My Pants

Holy shit! Here we go...

2010-03-30T18:08:00.000-05:00

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

Just a matter of time...

Imminent return?

2010-02-23T23:55:00.002-06:00

Recent developments that have affected my posting:

Divorced
General depression and malaise
RESPA Reform
Return to acting
2 shows back-to-back

I feel a return to normalcy coming and I hope to get back here soon.

I've given up the idea of starting over on a new blog. There's no legal reason to do so, since my ex-wife and I have returned to civil discourse. Getting rid of lawyers helps immensely in that regard. I like the name. And, of course, laziness is a factor.

The New Orleans and atheist blogospheres are doing just fine without me, but, as always, in need of more commas and the occasional shit-stirring.

Hopefully, I'll have something of substance soon.

I really needed this

2009-07-10T22:37:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I stumble upon a bright, shiny, happy piece of the internet that makes me laugh like a hyena and forget all of my problems for a minute. Lately, a minute is more of a respite than ever.

From Something Awful
Nothing goes together quite like "FUCK YOU FAGGOT" and "GOD BLESS." It's the right wing Internet's version of peanut butter and chocolate.

If you don't know Something Awful, you should.

It's groups like this one that fill me with hope for the future of this nation.

All on a Mardi Gras day...

2009-02-24T11:45:00.004-06:00

Miss Antoinette K-Doe died this morning. She was a wonderful woman and a singular New Orleans character. I met her for all of ten minutes one weekend afternoon after the storm and I can tell you this - the city sang through her heart. Even in the gutted shell of the Mother in Law Lounge, she was a bright light who made everyone feel like family.

Goodnight, Miss Antoinette. The city, she will not be the same without you.

MTA'holes

2008-12-08T11:58:00.007-06:00

The braggadocio me says, “Yep, I called it!” The old fart me blames texting for the idiocratic inability to have a memory or attention span that could possibly reach back to April. April! The frustrated civic writer in me wants to learn three foreign languages just to have a large enough vocabulary to throttle these pricks in print and destroy them.

Again, we just went through this in April. April! In my piece, Congestion Pricing: Be A Snot-Nosed Rich Prick, I spelled out a near epic list of arguments that should have come up in the battle to keep New York City’s East River and Harlem River crossings free from the disgustingly greedy power-monger lies and their dollar sign, cartoon eyeballs. Moreover though, debunked point after debunked moronic point was expressed as one common warning. I warned that congestion pricing initiatives would keep popping up again and again, with new names, new ways to mitigate objections, and new efforts to grab our hard-earned, recession pinched cash from the thin air left in our pockets. Never, though, in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be facing the same deplorable classists and their crusade to wrench money, if even through our collective anuses, less than seven months after the exact same proposed methodology was laughed out of Albany. Seven months! They’re baaaa-aaaack, at least a veritable cultist subset of them.

This time around, it’s the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, that’s out to do it. Yes, it’s the same Metropolitan Transit Authority mentioned in my historical Triborough Bridge argument. This is the same MTA, the company, that already controls that bridge and others, all the NYC subways, and all the NYC buses. Despite their near constant subway and bus fare hikes in my dozen years here, their recent takeover of all the private bus companies and routes within the city limits, their never ending push for folks to use mass transit, their massive job eliminations and rolling token booth closures, their near triennial bridge toll hikes, and their mass marketing of subway themed products that did not exist just a decade ago, they are somehow broke again. Functionally on the heels of their last birthed subway and bus fare hike that was supposed to quash their then alleged deficit, instead rumored to actually have been a multi-million dollar surplus amidst their public refusal to allow NYC to examine their books, the MTA'holes are now claiming a new 1.9 billion dollar budget gap that is estimated to reach 3 billion by next year. I guess your last fare hike didn’t work!

To close this gap, they will use the bailout driven economic environment to request rescue funds from city and/or state sources. When they don’t get that, because the city and state are trying to close gaps of their own and because government would be more than happy to take over the subway and buses in the event of an MTA failure, they are going to shoot for the moon with a plan to grab the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge (a.k.a 59th Street Bridge), as well as all the remaining smaller bridges that cross the Harlem River, and covert them from free thoroughfares to tolled ones. In other words, their plan to bail themselves out of another reputed economic failure of the NYC subway system, is to charge drivers of cars. Pardon me, dickwods, but isn’t that like raising Amtrak fares to pay for jet fuel?

Now, dumbass ideas knowing no bounds, the MTA plan fails to stop there. It does not stop at glomming seven bridges currently owned and run by the city, for free, to transform them into giant, unlimited ATMs. No. Another part of the plan is to simultaneously raise the subway and bus fares a full dollar or, in other words, to do exactly what charging drivers is hypothetically supposed to prevent.

But wait there’s more! This simultaneum will additionally be congruent with MTA layoffs, closures, and downsizing including the elimination of certain trains and bus routes. So, straphangers already paying the highest per ride fare in the country will now pay a full dollar more per ride (raised from $2.00 to $3.00) for less service and be forced to cope with larger crowds within that remaining service. Plus, for that headache, will they even get the feeling of security that might be knowing their dependable subway system is at all solvent? No! This ridiculous act of pay more, much more, get less, gleans absolutely nothing. It is an arbitrary fare increase that, according to the very people threatening the increase, will not help. Instead, they have to snatch a bunch of bridges they never had before and use them to charge ALL drivers, yes ALL drivers, who have absolutely nothing to do with a subway system deficit.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but he only visits MTA Board Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger and then blows him!

Okay, so here’s the obligatory “to be fair” paragraph. To be fair, the MTA plan has not released how exactly it would rend these bridges from city ownership, making the plan seem to New Yorkers like a longshot. To be fair, they have included one idea that I hadn’t seen in the defunct NYC Congestion Pricing proposal which is to not toll via booths, but via EZ-Pass scanners and traffic cameras that photograph license plates, both thereafter sending drivers a bill in the mail. That’s all I can give them. The rest of the idea shits on us profusely.

Hey Hemmerdinger, let’s not pat ourselves on the back for the traffic camera and scanners idea just yet! Firstly, it’s not the MTA’s idea. If you were creative thinkers, you wouldn’t be proposing the very same idea that was just trounced in April.

“I’m gonna buy that failed ice cream parlor on the corner of Nowhere and Nonesuch and make it into my own ice cream parlor! I’m a genius!”

Secondly, where have I heard the anti-camera argument before? Oh yeah, in my piece My New NYC Revenue Proposal: The Civilian Ticket Patrol. I may have employed a little reverse psychology there, but can anyone truly ignore the resulting cry of disgruntled NYC citizens who yearn for privacy?

Look, just like I’d written, the idea has expectedly resurged again with a few minor changes in hopes of masquerading as a new idea. At the very outset, that’s its own reprehensible problem. It states that tolling the free bridges of central New York and charging your own residents to get to work is the only idea anybody has to close budget gaps. Freakin’ automatons!

Duh, let’s toll the bridges and make millions a week. No? Um, okay let’s toll the bridges and make millions a week. No good? Okay, let’s toll the bridges and make millions per week and also raise existing fares!

Still though, outside of an extreme lack of thought and creativity on the part of every person strapped with closing a budget gap, most of my original arguments still work to fight this new incarnation. The checklist balances like this.

Booth troubles – No longer an argument
Exporting traffic angle – No longer an argument

Still – Punishes people who are doing the right thing
Still – Not a green initiative
Still - Charges people to get to and/or from their own neighborhoods
Still – Ignores tell-tale Triborough Bridge History
Still – Ignores the tell-tale “one city” history of bridges
Still – Unfairly segregates Queens and Brooklyn from Manhattan
Still – Ignores logical and historical toll function
Still – Unfairly charges 150,000 – 275,000 pregnant commuters yearly
Still – Reads a poor choice for toll placement
Still – Mimics the poor effects of the New Jersey Port Authority toll hikes

Newly – Charges drivers to close a subway budget gap
Newly – Fails to ask why the last plan and hike didn’t work
Newly – Creates less service for more money
Newly – Presumes that what was not a good idea seven months ago is a good idea now
Newly – Puts all remaining transit choices in the hands of a nearly untouchable, independent company with a captive client base

With all these counter-arguments, why do I think the plan has legs enough to get through if we don’t fight it? Well, it was the Mayor of the city that just tried and failed to toll most of the same bridges. It’s not such a far fetched argument that this way the MTA could simply ask for the bridges and the city could say, “Here, please take them off of our hands for free.” At least the old plan was going to get us millions from the federal government to improve mass transit. The new plan gets nada. Oh, did I mention the Mayor appoints four of the MTA Board members? Did I mention he also wants stuff from them?

Plus, I think it is no error that such a plan is being proposed right at the post-election change-over of local powers from the old guard who stomped down congestion pricing to a new guard that, in some cases, wasn’t even involved in the battle.

Also, the city and state, trying to close their own budget gaps, might jump at the chance to cross off bridge maintenance and reconstruction from their line items.

My friends, I understand belt tightening and fiscal responsibility better than most. I understand the drastic measures that must be taken by our government (not our companies) to fix stupid spending decisions passed. I believe that, having chosen to live here, part of that burden will actually be my own. This does not change the fact that an illogical, poor, mean-spirited, hurtful, non-creative, never-ending and counter-intuitive plan will ever be acceptable. We will go to war and take lives as a last resort in the name of saving lives. We don’t, however, get to take money in the name of saving money, even as a last resort. It doesn’t work. Why, is this, then, everybody’s very first resort?

You know, with world events being what they are, New Orleans an orphaned city, Wall Street in shambles, the U.S. auto industry castigated, successful terrorist attacks seemingly non-stop and everywhere, global climate change, foreclosure after foreclosure; I must just come off as some little runt who doesn’t want to pay six to twenty bucks a day for a round trip to work. Okay, granted. I never want to pay money for what was once free. But every single one of these disastrous world events is at least partially a result of poor and uninsightful decision making on massive scales. I am talking about one such massive decision on a massive scale impacting more than just mass transit, but all transit. Can we not learn enough from our previous approaches to poor decisions to examine the problem differently in the moment? Can we not identify what is wrong with a proposed “solution,” all the things that are wrong with a proposed “solution,” and then move on to something else? How can a government that just seven months ago debated both sides of an issue and deemed one side bad for New York at all entertain that same side of that same issue in a plan by a private organization? It shouldn’t be allowed. They should tell the MTA, “We just spent and lost millions of our own dollars to prove your plan isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Now don’t come back until you think of something else!”

Now that we see that no voice here, except perhaps my own, has any new or creative ideas, we can further see the nauseatingly repeated plan to toll the free bridges in its truer category. Tolling free bridges is not a plan. It’s giving up. It’s throwing in the towel. It’s getting the supposedly greatest financial and political minds together in a room for months on end just for them to conclude, “Fuck it! This is too hard. Just toll those bridges! We don’t even care who makes the money at this point.” There are more creative solutions. Just listen to your people. You are not going to get an all-in-one gift solution. It’ll be a package. It’ll be the creative efforts of bunches of smaller, positive programs that help you reach your goals. It’s like paying for college. You contribute some, your parents contribute some, you get a school scholarship, a private scholarship, a grant, a student loan, and work study. You’ll have to do the leg work to put together a positive and reasonable package of many ideas that work. I know that people who are used to having the money around hate the new leg work to dig up dollar sources. I know they want a fairy to hit them on the head with a wand and say, “Make a wish.” Get real. Get to work. If you’ve got a budget gap, the answerS ARE somewhere in your budget.

Gold-Diggers

2008-11-23T11:07:00.001-06:00

Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold-digger, but she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke, broke.

Ah, the wistful complaints of a generation and a half retasked to greed. Actually, I don’t think old Kayne was far off here, thematically. It is true that using the word “gold-digger,” male to female, has invariably become a mirror on “whore” to the feminine ear. The notion’s more recent adaptation ‘ho,’ as now also heard when one utters the term “gold-digger” adds a smattering of gully racism to the already sexist vibe therein meant. Expressing that some one is a gold-digger, specifically a woman, is today like to elicit responses of an intensity one might use to verbally thwart off a rapist or to steer a rocket ship full of mental health consumers careening into the sun. Very much in opposition to the politically correct speech continuum, “gold-digger” runs that fine line between being both cuss-free and an arbitrary insult. It’s a PG-13 bullet. The word is never uttered in the positive and while then fully negative, is still a sort of cast-off wording as aspersions go like baldy, shorty, diva, blondie, yahoo, wing-nut, or peon. Kayne ain’t sayin’ it. I ain’t sayin’ it.

I, of course, do not believe that almost any woman is a true gold-digger. Yes, I still have my penis. Traditionally the term is understood as a woman who chooses to marry for money, big money, in the absence of all love, maturity, self-respect, and couplehood. That’s pretty harsh. Yet, as harsh as it may be, there are one or two people out there who’ve done it and pretty much ruined the romance game for everyone else. (I’d make an Anna Nicole joke here, but it’s in poor taste to speak of dead boobs.) Still, the modern take on the word “gold-digger” has evolved far beyond its original affronting intent. So, while no woman deserves to be referred to in such a sexist way, it might also be incumbent upon an intelligent woman with relationship interests to know all the new permutations the notion has taken on.

Why? Well, to explain that, let’s look at a far more despicable word like “bitch” to illustrate. I am going to take it fore-granted that all readers agree as I do that a woman should not be called a bitch. It is a word originally meant to compare a woman to a female dog whose job it seemingly is to immediately bend over and acquiesce to sex as it is dished out, no conversation, no strings, no complaints. Bitch is a morbidly demeaning word in its linguistic heritage, an insult timeline that includes both the typical American tendency to insult through sex words and the typical European tendency to insult through comparison to lesser animals. It is a word used to subjugate, to battle, to goad, and to sometimes reassert a fictional manhood all too fragile to withstand fair debate. Given its origins, it is little wonder why in a society striving for equality we ponder as to the term’s usage at all. Any man worth his salt has set forth a pattern in life to either minimize, eliminate, or to never in the first place find function for the term. That said, and heard resounding in the ears of all the women out there who’ve actually found themselves a good man, have any of you ever wondered, despite how infrequently your man speaks it, how often he’s thought it? How many times has your man, in his head, thought you were a bitch? See, coming to the near collective agreement that the word “bitch” is bad to say, we never truly attacked the root of the issue, perception. We never really considered how much worse it might be to be thought of as a bitch than to be called one once or twice in a lifetime. Both are bad, yes, but is not the thought worse? Is not the word only a reflection of the thought and therefore a revealing of the true self, the underlying barbarian, the invisible demon within? Your man may have never called you a bitch in the entirety of your relationship, but I guarantee even the most evolved among us has thought it on occasion and amongst a small minority even been convinced of it on the regular. Asking does no good. Most men deny it. Those who will not deny it can’t really talk about it now that we’ve labeled the curse off-limits. Admitting this fault for a man is admitting the beast from whence he comes and topples all other hopes at his civilized efforts. He could solve world hunger, but his wife might never let him live down the one time the B-word slipped from his lips as he muttered in his sleep. Plus, let’s face it; nobody can control what another person thinks. It’s just not doable, nor is it ethical.

