The Fuddler

You're probably wondering why I'm (not) here!

2009-10-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't stopped posting. I've simply moved to what I believe is a better location:

http://open.salon.com/blog/thefuddler

Check out my most recent postings there! I'll be looking for ya!

I sure miss Ma Bell...

2009-09-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

Photo Creative Commons 2009 The Fuddler.
Non-comm, attrib, no derivs.

Last week, I found an mid-1970's-vintage desk telephone. It was sitting out at the curb next to boxes of trash, and an old steel record caddy full of 45 RPM records (which I also glommed). Needless to say, it needed cleaning, and I did a thorough job (didn't the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy remind us of the importance of telephone sanitation?). I lightly spritzed some contact cleaner into the phone's base cord and handset cord jacks as well as the modular jack on the receiver. Half an hour and a new base cord later, I was ready to test it. I connected the base cord to the phone, then plugged it into the wall jack. I picked up the receiver and heard the dial tone. Good sign. I called up a friend, who was kind of blown away by the fact that I was calling her on a 31-year-old phone!

As you can see from the photo, this relic of the disco era has no controls other than its keypad. No redial, no mute, no LCD screen counting off the number of minutes I've been talking, just the numbers 0 thru 9 and the usual star and pound signs. How lovely it feels to press those keys which give when you press them, so luxurious compared to dialing the keys of modern phones, which make you feel as though you were stabbing your fingertips into the wall or the desk on which the phone rests. It's solid too. Your cat will not be able to knock this baby off the table, unless your cat's an ocelot or a leopard. When it rings, there's no missing or mistaking it, for under that sleek black plastic enclosure reside two 2-inch-diameter bowl-shaped brass bells. Not a ringer, not a ringtone, bells, which are struck by a vibrating electric hammer when someone calls. They're loud too!

The phone's receiver is primitive by today's standards. The technology of its carbon-button microphone capsule and dynamic earphone is almost a century old. Yet, people that I called had no problem hearing and understanding me. I heard them loud and clear too, even the ones using cell phones with speakerphones. What does that say about today's high-tech digital cell phone system over which some conversations simply cannot be heard clearly, period?

This simple, cleanly-designed, almost-indestructible device from a bygone era was the industry standard for telephones until the breakup of the old Bell System in 1984. It was purpose-built for just one thing – making and answering telephone calls, something which it did without fail. No touch-screen, no camera, no MP3 player, no video games, nothing but an unfailingly dependable communication device. These phones were built to be rented to subscribers for decades, and their build-quality shows it (if General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had borrowed The Bell System's playbook, seeing a Toyota, Subaru or BMW's on the road would be a curiosity rather than commonplace). Compare that with the pocket-sized toys of today which are designed to be obsoleted in a few years by newer models with more gee-whiz features and ever-more-annoying ringtones.

Call me a Luddite if you want, but I'm starting to take a shine to this piece of old school technology! I might never break out my cell phone again!

Deal with it.

2009-08-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

About 8 summers ago, I rode up an ancient, hilly two-lane road in rural upstate New York with my friend Terry., who was searching for the grave of one of her 19th-century ancestors. We pulled off the road next to a cemetery in the middle of no place in particular, which couldn't have contained more than 20 or 30 graves. It was nestled at the forked junction of two roads which were bordered primarily by woods. She was jubilant when she found the grave of one of her distant relatives. As we were leaving the cemetery I happened to notice an inscription on one of the gravestones. I don't remember exactly how the flowery Victorian verse read, but the upshot was this:

“Where you are now is where I once was.

Where I am now is where you're eventually going to be.

Deal with it!”

The way many of us deal with the whack upside the head which is the realization of our own mortality is to resolve to be remembered, to live on in some form. We build actual or symbolic monuments to ourselves. We try to be famous, or at least conspicuously successful. We let funeral directors talk us into arrangements to purchase monuments worthy of a Civil War general for when the Grim Reaper finally comes knocking on our door. Those of us with millions to spare donate buildings named after ourselves to universities whose students will never know or care who we were, or set up endowments for organizations devoted to our promoting our hobbies, attacking our pet peeves or nurturing causes close to our hearts.

There's nothing wrong with respecting yourself enough to want a dignified exit. Giving money to organizations which support your world views is the sincerest way of backing those views up. But as for being remembered after you pass, my own view on the whole matter is this: if you want to be remembered after you're gone, don't try to do it by plopping a great stone monument with your name on it over your grave. Do you know how many people drive right past those things every single day without giving them a second glance or thought? No, if you want to be remembered, leave a legacy. The late composer/performer Frank Zappa remarked, shortly before his own untimely death, that he had no intention of making any extraordinary effort to commemorate himself as many politicians and celebrities routinely do (his grave isn't even marked). He didn't have to. His music will doubtlessly be studied and enjoyed by scholars and music lovers for many years to come.

To further clarify my point, how many of you have ever heard of Waldo Semon? Not many, right? Well, it just so happens that in 1926, Mr. Semon perfected a material called polyvinyl chloride, often simply called vinyl. I'd never heard of Mr. Semon until very recently but DJ's and “crate diggers” the world over (like yours truly) have him to thank. Even though vinyl is no longer used as extensively as it once was as a medium for recorded music, it made high-fidelity sound recording and marketing practical. There would probably be no CD's, MP3's or FLAC files if not for Mr. Semon's invention.

Frankly, if the only legacy that you leave behind after you're gone is the circle of friends, lovers and relatives who shed tears at your funeral, you're doing pretty well.

Be altitude...

2009-08-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

James May, emcee of the BBC's venerable Top Gear music program, gets high, I mean, relly high, in a U-2 spy plane.

You really need to watch this in full-screen mode for maximum effect.

Remembering America's Most Trusted Newsman

2009-07-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

My father called him “Mister Disease”. He wasn't slagging on America's most trusted news man, he was just cracking a joke. In his mother tongue, German, the word “krankheit”, pronounced the same way as Walter Cronkite's surname, meant ill health or disease.

The world of news reporting was a lot less sick than it is today when Walter Cronkite held forth on the CBS Evening News each weekday at about the time most of us were eating dinner. There was more emphasis on hard news and news analysis, and even though there has always been a spin factor in news, it seemed to be much less prominent at least on Mr. Cronkite's turf. His competitors, NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, had an excellent daily news program which ran for a full 90 minutes. It too featured hard news and news analysis. Its theme music was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which gives you a very good idea of how highly network executives thought of their viewers.

Today, the only extended-length daily news programs left in America are National Public Radio's Morning Edition, Weekend Edition and All Things Considered. Television news, once an intellectual oasis in the vast wasteland that was and is commercial TV, is now just more “entertainment” programming. “All-news” channels repeat the same 20 minutes' worth of headlines over and over again, taking little time for covering details or doing in-depth analysis. The emphasis is now on celebrity gossip, hot-button political issues and high-profile disasters. AM radio is chockablock with cookie-cutter programming by loudmouths who appeal to the basest emotions of a frustrated working class with inflammatory rhetoric. One fair and balanced TV network is so disdainful of fact and of viewpoints other than its own that it's ended up becoming the biggest propaganda outlet since the Soviet house organ, Radio Moscow went off the air. Newspapers are folding one after the other. Pundits blame TV and the Internet, but their unceasing rah-rah drumbeat of blind support for the Bush administration's misadventures is said to be another factor which turned off many now-former newspaper readers.

Walter Cronkite lived to see and report on the assassination of a U.S. President, the resignation-in-disgrace of another, man's first landing on the moon, the worst commercial nuclear accident in our history and the Cuban Missile Crisis which almost plunged us into World War III. And he lived to see the profession he devoted his life to, the one which our nation's founders considered vital to the functioning of a free society, mutate into a cheapened, weakened and thoroughly co-opted shadow of its former self.

And that, as the man used to say every evening, is the way it is.

We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement

2009-07-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

From Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator from New York via The Huffington Post:

There is a historic effort underway in Washington right now to finally address the health care crisis in this country, and I need your help.

As I've written over at DailyKos and as I told Howard Dean last week, I believe that a robust not-for-profit public option must be a part of the health care reform package Congress passes this year. I feel that opening up a Medicare For All type system to everyone would lower costs and increase efficiency by injecting some much needed competition into the market. ...

Read the entire article here.

In other news, a bulletin from Bill Maher.

GM, Mark of Failure

2009-07-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

My first car was a 1968 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Rocket-455 V-8 engine (bigger than the one in a Hummer H3). 10 MPG city, 15 highway. (Cost of a gallon of gasoline when I had the car – about US$0.89). The car has a special place in my memory not only for that reason, but because it was my grandmother's car. Shortly after she'd bought it, she took me on its maiden voyage. We took a road trip, just her and I, to Quebec City. I was in charge of reading maps. I sucked at it. Instead of hitting the brand-new, high-speed four-laner, I mistakenly guided us to slower but much more scenic back roads, some of which ran parallel to the new highway. We stayed at the historic Chateau Frontenac. We walked around the charming old section of the town. I tasted Veal Cordon Bleu (the real deal) for the first time. I watched an episode of Lost In Space which had been dubbed in French. Nothing like watching Dr. Smith cower before an alien-possessed Will Robinson and grovel for his life in a language which I would not study until I began high school that fall.

My grandmother kept the car until the late 70's when my parents drove it up from Florida. My younger brother got it a few years later. He drove it until the mid-1980's, when it was handed down to me. It had its issues, as you would expect with a four-owner car, everything from occasional funny noises at certain speeds to refusing to start on winter mornings without radical intervention when the temperature went below freezing (read:squirting starting fluid into its carburetor and begging jump starts from passers-by). Nonetheless, for a car its age, it delivered stellar performance. Despite worn springs it had the rock-steady ride of the massive cars of that era. It got worse mileage than a modern SUV, but it had the kind of styling and grace that today's butt-ugly iron-box-on-wheels monstrosities don't. It was easy to fix, which was a good thing because it needed a lot of fixing. Its cracked and crazed paint looked like soil after a long drought but the body was thick steel; fender rot didn't set in until very late in the game. It looked beat-up on the inside, bit it was comfortable. Decrepit though it was, it accelerated on a nanosecond's notice. Passing cars was a piece of cake. It laughed at steep uphill grades. It met an untimely demise in 1991 when, while parked on the street, it was crashed into by someone driving another Oldsmobile - same model, same color, and exactly 10 years newer than my car (cue music: theme from Twilight Zone).

They definitely don't make 'em like they used to.

They can't make 'em like they used to. Economic realities, technological advances, safety requirements and fuel-efficiency laws long ago sent the classic 1960's road-whale the way of the rumble seat and the 8-track tape player. They won't make 'em like they used to. The taken-for-granted reliability of American cars started going downhill in the 1970's. “Buy American” has a nice ring to it. Expensive monthly repairs and frequent product recalls don't. Outsourcing to slave-wage nations and further aggravated the situation.

So now, the company which symbolized American industry for so many years - no, decades - which built my first car, which powered an economy and changed peoples' travel habits forever, is in bankruptcy.

So who's to blame? The Japanese? Well yes, but not for the reasons you might think. They simply made cars with far better reliability than Detroit. Detroit lobbied congress to have tariffs placed on import vehicles. This, they thought, would cement their place in the U.S. Car market. Except that people continued to prefer the Japanese and European cars, even with the stiff tariffs. That should have been a wake up call for GM, Chrysler and Ford, but they apparently chose to ignore it. The imperious, egotistical and stunningly ignorant businessmen who ran the American auto industry into the ditch brought this situation upon not only themselves but all Americans.

Now our government is in the car business whether we like it or not. And I don't think I do. Trouble is, if we need tanks, troop carriers and engines for aircraft carriers, we can't exactly outsource that. The reason we won the second world war so handily is because our industries were up to the task. So the too-big-to-fail GM gets bailed out and Chrysler gets bailed out, for a second time, with taxpayer dollars. This despite years of both firms exporting American jobs to Mexico, China or anyplace else where people work for a daily wage that would get you an order of fast-food French fries here (doubtlessly served up by former autoworkers). The smaller businesses which have gone under or have laid off thousands of family breadwinners never get that kind of treatment. The poor slobs who have been watching their unemployment benefits or lifetime welfare benefit quota get used up don't get that kind of treatment.

To president Obama's credit, he didn't just unconditionally toss cash at these corporate behemoths as the previous administration had a habit of doing. But it still burns my grits that these few big companies in a few towns get a bailout while small business operators watch their livelihoods dry up and blow away.

Quitters never win, do they?

2009-07-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

After losing his bid for the governorship of California in 1962, Richard Nixon told the world we wouldn't have him to kick around anymore. 6 years later, he was elected president. Granted, the refusal of LBJ to run for another term and the Chicago Democratic convention riots made Nixon's ascent that much easier, but you get the idea.

All through the mid-1970's, Ronald Reagan's presidential aspirations were considered a joke. No one, it was said, as extremely right-wing as The Gipper could ever get into the White House without buying a tour ticket. I mean, look at how badly Barry Goldwater got trounced by LBJ in '64. Anyway, thanks in no small part to the Ayatollah Khomeini, on November 4^th, 1980 then-president Jimmy Carter became a lame duck, and the eighties - AIDS, yuppies, Iran-Contra, Michael Jackson and all - began in earnest.

Between the highly-questionable circumstances surrounding the 2000 election, the most frontal assault on civil liberties seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the worst economic trashing of America since the 1920's, everyone expected George W. Bush to be a one-term wonder. Except that for some reason, perhaps a few bugs in those newfangled electronic voting machines, he got re-elected in 2004.

Sarah Palin is a presidential candidate for the 16^th Century. Under her administration we could expect fornicators to be publicly flogged (with the best spectator seats going to the biggest campaign contributors), and intensive drilling in Genesis and Leviticus to replace all of those heretical math and science courses in our public schools. Now, most of us are probably thinking that as ignorant, regressive and dangerous as the rabble-rouser Sarah Palin is, there's no way she could be elected, though to our credit those of us who wished to live in the 21^st Century saw to it that her running mate, John McCain ended up giving the concession speech in November, 2008. But deep in our hearts, most of us know that she still has a shot at becoming president. Those of us whose brains aren't owned by Fox News strongly suspect that she's probably attempting a Nixonesque comeback. Why else would she intentionally resign from office halfway through her first term when she probably could have been a 10-term governor without breaking a sweat? Granted, Alaska isn't California and her program was rather strikingly repudiated by voters last fall. All it would take is for health care reform to fail (that's one of the things swept Republicans into congress in 1994) or for the economic policies of the Obama administration to fail, as dittoheads across America are hoping for between doses of OxyContin. Even if President Obama gets to serve out two terms as Bill Clinton did, he's outta there by 2016. If the Dems don't have a suitable opponent to face her down, we could all be living in Alaska, so to speak, by the following year, with officially-sanctioned ignorance blanketing this country like an ice-fog, and McChurches becoming the new town halls as many of them now are.

Remember, eternal vigilance, blah blah, yada, yada.

Michael Jackson, RIP

2009-06-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

I remember where I was when Jim Morrison, the lead singer-songwriter of the Doors passed away. I was in a camera shop which had decided to branch out into different kinds of merchandise and had just started selling stereo equipment. One of the units on the shelves was tuned to the local top-40 AM station. As I was leaving, after having picked up some darkroom supplies, the national news came on. The top story was that Jim Morrison of the Doors had died of a heart attack in a hotel in Paris, where he and his girlfriend were living at the time. I never even knew he was living abroad. From that point on, their latest single “Love Her Madly” would haunt me every time it was played.

I remember where I was when John Lennon was assassinated. I was in the bedroom of my three-room postage-stamp apartment on the second floor of an unassuming 19th-century house in a working-class neighborhood, owned by a sweet old Jewish lady. I was listening to the local album-rock FM station which the general manager of the college radio station I DJ'd for had a paying gig at. At about 11PM, he interrupted the show he was DJing to read the Associated Press bulletin. He read the copy exactly as it came off the wire. He was on the verge of tears. I myself was stunned. Who, I wondered, would want to shoot a Beatle?

I remember where I was when I learned that Frank Zappa had died. I was in my girlfriend's living room listening to National Public Radio when the talk show Fresh Air came on. Host Terry Gross relayed the Zappa Family's announcement that Frank “had embarked on his final tour”. I did what thousands of his fans did, and called friends to tell them the bad news.

When Michael Jackson died yesterday, I was on a bus returning home from a health care rally in Washington, DC. A passenger's daughter had text-messaged her father that Mr. Jackson had passed on. Our group leader broke out her laptop and surfed a few websites before finding a story stating that Jackson had been taken to the hospital, with no word on his condition. Only about an hour later did we learn that the King Of Pop had indeed, died of cardiac arrest.

As a teenager, I'd always lumped The Jackson 5's music in with a late 60's-early 70's musical trend called bubblegum. Bubblegum to my peers was little more than light-duty pop marketed to impressionable pre-teens, with trite lyrics only a notch or two above the Mother Goose rhymes we got tired of halfway through nursery school. The Jackson 5 TV cartoon series only served to reinforce this notion. Looking back, I think we were a bit hasty in our judgment of the Jackson music family. Yes, The Jackson Five's music was aggressively marketed to children, but nonetheless Motown Records built the Jackson's catalog with the same approach which had made the Supremes, the Temptations, and Stevie Wonder household names. Where other bubblegum productions often used session musicians, Motown threw the Funk Brothers into the mix. Not many bubblegum tunes get played on oldies radio, but songs like “ABC” and “I Want You Back” (most notably covered by British pub-rocker Graham Parker) have stood the test of time. Samples from Jackson 5 records have powered many hip-hop tracks.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Jackson's later releases after he'd grown, though I must concede that I never gave his all-but-pivotal album “Off The Wall” an adequate hearing. Its sound set it squarely apart from the avalanche of cookie-cutter disco of the era in which it was produced. I scoffed at his 1980's efforts like Beat It, though I thought his collaborations with the pop icons of earlier decades, Mick Jagger (State of Shock) and Paul McCartney (Say, Say, Say) were rather brilliant.

Michael Jackson to me epitomized everything that was wrong with the music business. His concert ticket prices were among the highest in the industry. A rock critic who attended three Jackson shows on three consecutive evenings noted that each show was literally identical to the last. Every second of those shows, including things that were supposed to be spontaneous, was in fact scripted and acted out to a fare-thee-well. His appearance at the White House with then-president Ronald Reagan, a Doctor Feelgood who massaged the egos of American voters while his administration did its best to undermine the social progress of the previous two decades, was as grotesque to me as Elvis Presley's impromptu photo-op with Richard Nixon.

And then there was his appearance. As a young man, Jackson was an attractive African-American. In recent years, he became a grotesque parody of himself. He bleached his skin almost white. His facial features, the product of several plastic surgeries, some of which his doctors actually advised him against, made him look. androgynous and almost mannequin-like. And that voice. How did the pipes of that sweet little boy, that handsome young man become transmogrified into the alien, robotic whine of recent years?

Much – let me correct that, not enough has been said about Jacko's terrible childhood. Yes, the kid had talent, industrial quantities of it. But when any kid gets pushed to succeed as Jackson was, you've got to wonder what's going on when the camera lights are off and the microphones are closed. According to various sources, his father, a brutal taskmaster, would literally whip the preadolescent Jackson into line by among other things, holding him upside down by one leg and beating him on his back and buttocks. There were also allegations of sexual abuse. And according to Wikipedia, the elder Jackson had other interesting pastimes: One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph [Michael's father] climbed into his room through the bedroom window. Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Jackson suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.

Now the man who embodied incredible talent combined with incredible excess is gone. We shall probably not see his like again. The tragicomedy of Michael Jackson's life is over, at what's usually referred to as “midlife”.

That's sad.

Yes we can! (Can't we?)

2009-06-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Are you among those of us who think that Barack Obama isn't quite getting the “hope” thing right? I mean, health care “reform” that leaves insurance companies in the drivers' seat? Financial “reforms” that seem to be merely cosmetic? Environmental “reforms” that do almost nothing to address the issue of human survival?

Barack Obama is no way the surrender monkey that Bill "NAFTA" Clinton was. But why does it seem that the man who represents our first, best shot at real reform in far too long might be too willing to compromise with the people who made the mess that we're in? For the answers to these and other questions, I'll turn over the floor to our greatest stand-up political analyst, Mr. Bill Maher.

Take off that sweatsuit. Now.

2009-06-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

Trust our man, Keith Olbermann to remind us that there are no limits to the absurdity of political punditry!

Recently, Mr. Olbermann showed us a clip from one of Rush Limbaugh's most recent daily talk shows. Through logic so circular as to make me dizzy from hearing it, the Republican Party's de facto leader attempted to convince all who would listen that the real reason for escalating health care costs in America is not drug company profiteering or out-of-control insurance company bureaucracies, but – don't laugh – people who exercise daily. Yes, the Rushster asserts that those of us who jog, bicycle, swim, lift weights, or play team sports for the sale of our health are really deluding ourselves, that we are actually engaging in self-destructive behavior. This, despite the fact that thousands of Americans exercise daily, not only with no ill effects whatsoever (apart from an alarming tendency to wear badly-coordinated exercise outfits) but with proven beneficial effects upon their general health. Despite the fact that yours truly used to stay fit by putting in mile after mile on my own 10-speed bike (until I went over to the dark side, and got a car).

