: "When 900 years you reach, look this good you will not."--Master Yoda.

Homework for Bloggers.

2005-05-12T22:29:00.000-04:00

(Sound of man climbing atop soapbox.)

I have to make a request of my readers: on this Saturday, May 14th, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) in conjunction with the U.S. Postal Service and a handful of generous corporate sponsors, is conducting the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. You may have already received a post card in the mail announcing it, but I will outline the program regardless: before your carrier arrives on Saturday, you simply place any sealed, non-perishable, and non-glass packaged food items in a bag at a visible location near your mailbox. Your carrier picks it up and takes it to the station, after which it is transported to an area food bank. It couldn't be any simpler.

What I am asking is that everyone place at least one item out for pickup on Saturday. It's a small sacrifice that will quickly be forgotten, but combined with the efforts of others gathered 70.9 million pounds of food last year alone. That's an awful lot of help for people going through some tough economic times.

Since charity seems to always be oddly politicized, I'll address it briefly from that angle: if you are a conservative who believes that the government should stay out of your pocket and stop redistributing wealth, here is a great opportunity to bolster your argument. Make all of this Robin Hood do-gooding unnecessary by your charity, and you'll have that much more street cred next time you rail against high taxes. If you are a liberal, who believes empowering the poor and oppressed is the duty of all, then I shouldn't even need to tell you why donating here is a good idea. Now you get to say that you live what you speak. This stuff is golden across the spectrum.

So everybody: at least one item, please. I'm doing it and I'm absolutely broke. You know there's canned asparagus in that pantry somewhere that you were never going to eat. Give it up.

(Sound of man stepping down from soapbox.)

Happy Mother's Day!

2005-05-08T02:26:00.000-04:00

Since we've been devoting a lot of our time here to Matters of National Import, and other such stodginess, I think all should instead join me today in wishing a fond Mother's Day to my mom, nurse extraordinaire, savior from starvation, and all around superstar kind of gal, Mrs. Karen Ann Smyczek.

In honor of those heady days when I was seven and had no income, and would make really crudely assembled cards out of whatever construction paper and glue was lying about the basement, I am hereby constructing an online Mother's Day card from scratch. I hope you like it, Mom.

Oh, a quick aside these people demanded that I link to their page in exchange for thieving their photos. No sense getting myself sued, after all.

We will begin your virtual MD with a virtual plant. Everyone knows moms like plants.

A Plant-Type Thing.

Can't you almost smell it? It's as if it's right there in the house, except stuck on the monitor of Dad's Mac, and not flower-smelling, or anything like that.

Next, we're going out for dinner. This is your appetizer:

A Virtual Quiche, or Something Like That

Actually, I'm not sure that you either of you guys like either quiche or greek salad, but man they sure looked good to me, and besides, those people at that web site didn't ask me to pay for stealing their pictures, and beggars can't be choosers, right?

Now we're on to the main course:

Delicious Prime Rib for Two

Now I know for a fact that you actually like prime rib, so that one was a huge find, as such. Isn't it delectable? It's as if you could eat it, were it not an electronic image walled off by a glass monitor screen. Wow, wouldn't it be great to have a son who could buy you actual prime rib?

I tried to get you a picture of a glass of some Manischewitz to go with your prime rib, but every time I copied a picture of it, my computer started to smoke and crackle, so I had to delete it. Funniest thing.

On the way home, of course, you'll need to stop for some apple pie a-la-mode and a cup of gourmet joe. Mmmmm. Mmmm. Sounds delicious. Here they are:

The Obligatory Apple Pie A La Mode, with Gourmet Coffee

What! You said that was ordinary drip coffee?! The outrage! Well, we'll have to get you some of that delicious chocolate-type whole bean stuff that they used to sell where I worked, but inexplicably stopped. Luckily, I have special powers to track things down. Here you are:

Those Beans you can't get at World Market Anymore.

You may now virtually grind your own virtual beans and make your very own virtual coffee at your leisure.

Oh, not quite done with our day, are we? Well, if that first plant wasn't stunning and fragrant enough, if a bit inanimate and imaginary, perhaps you'll like this second one! Everyone knows moms like plants.

More Flower-Type Things

Now, if you haven't been sufficiently smothered with kindness and gratitude, I have the final, creme-de-la-creme, coup-de-grace, granddaddy ultimate, end-all and be-all of virtual Mother's Day gifts. That's right. You guessed it. It's...three adult chimpanzees. I'm sure you'll take very good care of them.

What's Mothers' Day without Chimpazees?

Okay. I have to admit something. Chimpanzees don't have anything to do with Mother's Day. I downloaded that picture about a week ago, and just couldn't find any excuse at all to use it. In any case, I hear they're highly personable and intelligent, if a bit difficult to look after. But you raised six children and are on granchild number four. How hard could a chimpanzee or three be?

Well, I hope you've enjoyed all of your gifts, and your actual material-world day is as lavish and kind as my cyber-holiday has been for you.

Love,
Jeremy.

My Sincere Thanks.

2005-05-07T17:36:00.000-04:00

Since you all patiently read through or around the post that sat up here for the last two months, I ask that, after you've read it once, you skip past this one for a week or so. I want everyone who helped out to get a chance to see it.

The Walk to D'Feet ALS was yesterday in Wrightsville Beach. Chad of Dublin Saab came along for our three mile trek around the area, in which we took a circuitous route from Wrightsville Beach Park down to the ocean and returning back to the park. It was a pleasant if overcast day with temperatures in the low 70's--a fine day for a stroll by the Atlantic. I met the other walkers from the UNCW graduate student association, had some great conversation, got my promised ball cap and T-shirt, and generally had a good time while helping out this important cause.

Wilmingtonians walking for a cure

But this post isn't ultimately about me; it's about you, the incredibly generous folks who read, sympathized, and/or contributed financially regarding this charity. And so, I would like to recognize:

Claudia Smyczek Raleigh and Mark Raleigh, who pushed us well in advance of our erstwhile goal with their huge donation.

My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Smyczek, who can be reliably counted on to contribute to whatever crusades their children undertake.

Michael Zilliox and Melvina Kleverova-Zilliox, whose kindness extends far beyond this singular instance.

Last, but certainly not least, Natalie Miller-Moore, Dan Moore and lovable mutts Bailey and Luna (who know doubt sacrificed their allowance to help).

The people who you are helping out appreciate your graciousness, and so do I. With yours and contributions like yours, about $90,000 was raised by the event.

Wicked Pleasures.

2005-05-07T02:19:00.000-04:00

The New York Yankees are in last place. I am in no way displeased to read of this. After the unadulterated joy of watching them tank away there 3-0 ALCS lead to the BoSox last fall, I'm getting a rare entree-dessert of Yankee failure.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., May 5 - Derek Jeter remembers the glory days, an era in Yankees history that seems to be gone forever. The Yankees of that generation hardly resemble this team, a collection of faded stars who have crash-landed in the basement of the American League East.

How do I hate them? Let me count the ways: they're from the most obnoxious city in the country; they buy their success based on an uneven playing field that no one else in the AL can match; they are owned by a mercurial bastard whose hands-on interference is only offset by his ludicrous checkbook; they own a 200 game lifetime head-to-head edge against the Indians; they drive up league payrolls by spending huge sums on suspect and mediocre free agents...I could go on, but really there's no need.

In any case, 11-18 is merely a slow start for the rest of baseball, and a typical April in Cleveland of late, but this is big-time panic stuff to spoiled New Yorkers who believe the AL East crown to be granted them annually by celestial fiat. It's nice to see a little panic in the Bronx for reasons other than the DEA guys with the battering ram and dogs at the door.

The last time the Yankees were in last place this late in a season, it was June 20, 1995, and [Derrick] Jeter was playing for Class AAA Columbus after a brief trial in the majors. That team recovered to win the wild card and start a 10-year playoff run, but the streak may be in jeopardy.

My heart is breaking. Can one hear these things online? Following a sweep at Tampa Bay, the Yanks are sorting some things out, like who to fill in for the perpetually-injured Jaret Wright. (More about the free-agency bit in a moment.)

It was too much for [Chien-Ming] Wang, who had made an impressive debut last weekend. He worked six innings, allowing five runs on eight hits and two walks, striking out three.

A replacement for the injured Jaret Wright, Wang was an unlikely option to stop a losing streak, and he could not do it.

When Bad things Happen to Bad People.

Jaret Wright started his career as a 21-year-old rookie phenom pitching game seven of the 1997 World Series for the Indians. His career disintegrated into six of the next seven seasons spent on the DL. He had one good season for Atlanta last year, which prompted the Yankees to pay him a multiyear gig at seven mil annually. So, by the laws of the baseball market, now any putty-elbowed journeyman coming off one good season is worth the same amount, which means--you guessed it--only teams in New York, Boston, and LA can afford to take those kinds of risks. Let's hope they all have the same luck.

There may be no saving the Yankees, unless the stars align and summon their past heroics. Their next chance will be Friday at Yankee Stadium, where the fans who bought some of the 3 million tickets sold before opening day will be restless.

I would be inclined from a philosophical perspective to argue that one is morally debased by taking pleasure in the misfortune of his enemies. Ah well. You'll have that some days. Consider me morally debased. This couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Go Tribe.

Ohhh...The Disappointed E-Mail.

2005-05-05T10:02:00.000-04:00

I turned in my last paper of the semester today...you guessed it...late! I emailed it to my professor so he wouldn't have to take a seperate trip to school (the semester is over and all), and even offered to bike it over to his house, and I got...this e-mail in reply:

I got the essay, Jeremy. Thanks. I'm sorry you missed the gathering
at my house on Tuesday. We had a very relaxing time. I'll place graded essays in mailboxes later this week, Monday at the latest.

Dr Bushman

C'mon, can't you feel it? The passive-aggressive disappointment? The "well, at least you'll have it graded on time?" The guilt trip for blowing off his end of semester shindig because I was exiled in shame by not having my paper done? It's horrible. I wish he'd just gone ahead and failed me. Now I have to deal with three months of sad, head-shaking disapproval from my super nice-guy professor. Damn. Oh, and he's just Don when you haven't been a bad person. I got the grownup-speaking-to-child full-title name.

I swear, for Summer school I'm turning my stuff in on time.

THHG2G

2005-05-03T03:03:00.000-04:00

Arright, I watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with good friend Chad of Dublin Saab on his weekend excursion up here recently (and y'all thought bloggers never met in person).