So, what can be done? Nothing? I disagree. If you work in I.T., for instance, and are thought of as the go-to tech guru of Cinnabon Corporate, but are trying to break the ceiling into management, there are actions you can take. You can change people’s perceptions of you. You can refrain from certain practices, conversation, even projects and engage in newer tasks and interactions shaped to highlight your leadership attributes. “China needs sweet cakes!” It takes a lifetime commitment on your part, but such an outcome is very probable. Well, the same holds true for the perception of you, even the vastly false perception of you, as a “bitch.” Perhaps you are content in the word not being uttered. That’s fine. But if there is even the slightest desire in you for others to never reach that false conclusion, you can change practices in much the same way. You can gain control. You can positivize people’s perception of you, leaping thoughts out from the stagnant realm of cusses and insult and into the domain of mutual respect, perhaps even admiration or hero worship.

Should you have to do that? NO!!!! Not for the pea-brained morons who’d think you a “bitch.” You should not have to change anything about yourself to curtail these bleak prejudgments. After all, the word “bitch” only contains what power you give it, and not any power the speaker wishes to lend the term. But just because you should not have to change these perceptions, does not mean that you cannot. Seizing control is an option. If you had been somehow academically availed of all the practices that lead your husband or your boyfriend or your lover to draw that faulty conclusion, it would be in your best interest to address those points. Mature people will address them in conversation, some in arguments. Others might seek third party psychological help for the man to address his issues. Yet, for those women who might also wish to help the process along, to take responsibility for an outcome that is not her burden to bear, well a neat list of practices that lead to false perception would be invaluable. A tidy database of all the now different male definitions for the word “bitch” would come in quite handy.

I still say “bitch” is off-limits. It is somewhat insulting for me to even suggest that a woman take on the burden of changing another person’s sexist mind. The term is just far too off par to be a genuine behavior-changing motivator. “Gold-digger,” on the other hand, is a far less heated label. Perhaps there are one or two women out there who would actually welcome a useful list of all the ways in which modern men secretly jump to the conclusion that their wife is a gold-digger. Sexist ways, yes. But I am talking about an otherwise secretive mental fact, not a method whereby to defend the unjustified thought. Wouldn’t you like to know what your man thinks? Moreover, wouldn’t you want to change what he thinks if it were to prove unflattering? Asking or ordering him to refrain from a thought is not going to change squat. In fact, most people when told not to think something, picture that something all the more lucidly. Quick, don’t think about a panicked chameleon on a plaid shirt.

What follows here is a compendium of how the term “gold-digger” has socially evolved in the U.S. Each time a woman engages in one of these practices, she runs the needless risk of her husband jumping to a false “gold-digger” conclusion about her. Most do not even fit the idea’s main construct, but it would prove a grand mistake to assume that this popular, figurative definition is the only explanation and to ignore these very common permutations. The list is mildly comprehensive. Given some of the stretches herein to make sense of a male’s sometimes animal mind, each item on the list should probably have a separate name apart from “gold-digger,” but let’s face it; if this were a list of 2000 practices, that would be 2000 more insults we’d have to coin and then overcome anyway. Yes, we’ve a faulty, sexist lexicon used to depict men as well. Bum, deadbeat, slacker, loafer, scrub, small, mooch, leech, couch potato, are among our favorites. Yet, only men can work the change in a woman’s perception of them, just as I here hope to aid women who might choose to do the same. “Gold-digger” is a truly loaded thought. It can be pre-empted.

He’s at fault, yes, but you can still refrain from poor practices nonetheless. Outside of the label “gold-digger,” any person of any gender should understand that all the practices which follow are destructive with regard to relationships, sometimes lives. Do not think that because somebody close-mindedly molded your gender into these faux-pas that the insult taken would justify you continuing the action. For many of these, there is responsibility on both sides of the misogynistic characterization. I reiterate; he does not get to call you a gold-digger based on any of these. Period! Yet, you should perhaps not be engaging in almost any of these practices regardless, and if how you might be perceived mentally, daily, by your husband is motivator enough to change what you are doing, I simply spell out the truth of our unevolved male thoughts here. Check them out. A few are somewhat surprising.

What Modern, Married Men Mean By "Gold-Digger"

Any woman who fits the original definition above, whether or not she is married to the man in question.

Any woman with a career of her own who refuses to contribute equitably or equally to the household expenses, particularly the bills.

Any woman who bounces checks.

Any woman who refuses to work out a household budget.

Any woman who refuses to adhere to a household budget.

Any woman who cannot discuss household finances without the discussion ending in an argument or tears. Both are a means to change the subject from even approaching a remote tangent to her spending habits. The truth is that, even if anger and tears are involved, it is incumbent upon both in a couple to work all the way through to good financial decisions. This is a conversation that doesn’t end at all. It is one that starts and continues on or gets revisited all throughout life together. Ending the conversation, by whatever means, is, in effect, the same as never having had the conversation in the first place. Just as judges will take into consideration who threw the first punch in a case, it is wholly important to realize that whoever ends a conversation about household finances first is usually in the wrong.

Any woman who does not keep an accurate and balanced check register. Not-knowing is a guilt-assuaging tactic used by very small minds.

Any woman who considers bankruptcy as any resort other than the final one. She doesn’t want to do the work to fix the problem; she just wants to throw in the towel and start over, dragging the entire family, unethically, down with her.

Any woman who insists upon opening a joint savings account and who never contributes funds to that account. These tend to be the same women who deduct from the account regularly, even if their spouse never makes a withdrawal.

Any woman who has any untreated addiction, especially a shopping or gambling addiction. Getting help is the first step. If one is unwilling to take the first step it indicates and possibly outright proves that she is willing to do NONE of the work to fix anything.

Any woman who shares a car or cars with her partner and who regularly visits the gas station, but only fills the tank part of the way. These tend to be the same women who insist that men always fill the tank completely, who never count the cost of gas in a household budget, and who consume the majority of both the gas they’ve purchased and the gas their spouses have purchased. These also tend to be the same women who will lend a car to friends or share a car with a spouse while always leaving the gas gage on “E” when others need the car.

Any woman who makes the claim, “If I was a gold-digger, then I wouldn’t be with YOU.” Such is a comment on how “little” money you make in her eyes and an expression of her desire for you, not her, to make more. Yes, she doth protest too much.

Any woman who reserves the right NOT to go camping with you, but additionally dislikes the fact that YOU are going camping. Many women do not like camping simply because it is dirty and time consuming and difficult. That is their prerogative. But when those same women do not want YOU to go camping, it is for a much deeper reason. They will claim that it’s a desire to spend time with you. That’s false. They could have spent time with you while camping. Some women do not want you to go camping because they do not want you to realize that minimalist living can be perfectly doable and involve much happiness. They do not want that notion to even enter your head. They are phobic of you finding truer happiness in simplicity and the basics.

Any woman who lies about birth control.

Any woman who jokes about trying to get pregnant so that you’ll have to move to a larger home.

Any woman who insists she’s only slept with one man, making a baby, but for whom DNA testing proves otherwise. Interestingly, we rarely hear the sexist term “gold-digger” for these few because the label gets buried under the somewhat more sexist term, “slut” when this occurs. Forget not, however, that failing to know a baby’s father is an altogether common mistake. The lying insistence that she’s only been with one man, on the other hand, is a deceitful attempt to entrap a particular man’s skills and bank account and father potential.

Any woman who asks for a very expensive gift, even for holidays, and then never or almost never uses the gift.

Any woman who wishes to go green or to reduce a household’s carbon footprint by cutting back, reducing, reusing, and recycling, but only does so in a way that impacts the spouse’s belongings and not her own, the spouse’s pleasures and not her own, the spouse’s needs and not her own.

Any woman who does not know her net income off the top of her head.

Any woman who insists that her spouse work overtime when his boss does not and when she, herself, does not work overtime.

Sort of the inverse of the immediately above, any woman on salary with a partner on hourly wage who would prefer that her partner spend LESS time at work. While this can be a legitimate concern, for instance, when the partner is a workaholic; it can also be a negative practice. In some cases, the only way for that family to achieve a greater income is for the person on wage to work more hours. The salaried person will hold earnings steady over the year. If income is the family concern, the wage earner, given a high enough wage, should perhaps milk their job for more time. Short of finding new jobs at higher pay, or additional jobs to the ones they already have, allowing the wage earner to max out his time is the only short term solution to boosting income. Asking him to be home more often to help with household duties is fully ethical, but really stupid when it comes to income decisions (doubly so if in debt). This would seem to run contrary to the “gold-digger” notion, but it is not. By asking for this time at home, one is attributing an exact dollar value the man’s personal time. If the man would have earned an additional hundred dollars per week by working said hours instead of coming home, you are directly stating that the loss is worth it. You are directly stating that his home time, rather than being priceless, is worth one hundred dollars per week (one hundred dollars per week you now do not have and cannot get). Attributing an exact dollar value to one’s family time, even accidentally, is demeaning and begins the speaker on the shaky path to affixing a momentary value to everything else that is intangible. His sex is worth twenty bucks, his compassion a few Benjamins, his hopes and dreams a cold, plug nickel. Once a person unwittingly starts along this road it is not a far journey from gold-digging. “He should write that cookbook he wants to write because we can sell that easily, but he shouldn’t be spending his time exercising at the gym because it produces no monetary return.”

Any woman who unilaterally makes the decision on how a couple’s joint income tax returns and refunds will be spent.

Any woman who complains about her income tax returns having been larger as a single woman than as a married woman…as if that were the husband’s fault and not the fact that two completely different formulas are applied by the government. By the way, the same perceived, but not factual, “loss” holds true for the husband as well. These tend to be the same women who insist upon monetary recompense (a larger share of the return) to make up for their fictional “loss.”

Any woman who cannot sit down with her partner in a single session having produced the original of every current bill she has. At least some of these women feel that doing so is a trust issue. They feel they should simply be able to tell their spouses about amounts owed and to which accounts. They feel estimates and guesstimates are legitimate data. Sadly, without account numbers, full disclosure, proof of that full-disclosure, interest rates, payment plan details, and a breakdown of costs and fees within arm’s reach, no legitimate plan can be made to curtail debt, save properly, or cut back on expenses. In so doing, the woman will have left that burden to be fully dependant upon the man to resolve, sometimes without even half as much of the data any person would need to do so. Hence, gold-digger.

Any woman who refuses to have any of the household bills in her name.

Any woman who insists upon having ALL the household bills in her name.

Any woman that wants you to finance her parking and moving violations, either directly with cash/credit, or indirectly by cutting back on the household groceries and needs in order to pay her tickets.

Any woman who cooks two separate dinners regularly, one for each partner in the couple. This is a practice that frequently masquerades as benevolence in that it looks like the woman is going out of her way to please the husband. In fact, the masquerade is a simple one to pull off because a great many spouses do, in fact, make a different plate for her/his partner simply to be altruistic. There are a rare few, however, who cash in on this perceived benevolence when deep down, they, themselves were too self-righteous to eat something the husband likes. Those few usually do this believing that a grocery budget is for the birds.

Any career woman who chooses a single household chore that she fulfills on the regular and mentally offsets that chore against multiple expectations she harbors for her husband. For example, a woman who complains that her man should do the dishes because she cooks, but who also insists her man should scoop the litter box, because she cooks, and who further uses the fact that she cooks in every chore discussion that crops up. This is an over-estimation of either what her one chore is worth or what her career time is worth as compared to her spouse’s. It is a devaluing of her spouse’s time, income, and status in the home (even if he makes more, works harder, and completes more) that sets her up never to be satisfied with any chore the man achieves. It is the foundation of a power vacuum, the woman never satisfied and the man never able to do enough to fill that void. Inevitably he always works harder and more in futile hopes that simple money will turn the emotional tide. (Incidentally, number one complaint in couples therapy made by women… “He has no ambition.” Number one complaint in couples therapy made by men... “Nothing ever satisfies her.”)

Any woman with access to free job search tools, services, and materials before she quits who does not take advantage of them until after she quits.

Any woman who conducts job search from a couch.

Any woman who only applies to one job at a time, waiting to hear back before going on additional interviews.

Any woman who cannot stand a husband being out of work, but who thereafter also complains about which job the husband lands and the strictures of said job, despite the fact that those strictures are out of one’s control.

Any woman who leaves money in pockets in hopes of being surprised when she finds it later.

Any woman, at any given moment, who has more shoes than dollars.

Any woman that has ever mentioned aloud that she HAD TO buy something because it was on sale.

Any woman who cannot go a month without making a purchase.

Any woman who frequently buys two similar items with the understanding that she will simply return the one that doesn’t work out. This is baseless overspending on purchases, on gas, and on time.

Any woman who keeps buying batteries, but never uses her rechargeable ones.

Any woman who’ll accept a gift without a card, but not a card without a gift.

Any woman who plans free calling to your cell phone from hers, but then frequently calls your cell from her landline and frequently calls your landline from her cell, quadrupling costs.

Any woman who has multiple phone numbers, but who regularly fails to pick up any of them. The multiple numbers presume the need for and the ability to contact her, but ultimately waste the caller’s time and money as he will have to make multiple calls for every one piece of information he’s trying to exchange. An added layer of waste occurs when the same woman fails regularly to check her messages.

Any woman who doesn’t pay her bills on time.

Any woman who creates rolling late charges and fees, mitigating the new delinquency costs as a split responsibility between the she and her husband.

Any woman who welches on bets, financial in nature or otherwise. Her willingness to make a bet, but not adhere to the outcome, is a win-win for her and a lose-lose for the other. These tend to be the same women who cannot adhere to a household budget. It’s a fear of future money needs as if one cannot plan ahead.

Any woman who buys the household groceries, then marks off items the husband is NOT permitted to touch, and who finally helps to consume the remaining items while her “safe” stuff goes uneaten. This is a practice that guarantees that “her” foods last while the “shared” goodies go twice as fast. The result is that the husband perceives his wife always having something to eat while he does not.

Any woman who buys milks out of sync with cereals, sandwich contents out of sync with bread, and main ingredients out of sync with ancillary ingredients. This is an unconscious attempt to both stretch food supplies beyond the next planned grocery trip in hopes of affording more exciting food stuffs and an attempt to increase the regularity of eating out. Eating differently and eating out should simply be decided upon via agreement in a couple. If no such agreement can be made, a woman cannot hope to trick the situation into existence with underhanded tactics.

Any woman whose household brings in more than three times the divider amount that is the national poverty line, but who stands up and claims you are poor. One’s poor handling and decision making with money IS NOT the same as the act of making too little money. This declaration is disgusting.

Any woman who simply cannot save up for a major purchase.

Any woman with a credit rating in the toilet.

Any healthy woman who cannot remember most of the gifts you’ve given her.

Any woman who gives you more sex and/or better sex when more money is coming in.

Any woman who would pay for something she could get for free.

Any woman who uses time that could be spent at work clipping coupons, and then allows the coupons to expire.

Any woman who will organize things at work, but not at home where she doesn’t get paid for it.

Any woman who asks her husband to purge belongings for space, sometimes more than once, and then rents a storage unit to fill with her stuff.