Does it sound too incredible to be true? Here, watch Mr. Olbermann present the aforementioned clip for yourself!

A funny thing happened on the way to point B...

2009-06-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

With a Ku-Klux muu-muu in the back of the truck

If you ain't born-again they wanna mess you up, sayin'

“No abortions, no siree,

Life's too precious can't you see!”

What's that hangin' from the neighbors' tree?

Why, it looks like colored folks to me!



Would they do that?

They've been doing it for years!

Seriously!



- Frank Zappa, “Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk”



Note: This article was written before the assassination of Dr. Tiller.

Last week I had an epiphany. You know, one of those moments where something goes "click", and your ideas about something fundamentally change forever. It happened while I was driving down a rural road in upstate New York.

As you might have gathered from reading some of my previous postings, I happen to be very much in favor of reproductive justice. (I've never been comfortable with the popular label, “Pro-choice”. It's not specific enough. Anyone who who likes deli mustard instead of the regular yellow kind on his hamburgers, or puts up light-fuchsia drapes in her living room rather than red ones can be called “pro-choice”.) Nonetheless, like a lot of people of my persuasion, I sometimes had doubts about my beliefs, born of cultural and religious indoctrination, not to mention the unceasing crocodile-teared guilt-barrage of religious (or perhaps more accurately, quasi-religious) blowhards, cracks in my will where pronatalist slogans and ideology could infiltrate. Therein lies the chief difference between those in the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” camps. Those of us in the former camp may experience occasional doubts about the validity of our beliefs just as those in the civil-rights movements of the 1950's and 60's may have at times doubted the wisdom of theirs (I wonder how many African-Americans back then dealt with internalized racist indoctrination?). Let's face it, it's tough going against a prevailing ideology, especially one which is backed up by millions of dollars and power on a national scale. Most of those in the “pro-life” camp have no lingering doubts about their beliefs. Life is a lot simpler when you're told what to believe (or else).

Any such doubts and misgivings all but vanished from my mind in the moment of which I spoke earlier. Since I was driving a car, I obviously wasn't reading “feminist” literature. I wasn't listening to a “liberal” talk show. What I was listening to was a podcast called Storylife, an audio magazine hosted by Chris Bolton. It is modeled along the lines of This American Life. The particular episode in my car stereo was called The Underwater Birth of Francis Henri. It showcased a birthing procedure popular in some circles called water-birthing (which is definitely not to be confused with waterboarding) and it featured a live recording of such a birth as it happened. The newborn infant's first cry shattered the relative quiet of my car and any illusions I might have had about the “pro-life” movement being the least bit concerned with the welfare of young human beings. It wasn't simply my mind that got made up at that moment, it happened at a body level; it was a gut reaction. From that point on, I could never again take seriously the notion, the fallacy, that any so-called pro-life pundits, pastors and politicians and their sheep- or pit-bull-like followers say what they say and do what they do out of anything remotely resembling love. (At least their allies in the Westboro Baptist Church are honest. They put their cards smack-dab on the table; their God, they declare, is a hateful God). Put another way, when was the last time you heard of anyone from Operation Rescue showing up at the front door of a single parent's home with a case of disposable diapers and a voucher for five years' worth of day care?

Addendum 1: The “pro-life” movement of today is a lot more radical and dangerous than that of thirty years ago. Back in the day, they were merely anti-feminist groups. According to Chip Berlet on Democracy Now, today's pro-lifers have solid connections with neo-Nazi groups.

Addendum 2: Susie Bright has posted the story of one of Dr. Tiller's patients on her blog. I highly recommend it.

What's a human life going for these days?

2009-05-16T10:50:00.001-07:00

Photo Creative Commons by Connectologist.

If there was ever any doubt in your mind that American corporations regard their customers as the enemy, you now have indisputable proof.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court (the conservative-agenda-promotion machine carefully assembled by presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and George W. Bush) rendered a decision which emphatically calls into question whether these United States are still a civilized nation. They ruled that consumers of medical devices – implantable defibrillators, heart pacemakers, insulin pumps and such – do not have the right to take the manufacturers to court if a product of theirs turns out to be defective as long as it has been approved by the Food and Drug administration. In other words, if a can of vichyssoise gives you food poisoning because the manufacturer slacked off on sanitary procedures, you can sue (at least as far as I know). But when the insulin pump that's keeping you alive craps out because its maker laid off half its quality-control staff, your next of kin are out of luck.

The threat of legal action was and is the only thing that will keep the highly-monied producers of these implantable devices from endangering life and limb by going slack on quality-control or even knowingly selling defective items just to get them out of the warehouse.

In short, the high court has taken the cop off the beat.

Now if grandpa dies because his pacemaker failed due to the manufacturer's negligence, the manufacturer can just say “Nyaah, nyaah. Caveat emptor!”

The corporations whose limitless campaign contributions got Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes elected got exactly what they paid for. These radical-right presidents, over many years, carefully selected justices for the nation's highest court, right-wing activists who, they hoped, would consistently rule in favor of corporations, televangelists, right-wing think-tanks and the finance industry. The court, which certain entities are still counting on to “protect the rights of the unborn” has now officially negated the rights of the already-living.

Industries knowingly selling products which threaten life, limb and property is nothing new. “The public be damned” was the reply Henry Ford gave to someone who suggested that it would be prudent to install safety glass in his automobiles rather than ordinary plate glass which shatters into deadly, razor-like fragments when it breaks as in a collision. His sentiments are the creed by which every corporate CEO has run their companies ever since. In the mid-1970's, when it turned out that the now-notorious Ford Pinto line of compact cars had a defect which would cause them to burst into flames when hit from behind, an investigation revealed that Ford Motor Company had no intention of correcting the defect or ordering a product recall. Their representatives lied to congressional committees regarding the safety of the vehicles.

That's “business ethics” for you.

Congress is currently taking up legislation which if passed would undo the effects of this execrable decision. And predictably, the multinationals which make and sell medical devices are funneling money to the appropriate members of congress. They declare, via slickly-produced advertisements and crocodile-teared testimony from hand-picked witnesses or deluded consumers before congressional committees that accountability threatens innovation, that there will be no more development of new medical devices if these oh-so-benevolent medical-device companies are subject to the same tort liabilities as a homeowner who doesn't keep his pet pit-bull caged or leashed. Bushwa. There's money to be made selling medical devices, big money as anyone who has paid for them out-of-pocket knows too well. Too much money for any company to not stay ahead of the curve and cash in on the action.

Call your senators and members of congress right now. (You can find who to contact in your area by clicking the hyperlinks). Let them know in no uncertain terms that your life and those of your friends and relatives is more important than an overfed executive's ego or his company's bottom line.

Things are really getting out of control

2009-05-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

I just heard about the advertisement in the above video from a friend who saw it on TV tonight. It's an ad for what's known in the pharmaceutical industry as an atypical antipsychotic drug.

Psychiatric drugs can help - if and only if they're used properly.

Too many psychiatric professionals don't use them properly. It's much easier and cheaper to carelessly toss a prescription at patients than to sit down with them and get to the actual source of their troubles.

One reason for this indifferent approach to medicating peoples' minds is insurance industry pressure on doctors to do medicine on the cheap.

Another is pharmaceutical companies' aggressive marketing tactics.

Still another is laziness on the part of too many psychiatric professionals.

Marketing antidepressants like headache remedies was bad enough. Marketing powerful and potentially dangerous anti-psychotics on television is rather disturbing.

Now, I've heard from one professional that judiciously applying so-called "homeopathic" doses of Abilify can do wonders for difficult cases of depression. What I worry about is doctors who hear clients talk about something they've seen on TV, and then just indifferently scrawl them out a prescription for it.

If you do believe you're suffering from a genuine psychological or psychiatric disorder, choose a therapist who listens to you, and isn't trigger-happy with medication. They can be tough to find, but they are out there.

Just remember that successful treatment for depression often happens gradually, not overnight. It can be frustrating to think that nothing's happening, but subtle, cumulative changes can manifest themselves almost without your knowing it. Here again, a knowledgeable therapist can be worlds of help.

Remember also that human feelings are not diseases.

Recommended reading:

http://tinyurl.com/cqfgao
http://mindfreedom.org
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/catys-story/
http://www.freedom-center.org/

Names. Lives. Not numbers.

2009-05-03T21:42:00.001-07:00

“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” - Joseph Stalin

I viewed the AIDS quilt at Broome Community College today. It’s hard not to feel sad when you look over each panel, lovingly crafted by the relatives and friends of AIDS victims. Victims who didn’t live to see better treatments for HIV/AIDS. Victims who never lived to see a cure, which as of this writing still hasn't been found. The ignorant and mean ones among us regard the terrible pandemic which ended these lives years before their time as a sign from above that love and pleasure are abominations. The rest of us feel our heads spin at the thought of so many promising lives lost for no reason.

The AIDS Quilt was the brainchild of San Francisco AIDS activist, Cleve Jones. Like many others, Jones was upset at the way Reagan-era America painted this then-new pestilence as divine punishment and its victims as human trash or worse. Many AIDS victims of the 1980's didn't even receive proper funerals. He and his co-organizers wanted to drive home the point that AIDS casualties were friends, relatives, parents, co-workers, not statistics in a seemingly endless body-count but people. People who loved and were loved by friends, relatives and life-partners. People whose loved ones were certainly devastated by their slow, excruciating deaths. The quilt, which rapidly expanded beyond the point at which the entire thing could easily be viewed in one place, traveled to dozens of American cities.

I last saw the quilt at a local high school in the early 1990's. Like the panels shown here, most were simple celebrations of the lives of those lost. Others included a call to action for social justice. One which sticks in my mind from that exhibition almost two decades ago was one which contained an embroidered mandala which on closer inspection turned out to be composed of ejaculating penises arranged in a circle. It made a huge impression on me that here in the middle of the worst sexually-transmitted disease epidemic since the emergence of syphilis, in the middle of the worst anti-sex backlash since the Comstock era of the late 19^th century, friends of this one particular victim were not shunning sexuality, nor holding up their loved one’s death as a warning to sexually-active people, but actually celebrating sexuality, affirming life, affirming pleasure. Life, this simple artistic statement said, is not an underground shelter which we cram ourselves into while we wait indefinitely for the storm to pass, it’s meant to be lived, enjoyed. In the era of “just say no”, of yuppiedom, with its overemphasis on overwork and in-your-face conspicuous consumption, this was a radical idea. It still is today.

(Loyalty oath department - I’m a more or less ordinary straight person, one who recognizes that the same kinds of people who persecute or marginalize gay men and women for being what they are can mess with us just as easily. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, remember the hoo-haw over emergency contraception, also known as “Plan B”?)

It's always somewhere else, it's always someone else...

2009-04-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing which, most of us think, always happens someplace else. Today, it happened right here.

This morning, a gunman wielding a high-powered rifle invaded the American Civic Association building on Front Street in Binghamton, NY. He shot several people and took dozens of others hostage before finally turning his weapon on himself. 12 hostages were killed in the attack. Follow the hyperlink above for a more detailed account of the attack. The American Civic Association, where the attack took place, was the place which held a festival each year featuring the music, dance, theater and last but not least, food of many nations. My parents would take my siblings and I there each year. It was an unpretentious place staffed by friendly and often unassuming people. Never did I ever suspect that it could become the scene of a massacre.

Nut-jobs with weapons attacking innocent people for no apparent reason is unfortunately nothing new. I was a kid when I heard radio news coverage of Charles Whitman’s August, 1966 shooting spree from the University of Texas tower. He sniped randomly at passers-by and at police for over 90 minutes before being killed himself. This attack is celebrated in song by Kinky Friedman in The Ballad of Charles Whitman. Now, by this time in my life I’d seen and heard reports of violent crimes on the radio and on the evening news. I’d heard on the news about murders being committed for profit, to silence potential trial witnesses or as revenge. My grade-school-kid mind could not fathom why anyone would kill strangers, one after the other, whom he’d never met and who had certainly never done him any harm.

Some of you may also remember the infamous 1984 San Ysidro Massacre, sometimes jocularly referred to by the locals as the “Big Mac Attack”, in which James Oliver Huberty dressed up in combat fatigues, drove to a local fast-food restaurant and killed several people before being killed himself by police sharpshooters. And I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the gunman who shot up a Unitarian Church in Kentucky on July 27th of last year as the children of church members were staging a performance of the play, Annie.

The block of Front Street on which today’s attack took place has had a colorful history. A 19th-century Gothic home on its eastern side was washed away in the flood of 1935. A local amateur photographer snapped a picture of the house just as it heaved over backwards into the swollen Chenango River. In the 1990's, a family-planning clinic on that block which provided abortions was the scene of constant, theatrical demonstrations by the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, who very thoughtfully opened up a “crisis pregnancy center” across the street. Downtown Binghamton has had its share of entertainment too. As former Binghamton resident and cultural visionary R.U. Sirius wrote in a discussion on the WELL:

“...I had a friend who took over the local Nixon [presidential re-election campaign] headquarters in the name of the Zippies (Yippies with an extra zip) with an unloaded BB gun on Halloween in 1972. It was a scene straight out of Rebel Without A Cause. The cops were ready to shoot up the place when another friend of mine stepped up and coaxed him out of the building”.

Not all the details of this random act of violence are available yet.Whatever was going on in the gunman’s mind shortly before he started killing people at random, we can only guess. A friend’s therapist had one of the victims as a patient, and naturally, she was pretty torn up about this. I've been alternating between numbness and disbelief all day today. Now this whole thing’s just beginning to sink into my head. I wonder if I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the attacker’s victims.

Saying goodbye to an old friend

2009-03-26T20:29:00.001-07:00

It’s the end of an era. Whether we like it or not.

Last month, my friend Brian (not his real name) who I’ve known since the early 1980's got word that the chain which runs the camera shop he’s worked at as a salesman for almost a quarter of a century was declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This meant that his store would be closing at the end of this week. It not only means that Brian is now among the many thousands trying to set up a livelihood in the current economy, it means that the town his store was located in, a college town with dozens of photography students, will now be without a proper camera store. Consider what that loss means to a student who needs materials or equipment for a project that’s due in a few days, a professional who needs extra gear for a particular job, or anyone who needs technical advice from someone other than the salesman in the big-box store who was selling running shoes or toasters the previous week.

When I bought my first digital camera, I went to Brian’s store. I knew that I’d be paying a bit more than I would if I shopped online. I also knew I’d get something from Brian that I’d never find at Amazon.com, Buy.com or anyplace else in cyberspace - solid, personal technical advice. Advice from a man who has been working with cameras since his teens, who has observed the transition from film to digital. Who has seen which brands and models of cameras come in for repairs most frequently, who could look at a problem picture and immediately tell you what had gone wrong and what could be done about it. Who knew which kinds of digital media were reliable and which were to be avoided. When my digital camera developed problems with its image sensor, it was Brian who informed me that the manufacturer was recalling that particular model and walked me through the recall process. When I wanted to have my old film camera fixed, he referred me to a local camera repair shop (itself a rare and dying breed).

Lots of chain stores, drugstores and supermarkets still have film-processing labs where you can get prints and enlargements made of digital or conventional photos. Trouble is, the self-service print-making kiosks all operate in idiot mode. They all are programmed to function as if everyone who uses them is a rank amateur who needs to have all of his or her work “enhanced”. This can be frustrating for good photographers who have a certain kind of image quality in mind and don’t want their pictures messed with. The teenaged minimum-wage-slaves behind the counter can’t override the idiot-mode programming and will not hesitate to tell you so. Brian knew how to make the print makers behave. I've had him make exhibition-grade prints for me. Obviously he cannot provide me with that service any longer.

Personal service in retailing is being superseded by “customer service” from a back-office halfway around the world whose employees often know barely enough English to read the printed scripts pertaining to the most common problems. If your particular problem isn’t listed on any of the scripts - lotsa luck. Point-of-sale technical assistance? Forget it. The way things are progressing, genuine technical advice will only be had by logging onto web forums such as photo.net. No one bothers fixing digital gear when it fails not only because the mediocre build-quality of much of it leaves little “fix” in it but because a new and improved model is always one mouse click away, for less than the cost of the repair. We have finally arrived in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which it is always better to end than to mend.

Photo Creative Commons 2009 by PMG.
Non-comm, attrib, no derivs.

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Can I run Second Life on it?

2009-03-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Just to show that personal computing is a lot older than we think, this ad from the January 1959 issue of Electronics Illustrated magazine offers for sale an analog computer with not much more power than a ten-dollar calculator but which was probably very advanced for its time.

Analog computers you’ll recall were the predecessors to the digital ones we now know and love (or hate with a passion!). Judging by the photo in the ad, the unit handles data using 5 or 6 metal-shell vacuum tubes. Yup, that’s right, tubes, just like the ones in your guitar amp or antique radio. Transistors at the time were just beginning gain mass-market acceptance, and it would be another 11 years before microprocessors as we now know them would make their appearance and put us on the road to personal computing, digital audio and video, and annoying cell phone ringtones.

Can’t find anything on the web about this particular model. The grid of black dots in the picture is probably an array of pin jacks for the patch cords which were used to program the thing, sort of like the way early synthesizers were programmed. The “display” was the analog meter which you see at the machine’s upper right hand corner. A far cry from the machine you’re viewing this blog on, certainly, but a necessary step in the evolution of the digital world we now inhabit.

What is morality? (What is reality?)

2009-03-13T22:46:00.001-07:00

Photo Creative Commons 2009 by Pinkmoose.

I haven't got much to post this week. A few items in the can, but they're not yet ready for prime time.

In the meantime, that doesn't mean that I can't bring outrageous, maddening things to your attention. Under the heading of "religious dogma before common decency", I bring you a news report about a situation which sounds like something out of Monty Python.

Declaring that "life must always be protected", a senior Vatican cleric has defended the Catholic Church's decision to excommunicate the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old rape victim who had a life-saving abortion in Brazil. ...

... The controversy represents a PR nightmare for the Vatican. The unnamed girl's mother and doctors were excommunicated for agreeing to Wednesday's emergency abortion yet the Church has not taken formal steps against the [alleged rapist, the girl's] stepfather, who is in custody. ...

The entire story can be read here.

And speaking of Monty Python...

"This is Paul Harvey - Good Night!"

2009-03-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, I used to hear the late Paul Harvey every so often on the only top-40 AM rock station in town (there was only one at the time, but that changed with the advent of FM album-rock). I didn't recall him harping on right-wing topics, but I didn’t pay too much attention to politics back in the day. “Smooth” was not the word for Mr. Harvey. His voice had a jarring, jagged quality which grabbed you the way a car alarm would. Not to say that it was irritating, far from it. What kept me glued to the radio was not merely his selection of unusual, nay, weird human interest stories but his delivery. The man could manufacture the kind of suspense normally reserved for final baseball scores or election returns even when he was talking about something fairly trivial. To me he was not so much a commentator as a storyteller. He worked his magic on everything from breaking news stories to humorous anecdotes. A lot of the things I heard him say would have been right at home around a campfire. Turn off the TV, Paul Harvey’s in the house!

Mr. Harvey was of the old school of radio journalism. Although he was every inch a conservative, and while he socked it to the loyal opposition every chance he got, I remember him taking the high road, or at least a higher one than most right-wing talk show hosts do today. I simply cannot picture Paul Harvey telling a progressive “Shut up, you punk!”, as I’ve heard one such modern-day AM-radio garbage-mouth do. On one of Kermit Schafer's "Bloopers" albums, there's a recording of him reading a particularly risible human-interest story, then totally cracking up on-mic, and never recovering. Can you even imagine Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter or Michael Savage doing that?

In Defense of "Can't"

2009-02-26T17:06:00.001-08:00

This is America. We are, so we’re told, a nation of doers, not doubters. If there’s one four-letter word we will not abide, it’s the word “Can’t”. Far worse than the dreaded F-bomb, this word signifies disgrace under pressure, wimpiness, wussiness, loserhood. It’s a word that’s only uttered by naysayers, nonbelievers and other nattering nabobs of negativism. “Can’t” means cut-and-run. “Can’t” means you obviously aren’t serious about success. Better to bullshit your way to inevitable failure than to admit that something might be beyond the scope of your abilities.

How this childish attitude toward life got to be so prevalent, I’m not certain. Maybe it’s that story we all had read to us as kids called The Little Engine That Could. In case you missed it, a small switch locomotive is confronted with the task of scaling an extremely steep hill. The little engine keeps on telling himself “I think I can”, or words to that effect as he slowly huffs and puffs his way upward. He eventually makes it to the top of the hill, and gleefully whizzes down the other side to his destination (he obviously wasn’t working for Amtrak!). Meanwhile, back in the real world, author Shel Silverstein points out in his response to that story, "The Little Blue Engine" that "If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain't enough!"