For those who like to think movie versions are inevitably inferior. Well, duh. A virtually plotless novel was contorted into a movie. And you know what? I think they did a pretty fine job of it. I never like books (particularly books I love) made into film. Nor does anybody else. But I think the adaptations were thematically true to the novel in a way that make most conversions look even weaker than they aught. Arthur was Arthur. Zaphoid was Zaphoid. Marvin (God bless Alan Rickman) was most certainly Marvin.

In fact, every one of DNA's characters, with the possible exeption of the miscast Trillian (a wandering Zooey Daschell) said their part flawlessly.

A Vogon reading very bad poetry.

So, nimrods who feel that the novels should be matrixed somehow directly into the screen just aren't getting it. The cinematic version captures the idea of what Adams was getting at splendidly. I've read the books three times apiece. He himself (as he wrote the screenplay, before his unexpected death) liked the way the film incorporated his ideas. Why the dissident purists want to raise a fuss is beyond me.

Last Call...for Charity.

2005-04-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

Isn't the world a better place now that our post titles are centered? I mean, I could get, like, out there, and make them bold as well, but then I'd just be showing off, and besides, that might be enough to make this blog popular and stuff, and who needs that?

Okay folks, one final annoyance regarding the post at top: the Walk to D'Feet ALS is tomorrow. Dublin Saab in civilian alter-ego will be graciously walking along with me. After that, the post up top finally leaves and my ALS web page comes down. So for anyone who would like to contribute but has been procrastinating, or who would just like to read a few facts about the disease, please click here. Then, click on the "click here to sponsor me button" to contribute using a credit card. We are a mere $45 shy of my (revised) goal. Donation is win-win: you'll get to feel like the good people you know you are, and those that don't know already get the scandalous thrill of finding out my real name. What could be better?

My thanks again to those who have chipped in thus far. There will be a formal post of recognition following the event that will stay up top for a while, as you all did patiently suffer through two months of the one that's there now. Pictures will be posted following the event.

Tales o' Racin' Mopeds

2005-04-27T22:22:00.000-04:00

Let me tell you a story. When I was fifteen years old, my delinquent friend Kevin and I hung out with this eighteen-year-old loser by the name of Erich Meier. Erich's parents were perverted German immigrants who, like good Teutonic parents, had bought their son a 35cc Puch moped. One typically bored afternoon, Kevin and I stole the moped and took it out for a joyride, during which I rode it over a speed bump and broke something important, so that the poor Puch no longer ran. Erich was none too pleased with this, but gave me a reasonable out: I could buy his broken moped off him for a fairly modest sum. He didn't ride it anyway, so it was win-win for him. I accepted, because: A) Erich was much bigger than me; and B) Kevin, for all his many adverse qualities, was not a bad mechanic. With his help, the Puch ran again, and I had an uncool but incredibly fun toy.

I went out of town for a few days after my acquisition, when, true to karmic form, my brother Jason and his delinquent friend stole my moped and took it out for a joyride, wrecking it and breaking something important so that it no longer ran.

Fast forward six years. I'm at Ohio State and have told my friend Michael the story I've just told you. He concludes we need to go to Cleveland and bring the damaged, dusty and disused Puch to Columbus to resuscitate it. We retrieve it, but in a beer-soaked repair session Michael breaks something important, and the Puch, having had enough of this kind of thing, wisely never runs again.

I was done with mopeds after that, eventually moving on to the more sophisticated dorkiness of scooters, some of which can actually meet local speed limits. But for Michael, a strange, festering sickness began.

Fast forward another nine years. Michael builds a two-car garage behind his new house. Soon it, and his basement, are filled with slow, two-wheeled mechanized oddities. He tries to recruit me into his recondite moped world, but I refuse. Soon, his condition has deteriorated to a point at which he begins to modify the bikes for racing. People actually do this. Michael is about 6'3 and in well exess of 200 lbs, so he's out as the potential helmsman in any moped contest. His lovely wife Melvina, co-dependent in his illness, however is not. Here she is in action.

The Magnificent Melvina, moped-mounted and maniacal.

The event, in Michael's own words:

Here is Mel in heat # 2, she came in 3 of 5 in #1 and 4 of 7 in heat 2. She was not only the only girl in the moped specials class, but also the only female of about 70 racers in all classes (scooter, ysr, motard, and moped). She got acclaim from not only friends she raced against, but also strangers that became friends that day - everyone was a true sportsman. She has a 70cc kit with expansion chamber exhaust, underdrive front sproket, matched ports, and 110 race gas. We have also ordered/working to fabricate additional items to increase the bike's potential - 'specials' that she runs in is unlimited [modifications]. The winner rode a Puch.

Life is full of little ironies.

Welcome to America.

2005-04-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

My brother Jason of One Sandal fame has returned from his two-month sojourn about SE Asia. He's probably experiencing the typical post-extended-trip-abroad readjustment blues, so you should all stop by his blog and say "hello and welcome back." I'm still sorting through the 8 trillion or so pictures he's posted to it, but one in particular stood out:

My brother, riding a freakin' elephant!

That's him, back right. So what did you all do this Winter?

Why we should be Happy that Ants are Small.

2005-04-24T16:59:00.000-04:00

Ants are vicious little bastards. Anyone who has encountered any of the biting variety knows this well enough, and besides, they're a notoriously annoying domestic hassle. But this BBC story gave me new cause to dislike these bugs. They're sadists on top of everything else. Or at least this kind is.

A fierce species of Amazonian ant has been seen building elaborate traps on which hapless prey are stretched like medieval torture victims, before being slowly hacked to pieces.

That's why I'm declaring today "celebration of elevated status on the food chain day." Okay, that title needs work if I'm ever gonna sell Hallmark on it.

Once the prey is well secured by jaws fastening all its extremities, it is stretched over the platform like an ancient sacrifice to the gods.

I do love how British journalists editorialize. It makes for some, er, questionable reporting on international events, but it's delightful for bug-writing. Sound like a suitably awful way for some unlucky grasshopper to go out? Wait; there's more:

"Small insects will be immediately dismembered and transported to the nest," said Dr Orivel. "But bigger insects will stay on the trap for up to 12 hours.

Ravenous and hateful ants conspiring to torture and kill cool green bug.

So there you have it--twelve hours of innocent vegetarian bug suffering. Ants are murderously cruel and need the big old Shoe of the Almighty to come down on them. Since the Almighty doesn't seem up for it, you'll have to substitute your shoe. That's right; this is a call to arms. Smear every ant hill you come across; step on every blasted fire ant you encounter. Get out those magnifying glasses and start focusing the sun on them again! Pour Gum-Out on them and light them on fire! Drown them! Stick chewing gum on them and then pull it apart, watching their little ant compartments seperate! Reclaim every bug-killing habit you had as a seven-year-old and never should have let go. Now's the time, before they evolve into the size of dogs and eat us all. Ask yourself: do I want to be eaten by dog-sized ants? I know I don't. So get killing, and that right soon.

You know, I started out with the idea of a serious and reflective post on nature. Somewhere along the way it was highjacked by a wave of silliness. Ah well. Maybe next time.

In the Night.

2005-04-19T19:12:00.000-04:00

So I was trying to leave St. Mark's twenty minutes into the liturgy, having once again accidentally gone to the Spanish Mass. Halfway up the driveway, I fell down and couldn't get up, or rather, fell again every time I tried. A couple of hispanic-looking guys were heading down the driveway the other way. I told them that the Mass was in Spanish and they shouldn't go. In totally unaccented Midwestern English, one of them said, "Man, they should really put that on the sign." They both turned and left.

I looked down at my watch. 5:20. I had only ten minutes to get to the Newman Center for the 5:30 Mass (always in English), and as it's over a mile away, I realized I had better hurry. But I was just walking so slow and I couldn't make myself go faster, so I realized I'd need to cut across Lydian Avenue to save some time. As I was heading down Lydian, I saw a tall, guant black dog, perhaps a doberman-shepherd mix, walking toward me. Knowing she meant harm, I looked around at the gnarled oaks, scanning nervously for a branch in climbing reach. None. I was doomed. But she just kept walking on by, with her furry, bouncy black puppy that I had suddenly noticed in tow. She strode off, but the puppy (which, oddly, looked like a cocker spaniel, and nothing like its mother), after sniffing around for a minute, locked its jaws onto the heel of my sandal and wouldn't let go. I took off the sandal but there the puppy hung, eyes roving and alert, happy-looking enough, but locked inseperably to my sandal. So I carried sandal dog up to Nelson road, where I saw a posh, well-dressed, fiftyish white woman with two hispanic children.

"I see you've found my dog," she said. "He seems to like you." Pulling out her purse she withdrew some bills and handed them to me, who, being broke until my tax return arrives, gratefully accepted them. "We're going to church. Meet us over on Eastwood later." And they walked off. I guess everyone was late that day. So, puppy-sandal still in hand, I started walking toward the intersection of Nelson and Fifth, not at all bothered that I had just taken a side street in Cleveland to cut through from Wilmington, North Carolina to Columbus, Ohio. I checked my wallet to see how much money she had given me, and found, miraculously, it had morphed from what looked like ten into about $140. Wow. Drinks for me tonight, I thought.

So I kept walking with the dog toward Fifth, and crossed when the light changed, being eyed suspiciously by the dense throng of traffic for holding a sandal with a black puppy attached. From his darting eyes, I could tell the puppy was getting skittish, and the last thing I needed was for him to take off running in traffic. I made it to the other side, where Amanda was walking her dog. I didn't know that Amanda had a dog, but asked if I could borrow her leash so I could keep track of the puppy until I took him back to Eastwood. She was about to hand me the leash when, sure enough, the puppy dropped to the ground and ran out in front of some cars. I bolted out after him, getting in between a black minivan and an early-eighties, gleaming white Toyota Supra, like the one my friend Jason used to have but much nicer. They both had tinted windows and headlights on, and I was sure they were going to kill me but they didn't. They stopped. The puppy then darted after a squirrel into the trees, and I realized now I had to catch the puppy and the sqirrel, although I wasn't sure why, even though they kept splitting off and going different directions. All I could think was that I'd have to give that money back to the nice rich lady, and I'd lost her dog and would have to move away in shame. Amanda caught the squirrel for me and put it in a shoebox, but I knew it would never substitute for the puppy, which was gone.

And then I saw Jamie standing there at the edge of the woods, watching, not saying a word. Honestly, I thought the intrusion was a little sneaky and rude, and so, a bit bothered, I marched up to him, pointed my finger, and said, "You're dead," in a very accusatory tone.

Quietly, like the dead, he replied: "Only sometimes."