Any woman who has more dollars on her than her children have had books.

Any woman with more credit cards than will fit in her wallet/purse comfortably.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a priority.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a basic necessity.

Any woman who takes sick days from work to do something fun and/or costly, but who goes in to work when sick.

Any woman who, if she were to die today, would leave her husband with marital or secret debt that he could not afford.

Any woman who cannot stand for her money to be in one of her husband’s accounts or portfolios, sans access, even if that money is earning more of a return than she ever could or would. Again, we see a marital trust issue here. The problem is that the perception of her husband not being trustworthy with “her” money can only stem from her own secretive dealings with funds. It’s psychology 101.

Any woman who insists that while the husband earns more money than she does, he should pay a greater share of the household expenses, but who does not or can not do the same when she suddenly makes more than the husband.

Any woman who doesn’t pay taxes.

Any woman who defrauds the government to get checks.

Any woman who has raised one or more frivolous lawsuits.

Any woman outside of the entertainment and intelligence industries who has multiple aliases.

Any woman who’ll wear clothes that the husband likes while she’s out at work or out with her friends, but that she’ll never wear for more than a few minutes while at home with her spouse. While this speaks more to a feeling of dejection in the man, the practice often mentally qualifies in a male’s eyes as “gold-digger” pursuant to how it seems as if the woman is putting on airs, building a façade. He sees it as an indicator that her home life is not good enough to be dressed nicely, ever.

Any woman who CANNOT leave the house without make-up. Men jump to the conclusion that this indicates a gold-digger simply based upon the stereotypically feminine attitude that accompanies the act. Men give little nod to a culture that demands appearance driven professionalism. However, the deeper root of gold-digging here is the woman’s treatment of the make-up musts as normal, somehow balanced and on-kilter. Look, “balanced” is a way of saying, “all things being equal.” Well if all things were equal, even allowing for forced cultural mores, there would still be some days with just as much chance you’d leave the house without make-up as days when chances were you’d leave the house with make-up. It wouldn’t be 50/50. Almost nothing’s 50/50. But, whatever the chances, the “equal” chances over time, non-make-up days would occur. They would happen. They would take place and the woman would be okay with them. If non-make-up days NEVER occur, it shows then all things are not equal. It is an overt display of the mental control a woman exerts to negate any chance of being seen without make-up. It prominently tips her hand and shows how she thinks. She is under a perpetual delusion that she should ALWAYS look better than whom she actually is. It’s the ALWAYS that speaks to gold-digging. Always having make-up will cost the most money possible. Always needing to look better is to never feel good about your natural self to be satisfied. In search for greater satisfaction with one’s self, there will be endless related purchases over a lifetime, few or none of which will bear the fruit of contentment.

Any woman who, in practice, fails to treat her partner’s belongings or the household assets with care and respect. The simple, nitpicking peeve of maintaining ones belongings has a direct bearing on finances, both past and future. A cavalier attitude that undermines or negates this maintenance therefore speaks directly to a frivolous belief that one can always buy and consume more. That attitude applied only to belongings not exclusively her own is a further devaluing of the husband.

Any woman that destroys or discards bills, statements, check copies, passbooks, notices, contracts, agreements, and other documents before they’ve been totally reconciled. This practice reads a little bit in a relationship as “destroying evidence” and, at the very least, indicates the woman’s knowledge that what she is doing is in some way incorrect.

Any woman who will not sign a pre-nuptial agreement based on the fact that it is a pre-nup’ and not based upon the document’s content.

Any woman who believes her job search is open ended, but that her husband’s has a limit to time and date.

Any woman who does not consider the gift of tickets a “thing” because tickets are not a perpetual, physical object that she gets to keep. Most women, I think, do in fact like the gift of tickets, but those few in this rare category tend to expect or insist upon another gift in addition to tickets to be pleased.

Any woman who always chooses the most expensive of all available options.

Any woman who always or almost always chooses the second most expensive of all available options “to save money.” You are not fooling anybody.

Any woman who refuses to revisit spending decisions of the past in order to readjust spending decisions in the future. This is usually a practice highlighted with short fight-ender statements like, “That was two years ago,” or “What does that have to do with anything?” One can only learn from the past, even with finances, and a failure to do so is a simple, foundationless hope that money or a financial solution is going to fall into ones lap before death.

Any woman who reserves the right to be a homemaker, but disallows the same option for her husband.

Any woman who gives her spouse gifts that aren’t remotely within the realm of what he might like or want. Such will sometimes tend to occur naturally after couples have been together for many years. They “run out” of gift ideas. It does not change the fact, however, that some men view this as gold-digging, especially (though selfish) if their own gift choices to her still go over well in kind. Where it is the thought that counts, a woman gifting presents that her husband would never want shows the lack of thought therein. No thought indicates that she hoped the cost of an item would be the sole impressive instrument between them. It might further indicate that she expects the same expense in her gifts, like them or no.

Any woman who relies consistently upon her partner for donations to charity or church.

Any woman who only “volunteers” when paid to do so.

Any woman who doesn’t want you playing in a $5.00 poker game because it costs money, but who would ask you to take her to a $200 dinner.

Any woman who buys or receives electronic equipment that she never learns how to use.

Any woman who talks about passers-by in the negative based upon appearance. This is a self-aggrandizing practice not always exclusively related to bigotry, fashion, humor, or narcissism, but increasingly to a comparison of taste expressed through cost in modern times.

Any woman who will not sit down with a financial advisor.

Any woman who will dismiss multiple candidates from becoming financial advisor to a household based upon the advisors disagreeing with her poor money management.

Any woman who sends her husband constant email links, pictures, videos, and texts of things the couple cannot afford, but that she would have the husband buy out of his own pocket.

Any woman who plays the lottery regularly, but has not paid her bills.

Any woman who PLANS on winning the lottery.

Given a lump sum or repeated payout on a lottery win choice, any woman who finds fault with the husband for choosing the option that she would not. This practice is actually engaged in most frequently by women in couples who’ve never won the lottery.

Any woman who spends more on her portion of wedding payments than she pays in household contributions in the first five years of the marriage combined.

Any woman who cuts back on necessities to pay a bill, rather than cutting back on what the bill is for.

Any woman who uses multiple payment types and sources without ever consolidating the results into an itemization of what she spends overall.

Any woman who cashes bonds early and pays penalties when she doesn’t have to.

Any woman who invests time, money, and assets in herself, but not her relationship.

Any woman who argues, delays or ignores her half of the responsibility (when present) for the cost of couples therapy, pre-Cana, household financial advisory, rent, mortgage, insurance, or vacations.

Any woman who refuses to include yearly or one time charges on a household budget because they are a seemingly lesser concern than monthly charges.

Any woman who refuses to include line items on a household budget because to her they are invisible or intangible like insurance, student loans, gas, car repair, interest, internet access, taxes, fees, entertainment, dues, club membership, subscriptions, mass transit, charity, tolls, heating oil, landscaping, child care, medical co-pay, online purchases, tips, and so on.
Any woman who cannot make it from work to home on the regular without making a stop or purchase in between.

Any woman who regularly commits to meeting her husband at a certain time and is instead regularly or always late. Again, while this might not seem too much like a gold-digger offshoot, it screams that time is money. A husband waiting, she’s forced you to push off all other things that might have gotten done had you been uncommitted to the time slot. This, in turn, builds up and collectively impacts a person’s maximum possible work schedule, not to mention long term earning potential. When this happens on the regular, husbands WILL make less money, not only less money than they could have, but less money than they should have in their current positions. They will get less sleep, get fewer chores done, get fewer errands run, acquire fewer opportunities to make extra money, land fewer opportunities to properly network, have less effectual mental time, be on a tighter resultant schedule; cleanliness will suffer; caring will suffer; personal time will fly out the window; stress will increase…all because one’s wife does not value his time. All of these negatives accumulate and spill over into one’s work environment. So, if a person is going to make LESS money, why does it qualify as gold-digging? Because anyone who values her own time significantly more than her chosen partner’s time is just selfish enough to still expect that the husband perform up to his maximum potential despite the collective obstacles she’s inflicted. He can’t put in the hours, but she expects him to bring home the same check. Men view women who always make them wait as gold-diggers simply because men value their time more than they value their own money.

Any woman who talks about what would be a second, complimentary purchase to the single purchase she is making at that moment.

Any woman who does not take an overt, unprompted, verbal interest in her husband’s day and career.

Any woman who, on the regular, talks about something she’d someday like to buy before asking about her husband’s day.

Any woman who continues to dream about being someplace else after she’s moved several times.

Any woman who has to go out every single weekend or travel every single month to keep up her self-esteem.

Any woman who refers to shopping as a meditative state or a stress reliever.

Any woman who nostalgically prefers the freedom of her youth, as afforded by funds from her parents, to the idea of making her own living or living up to the vast responsibilities of her current relationship.

Any woman who would take over the household finances by having her husband hand over his paycheck each week, but who would not hand hers to him if the tables were turned.

Any woman who mitigates cost/value via quantity as opposed to quality.

Any woman who enjoys getting flowers from her spouse “for no reason,” but always waits for an occasion to purchase niceties for that spouse.

Any woman whose finances are so out of control that she needs to skip gift-giving occasions with her spouse or children even if her spouse does not.

Any woman who calls her husband’s work number to check that he is at work. While some of these cases have to do with suspicions of infidelity, others are actually a direct attempt to control when the man is earning money and at what times. The latter scenario is the rarer of the two, and of course men cannot tell outwardly which is which in any given phone call. Some calls might be just to see how he is doing or to tell him that he is loved. However, the caller DOES know the reason for her call. She knows if she’s checking up to make sure he’s pulling a paycheck or working hard. If she is somehow unaware of her own intentions, she is the one, the only one, who can and must examine her inward motivation. Have you ever called your husband just to see that he was working?

Any woman who thinks that actually going bankrupt is okay so long as she is not going spiritually bankrupt.

Any woman who makes a mess that outpaces her capacity to clean it. This is an addiction of sorts that once again demands of the spouse excess time to correct her mistakes, time that could be better spent with family or earning. It not only falls into the “gold-digger” category for the same reason as some of the “less money” practices above, but also because a select few selfish women out there have additionally forced this issue as a medium through which to hire a housekeeper or to move to a larger abode.

Any woman that is incensed by any time or effort her spouse spends entering a contest, but who insists upon half of the winnings when the husband hits the jackpot.

Any woman who votes based on looks. This is a power hunger that speaks secondarily to money.

Any woman who frowns upon her husband improving himself by unpaid, non-career means. This closed-mindedness covers a wide range of practices, everything from women who can’t allow a man to read more than a few pages of a book without interrupting, to more complex doings like finding fault with a man’s quest to climb a mountain or to reconcile with an adversary. Women in this category show no qualms about a man improving himself in a bankable way.

Any woman who simply cannot play a game with built-in limits. I’m put in mind of a game we used to play. It was a little, conversational question about what three things you’d want if you were stranded on a desert island. For a select few ladies, three was a limit with which they could not feel comfortable. Those women could not stick to the one parameter within the question. In fact, the discomfort of having been imposed with a limit was such a huge burden to some, that they would refuse to play despite the fact that the game was complete fiction. I’d never again seen such a frightening indicator as to how some women feel limitlessness is the only way to think.

Any woman who would keep a teaching job she fell into when she doesn’t know about the subject being taught.

Any woman who wants to be well off enough to move to a country wherein she would not learn to speak the native language.

Any woman who finds fault with her spouse’s personal decision to not want riches or fame and the inherent problems that come with them.

Any woman who uses any amount of money given to her for child support on any purchase or payment that does not support the child.

Any woman negotiating a divorce settlement who defines “the lifestyle to which she is accustomed” in terms of a lifestyle she had with a different man or in terms of a lifestyle she hasn’t yet achieved.

Any woman who would accept alimony, but under inverse circumstances never pay alimony.

Any woman who insists that her husband not set bad examples of any kind as a father, but who would teach her child, by example, poor money management habits.

Any woman who outstretches her arm and leaves it extended, waiting, in an attempt to hand her husband an object while both of his hands are already full. While this is not a practice that might readily force your man to jump to the conclusion that you are a gold-digger, it is an indicator. Build up enough indicators cumulatively over time and their indirect nature may eventually and directly lead to the same false conclusion as other poor relationship practices on this list. This particular practice is a forceful attempt, on the woman’s part, to unburden herself of whatever she has in hand, even if it lends triple the burden to her husband. Such can additionally be viewed as the woman exercising license to remain completely oblivious to the man’s state while insisting he recognize her own state. Both give rise to the gold-digger indicator. A great many American woman actually engage in this tiny practice to an addictive extent without realizing it. Culturally, this gesture derives from older, feudal cultures wherein women were stuffed into impossible clothing, made to balance on precarious footwear, and fed so little that they were physically weak if not all out ill. Plus, at times, they were generally looked down upon for keeping fast to any possession, possessions to which a female frequently did not have the legal right. Pre-pocketbook, men held and carried anything that would not be tied onto a woman’s garment. Note how very many other historical cultures did not show this to be the case, the woman’s doll-like lot. Females from northern hunter-gatherer tribes in the Americas did all the work, for instance, chewing every inch of seal skin ever slaughtered in the bitter cold of the arctic to soften the material for domestic use. Women of polygamist, communal sects in this nation sling 60 pound bags of feed over their shoulders, dig wells, prep entire sides of beef. Tribal Amazon women of the mid-to southern Asian continent are described as having purposely severed a single breast from their bodies to give them superior accuracy with their warring bows on horseback. Try moving up the corporate ladder or getting equal pay for equal work if you are a woman in modern day corporate America. No, women in almost all cultures have always carried the brunt of the nastiest, most laborious tasks. So why do women today socially look so longingly back to one, solitary, feudal example? Why do they idealize the only culture that did not exhibit their strengths? The example has been romanticized. If you were a woman stuffed into a corset, it was “romantic” for a man to realize that and to help you carry. If you were so weak you could not lift a pea or even bend over to do so without getting dizzy, it was “romantic” for a man to understand your circumstances, particularly a handsome stranger. This minority of women receiving such treatment, however, was of the court, walking trimmed gardens and frequenting secure, stone dwellings. It is neither to the greater populous of the Italian Renaissance nor to the throngs of feudal serfs that modern women reach for this false romanticism, but to the ever so tiny court culture. They peer back to perhaps one of only a handful of social settings wherein men made it proper for men to help women in this way. They look to a time where only the richest women with the richest clothes and the richest expectations would need hand off a balance-impacting trinket. They look so steadily and with such a fixed eye to the tiniest “romantic” pocket of all the cultures that have ever been that they’ve unwittingly preserved a gesture from second-class citizenry which no longer has any factual gravitas.

Any woman who will risk a $65.00 parking ticket to save a quarter.

Any woman who before marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “his possessions” and “her possessions” and who after marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “marital assets” and “her possessions.” These women are mentally practicing the very same archaic notions that once legally banned women from ownership.

Any woman who borrows luxury items on more than just special occasions.

Any woman who has never changed her vision of a perfect life, even once, since junior high school. Dreams are fine. Inflexibility is not.