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never criticize anyone who seeks to push the envelope and get more out of their careers, their relationships, their lives. I’ve no complaint against anyone who weighs the odds, considers the facts and then goes for it. Those people are the reason why we have things like personal computers and the Web. And there’s a lot of transformative change that’s been wrought by people who kept on keeping on in the face of what looked at the time like impossible odds. That’s one of the reasons why an African-American man is now president of the United States and not a janitor in Chicago’s city hall. But perseverance is only a virtue if it is tempered with some degree of rationality. There are few people who create more problems than those who blindly throw rationality to the wind and rush in where more sensible folks might fear to tread, lest they be labeled “quitters”.

Many of us became indoctrinated with the gospel of can-do-must-do in grade school. If you had difficulty with a particular assignment or academic subject, your teachers probably said it was because you weren’t trying hard enough. And it wasn’t very long ago that “failing” or “problem” children - those with learning disabilities or other issues - were segregated in “special schools”, or simply put out to the curb for the criminal justice system to haul away. And speaking of learning disabilities, why is it necessary to medicalize the strengths and weaknesses we are all born with? How different is turning a child who cannot read or do differential equations into a patient or a “case” from slapping a “Dunce” cap on his head and making him sit in a corner, as was done decades ago? Our weaknesses are merely the reverse-sides of our strengths. I myself cannot handle numbers. I got to be very familiar with the folks at my college’s remedial math lab until I made up my mind to stop beating my head against the wall, and switched majors from engineering to English. A disappointment? Yes. Was it the right thing to do? Yes again.

If people are the least bit honest with themselves, they will admit that there are certain things which they will never be competent at, let alone excel at, no matter how much effort they expend, no matter how many hours they practice, no matter how many times they beat themselves up for failing. Like a suit that’s two sizes two small, some things just don’t fit. Success only happens when you are on the proper path to it.

Americans need to let up, sit down and take a long, deep breath. Contrary to popular belief, life is not a race, a contest, or a fight to the finish in which the man standing next to you is your enemy. There are solid, rational reasons why civilized society has renounced the Law of the Jungle. Permit me to posit the heretical notion here that life is meant to be enjoyed, that competition does have its place (and should stay there), and that in most cases, failure doesn’t need to be a mark of disgrace or the end of one’s life.

Great Moments in Advertising (second in a series)

2009-02-25T18:50:00.001-08:00

During the years of the “sexual revolution”, the exploitation of sexuality for commercial ends went super-critical. From myriad permutations of the word “intercourse” (for instance, a radio program from that period called “Interchords”) to full-page ads in magazines for a certain brand of blue jeans, which showed only an attractive young woman riding a bicycle, in the buff (not showing the product in the ad? What were they thinking?), things went from mildly amusing to absurd faster than a space shuttle blasting off for the Van Allen Belt.

The proprietors of the electronic emporium being advertised here obviously had no use for subtlety, preferring instead to go as close to the line as they possibly could without landing in court for “obscenity”, no small matter back in those days. The “feet” motif shown in this illustration continues to adorn things like aftermarket auto convertible-tops to this very day.

(Click illustration to enlarge).

Everything I know I learned from record shopping,Part 2

2009-02-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

Photo Creative Commons by Ivan Zuber

You cannot tell how a record will sound by looking at the cover art, reading the list of musicians, or checking out which studio it was recorded at or when. The only way to know is to put it onto a turntable, put the needle on it and listen to it, however briefly.

Just because "everyone likes it" doesn't mean that it's right for you.

If someone tells you that something sucks (or is fantastic) without offering a solid, rational explanation, that's proof that you need to check it out for yourself.

Oldies radio reminds us that a little nostalgia can be fun, but living in the distant past isn’t good for you.

You can hear something that everybody's raving about and wonder what the big deal is. You can hear something that everyone makes fun of and not think it's so bad.

The mainstream is like an 8-lane highway; big, straight, flat, efficient and predictable. And it seldom goes anyplace interesting. Cultural side roads can be much harder to navigate, but you'll probably find much more interesting and rewarding experiences on them.

The following is a public service announcement.

2009-02-13T20:03:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, February 14th, is Valentines’ Day, a holiday whose existence is crucial to the profit margins of the makers of mediocre chocolate products, the manufacturers of red, heart-shaped things, and the vendors of banal greeting cards. It is also a celebration of traditional romantic love. Those of us who are without partners, for whatever reason, often feel jealous of the legions of allegedly happy couples who are presumably smooching and cuddling the day away and will most likely head for the bedroom for an evening of conjugal bliss.

Allow me to perform a reality check. First of all, it just so happens that not all couples are happy. The divorce rate is around 50% and like the unemployment rate, the statistic does not tell the whole story. It doesn’t count nominally-intact marriages in which the love (and sex) dried up years ago, ones where one or both partners is a victim of abuse, and so on. Things aren't that much better for non-married couples who stay in loveless relationships simply because they cannot bring themselves to do otherwise.

Secondly, being single isn’t a disorder requiring costly or desperate measures to correct. We all begin our lives as single people. Some of us who are now happily coupled may be forced apart by circumstance. Those of us who are single by choice deserve to have our decision respected. Those of us who are single through no fault of our own deserve support, not pity or scorn.

Traditional stereotypes of single people range from the man who couldn’t attract a woman if he walked into a brothel with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills, the insouciant playboy who spends all his time going from party to orgy to swinger’s club, the nymphomaniac who lures dozens of (mostly married) suitors up to her penthouse apartment each day, to the old maid with no companions apart from her 27 cats. How many people like these actually exist in the real world?

No lover, however devoted, is a substitute for a social support network. Friends are not luxuries.

No one will deny that living by oneself can get lonely and frustrating at times. But anyone with a firm grip on reality will also recognize that the all-too-common practice of “settling”, coupling up with someone who just happens to be available whether or not he or she is actually a good match, can make things much worse in the long run, as illustrated by the above satirical Youtube clip, and the obscenely-high incomes of divorce attorneys.

As many single people the world over will tell you, being single does not mean taking a virtual vow of chastity! True, solo-sex is the primary mode of sexual expression for a lot of single people, and it has an undeservedly bad reputation. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. Surgeon General got fired from her job for suggesting that solo sex might be good for one’s general well-being, a point which a recent BBC report reiterated. Too often it has been regarded as the last resort of losers. This attitude needs to change, and fast.

While I’m at it, I’d like to strongly recommend that the adjective-turned-noun “single” never again be used to refer to people without partners. When used in this manner, the word has all the characteristics of a derogatory epithet. It suggests someone who is too unattractive, irresponsible or dumb to attract and hold a partner.

Lastly, but definitely not least, I must emphasize this final point: Valentines Day is a commercial holiday. It has far, far less to do with romance than with moving loads of dodgy theme products. Love, after all, isn’t about stuff. Love is about intimacy, about pleasure. Put another way, love isn’t when you buy your partner a heart-shaped fuzzy pillow. Love is when you do her laundry or sweep the floor because it needs to be done. Love isn’t sending her a bouquet of flowers. Love is when you spend a rainy Saturday afternoon in a junkyard looking for parts for her car.

Having said all that, happy Valentines’ Day to everyone, coupled or not!

Random recommended reading:

Quirkyalone.net - Being single as a conscious choice.
Blogher - Pleasing yourself, aka going solo. (NSFW)
Solo Sex guru Betty Dodson (NSFW)
Interview with Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love and The Female Thing.
An American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers article about collaborative divorce.

Is this your lucky day?

2009-02-13T16:50:00.001-08:00

Photo Creative Commons Cayusa

Today marks a sea-change for The Fuddler. From this day forward, The Fuddler will be updated at least once a week, on Friday. And what better Friday to begin with than Friday the 13th!

Speaking of which, the traditional belief about Friday the 13th is that it’s unlucky. I myself have never experienced any more or less bad luck than usual on any Friday the 13th. What I have noticed is that some rather strange things sometimes occur on that day.

As a f’rinstance, years ago I lived in an apartment in a late-19th-century home, on a main street, which was showing signs of age. The building had recently been purchased by an athletic man in his thirties who turned out to be a very skilled renovator. He went through each apartment, stripping every room down to the bare studs, replacing the obsolete, turn-of-the-20th-century knob-and-tube wiring, extracting the occasional carcass of a long-dead squirrel, installing new copper water pipes in place of aging galvanized steel ones, putting in modern, energy-efficient windows and finishing the job with new drywall and a fresh coat of paint. He once showed me how he leveled the warped and bowed floor in one apartment by painstakingly installing a new floor over it. On the evening of Friday the 13th he was hard at work ripping out the cracked and discolored original plaster ceiling in a room directly below my kitchen. In the process, he found an old cast-iron stove plate from a wood-burning stove (all of the stoves in the house at the time were either gas or electric). On top of the plate were thirteen hollow-point .22-caliber long rifle shells. Neither I or my landlord could figure out who had put the shells there, when or why.

Another Friday the 13th incident which sticks in my mind happened while I was on the air at my college’s radio station in the early 1980's. It was a free-form station, which meant that instead of spinning John Cougar Mellencamp, Madonna or Tom Petty, most of our DJ’s played “new wave”, punk or hardcore. Since much of the student body was from New York City and Long Island we also played whatever dance music was popular in the New York underground scene, including a good quantity of early hip-hop. So, there I was that afternoon, spinning a Talking Heads album when the control room phone rang. I expected it to be someone calling in a request. What it was instead was a young man from the Republican National Committee. It should be noted that this was around the time that one of then-president Ronald Reagan’s proposed budgets was making the rounds on Capitol Hill. Like those from previous years it seriously pumped up defense spending (along with the federal deficit) while drastically reducing funding for silly things like education, regulatory agencies, health, and financial aid for college students. Anyway, the nice man from the RNC told me that his organization had put together an audio press release to help dispel any possible misunderstandings about the budget which people might have on account of the liberal media. He asked me if I would mind airing it. Sure, I told him, I would most certainly consider it my patriotic duty as an American to air it. In those pre-digital days news actualities and other material were delivered over the telephone. I put my caller on hold and cued up an album side on one of the control room’s two turntables. After starting the album side, I opened the station’s recording studio, put a fresh reel of 1/4-inch tape on one of our two reel-to-reel tape recorders, patched the phone line into the mixing board, picked up the phone in that room and told Mr. RNC to let ‘er rip. After I’d “downloaded” the rather slickly-produced sales pitch for that year’s round of Reagan budget cuts, I took the reel into our main studio. When the album side had faded out, I played the tape on the air, the whole 3 or 4 minutes of it, following it with my own comments and analysis.

However weird or scary this Friday the 13th might be, it can never hold a candle to the day which follows it, one which causes hearts to pound and palms to sweat, one which makes them commit the most degrading acts of desperation, one which engenders fear and loathing like no other.

I refer of course to Valentines Day. More on that later!

The Way He Walked...

2009-02-05T06:38:00.001-08:00

Photo Creative Commons 2008 by Yves Lorson.

It has come to my attention that a great punk icon has passed away.

Those of you who are familiar with The Cramps know of Lux Interior’s snarling, piercing vocals. You know of his original songs (co-written with his wife Ivy) with titles like “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?”, his almost parodic treatment of dusty pop war-horses like “Lonesome Town”, or his band’s thrashing reading of Hasil Adkins’ “She Said...” which outdoes Mr. Adkins’ bloodcurdling original, no mean feat.

I remember hearing The Cramps’ debut 12-inch, Gravest Hits back in ‘79. I was suitably impressed to say the least! The record sounded to me like it had been made on a thrift-shop cassette deck using the cheapest grade of tape available. The reverb on most of the tracks was the classic Lincoln-Tunnel variety. All the previously-buried 1950's rockabilly cliches had been newly exhumed, hosed down and given a fresh coat of red-lead paint. In an age of Teflon-slick FM rock with synthesized orchestras and 20-minute drug-fueled guitar solos by people who flew to gigs in Lear Jets, The Cramps’ gritty back-to-basics style stood out.

News reports say that Lux died of a bad heart, which makes no sense to me. He and his band had plenty of heart. So long, Lux. It’s too bad you had to split. The music world needs people like you more than ever. My sincerest condolences to Ivy, the band and all of your fans the world over.

Everything I know, I learned from my parakeet.

2009-01-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Photo Creative Commons by Kent K. Barnes.

I don’t like fingers. I don’t care how much you’ve been told that parakeets like to sit on peoples’ fingers. Just because some expert says we’re supposed to like something doesn’t mean that all of us do. Put your finger in my face and I’ll snap at it. I’ll be perfectly happy to hop on your shoulder, your head, your arm, a pencil - anything but a finger. Fingers are verboten. End of discussion.

Horseplay is fine. Get too rough with me, and I’m outta there.

Puh-leeze don’t load down my cage with bird toys. I know you love me. Show it some other way. Let me out of the cage more often. Play with me. Put me on your shoulder while you do your homework or watch TV. Face time is a lot more important than stuff.

I love music (hey, I’m a bird!). Just don’t play it too loud. Too much of a good thing makes it bad.

Don’t vent your frustrations on me with verbal or physical abuse. I’ve had nothing to do with whatever it is that’s bugging you. I fully sympathize, but only if you treat me with respect. Otherwise, I’m outta there.

I like to fly to the downstairs bathroom mirror, clamp my feet to the bottom of it and peck furiously away at my reflection. I know it looks strange to you, but don’t rag on me too hard for it. We all have our strange little quirks.

Sorry about those little um, artifacts that I leave around occasionally. We birds don’t have sphincter muscles, so we can’t control our “emissions” the way you humans can. Please make allowances for that.

Tell your mother that I’m sorry if I embarrassed her when I landed on her head as she walked into the room. Like I said, I’m a bird. That’s the kind of thing we do. Our sense of decorum is different from yours, but please know that I mean well.

Please clean up the bottom of my cage a little more often, OK? You don’t like it when your own living space gets gross. Neither do I.

(Dedicated to Lightning).

Are there any copy rights left?

2009-01-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

A while back, I linked to a couple of Youtube clips showcasing cartoonist Nina Paley and her reinterpretation of the Indian epic, Ramayana. Well, according to Question Copyright, the licensing fees demanded by the publishers of the 80-odd year-old blues numbers she's included in the film's soundtrack were so exorbitant as to all but kibosh the project, which has been three years in the making.

Ms. Paley is currently trying to raise money to pay back the loan she took out to cover the licensing fees. She's also given a 42-minute interview about the situation, which you can download from archive.org, or watch below.

In other news, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is seeking public input on the contentious issue of Digital Rights Management, or DRM. For those of you watching in black-and-white, DRM is digital code applied to audio files which can make it difficult or impossible to move them from one device to another or to even simply play files that you've legally bought and paid for. Some content providers, most notably Audible.com, include potentially-troublesome DRM in their proprietary audio files even if the author and publisher object to it.

The FTC's comment form can be found here. If you're going to be in Seattle on March 25th, 2009, you can comment in person at an FTC "town hall".

(Many thanks to BoingBoing.net for bringing these and other crucial issues to our attention, day after day!)

The truth about the Assassin of Youth!

2008-12-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Be sure to watch this video, which I found while looking for other things, very carefully. See if you agree that its message is one which America's youth must hear and heed!

Beating a Horse That's Not Quite Dead

2008-11-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Much ink and pixels have gone under the bridge in the wake of the success of Proposition 8, a ballot initiative which rendered same-sex marriages null and void in the allegedly progressive state of California. Rather than vent my own spleen over this half-witted endorsement of intolerance, I'll turn the discussion over to someone who's said a lot more than I could say - and on national TV too. (Loyalty oath department - I'm not gay. I just can't abide medieval attitudes toward sex and sexual orientation).

One Size Never Fits All.

2008-11-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

Photo Creative Commons by
Sparkletography - Non-comm, attrib,
no derivs.

Two of the blogs I follow regularly are the ones by author and commentator Greta Christina, both her own and the one she writes for Blowfish.com (which is a sex-toy vendor, so it's probably not safe for work).

Her most recent one for Blowfish cuts to the very heart of our belief system concerning love, sex, and/or marriage. Most of us frankly don't give these beliefs a second thought. It's hard to do so when you're pressured to conform not only by friends and relatives, but by television, Hollywood and the music industry. We don't question these beliefs even when, when it turns out they're not quite right for us.

Check this excerpt out:

...If we know anything at all about human sex and human sexual relationships, it’s that the only constant is variety. Human beings have an almost infinite variety of sexual and emotional experiences: an eye-popping smorgasbord of feelings and desires, prejudices and preferences, turn-offs and needs. And we should be tailoring our decisions about sex to fit our individual experiences. We should not be forcing our sexual and romantic decisions into a one- size- fits- all garment . . . one which, like most one- size- fits- all garments, really fits only a handful of people. ...

Read the whole thing here.

About the new graphic

2008-11-10T19:26:00.001-08:00

Artist unknown.
Graphic Creative Commons 2008
C.S. Lewiston.
Non-comm, attrib, no derivs.

Like a lot of you, I spend a lot of time in thrift shops. The above graphic came from a mix tape. (Remember mix tapes? You'd sit down in front of a device called a cassette deck with a stack of vinyls. You'd choose songs from each of the vinyls and dub them onto the tape in sequence). I didn't even look to see what was on that mix tape, but this handmade collage caught my attention.

I have incorporated this graphic into my blog's new header. My sincerest thanks and compliments to the person who created it.

It can STILL happen here.

2008-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of you, I'm elated that Barack Obama won the election.

Like a lot of you, I'd like to take a well-deserved breather. Nothing wrong with that.

Just remember, it's not over. Not by a long shot. Check out these excerpts from a press release by People for the American Way:

Did you read Paul Krugman's column in Monday's New York Times? On the day before the Blue Wave washed over national and state elections across the country, he asked the important question, "What will defeat do to the Republicans?" and provides several reasons why we can expect the Grand Old Party to take a hard turn to the extreme Right. We agree. With the Right in its new role as "the opposition," get ready to see an invigorated right-wing grassroots, media and organizational infrastructure.

The Heritage Foundation is already digging in its heels saying they will not let President-Elect Obama bring about the change he's promised.

Right-wing blogs, talk radio and television outlets like Fox News will experience a boom, and new personalities will emerge (remember that the Rush Limbaughs of the world became popular during the Clinton years and the power of the progressive netroots is in many ways attributable to backlash against the Bush administration and right-wing government).

With the failure of a Republican presidential candidate who tried to distance himself from the current administration, and the popularity of Sarah Palin, who appealed to the far-right base, many will make the case that the best political strategy is a hard-line and unabashed commitment to right-wing ideology.

One of the only victory trends enjoyed by the Right on Tuesday was in anti-gay ballot initiatives in Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and, sadly, even California, emboldening the Religious Right to repeat these tactics in state after state.

And finally, with President-Elect Obama and the Democratic Senate in a position to undo many of the Right's most cherished gains in its favorite area of focus: the federal courts -- this, perhaps more than anything else, will energize the Religious Right's grassroots.

...And we can't see a repeat of the early 90's. What happened was that the organized Left went dormant, became complacent and didn't keep the pressure on the administration and Congress to deliver on their promises to America. The Clinton administration was subject to unrelenting attacks from the Right -- as Obama's surely will be -- but too many progressives thought they could stop fighting once the election was over. ...

Read the entire press release here. Yeah, they're soliciting donations, but even if you don't want to contribute money, you need to know that the game is far from over. Stay current. Stay active. The worst thing we can do right now is to slack off. It's never too late for another Republican takeover, one which could make George W. Bush look like a moderate.

YES WE DID!

2008-11-04T20:44:00.001-08:00

As I sit here, listening to John McCain wax downright rhapsodic about Mr. Obama in his concession speech on WFMU's web-only special program, "Electile Dysfunction", I can only think of the words of the late Phil Rizzuto, who once said "HOOOOOLY COWWWWW!"

Mr. Obama's win was bigger than 1992, when Bill Clinton high-speed coasted to victory leaving the first George Bush in the dust. But remember, Bill Clinton had help in the form of third-party candidate H. Ross Perot, who sucked up a substantial number of Republican votes. Mr. Obama didn't have such an advantage this time around.

More news as it happens!

Shoe Leather Democracy, Part 2

2008-11-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

Obama headquarters, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

(Names, except those of candidates, have been changed to protect the innocent).

The last time I blogged about door-to-door canvassing, I was doing voter registration in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a major city in a critical swing state (and the hometown of vice-presidential hopeful Joe Biden). Two weeks ago, I was in Elmira, New York, going door-to-door with our organizer, Janet, for two campaigns; universal health care (the dead issue that won’t go away) and congressional hopeful Eric Massa.

The first thing you learn as a door-to-door canvasser is that there aren’t many people home on a Saturday afternoon, at least none who’ll answer the door when you knock, especially when it’s a few weeks from Election Day! We knocked on several doors in a middle-class neighborhood before being greeted by a sweet gentleman and his family. Seems that he and at least one of his relatives lived on Social Security disability benefits, so when we informed them that Eric Massa’s opponent, Republican incumbent Randy Kuhl, wanted to privatize Social Security (you know, by turning over its trust fund to Wall Street), they were very interested indeed!