This afternoon, I was trying to make heads or tails out of all of this, when I noticed the date: April 15. In three days my friend will have been dead eleven years. I don't think about him or how he died very often. It was a long time ago in a different city with a different group of friends, most of whom I no longer have contact with. But what I did realize is, be they young or old, we never really forget the dead. The loss they represent to those who considered them friends, parents, chidren, neighbors, is like a pinprick in the soul, that grows easy to ignore with time but never truly closes. It just lingers, and is joined in time by more and more pinpricks, until with age we are so riddled, the balance so skewed between the number of dead we know and the number of living, that it seems a matter of proper economy to join the bigger group. I think perhaps that is often why the elderly face death with such stoicism.

And so I thought of Jamie Best and Jim Metzgo, Pat Joyce and Lynn Dura and Chris Burrant, Jerry Wick and Chris Carlson, my brother's friend Hans, Amanda from the dream's brother, Kohler, Dusty--friends of mine, friends of my siblings, some close and some nearly strangers, and wondered "where did you all go? You were all so young."

I don't know if its easier to lose the elderly for their friends and children, but loss of the young just seems so painfully unjust. This is an illusion of the mind, of course--we don't sign 80 year leases at birth--but a potent illusion. It seems unfair to know, at 31 years of age, directly and peripherally so many people that didn't make it this far.

But I realized somewhere in pondering the question, that I already had my answer. Each of us may say to the departed, in moments of sorrow, "you're dead," and mean it as a sort of reproach. To which the dead, perhaps flattered at being long remembered, reply without injury:

"Only sometimes."

Felize Pascual!

2005-03-27T20:04:00.000-05:00

So, it being Easter and all, I decided to go to church. I know fom my rides down to the beach that there exists one St. Mark Catholic Church and Education Center along Eastwood Avenue, which made it well within biking distance, so that's where I went for the five o'clock evening Mass.

I was handed a songbook on the way in, and figured, correctly, that's how things are done there. Or, that's what I thought until I saw a hymnal already in the pew. It was at this point that I looked around, taking note of how, well, brown most of the other attendees were. I do realize that I live in the South now, and given the overwhelming practicing Catholic bent of the Central and South American immigrant communities, this ethnic makeup is to be expected. Just because the surnames of the local church families in the West Park section of Cleveland were Corrigan and Sweeny and Kilbaine and McCaffery doesn't mean the whole of the Church is of Irish descent. I then noticed that the songbook I was handed on the way in is written in Spanish, and that, as the Mass began, that's what the priest was saying it in, and that I was going to have to follow a Spanish/English program located near the hymnal. It seemed to me a mite curious that no one felt any need to note on the sign (written in English) out front that the evening service was in a language other than English, and wondered further if I was the only one who had made this mistake. I mean, really, since half the people at an Easter srvice are attending the first of two Masses they will attend annually, it might be helpful for a parish to point them toward a service time in which their respective vernacular is employed. Sure, the program was helpful and the Spanish singing was nice, but other than the dozen or so words I figured out (via proximity to French/Latin) by midway through the Mass, the homily was a bit beyond me. I got from a lot of "nuestros" that Heysoos died for our sins, but couldn't work out much beyond that. I felt like all those poor pre-Vatican II kids suffering through the Latin Mass.

If my Reflective Catholic Rhetoric weren't so rusty, I'd no doubt observe that the Lord sent me to that particular church for some as-yet unarticulated reason in His plan, but I'm not really of that habit. I'm glad, in an odd way, that I went, and may even go again and see what Spanish I might pick up from the hymns. But I am sincerely puzzled that a church whose sign out front is in English, whose daytime services are apparently in English, felt no need to make note of the small departure from form for the evening edition. You have to coddle us C&E folk if you want us to come back more often.

Happy Easter to all nonetheless. I hope yours was at least as blessed as mine was interesting.

Final Four: What's the Big Freakin' Deal?

2005-03-25T22:23:00.000-05:00

I begin with the following caveat: I have nothing intrinsically against NCAA college athletics. I happily cheered my football Ohio State Buckeyes to their national championship in 2002. I am happy that their basketball program is on the ascent, and feel the college game, in most disciplpines and instances, offers a level of honest competition that pro leagues can only fantasize about--more substance than style.

But, at the end of the day, I am poised to wonder: why in college basketball is getting to the semifinals of the NCAA tournament so bloody noteworthy? I understand that "Final Four" has an alliterative and marketing value, but I defy anyone to find another forum in which coming in fourth is something to paste on the resume. (Since there exists no Bronze Medal game in March Madness, I assume both semifinal losers to be in fourth place.)

Assume we apply this standard to any other sport, team or individual. Are the 2004 Yankees a great team for reaching the ALCS (and tanking away a 3-0 lead to the Red Sox) before being defeated? Will posterity look kindly on the Astros for taking the Cardinals to seven before losing in the NLCS? Are the Cleveland Browns a great team for dropping the AFC Championship game three times in the '80s? Do the Pittsburgh Steelers add to their storied history that they lost to the New England Patriots in last years playoffs? Of course not; these are failures. Spirited and competetive failures, and better than most other teams did, to be sure, but ultimately failures nonetheless.

I have heard it suggested that reaching the semis is extraordinary in the NCAA tourney because of the large field. But do tennis players (who typically come from a field as large), rejoice in not reaching the finals of any Grand Slam event? What other tournament, of whatever size, features hyperbolic praise and rejoicing for teams two wins away from accomplishing anything? The post-season NIT, college basketball's consolation tourney for those not quite good enough for the NCAA's, certainly doesn't make such a distinction: you win the tournament, or you don't. Do you know what they call the semifinals? That's right...the semifinals. Fairly simple.

Being number four works like this: you are out of the money if you are a racehorse; you are out of the medals if you are an olympian; you are out of honorable mention if you are a team in anything other than March Madness. The way our understanding of sport works in the US tends thus: win the show, and you are remembered by athletic history as great; come in second, and you get a "good effort" prize for playing for the whole shebang; lose a semifinal, and you are an also-ran who plans next year's strategy. Only in NCAA basketball do the Dean Smiths and Mike Krzyzewskis of the world get to beg props for failing to reach a championship game, to claim bragging rights and Hall-of-Fame fodder for not winning anything besides four games in a row. It's a ridiculously downgraded standard by which Marty Schottenheimer is a premier football coach and Anna Kournikova is among the legends of tennis. Coming in fourth is not admirable; no golfer or race car driver boasts of it. I am etrnally puzzled as to why the sports media has complicitly abetted a system in which NCAA basketball coaches and teams may.

The Empire Srikes Back. Best. Movie. Ever.

2005-03-25T04:31:00.000-05:00

Honestly, could a better movie ever be made? I pen this comment watching it after a good proper night closing the bar (and my 136th or so viewing), but...this movie is a love story that isn't maudlin; a war movie that isn't ridiculous or preachy; a sci-fi movie that isn't annoyingly tekkie; a middle sequel that isn't derivative; in short--a Hollywood movie that disdains the pitfalls that virtually all Hollywood movies succumb to. In addition, it's the only movie of the original three that was improved, rather than worsened (in Return of the Jedi's case greatly worsened) by Lucas's re-edits. Incredibly, after 25 years, the only aspect of this film that had not aged well was the stop-action sequences with the Imperial Walkers, which, frankly, didn't look all that good in in 1980. For once, Lucas shows some restraint in the CG-ization of his revision, confining it generally to background filler in Bespen, where it actually looks good. (Note to George Lucas: computer-generated buildings in the distance look stately and grand; computer generated characters like Jar-Jar Binks, especially when standing alongside actual actors, look about as real as Pete's Dragon. I don't care how expensive they are; they're cartoons. What is additionally annoying is that there is no reason Jar-Jar couldn't have been played by an actor in an inventive alien costume, which would have looked a heck of a lot less absurd.)

What Empire ultimately represents is the one time Lucas actually got it right. This is in no small part attributable to the fact that he got out from behind the camera and let the superior Irving Kershner direct (before inexplicably replacing him with relatively unknown Frenchman Richard Marquand for Jedi). The improvement over the original Star Wars also derives from the massive improvement in the acting of Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill in the interim. The dialogue is snappy, the pseudo-Zen rubbish that abounds in the new films is restrained and appropriate, and the dogfighting and light-saber sequences are still as visceral and exciting as anything done since. The sound effects are incredible, and James Earl Jone's voice acting may be the best work of his career. It is by far the most hands-off project for Lucas of any of the five films so far, which is, in all likelyhood, why it is easily the best (can you tell I'm not a big fan of Lucas' directing or screenwriting skills?). Oh yeah, and if you're the guy that roots for the villains out of pity 'cuz they never win except in arthouse flicks, which I most certainly am, you get to watch the rebels get their stuff handed to them for two hours before their daring escape at the end. I love that.

In short, it's the best movie ever, and is helped out considerably by the revision. And that's why I've watched it 136 times.

I Left my Heart in Olde Virginny.

2005-03-25T01:51:00.000-05:00

I spent a wonderful evening and afternoon last weekend in Williamsburg, VA, with Natalie of Moose Munch and husband Dan, the most gracious hosts a blogger could ever wander across. One wonders how people so personable and thorougly engaging are not famous worldwide, when reprobates like Scott Petersen are ubiquitously present in the news. But we will leave human society and journalistic priorities as topics for an altogether differrent post.

This all began as a strange adventure with Priceline. Natalie sent me an e-mail inviting me to her party saying she thought Williamsburg was only a four or five hour drive from Wilmington, which, as it turns out, is perfectly correct. There is, however, the small caveat that your distinguished author is the last person in the industrial world, 21st century scheme o' things essaying to get by sans automobile. So I checked out Greyhound, idiot that I am (I have nothing against Greyhound, besides the fact that they are a slow, ill-serviced, overpriced, corrupt monopoly--like Amtrack, without the novelty of being on a train) to find out that a bus trip from Southern North Carolina to Southern Virginia (a whopping one state away, for the geographically challenged) costs $148 and a shade short of infinity in the time department. So no go on that. Then, just for kicks, I check out what a short-notice, one-day, weekend airfare might be: $695 on Priceline, and that only gets me to Richmond, about a 30 mile cab ride from Williamsburg. Natalie and Dan are great people, but $800 dollars is a bit much to shell out in cover charges to go to a party, no matter how good. Before giving up all hope, I check out what rental cars are going for: Hertz clocks in cheapest at $30 a day for a sub-compact. (As an aside, and general travel tip, always ask for a sub-compact when renting a car. They probably won't have one available, and will be obliged to upgrade you to a better class of car at no additional cost. If there does happen to be a Geo Metro available, you can always upgrade yourself out-of-pocket; it's a win-win situation.) I go to the "name your price" option, which is a bidding service by which your credit card is automatically charged if your bid is accepted--a kind of "don't bid unless you really mean it" system. My bid for $20 a day, is, to my great surprise, accepted. We're off to Williamsburg, for the third regional sub-meeting of the famed Atlantic Bloggers Alliance (may the celestial light of the heavens be forever upon it). There exists a certain irony here: since the founding of this storied coalition, I have met with three of the other original members, involving interstate travel on the part of one of us, and not the fourth, who works two doors down from my apartment. It is observed that I'll have to fix that.