Any woman who does not take an active part in even one of her husband’s hobbies when invited. While hobbies usually have little to do with finances, most of them cost at least a little doe and a significant amount of time. Not taking part in any single one when invited, the woman shows that she wishes to use that potential together time, instead, on a separate hobby of her own. Not always, but in some rare cases, this translates in a woman’s mind and demeanor to “For every hobby he has, I should also get one.” That attitude can be costly. He should take part in one of yours. You should take part in one of his. This will decrease the number of household hobbies by two and save dollars. Otherwise, the problem is a practice that ignores relative cost and instead compares the number of hobbies in a 1 to 1 ratio, as if that has any bearing on life.

Any woman who cheats. While this too gets buried under the other comment, “slut,” the ire that results in a man’s response is a “gold-digger” sourced ire. When a man cheats it is either about sex or having been dehumanized in his existing relationship. When a woman cheats it is because she wants more than she already has, whether that’s more sex, more money, more understanding, or more love. She’s mining for gold from another mine.

Any woman who demands that her husband literally write her a blank check or checks to save time. Again, this sounds like more of a trust issue with regard to what amount the woman might fill in on a blank check, but the fact is that the woman has squandered her valuable time to the point where the mere moments it would take to write down a few numbers and words is a concern. It is once again the husband bailing the wife out of a sticky situation in a way that requires no trust or risk on her part, but both trust and risk on his.

Just When You Thought Corporations Couldn’t Get More Evil

2008-11-07T11:14:00.012-06:00

JPMorganChase has made much press this year. In addition to being one of the sole global financial institutions that almost completely sidestepped the sub-prime mortgage crisis, it also, at the government’s behest, merged with Bear Stearns as they were going under, many months before Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG tanked and before Wachovia and Merrill Lynch began publicly waffling. In fact, JPMC did so with such vitesse and expertise, they had plenty of spanking room left over to proceed with the long rumored take-over of Washington Mutual just months after buying Bear. Unlike other organizations, JPMC offers those who’ve lost their jobs pursuant to mergers an astounding barrage of high-end, professional services to help them get resituated in new jobs elsewhere. How sweet. Also unlike other organizations, their no-holds-barred CEO, J. Dimon, has been plastered all over Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune for months on end if for no other reason than speculation as to what move he’ll make next.

In this light, JPMorganChase certainly seems like a cowboy in a white hat, a good guy amidst disappointing failures all around. And, for the most part, the press reflects that. But let’s call a spayed duck a spayed duck. JPMorganChase is no stranger to the very greed, questionable behavior, and ruthless decisions exhibited by all the other corporate banking giants. They were just strategically lucky this time. It was not so many years ago that in a public address to his employees upon newly accepting the head honcho position, J. Dimon referred to all of HR, for example, as a “bunch of maggots and cockroaches.” His attitude seems to have changed little since and as a mouthpiece for his organization, it should be noted that this style of communication is an underpinning of bank practices at large.

Kudos to JPMorganChase for giving so much to charity over so many years. Cheers to them for sponsoring so many of our well-known and widely enjoyed sporting events and competitions. Yep, give them points for having more ATMs than Canada has snowflakes. Do these things really offset twisted business ethic?

Offset might be the wrong word. Actually the good they do rather seems to bury or adequately hide many of the nastier goings-on. For instance, as of November 2008, JPMorganChase has implemented a new, mandatory invoicing procedure for all external service providers. No hitch there. Service providers are now to invoice through an online system only. No hitch there. All such providers will be required to do this regardless of the service type provided. So, the company that restocks the water coolers is thrown into the same boat with the shoe shine guy and the $1000 an hour commodities consultant. Perhaps no real hitch there other than the regular corporate tendency to make sweeping decisions without so much as a humane wink toward the macro or the micro. Yet, in true corporate fashion, JPMC has tagged on a new and creative slap to the face that has certain service providers wondering if it is just a big, fat joke. If you wish to be paid on your invoice on time, JPMorganChase will now charge you 4% of the money you earned. You heard it! Buy your money! If you get paid in any way from JPMC and are not a direct employee of the bank, you now must pay a fee to get your money in fewer than 60 days. Some might say, “Well, 60 days, 8 weeks, that’s not really a concern to most service providers.” Some might be lucky to get paid that “quickly.” Well, I think I need not mention what that does to Mom and Pop shops, especially straddled over the fiscal year’s end. But this hardship isn’t relegated to only the small businesses around town.

Consider, for the moment, that at any given time, JPMC has a strong percentage of people working in their offices, every day, who are not direct employees of the bank. The supposed global authority in fiscal prudence didn’t want to take them on at a decent wage or pay their benefits. So, though full-time workers for the bank, they aren’t actually employees. They are temps and contractors and consultants and associates and interns of every type and level. We are not talking about the schmuck who delivers the bagels in the morning or the window washer with the peg leg. We are also not talking about an elitist jet-set or a self-proclaimed mogul salon. We are talking about a set of workers, doing the bank’s work, who show up every day, for a full day, sometimes more, with no overtime in certain cases, no job security from one day to the next, no corporate earned recognition for their deeds, but whose only difference between themselves and an employee is the lacked label, “employee.” They live from week to week, sometimes hand-to-mouth, and depending upon their situation, may already be waiting a four week lag time between hours worked and the specific check used as recompense for those hours.

By JPMC switching to the 60 day standard, pseudo-employees in this title-less cage have but two choices. Pay good money to get their due pay in a normal amount of time or wait double the time they might already be waiting. Why is either significant? Well, to pay money to get your money is a matter of poor principal, poor business ethic; so much so it would be illegal to inflict this very practice upon regular employees. It reads kickback. If you think paying ATM fees is a killjoy, at least ATM fees provide you with a choice. Imagine, instead, if your employer forced you to give her/him 4% of every paycheck before receiving your check every week. Freakin’ Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t even do that.

As for the doubled wait time, a wait period that’s already been doubled from the standard 90’s Chase practice of a two week wait, the negative impact is a little trickier. When one considers the fact that these folks already waited an entire payless month at the outset of their being brought on to JPMC, the existing four week lag time, it makes another month wait seem devilishly inappropriate. Yes, they will get paid eventually, but for at least a few, that’s going to constitute two full months without physical pay in a given calendar year. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty hard to withstand for a lot of folks. Honestly, what would your opinion be about people asked to work full-time for a year and get paid, at the outset, for ten months of that work?

Secondly, given that the notification went out to certain folks in this group during their unpaid vacations, notification warning with less than two weeks prep-time, well that’s then a ten week wait without pay for some. Again, this “some” is people who show up and work every single day.

Thirdly, lump onto the above the sometimes two week processing span it takes to register a person in the new online system, and you can be talking about an up to twelve week wait without pay. Work done on October 1st for instance, wouldn’t be paid until the following year. Yes, once the lag time has abated, such workers will get a check every week thereafter, steadily. Yet note how few people in the world actually get paid every OTHER month or every THIRD month. It usually doesn’t happen because that is not how bills and rents and mortgages are set up. Monthly is usually the least palatable tier of payment possibilities. Even at that rarity, such a paycheck would be for a whole month of work, a larger check. This potential eight to twelve week wait only starts payments again with a check for a single week’s work. Ugh! JPMC should not be allowed to get away with this based on the idea that it is only a single lengthy wait and not a regularity. Face it folks, it is no mistake that a brand new 4 to 8 to 12 week lag time goes live in November, just in time to be penniless for the holidays! Nice move JPMC. I guess if you wish to feed your children on Christmas, you have to give 4% to the Grinch who stole WaMu.

Ready Or Not: Obama Wins

2008-11-07T09:52:00.016-06:00

I am registered as non-partisan. I belong to no political party. I think it is no secret that I tend to idealize left, but I hope to do so in a way tempered with more reason than I can rightfully afford myself as party to any particularly competing or politicking group. That said, I tried, and to a large degree succeeded in, making my views on the campaigns take shape bereft of racial implication. For a good deal of the last year, the notion never entered my mind. I never hoped Obama would win because of his skin color, nor did I truly fear that he would lose for the same. I never presumed McCain kept company with racists nor did I close my ears to his views whilst secretly rooting for some visual underdog. I heartily focused issue to issue, debate to debate, character to character as McCain and Obama squared off. It was nice. It was nice to finally have a Presidential race that remained positive for a good deal of the run. It was nice to see clear differences in our candidates and issues that were genuine concerns taking up most of our air time. It was nice not having a Bush or a Clinton on the ballot for the first time in 28 years. The choice felt free again.

Regardless, however, of how hard I may have tried, succeeded, or even perhaps failed in the end at ignoring race as a potential political shapeshifter, I could neither before the election nor now deny the historical significance of what has become an unprecedented achievement. Skin color is not a reason to vote for a president. Skin color is not a reason to vote against one. Once elected, though, it is a key element thereafter to the immensity of the historical feat. Race, after this election fact, but before the world leader litmus test, is at once a symbol, an achievement, a proof, an indicator, a wonder, a surprise, a passion, a leveling, a coming-together, a change, and a statement. While just any old member of any old race would not have done, Obama was the right candidate for his party. Race did not make him the right candidate, but being the right candidate allowed for a linchpin moment in America wherein his race must be part of that moment’s description.

So, basking in America’s ability to come together and to care about voting again, I would like to take this moment to talk about that which cannot be ignored today…race. Not racism. Race!

Whether you picked it up on the media or languished over the idea in conversation with your loved ones, there was always this question throughout the campaign season as to whether or not America was “ready” for a “black President.” Both candidates were smart in steering clear of the question. Forget the wisdom in avoiding the query because it is an inflammatory question with several inflammatory answers and explanations. They were smart to do so because the question has no heft. It cannot be answered. It is completely made-up. There is no factual or empirical criterion upon which to measure collective mental and emotional readiness for someone else to do his job. What means we are ready? What flawless indicator could a person possibly point to as an answer one way or the other? What could you have in your pocket today that you didn’t have yesterday that could identify you as prepared for a “black President?” Essentially, it’s just another way of saying, “Do you think America is still filled with a majority of racist swine?” By recognizing the question as immaterial and avoiding those inflammatory possibilities as a fringe benefit, look what happened. It opened the door to talk about the subject rationally.

When “reverse” racist allegations and evidences were piling up against the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama walked through that door, calmly, intellectually, and talked about race. Not racism, race. In fact, presumably running the risk of jeopardizing his entire campaign, he spoke on the topic so truly, openly and precisely, his words may well prove one of the greatest speeches on race our national history will ever know. At the very same time that regular Americans were unconsciously contemplating whether or not they were “ready” for a “black President,” as prompted by media and naysayers, literature and maybe even inner demons, Obama walked out and shared with them a whole bunch of details about race in America that they already knew. He reinforced their belief in their own goodness. He ingratiated himself to like minds without pandering. “Hey, I am actually thinking what you all are thinking.” He just had the bravery to say it and the clout to influence folks to listen. He didn’t have to answer the question of whether or not America was “ready” for a “black president,” because a hard-worked win would answer that question for us.

Inspired, I too wish tackle new ground. I would like to try to theoretically answer the unanswerable question. What did Americans have in their pockets on this Election Day, whether they voted Democrat or Republican, that they did not have a few years ago? What allegedly made them “ready?”

The obvious responses go without saying. America had the right candidates. McCain supporters never had to worry about that great man, their representative, showing up in a KKK photo or any serious gaff reel in black face. Obama supporters never had to worry about a Tawana Brawley-like association or a pubic hair on a Coke can popping out of the man’s closet. In primaries and campaigns past, one side or the other winding up with the “wrong” candidate, we always spent inordinate time pointing out the multiple flaws in that person’s character. It left little room to probe the minds, beliefs, and issues for which the loud-mouthed finger-pointers stood. As a result, we’re going to elect the occasional out-of-touch rep. or racist or bigot or racially motivated numb-skull, almost by accident. Choosing the right candidates is a vote to talk about what is actually going on, everything that is going on.

Also an obvious pocket pal indicating why we were “ready” was a lame duck administration effecting the campaign environment. Perhaps Chris Rock put it best in his HBO special, Kill The Messenger when he said, “Bush made it hard for a white man to run for President.” More accurately put, it might be that Bush was viewed as having bottomed out so far below even the minimum expectations of a Presidency, that by comparison, any issues the general populous might have had with race seemed small and petty. Like W. or hate him, the particular class of decisions he and his cronies have made over eight years in office is unlike any in our lifetime. The list is long, yes, but each item on that list has additionally a blockbuster ramification. You may not blame W. for all of them, but even when you cut the list down there always seems another two pages of bad. Unbelievable! All a person of any race should have had to do to get in the primaries door was to point at W. and say, “I disagree.” Obama, skin color and proud multiple heritages aside, maybe said it most eloquently when he phrased our disillusionment as, “Enough!”

Outside of plain sight, at least theoretically, I think we have fuller pockets than just what’s offered above. What else made us “ready?” Mindset. Mindset is key. If the fake question, “Is America ready for a ‘black President?’” really asks, “Is America filled with racist swine?” and if the election outcome is overwhelming proof that America is not; what changed, motivated, or brought the balanced mindset to the surface? What made these existing, shared ideas of equality an election reality? Well, let’s look at the last several years of pop culture. What’s been out there in the public mainstream? TV, movies, fictions many.

You’ve had a show called The West Wing, an hour-long weekly drama centered on a fictional, Democratic President and the behind-the-scenes running of The White House. Those who followed the program got very into the high-energy, challenged ethic, quick-to-quip go-go-go pace of the fictional administration. Perhaps Obama’s administration cannot achieve that precise and speedy White House repartee, but we all knew for certain when watching the show, Bush’s White House definitely did not, could not. The show was what we wanted in direct contrast to what we had. That is a seed of change.

We had a program called American Idol, a show that let the country vote and vote and vote as often as they liked, assured they were making a difference each week, each season in selecting a winner. Each season that they did so, new groups of competitors showed up on our screens and in our living rooms, real people, not sitcom characters. These people were African-American and European-American, Asian, Australian, you name it. The voting results not only showed great acceptance among all those groups, not only showed that the show was about singing talent above skin color, but it also gave us weekly results that reinforced the general absence of race motivators in those tabulations. Our opinions came to the surface and were shared with the nation, weekly. Who knew, until they were televised, that there were so many of us who could look beyond race and vote on talent?

Is there any other epoch you can think of that could see droves of Americans crying out to declare English our national language at the same time our toddlers are watching Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Ni Hao, Kai-lan, and other language-boosting, educational cartoons in good parental faith. This is a brilliant dichotomy that allows both notions to exist simultaneously. It is, in and of itself, a plurality and one that, like those above, is in our minds and at our dinner tables each day. We support our children learning languages early and we support the idea of nationalizing a language pick for commonality’s sake. ESL classes crop up everywhere for those who want to learn English at the same time every noisy Fisher-Price toy you buy speaks English and Spanish and German and French. Agree or disagree, there is enough mirth in the two practices to conclude that there is plenty of room in this country for both acceptance and function across heritage lines and language barriers.