Another of our prospects was a 78-year-old widow who had lived through the Great Depression of the 1930's. Like a lot of us, she was convinced that we were looking down the barrel of another one, and she had not a few choice words for the Bush clan. On our way from her house to another, we ran across two young men standing next to their parked truck. When Janet asked them if they were registered to vote, one of them remarked that he had just recently been released from prison. She informed him that as long as he wasn’t behind bars, he had just as much right to vote as anyone else. Our most interesting prospect apart from the widow was an elderly man who’d been in the Navy when John F. Kennedy was president. He related his story about how he had been standing only a few dozen feet away from the president as he reviewed the men on board his ship.

********************

Yesterday, (Saturday) several of us car-pooled once again to the critical swing state of Pennsylvania to canvass door-to-door for Barack Obama. Florence, Harvey, David and I (names once again changed to protect the innocent) all piled in to Florence’s car and drove down route 81, with a spirited discussion of our man’s standing in the polls going all the way down.

As if to remind us of just what is at stake for our nation in this election, we got a surprise when we arrived in Scranton. Normally, organizations which depend on volunteers count on 30 per cent of the people who commit actually showing up. Today was different. Today, all of the people who’d originally committed to help with the day’s work showed up, and then some. I met volunteers from as far away as Columbus, Ohio and New York City. The little storefront, behind a bakery, which served as a satellite office for Obama headquarters in that city was packed. It looked for a while as if we were all going to be fifth wheels. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. In all the years I’ve been volunteering for political causes and candidates, I had never before seen this kind of turnout. Eventually we were given lists of voters to be contacted and set out for the appropriate neighborhoods.

The first thing you learn about Scranton is that the street corner you’re looking for might not necessarily have a street sign on it. This made our journey to our assigned neighborhood rather interesting. Fortunately, it wasn’t located too far away from a main drag. One of the first people that Florence and I encountered was a man washing his car in his driveway. Florence opened the discussion by asking who he’d planned to vote for. He replied that he had heard reports that Obama favored late-term abortions which involved the killing of babies. His concerns were obviously based upon inflammatory Republican and religious-right rhetoric. I pointed out that late-term abortions were relatively rare and were only done when absolutely necessary. I went on to remark that abortion was a megaton of cure, and that I believed in an ounce of prevention. I reminded him that in localities with legitimate sex education, where students are taught how sex and sexuality really work, and that sex isn’t the great forbidden fruit that Hollywood and popular culture make it out to be, that kids wait longer before becoming sexually active and take proper precautions when they finally do, which cuts pregnancy rates (and therefore abortion rates). Unlike a lot of right-leaning voters, our man seemed receptive not only to my arguments but to Florence’s about the state of the nation and the economy. We left him to his car-washing and wished him well.

The rest of the day went rather uneventfully. A lot of the doors that we knocked on went unanswered. Florence approached a home where three pre-teenaged boys were playing on their front lawn. Florence told one of them she was with the Obama campaign, and asked one of them if their parents were home, which they weren’t. One of the boys remarked, “I’m for McCain, because Obama has nothing to offer. But, I’m a child, so I can’t vote anyway!”.

At one point we got lost. We pulled into a nearby gas station, whereupon Florence asked a pair of young women who were passing by for directions. These recent high-school graduates were very friendly and helpful. Florence gave them some lawn signs and literature about voting rights, and sent them on their way.

********************

It’s not over yet. I’m going to be calling voters in swing states. I’m going door-to-door and dropping off campaign literature. I’m calling and e-mailing everyone I know to remind them to get out and vote tomorrow. You should seriously consider doing the same.

This just in:My sincerest condolences to Barack Obama for the passing of his grandmother, Madelyn "Toot" Dunham.

This also just in: Filmmaker Michael Moore weighs in on tomorrow's election. VERY highly-recommended reading.

The election's over, right?

2008-10-20T07:45:00.001-07:00

Picture copyright by Stephanie Yue.

Okay, it’s a little over two weeks to go before the election.

Things look pretty good for Barack Obama. He’s ahead in the polls.

John McCain has conceded one state (Michigan) before the election has even begun*.

Prominent Republicans like conservative media mogul Christopher Buckley and former secretary of state Colin Powell have publicly endorsed Barack Obama.

It looks like our candidate is a shoo-in and we can all just sit back and watch Senator Obama coast to victory. Right?

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

Don’t slack off. It ain’t over till it’s over. And it’s not over yet.

If you’re going door-to-door, canvassing by phone or soliciting donations, keep on doing it. Do it as much as time will permit.

If you have a good car, please consider giving voters who cannot drive rides to the polls. Check with your local Democratic headquarters, or with independent organizations like Citizen Action about doing that.

If you have the money, please consider donating to Moveon.org’s No Stolen Elections Fund. They plan to publicly expose and legally challenge any and all attempts by the Republican party to prevent people from voting (which they, or sympathetic organizations appear to be doing, even as I write this). There's an excellent web site called http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/ which tells you more about voter-suppression and what you can do about it.

If you value your country, if you value your rights, if you value your money, keep on working.

And don’t stop until Mr.Obama becomes America’s first African-American president.

* - In some states, you can vote early by absentee ballot. I would strongly encourage you to do so if you can. Check with your local Board Of Elections, in person if you can. And whatever you do, DON’T mail in your ballot. There’s just too much likelihood of your ballot getting “lost” in the mail, if you know what I mean. Instead, deliver it in person to your local Board Of Elections. If you absolutely, positively can’t get to your Board Of Elections, mail it in certified, return receipt requested.

THIS JUST IN:

Moveon.org just sent the following message to everyone on their mailing list (including yours truly). I am including it here because I agree with their thinking points (hyperlinks added by me):

Dear MoveOn member,

If you're an Obama supporter, watching the polls or reading the news can feel pretty good right now. And we should feel good—progressives have worked hard to get this far!

But we can't listen to the pundits who say it's over. Can you share these "Top 5 reasons Obama supporters shouldn't rest easy" with your blog readers—and encourage them to volunteer for Obama between now and Election Day?

TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN'T REST EASY

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some state s. They're whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history... In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

If you agree that we shouldn't rest easy, please sign up to volunteer at your local Obama office by clicking here:

http://tinyurl.com/downtowire

(This is a condensed version of the URL sent to me by Moveon.org. It'll take you to their volunteer sign-up page.).

We're just two weeks away from turning the page on the Bush era—but we can't afford to take our eye off the prize. We've got to keep pushing until the very end.

= = = = = = = = = =

Thank you, Moveon.org. I couldn't have said it better!

THIS ALSO JUST IN:

Senator Obama is temporarily exiting the campaign trail to visit his seriously ailing grandmother in Hawaii this Thursday and Friday (October 24th and 25th). Watch Rachel Maddow's MSNBC video about the situation here.

Something to think about...

2008-10-06T21:19:00.001-07:00

You might be too young to remember Three Mile Island, one of the worst nuclear accidents in recent memory. Permit me to give you a capsule history:

Basically, something went seriously wrong with a major nuclear power plant’s reactor cooling system, resulting in a partial meltdown. A meltdown is when the enriched-uranium nuclear fuel in a reactor gets too hot to be contained in the form of fuel rods, a form which allows the reaction to be controlled, and literally melts down like candle wax into a giant mass whose criticality, that is, rate of reaction, can no longer be controlled. (That’s how the word “meltdown” got into our vocabulary by the way, because of Three Mile Island).

Company and government officials told us that it wasn’t a serious accident. It turned out that it was.

Company and government officials told us that no significant amount of radiation had leaked into the atmosphere. It turned out that it had.

Company and government officials told us that there was no reason to panic. We panicked, silly us.

Company and government officials told us the reactor site would be cleaned up, the reactor fixed and placed back on-line as soon as possible.

That reactor is still off-line.

Do you see any parallels between Three Mile Island, and what’s now going down on Wall Street?

Notes from the road: Shoe-Leather Democracy

2008-09-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

(Image copyright Image Comics. All
rights resererved).

Last Saturday, I did my bit for the cause of hope. I went door-to-door doing voter registration for the Obama campaign.

Pennsylvania is a swing state. If Obama clinches it, he’s probably going to be elected. Obama got a 9-point bounce in the polls after the debate last Thursday, so things look good right now. However, we know from past experience that nothing ever can be taken for granted. We also knew that Obama lost here to Hilary Clinton in last spring’s primaries. If McCain wins in November, given the state of his health, the net result will most likely be a know-nothing moose-hunting beauty queen in the White House for 8 years or more and a Supreme Court completely owned and controlled by corporate CEO’s and television ministries. So a dozen or so of us upstate New Yorkers took up clipboards and pens, grabbed stacks of Pennsylvania voter-registration applications, piled into cars and headed for the Rust Belt city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, about an hour and change south of us. I rode with our organizer, Donna (not her real name, protect the innocent, etc.). I think she was channeling Mario Andretti that morning as she piloted her subcompact car down Route 81, its check-engine light blazing all the way. We got to town in record time.

Obama headquarters is in a theater building not far from Boscov’s department store. Here we briefly mixed with locals working on the campaign as Donna checked in with one of their honchos. There were bagels and cream cheese, which I attempted to avail myself of until I realized that what I thought was a sesame bagel turned out to actually be a garlic bagel. I threw it away because no way did I want to go pitch for Mr. Obama with a breath that could stop a vampire. I had half of a whole-wheat bagel instead. Anyway, Donna soon hustled us back into her car and headed out for our designated turf.

I’ll tell you, if you ever need driving directions, forget Google Maps. It sent us here and there just to make a simple turn. It left street names out on maps. A drunken gas-station attendant could have seriously done a better job. But eventually we got to where we were going, a housing project on the edge of town. I set out with Donna for one side of the street while another volunteer, Harvey (again, not his real name), who’d ridden with us covered the other side.

I knew that convincing people in this particular economic class to register and vote was going to be a very tough sell. I’d attempted to register voters in the projects in my own hometown several years earlier, and while the people a fellow volunteer and I met were by and large decent to us, they made it abundantly clear that they had absolutely no interest whatsoever in participating in a system which they probably believed was keeping them in poverty.

The cross-section of the population of the housing project we arrived at last Saturday was African-American, lots of Hispanics and some white elderly people. The houses themselves were boxy brick-and-wood duplexes, and others containing four apartments each which looked a suspiciously like double-wide trailers. We met several Hispanics who politely told us in broken English that they weren’t interested in voting. They were citizens, not illegals, so there was no issue with immigration, but they were just plain not interested. Donna managed to turn some of these people around and register them anyway (we made a note to bring more Spanish-language registration forms with us next time).

Single mothers proved to be our toughest clients. One was an attractive woman in her late twenties with three children who made a living (though I still don’t see how) working at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. She was knowledgeable and apparently paid attention to political developments, but was simply turned off to the idea of voting, period. She preferred to leave things up to chance, and that was that. I told her that I believed even voting for the lesser of two evils was better than letting the worst of them win by default. Donna reminded her of how many times John McCain had voted against raising the minimum wage in his career as a senator, but even this argument wouldn’t wash. After trying to convince her to at least register, for over 10 minutes, we bid her goodbye and set out for the other homes in the projects.

Our easiest sells were people over 65, some of whom had no doubt gone through the Great Depression of the 1930's. Many of them were Obama supporters, though we did meet one die-hard Republican who told us that Obama was trailing by 50% or so after last Thursday’s debate. His friend or housemate who was standing nearby reminded him that Obama had in fact gained several points. Donna and I suspected that the guy had been watching Fox News. The most bizarre encounter of the day was a buxom woman of about 60, who appeared outside her front door dressed only in a worn, ripped body-length T-shirt which didn’t hide very much. She proceeded to rant incomprehensibly about Hilary Clinton. She basically repeated the same sentences over and over, ignoring whatever Donna or I said. Finally, Donna and I politely excused ourselves and took off to the next home.

When we’d finished, Harvey had signed up five people, Donna and I had signed up eight. We went downtown to get some lunch and talk strategy with the other volunteers. I noticed that there was a comic shop nearby, so after finishing my meal, I sauntered on over and bought a few interesting titles, including an R. Crumb book which I’d never seen before. On my way out, I thumbed through the new-release shelves and found the book whose cover is reproduced above. When I showed it to the other volunteers, they stormed the comic shop and bought up every last copy.

I’ll be doing it again next weekend. Film at 11.

Good News and Bad News

2008-09-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Photo creative-commons Wikimedia.

My friend Niles is a railroad buff. He’s constantly collecting books and magazine articles about railroading history, and is a co-author of this post.

Recently, he found an issue of Trains magazine from May 1972 that had an interesting article by George W.Hilton called "The view of the viaduct from in front of the diner", recounting a rather odd incident on the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in 1961.

According to Hilton's account, a westbound Erie-Lackawanna train from New York to Chicago, which he was on at the time, stopped at Hornell, NY, about an hour west of Corning, where things got interesting. Not even half a minute had passed since the train left the station to continue on its way when the engineer suddenly saw that just ahead was an eastbound freight train about to enter the main line at a nearby junction, which meant that his passenger train would be right in its path. Not a happy situation, to be sure. The engineer realized that if he jammed on his brakes right away, the freight would hit one of his head-end cars (the closed cars up at the front, for baggage or freight) and miss his single passenger coach, which was the last car on the train. As it turned out, one of the head-end cars was in fact hit by the freight locomotive, and the other cars derailed, but the passenger car stayed on the rails, apparently safe and sound. When the dust cleared, Hilton got up and jumped from the rear doorway of the coach.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. Hilton writes:

"What seemed odd to me was that two soldiers were running around,
obviously in some agitation, with their rifles over their shoulders
and otherwise ready for action. I hadn't seen them previously... From
where had these soldiers come, and why did they appear in such distress?”

It turned out that the freight car which had been hit had been carrying nuclear weapons. The soldiers were responsible for guarding them. The railroad very wisely called up the Atomic Energy Commission (or AEC, forerunner of the present-day Nuclear Regulatory Commission), who had good news and bad news for them. The good news was that no nuclear components were on board. Those were shipped separately through other channels. The bad news was that since all nuclear weapons contain a fairly powerful conventional-explosive detonator, there was some risk of a fairly big bang. The AEC cautioned the railroad against building a temporary bypass or “shoo-fly” track around the wreck to let other trains pass until a safety engineer could be flown in from Washington to oversee the safe removal of the detonators.

I think that the incident depicted in this article is a great metaphor for the fiscal train wreck we’re now witnessing on Wall Street. The safety engineers, Mr. Bernanke and Mr Paulson are recommending a taxpayer-financed three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar “shoofly” (the much-talked-about bailout which as of this writing is still not a done deal) for the criminally-mismanaged firms which ran the train off the track in the first place. The porter, Mr. Bush, is trying to reassure the passengers that everything is under control and there’s no reason to panic. Meanwhile, no one knows, or will say how big the explosion from the damaged lead freight car will be, a recessionary fizzle or a 1929-style Armageddon.

Everything I know I learned from record shopping

2008-09-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

Some of the least worthwhile stuff ends up being bestsellers.

Some of the most worthwhile stuff ends up in the bargain bins. .

Some of the stuff at the top of the charts (or in the bargain bins) actually deserves to be there.

Whoever said that you can’t judge a book by its cover never worked in a record shop.

Attractive packaging is no guarantee of quality. In fact, it’s often used to hide mediocrity and shoddiness.

Just because the cover is torn and mildewed doesn’t mean the record inside isn’t worth at least one spin.

Life’s too short not to check out some new things.

“Used” doesn’t necessarily mean “damaged”.

“Virgin” doesn’t necessarily mean “perfect”.

Some things aren’t worth having, even for free.

Better a 7-inch vinyl with one really hot 3-minute song on it than a boxed set containing hours of boredom.

Some days you can spend hour after hour digging in bin after bin and not find anything worthwhile. And sometimes, what you’re looking for jumps right out at you.

Always check the goods before you lay down your money.

When presented with two equally-attractive selections, but only able to take one, pick the one that’s least likely to show up again.

There’s absolute garbage at the flashy place in the mall, and great stuff in the basement of that thrift shop just outside of town.

The quality of a band’s output is often inversely proportional to the amount of hype it gets.

Sometimes even the artist doesn’t believe the hype.

Can it be? Yes it can!

2008-08-28T21:35:00.001-07:00

You may count me among the jillions of bloggers who saw Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech tonight and had their eyes glaze over, but not from the usual ennui which occurs while watching candidates for public office speak on TV. No, this time it was a magnificent case of not believing what I’m seeing.

African-Americans have held federal office since the late 19th century. But the idea of one getting this close to the presidency, and actually having a fair shot at it has, to say the least, blown this observer’s mind. When I was a kid (a very considerable period of time after the late 19th century), my country was only beginning to get that African-Americans were human beings and ought to be treated like them. Whatever you might think of Senator Obama’s politics, there’s no denying the trail blazed by those who came before and the barriers he himself has crashed through. Racial politics in America will never be the same.

For the record, I intend to vote for Senator Obama. I know better than to think he or any candidate is a knight in shining armor. But I definitely expect better from him than from his rival, Senator John McCain, who, far from being the second coming of George W. Bush is actually far more dangerous. When Ronald Reagan made his infamous “bombing in five minutes” wisecrack in 1984, it was meant as a private joke. He didn’t know he was being recorded. When Senator McCain nonchalantly made light of the idea of attacking Iran by parodying a Beach Boys tune, he did it in front of a roomful of supporters and reporters.

Senator Obama’s got charisma. He’s got class. He’s articulate, smart and as he’s proven by his rise to Democratic presidential nominee, he knows how to get things done. And if he’s elected president, as I hope he is, he will have made history twice.

Great Moments in Advertising (first in a series)

2008-08-17T18:27:00.001-07:00

What’s with the third leg?

When this ad for Dingo boots ran, the football superstar who was then known simply as “The Juice” had been traded by the now-defunct American Football League from the Buffalo Bills to the San Francisco 49ers. It would be another 16 years before a pair of more conservative shoes that he wore on a certain evening would become evidence in the murder trial which eclipsed the impeachment of then-president Bill Clinton.

Long, long ago, in a head shop far, far away...

Back in the 1970's, when everyone from President Ford’s son on down “inhaled”, in the Bill Clinton sense of the word, people who couldn’t quite get the hang of rolling their own, who needed to roll lots of product for a party or who just wanted a little more convenience in the whole process bought a cigarette roller, quite possibly like the one pictured here.

The mascot in this ad looks suspiciously like a certain character from the motion picture, Star Wars (now titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), which came out only a year earlier. Personally, I can’t think of why a protocol robot would need a rolling machine when it’s no doubt been programmed to roll 100 perfect sticks of Tattooine Purple in less time than it takes to power up a lightsaber.

Impress women with your knowledge of impedance!

This advertisement appeared not in a technical journal or audio-hobbyist magazine, but the September, 1978 issue of Penthouse magazine.

Howard W. Sams has been printing technical reference materials for the electronics industry since 1946. They have a well-deserved reputation among technicians and engineers for excellence in that field. But selling a specialized technical manual to the readership of what is politely called a “men’s magazine”? I don’t know about that.

I’ve skimmed the Audio Cyclopedia while sitting in the waiting room at an NPR station. Now out of print, it was a great textbook for anyone who wanted to seriously study the principles of analogue audio. It was an excellent reference guide for anyone who worked in a recording studio, a motion-picture studio, a broadcast facility or an audio or video archive. For anyone else, it was probably too technical and too expensive.

Click any image to enlarge.

The preceding advertisements appeared in Penthouse magazine, September 1978.

This joke isn't funny.

2008-08-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

We’ve all gotten junk e-mails from time to time. Most of them are annoying. Some of them are mildly amusing. Still others are dangerous, like the ones claiming to be from your bank and credit card companies but which are really sent to you by identity thieves (“phishing”). Or the ones which promote hysteria. One such e-mail is currently making the rounds:

Subject: Minister With Aids
PLEASE READ ALL THE WAY AND FORWARD TO THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT.

To those of you who are single or married, saved or not saved, this is for you. I am a 35-year-old African American or Black brother dying of Aids. I would like to share my testimony with you.

I am an owner of a Mortgage Company in Atlanta , GA. I own a 2007 Jaguar and I also own a $350,000 beautiful home in Cobb County .

I have a beautiful Lady who is deeply in love with me and a loving family. But most important, I have Jesus, this is just a wake up call to all single brothers and sisters who are professing to be Christians, but don't want to be complete.

Brothers, I had a beautiful young lady who loves the Lord and worships the ground I walk on. But I still wasn't quite happy because sometimes I would see another sister with a Coca-Cola bottle shape and just wanted to hit it. Because I was using a condom, I thought that I wouldn't catch the killer 'AIDS' but guess what? I did..

And the person I caught it from was a girl that I knew well.

But the condom came off and now I am dying of AIDS. Yes, I wore a condom. But yes it did happen.