I had come to believe, over a number of previous years, that I don't actually like driving long distances. Truth of the matter is, I simply didn't like driving long distances in foul Ohio Winter weather in old, poorly maintained automobiles that are liable to strand me in bleak farm country when it's eleven freakin' degrees at any given time. Driving four-plus hours through the woods of the South in a regularly serviced rental Cavalier (which, true to prediction, is a bigger car than I paid for) on a sunny early Spring afternnon is in fact remarkably pleasant. I take note that I'll have to make a habit of this.

Upon arrival, I am reintroduced to Natalie and Dan, whom I haven't seen since my sister's wedding two years ago, along with their adorable and enthused canine children Bailey and Luna. Luna likes to bark to hear herself, not unlike a lot of people I know, but both are friendly and well-behaved. We talk dogs for a moment or two, which is always good fun; we love dogs here at LiteraryLiberal (and may end up adopting one soon), and these are some awesome ones. I am plied with drink as we catch up, and I am promised the following things from the party: some people from Colonial Williamsburg, where Dan works as a guide, will show up in eighteenth-century period costume; some people will undoubtedly seduce me into an Irish Car Bomb (Guinness with a shot of Irish cream/Irish whiskey, for the unversed) or two; some wine geeks will show up with the remnants of a tasting that they're giving at their shop (Burgundy/Pinot Noir theme). To my great delight, all of these things are true, although the following day effects of beer-wine-liquor drinking are best left undescribed. I bestow upon Natalie and Dan my cheapskate housewarming gift: a pair of jalepeno necklaces procured from my recently expounded-upon trip to New Mexico, which, like champs, they wear for the balance of the evening. My hosts and their friends and neighbors are lively and interesting, the party is a rousing hit, and I go to bed properly drunk.

The following day brings breakfast at The Gazebo, this wonderful, if a bit hurried, Greek family breakfast joint in which presidential candidates apparently feel compelled to eat, based upon the wall photos at the enterance. Then we're off Colonial Williamsburg, or CW as it's known to the locals, inexplicably my first-ever trip there. CW and the College of William and Mary make up one contiguous space, and since W&M wears its eighteenth-century aspect on its sleeve, we have an awful lot of well-preserved history going on. W&M would be the oldest school in the country, if those pesky Indians hadn't raided and burnt the first incarnation of it, forcing everyone to start over from scratch. Ah well. We seem to have taken care of that problem, anyway. (Hey, what's a post without some light-hearted genocide humor?)

Walking Duke of Gloucester (which I think is what the evil Richard III was, as well as Duke of York) Street, or Dog Street colloquially, with a guy that knows the place inside and out is tremendous. We see the weapons magazine, stop in a few shops, pass by the period houses where Dan's co-workers reside, all while I get an entertaining and informative running commentary from Dan. I settle on purchasing a March 17, 1774 reprint of The Virginia Gazette, a tavern license, and a tin whistle, which I grandly imagine myself playing alongside the flautist and drum corps at the head of a puissant Colonial army. Then I give it a try, and hear the most abhorrently shrill, scratchy, broken musical note perhaps ever to eminate from a wind instrument. I revise the fantasy scenario, including that I'd be quickly shot, both for being at the fore and to knock off the infernal racket. Dan wisely observes that 99.7% of all tin whistles purchased at CW can be easily reclaimed and resold from the side of the interstate, where they are hurled by irritated parents halfway through the trip home. I realize I may need to practice a bit.

There are, it seems, two requisite photo ops on Dog street: the pillory, and sitting beside Thomas Jefferson. I happily comply with both, the latter of which appears as follows:

The hung-over and unwashed author chumming with TJ's bronzed corpse.

It's a lovely Spring day of wandering through history, and stepping around horse droppings. We head back to the ranch, where I thank my friends for their incredible hospitatlity, snap a few pics on the disposable, say goodbye to the dogs, and head back to the great state of North Carolina. There is a threatened rumor about all this happening again in May. Y'all should come along.

Observations from my Present Hangover.

2005-03-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

Presently working on a longer post detailing my trip to Williamsburg, VA, to celebrate a belated St. Patrick's Day/housewarming/no-excuse-needed soiree (anybody know how to do that French accent thingee in Windows?) with Natalie of Moose Munch, hubby Dan and canine children Bailey and Luna. I also need to read Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, and a bunch of other stuff while unabashedly sneaking in a ride to the beach, as it is far too gorgeous a day to do otherwise. So we'll all have to live with another grab-bag sort of post or two untill all of the former has been accomplished.

I'm aware and failrly disconcerted that this has been preponderantly an all-about-me blog of late, and would like to mix in a greater quantity of news and issue-oriented stuff on a more regular basis. I am under no delusion that my life is so interesting that it need be assiduously conveyed in intricate detail to my vast and appreciative readership. We'll se what can be done about that.

Ah, well then. Click here to find out the real truth about Michael Jackson, and consider the above personal exhortation to be temporarily fulfilled. Verily I say, my blog has returned to the cutting-edge journalism for which it enjoys international renown.

That post about ALS is just going to sit there and collect dust until we reach at least $100. We're presently at $25, only because I put it there. So, if you're tired of skipping over it to read other things, the question you might well ask is "is it me, am I the one causing this?"

The marketing agent that came up with the name Ocean Spray for a potable product is either insane and hence needing a new line of work like at the transit authority, or is just plain ignorant as to what ocean spray actually tastes like. Blech. Tastes like a dead cow marinated in rock salt and left to decompose. I wonder what brilliant names were skipped over before this one was selected. Old Shoe Sole Cranberry Juice? Disused Tissue Cran-Apple? Dog's Breath Ruby-Red Grapefruit, perhaps? Fetid Air Kiwi-Lime? To be a fly on the wall in that meeting.

While I was busy returning from Virginia, LeBron James was busy putting up the greatest individual game in Cleveland Cavaliers history, nothching 56 points, ten boards and five assists against the Toronto Raptors. Problem for the King was that his center is in an ugly slump and the bench blows chunks, so the Cavs lost anyway, their ninth straight on the road, following which coach Paul Silas was fired. It'll look good come contract negotiations, I suppose.

Cab drivers have some of the most interesting stories in the world, if for no other reason than half of them are refugees and immigrants from some of the most wretched places on earth. More people should talk to them instead of acting in such a confounded hurry and blathering on their cel phones. I've learned more about Palestine since moving to Wilmington than the NY Times ever taught me, all because I needed a ride home from the downtown taverns.

Can anyone tell me why are whales so much more prevalent on the Pacific Coast than the Atlantic? Is it gratitude to all the hippies who campaigned to save them back in the 70's, and residual anger about those whalers in Maine? Really, I'm curious about this--and I wanna see some whales, confound it. Or dolphins, or something. Why does the left coast get all the cool wildlife?

Speaking of ancient and wondrous sea creatures, I had the pleasure and honor of watching Spring Break Shark Attack, sans volume, at the local pub last night. If only TV movies were eligible for Oscars, well, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey and Denzel Washington had better take notice. The story, the acting, the sharks man, so gripping, so riveting...okay, I'll cut it out now. I swear to mon Dieu if this stuff got any more vapid, CBS would literally have to start broadcasting empty snow interrupted at ten minute intervals by advertisements, listing it as "performance art" in TV Guide. Please CBS, CSI Miami reruns, anything, just don't ever spend money on anything this cheesy again. Then again, it did have lots of girls in bikinis and a decent amount of blood (but no corresponding gore; that's why network TV sucks), and with the sound off and one dollar Miller High Life--never mind this was a fine film. Keep at it, CBS. Oh, but one tiny objection: I don't think there are as many big sharks left in the world as there were in the subtly and tastefully executed grand finale...whoops, we've descended into sarcasm again. But remember, er, forget, at thy peril the critical didactic moral parable represented in such grandiose artistic statements: God punishes fornication by sending sharks after you. That's right, big, mean, hungry sharks. Or demonic killers in hockey masks. Bad stuff, in any case.

I am now two paragraphs past having run out of things to babble about. I'll tell you a little bit about Virginia sometime tomorrow. I'm off to the beach to suffer through Jane Austen. Early novels are painful, but the beach is good, so perhaps I will achieve the proper acid/base karmic ratio. Y'all come back now, hear?

Cingular Wireless...Worst Company Ever.

2005-03-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

I just opened an $83.71 bill today from Cingular Wireless for an account that I terminated two weeks after I opened it, based on their deplorably bad service, and by whose contractual terms I owe them nothing. But this is just par for the course for my experience with these tools, who shall henceforth be referred to as the Worst Company Ever, or WCE for short. This final, insulting, straw is merely the continuation of a trend of storied incompetence that has defined my experience with WCE since their regrettable purchase of AT&T Wireless last year.

The very first thing WCE did was apparently fire most of AT&T's pleasant and efficient phone operators to supplant them with the slowest, most irritating, voice software I have ever had the displeasure of engaging. One now needs to navigate through five minutes of this astoundingly frustrating madness in order to find out if an actual operator is available; saying "operator" or pressing zero just makes the software reset back to the beginning. An acid bath might be more enjoyable.