The recent list of mainstream fiction that jumps over a few real life prejudices and complications to otherwise familiarize our mind’s eye with new possibilities seems endless. Chris Rock made an excellent comedy feature called Head of State in which he ran for President and won. Geena Davis starred on an ABC TV series called Commander-In-Chief in which she played the President. Glenn Close, as Vice-President in the film Air Force One, has to stand up to a War Room full of brilliant men to run the nation while her President, Harrison Ford, might be dead or incapacitated. Morgan Freeman’s career alone, in part, consisted of an escalating string of films wherein the characters he played grew more and more ranked. In Glory he was a Union Sergeant. In Outbreak, he was a Brigadier General. In Deep Impact he was President of the United States. In Bruce Almighty, he was God. Notice, all consummate characters that were highly believable in the settings given despite the actor's skin color. The 2005 Academy Award winner for best picture was a film called Crash, one that employed a very diverse cast and a Six Degrees of Separation feel to describe the state of conscious and unconscious prejudice in modern America. Russell Simmons’ fantastic recurring HBO series Def Comedy Jam and Def Poetry Jam significantly mainstreamed large chunks of hip-hop culture and art into hometown American culture while celebrating diversity themselves. Sex and the City popularized cosmopolitan women. Big Love examined polygamy. Oz captured America’s attention looking at violence and racism in the nation’s underbelly, its prisons. The Matrix trilogy gave all human races a common enemy, galvanizing them in faith of a savoir prophecy. The Sopranos showed what American society looked like through the eyes of organized crime, encompassing the same tribulations as mainstream America, but always walking that fine line between proud, Italian-American heritage and the unacceptable violence within “the family.” South Park, an adult, comedy cartoon series, includes a single black character named Token, as if to point out and ostracize our past practices of including “token” black characters by underscoring just how ridiculous that was compared to our modern sensibilities. The House of Sand and Fog is a wonderful cultural character study which won a great deal of Academy nominations and awards. A comic strip, The Boondocks, which centralizes around a young African-American of pseudo-militant mind is the first of its kind and subject matter to win widespread appeal and acclaim. Will & Grace allowed us to laugh in a gay lawyer’s living room. ER took us to a place where everybody has common concerns and the human interest never stops. By the way, they also took us to the deep, rural, American south, to Croatia, to Africa, and beyond. Frasier caricatured elitists and intelligentsia. On a given DVR night, we might have had to decide between watching Queer as Folk or Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Real life American judges of every heritage started to land show after show on daytime TV. True Blood, the books from which it is taken and the cable TV series that carries the title, lets us examine real life prejudices through fictional vampires. We are suddenly no longer afraid to look back and pen a period piece with a real life bias component or even a present day piece with our own societal drawbacks. In what other generation could you get such a plethora of serious film pieces grown from bias and struggle like Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, The Last Samurai, Lackawanna Blues, Freedom Writers, Luminarias, Stand and Deliver, The Crucible, The Green Mile, Gangs of New York, Moulin Rouge, Spanglish, A Time To Kill, Medal of Honor, Ray, The Passion of The Christ, American History X, Dreamgirls, Amistad, Erin Brockovich, Men of Honor, and A Bronx Tale?

Sure previous generations had a play or two, a movie here or there, a mini-series that caught the public attention. Race, bias, injustice; they have always been concerns and therefore have always made great drama, even comedy. But never before was the backdrop of bias and the list of ways in which to understand it and deal with it so centralized in the mainstream public eye. People could most recently afford and did purchase thousands of TV channels instead of accepting one of three network choices on the public airwaves. People now had computer access at home, in school, at work, in transit, at the coffee house, or while camping. People could generate enough disposable cash to see every summer blockbuster and every Academy Award nominee at the multiplex before reviews even hit the papers. Just one generation ago you had a people, a fair-minded crop living amidst an activist youth culture, that sincerely went from watching propaganda films and silver screen classics to hailing Roots as the best miniseries ever. That generation made the transition from watching Jimmy Stewart in what seemed like every film to seeing their kids watch What’s Happening and Diff’rent Strokes in constant, back to back reruns. For them, that was an enormous change. For us, it’s the lesser artful beginnings to the theme of our entire pop culture lives. Inclusiveness and acceptance within our ranks and masses meant the arts would reach out and tell us more, replicate these driven ideas of equality and explore them with the audience in more interesting detail. We went from three choices of network, in short order, to multimedia choices numbering in the thousands. We went from thinking that sitcoms casting black actors were for a target audience only, to shows that everybody loved, like The Cosby Show, to a veritable effluvium of never-ending entertainment, education, and information far too vast to fill with only one norm. A strong majority of entertainment never deals directly with bias or even illustrates it as a backdrop. Most shows are simply about other things. Having such a monster volume of entertainment choices, however, naturally increases the “lesser” number of shows that will deal with that distinct notion in all kinds of ways. Does having all this fiction solve racial tensions? No. Does having them around even alleviate, in any direct way, the problems of the world? Absolutely not. What these entertainments do is allow us to talk about it. It might be hard for any two people to talk about a difference in perception of skin color, say, but they can both talk about what happened on Oprah yesterday. It might be uneasy or even heated to discuss racism around the water cooler, but everybody has an opinion on Danny Glover’s performance or Margaret Cho’s jokes or Ellen coming out. Fiction is an ice breaker to the future.

Yes, fiction helps, but it cannot win out alone. During much of the same time all these stories, laughs, and “what-if” cultural exchanges were taking place, the world of fact rolled on. DNA tests started to get precise enough to determine the ancestral heritage in a person’s biological build. It goes without saying this would mean something positive to groups who’d had origins robbed from them. Charles Barkley toured the nation talking about how he felt that not only African-Americans were undervalued by the U.S. government, but Latinos and poor whites as well. He was obviously not the first one to speak on this, nor to extend the implications across color lines, nor even the most succinct, but he was hero enough to sports fans to reach a great many new minds. Bill Maher got fired from his own show on ABC, one having been brought over from HBO called Politically Incorrect, for saying something considered politically incorrect post 9/11. The Dixie Chicks similarly lost a huge percentage of their fan base when country music stations boycotted their albums after one member of the group publicly expressed a feeling that didn’t jibe with the pro-Bush sentiment of the day. A black man, chained and dragged to death by a white man in Jasper, Texas gave rise to a court battle that saw the first white man ever to be put on death row for the murder of a black man in that state (with the exception of an 1854 crime where one slave owner killed another’s slave in what was essentially tried as a property crime). Shock jocks were getting fined and fired nation-wide as people once afraid to call them on remarks that were sure to incite division decided to speak up. Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won Academy Awards in the same season in their lead actor categories, the first time both those slots had gone to African-Americans in the history of the awards. They accepted on the same night that Sidney Poitier received the Lifetime Achievement Award. The Olympic Games broke out from their regular four year pattern to alternate summer and winter games every two years. With NBC landing the rights to carry the broadcast, not only were we treated to views of peoples and talent around the world twice as often, but under the incomparable sports-casting umbrella that is Bob Costas’ genius, the proper time was taken to cover all major names and teams. Our country found itself no longer rooting only for the U.S.A., but for global underdogs and sometimes even the home team in many a nation. Condoleezza Rice became U.S. Secretary of State. SNL had two female co-anchors to its Weekend Update segment for the first time in the show’s history. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, following in the 1960’s footsteps of Star Trek the original series which had an episode that would showcase the very first interracial kiss on network television, in the 90’s offered up the very first, dramatic same-sex kiss on network television. George W. Bush promised supporters that if they elected him to a second term, he would seek a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a sacred union between a man and a woman, thereby disallowing same-sex marriages on the federal level and failing to extend marital rights to the LGBT community under the law. Hurricane Katrina lead to the levies in New Orleans collapsing, waters flooding the entire city, literally uncountable deaths, and an embarrassing American spotlight on the great divide between middle class and poor. Kayne West went “off-book” on his testimonial during the live Katrina relief effort and alleged, among other claims, that the President of the United States hated black people. The West Wing TV series finished off with a whole season geared around two new campaigners for the U.S. Presidency (Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits), not only examining the angles of a Latino man’s run for that top seat, but also making television history by broadcasting a live, unscripted debate between the two characters as if they were real candidates. A change in Popes saw Pope Benedict XVI announce that secularism was the Roman Catholic Church’s true enemy. Reality TV took a foothold in the public eye, many incarnations of which created competitions with contestants purposely chosen for conflicting or even racist views. Janet Jackson’s one breast was a topic of conversation for over a year after it, pasty and all, was removed from her clothing during a Super Bowl half-time performance. In New York City, under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a total of 14 UNARMED black men were shot by police officers, many of them killed, including an immigrant whose name became synonymous with this string of unpunished wrongful deaths, Amadou Diallo. Bruce Springsteen concerts were boycotted by police and he was protested at police rallies after writing a song about Diallo that included the victim’s name.

While fiction certainly asked us “what if;” facts, good or bad, structured the dinner table conversations in a way where folks would talk about, “How could we get there from here? Given the perils of today, how could we make that fantasy a reality?” The frequency of both kept this intercourse and these thoughts going. There was always something to discuss, a new hallmark from which to move on, to grow. While this has been true for all previous generations, what differs in ours is the infinitive number of conduits for factual and fictional information to pour into our wisdom. In 1963 you could just turn the TV off, put the paper down. Today entertainment and informational sources are constant reminders, almost in-your-face calls to expand thinking, to readjust on the fly, to speed the social evolution along. They are in your pocket, on your laptop, on a cell phone, bolted to the wall on a large screen TV with a billion satellite channels. They are on XM radio, cable, FIOS, air waves, DVD, Blu-ray, iPods, Sidekicks, RSS feeds, websites, blogs, vlogs, books, eBooks, periodicals, mass mailers, email, presentations, Podcasts, electronic billboards, spam, on screens in taxi cabs and elevators, and even phoned in with a robot. If you’d always felt there was so much more to know, superlative access to information was always the way to get there. The more one knows, the broader his or her thinking can become. That speaks to mindset. It prepares you. It makes you ready for anything.

President-Elect Barack Obama is not a phenomenon. There are plenty of people fluent in plenty of languages backed with plenty of ideas and with skin colors as varied as the 64-bit setting on a PC in our America. A staggering number of those people exhibit all the fine attributes Obama seems to exude. They are gentlemen and gentlewomen, proud parents, decent politicians, educated, great speakers, authors, hard-workers, exceptional fund raisers, deep thinkers, good joke tellers, and people all with hopes and dreams. Again, he is no anomaly. The anomaly is a civilization that just 8 to 16 years ago was collectively stupid enough to try to answer an unanswerable question with a very loud and determined “No, we are not ready for a black President!” That very civilization instead came to the conclusion, in less time than it takes for a bond to mature, that it is simply okay for these two guys to run. Suddenly, very suddenly, either of them was eligible to win and we didn’t really have a problem with that. Obama’s win may be astounding history, but that history is our prize.

Obama is not the Messiah,

2008-10-30T13:39:00.006-05:00

Drew Brees is.

I am so in love with this man. You think he can't possibly be that great, but he is. He's standing in London, about to spank the team that first broke him then fired him because he was broken, and what does he do?

On the edge of a soccer pitch masquerading as a football field, Drew Brees sold New Orleans.

"Just like London is one of those spots where people feel like they need to visit when they come to Europe," Brees said, "well, New Orleans is one of those spots that if you're European and you're coming to the States and you want to know where to go, hey, come to New Orleans. I think the culture is unlike any other in our country and, certainly, you want to share that with the world."

I know that he's just a football player and that one day he'll be traded off to another team or get pissed off and leave. When he talks about the city, though, I don't doubt for a moment that he's here to stay. New Orleans, broken as she was, wrapped her arms around him and said, "You're home."

So many people have done this in the last three years. It still gets me right in the gut when I think about it.

I never had a choice, but they did and they picked her.

"There are a lot of things that still need to be done. But, in a lot of ways, I think New Orleans has come back better than ever."

Thanks Drew. We love you, too.

And thanks to Cait at Shrimp Poboy for pointing this out. Don't know how I missed it last week.

Trent Reznor on New Orleans

2008-10-22T22:05:00.001-05:00

From Offbeat magazine:

I grew up in Pennsylvania in a small town, and every time we’d come to New Orleans, it felt like another planet. It seemed like the weirdest place I had ever been. It wasn’t an overwhelmingly big city to me, but the culture, the tradition, the smell of the air, and the way it looks—things I never paid attention to like architecture. What I grew up seeing was steel row architecture. Houses you lived in, you didn’t see as art. They just functioned. And to see a sense of tradition, and the people I met. You can drink a beer outside! Oh my God! It was just mind-blowing.

There's more. What he says about New Orleans is filled with the inexplicable love and attachment that grabs so many people who visit this city and convinces them to stay. Growing up here, I knew I was in a different place, but didn't realize until I left exactly how different. I simply knew that I would be back, eventually. I really like these perspectives from "outsiders" who came inside, people who were grabbed by New Orleans and brought close to her bosom. Makes me feel less crazy.

I remember running into Trent Reznor at Decatur House almost every time I came home from school. There were always guys from big bands in some bar or another. They were in town to play at House of Blues or one of the festivals and hung out in holes to listen to great music. It was one of those cool, ordinary things that happen in NOLA. Trent lived here, though, and that somehow made him different. I never talked to him. He always looked really nervous. Maybe he was just there to score. Sadly, Decatur House is no more, so I guess I'll never know.

One more quick quote:

It was the first time I lived in a place and I really enjoyed being there. You never feel out of place.

Yeah, he gets it.

Props to oyster at YRT for the heads-up.

I guess you can't have everything

2008-10-22T18:18:00.001-05:00

When I left for work this morning gas was $2.62/gallon. Now it's $2.44! WTF?

In other news, the Wendy's I frequent has misspelled "Rasberry" on their sign.

Ah, well.

This goes out to the Philosopher King

2008-10-17T14:59:00.002-05:00

T.S. Eliot

Concision is Overrated: Repetition is the New Concision

2008-10-15T10:19:00.005-05:00

Concision is overrated. Repetition is the new concision.

Concision is overrated. Repetition is the new concision.

My NYC New Revenue Proposal: The Civilian Ticket Patrol

2008-10-13T17:11:00.015-05:00

Okay, I am preparing myself for a veritable FLOOD of comments, not to mention people with pitchforks and torches outside of my door. Damn! I think they’re here. Read fast!

In the recent blog entry I’d posted about congestion pricing, I did something out of literati-wanna-be character for myself. I panned a plan without offering an alternative solution. I did so to stay on topic, of course, but also because I’d already skull-numbed Chappy and Bullet with two epic posts in a week. I’m sure the slight misuse of the oh so common words “autocentric” and “nary” didn’t help with flow. This blog entry will, in fact, offer one alternative solution to raising revenue in NYC whilst curtailing traffic and gridlock in Manhattan proper, if not the city at large. But, the content of this suggestion will doubtlessly ruffle enough feathers that there’ll be a virtual dirt nap in my blogging future. Here Lies Pockets, Rest In Pants.