God gives us time after time to straighten our lives up. I do know the Lord in the pardon of my sins. I've been saved now for 7 years.

I found out 7 months ago that I had the virus, and now I have full-blown Aids. I really didn't think that I was doing anything wrong, because I would tell the women who I would deal with about the woman I love. I thought that was good enough. But it wasn't.

I am a good man and also a God-fearing man; but my weakness was women... I really wasn't out there like you may think I was, but every once and a while I would see something I wanted to try. My girlfriend is a praying woman. I know now that she was intimate with me because she loved me and she wanted to make me happy.

Now I've given AIDS to the woman I love (who has been faithful to me) because of lust.

Brothers and sisters, what I am telling you is that God is tired of us hurting each other and using each other for self-gratification.

God has given me my home, my dream car and a beautiful woman and I took it all for granted. I've been tithing for 7 years. I am the chairman of my Deacon Board. But when I told my Pastor I had AIDS, he could not believe it because of the way I would carry myself.

Brothers, if you have a sister who loves the Lord and who loves you for who you are and not for what you look like and not for what you have, cherish her.

Sisters. If you have a brother who loves the Lord, love him and cherish him.

My life has been altered. I've been with my lady since I was 20, and I've always used my young age as an excuse for not being loyal and not settling down with the woman I loved. I was being a hypocrite thinking that I was missing something, and not realizing that I had a good woman who loved and adored me.

I wish I had been a real man and had appreciated the good woman God had sent me by not making excuses and dedicating my life to her. I would love to travel and marry this beautiful young Lady, but now I can't.

I've embarrassed my family, my church and my friends. But I was hardheaded and now I must suffer.

God is cleaning up. Stop playing with God. God is revealing the secrets of us Christians. Brothers and sisters, we don't have to have so many 'friends,' you know what we call them. The ones we are planning to sleep with but haven't yet.' We often say that we don't want anyone to know our business, but God is about to reveal something. Especially to us young people.

We think so carnal. But we say that we have been transformed. We have been transformed from what we want to be transformed from. Let's be real. God knows that the opposite sex attracts us. And he knows the desires we have for each other, but we don't have to have multiple partners.

If I could do it all over again, I would marry the woman I love and live happy forever. But now I can't! But you can!

Singles...I gotta tell you, it's not worth it. I love you all!

Get rid of casual sex.

This is really deep. After you've read this, think about yourself. Could this have been you? Some of you may not relate, but think about anything you are doing right now that is not of God.

We are living in the last and final days, and pretending to be saved is not going to cut it. Professing that He is Lord, and yet worshiping the devil every chance you get will lead you to the same path as me. Get your mind out of the gutter and put it in the Word of God and you'll have great success. Don't and you'll have great woe.

I love the LORD and thank Him for all that He does in my life; therefore, I'm passing this on. Yes, I do love Jesus who has forgiven me of the repeated sins. That forgiveness does not cancel out the consequences, at least not so far. But that's on me. Still, the Lord is my source of existence and Savior. He keeps me functioning each day and is letting me share my story with you.

I'm telling it like it is. THIS REALLY is to help somebody. Without Him, I will be nothing. Without Him, I am nothing but with Him I can do all things. Phil 4:13

If you love Jesus, send this to lots of people!!!!!! Be Positive - Be Progressive...Take the time to make a positive difference in someone's life.

Minister Anthony J. Cox

God Bless

And I thought that Reverend Jimmy Swaggart was pitiful. This inflammatory screed apparently hasn’t hit Snopes.com yet, but I suspect that it won’t be long.

First, these chain letters (messages which you’re expected to forward to all your friends and relatives) are spam. They’re written and circulated by people with far too much time on their hands and nothing constructive to do with it.

Second, while unprotected sex is certainly inadvisable in this day and age, the idea of a man catching HIV - zap! - the very second his condom fails is ludicrous. I know of at least two instances where a married man whose wife caught AIDS from a blood transfusion stayed uninfected even though they continued to have unprotected sex until the wife was diagnosed long after the fact. One was Paul Michael Glaser who played Detective David Starsky in the 1970's action/comedy TV program “Starsky & Hutch”. His wife Elizabeth, who died from AIDS in 1994, was diagnosed with HIV ten years earlier, about 3 years after his daughter Ariel was born (she was also HIV-positive and died from AIDS in 1988). The other was a man named “Pete”, a friend of National Public Radio film reviewer Bob Mondello. As with Elizabeth Glaser, Pete’s wife became pregnant before she was diagnosed. Pete’s wife and child died of AIDS, Pete remained uninfected.

This is not to advocate unprotected sex, or to minimize these peoples' terrible losses, but hopefully you see my point.

Third, there are treatments for HIV and AIDS now which didn’t exist when Pete’s wife and Elizabeth Glaser became infected. While a cure still hasn’t been found, we’ve come a very long way from the days of AZT and hopeless despair.

Lastly, let's all stop demonizing "casual sex" (read: sexual relations between reasonably intelligent but unmarried adults). Ignorance and carelessness. are what spreads HIV, not "casual sex". By the way, the one part of America with the greatest number of new AIDS cases is the deep south, the most moralistic, socially-conservative part of America. What does that tell us?

HIV/AIDS is a serious matter. Let’s treat it like one, and not make a moralistic anti-sex crusade or a stupid practical joke out of it. For solid facts on this pestilence that has been in our face for far too long, check out:

The Body - Lots of information, some of it a bit technical, but factual and without moralization.
Scarleteen.com - As the name suggests, it's geared toward high school and college-age people, but still has plenty of useful information for people of all ages.
National Public Radio hosted a call-in program about AIDS on August 5th. They've also got a blog to accompany the on-air discussion.

“This is a plausible theory”

2008-04-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

The BBC has been a wellspring of world-class reportage for many years. For detailed reports about world events to pithy, hard-hitting in-depth news analysis, the BBC has no competition.

Recently the Beeb ran a story about studies done on prostate cancer by Australian researchers. The researchers concluded that frequent solo-sex sessions could significantly reduce a man’s chances of coming down with prostate cancer by regularly flushing toxins which can cause prostate cancer out of a man’s reproductive system.

So, solo sex now joins more common fitness regimens like jogging, weight-lifting and dieting. Though I strongly suspect that people will be a lot more inclined to stick with it than the latter three!

Maybe we're taking the wrong approach...

2008-04-07T08:08:00.001-07:00

Word is that the United States Department of Energy is working on a new generation of nuclear weapons. The Pentagon doesn't even want them. Peace groups are naturally up in arms at this development. They claim, rightly in my humble opinion, that building new nukes only encourages other nations to go nuclear as well.

The late Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Rokyo once suggested that instead of trying to curb gun violence through gun control, guns should be as plentiful and ubiquitous as ballpoint pens. He cited as an example an armed robber trying to victimize a subway car full of people. The prospect of being on the wrong end of not one, but dozens of revolvers and automatics would presumably make a criminal think twice about pulling off a job like that.

Which leads me to my point. Attempts to limit the spread and manufacture of nuclear weapons, by peace groups and governments over the last 60 years, have been an uphill battle at best, fruitless at worst. The big nations want them, well, just because, and the little nations want them to protect themselves from the big nations and from neighboring countries that they don't get along with. So, instead of going against the flow, instead of trying to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, let's give every country on earth, from the biggest superpowers to the smallest island nation, nuclear missiles and bombs.

Before you question my sanity, hear me out. I'm in no way beating the drums for Armageddon. Quite the opposite. I believe that if every government knows that any military adventure could result in mutual assured destruction, they'd probably think twice about engaging in them. Wars over resources would be replaced by vigorous negotiations. Border disputes would be settled by teams of surveyors rather than by armies. And tyrants would have to seriously reconsider their plans for world conquest.

Is this wishful thinking on my part? Probably. But if you can think of a better way to insure human survival, please let me know!

Martial Law Declared! Elections Postponed Indefinitely!

2008-04-01T14:18:00.001-07:00

Citing civil disturbances arising from the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the Bear-Stearns bailout and skyrocketing oil prices, President Bush announced today that all civil liberties would be suspended effective immediately and until further notice. He also announced the indefinite postponement of the upcoming presidential election.

(Sorry, just kidding! April fool!)

April 15th is just around the corner!

2008-03-18T21:04:00.001-07:00

"Only little people pay taxes!"
- attributed to Leona Helmsley

Is this what Adam Smith had in mind as the founder of capitalism?

The following are passages from Susie Bright's blog:

... Jimmy [Cayne] is the disgraced former Bear Stearns CEO whose company went kablooey this week, but which was saved by a bailout the Feds engineered with... our tax dollars.

Funny, I was just working on my taxes. Also this week, twenty thousand California teachers got their pink slips, taking our state to the the absolute bottom in public education spending.

But Jimmy and the other Bear Stearns blowhards need my money more.

Jimmy just closed a deal on a twin set of adjacent apartments at the famous Plaza Hotel (home of Eloise!) for $28.24 million.

Altogether, Jimmy and wife will have 6,000 square feet at the Plaza, plus room service, maid service, a concierge, and stunning views of Central Park. I'm so glad everything is working out for them!...

And after all, it's these people's fault that their fortunes went up in smoke, just as it is to Jimmy Cayne's credit that he's found a golden parachute. Right. ...

Read the whole thing here .

(And remember, since Ms. Bright's usual journalistic beat is sex vis a vis politics, this link may not be work-safe).

How to remove a bumper sticker

2008-03-13T09:19:00.001-07:00

"America is just a Latin dictatorship!" - Abbie Hoffman

A friend of mine has weighed in on the recent character-assassination (under very shady circumstances) of Eliot Spitzer. (That he was complicit in said assassination is beside the point):

Songs for the headlines:

O'Jay's "the Love of Money" and

ABBA's "Money Money Money"

Listen with a sense of irony to the latter, because, as of yesterday,
it ain't even a really rich man's world.

Oh yeah- how to remove a political bumper sticker from your car- in my
case with regret, because it is the only one I have ever applied [“Spitzer 06”]. Body
temperature tears of shock and disappointment won't do it, but there are
no dangerous solvents required:

Boil a teakettle of water and pour half a kettleful of water back and
forth, slowly across the top edge of the bumper sticker, over the height
and width of it. Plastic bumper stickers peel off in 1/4 of a NY
minute. Make yourself a pot of chamomile tea and consider our life and
times for a few cupfuls.

The time it will take to get over the destruction of of this excellent
NY governor is a lot longer than it takes to drink 2 cups of tea. If
Mr. Spitzer had had the chance to stay in office a term or two, would
have transformed how America does business.

I wonder if it is the enmity of the banking industry or the mob or the
vested business interests which are the puppeteers of the Federal
Government (or all 3) that dug up this dirt. Surely it was not just the
FBI.

I wonder why those who knew handed over the goods just now. I
would watch other news items given much less prominent play for the
answer, with special attention to legislation and policies just being
passed. Just like 9-11, what was *not* in the news was much more important
than what was. Watch especially for laws rammed through in late night/
early morning sessions, you newsies.

I am guessing it may have something to do with [NY State Attorney General] Andrew Cuomo's recent
sifting of the Pearson cat box, the Halliburton of textbooks, on line
education "systems" and "deep" IT/ pre-emptive BI and PR, contractors to the
US Departments of Education and Defense, among many other important
clients.

It could be Cuomo's fingering of Ingenix, its parent company,
UnitedHealth Group and three additional subsidiaries, the nation’s largest
providers of health care billing systems which enabled billions of health
insurance consumers to be defrauded by automated manipulation of
reimbursement rates, rigging the data for the largest insurers in the country:
Aetna, CIGNA, and Empire BlueCross BlueShield. If you didn't know it,
the health insurance racketeers are not only more powerful than the
Federal Government, they are more powerful than God and screw everyone,
rich or poor with the help of the distancing new technology provided by
voice-recognition-enabled circular Internet customer service routing,
call-center customer service ranking.

Maybe you have your theories????

One thing for sure, this is not about how Elliot Spitzer has a good
time. It is surely about how most of the rest of us don't.

Why should Republicans have all the fun?

2008-03-10T23:48:00.001-07:00

Dear Governor Spitzer:

How could you?

I'm not talking about your dalliances with a call-girl. As certain Republicans and other professional moralists have demonstrated time and again, that kind of thing is par for the course these days. No, I'm talking about how you ignored your better judgment and took the advice of the gubernatorial assistant in your pants.

Back when you were The Sheriff of Wall Street, you should have known that you had some very powerful enemies who would want nothing more than to get revenge on you. When you became governor, with a mandate to dismantle and reconstruct New York's notoriously dysfunctional state government, you should have expected that those who have benefited from the status quo for decades would stop at nothing to frustrate and discredit you. You should have behaved accordingly, refusing to give your enemies any easy opportunity to strike. Instead, you literally bared your flanks.

At least you didn't insult our intelligence by telling us that you did not have sex with that woman. I personally hope that you do survive this incredible blunder. There have certainly been people in Albany and Washington who have done things many orders of magnitude worse than what you've been accused of. And unlike some, I do not wish to see you cop out and resign from office. After over three decades of watching my home state sink further and further into decline, no thanks at all to certain governors who went before you, you were, and in my humble opinion are still, a breath of very fresh air.

Don't screw up like this again, OK?

ADDENDUM - Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that someone in Washington's not merely prosecuting wrongdoing here, but is actively trying to smear Governor Spitzer.

Vonage Out, In with POTS

2008-03-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Enough is enough.

After having had my fill of their mediocre-to-non-functional telephone service, I closed my Vonage account this morning. And I'll tell you that it was no easy task. First of all, I could find no contact information on their official web site. So I filed a complaint with the New Jersey Better Business Bureau. After about 3 weeks, Vonage e-mailed me a copy of the message they sent to the BBB in response to my complaint, in which their representative said “As stated in the Terms of Service, for the purpose of security, customers are required to contact us if they wish to discontinue the Service. “. Yeah, right.

I called the number mentioned in their letter (1-866-243-4357), and was connected to a Mr. Lopez in a back-office in the Philippines. (Why any American firm has to farm out so-called customer service to some poor schlubs halfway around the world, who are probably getting paid far less than what typical American phone slaves used to earn, is beyond me, but hey, that's progress, right?) Even though I made it clear that I wanted to terminate my Vonage account immediately if not sooner, Mr. Lopez kept on trying – again , again and again - to sell me more Vonage gimmicks and service plans, even offering to charge me only half my monthly fee for I guess 6 months or so if I stayed with them. For several minutes Mr. Lopez and I had a pointless back-and-forth exchange in which I would reiterate my request to terminate my account and Mr. Lopez would immediately ignore my request with an "OK, but..." and then toss out another Vonage come-on. When I told him I didn't want to hear any more scripted sales pitches, he replied that he was making them not from scripts but “from the heart”. Oh, please!

After about 5 more minutes of that, I told him in no uncertain terms that I was no longer interested Vonage in any way, shape manner or form, and asked him one last time to terminate my account. Then I hung up.

A few minutes later my Vonage line stopped functioning, which indicated to me that Mr. Lopez had finally honored my initial request. The fact that I was now disconnected was confirmed when I made a follow-up call to Vonage at the same toll-free number. This time, I got a “Rafael” who said he was located in Vonage's corporate headquarters in Holmdel, NJ. I asked Rafael what I should do with the interface box Vonage supplied me with now that I was no longer a customer. He told me that it was not necessary for me to ship it back, and that I would not be charged for it.

I have never had an experience like this with Verizon, Time-Warner or AT&T. Never before have I been treated in such a hucksterish, unprofessional manner. It'll be interesting to see if I continue to get charged by Vonage for the service that I am now not receiving. Oh yes, I'm told that the New Jersey Attorney General's office has one person in it whose job it is to handle complaints about Vonage.

So much for voice over IP (VOIP). It's back to standard phone service I go.

Tough shit, Dubya (why there might be hope after all)

2008-02-24T08:12:00.000-08:00

"Congress' failure to pass this legislation was irresponsible. ... It will leave our nation increasingly vulnerable to attack. ... It is unfair and unjust to threaten [telecommunications] companies with financial ruin only because they are believed to have done the right thing and helped their country". - President Bush in his weekly radio address, 23-February-08

In a rare display of spine, Democrats in the House Of Representatives let the dishonestly-named “Protect America Act” expire rather than permanently sanction the lawless practice of warrantless wiretapping and grant legal immunity to the telecommunications companies which made it happen. President Bush practically accused the Democrats of handing the country over to our enemies on a silver platter.

Dubya, I've got a newsflash for you. America has always had enemies. And you know what? We've dealt with them. And we did it without turning America into a Stalinistic surveillance state.

For instance, ever hear of Adolf Hitler? He was one of the worst criminal sociopaths ever to hold high office. He had a powerful army at his disposal. He was bent on conquering the world, and he almost did it. He declared war on America while his buddy, Japanese Emperor Hirohito was using his air force to bomb the hell out of our naval base at Pearl harbor. It was the most destructive war in human history, but we won it. Did we have wartime security? We sure did. But our government basically left the Constitution intact. When authorities caught a gang of Nazi spies in the New York area, they followed standard criminal law proceedings. The spies were arrested, tried, convicted of espionage, and then executed on New York State's electric chair. No USA PATRIOT Act, no warrantless wiretapping.

How about the Soviet Union? Talk about an enemy. Their leaders once vowed “We will bury you!” No mere ramshackle gang of terrorists with box cutters, they had the world's largest army. They had enough nuclear weapons to reduce not just our country but the entire planet to a fine, radioactive mist. Some were on military bases, some were being moved constantly on railroads and still others traveled unseen on submarines, each of which could carry enough nuclear missiles to wipe out several major U.S. cities in one go. We eventually defeated the Soviet Union, without turning our society into a mirror of their failed totalitarian state.

Pardoning telecom companies for being accomplices in your unwarranted, wrongful surveillance of thousands of law-abiding American citizens would mean the final triumph of official lawlessness. You claim that it was vital for national security. I say to you that gathering dirt on citizens is nothing but a classic instrument of tyranny.

It would be tempting to call you a tyrant, Mister Bush, but that would be unnecessarily glorifying you. All I see in you is a pitiful man who has had everything handed to him all his life by his rich and well-connected daddy, who has never had to do any real work in his life, let alone fight alongside other members of his generation in the Vietnam war. Your drug and alcohol abuse has led you to embrace a twisted, perverted version of religion and given you the paranoiac notion that you are doing God's will. I'm glad that the House of Representatives has finally lived up to its name and, at least this time, delivered you the defeat that you deserve.

More than a jittery feeling

2008-02-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards." - Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Michigan campaign stop, January 18, 2008

Under the heading of “Stranger than Fiction”:

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is jazzing up his campaign by playing bass guitar in a band he calls “Capitol Offense” (yuk, yuk, yuk!!). Joining him for part of his campaign tour is Barry Godreau, a former member of the 1970's arena-rock band, Boston. One of the tunes Capitol Offense has featured is the 1976 hit single, “More Than A Feeling”, which has also been used as background music in a Huckabee campaign ad. Trouble is ,Tom Scholz, lead singer-songwriter of Boston and the guy who wrote that song didn't give his permission for it to be performed in public, let alone by a band fronted by a man who if elected would probably do whatever it took to get rock music (and “liberal media” news) off of every radio station in America.

Mr. Scholz has publicly expressed his disapproval for Mr. Huckabee's philosophy in general and Mr. Godreau's actions in particular. Mr. Godreau has pretty much chosen to ignore Mr. Scholz's admonishments. Fred Bramante, who was chairman of Huckabee's New Hampshire campaign chimed in: "Gov. Huckabee plays 'Sweet Home Alabama.' Does that mean Lynyrd Skynyrd is endorsing him? He plays 'Louie Louie.' Does that mean the Kingsmen are endorsing him?"

Regardless of whoever does or doesn't endorse Governor Huckabee (who by the way, stands a good chance of becoming John McCain's running mate since McCain has to somehow appease the religious right), what bothers me the most is the image of a virulent, avowed religious extremist trying to make himself look like a regular guy by playing in a band that covers classic rock tunes.

Ramayana Remixed

2007-12-27T19:17:00.000-08:00

Cartoonist Nina Paley has a treat in store for us.

You might know her work from her daily comic strips, or possibly from cartoon anthologies like "What's This Thing Called Sex?". You might have even seen her critically-hailed early animation works.
Now she's taken on the Indian epic, Ramayana.

Watch the following clip for more background info, watch the clip below it ("The Battle Of Lanka") for a taste of what's hopefully to come. That's "hopefully" because no distributor has yet picked up this novel animation by this talented (and pleasantly bent) artist.

Why There Is No Hope - Go ahead, insult my intelligence! I love it!

2007-12-13T12:07:00.001-08:00

The following paragraph was taken from an article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine Intelligence Report. The article concerns an installment of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. The story under discussion is one on which Mr. O'Reilly asserted that gangs of homosexuals armed with pink pistols were terrorizing American cities and recruiting children into the gay and lesbian lifestyle. To back up his story, O'Reilly turned to Fox “news analyst” Rod Wheeler, who it seems once worked as a corporate security officer for McDonald's.