Ah, but then there's the customer support they offered all existing AT&T customers--none of our web or retail services will be able to help you, and yet you'll be redirected toward them at every possible instance. If you ever want to change your service, your only option will be to be bullied into a new two-year service contract with a new phone from us. It's about as gentle and subtle as being pushed from a nest on the wall of the Grand Canyon. So I bit, signing a new deal and getting a free Motorola V220 camera phone, which I discovered to my great surprise sounded absolutely wretched, whereas my previous Motorola, in the exact same apartment, sounded just fine. So I arranged an exchange over the phone, because, in yet another astonishing feat of entrepreneurialism, WCE's retail stores can't handle products purchased online. I ship the phone back to them at my own expense, which they promise to credit and then never do. I am told that, upon receiving my return, my new phone will be immediately shipped from Atlanta, meaning four days of phonelessness, at best. After mailing the phone, during which interum I am paying roaming charges on my old AT&T account for every necessary call, which are many considering that I've just moved and am registering mid-year at a university and setting up in a new city, I am informed in my second call (in which I offer the UPS tracking number for my return), that WCE can't send me a new phone until my original phone is processed back into their inventory. This will take an additional 3-5 business days. I accept the disparity in information as a mistake, and continue in good faith to await my new phone which will put an end to all these difficulties. Accepting WCE's maximum time estimate, I hedge my bet and get a new phone with a new carrier, realizing that I can cancel the contract and return the backup phone if WCE gets their act together. I place a third call after two weeks of WCE phonelessness, once again offering the UPS tracking number of the returned phone. I am politely informed that WCE has no record of my return, and no plans to send me a new phone. I have, reasonably, had quite enough at this juncture and inform them that, as I am well within my opt-out period, I would like to cancel my contract, and explain in detail why. The operator (funny that you can talk to an actual human when you want to cancel service but not when you want to pay your bill) tells me how sorry she is while assuring me that this isn't how WCE normally enacts commerce. I accept her apology and ask that I be e-mailed and snail-mailed a notice of my account cancellation. I am told that that simply isn't possible, and that she has noted dilligently that my account has been closed, and her name aught be enough.

And so today, I get the result of WCE's efficient processing: not only did they fail to cancel my contract before billing me for a month's service and an activation fee, they are now claiming the balance to be overdue based on a previous bill I was never sent. If I had but the time, I would sue them simply for being so unmitigatedly worthless. But I don't. So now I have to waste personal time, dealing with their infernal software operators, to avoid being referred to collections by refusing to pay for a service they never provided.

So if any of you are new to the game, or looking to switch providers avoid these nimrods at all cost. I understand that mergers of this magnitude involve complications; these aren't complications; this is willful arrogance and stupidity. Spend your money elsewhere.

A Meditation on the Atlantic Ocean.

2005-03-17T03:08:00.000-05:00

When in the presence of that which is greater than ourselves, when we are humbled, reduced, burned down to what is of us and not added to us--it is in these precious moments that we come to know ourselves, truly and without illusion or pretension. It is in relief and juxtaposition from the crafted and flattering image of ourselves that we can comprehend in honesty and clarity our own weakness, and consequently the potential for individual greatness. For what can become great besides that which is small? The enduring human fascination with God, whatever permutation such entity might take, is based upon the principal of removing the self as the object of worship and instead perceiving the same as a vessel of higher direction: it is agreed throughout all spiritual traditions that the one who feels he is God knows neither God nor himself. Like a sick person in denial of sickness, we stagnate until we are ready to be healed.

No knowledge of denomination or doctrine or dogma is essential to this understanding; to merely look into the infinite swell of the ocean or endless expanse of the firmament--to really see and not merely factually know the power and longevity of such in contrast to our feeble and transient stay is the path to subsume the dangerous passion of the ego--to realize we individually can be reclaimed by creation in an instant without the same taking a moment's notice. In any such moment of comprehension and true humility we can come to see the essence of our brief, ephemeral, and transitory presence. There is nothing sad about this prostration; billions have come before us and billions will come after, none with any greater ability to preserve his or her own stay here with significantly greater efficacy than you or I. And I tend to think that in these silent epiphanies , and not in the clamor and noise of the active ego, that we realize our potential--small beings that can be made large not by keeping, but by relinquishing all that which is in essence worth giving: our time, our love, our dispensable wealth and possessions; those things which we hoard at our moments of fear and selfishness, with which we are never diminished by parting.

My idea of God, a God that asks that we exist in the shadow of his halo and not try to outshine it, a God that is present in the magnificent quiet of solitude as much in the frantic engine of activity, has its presence in the mystical traditions of all faiths--the words of the Hebrew Jesus, the Catholic Aquinas, the Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita. He, or she, or it, is omnipresent and undying, asking that in our bleakest sorrows and highest ecstasies that we merely be receptive--alert, listening. This God presents a challenge to us: allow yourself to be remade in its presence; be the ship to carry worthy cargo, and not simply the captain of an empty ship. It is this God that I seek, and in the searching hope to be found worthy.

Tales of New Mexico.

2005-03-15T21:28:00.000-05:00

Back from the long and boozy weekend at the National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show promised in Friday's post. Albuqueque is beautiful (or maybe I've just never been to that part of the country, or both). My hotel room had a direct view of the Sandias (I probably spelled that wrong) mountains, which, as one largely unexposed to mountains, being from Northern Ohio and now living on the East Coast and all, was pretty exciting for me.

The show itself was great, allowing me to ingratiate scores of brave men (and a few women) with, among other tasty and fiery concoctions, Matar los Gringos hot sauce, our company's new product for the year. It was especially rewarding to sample it those really tough dudes who just didn't think that there was anything stout enough for them. Let me explain a bit: the sauce is comprised mostly of capsaicin oil, which is the extract of the habenero, or, in short, the hottest part of the hottest pepper in the world; the color and texture is provided by chocolate habenero solids, which hardly cools it off much. The effect of eating it is peculiar, in that what starts as a mild burn in the back of the throat then builds, slowly, inexorably, horribly, into a fire that engulfs the entire tongue, gripping it in pulsating waves of heat that peak about three minutes in before tapering off over the next twenty or thirty. So the tough people would eat some sauce on a nacho, declaring, with their best poker faces, "that's not so hot," before being overwhelmed 60 seconds later and crying for fluids like little girls. I was crying right along with them--with laughter. Nothing like watching other people's foreheads break out in beads of sweat, tears occasionally running down their faces, sniffling like sick toddlers, begging for paper towels and water, to satisfy the low-rent sadist in all of us. Oddly enough, remarkably few people realize how pointless drinking water is to alleviate hot-food burns. The burn comes from oil: how well does cold water take oil off of a greasy pan? Works about as well on your tongue. Something fatty like milk or ice cream will neutralize it, and beer or liquor will act as a solvent to remove it, which is why there's a time honored association of spicy food with beer and tequila--it works.

On both Friday and Saturday, the show paid for a keg of beer to be given free to card-carrying show exhibitors to consume afterward at a local bar. All went well on Friday at The Liquid Room, but on Saturday, things went, shall we say...askew. The CaJohn's crew, along with myriad and sundry other vendors, arrived at Ned's bar on Central street, drank up the free beer in about 45 minutes and proceeded to spend hoardes of our own cash. Come ten o'clock, the bar decides that it's now a club with a dress code prohibiting ball caps and short-sleeved tees (which happened to be the show uniforms of many NFFBS people present). I'd changed clothes after the show, but the people I was with hadn't. First of all, I've never in my life been to a bar that had two different dress codes for happy hour and late night, let alone a bar that retroactively imposes rules on people who were already spending money there. I was under the impression that this was a fairly universal standard: if you get in before the band starts, you don't pay cover; and, presumably, if you get into some run-of-the-mill dive that acquires pretensions of "club" status (no DJ, band, or anything else, by the way) come ten PM, you stay and drink as long as you have money in your pocket. I guess I was wrong, as a number of us were told to leave. One of the level-headed bouncers, a ridiculous little five-foot-four, 125 lb. Mexican twerp, started exchanging words with some of us as we were on the way out. I wondered if he was naturally that bad at his job or if the cocaine I'd heard him snorting in the bathroom stall minutes earlier was fueling his aggression. Once outside, I calmly explained to him that by losing his temper in the situation he was becoming part of the problem. I've been a door guy and a bartender and know the game fairly well. He replied that he'd fix any problems. I half-laughed, half-sighed and walked away; insecure short men and narcotics just don't go together at all. Naturally, everybody else there who was going to be split from their lesser-dressed companions finished their drinks and left, so Ned's chased out hundreds of dollars in sales to be replaced by the completely imaginary line of sartorially gifted people eagerly waiting outside. Some people just don't deserve to own businesses. The CaJohn's folks, being John, his son Nate, and me went through another hundred dollars ourselves at the hotel bar that we'd have happily given to them. I doubt anyone from the convention will make the same mistake next year.

On Friday, I got in a fun conversation with Tom from England, attending the show as a journalist writing a book about various aspects of Americana, and a squat bulldog of a man named Horrible Haggis (or just Haggis, outside the show) a hot sauce artiste hailing from near Melbourne, Australia. We had a bunch of laughs, Haggis occasionally offering a crack about the royal family for Tom's edification, and all that, which Tom took like the good sport he is. It wasn't untill Sunday, the final day of the show, that John noticed the unusual hyphenated name on Tom's visitor pass, and inquired about it. The name was "Parker-Bowles," and John's question of "any relation to Camilla?" was met with "that's my mum." (Suspicious me, I looked it up upon arriving home. No lie.) We tell the boisterous Haggis who he's been maligning the royal family to, and he is, for the first time since the beginning of the whole show, totally speechless. You can't make this stuff up. In a sense, I'm glad I didn't know about Tom's parentage until it was too late to bother him about it. There are probably few things in this world as de-individualizing as being the plebian relative of someone famous. And, jackass that I am, would have, following a few drinks, have completely lost interest in Tom the journalist from England and instead began speaking to Tom the future stepson of the future King of England. I'm sure this has happened to him so many times that he makes no point whatsoever of bringing the matter up unless specifically asked. No sense becoming an unwilling component in "six degrees of seperation" if it can be avoided, I suppose.

On the whole, I found Albuquerque beutiful and pleasant, although I could never live in a city that completely shuts down on Sunday (no, not true, Circle K is open--and strange things are afoot at the Circle K). I had two flights to catch on Monday, leaving NM with a stop in Cincinatti, Oh. I was at the Albuquerque airport two hours early, and had an almost three-hour stop in Cinci, and I hate flying like hell and all Montagues, and they serve alcohol in airports and on airplanes, so I was one intoxicated little traveller by the time the cab dropped me off at my doorstep in Wilmington. I had neither the promised Spaniard's head nor alien paraphenalia, but a couple of nice pictures which I'll someday scan and post (old world camera) and the story above. I hope you enjoyed reading about it.

I'm a-Leavin, on a Jet Plane.

2005-03-10T20:05:00.000-05:00

Off to Albuquerque, NM, for the weekend to peddle and eat some really, really, absurdly hot food with my friend and mentor John Hard of CaJohn's Fiery Foods. This guy, for no other reason than our shared love of the habenero, which he discovered while I was his waiter at Noodles in Columbus, Oh., has agreed to fly me two-thirds of the way across the country with food, drink, shelter, and pay--so I can do three days of work for him of a sort I enjoy doing anyway at a trade show. When I figured his overall cost in the enterprise, I realized that's like lawyer money. Wow, everyone should have friends like this. I will be sure to bring back lots of cheeseball alien trinkets, which are no doubt in heavy circulation, as I will be a mere (by desert standards) 200 miles from Roswell, the principal attraction (besides questionably legal immigrant labor opportunities) in the state.