A great number of cities and townships in the states now boast everyone’s favorite traffic control device, the red light camera, otherwise known as the Ticket Camera or #@!$%^&^%!! If you are unfamiliar, count your blessings and your money. This is a camera or set of cameras automatically snapping photos at an intersection with the express purpose of ticketing driver’s who violate red traffic signals. Photos are snapped, the license plate is captured in the image, and a high-priced summons arrives in the registrant driver’s mail along with a photo of her/his alleged infraction some time after. Gotcha! “But that was a harmless night of chicken plucking, birch beer, and the Wu Tang Clan. I can’t believe those bastards did this to me!”

Absent from common knowledge was the manner in which age-old laws and rules of law enforcement in many states had to radically change to allow for the devices. To use one east coast county as our looking glass, it had always been procedure that reports of crimes and violations could reach a sector car in one of three ways. A call could come in via police radio. A bystander could run up to the car and point officers in the direction of a crime taking place or a person in need. The cops could react to witnessing a crime themselves while on patrol, pretty much necessary for lesser moving violations. This permissible three-fer procedure helped to prevent corruption. Limiting the initiating sources made it difficult to manufacture false evidence convincingly. Requiring that written reports begin factually with one of only three starting points made it far more difficult to take random or rogue action. For the same token, the three-pronged procedure also quelled the bearing of false witness by citizens. A person would have a more difficult time pinning a false crime report on the neighbor kid who porked his daughter if the process had to begin by talking to the police. A person couldn’t run up with a trick photo of a banker boffing a zebra in the playground without the promise of cops investigating. In all three cases, however, it was expected of cops to be PRESENT to bear out the proper response action. They had to go to where the infraction was taking place. They had to get on-scene. In fact, an officer’s written report or summons, the sole official document of each such event, was so predicated upon the importance of an authority figure’s first hand knowledge of an incident, that almost any contradictory claim was readily dismissed and lack of proper police report could make or break one’s argument in court.

Well, the red light camera has no such police presence. While the photo itself still goes through law enforcement personnel before ever reaching an accused’s mailbox, the photo is no longer first-hand knowledge, but barley second-hand knowledge. In fact, given the boundaries of a photograph, it is a limited second hand knowledge at that. It’s like a slutty reputation in high school or a belief that Dr. Pepper contains prune juice. Sure, all knowledge is limited, but clearly the minor point here is that a photograph will always be more limited than the knowledge of an officer on-scene. In some cases, under older law, some red light camera photos would prove little different than hearsay. Seesaw?

Thus, in many states, this required direct change to major legislation. For some other states and counties it meant simple additions to laws. For still others it meant finding adjudicative justifications within existing bodies of law when legislation was slow to change. Some places simply shifted the onus of clear determination from the law enforcement level to an already backlogged judicial level, people showing up to fight all sorts of red light camera photos only to predominantly lose in the end. “Yes, I did run the red light, but as you can see in the photo, my penis was caught in the vent window!” What’s more, legislation change was not the limit to problems with red light camera philosophy. For instance, unlike a parking ticket where a vehicle is still, is it not counter-intuitive to presume true witness to a MOVING VIOLATION in a STILL photograph? The legal shift, middlingly justified by a government attempt to make roads safer, is certainly one in favor of big brother, big government, big revenue, and tech’ solutions over human ones.

It is because of these inherent fallacies in red light camera programs, that while acknowledging noticeable decreases in traffic accidents at equipped intersections, I have to disagree on a fundamental level with their application.

Don’t hoist me as the hero just yet. You are about to hate the playa.

What if, just what if, despite my distaste for red light camera programs, I asserted a newer, wider application of these changes in law? No, not stoning. Well…

My chief argument against congestion pricing in the post noted earlier was that it punishes the people already doing the correct thing, an unjust act of wrongfulness no matter how one explains its “need.” If I purport my assertion to be a blockbusting bill-killer in all future congestion pricing proposals, then I need to acknowledge my claim’s inverse. I need to support ideas which only punish wrongdoers and spare already error-free commuters any hassle. I have such an idea. I like it. I call it the Civilian Ticket Patrol. Bum--ba-duh-dump.

If our legislation has already been eased to allow "police absence / tech’ presence" style evidence in the form of still pictures, then it is not that far of a leap to do something similar with motion pictures. Video cameras can easily capture far more moving violation types than a still camera. Illegal u-turns, blown stop-signs, failures to yield, failures to signal, equipment violations, one-way street violations, illegal turns, fender-benders, these can all be SEEN on video. Video devices mounted in the grills and on the dashboards of police vehicles already do this during routine traffic stops. One merely needs to check out The World’s Scariest Police Chases or Cops to see how many precincts and sheriff’s offices use this tool to great evidentiary achievement. Well, instead of "police absence / tech’ presence," why not "police absence / citizen-tech’ presence?"

I reluctantly propose that we implement a system whereby city citizens with registered, insured, personal vehicles can choose to have their vehicles outfitted with similar motion picture capture devices at no charge. The system would need to be a closed system that disallows tampering. A driver’s only interface with the system would be a keypad that marks a starting and ending video time index to bracket a moving violation they’ve just witnessed, and perhaps a wireless upload switch to the police department or an ejectable, lockbox media to mail-in to the police. The device would need to be well hidden for citizen safety. The interface component would only work when the Citizen Patroller had her/his own vehicle parked, again with regard to safety. Video would be automatically time and date stamped and uniquely coded with the video capture unit number. Ejectable lockbox media would not be accepted at the police department if it showed any signs of breakage or tampering. I would suggest a wide angle lens set with a focal point broad enough to pick up street signs and oncoming cars. I'd also suggest a GPS feature to further add to the information gathered.

On the front end, citizen selection for the program would be key. Interested parties would be put on a waiting list. Nobody with outstanding parking or moving violations, criminal records or warrants would be eligible. No one without a current driver’s license would be eligible. Nobody with pending court cases would be eligible. Nobody with orders of protection or orders of protection against them or other legal documentation implying potential grudges would be eligible. No hunchbacks. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Participant citizens would receive training on the interface, training on what constitutes a moving violation, training on recognizing non-viable video capture (both technologically and with regard to the law), and training on safe use of the tool (CTP procedure). Citizen’s would NOT be pulling cars over or issuing tickets themselves. Citizen’s would NOT be patrolling, but merely capturing moving violations in their day-to-day doings around the neighborhood. Jeez, Louise, I “happen” across 10 creative moving violations a day just going from my apartment to the babysitter’s place. Good evidence, chained properly and resulting in adjudication against a violator would yield a percentage of the revenue collected on the ticket back to the video capturing citizen’s pocket. Money! Money taken from the “bad people” and given to the “good people.” Holy cow, I’m Robin Hood!

On the back end, more cops/legal officials would need to take more time to witness the video captured evidences. (Video takes longer to see than a photo.) These officials would be the sole deciders as to whether a ticket is warranted and issued on the video or not, just like red light camera photos, retaining the proper decisive authority where it belongs. Time and date stamps would determine the immediacy with which a video was received. Cops should be given the authority to simply throw away any video evidence that arrives long after the date stamp (preventing people from saving up incriminating evidence). Cops should be given a workable CTP database for cross-checking and the authority to discard any video evidence received from the same patroller on the same vehicle more than once, to prevent stalking, blackmail, entrapment, and varied forms of citizen corruption.

There would need to be oversight provisos aplenty. Any willful violation of CTP procedure and policy would result in immediate shutdown and removal of the apparatus from the citizen's personal vehicle at the owner’s expense, even getting towed to do so, if not her/his own arrest. Further, CTP procedure violators should be fined at least ALL monies collected through their actions on previous captures. Such violations should include but not be limited to

1) Speaking to the violator caught on video
2) Sending in more than one (or pick a reasonable number) video violations on the same vehicle
3) Any indication of device, data, or media tampering
4) The interruption of any police officer in the course of her/his duties
5) Evidence of entrapment.
6) Breaking motor vehicle law in order to capture some one else breaking motor vehicle law
7) Posing as a police officer
8) Expired driver’s license
9) Expired vehicle insurance
10) Expired vehicle registration
11) Failure to pay one’s own tickets
12) Video capture of the patroller’s own vehicle in a moving violation
13) Equipment used to spy.

For years police departments have talked about citizen’s being the eyes and the ears of their neighborhoods. They express actual regret in not being able to protect everyplace at once. They beg neighborhood watches to be on the lookout, commuters to keep eyes open for suspicious behaviors and objects, victims to report crimes against them, and building/business owners to install security cameras. The Civilian Ticket Patrol is an extension of that very want. While it utilizes an existing segment of law that I find somewhat deplorable, there are a great deal of long sought after complications that a program like this might well resolve.

Let’s examine.

The practice only punishes those who are breaking the law, as opposed to blanketing the entire area with new rules and fees that target innocents and traffic violators equally.

It spreads the eyes and ears of otherwise official units charged with preventing traffic violations out among as large and invisible a cross–segment of the city population as any city is willing to fund.

Unlike red light cameras which groups frequently document and post online to create a map of avoidable intersections, these cameras are mobile; they can be at any place at any time, a truly more effective deterrent to traffic violation than a stationary, visible camera.

This can easily put a little extra money in ordinary people’s pockets without the lengthy governmental red tape of raising minimum wage, encouraging new local business, or creating jobs. Once up and running it is quite an immediate return for both city and citizens.

As stated before, a video system would capture far more types of infraction than a single, red light camera can.

Former New York City Mayor Giuliani, and to a certain extent, the now NYC Mayor Bloomberg have frequently asserted that the best action to curtail gridlock/traffic in Manhattan’s central business district would simply be for those on the road to follow the existing rules. New York City has signs at so many of it’s major intersections warning “Don’t Block the Box,” meaning, do not enter an intersection, even on a green light, if you cannot safely cross the entire intersection to the opposite side. A large number of these intersections have even painted a giant cross-hatching right onto the pavement so that drivers can see the “box” in question. Heck, many of the red light cameras in Manhattan were mounted for this express purpose. Much to the city’s surprise after implementing them, a great number of the red light scoffing culprits were their own city bus drivers. The point being, if officials insist that moving violations (not traffic volumes) are a direct cause of city gridlock, to the tune of implementing multi-million dollar systems targeted to decrease just one type of said violations, then they would have to agree that a newer system which targets MORE violation types in ALL areas would be superior and therefore more effective.

Sure, the Civilian Ticket Patrol would have its built-in limits. Civilian car to car video cannot accurately capture speeding, horn blowing, improper breaking distances, and so on. Such a system would even need to weed out the possibility of multiple videos captured of the same, distinct violation.

But, these circumstances are not why everyone to whom I suggest the idea is ready to string me up by my balls. People hate the idea because they like getting away with moving violations. “Come on. Everybody does it.” They have fervently convinced themselves that, if gone uncaught, a moving violation, even a serious one, never actually happened. They like putting a boot in the man’s ass. People mass-justify their own rule bending and breaking actions to such a vast degree that the idea of a factually legal driver is considered an outcast notion, an impossibility, and even a danger to other drivers. People like beating the odds. They seriously don’t mind paying a ticket or two over the years when compared to the twenty-thousand times they habitually got away with the same action. The Civilian Ticket Patrol would severely crop those odds. It might truly force a multiple offender to look at and to adjust to her/his own actions. If not, it might merely be a speedier path to getting licenses revoked, cars off the road, and nominal traffic flow in a thickly populated area.

All in all, we should not do it. My idea is not at all a nice way to collectively dis/allow folks to exercise American freedoms. Yet, if the only alternative is going to be congestion pricing or some other ill-begotten idea that charges everybody and punishes those who already play by the rules, I vote for my idea. The Civilian Ticket Patrol, gotcha!

Douchebaggery FTW!

2008-10-10T23:20:00.003-05:00

If you saw this week's ridiculous Monday Night Football game, you should go read what Jeffrey had to say about it.

After five or ten minutes of jeers from the fans, Hochuli offered his explanation. The ruling, delivered in a confounding Sarah Palin-esque verbiage, seemed to state that, yes, the ball was coming out as the player was going down but since his hand was still kind of touching the ball as his knee hit the ground, Minnesota retains possession.

Seriously. It's a great post, even if you aren't a football fan or couldn't give a shit about the New Orleans Saints.

Kitten v. Toothbrush One for the ages.

2008-10-10T14:17:00.001-05:00

Go ahead and waste 4 minutes of your day.

You can thank me later.

Props to Cajun Boy.

Houston Texans prove me wrong

2008-10-09T13:41:00.002-05:00

I'd like to think that I admit it when I'm wrong. I don't, but I'd like to think so. My standard excuse is, "If I was wrong, it was because key information was withheld."

Here, though, that's not the case.

I stated last month that if the Houston Texans could manage to host a home game this season, we could discuss the comparative rebuilding prowess of Texas and Louisiana. Well, they did.

But they cheated.

Officials expect that all eight of Houston's home games this season will be played with the roof open.

I realize I was not specific when I threw out my challenge.

Hell, when you manage to host a home football game before the end of the season, we can talk about who's better in a crisis.

They managed to do that and I will admit that they dealt with their football problem better than we did. One can only imagine what the Saints 05-06 season would have been like if Superdome officials had been as forward thinking as the folks at Reliant Park. "Fuck it," they would have said. "We'll just play with the son-of-a-bitch broken."

Texas: If it ain't fixed, leave it broke.

Though the Texans played well, they blew a 17 point lead in the last four minutes.

They choked, because that's what happens to dirty, sneaky cheaters.

Congestion Pricing: Be A Snot-Nosed Rich Prick

2008-10-02T14:55:00.041-05:00

Yes siree, if you live in the U.S. of A. it’s coming for you, and the only thing you can do to stop it is to keep an ear to the ground and recognize the greenback beast in all its many incarnations. The idea of congestion pricing, adding new tolls to some or all inbound roads into a city or central business district in the name of traffic control, is a sneaky shape-shifter of an idea recently, but barely, shot down for New York City. I’ve no doubt that it will be revisited, mayor after mayor, snot-nosed rich advisor after snot-nosed rich advisor, and suggested as a solution to every deficit until kingdom come. Learn to fight it here.

Background snippet de jour: New York City is a city made up of five boroughs on four differing land masses. When most people think about NYC, they think of Manhattan, an island. Staten Island, a separate island, is also part of The Big Apple. Brooklyn (Kings County) and Queens are actually city counties on the westernmost geographic body of Long Island (yet a third isle), while the Bronx finishes the city to the north looking to cartographers like a mutant uvula dangling rudely from the mainland. Smaller islands like Rikers Island, Wards/Randalls Island, Roosevelt Island, Governors Island, Coney Island, and the like are also part of NYC. The Hudson River (tidal estuary), Harlem River, East River, Arthur Kill, Atlantic Ocean, and Long Island Sound are a web of water bodies that carve up the city into its component parts, making it no surprise that the metropolis is vivaciously riddled with beautiful bridges of every length and style. Long story short, all the bridges and tunnels controlled by New Jersey’s Port Authority, are tolled. Most bridges controlled by the city itself are currently free. While this has made for some controversy over the years, certain New Yorkers able to get from home to work and back sans toll, others being forced to pay a toll to get into their own neighborhood, it’s not all that difficult to track. Bridges and tunnels closer to the outside of the city or entering the city are tolled, bridges closer to the center of the city are usually free.