”...Wheeler told the Report that he spent seven years in professional law enforcement before going to work as a corporate security officer for McDonald's Corp., a job he has since left. ... Just this spring, he publicly warned that the Big Mac is vulnerable to bioterrorist attacks at "250 points" during production.”

Well heck, I'd have to say that the company itself is a bioterrorist threat, and a mighty successful one at that. Thanks to Mickey-D's and their competitors, obesity-related illnesses are at an all-time high, Americans' idea of what food is supposed to look and taste like has been thoroughly debauched, American retail and service-sector workers have only slightly more rights than a Soviet conscript-laborer and real wages are at their lowest level in 60 years. Try and top that, Osama Bin Laden!

Read the whole business here:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=274&site_area=1

One costly fiasco is not enough!

2007-12-04T09:09:00.000-08:00

"As former US military leaders, we strongly caution against the use of military force against Iran," -

-Lt Gen Robert Gard, a former military assistant to the US defense secretary

-Gen Joseph Hoar, a former commander-in-chief, US Central Command

-Vice Adm Jack Shanahan, a former director of the Center for Defense Information

In 2002, our Dear Leader (and our liberal media) started dishing dirt on Iraq. We were told that Saddam was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks (even though our intelligence agencies could find no such connection). Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (even though the most diligent inspections uncovered little or nothing). Saddam Hussein was a murderer and a tyrant - which he was, but that didn't stop the United States from supporting him for many years because (1) he was at war with Iran, a country we were miffed at, and (2) after the Iran-Iraq war was over, he kept a lid on internal dissent and kept the oil flowing for American oil companies. When the deal went sour, the drumbeat began; “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!!! MUSHROOM CLOUDS OVER WASHINGTON!!!!”

I do believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein (or “So-Damn-Insane” as one friend referred to him). Fact is, if all we'd wanted to do was depose him, we could have dispatched an elite tactical squad to pluck him out of the presidential palace and have him on a plane to Guantanamo before most Iraqis even got the news. In other words, the big mess that's been made of Iraq in our names and with our money didn't have to be.

It's been a while since Mr. Bush's much-televised “Mission Accomplished” celebration. Would that it were true, that American friends and loved ones (to say nothing of Iraqi civilians) were no longer getting killed or maimed, that our tax dollars were going to other things (like putting New Orleans back in order), that our administration were functioning more like an administration and less like a slapstick comedy troupe.

Now the drums are beating again for war with Iran. George Dubya has played the Weapons of Mass Destruction card again (“Nucular devices”), even though American intelligence has found that Iran abandoned their nuclear weapons program four years ago. Bush, Cheney and the usual gang of scoundrels are all hot to get us into another costly no-win war, probably just to thumb their nose at Hilary.

Between our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military is stretched pretty thin. If our half-witted power-tripper administration does decide to invade Iran, they're going to need fresh beef. Which of course means that high school and college kids all over the Land of the Free are going to be drafted.

If you do not care for the Bush-Cheney program, then you'd better speak up now. I understand that certain Senators have introduced bills forbidding invasion of Iran. A call to your senator would seem to be of vital importance right now. Find out how to contact your U.S. Senators by following this link:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Please do make a call, send a fax or send an e-mail now. Your life, the lives of your family members and the fate of your country may depend upon it.

Why There Is No Hope: Pride cometh before a fall

2007-10-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

"They make us feel indebted
For saving us from Hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell!"

- Stiff Little Fingers, "Suspect Device" (1978)

The Religious Right (which as you may know is neither) has been having some problems of late, so much so that people on the other side of the political spectrum are thinking that they've finally slain the dragon which Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, et. al. unleashed upon this nation beginning in the mid-1970's. Even the New York Times published a somewhat convincing eulogy.

I'm not sure that the hurricane of theocracy-or-worse has passed. I think we might only be in the eye of the storm. And so does free-speech fighter and sex columnist Susie Bright. She's written several articles on the tribulations which now plague the movement which ran roughshod over science, sex education, and ultimately turned America into a Soviet-style one-party state, if only briefly. Some excerpts from the latest one:

"...This is the movement that could be relied upon to do anything at the flick of an abortion-shaming or homo-hating switch. Get them on their high horse, with a sexy leather crop in their hands, and you had them sweating and frothing their way to the finish line...."

"... Successful missionary work encourages conceit, and aggression. It always does. When it was 'fun' to be a Bush Family supporter, when W. was a 'winner,' then being a fag-bashing bully and killing a few more abortion doctors was righteous. Bomb Iraq! Your credit card is limitless! Gas is cheap! National Guard duty is a cakewalk! Jesus did a lot of kicking ass and taking names. ..."

Read the whole thing here (and remember that articles which deal with politics vis a vis sexual issues may not be work-safe).

I've heard of auto-eroticism, but...

2007-10-31T09:38:00.001-07:00

According to the The Telegraph, a man in Scotland was arrested, and placed on a sex-offender registry for having sex with – a bicycle. (I can never look at a bike shop the same way again!)

While this man's sexual proclivities are somewhat unorthodox to say the least, did they warrant ruining his life by plastering his name and image onto the web and lumping him in with sex offenders (real or imagined)? Is getting off in a highly-unusual but essentially harmless manner really as bad as forcible rape? How does the English judicial system justify this kind of penalty for this kind of activity?

Why there is no hope, September 12th 2007 Edition

2007-09-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

There's a man whose name you need to know: James Howard Kunstler.

Mr. Kunstler writes, and writes very clearly and articulately, about economics, architecture, suburban sprawl and some kind of liberal nonsense called "peak oil" in a blog called "Clusterfuck Nation". (That's clusterfuck as in "very bad turn of events", not as in "group sex".) From the biography on his site:

" James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.""

One of Mr. Kunstler's frequently-made points is that we are as a nation headed for what the elder George Bush once referred to as "deep doo-doo". His exquisitely no-nonsense essays on our culture, our politics and especially our economy, delivered at the rate of one every Monday, are all worthwhile reading for anyone who suspects that things are a bit different than what we see on the news and that maybe we just might not be living in the Best of All Possible Worlds®. One in particular, written just two years ago, had a significant impact upon me me, kind of like a two-by-four upside the head. It is this one. Check out this excerpt:

"Americans were once a brave and forward-looking people, willing to face the facts, willing to work hard, to acknowledge the common good and contribute to it, willing to make difficult choices. We've become a nation of overfed clowns and crybabies, afraid of the truth, indifferent to the common good, hardly even a common culture, selfish, belligerent, narcissistic whiners seeking every means possible to live outside a reality-based community.

These are the consequences of a value system that puts comfort, convenience, and leisure above all other considerations. These are not enough to hold a civilization together. We've signed off on all other values since the end of World War Two. Our great victory over manifest evil half a century ago was such a triumph that we have effectively - and incrementally - excused ourselves from all other duties, obligations and responsibilities.

Which is exactly why we have come to refer to ourselves as consumers. That's what we call ourselves on TV, in the newspapers, in the legislatures. Consumers. What a degrading label for people who used to be citizens."

Is this guy on the mark, or full of beans? Why not read the rest of it, and his other essays, and see what you think?

Operation Coffeecup

2007-09-06T10:51:00.001-07:00

A conservative web site has posted this rather interesting artifact from very early on in the universal health-care debate. This recording was distributed by the American Medical Association to members of its Women's Auxiliary in the early 1960's.

Click this link, have a look at the record's liner notes, and give it a listen.

NOTE: For those who might be tempted to say certain things in certain web sites' comment sections, just remember, rational arguments accomplish a lot more than flame wars.

Who is the next Murrow, the next Cronkite?

2007-09-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

In a news media dominated by rah-rah cheerleaders for the administration and its policies, there is at least one newsman of the old school, someone for whom facts carry some weight. Someone who definitely calls a spade a shovel.

I just don't get how this guy has held up against Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter, etc. ad nauseum for so long. In the face of Faux News and Coulterama, this guy carries on much as Murrow would have if he were alive today. Not bad for someone who's nominally a sports commentator.

Carry on, Mr. Olbermann! You do us all proud!

Don't laugh too hard ...

2007-09-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

A moralistic radical-right-wing blowhard gets nabbed in an airport john doing exactly the sort of thing he publicly rails against. Bastard had it coming, right? Well unfortunately, it's not that simple.

According to this story, Senator Larry ("I'm not gay") Craig got busted not for openly soliciting sex for money as another member of Congress did, but for taking certain cryptic actions known primarily to gay men experienced at crusing. Apparently he neither did nor said anything openly sexual. Seems the undercover cops who busted him didn't know he was a prominent family-values Republican senator. They took him down because he was - a gay man cruising a public bathroom.

Like a lot of you, I enjoyed seeing this man, and others like him, getting exposed for the hypocrites that they are and receiving a generous dose of their own bad medicine. What I didn't like so much is the idea of authorities randomly victimizing gay people because - well, just because.

Knowingly arresting and criminalizing people who haven't actually violated the law is a frontal assault upon the rule of law itself. Why don't we put a halt to this kind of official misconduct before the Supreme Court upholds it?

WARNING - Cave-In Zone

2007-08-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

That bridge collapse in Minneapolis and that mine accident in Utah weren't the only disastrous cave-ins that occurred recently.

Here's how the Washington Post's editorial board described what happened in Congress:

"The Democratic-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law—or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions."

In honor of this outrageous wiping-of-ass with what's left of the Bill Of Rights, I offer the following open letter to every Democrat who's running for office (are you listening, Hilary?):

Dear (insert name of member of Congress here):

I have only 3 words to say to you – lead, or leave.

I have had enough of watching you and your colleagues piss away what few rights and liberties we still have. I have had it up to my keester with your confirming of blatantly anti-democratic Supreme Court justices, virtually pardoning an impeachable president by declaring impeachment “off the table” and making no serious effort to end the Iraq fiasco. Now you've given the green-light to KGB-style surveillance of any decent American citizen of whom the President and his henchmen simply do not approve. We gave you our trust in the last election, and now you've pissed it down a rat hole.

You probably think that your re-election is assured this November because, you think, who would vote for anyone as blatantly anti-liberty as the present-day Republicans? Right you are on that second point, but if you're going to let us down the way you've done thus far, I for one am going to do what voters did in droves during the dark ages of the 1980's – stay home. Yes, that's right. Why should I, or anyone bother pulling a lever (or punching a button on one of those easy-to-hack computerized voting machines) for you guys if you're only going to ratify the excesses, follies and flat-out criminal activities of the most anti-democratic (with a small "d") regime this country has ever had?

Now, I've been a registered voter since 1972. I have made it my business to vote in every general election. I believed that it was my right and my duty as an American. This November might be the first time I abstain of my own free will. Yes, you say, that's no way for the citizen of a democracy to behave. What democracy? If you don't care about voting to protect our liberties, then I don't care about voting to prolong your highly-paid, handsomely-privileged employment.

I mean it. Start standing up for us now, or get the fuck out of Washington.

===============================================

I want to make it perfectly clear that this letter is in no way directed at those members of Congress, of either party, who have consistently stood up for the rights and liberties which Americans have fought for over the last 231 years. If you are fortunate enough to have one or more of these people in your Congressional district, support them with everything you've got, including your vote.

The past is not a theme park.

2007-05-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

The past is not a theme park. Remember, the past was someone else's present. Whenever the nostalgia pimps get a hold of very select chunks of your elders' lifetime, you can bet they're doing some VERY heavy spin-doctoring of the facts, absurdly exaggerating the good points (and sometimes fabricating ones which never existed) and obscuring the bad points, making peoples' lives and indeed our very history look as glitzy and artificial as Disney World's “Main Street USA”.

Take for example the 1960's. the decade of my own childhood. Many of you have experienced it only through the popular media, so to most of you it's the decade of flower power, sexual abandon and drug orgies. To be certain, the latter part of that decade did see some downright revolutionary changes in attitudes toward sexuality. It saw the rise of a drug culture built at least partly around mind-expansion rather than anesthesia. It saw the maturation of rock music, the rise of fusion jazz, the establishment of electronic music as a serious art form rather than a novelty, and the mainstreaming, however briefly, of avant-garde music (the Columbia Masterworks and Nonesuch Explorer catalogs from that era were and still are something to check out). The first flickerings of what we now think of as “outsider” art happened in that decade. There were plenty of good times to be had, no doubt, the likes of which have never been seen before or since. But make no mistake, the 1960's were anything but a party. Sometimes they were downright scary.

Only two years into the decade, the world stood at the brink of Doomsday. The Cuban Missile Crisis, sparked by then-Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev's decision to station nuclear missiles not 90 miles from our shores in Cuba, threatened to touch off an all-out nuclear confrontation. The only things that saved us were then-President John F. Kennedy's cool-headedness and Premier Krushchev's wise decision to back off. I remember being sent home early from school on the first day of the crisis. I guess they must have thought that if World War 3 was going to break out that we should be vaporized along with our loved ones. I also remember those dumb-assed duck-and-cover drills you might have heard about, where you ducked under your desks and put your hands on the back of your neck in a laughable attempt to protect yourself from a nuclear blast. My home town had a lot of defense contractors in it, so it was reportedly in the top-20 targets favored by the Soviets. I remember asking my teacher what would happen if a Soviet missile scored a direct hit on the school. I never got an answer to that question.

A little over a year later, President Kennedy was assassinated, under what are still considered extremely shady circumstances. My 4^th grade recess was interrupted by a hastily patched-through radio announcement on the school's public address system, “The president is dead. The president is dead from his bullet wounds. Let us pray ...” My initial thought was “OK, whose idea of a sick joke is this?”, followed a few microseconds later by “Holy shit, it's not a joke...” Again, they sent us home early. I remember walking home with what felt like a hole in the pit of my stomach. I was only a kid, I knew nothing about politics. All I knew was that some bad man had killed the president, and I was scared.

The civil rights movements of the 60's is rightly regarded as a high point in our history. It was a time in which people who had resigned themselves to non-personhood or worse for decades (if not centuries) finally decided that enough was enough. Week after week there were reports of appalling violence perpetrated against people who were only demonstrating non-violently for the right to be treated as human beings.

Of course there was the
Vietnam War, the olive-drab cloud which hung over the whole decade and then some. The arguments in favor of it were quite shaky (sound familiar?). Thousands of men were drafted to fight and die in a war which was billed as a defense against Communist expansionism, but was really meant to maintain American control over that region by propping up a corrupt dictatorship. About 58.000 Americans didn't make it back. In early 1970, then-President Richard Nixon compounded the folly of the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia, and then claiming in a TV address that it wasn't an invasion.

And then there was Kent State. It happened in early 1970, so technically it wasn't a 60's event. But it was part and parcel with everything that had gone before. It was my generation's 9-11. The picture of victim Jeffrey Miller lying dead on the pavement is just as appalling and stomach-turning as those replayed-to-death clips of hijacked jet airliners plowing into the World Trade Center. I was a high school junior when I heard that Ohio National Guardsmen had opened fire on students demonstrating against the Cambodia incursion. Thirteen people were wounded, four killed. Some think it was an accident or a breakdown in command. Others have cited a direct order from the White House to then-Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to “discipline” the demonstrators at Kent State (and recent revelations would appear to bear that theory out). My first thought on hearing of the massacre were “That's it. My country has finally lost it.” My adolescent mind pictured more such massacres, concentration camps, and martial law. Other shootings later that month at Jackson State University did nothing to dispel my paranoia. Universities all over America shut down. Political pundits on both sides of the issue went ballistic. Impromptu talk shows on the local university's 10-watt student radio station varied from teary-eyed commentary to angry calls for justice, if not revenge. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young hastily cut a song about the massacre, You've probably heard it a million times. To the program director at your local “oldies” radio station it's just another song in rotation. To some of us back then, it was more like a primal scream.

“...Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago...” - Neil Young, “Ohio”, '© 1970 Silver Fiddle Music

I didn't realize it at the time, but what the band is singing about is revolution. It was fashionable to talk about revolution in those days (Frank Zappa referred to it as “This year's 'Flower Power'”). It was quite another to even consider an October Revolution-style uprising against the world's most powerful nation. No revolution ever materialized.

My take on the shootings is that the Nixon administration on down was simply resorting to one of the oldest crowd-control techniques that there is: If you want to keep 100 slaves in line, kill one of them, in a very public manner, I believe that the lethal firepower directed at students was purposely meant to terrorize dissidents into submission.

Go ahead and enjoy the music, the retro fashions and the other trappings of the 1960s and 70s. Just keep your head screwed on and take care not to be fooled by the tendency of the popular media and the advertising industry (same thing) to romanticize that era, or to trivialize the very real struggles of the very real people who lived in it.

ADDENDUM: In my haste, I neglected to mention two high-profile political assassinations, those of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That was due to error on my part. I certainly didn't intend to discount or minimize the importance of these events.

Back to the Middle Ages?

2007-04-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

-- H. L. Mencken

Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

-- D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries and advisor to President Bush.

As badly as I would like to, I'm not going to vent and rant and write a rambling screed about the sheer wrongness of the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the misleadingly-named and incredibly unrealistic Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, shepherded through a rubber-stamp congress by certain Republicans and their conniving, tax-exempt and sometimes closeted political allies a few years ago. There are plenty of bloggers, editorial columnists and others who are going to do a far better job of documenting and analyzing this outrage against our wives, our daughters and our mothers than I ever could. What I would like to briefly discuss instead is the slowly creeping dark cloud of joyous ignorance, glassy-eyed fanaticism, and malevolent, ends-justify-the-means cynicism that's not only at the root of the current "culture-war" jihad against not only abortion, but apparently sex itself.

You're probably already familiar with Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and like-minded individuals, and all the interesting things that they have been doing over the last 25 years or so. Your town's family-planning clinic has probably played host to a pro-life be-in over the last three decades. You may have even winced at the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church's congregation at the funerals of Iraq war soldiers. What you might not have heard of is The Christian Embassy, a radical ministry which has actually taken up permanent residence inside the heart of the Pentagon.

You also might not be aware of the so-called “megachurches” which have sprung up at an alarming rate all over America, actively recruiting law-enforcement officials and local politicians with little or no media coverage. Far from being just extremely large places of worship, they are training facilities for future generations of culture-warriors and breeding grounds for religio-fascist thought. These organizations sponsor summer camps which are indoctrination pressure-cookers for children as young as early-grade-school. One such camp is examined in unsparing detail in the documentary Jesus Camp.

Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, The Handmaid's Tale was a scary read back when it came out, but most of us believed that the constitution (and the Democratic party) would save us from the theocratic dystopia which it depicted. I don't have to tell you that a lot has changed since the mid-80s. If the current Supreme Court upholds abortion bans which contain no exceptions for protecting the life of the mother, what other established, fundamental rights are they capable of erasing?

Instead of attempting to detail the very real threat of theocracy myself, I have provided links, throughout this posting, to web sites which have examined and analyzed the situation in far greater detail. Check them out if you care to. Do some web-searching of your own. If you are a mainstream Christian, you might want to consider what these quasi-religious radical-right movements are doing to the faith that you were raised with. In any case, we need to think about what might be done to preserve what rights and liberties we still have.

Above quotes from - http://edkrebs.com/herb/

R.U. Sirius Interviewed by UFO Abductee!

2007-04-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

You probably already know about futurist/visionary/cultural analyst R.U. Sirius (who was actually an acquaintance of mine back in the day), through his webzine, his podcasts, his old magazine, Mondo 2000 or his books. Science fiction author Rudy Rucker's story blog flurb.net has published an interview with this cultural icon, conducted by alter-ego and flying-saucer-pilot-drinking-buddy Frank Shook. Below is a brief excerpt:

FRANK SHOOK: How many women have you fucked?

RU: Can you ever really tell for sure? Was it me doing the fucking, and were they actually women? My seed has been aborted many times. John Perry Barlow took great delight in telling Randall Terry, from Operation Rescue, all about it when we were all in the green room getting ready to be interviewed by Chris Matthews for a late night talk show called “NBC Night Focus” back in 1992. Rudy was there too. Incidentally, Terry – like me – spent his adolescence in Binghamton New York. And part of his story is that he took acid in high school. A friend of mine distributed most of the acid in Binghamton in the mid-70s when Terry was in High School. So I feel some vague quantum contagion might be afoot here between Terry and myself.

Check the full version of the interview at the link below:

http://www.flurb.net/3/3sirius.htm

Some Cosmic Truths about Vonage

2007-04-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

For those of your who haven’t already seen one of their inane TV commercials or received at least one of those flashy orange-and-white cardboard brochures in your mail at least once a week, Vonage is one of the bigger and better-known VOIP (Voice Over IP) telephone service providers. Simply put, VOIP is the technique of making the Internet function as a telephone system, the main advantage being that long distance calls to the USA and Canada - and a select few foreign countries as well - don’t cost anything extra. There are no toll charges, and the sound quality of each call is claimed to be as good as what Ma Bell and her sisters have been giving us with traditional telephone service. Sound too good to be true? Read on.

Their hardware needs help.