All blame/credit for my bizzare predilection toward all things chile is owed to my mother (God bless her) who, being a good German girl, never kept anything in the house fiercer than ground black pepper (and that we had to add ourselves). Like most Northern European-derived cuisine, her meals were laden with butter and oil and a bit wanting in the herb and spice scheme o' things. Don't mistake me; I like a good meatloaf (and she makes a damn fine meatloaf) or pot roast as well as the next guy. I just felt somehow I was well, missing something those hearty-meal childhood years. So by adolescence I was, against her fervent protests, dousing everything she cooked with enough black pepper to hide its original form. Matters just grew worse in college, where I got a job in a wing joint and worked my way through the chain-of-command of heat levels on the sauces. But I wasn't done there, oh no.

There is something that non-hot food junkies fail to understand as they watch me and my ilk wince in pain as we scarf down blazing wings and molten bowls of chili, indigestion be damned: hot food, by which I mean really hot food, not your run-of-the-mill Mexican or General Tso's chicken, affects the same stimulus/reward areas of the brain as narcotics and sex (or so I hear; I'm not a researcher). Eating painfully hot things leaves one feeling euphoric and serene, if a bit runny nosed, and inclined toward the lavoratory the following day. It's typically a poor trade for the uninitiated, as the tears streaming down one's face and plaintive gasping for water (which does no good whatsoever) normally are too dear a price for the ensuing rush of endorphins. But that's the special thing about being a chile-head: building a tolerance to the pain allows us a dining experience most people can only imagine. I've never heard of a burger and fries making one feel...elevated.

So, following the wing training, I eventually got to the source: the habenero pepper itself. Just manually handle enough of them (and, stemming multiple cases of them in the early days of freelancing for John, I certainly did), and your hands start to burn, in a way that soap and water can do nothing to alleviate. Further, there are levels: there is the standard green habenero, which is plenty God-awful hot in its own right; its cousin the still-worse chocolate hab (for its brown color, not its taste); and finally the diabolically evil red savina hab. The Incans (or Aztecs, I can never remember) used to eat green habeneros raw before going into battle; it filled them with madness and bloodlust. But the latter two hadn't been cross-bred into being yet, and it's a damn good thing for the invading Spaniards they hadn't. If such had been the case, all an Incan tribal general would have needed to say to his troops is "there's cool water on the other side of the Conquistadors," and the history of the Americas might be very different indeed.

Now, I occasionally hear an astute response to these narratives. It goes something like this: "Ha! I've busted you out! This is actually some sort of tough-guy male-bonding ritual that you pass off as epicureanism!" (or something like that). To which I respond, "Well I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie!! Take the professor into the back and plug 'im into the hyperdrive!" Oh, wait, that was Han Solo. I say something far less eloquent like "duh." Anyone that denies the macho-juvenile culture of the hot sauce world harbors acute and internalized delusions. But, at the end of the day, our geeky little hobby is much more benign to society than, say, rolling drunks or driving way too fast. Our adrenaline motives are the same, sure, but our collateral damage is zero--like Trekkies, except we can still make fun of Trekkies.

So I'm in training tonight, having baked chicken with a chipotle and chocolate hab sauce with some veggies covered in dried savina dust. One shouldn't go into battle unprepared. A little luck, and I may return from the trip with a Spaniard's head to put next to the Roswell junk.

Salt of the Earth.

2005-03-08T03:27:00.000-05:00

Preface: This is neither that good nor especially current, but I thought hauling something out of the "draft" menu might give people something to chat about while I get my ISP issues worked out at home.

My good friend Dublin Saab had some things to say about a lawuit on behalf of a consumer safety group attempting to force the FDA to reclassify salt as a food additive. It is presently listed under the heading "generally known as safe." My problem is this: I feel lawsuits are the worst way possible to proceed regarding issues of individual responsibility; I also am concerned that restaurants are by and large unwilling to self-regulate gratuitous sodium content in their foods. MacDonald's could preemptively shut most of these people up by switching to low sodium dressings and allowing people to salt their own fries instead of doing it for them. But they don't. Now, the best argument in response to this is of course: don't eat at MacDonald's or Chinese places. Fine; I don't. But childeren get no say in the matter--and MacDonald's and Burger King have made billions by spending millions specifically advertising to children. Should they be allowed to? Of course; it's a free country. But compare the number of times you've seen a MacDonald's (or White Castle, or Wendy's, or KFC, you get the point) promoting high-sodium products versus the number of times you've seen public service ads telling you about the danger of sodium consumption. Since kids watch more TV than anybody, they are given a steady education from birth on just why they should eat Fritos, which is of course about the single most unhealthy thing a person could eat this side of straight mercury. As a result, we have children consuming enough sodium to retain a keg of water and enough fat that we now have the most obese generation of children in all of the known history of humanity.

How to fix it? Well, I for one like to pine for the good old days when people actually knew how to cook. Fresh fruits and vegetables have little to no sodium, and most poultry and fish is naturally rather low. Hence, how much salt is in that kind of meal can be determined mostly by the question "how much salt did I add?" Whatever the reasons, though, those days are gone and don't seem to be coming back any time soon. So that's no good. Do you spend more money on public education campaigns? I'm not sure I've ever really known one of those to be effective unless, as is the case with smoking, the government gets all of the airtime and the industry gets none. (And even then, I'm not sure how effective it is.) Plus, unless you wring a settlement out of the restaurant industry, that's taxpayer dime, and people probably want it spent elsewhere.

So the original problem remains. Millions of people, a certain percentage children who don't get to choose, are consuming far too much sodium. Their health is suffering as a result. Neither of these facts, as far as I can tell, is in serious dispute. There are, in a basic way of looking at the matter, two options: something can be done about it, or nothing can be done about it. If the former is chosen, then we go on to who the doer is.

Truth in advertising on behalf of the industry would be a good way to go. But they never do it on their own (who, after all, wants to spend money to tell the consumer their product is bad for them?). And when laws are proposed to force them to comply, they lobby massively against them and refuse to comply whenever possible. Just how prominent are those signs in Micky D's telling you that their food is saturated-fat and salt drenched shit?

I for one favor the a stick/carrot approach from the FDA putting the processed food industry on notice: you can fix this yourselves in a five or ten year time frame, or we can fix it for you. No regulation would eventually be necessary, because you'd be telling corporations to reduce an (admittedly minute, unless we count stolen shakers) cost, while losing no competetive advantage, because everyone else would be lowering sodium content at the same time. Unless there's a lame-duck Democrat as President (and probably not then), that of course won't happen, as Congress (both sides of the aisle) is firmly in the pocket of the food industry.

So here's what we're left with. The food industry is contributing to a public health crisis by putting too much salt in their products. They refuse to stop doing this. The restaurant industry refuses to educate consumers that their products are high in sodium. Congress bends over backwards to accomodate the industry. Public education campaigns have no chance against the advertising might of the food industry.

What option does that leave, pray tell?

At the end of the day "nanny state" is a meaningless bit of political propoganda hauled out virtually whenever government proposes to value the safety of the public over profit rights of industry. The term is itself bewildering, as at the end of the day, what is government if not a nanny? If policing our neighborhoods, housing our criminals, educating our children, paving and plowing our roads, defending our borders, and providing relief in times of disaster are not inherently protective (and hence nanny-like) functions, then what exactly would qualify? At what point has ensuring the safety of its citizens not been within the mission of our government?

But if the term "nanny" must be used pejoratively, let me draw a distinction. Government requiring that Campbell's send less salt into your kitchen and Macdonald's put less on your fries is not nannying; government taking the salt shaker out of your kitchen and off your table is. And if government refuses to address a situation which private industry is concurrently failing to address, then somebody sooner or later has to file a lawsuit compelling it to do so. I believe it should be an option of last resort, when other avenues of recourse have failed. That standard looks suspiciously close to being met here. Labels have been measuring sodium in foods for 22 years. There has been a steady increase in that time. People will continue to be free to add as much salt as they want to offset any reductions caused by regulation. I think this lawsuit might just have some merit; I am interested to see if the judge does.

An Open Letter of Apology to the Frog I Roasted Alive in 1981.

2005-03-07T16:51:00.000-05:00

Y'know, I've been thinking a lot in terms of personal and spiritual development, as men past the flower of youth are wont to do. I'm working on making amends to those I may have in some way wronged, etc., etc., and have come to the following, irrevocable conclusion: it's high time I said "sorry" to you, that frog I tossed into the grill in St. Louis in 1981.

Sure, I know what you're thinking, "well, bloody lot of good your remorse does for me now that my charred frog-shade soul wanders the bleak bogs of eternity." That's true, and a good point, but hey, not a whole heaping lot we can do about that now, is there? I mean, were I to presently discover an enchanted lamp with a genie popping out like a cork off cheap bubbly to grant me three wishes, I'd no doubt start with "hey, I need a time machine back to the Reagan administration so I can refrain from catching that slow and malgrown little frog and tossing it on the coals at my Uncle Wayne's house." Really, I would. But, problem is, I just haven't found that lamp, so we're just going to have to live with things (well, me anyway) as they stand. No sense being a crybaby, know what I'm saying?

And sure, being roasted alive on hot coals, no one to hear your plaintive little frog wail, was probably pretty nasty stuff. Hell, I've been burned enough with grease from the deep fryer to have a taste of what you went through. But you know what? I've never been slow and stupid enough to be collared by something 300 times my size, which in turn flung me into the barbecue and cackled with childish glee as I died an agonizing death. Must've sucked to be you, yeah?

But we're getting off track here. Sure, you were a pretty sorry excuse for a frog and all, and I derived enough diabolical amusement from fiendishly murdering you to probably warrant your hideous and grisly end, but let's get back to my apology. Hey, sorry about all those froglets you didn't get to spawn while you were busy cooking to a blackened husk. An additional sorry to you, any possible Mrs. Frog, for making you a widow by callously burning your husband to cinder and ash. I apologize to the greater amphibian community for taking such a fine and upstanding denizen from your ranks, laughing hysterically as his croaks for mercy from the hellish tortures of immolation fell on deaf ears. Let's let bygones be bygones, shall we?