Well, borrowing from current practices in places like London and Stockholm, this year saw “congestion pricing” suggested and narrowly defeated in NYC. The idea was to add new tolls to all the currently free Manhattan inbound bridges between certain streets. Functionally, this would have eradicated all remaining free rides on any major bridge. It was meant, in part, as a deterrent from driving for non-city residents. Problem was, the bridges proposed for said tolls are right in the middle of the place, effectively cutting off more than half of the city’s resident drivers from their destinations. I mean, wherever you live, imagine, for the moment, that there is only a single boulevard you can take to get to your job. Then imagine that somebody slapped a big toll booth right on that road. Starting to get the picture? Mayor Bloomberg backed it, pushed for it, and financed an obtuse battalion of elitists to hammer it through. No dice, even as the lie evolved. It was originally brought up as an idea to curtail traffic in Manhattan, but soon became touted as a green initiative. Lie!

What kills me about it is not the suggestion. Ideas come and go. I don’t even horribly much mind that the idea became lumped in with green initiatives. The Bloomberg administration has done quite a lot, in fact, to push through and to support multiple green initiatives, despite a small budget burp early in his 9-11 proximal mayoralty that temporarily quashed the city’s massive recycling program. The congestion pricing idea needed a recognizable home and gravitated toward the easiest one to lie about. What actually feels like the ice pick in my brain, instead, was the argument used by congestion pricing opponents, the freakin’ people on my side! The main argument they chose to combat congestion pricing was such a poor and almost unrelated argument that I am actually amazed this tolls nonsense didn’t pass with flying colors.

Congestion pricing opponents, again and again, chose to harp upon the idea that to toll the many remaining free bridges between Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan was a thinly veiled stratagem seeking to disenfranchise Queens and Brooklyn residents, an unfair tax. Often, without actually saying it, the insinuation was that Queens and Brooklyn, being among the most culturally diverse counties in the entire nation, were being discriminated against by Bloomberg and an army of Manhattanites. Pah-leeeeese! Really? Ten-thousand perfectly logical counter-arguments that could have shown congestion pricing for the poor idea that it was; countless obvious, common-sense reasons, any one of which could have defeated congestion pricing initiatives for a long time to come if not forever, and these concave skulls thought that a watered down version of a race card was the way to go?! They chose a “taxation without representation” argument for a fee that was not a tax and a group of people who they themselves represented? You know, despite the fact that I seem to live in an urban honeycomb of modern liberalism, I do see racism and bigotry every day. It’s here, it’s there, it exists, it’s real, it deserves to be challenged and fought. But to buy the argument that congestion pricing would unfairly “tax” a cross-section of the community even partially based on class or race means I would also have to believe that Bloomberg and his money making robots actually had some sort of investment in discriminating, a Berlin Wall agenda that starts with tolls and ends with a force field. I’d have to believe that Manahattanites, a mosaic of races and classes in and of their own demographic, didn’t simply and selfishly want less traffic around their homes, but also wanted Queens to evaporate and Brooklyn to just go away. It makes no sense. I am insulted by the very people sent to debate for my best interests.

Look, there are forces at work out there that are going to piggy-back a highly unfounded congestion pricing scenario onto every cause, every bill, every earmark they can. They’ll call it something different each time. They’ll renegotiate the price. They’ll petition the feds for backing. They’ll “mitigate” the impact. They’ll take surveys until people are bored with the subject. They’ll cite new impact studies from every angle. It’s not about any of that. It’s about money and only money. It’s about a few too many powerful people who are too self-righteous to sit in traffic like the rest of us, or dare I say, deign to take mass transit. It’s about an endless history of government waste and questionable spending practices that listless entrepreneurs will try to balance by charging the very people who their inane spending habits affected the most. It’s an untapped source of revenue over which businesspeople like Bloomberg salivate as they stare longingly at those poor, untolled, engineering marvels. A makeshift race card defense isn’t going to fly every single time this power brokerage rears its ugly haunches to piss on us.

That said, ringing true to even the soundest of Queens and Brooklyn minds, it’s all phrased as opinion. Opinions don’t win dink! This blog entry is not about my opinion. Imagine that! It is about equipping you, the reader, with all the actual arguments that should have been brought to bear in New York. It is about sharing the layer upon layer of common sense that was ignored from both sides in our case, so that you can adjust to your own city’s attempt at congestion pricing with a full and proper arsenal. I’ve no doubt that some cities are going to sneak it through, but before they do, they are going to have to contend with you and each and every single GOOD point you bring up at the hearings before getting it done. I’ll give you what I can. Please give me yours. Let’s work this out.

THE NYC ANTI-CONGESTION PRICING MASTER LIST:

First, let us just plainly and logically discount the notion that congestion pricing is a green initiative as proposed in NYC. Perhaps the simplest illustration I can borrow is the fact that all cars would be charged the same toll. Hybrid cars were not going through at half price. Alternative energy cars (like yet to be legalized hydrogen vehicles which only produce water as waste) are not getting through the tolls for free. There would be no pro-rate for cars that use less gas over cars that use more. There would be no 1955 singing Exxon team popping out of each toll booth to check under your hood and validate your energy prudence. If the heart of the matter is an ecological one, certainly no truly green mitigating provision was made in the congestion pricing proposal. Not green $8.00. Completely green, $8.00. Horse and buggy, $8.00. How stupid do they think we are?

Even if future editions of this farce crop up including discount provisions and passes, one still cannot justify the ADDED 40 minute to 2 hour wait that all drivers, hybrid, biodiesel, corn ethanol, and otherwise, would have to wait in the snaky line behind the toll booth. That’s not green. That’s not reasonable. If the current rush hour wait times on the highly tolled west side at the New Jersey bridges and tunnels are any indication, waits that take place on wide open highways, well then the waits through the easterly Chiclet-like neighborhood blocks, fully actuated traffic lights, industrial parks, double-parking, and bus stops are going to be all that much worse. When I am talking about 40 minute to 2 hour waits, I AM ROUNDING DOWN! People we are talking about a different kind of green here, dollar green.

Besides, that’s just the autocentric version of the “green” debacle. Though I am in full awareness that the people of our nation are exorbitantly far from green goals, what about those crafty, future Queens homeowners who will have participated in projects enough to completely neutralize or negate their entire carbon footprint? For every bit of gasoline they will have bought and for every molecule of pollution they will have shunted through their tailpipe, they will have also done something else on the homefront to reverse the curse. They will have planted trees and tended to flowers. They will have stuck a windmill on the roof, gone paperless with their bills. They will have taken to buying only green products, reduced, reused, recycled, minimized consumerism, ridden bikes locally, hosted Earth Day, become vegetarians, forgone AC, and donated to the DEP to clean up the East River. You mean to tell me that Inspector 12 is going to come monthly to their homes and fill out a certificate that allows them to cross that very same East River at a discount? No! “You are on four wheels and rollin’ lady, 8 bucks.” Congestion pricing has nothing to do with ecology. Were that the proposition’s only fault, it might have had a chance.

I’m going to start with the absolute broadest reason why congestion pricing is titanically unjust, the reason lawmakers need to have smacked in their faces. It punishes the people who are already doing things correctly! Congestion pricing punishes the people who are presently doing exactly what the city insists that they do to battle congestion! The city wants people to take mass transit. Well, millions of them do just that. They are on a train in a hole in the ground every morning at rush hour and again at rush hour on the way home. They stand, packed, dangerously shoulder to shoulder, not a seat in sight, clutching belongings and unable to reach the nearest pole or strap to hang onto in the speeding subway snarl. They are crowd-pressed to teeter on platform edges as the trains roll into stations, already sardine-full of people from the previous stop, each clipped for two bucks a head to experience the luxury of this risk to life and limb and time and comfort and privacy. Commuters are herded up wide staircases with nary an inch to spare between their own faces and the stranger’s ass in front of them. The sheer mass of the populous sharing their commute, the mass that is mass transit, has so engorged the subway and buses systems that, in typical New York fashion, morning rush hour is actually two and a half hours long. Nighttime rush hour lasts from 4pm to 7:30pm without blinking an eye. Six full hours per business day of people-stuffing, strained backs, picked pockets, squeezed breath, spilled drinks, no seats, danger, dehumanization, and cumulative, inadvertent dry humping; and to this equation Bloomberg wishes to ADD all the people in up to 40% of all the vehicles in Manhattan?! I guess one of us must have bent his grandmother over at Thanksgiving.

Too personal? Perhaps. I mean, the idea of congestion pricing seemed pretty damned personal to me. How about my once pregnant wife, high-risk pregnancy, weekly appointments with her OB, the occasional extra appointment for a test or two here or there? Well, we live in Queens. Her choice of doctor (and we have to add the insurance company’s choice of doctor) was in Manhattan. You mean to tell me that you think it is perfectly fine to implement a congestion pricing scheme that would leave my pregnant wife only two real transit choices for every single appointment as well as for the “big day?” Choice number one, walk eight blocks, go up the subway steps, enter the subway system, up another set of steps, onto the train, 20 minute ride with rush hour bodies knit together like a big B.O. doily, change trains underground, 10 minute ride with rush hour bodies crushed to critical and sometimes urinating mass, up another set of steps, followed by a five block walk to the hospital. Choice number two, get in the car and wait 40 minutes to 2 hours to get through an $8.00 toll, per trip, and over a bridge that without the toll can take 5 minutes? Hey, I realize it is expensive to have a baby in New York, but you just took $416 out of that baby’s mouth. If you consider the time I spend waiting each day to make it through that toll, time I could have been at work after each doctor’s appointment, well even at minimum wage that’s an additional $371.80 you’ve taken from that child’s well-being. This doesn’t even count gas spent while waiting. Might not sound like much, and therefore it might not sound too personal, but let’s keep in mind there are 125,00 babies born in New York City every year. That’s 150,000 to 275,000 pregnant commuters at any given time. There's a hearing I want to hear!

Let us, for the moment, turn to discounting some of the lesser riddles embedded with the pro-congestion pricing pulpit. How about the idea that the intention of congestion pricing was to encourage people outside of the city to take mass transit? Well, we are getting closer here, but still untrue. Placing the toll booths on the bridges smack in the middle of the city means you are not looking to curtail outside cars from entering NYC, but that you are trying to curtail any cars, including the cars belonging to your own hard-working residents, from going to one particular area (the area where most of your citizens work). Bridges, sadly, form the perfect traffic bottleneck for toll booths. It makes sense that a money-monger would WANT to put the tolls on bridges, but if one is truly to encourage “outsiders” to opt for mass transit, than the toll booths logically need to be placed on the far more voluminous inbound roads on the outskirts of one’s jurisdiction. There would have to be sudden, expensive booth eyesores placed on each Nassau County road leading into Queens, the city’s largest county. Impossible!

Instead, bridges were the target, and perhaps luckily for naysayers. See, the proposed placement of the booths couldn’t have any better illustrated all the flaws with the idea. One key argument I never heard brought up to combat congestion pricing was its effect. In effect, as a proposed method to “curtail” traffic in Manhattan by 13% to 40%, such was not a curtailing at all. It was a manner in which to EXPORT the traffic to other boroughs within the same city. Up to a Manhattan-sized 40% increase in traffic would be diverted to the local roads and neighborhoods housing the very citizens who predominantly support NYC’s central business nexus. That flat traffic increase is then additionally lumped on top of the then 40% more monstrous bottle-neck caused by the toll itself. Mosquito infestation? Blah! We’ll fix it. Send 40% of those mosquitoes to your brother’s house. It’s poor business ethic, plain and simple.

I truly thought that Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican and later changed to a more Independent approach, was a person learning lessons. If so, it might then follow that at least some of those lessons would be the lessons of history. The congestion pricing proposal for NYC flagrantly ignored so many of the lessons of history that it became quite difficult to see anything inspired in the idea.

It ignored the countless news broadcasts, two toll hikes ago in 2001, that showed New Jersey drivers furious over NYC inbound tolls going up as they commuted to work, but surprisingly showed Manhattanites who were happy as pie and grossly over-thankful for the increase, figuring the hike would keep more cars out of “their” city. It didn’t, at least not until 9 months had passed and even then to a tune of a trivial 2%. Such broadcasts overtly laid those Manhattanite desires right out for everyone to hear. Do we really think those desires faded in just five or six years? Do Manhattanites deserve special treatment over others in their own city, OUR city?

It also ignored the history of the bridges bringing the city together as a single entity, a story founded on more than just matters of transit, money, trade and traffic, but one deeply rooted in culture, immersion, freedom, and empowerment. The History Channel even ran an ironically recent special on these giant NYC bridges and how they made the city whole. Cast in the light of bridge-building past, the congestion pricing proposal cannot hope to achieve any greater reputation than that of purposeful division.

I guess it also doesn’t help that the proposal ignored years of widely publicized complaints from Triborough Bridge users. In a nutshell, users of this bridge are chiefly New York City residents who are forced to pay a toll to get both to and from work within their own home town, the folks whom I’d mentioned earlier as being charged to get into their own neighborhoods. The Triborough Bridge, a bridge with three legs (plus) that actually reaches three city destinations, while placed perfectly to service three boroughs, is also at a cross-purposed niche in the city geography. It is both near the center of the city and used as an entry point. It is controlled by The Metropolitan Transit Authority and tolled much as the New Jersey crossings are despite the fact that no end of it touches New Jersey, no end leaves NYC, and it stretches across the same river as all the free bridges. The weirdness of the Triborough’s status aside, years of complaints from commuters have yielded years of responses from city officials. For decades now the typical response had been that if Queens residents wish not to pay Triborough tolls to enter Manhattan, they already have another free alternative, the 59th Street Bridge (Queensboro Bridge). Well, that response seems to imply that if Queens residents had no alternative, the Triborough Bridge toll would be eliminated. Did I say implied? The wording of this repeatedly visited response, when stated officially, is practically a promise. Under congestion pricing, there would be no alternative. Yet, was there any provision to address this historical fact, any provision that would have city officials and the MTA make good on their promise? Nope. In fact, it is more likely the Triborough Bridge toll would need be nearly doubled to match congestion pricing on the other bridges. Voilà! Another turbulent verbal history of citizen voice verses government rationalization ignored as Bloomberg’s skirmishers beseeched Albany to pass the bill.

Perhaps the easiest reel of history for our representatives to have shelved was the common sense episode. Tolls, for the most part, are meant to help pay for new thoroughfares. They offset new bridge costs and new highway costs, ensuring that public projects eventually pay for themselves. Specifically, they are a plan to guarantee that those who foot the bill are those who use the road, and not an additional tax hike on six million people who stayed at home summer Fridays picking their toes. Sometimes, tolls are instead worked into a broader shard of the revenue system, not only paying for the road over which one travels, but additionally helping to pay for related initiatives, like transit in general, or unrelated initiatives like public schools, police protection, and the Mayor’s penis pump. In either case, there is an unavoidable chronology in the purposing of tolls. In the first case mentioned, tolls have a built-in end date. They are placed for a number of years and then removed when the road construction and maintenance costs have been superseded. New York City need only look to its near neighbor, the Southern State Parkway for this example. In the second case mentioned, tolls are placed when the road is built and are planned to remain in that location indefinitely. NYC’s other near neighbor, The New Jersey Turnpike, is a shining and despicably expensive example of this usage. However, does anyone care that in neither case is a road allowed to remain free for a century and then get tolled later on? That’s a step backwards! A twelve year old kid can tell that's a decision that moves in completely the wrong direction. This concept is consumately un-American. To find its like, one has to stretch for examples all the way across the Atlantic Ocean or into nations with whom we would never share economic policy. We are not Stockholm on the Hudson. You know, the plain common sense of it is that Manhattan traffic will not be viabley curtailed. For every vehicle you get out of the area, another one will take its place eventually, usually from within Manhattan by people living there. Where do we get off suggesting a rigid policy that even distantly approaches the ideal of, “If you want to drive here, you have to be rich...and we're willing to move backwards to enforce that?”