A Vonage box is typically a combination VOIP interface for their network and broadband router (you can get dedicated VOIP adapters for use with an existing router). Since you’re using the same Ethernet connection for VOIP and data, you definitely need a router in order to still use your Internet connection for its intended purpose. But no joke, I’ve had not one, not two, but four, count ‘em FOUR Vonage boxes “brick” on me. You know why? I was trying to do something complicated and exotic with them, something they were obviously never intended for. Are you ready to hear about the heinous abuse I inflicted upon these poor, unsuspecting plastic boxes? I tried to - - set up port forwarding! Yes, the very same thing that on-line gamers do in their sleep was just too great a stretch for these substandard contraptions from D-Link and, of all people, the venerable Motorola. The first of two Motorolas bricked while I was working on it because, unbeknownst to me and without any discernible warning whatsoever (no mention of it in the instructions that came with it either), it began downloading and installing firmware updates for itself. Using a device during a firmware update is a big no-no, but as I said, I was given no warning and no indication. After the fourth trip to the local DHL office to send the last dead one back, I wised up and got myself a decent stand-alone router, the so-called “Linux-compatible” model from Linksys which got good reviews and is apparentlymore robust than the identical-looking models which they sell at the mall, and certainly more so than the bulk-purchase cheapies from Vonage. My Vonage service works just as well (or as lousy) as ever. Setting up port forwarding on the Linksys box was only slightly more difficult than sneezing. I set it up, and it just - ran, as it continues to do. As for the Motorola box, sound-signal strength and voice quality is all right, There is a faint, and slightly annoying high-pitched whine in the background on all calls, whether local or long-distance. Think fair-to-decent small-town telephone company.

Customer service? What’s that?

I have nothing whatsoever against India, or her people. I have everything against calling up Vonage’s (and too many other American technology firms') “customer care” department and being connected to someone halfway around the world who has difficulty speaking understandable English and understanding simple statements from my end. Now, if I go to Hong Kong or Mumbai and I can’t speak the local tongue, that’s my tough luck. But when I buy a service from an nominally American firm which serves a primarily American clientele, I have the right to expect that the person on the other end will be able to speak English at least well enough to complete any routine transaction. Their standard phone greeting is “Hello, this is Bill” or “Hello, this is Jane”. Come ON, Vonage, I wasn’t born yesterday, OK? These people apparently know little or nothing about computers, definitely a bad thing for an Internet-based business. I run Linux on my computer (Ubuntu, if you must know) and I was having some compatibility issues with my browser and their router’s admin screens. I asked one of these people if he was familiar with Linux. I may as well have asked him “What is the iron content of the soil on the Martian moon, Phobos?” As with all outsourced “customer service”, many phone-slaves – I mean representatives - read all responses to any customer questions from pre-written scripts. Scripts!!!. That means if your question is the least bit unusual (like my Linux question), they either have to try and wing it (mostly without success) or connect you to a supervisor, who might know even less. Hey, Vonage, if doing business as dirt-cheaply as possible regardless of the consequences is what you’re after, why not just drop the pretense of “customer care” altogether and have all your phones answered by machines that do nothing but play back those same scripts as read by American voice actors (“For questions about port forwarding, press 3").? At least they’d be easier to understand. And it would be easier on those poor schlubs over in Bangalore, who now must bear the brunt of your customers’ justifiable anger and frustration every single day.

Still quite a few bugs in the system.

My sister once tried to contact me at my Vonage number via her cell phone. Big mistake, bad combination, digital cell phones and VOIP. I heard nothing but unintelligible smears of sound which sounded vaguely like my sister’s voice. I said that if this in fact was her calling, that she should call me back ASAP, which she did. No problem on the second try (she may have been calling from her ground line on the second try). Other calls come through with annoying and confusing slap-back echo. When you talk, you hear your own words a split-second later. Sometimes when you finish a call, your phone will ring. You pick it up, and there's no one on the line.

More cosmic truths, as they are revealed to me.

Piracy, schmiracy

2006-11-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

Lately there’s been a lot of gum-flapping about “music piracy”. The RIAA has put out DVD’s containing lavishly-produced infomercials about the evils of file-sharing and the story of The Kid Who Got Caught who now has to spend the rest of his life flipping burgers to pay his legal bills and fines. Each new major-label release comes festooned with a conspicuous FBI Anti-Piracy Warning (on one such release, the performer printed a disclaimer: “The artist does not endorse the message shown below”). Never mind that traditionally it’s the major record labels themselves who routinely take money out of the pockets of musicians. But I digress.

By now, we’re all familiar Apple placing “digital rights management” (DRM) crippleware into music that it sells via Itunes as well as with SONY and their criminal invasion of innocent customers’ computers with malicious “rootkit” software which they said was only meant to - you guessed it - CURB PIRACY. (Whatever happened to “two wrongs don’t make a right”?) It’s a jihad against fair use and even common sense, and we music consumers are THE ENEMY. How did we come to such a state of affairs? What’s going on here?

Back in the early 80's, cassette gear was really getting popular, largely thanks to SONY’s Walkman series of earphone-based portable cassette players, the granddaddies of the Ipod. Back then in those oh-so-analogue days, people would transfer their record collections to tape in order to listen to them on the go. Sometimes they’d tape copies of their albums for their friends which, whether the alkaloid-powder-enhanced record wonks acknowledged it or not, is how many people learned about new bands and different kinds of music. Then as now, commercial radio was too concerned with ratings and advertising to be bothered with breaking new music, at least not without the imprimatur of the major labels. Not to be denied their virtual monopoly power, the record company wonks swung into action. “Home taping is killing music, and it’s illegal!” trumpeted full-page ads in music magazines and on the backs of records, accompanied by a stylized Jolly Roger showing a cassette tape above the traditional crossbones. The record conglomerates attempted, with limited success, to charge customers a “tax” on tape decks and blank tapes, money to be paid directly to the record companies for music which consumers were presumably going to “pirate” using those items.

Skip ahead to the mid-90's. Along comes this kid Shawn Fanning and his new invention, a peer-to-peer file sharing site called Napster. It’s a pay site now, but back then it functioned a lot like Kazaa, Gnutella or Limewire. The major labels rallied their designer-suited troops just as they did in the early 80's. “Piracy! Theft!” the record executives all shouted when pressed on the subject. “Our jobs! Our limos! Our $500.00 lunches!” they whined softly to each other in private. The labels through their cartel, the RIAA, decided that Napster had to be stopped at all costs, and so the litigation began. This despite the fact that while Napster was going full-tilt, CD sales were actually UP - that’s right, up, by 4% as compared to before Napster’s arrival. According to PC Magazine’s John Dvorak, file-sharing services like the old Napster were proving to be excellent promotional vehicles. Peer to peer services also have the advantage of not being governed by the whims of media conglomerates who don’t know enough to get out of their own way (or as a friend once put it, “How come I can download David Bowie’s latest single on Limewire, but I can’t hear it on the radio?”). Before the shutdown of the old Napster, independent bands were actually using it to get their music out to potential audiences. After the shutdown of Napster, CD sales dropped by almost HALF. Was this what the record conglomerates were really shooting for?

To further illustrate my point: Several years ago, a friend shared one of his new CD’s with me. He did it the old-fashioned way, by sending me an audio cassette of it. That tape stayed in my car’s stereo for over a month. It was that good! So I searched out more releases by that group. In all, I bought 5 titles by that band. Net loss to the band - one sale. Net gain to the band - 5 sales. Who came out ahead in that deal? And if my friend had not “pirated” me their first album, I never would have even known that they even existed and never bought ANY of their releases, in which case: net loss to the band - one less fan.

Why do people still use the peer-to-peer networks? Why risk an unwanted visit from The Men In Black Who Know Everything About Everything That You Do? Well, it’s because the paid download sites are essentially virtual mall record stores. Paid download sites, having none of the space limitations common to stores, are free to host many more selections than a real-world store. Just the same, there are hundreds of songs by obscure or forgotten artists which will never be available on the paid sites. There are unreleased recordings which will never see the light of day except via peer-to-peer. While technology has moved by leaps and bounds, the whims of radio programmers, music marketers and focus groups remain just as intractable as ever. As long as things stay this way, there will always be an “underground” music economy.

For the record (also available on cassette and CD), I believe that downloading and sharing commonly-available commercially-released music is a waste of time and bandwidth. I would much rather use the web to explore music that hasn’t been overpromoted and overplayed. There are independent artists who post their music on sites like Garageband.com and Myspace. Unlike the major labels, these bands very much want people to download their music, not because they’re being charitable, but because they know full well that their chances of being played on Clear Channel radio or showing up at a mall chainstore are somewhere between nil and zip. The Web is the only kind of “broadcast exposure” they can hope for. Sure, a lot of them suck, but hey, so does plenty of major-label product, right? You have to “dig” for the good stuff just as you would if you were pawing through a bin full of vinyls or a shelf full of CD’s. The reward is finding music that you didn’t know you couldn’t live without until you found it.

Suppose it were true?

2006-10-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

What would happen if America went fascist?

There are those who assert for the millionth time that it couldn’t possibly happen here in the Land Of The Free. Then there are others who say that it has already happened and that the only difference between present-day America and Hitler’s Germany is that the ruling class is wearing designer suits instead of jackboots and armbands.

The parallels between Germany in the mid-1930's and the current New World Order are certainly disquieting to say the least. A leader who was appointed by high government functionaries rather than popular vote, the destruction of a prominent national landmark, in Germany’s case the Reichstag, in ours the World Trade Center, the domination of all branches of government by one party, and finally, the passage of a body of law intended to revoke all civil liberties at the leader’s whim.

Suppose it’s true? Is history repeating itself? Or is something bigger and more frightful in store?

Germany in the 1930's was a powerful, highly-advanced industrial country. Even so, it was minuscule compared to the United States, a typical European state roughly the size of the American state of Wisconsin. Hitler doubtlessly needed allies like Italy’s Mussolini and Spain’s Franco to get his war machine going. The United States is the strongest military power on the planet, with permanent bases on every continent. Alliances can’t hurt, but America is more than capable of going it alone (or going off half-cocked) if it so chooses.

Hitler had primitive versions of what we would now call ballistic missiles, but only conventional warheads for them to carry. America has had nuclear weapons for over 60 years. A fascist dictator in Washington could use the leverage of nuclear terror to get every other nation on the planet to do its bidding. Or he could nonchalantly nuke any nation which he viewed as an obstacle to his plans for world domination, or as a plum target for conquest.

World War II occurred in a world where the primary modes of telecommunication were telephone, telegraph, radio and on rare occasions, television in its infant stages. Business and government records were authored in handwriting or on typewriters. The Internet was a good four decades off. Computers and databases as we now know them did not exist. What the Nazis did have was mechanical devices which sorted punched paper cards (supplied throughout the war to Germany by IBM). They were used by the Nazis to hunt down and round up victims for the death camps and also at the death camps to oil the machineries of genocide. Every Nazi death camp had what we would now call an IT department. With the total information awareness now made possible through electronic information gathering, it’s easier than ever for the state to not only identify its opponents but to attack them without firing a shot or even drawing attention. All you have to do is get a little dirt on your opponents and quietly blackmail them into submission or exploit a little-known medical condition of theirs, or set up a trap based upon your target’s desires, character traits and weaknesses - the possibilities are endless.

Chemical warfare has been around since at least World War I when chlorine, phosgene and “mustard gas” were popular weapons of mass destruction. If Hitler had had the one-whiff-and-you’re-a-stiff nerve agents of the kind recently employed by Saddam Hussein or stockpiled by our own military, it’s safe to say that the outcome of World War II might have been a lot different. Biological warfare in the 1940's had not advanced much beyond the 18th century technique used by English colonists to wipe out native-North Americans by giving them blankets which had been used by smallpox patients. With today’s genetic engineering techniques it is now possible to engineer a so-called “ethnic” pathogen for use against any specific target population.

If America is indeed rocketing down the same path as Hitler’s Germany, the stakes are going to be much, much higher than in World War II. The threat is not only to basic civil liberties, but to the very character of world civilization, if not to human survival itself. There is no longer an opposing superpower to make American leaders think twice about militaristic adventures. In short, if America does come under classic fascism, the threat to ourselves and the world is going to be many orders of magnitude greater than it was even during the darkest days of the second World War in which it appeared as though the Axis powers might win.

A new dirty war, right here in America.

2006-10-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

By now, some of us have heard of The Military Commissions Act of 2006 which President Bush recently signed into law, giving him the right to pretty much kidnap and detain indefinitely anyone who he doesn’t like, without due legal process. Everyone from Federal judges on down has denounced this new law as a great leap backward toward the kind of barbarism we normally associate with Latin-American dictatorships, or fascist Europe during World War II.

I wonder, are These United States really getting ready to emulate Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, or Argentina during the notorious Dirty War of the mid-70's? Are our federal courts so heavily infested with Federalist-Society members and other radical rightists that they actually would uphold what amounts to the wholesale repeal of not only the Bill of Rights, but the rule of law itself? Is it really time to load our muskets or hastily pack a suitcase and get on a plane for anywhere-but-here? Or is there something a little more insidious going on here? Something more mundane and cynical?

Legal challenges to The Military Commissions Act are inevitable. Pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU, People For The American Way and MoveOn.org will certainly mount them, and soon. I have a hard time believing that Congress actually wants to turn America into a Stalinesque terror-state, not to say that it couldn’t happen. But I think the real reason for passing this almost absurdly totalitarian law is to sap the financial and manpower resources of the ACLU, PFAW, etc. for years to come by keeping them busy fighting what I believe will prove to be a patently unconstitutional and unenforceable piece of legislation. What does Congress plan to whip on us while the freedom lobbies are distracted? An end to the 8-hour day and the minimum wage? Heaping content restrictions upon our mass media to the point where innovators and dissenters merely give up rather than face financial ruin? Casting in stone the buying and selling of members of congress like so many pork bellies?

Misuse of our Military or Why There Is No Hope Installment 3

2006-08-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

There's this blogger, Greta Christina, who has written a posting about the war in Iraq, via a vis military preparedness for other crises which might come down the pike really soon, which ought to be syndicated in every major paper and might be if she had a better agent. Here's a link to it:

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2006/07/north_korea_and.html

(NOTE: Ms. Christina sometimes writes on subjects which may not be work-safe.)

Here we go again...

2006-08-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

As I write this, another plot by religio-terrorists to blow up airplanes and make fish food out of the hundreds of innocent people aboard them has been foiled. Authorities have nabbed dozens of would-be perpetrators. The “terror-alert” ratchets up to Code Red. Our stomachs tighten. President Bush’s approval rating inches up a few points.

What I’m about to say has been churning around in my brain since 9-11. I think that now is as good a time as any to finally say it in public.

About 10 years back, before there was a Transportation Security Administration, I took a flight to London with my family. I had with me my 35mm SLR camera with a yellow contrast filter over its lens; if you shoot black and white film outdoors without such a filter, the sky comes out flat gray with little cloud detail. Anyhow, I asked the security inspectors to please hand-check my photo gear, as I always do, and when one of them looked through the viewfinder, she went ballistic. She got in my face and started barking at me “Why is it yellow? Why is it yellow?” When I told my frequent-flyer cousin about this incident, she told me to cut these people some slack since they were under a lot pf pressure and only getting paid the same hourly wage as the high school kids who get us our fast-food cheeseburgers.

On a transcontinental flight in mid-2001, only a few weeks before 9-11, I needed to use the bathroom. Unfortunately the coach class bathroom had a long line in front of it. So I snuck into the first class bathroom which is just behind the plane’s cockpit. On leaving the bathroom, I saw, to my left, a door made of flimsy plastic on which was printed “Authorized personnel only” or words to that effect. I then realized, to my horror that this flimsy piece of plastic was the door to the airliner’s cockpit and that anyone could easily traipse through it and do God knows what.

Why did it take the catastrophe of 9-11-2001 (in which I lost a friend) to get the US Government to finally set up the dedicated transportation security force which should have been in place at least since the late 1960's when homesick Cubans started hijacking planes to their homeland? Why did regulation-phobic airlines fight the creation of the Transportation Security Administration tooth and nail? Why in this day and age is there not a rapid-deployment airport security force which can be mobilized to deal quickly and effectively with a threat such as the kind revealed today without having to force passengers to wait for hours or even days to get where they’re going?

I want your bail bond!

2006-07-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Remember the 80's schlock-pop opus "I Want Your Sex", which in the early lizard-brain, Pavlovian-response days of the AIDS epidemic elicited a knee-jerk condemnation from concerned citizens, for (horror of horrors) "promoting casual sex ", an allegation which its composer, George Michael, was only too glad to publicly deny, thereby increasing buzz and sales for his new record?

Well, it seems that the song's creator has fallen on rather hard times, as this article will attest:

London, England (AHN) - Singer George Michael has been arrested in London over the weekend under the suspicion of possessing drugs. Sex toys and masks were also found in his car, according to reports.

The former Wham! frontman was found slumped over the wheel of his car close to Hyde Park Corner early on Sunday morning. ...

Read the whole thing here:
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002581769

More spammer names and subject lines

2006-06-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Fresh from my inbox, here are some more incredible word combinations from people who really think we have excrement for brains, and who want to separate us from our money as quickly as possible, and play fast and loose with the English language in the process. My own comments are in italics.

Ultra Allure Pheromones will make women give you flowers.

- And other things, hopefully...

With our Viagra Soft Tabs you can crack nuts with your penis.

- I’m not sure that’s the best way to impress a date.

You don't know what is the best revenge for your ex girlfriend.

- I understand she's bought an AK-47...

If you cum with Spermamax on July 4th, people will take it for the firework.

- Now, I’d definitely pay to see that during the national anthem!

Erections are still possible. compress

- No, no, that’s the opposite of what you need to do...

hree we cmoe!

This could fix your entire relationship or marriage. exorcist

- Hiring one might be the best idea here.

A hill under the bad cover

clerical sorbet

Skinny cooks can't be trusted

air conditioned umbilical cord

Finger H. Radio

More coming soon to an inbox near you.

History of Rock, as viewed by a 1980's college student

2006-04-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

The cartoon shown here is from a now-defunct student publication called "Crooked Beat".

Click on the image to enlarge it.

(Copyright 1984 by Joel Peterson)

Don't worry, it's only a liberal myth.

2006-04-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

I originally posted the following play-by-play account to a USENET newsgroup back in 1998 in response to a rather nasty spate of tornadoes, not often seen in upstate NY.

I was sitting on my friend Keith's front porch tonight, sipping a glass of water and chatting with him and a mutual friend when a thunderstorm rolled through. It looked a lot like a typical upstate NY summer squall. The sky darkened and there was thunder. LOTS of thunder and way more lightning than I'm used to seeing. The trees across the street started shaking, swaying and gyrating like weeds in the gusty winds which pummeled them. Rain came down in sheets. If I'd left the porch to get something out of my car, parked directly in front of Keith's house, I would have been soaked to the skin. A leak in the porch roof, which usually just dripped when it rained, poured like a bathroom shower. After about 5 minutes of that, hail anywhere from pea-size to cateye-marble size clattered down onto ground and the porch roof. The yard and the street went white in a matter of minutes.

After 20 minutes or so, the storm abated. It turned out that this was just the opening act. Another storm, almost identical to the one before it, only much stronger, cut loose. More rain, more hail, and a lightning bolt which struck less than 2000 feet away, which sounded like a rifle shot amplified 1,000 times. This all happened not once but 6 more times. I had to drive home, 8 miles, through all of this. I saw husky, almost perfectly straight bolts of lightning (no forking) hit the tops of area mountains as I drove by them. I saw clouds the likes of which I never saw before in this area. The sky looked like a grainy b&w photograph. I had to stop for gas on the way home. Fortunately, the gas station/convenience store I chose had sheltered pumps and a sheltered entrance. As I waited in line inside to pay for my fill-up, I heard a muffled roar, like when an air-conditioning unit starts up, except that this was much louder. I asked the cashier if it was in fact the store's A/C unit. She confirmed what I already instinctively knew - that what I was hearing was the sound of freakishly heavy rain hitting the roof of the gas station. It was so heavy that there was no way I could continue my drive home until it let up.

One thought I had was "God, these storms are intense. I hope we don't get a tornado". Well, I never saw a one myself, but I learned on that evening's news that not one but several tornadoes had hit the area and a lot of people in outlying areas just narrowly escaped injury. (Twisters do seem to hit in outlying areas here when they occur, though in 1992 one wrecked a steel warehouse building and snapped an 80-year-old maple tree clean in half.). One TV news program showed an amateur video of one twister passing within about 100 feet of their backyard. That's as close as I ever want to come to seeing a real twister. Our local newspaper (singular) showed pictures of several peoples' houses reduced to rubble. I can only thank whatever greater entity there is up there that my home, or those of anyone else I knew was not among them. It makes me violently ill to contemplate those people losing not only their homes, but family records, keepsakes of past events in their lives, and book, record or other collections, all literally blown away by this otherworldly force. One local tv station had its building partially demolished (while the news anchors were still on the air), all of its broadcast equipment ruined by the resulting rain damage, and its 600-foot antenna tower and satellite dishes trashed. It and 2 local radio stations which were renting space on the tower got knocked off the air.