Well, I'm really glad we had this talk, frog. I feel better already. No doubt, as your crispy spirit wanders the barren halls of forlorn frog hereafter, wailing and gnashing your little frog teeth, or whatever, you feel better too. It's time we put this behind us, derive a little closure from my sociopathic execution of you, engulfing you in flame like you were a protesting Tibetan monk. I mean, it's not like I really enjoyed your deliciously painful death more than any other maniacally gleeful eight-year-old boy would've, dig? I mean, I said I'm sorry already, you loathsome little ex-salmonella courier. What the hell else do you want from me? There's no sense in you being a hater here--it's not like I can reassemble your slimy frog molecules that I wickedly transformed into carbon and soot by annihilating you utterly on the white hot coals beneath the hot dogs and hamburgers. Please don't be an ingrate, okay?

I Hate Crosswinds, and Other Random Notes.

2005-03-06T20:01:00.000-05:00

Internet service is out at the apartment, for reasons my feeble computer literacy cannot fully fathom. I can't call the service company until tomorrow, so forgive the brevity and utter lack of polish from this post, as it comes from my graduate lab at the library and will see nothing resembling revision.

I just rode back from the beach, and feel a need to share my displeasure with crosswinds with the world (or all eight of you that read this). Headwinds on the way there (heading east, obviously) are all fine and good, as, while they make the outbound trip a bit arduous when I'm full of energy and prepared to cope, they speed me on my merry way home, when I'm tired and it's getting dark and cold. Tailwinds on the way are fine too, as they hasten my ride there and hence get me more daylight time. Let it not be said that I am a pessimist in such matters. Crosswinds just bite, however. They are a general impediment for both trips, as well as an affront to my general constructions of fairness and justice. Fie on them. If I wanted to travel north, I'd move.

While I was at the beach, I found a cool looking piece of driftwood. It is, of course, probably the defining character of lifelong inlanders that we find driftwood novel, there being no shortage of it or anything like that. I was considering sanding and polishing it and trying to pass it off on some unsuspecting hippie as "art," but I suspect that plays better in places like Columbus, where people can't just get their own certified Atlantic driftwood and then spend 99 cents on sandpaper at Home Depot. Alas--my fledgling career cut cruelly short. I was going to take a picture of the driftwood and the nifty conch I found nearby and then post them, but suddenly remembered that I'm the last person in the Western Hemisphere without a digital camera, so I can't. My birthday is in August, by the way. And you'll just have to take my word on the aesthetic merits of the shell and wood.

Being a novice to this whole coastal experience, I'm encountering ocean birds (terns? herons?) with which I have no familiarity. Among one species, I've concluded that the ones with brown speckles on their heads and the ones without are probably males and females, but have no better idea than a coin toss to determine which is which. I've also noticed that two different species of bird will occupy the same stretch of beach with nary a peep of discontent from either: peceful coexistence, ornithology-style. Warms the heart, I tell you. I'll have to write more about this when I ascertain some clue as to what I'm talking about. I'd take pictures in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable could help me out, but (refer to previous paragraph).

And thus ends my daily musing on things coastal (But not grammatical--have you ever seen news publications use "thusly" instead of "thus?" Fills me with blind, lashing-out, English-scholar rage, I tell you. The former is not a word. "Thus" is already an adverb, hence adding "ly" to it is a redundant illiteracy which should be punished with a terse rap of a ruler across the knuckles, preferably by a stern-faced nun with dark rimmed and thorougly out-of-style glasses. It's the formative equivalent of "extremelyly;" it further violates the natural and sensible trend of the English language to contract and abbreviate words rather than have them expand and sprawl, much like this rambling and, it must be conceded, increasingly unwieldy sentence and parenthetical.) Whew.

Okay, brain is out-o-gas like like a Shell station in 1972 with a line full of Buicks and Oldsmobiles queued up around the block. I'm hopping on the bike and heading home. Another post is waiting on my computer, and will be tranferred to the blog tomorrow if I can sort out my issues with the Thin Air Network in an amicable, nonviolent, and unlitigious manner. Think of this post as "snack food" until then. Don't read it too many times, or you'll spoil your appetite.

Chronicles of Procrastination.

2005-03-04T17:49:00.000-05:00

I was facing a certain dilemma today: take Chiang the Chinese bicycle from Wal-Mart down to Wrightsville Beach, or directly engage the encroaching squalor of my apartment, concurrently cooking chicken and lentil soup. Beach versus cooking/cleaning is normally not a difficult decision for a bachelor who lives alone, but as it was four, I wouldn't have had an awful lot of daylight left by the time I got there anyway, so I decided to go with the latter. I like chicken and lentil soup, and a clean apartment allows for my continued residence in the fantasy world where some woman may actually ever set foot in it. It's like paying rent on my delusions of eligibility.

It's funny to me that I face this dilemma at all; back in Cleveland, if one were casually mulling over a trip to Lake Erie in early March, it would typically be done with fishing poles and an ice pick as prerequisites. I tend to suspect this might be why Midwesterners tend to emerge from the Winter a little, er, better fed than before. For five months out of the year, calisthenic excercise requires: A) The lunatic resolve of one training for the Winter Olympics, or; B) An expensive gym membership. The mere fact that I can hop on my bike for a ten mile round-trip ride on a sunny, 58-degree early March day, stopping midway through for a three-mile walk along the ocean is still a bit novel to me, and hence ardently indulged.

So I struck a compromise: I'd go get the mail, which would fulfill the "left the house during daylight hours" provision of my contract, and then do the cook/clean thing, stopping to inspect the bicycle, and hence entertain the idea of exercise. Surely that counts for something, no? But what I was struck by when I did look at Chiang was what's up with all the silly decals they put on new bikes? It's as if they're giant Hot Wheels toys, requiring every conceivable adornment to capture and hold the attention of an eight-year-old. Would anyone actually buy a car with that many stickers on it? In fact, I believe the principle operates in reverse in the automotive world: the more stickers on a vehicle, the less its sale value; hence the '72 Volvo with 119 political slogans cleverly arranged to cover the rust holes being worth about $75.

So I decide that the really silly ones have got to go, and I use the car standard to decide which ones qualify: if it would look ridiculous on a car, off it comes. Item one: "three speed, coaster brakes," on the rear chain guard. I had no sticker on my Honda announcing "five speed-manual, front ABS." Away with it. Item two: decal near front forks announcing "aluminum frame." Nope, never seen a Corvette sporting a "fiberglass hull" bumper sticker. It's gone. After several more of these informative stickers, I begin to wonder if bicycle manufacturers save on printing owner's manuals by substituting decals explaining every function and specification. By the time I'm done with the infograms, I'm left with nothing but these silly looking decorative arrowhead patterns on the crossbar and forks and the serial number info, which is supposed to be engraved into the frame so people don't steal your bike, but is of course here instead an easily removed decal.

The patterns go, the manufacturer's info sticker stays. I now have a pocketful of crinkled plastic, a tuff-looking, minimalist, Euro-style $99 Chinese street bike, and have squandered a half an hour of my time. The house is still a mess and I haven't started on my paper.

God, I need a job and some friends here before I go off my head. Off to tend the chicken and lentil.

Dead Villains' Hereafter.

2005-02-25T23:51:00.000-05:00

Preface: I wrote this a few years back, and am presently revising it for possible publication somewhere. I think it's pretty funny, but the jokes are pretty esoteric and are helped tremendously if one has a passing familiarity with Shakespeare, especially Hamlet. I hope that anyone who invests the time (it's pretty short) will enjoy reading it nearly as much as I did writing it.

Opening scene: Enter Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. All sit on straw in the back of an open, horse-drawn cart, looking alternately confused, resentful, or despondent. The cart, with the shrouded figure of death at the helm, plods along slowly, evidenced by the recorded sound of hoofbeats against a road being played. The characters are to varying degree aware of what is going on: the action of Hamlet is concluded, and these dead villains are being removed to Tragic Villains’ Hell. All are bloodied and/or discolored respective to manner of death. All also have a peculiar narrative insight that might have been useful during their “lives,” but is merely irritating and frustrating in present state. There is a long, uncomfortable silence among them, no one wishing to be the first to speak.

GERTRUDE: ([Henceforth “GER”] sharply breaking the silence, to CLAUDIUS [henceforth CLAUD]): “Gertrude, do not drink.” That was the best you could do, Claudius? I, your loving wife of scandalous circumstances, toast Hamlet during what I believe to be a joyous and festive family reunion, in the process draining a half a goblet of the liquid plague you prepared for him, and “Gertrude, do not drink” is the brilliant advice you have to offer, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane?

CLAUD: (bitterly sarcastic) Oh, right then, take your son’s side now just because we’ve met our ends and he hasn’t. What a devoted and loyal wife and queen you turn out to be! But...that seems to be a recurring theme, now doesn’t it? A shame you didn't live through this. Perhaps you could have married the next member of my family!

GER: You regicidal, usurping twat! (Pause.) And what precisely are you talking about? He’s just as dead as the rest of us.

CLAUD: Then why exactly isn’t he here, your envenom’dness?

ROSENCRANTZ: (Hereafter “ROS,” still nervous around his royal companions.) Ahem, well, if you’d listened carefully at the orientation seminar before we’d climbed aboard, you might remember that Hamlet and Laertes were sent to Revengers’ Hell, a suburb of ours. It’s rumored to be quite nice, if a bit vengeful. (Pause.) Perhaps he’ll write.

(CLAUD glares at him.)

POLONIUS: (Hereafter “POL,” exclamatory, to apparently no one.) My daughter! My Daughter!

GUILDENSTERN: (Hereafter “GUIL,” awkwardly.) Ophelia, sir, has been sent to Christian Hell, the Lord having fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, and all that.

POL: Woe!

ROS: (Cheerfully.) It might not be so bad for her, sir. The Church has abandoned much of the fire and brimstone rhetoric in recent years, preferring to depict Christian Hell as a place of unfulfilled longings and the like. (Pause.) Besides, I’m sure she and Othello will get on famously--form a tragic suicides support group, perhaps. (All but GUIL glare at him.) Sorry.

CLAUD: (Bitterly interjecting.) So let me see if I’ve got this all: Laertes, by benefit of noble motive, gets to join my nephew in some Valhallaesque place of glory and honor; Ophelia, though about as maiden as Queen Hapshetsut over here...

GER: Soft, your regal impotence.

CLAUD: (Ignoring.) ...gets to be pitied for eternity as the virgin martyr, and I’m stuck on an absurdly slow cart to nasty person’s perdition with a poisoned tart, a comically misguided old fool, and two indistinguishable, useless, and recently hanged courtiers who used to attend university with Hamlet. Have I got the gist?

ROS: Beheaded, my liege.

CLAUD: What?

ROS: Guildenstern and I were beheaded. Rather flattering, really, considering our modest station. We were only allowed to reattach our heads by benefit of a recent law enacted by the Damned Villains’ Union declaring eternal dismemberment or immolation to be cruel and not on.

GUIL: Lucky, weren’t we?

ROS: I’ll say. (To CLAUD.) You really were ignoring the orientation, weren’t you?

GER: (Indignant.) Well, s’wounds, he ignores his own wife drinking a cup of vintage Wrath of God, and you suppose he’s going to listen to some fop with a clipboard reading off the intricacies of the hereafter for two hours?

CLAUD: (Sternly.) Gertrude...

GER: I mean, really, he lets the recently vanquished Army of Norway saunter past his palace gate on their way to run an errand before overthrowing his kingdom, and you expect a “posthumous conduct and rules” chat to hold his attention? Be serious!

POL: My daughter!

(GUIL unexpectedly loses his temper, grabs POL by the shirt and begins to shake him.)
GUIL: (Shouting.) Will you not...shut...up? Enough about your daughter, for the love of God! She was a secondary character, almost to the extent which Rosencrantz and I were! She served to give potential narrative insight into Hamlet’s condition, and to give edge to the conflict between him and Laertes! No more! Dead for a ducat! Dead!

(ROS interrupts, tapping GUIL on the shoulder, causing him to release the terrified POL. He withdraws a brochure from his pocket, unfolds it and points out a certain section to GUIL, who reads it attentively before resuming his seat, slightly embarrassed.)

GUIL: (Sheepishly.) Sorry.

CLAUD: What?

GUIL: Seems I nodded off a touch myself during the “penalties” phase of the seminar.

CLAUD: And?

GUIL: Well it seems...

ROS: ...that due to ubiquitously infelicitous use of language during his life...

GUIL: ...that the Lord Polonious is only allowed to speak the words “my daughter...”

ROS: ...along with varied exclamations of woe such as “woe,”“o woe,” and “woe is me...”

GUL: ...for the rest of eternity under the “no tremendous loss” sublaw.

CLAUD: Ah, well then. That quiets one of us at least.

GER: Enough, murtherer and villain.

CLAUD: Aye, woman, a self-murtherer for wedding a lodestone of death such as thou art. Can’t hide our doddering old fool here behind a curtain without you shouting a contrived “help, ho” to get him discovered and unseem’d. A month after you fetch your son’s school chums to help us figure out what he’s about and–look!–what a lovely necklace of gore they get to wear into perpetuity! Every male who's had the dire misfortune to be alone with you in the last year is now stumbling somewhere about in the underworld wondering just where it all went askew. I begin to think my brother’s untimely death was inevitable. Sleep with a black widow long enough and some poison is simply bound to come your way.

GUIL: Excuse me...

GER: (Testy.) What do you want?

GUIL: (Gathering assertiveness.) You know, the partial correctness of the King here aside, I’ve been a bit curious as to what exactly we (motioning to ROS and himself) are doing here? I mean right, sure, (He extends a hand to stop ROS, who is again fumbling for the brochure) in a purely technical and dramatic sense, we were your co-conspirators. But it isn’t as if we did anything all that wrong, now is it? We show up at you summons like a couple of good, obsequious courtiers in search of preferment--“a King’s remembrance,” if I recall–have a couple of utterly baffling conversations with your oh-so-much-more-clever-than-us melancholy Prince, get on a boat with him and a mysterious letter, and, next thing you know, I feel my liberated head bouncing about on some dirty English floor. As if we knew that your insecure yet homicidal spouse here had ordered the death of Prince Hamlet! He didn’t have to redirect his aggression toward us! We were, at best, accidental spies! “Yeah, yeah, that’s tragedy” you say. Well, where does fair enter into this equation, I’d bloody well like to know?

(Before anyone can respond, the stage lights turn up slightly and the sound of the horse’s hoofbeats slows.)

POL: O, I am slain!

Exeunt.

Scene 2: The cart is now at rest in a dismal room that appears to be a cross between a ruined gothic cathedral and a London Jobcentre. The dead villains have disembarked and now stand in a lengthy queue before a large desk except GER, who stands apart. At the desk sits a clerk whose garb is a mix of Venetian soldier and Britrail ticket inspector. He has a gaping chest wound which bleeds assiduously onto the desk and floor, but seems not to notice. He has silent conversations with each successive person in line, who then depart offstage until CLAUD comes to the fore.

GER:(Aside.) Although my ruinous counsel hath found ruin,
These hellish mercies greet me none too soon.
Libid’nous, friv’lous, cruel, incestuous I,
Wish only that my Hamlets did not die.
Engaged aboard a dam’ned cart of fools,
I, woodcock, am ensnared by dramatic rules.
And tho’ God hide redemptive light from me,
I would but pray for better company. (Exit.)

CLERK: Right, who’s first?

CLAUD: Nay, not first. Second, in birth, and hell, and all, that’s me.

CLERK: That was lovely. You’re Claudius?

CLAUD: He.

CLERK: (Bored, officious.) Right. Says here (Refers to a document.) you murdered your brother, stole his crown, married his wife under false pretenses, were ratted out by his ghost, set a trap for his revenging son, and were undone by your own treachery. Yeah?

CLAUD: I suppose...

CLERK: And it also says you were a ubiquitously worthless monarch, constantly on the piss, unable to consolidate power, intelligence effectively, quiet the masses, or defend the state. That all correct?

CLAUD: To an extent...

CLERK: Right. Well, seems you’ve been sentenced to the Inefficient Usurpers Ward, where you’ll get to hear MacBeth recite that “life’s but a walking shadow” bit 1,000 times daily until the end of recorded drama. As an additional bonus, King Richard III, (the fictitious version) will view you as a direct competitor and assassinate you in a grisly manner not less than fortnightly. Away with you.
(Enter GUARDS, who take CLAUD and forcibly lead him away.)

CLAUD: O. My offense is rank, it smells to heaven! (Exit.)

CLERK: Not from here it doesn’t. We haven’t got all day. Who’s next?

POL: My...

CLERK: Right. Polonius. I see they’ve already instituted you preliminary punishment. Hell gets more spot on everyday, I say. Says here (Again refers to document.) You were a buffoon unwittingly allied to an insidious tyrant. Yeah?

POL: O, woe!

CLERK: Alright then. Off with you to the Tragic Villains’ Pensioners Home. You can exchange war stories with geriatric corpses from Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy. Move along.
(Enter guards with a wheelchair, into which they shove POL before maneuvering him offstage. Exit.)

CLERK: Onward, then. Queen Gertrude, says here you were a lascivious trollop who pounced on your husband’s younger brother ere his body was cold before...(Pause.) Queen Gertrude?
(Enter MESSENGER, with a letter.)

CLERK: What’s this, then?

MESSENGER: Letter from Queen Gertrude, sir. (Exit.)

CLERK: (Opens letter and reads aloud.) Dearest Turnkey, Sorry about slipping past you so, but I am now happily wedded to the Lord Polonius and living in the Pensioner’s Home. Send kisses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Good luck and Godspeed, (no pun intended)–Gertrude. (Pause.) And she’s even enclosed a photograph.

ROS: A photograph? Wasn’t she listening during the “no anachronisms” phase of the seminar?

GUIL: (Sighs.) It would appear not.

CLERK: Well, apart from all this...

GUIL: (From nowhere.) Can I ask you a question?

CLERK: Yeah?

GUIL: How’d you get that nasty chest wound?

CLERK: I bleed sir, but not kill’d.

GUIL: (Triumphant.) I knew it! You’re Iago!

CLERK: Yeah, yeah. They all figure it out sooner or later. Villains without clear motive make up the bureacracy around here. Worst punishment they could devise. Thanks for caring. Now, about you...

ROS and GUIL: Yes?

CLERK: I have here that you were gullible suck-ups, who, although appallingly bad spies, were inherently devoid of malicious intent, and...

(Enter OVERWORLD REPRESENTATIVE, henceforth REP, an American dressed in a smart modern business suit.)

CLERK: (Clearly bothered by the intrusion.) ‘Ew are you?

REP: Sorry to interrupt, but...

CLERK: ...and ow’d you get here?

REP: Well, you see, this is fiction, and we (Points upward.)control it.

CLERK: (Defeated.) Right. Carry on then.

REP: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!

ROS and GUIL: Yes?

REP: You’ve been recalled. Come on, I’ve got a car waiting.

GUIL: (Taken aback.) But this is...

ROS: ...Tragic Villains’ Hell...

GUIL: ...and the only place we’ve ever been...

ROS: ...due to any personal fame or notoriety of any sort. And besides, this is the afterlife, meaning that...

GUIL: ...we’re here for eternity, right?

REP: Don’t be ridiculous.

ROS: What do you mean?

REP: You really think your existence and death are irreversible? Immutable? That you’ve moved from the realm of flesh into that of legend, like Hercules?

GUIL: Well...

ROS: ...we’d hoped.

REP: Well, guess what? Hercules has been busy starring on bad UPN television shows! You are no more granted permanent rest than a belch is. Somebody, somewhere, belches, and that’s the end of it as an episode, but certainly not as an art form. Somebody, somewhere, will pick up where said belcher, who we will designate person “A,” left off, and it may be better or worse, and it certainly won’t be the same, but the narrative started by that ur-belch will continue. Get it?

GUIL: Not even a bit.

REP: Okay, it works like this: you were created by a 400-years-dead, incredibly influential Renaissance English playwright, who himself lifted the plot of his play from earlier sources. There was no such thing as intellectual property, and it wouldn’t matter if there had been. You exist in the public domain now. It's ironic, really: you were written in a style meant to remind your era of a period they considered classical. But now your period seems classical to my modernity, and hence characters like you keep getting excavated and reused. You are, to continue my vulgar but appropriate little analogy, like the indigestion of a previous era. You are the gastric residue of a prior fiction that has resurfaced, perhaps tastelessly, perhaps bringing a bit of relief, but back again nonetheless. You aren't dead, so can't stay here anymore; you’ve been revived.

ROS: Meaning?

REP: Meaning some guy Stoppard’s written a play about you called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, or something like that. Now come on. (Exit.)

ROS: (Puzzled.) Why do I get the feeling...

GUIL: ...that we may be back here again?

ROS: I just don’t know.

ROS and GUIL: Bye Iago!

CLERK: See ya’ later.

(Exit ROS and GUIL, lights come up. From offstage comes the voice of POL.)

POL: My daughter!

END.