Our county executive said in a press conference that evening that this was the worst spate of tornadoes we've had in this area since 1936; that we've had only 3 confirmed twisters here since then and yesterday. A friend of mine was visiting relatives in one of the worst-hit areas, but apparently the storms missed them. I was relieved to hear she was okay. Most people I knew only heard of the twisters on the news. I guess we were damn lucky.

I used to love thunderstorms. They were a part of summer for me. Now when they predict thunderstorms - as they're doing for tomorrow and Wednesday, I'm going to be looking over my shoulder...

This global climate change thing isn't funny anymore.

--

I drove through some of the areas hit by the storms several weeks afterward. The twisters weren't the F5 monsters that occur in the Midwest which devour whole towns in minutes, they were only F1's or F2's which lacked the power to reach into the valley I lived in and mostly hit surrounding hills. Even so, the damage they did was barely comprehensible. Several stands of trees looked as if Godzilla had stepped on them. In one spot, a twister had ripped the pavement off a road before tearing into a small house nearby, its facade gone and its interior exposed to the elements. Someone, presumably its owner, had spray-painted "There's always hope" on an interior wall.

Whenever someone makes the mistake of associating the current trend toward more extreme weather with global climate shift, he gets shouted down, she gets told that it's only a myth, and the factories and SUV's keep right on chugging along. Garbage-mouthed pundits and talk-show hosts hurl salvo after salvo of invective. Business-as-usual trumps common sense. Will it take wholesale environmental catastrophe to shake up the careless profiteers who prop up the status quo?

The e-Mail tax: It's not an urban legend anymore.

2006-03-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

America On-Line, that 5000-pound gorilla which has dominated internet access and has been littering our landscape with plastic and metal waste for many years now wants to seriously degrade the quality of our internet communications.

Apparently, AOL wants to create a two-tiered e-mail system where mass-mailers (read: spammers) who pay an exorbitant shakedown fee to AOL will have thir messages receive top priority while those of the lowly AOL home and business user will be shunted off to AOL's slow lanes and spam buckets.

If this scheme catches on, let's put it this way, if you liked the U.S. Postal service with their regular (until recently) as-clockwork rate increases, you're going to love this latest scheme by mammoth corporations to milk the Internet for every penny it can possibly scam. The logical conclusion of this plan is costly, mediocre service for average users and total domination of net communications by advertisers and corporations which exist to meet their needs, not ours. Kind of like the way television is now.

I would like to suggest that you read up on this odious proposal and do something about it before the free and open internet we now take for granted becomes just a fond memory.

The Oil Commissars Own Us, Lock Stock and oil barrel, or Why There Is No Hope, Installment 2

2006-03-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

I originally wrote this as a comment to a posting on WFMU's Beware of the Blog:

Last spring, someone in an SUV (who may have been talking on a cell phone) rear-ended me as I waited at an intersection to merge onto a main street. My car, a compact, had its rear end flattened. The other driver's car, a massive SUV, wasn't even scratched. WHY do people drive these overpriced, elephantine porkmobiles? In the mid-1960's, gas-hungry "muscle cars" with massive engines were the rage. Even so, they had far better styling and handling. A Ford Mustang Shelby, an Oldsmobile Delta 88 or a Dodge Charger had the kind of style and class that these boxy, butt-ugly excuses for vehicles never will.

The problem with automotive transport is that, for most Americans there is simply no viable alternative. In a place like New York City, you can hop a subway and (usually) get where you need to go in rapid order. Here in upstate NY, public transportation sucks, plain and simple. A trip that takes 15 minutes by car takes a whopping 45 minutes or even longer by bus. That's because underfunded public transit systems have to make do with an inadequate number of buses, which must cover large swaths of populated areas, following routes along traffic-light-ridden main streets, or following labyrinthine paths through residential areas. Smaller buses or "jitneys" could speed things up in residential areas, but no legislature will allot ther money for them or take the necessary steps to put them on the road. More buses would permit more express runs to common destrinations like shopping malls, but again, the government's will and wallet just aren't there. And if you happen to live in the country (because housing costs in town are just too damn high), there's one or maybe two buses a day, if you're lucky.

And don't even talk to me about Greyhound. As the late singer/songwriter Harry Chapin once sang, "It's a dog of a way to go". They run their buses when they want to, not necessarily when you need them. If they don't see any profit in running buses to your home town, you're out of luck. Their prices are exorbitant for the mediocre level of serivce which they deliver, and they never let you forget that you're a captive audience.

One local transit bus driver said to me, about 15 years ago, that when the price of gas goes to $5.99 a gallon, then and only then will Americans start thinking seriously about public transport. I believe that the current status quo will only change when the oil commisars, their overpaid lobbyists and their bought-and-paid-for allies on capitol hill get booted out of the halls of government.

Pandora's Infinite Jukebox

2006-02-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

Whatcha doing?

Listening to this new web site, pandora.com

Is it a download site?

No. It’s a custom radio site.

A what?

You feed it the name of one or more bands or sings that you like. Then it searches for other music that it thinks you’d like. For instance, I programmed in Buzzcocks, The Clash, and a few other 70's punk and New Wave bands, and now it’s cranking out 70's, 80's and 90's punk tunes by not only Buzzcocks, but the Toy Dolls, The Lillingtons, The Sex Pistols, Chron Gen, Black Flag and Green Day.

Green Day?

Well, there are probably still a few bugs in the system. It’s kind of new. But it still beats the crap out of shelling out for satellite radio.

So I can hear anything I want for free?

Well, not exactly. They choose the songs, though you can always skip ones you’d rather not hear, and you can edit your “seed” song list to change the flavor of the stream. If you want to hear anything fairly obscure, they might not have what you’re looking for.

In other words, don’t throw out those old 7-inchers?

Right. But they’ll do better by you than the local Clear Channel top-40 FM station or MTV any day.

I stopped watching MTV when I got a life!

I stopped watching it when I got a job. Pandora saved my butt when my boss banned playing CD’s in our workstations.

Because of that Sony Music rootkit thing?

You got it! It was pretty dismal around the office for a while!

You know, I’m wondering, who’s running this thing?

The Music Genome Project.

I mean who’s paying for it? The rights to all these tunes must cost a lot.

Not sure. Their FAQ doesn’t say. Their about screen says “At Pandora Media™ (formerly Savage Beast Technologies™), we have a single mission: To help you discover new music you'll love.” They’ve got links to Amazon.com and Itunes on their site. I guess it’s a marketing operation.

Or a mind-control operation.

Say what?

Think about it, if they can gather information on the kinds of music that millions of people are listening to, then they’ll be able to figure out what the country as a whole is thinking. Then they can pass the info along to the govermnent, who can use it to figure out how to get away with whatever it wants to get away with and how best to do it. It’s demographic science on a newer and much more intimate, invasive level. And as far as we can tell, all we’re doing is listening to free music.

What are you rattling on about?

...Or they can figure out who the liberals are. They’ll check out the kinds of music that each subscriber listens to. Think about it. They scientifically know what kinds of music a peace activist, a free-speech advocate or a secular humanist is most likely to listen to. Then they can come around and get us one by one.

Jesus, give me a break! You see Homeland Security agents under every dirty sock! Yeah, they probably are collecting information about what we listen to, and they probably are passing it along to Amazon, Itunes, and other music marketing entities. At least I sure hope they are. I’m so damn sick and tired of a handful of overfed, designer-suited, expense-accounted record company wonks with 50-dollar haircuts and drug habits telling us “what we want to hear”! If web sites like pandora.com shake up the business-as-usual of the music industry, and make the radio conglomerates finally sit up and take notice of what we REALLY want to hear, meaning that commercial radio might, just might become listenable again, then I’m all for it! I don't mind the free music either!

More Spammer Names and Subject Lines

2006-01-30T23:25:00.000-08:00

Coming soon to an inbox near you!

Lola Lyon Or change of virgin - I’d pay to see a movie with that title!

Get it now - Cialis Angel - Gee, just like the tooth fairy!

Saddest J. Umpires - Must be working at a Mets game...

Your boss = no more - Cybernetic hit men?

Easy to find the software you're looking for. demented - Demented is what I usually am after installing it.

Renovation J. Reconditioned - I’ll bet HE feels like a new man!

Snooze and Loze Inc.- Don’t buy stocks from these guys.

Subject: Of rain he disjunctive prosy

Kiev U. Mentally - A cerebral Chernobyl.

Subject: Sex and The City blood - Vampire metrosexuals! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

It never ends...

Found images, installment one.

2006-01-14T18:24:00.000-08:00

I found this card in an antique shop in upstate NY.

The Very Big Stupid is still on the march!

2006-01-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning my room a few days ago when I noticed a book which I’d been looking for for some time sitting underneath my bed. It was Frank Zappa’s autobiography. I opened the book to a place toward the back of it that I’d marked using an old telephone company bill envelope. I’ll let you read the following passage let you decide for yourself whether what Frank wrote back in 1989 is still relevant today.

From THE REAL FRANK ZAPPA BOOK:

"...Here it comes, folks! Watch it grow! One day, the BIG STUPID goes to a PTA meeting, winds through the PTL Club, wends its way to the White House, spreads out from the Oval Office like a cow flop into the judiciary system, dribbles out onto the desks of BIG BUSINESS, and the next thing know we've got THE VERY BIG STUPID.

THE VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D Department.

I can't think of any developing nation with a genuine 'fondness' for America. People in these countries see America as threat to their national security; they see US as an 'Evil Empire'. Everything Reagan said in the early days about Russia is descriptive of our country, viewed by a developing nation.

Because we possess THE VERY BIG STUPID, they know there is always the possibility that we might use it on them - accidentally.

Folks, over the years we have developed a first-strike capability with this hideous weapon, and have already deployed it several times, disguised as Reagan Administration 'foreign policy'.

Some people in the Imaginary Heartland of America. say "Who gives a shit? They ain't going to get us. They ain't coming over here. Why, some of 'em don't even have air-o-planes."

That kind of guy has bought stock in the THE VERY BIG STUPID, and has reaped a philosophical dividend which states on its face that, as a Special Christian Nation, we have the right to stomp all over the other guys (Manifest Destiny). God is on Our Side, and we're supposed to do this, because we're the only creatures sophisticated enough to bring peace and sanity to the rest of the world. Pheeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuwwwwww!"

RIP the JACKER

2005-11-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

Just this morning as I was perusing an e-flyer from Circuit City, I happened to notice an ad for a new kind of digital music service. It’s called “Get Digital” and the service is the mass-ripping of large collections of CD’s. No joke, they want to charge you to rip your CD’s and convert the music to MP3 files, for your Ipod, car MP3 player, etc.

Now, the first question in my head is, why would anyone pay someone to do something you could do just as well and for free at home? Even yuppies who are tied to a laptop or cell phone 24/7 can usually find a few minutes to slip a favorite CD into that laptop’s CD-ROM drive and rip it. Get Digital’s prices range from $1.49 per disc for 50 to 200 discs, to 99 cents per disc for 400 or more (if you want bitrates over 256 Kbps, that costs a few cents extra). Now, I was never that good at math, but if you send these guys 1,000 of your precious music CD’s, that adds up to, let’s see, $990.00. Not including the cost of shipping the darned things. And speaking of shipping of shipping, do you really trust the postal service or UPS to handle your precious music collection with care, and not lose it? I didn’t think so!

If this service catches on, there are other specters lurking on the horizon. Will the RIAA in its infinite greed and arrogance mandate a kind of DRM (that’s “Digital Rights Management”, or “Digital Ripoff Method”) which would make home-copying of CD’s impossible, forcing you to mail away your music to someplace like Get Digital, who will doubtlessly be strong-armed into charging “use royalties” on top of their existing fees by cocaine-addled record company wonks? Will money from use royalties rightfully belonging to artists like say, Leo Kottke, Frank Zappa and Thievery Corporation instead end up going to whoever’s at the top of the RIAA sales charts, as has always been the case? Will the resulting MP3's be programmed to disappear from your player after a pre-set time?

Let’s hope that this super-consumer-soaker scheme goes the way of the 8-track tape, real soon.

The high cost of mall jobs

2005-11-20T16:22:00.000-08:00

Recently I saw the movie "Wal-Mart – The High Cost of Low Price". Through interviews with independent business operators, the movie describes how the arrival of a Wal-Mart in a Midwestern town guts the local economy by undercutting local businesses. Wal-Mart workers (or Wal-Martyrs as some people call them) go into detail about their minimal-pay, about being forced to work off-the-clock (read: for free), about the company's all-but-useless high-deductible health "benefits" and – this is the kicker – how they often have to turn to public assistance (with the encouragement of their managers) just to make ends not quite meet. All of this against a backdrop of Wal-Mart’s CEO rhapsodizing to stockholders about how virtuous and socially-responsible the company which they have invested in is. You don’t have to look too far to find out if the film’s assertions are correct. As excerpts from local television news programs included in the movie prove, the media is full of corroborating evidence.

I certainly don't disagree with the film's basic premises, that the 21st-Century robber-barons who run this giant corporate octopus are ruining lives and communities. But as far as I can see, Wal-Mart’s business practices are only slightly more egregious than those of any other national chainstores. Furthermore, the detrimental effects of chainstores upon local economies has been a fact of life long before Sam Walton’s Arkansas discount store chain went national.

Back in the early 1960's, a developer was planning to build a suburban-style shopping plaza (what we would now call a strip-mall) only a few minutes from downtown. My father, a very active participant in the local business community, tried to warn every retailer he knew about the adverse effect this would have on their businesses. He suggested that they buy up the land before the developers could get hold of it and donate it to the city as a park. They pooh-poohed my father's advice, The subsequent construction of the shopping plaza, capped by the arrival of the giant discount chain Grand-Way, sent downtown's retail economy into a steep downward slide from which it has never recovered.

Retail sales used to be a respectable profession with potential for advancement, not the dead-end McJob it has largely become. For instance, when you walked into a camera shop in the 1960's, the people behind the counters were either photographers themselves or at the very least knew what you were talking about when you asked for anything more specialized than a roll of film. When you went to the local electronics store to buy a stereo or a TV, the salespeople there had some background in electronics. No business operator of that day in his right mind would have hired a salesperson who had no knowledge of what he or she was selling. So, what happened?

In the mid-1950's, a little hamburger stand near Chicago called McDonald’s started raking in the bucks by selling cheap hamburgers, and milkshakes by the carload. When Ray Croc bought the business, he made some fundamental changes. Out went the skilled - and highly-paid - personnel, like short-order cooks. In went an assembly-line-like system whose individual tasks were so dumbed-down that unskilled minimum-wage earners could perform them. As the fast-food chain and others like it grew by leaps and bounds over the next 20 years, the management of other corporations watched in awe, and said to themselves “Hey! I want some of that!”. The chain stores which displaced traditional retailers over the last 30 years employ much the same business model as McDonald’s; reduce skilled tasks to a series of simple routines, hire cheap, unskilled workers and watch the money roll in. It apparently has worked, because that is how nearly all national mass-market retail chains do business now.

The makers of Wal-Mart - The High Cost of Low Price also took Wal-Mart to task for breaking with founder Sam Walton’s ideal of buying American, and sourcing much of its merchandise from China, which is known for extremely low wages and deplorable working conditions. Actually the “made in China” issue has been around since at least the mid-1980's. About that time, CBS aired an installment of “60 Minutes” which outlined how Chinese manufacturers were undercutting American manufacturers, putting many of them out of business. The program featured a business encounter with a representative of one Chinese manufacturer, who informed her American client, on-camera, that quality control in her employer’s factories was enforced through beatings of workers who failed to meet quality-control standards.

My own experiences working in the modern retail industry spoke volumes about it. At one mall job, after explaining to my boss that I had skills and experience with cameras, recorded music and home entertainment gear (which I did have and still do), he assigned me to cover the automotive department, even though at the time I had never worked on a car. At another I was the only one in my department who knew anything about the camera or computer equipment we were selling, apart from whatever was printed in the weekly sale flyer. The pay at these mall jobs was whatever the minimum wage was at the time give or take a few pennies. Benefits were non-existent. Only a handful of commission salespeople in departments which sold big-ticket items worked full-time. Management often treated my co-workers and I as if we were petty criminals or mental defectives. Each company reminded us, and reminded us often, that we were expendable and that they could (and often did) force any of us out on a whim. One particular employer used a sure-fire cost-cutting tactic. When they decided that they had no further use for you, instead of laying you off or firing you, they simply cut you down to four hours of work per week in order to force you to quit so that you couldn’t collect unemployment insurance. Unions? Never heard of 'em. At least partly as a result of the way they were treated by management, my mostly high-school and college-age co-workers never took their jobs seriously and it showed in the mediocre level of service they delivered. Customers' simple questions about products often got answered with an indifferent "I don't know", in no small part because we never received any information from the company about the things that it sold. Management just hired us and put us in whichever department they chose and left us to fend for ourselves. One of my co-workers was an older woman whose demeanor was the very epitome of resignation. “A job is a job is a job” was what she would often sigh whenever our break-room conversations turned to work-related issues.

America cannot afford to put up with Wal-Mart’s current business practices, no two ways about that. Wal-Mart cannot be permitted to merrily trash local economies and soak taxpayers by letting welfare agencies feed and house their underpaid work force. But as bad as it certainly is, Wal-Mart is not unique. Wal-Mart’s issues are merely the big-screen version of what is wrong with America’s “service” economy. Realistic minimum-wage laws (also known as living wages), genuine fair-labor practices enforced by law, and unionization of retail workers are the only true long-range solutions to the sorry situation of not only Wal-Mart workers but American service-sector workers in general.

Actual spammer names and subject lines

2005-11-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

Those pestilential junk e-mails for everything from counterfeit pharmaceuticals to bogus debt relief schemes are usually sent with fake usernames, some of which are generated randomly by computer. Some are sent from non-English-speaking countries, which also results in some interesting word combinations. A few examples of this uniquely 21st-century accidental-art form are presented here. Everything you see below is a sender name unless otherwise noted.

Nonindustrial G. Landscape

Well, that would describe most of the Northeast, wouldn’t it?

The do so wirecutters (subject line)

Yes, from the same people who brought you “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!!”, a cartoon series about a band of superhero electricians!

Loudspeaker F. Tinny

Don't buy a stereo from this guy.

Sex and The City spacecraft

Omigod...Metrosexuals from outer space! Run for it!!!!

More to come, I'm certain.

THE HELLBOUND TRAIN

2005-11-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

21st Century Edition

A CEO slumped in his executive chair,
Having drunk more Martinis than he could bear;
So he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on the Hell-bound train.

The engine with sweatshop workers’ blood was damp
And was brilliantly lit by a plutonium lamp;
A demon, for fuel, shoveled Iraqui bones,
While his cell phone rang with a thousand ringtones.

The boiler was filled with Coors lager beer
And Grover Norquist was the engineer;
The passengers were listening to Motley Crue-
Republicans, televangelists, John Roberts too,

Owners of sweatshops, Amway shills,
The people who sell us those overpriced pills,
Michael Savage fans spoiling for a fight
All gathered together-O God, what a sight!

While the train rushed on at an awful pace-
The greenhouse gases scorched their hands and face;
Bigger and denser the housing tracts grew,
As faster and faster the engine flew.
Louder and louder the cluster bombs crashed
And brighter and brighter the missiles flashed;
Hotter the global-warmed air became
Till the clothes were stuck to each quivering frame.

And out of the distance there arose a yell,
"Ha, ha," said Norquist, "we're getting near Hell"
Then oh, how the passengers all shrieked with pain
And begged Grover Norquist to stop the train.
But he capered about and danced for glee,
And laughed, and took some ecstasy.
"My faithful friends, you have done your jobs well
So I’m having you all at my condo in Hell

"You've attacked the innocent, robbed the poor,
The downsized workers you've turned from your door;
You've put all your money into offshore banks,
The money you’ve made selling bombs, guns and tanks
"You've justice scorned, and corruption sown,
And trampled your dear planet down.
You have murdered, cheated, plundered, and lied,
And mocked at humanity in your chicken-hawk pride.

"You’re all going first class, so I'll carry you through,
For it's only right you should have your due.
Why, the Wal-Mart workers get paid what they earn,
So I'll land you in Hell and watch you burn,

"Your flesh will waste in the flames that roar,
The pundits will torment you forevermore."
Then the CEO woke with an anguished cry,
His clothes wet with sweat and his hair standing high.

Then he prayed as he never had prayed till that hour
To be saved from his sin and the pundit’s power;
He stopped outsourcing to points far and wide
And moved his company’s operations stateside
Provided health care (how the workers rejoiced!)
Welcomed labor unions and gave workers a voice
He divested his holdings in war industries
And stopped donating to Focus on the Family
And his prayers and his deeds were not in vain,
For he never rode on that Hell-bound train.

-Anonymous,
revision by Doctor B.