In the end, maybe the folks on my side in Albany had it right. Maybe all these many solid arguments were just too common, too easy to overlook as non-points and non-politics. Maybe the “race card” or the “unfair tax” approach had more on the ball than I’d realized. I mean, after all, it is one more well known lesson of history that Robert Moses, power broker who saw to the construction of the Northern and Southern State Parkways, each stretching east over Long Island from NYC, sought to prejudicially exclude. All the cross-street bridges over both parkways were purposely built too low to allow buses to pass thereunder. It was an artifice specifically employed to disallow poorer people (urban minorities) from making their way to Long Island. That’s a bit of a Berlin Wall, a kind of lowbrow force field. Well, what is Bloomberg, but a rich power broker? I personally don’t hear a speck of bigotry in his speeches. That shows he’s careful, careful enough to tailor every quip, careful enough not to use language that divides. It begs the question then, why he as such a careful, rich, power broker would elect to back a policy that so clearly lumps him into historical association with another who deliberately sought to divide, maybe even conquer. Aren’t appearances everything?

If I Admit…A Search For Meaningful Ground

2008-09-30T15:27:00.010-05:00

If I admit that McCain’s time in the military better suits him to be Commander-In-Chief, will you admit that time spent in an enemy prison camp probably doesn’t give him the best mindset for setting foreign policy?

If I admit that there is a tiny, little part of me that wishes to wrongly ignore all the issues and vote for Obama simply because he’s “the black guy,” will you admit that not voting for him based upon the same reason is at least equally as wrong?

If I admit that despite my vast education, the current economic crisis seems too complex for me and perhaps for most to understand, will you admit that you must comparatively know even less about the infinitely broader subject matter of God, afterlife, and metaphysics?

If I admit that I see no short-term end in sight to the nearly 50/50 electoral schism between red states and blue states, will you admit that the closest we might get to our own moderate or centrist views in The White House is a Republican for eight years followed by a Democrat for eight years, and so on?

If I admit that Sarah Palin has to have exhibited some intelligence to rise to the position of Governor, will you admit that her stance as a traditional, small government Republican simply means she does less in government?

If I admit that, no matter what he says, Obama as President coupled with a strongly Democratic U.S. Congress is going to cost you way, way, way more money in the long run, will you admit that means more money in programs and less in rich pockets?

If I admit that, based on the Reagan-esque standard, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” our answer in 1983 should have been a unanimous YES, will you admit that our answer to the same question in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 should have been a resounding NO?

If I admit that there’s a large part of me that is simply too lazy to take personal action against global climate change, will you admit that I’m part of the problem, thereby acknowledging the problem?

If I admit that evolution could be a subset of creation, will you admit it’s the only subset based upon empirical data, and therefore the only subset teachable in an evidentiary manner?

If I admit that I’d be willing to acknowledge that timetables are bad, like one to withdraw U.S. Troops from Iraq, will you admit the necessity to eliminate another timetable that claims the Earth is only 5000 years old?

If I admit that giving birth seems like the best choice, will you admit that it’s a choice?

If I admit that Liberals sometimes seek new change for the empty sake of change, will you admit that Conservatives, in the act of conserving our Republic, have over 200 years of practices, many bad, from which to choose their stances and still be considered good Conservatives, regardless?

If I admit that there is no definitive way to control the emotion of greed on Wall Street, will you admit that there is no definitive way to control the emotion of lust in our young adults?

If I admit that God exists, will you then admit that there’s no reason you have to tell me about him?

If I admit that I irrationally blame McCain’s party line, in part, for the mistakes of the George W. Bush administration, will you admit that Obama’s party line makes you irrationally fear another White House BJ?

If I admit that Democratic politicians don’t really care about poor Americans, will you admit that you don’t either?

If I admit that, in the interest of America, Saddam Hussein deserved to be forcibly removed from power and killed, will you admit that Osama Bin Laden deserved the same, first?

If I admit that the surge worked, will you admit that our soldiers deserve to come home then in triumph?

How to fix a natural disaster

2008-09-17T11:07:00.003-05:00

16 die in attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen

I bet Bush wishes he had thought of that 3 years ago.

Quick thought on Ike

2008-09-16T11:02:00.011-05:00

More to come later, but I saw this on MSNBC today and just couldn't believe it.

Officials from Texas pressed for equal treatment from federal aid agencies. "I have asked the president and the administration to just treat us as fairly as they treated Louisiana back during Katrina," said Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "Texans will take care of the rest."

Mr Perry, you really might want to rethink that statement. I hope you haven't put it in writing. If you did, you just fucked the citizens of Galveston and Houston.

If you want help that is a day late and a dollar short, then ask to be treated like Louisiana. If you want an enormous, unreasonable bill from FEMA for a percentage of the money they wasted through ridiculous red tape and bureaucracy, ask to be treated like Louisiana. If you want your citizens to receive help that will endanger their health and welfare, brought to them through no-bid contracts with barely regulated out-of-state contractors, then ask to be treated like Louisiana.

If you want, "Heckuva job, Brownie!" then ask to be treated like Louisiana.

I could go on.

And on.

And on.

Mr. Perry, set your sights a bit higher, like maybe Mississippi. You have ruined casinos, right? Better build some, quick.

Oh, and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH for the insinuation that Texans are somehow able to help themselves better than Louisianians. We've already started to see the same bitching and carrying on from your superior, self sufficient and, may I add, incredibly wealthy citizenry. When you get Galveston up and running in less than a year, get back to me. When Houston is back to pre-storm population in less than two, give me a call. Hell, when you manage to host a home football game before the end of the season, we can talk about who's better in a crisis.

Until then:

Don't mess with Texas. You don't know where it's been.

*I don't need any irate Texans leaving nasty comments. I'm mad at your governor, not you. I hope someone in charge over there has been paying attention. It's not going to be easy.

September 11th, 2001 was a gorgeous day...

2008-09-11T13:59:00.006-05:00

It really was. It was one of those perfect NYC fall days. Warm enough for short sleeves, but with just a little bit of chill on the morning air that would disappear before noon. Small signals of deepening autumn but without the sense of the impending cold weather.

I was supposed to be at work for 9, but I never got there until 9:15 at the earliest. There was a simple, rational reason to it. It took me 15-20 minutes to make it from Queens to midtown. Since we lived at the last stop in Queens, if I boarded the subway between 8:30 and 9, I would have to wedge myself intothe entire borough of Queens trying to make it to work for 9. If I boarded at 9:01, the train was empty. I was a temp, so it really didn't matter.

I kept NY1, the local news station, on every morning while I was getting ready for work, mostly for weather. As I picked up the remote to turn off the TV, Pat_Kiernan reported that a plane might have hit the World Trade Center. He took a call from a motorist on a cell phone who told him debris was all over the road. Nobody seemed too concerned. I simply thought, "Well that's fucking weird," and went to work.

I just kind of subconsciously made up my mind that it must have been a small private plane with some kind of trouble that smacked the WTC and broke apart. Imagine flying a remote control plane full speed into the side of the house. That's the picture I had in my head. Apparently, I wasn't the only one.

The people on the subway were calm. When I got to midtown, there was no indication from anyone on the street that anything out of the ordinary had happened. The only thought I really had about the whole thing was how difficult it would be to pull all the airline commercials off the schedule and find something to replace them that wouldn't conflict with anything else.

I got off the elevator and the office was relatively quiet. No one was at their desks, which was a little strange, but it was just 9:15 so I figured they were off bullshitting like they did every morning. I sat down, pulled up the Schedule and started working. Turns out, I didn't even have that many airline spots that week. Then Nell comes in and says, "Did you see the Trade Center?" I said, "No. A plane hit it or something?" "Two planes. We're under attack." "What? That sounds like bullshit." "Turn on your TV." Oh yeah, there's a TV on my desk. So I turn it on (it's already on NY1) and see the Pentagon in flames.

This was no longer interesting or weird.

I didn't know what to do, so I just kept working. Honestly, I wasn't really scared until the first tower collapsed. I remember thinking at that point, "I need to call my mom and tell her I'm OK."

I don't remember anybody telling us to leave and go home. The trains and subways weren't running. The bridges and tunnels were closed. There was no place to go and nothing to be done.

When they finally opened the bridges that afternoon, I walked home with my girlfriend (now wife) across the Queensborough bridge.

If I had just looked out my window before I walked out the door that morning, I would have seen it all happen. I don't know if that would have made any difference.

I don't care who's fault it was. I don't care who has capitalized, or tried to, on it. I don't care about the wars that followed it. Not today.

I don't care about the prayers or the moments of silence or God Bless America.

Today I care about one thing and one thing only. It's a statement I heard or read in the days after the attacks. I have no idea if it's entirely accurate, but it's so poetic that it must be partly true.

A fully loaded fireman climbs stairs at the rate of about one minute per flight.

The men from the FDNY that entered the North Tower to fight the fire and evacuate survivors were headed to the 93rd floor. They were blind and deaf as soon as they entered the stairwells. The tower collapsed after an hour.

They never had a chance.

And they did it anyway.

When I get home this evening, I'll be playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and having a drink in honor of the men who looked Death square in the face, said "Fuck you," and kept climbing.

Join me.

This is kind of important LA SPCA annoucement

2008-09-05T15:07:00.005-05:00

Emphasis mine

From the Louisiana SPCA:

The Louisiana SPCA is currently handling animal emergency and animal rescue calls ONLY. To report an animal emergency or an animal needing rescue please contact the Louisiana SPCA at 504-368-5191 ext. 100 or contact the Louisiana SPCA by email at info@la-spca.org. Because the shelter is located in Algiers, which is still impacted by power outages, the Louisiana SPCA is currently not open to the public but we will resume our regular operations as soon as possible.

The LA/SPCA is also alerting New Orleans residents that several unauthorized animal groups have entered New Orleans to go onto citizens’ properties to remove animals, presenting themselves as animal rescuers. Please be aware that the Louisiana SPCA is the only organization in Orleans Parish authorized to respond to animal rescue calls and to respond to animal emergencies.

If you see anyone entering your or your neighbor’s property that is not with the Louisiana SPCA and are attempting to remove an animal from its property it should be immediately reported to the police. Please check the LA/SPCA website at www.la-spca.org for continual updates.

Props to Best of New Orleans Blog (aka Gambit) for the heads-up.

Everything is fine

2008-09-05T12:50:00.002-05:00

For me, anyway. Still trying to get everything up and running. Probably just in time to take it all down again for Ike. Fuck me.

This is the price one pays for living in the most interesting city in the nation.

I Don't See A Flag Pin

2008-09-04T07:41:00.008-05:00

Um, okay, Repubs might finally have something here with this VP pick.

Happy Anniversary

2008-08-29T12:25:00.005-05:00

They buried the last of the bodies today. One day maybe we can dispel the ghosts, as well.

I can't really say it any better than Michael.

3 Years Later, 85 Saints Go Marching In

Please raise your glass tonight to the most wonderful city in the world. 3 years down, eternity to go.

Monday, August 29th, 2005 4:30 AM Please.

2008-08-29T05:04:00.002-05:00

This post is the ninth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

I don't know when I fell asleep, but something woke me up. Probably a cat. I can't get back to sleep, the reason for which you'll see in a minute, so I'm back here, trying to make sense of all of this or at least put it down so I can make sense of it later. I just don't know.

I walked out to the kitchen to get some water or juice or something and my mother was in the living room sitting on a chair, not the couches, but a dining room chair. It took me a minute to register what was going on. She had her pajamas on and was parked not two feet from my aunt's giant television. I could see her face in its glow and she was quietly sobbing, her shoulders shaking. The ice in her glass tinkled with every shudder. I walked around behind her, put mu cheek on the top of her head and my arms around her shoulders. "Momma. What are you doing out here?" She didn't answer me.

I looked up at the TV and and there she was in all her glory, the beautiful and terrible Katrina. The volume was muted. We just watched her, this picture from another universe, an impossible picture, as she swept silently toward Louisiana and consumed the coastline, the entire state. And then back out, rolling in again with those beautiful bands and her perfect eye. Creeping in, jumping back out. Over and over again. I have no idea how long we stayed that way. I put my cheek on hers and realized I had started crying, too. "Don't worry, Momma. It will turn. It will. They always do."... "No, baby, I don't think so. Not this time."

After a while, I got up and left her there.

It has to turn. It HAS to. I don't know what I'll do if it doesn't.

Please God, if you're there, if you were ever there, please make it turn away. Please. I'm sorry. Please just forgive me and MAKE IT TURN!

please

fuck

Sunday, August 28, 2005, 10PM The suspense is killing me

2008-08-28T22:27:00.004-05:00

This post is the eighth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

Some changes... The no names thing is too confusing, so I went back here and added names for clarity.

Such a surreal day. I don't remember much of it except in flashes here and there.

Todd and Nikki rolled in around 10AM. Said there was no traffic at all. Fuckers. I guess we were with all the suckers who left on time. Their dog immediately started humping Charlene's dog and there was a brief bit of drama. They brought our friend Annabelle and her dog, as well, so now the tally is 12 people, 9 dogs, 2 cats.

My parents arrived after noon. There was a brief flurry of emotion when my mother came in. She had apparently been crying the whole way. Tory and I avoided that little squall by going to unload all the stuff my parents had brought with them. Office computers, boxes upon boxes of files, just about everything in my mother's house that was irreplaceable. And the dogs, cages and accoutrement.

I remember the forced way that everyone moved and spoke. No one has been forcing themselves or pretending to be happy. We are all genuinely happy to be here with each other, but every word is coated with dread and fear is in every exhalation, until the the fumes from it all are choking. And I couldn't sneak away for a smoke.

The little bit of levity was provided by Mr. Jack Daniels and the good folks at the Abita brewery. We drank almost all day. Not like Mardi Gras, more like a funeral. With the Weather Channel in the background.

I spent a great part of the day lying in Matthew's bed with the same thoughts running through my head on an endless loop.

Are we missing anything important?...Did I do everything I needed to do?...Is the house secure enough?...I wish the dogs would shut the fuck up...Jasper! Leave that alone...Wow this kid has a lot of crap...When can I get a fucking cigarette?...When are they going to come on TV and tell us everything is OK?...I wish Nash Roberts would wake up and say something...Jesus, she packed a lot of clothes...Get off me, Stella... (Poor baby Stella. Not even a year old and on her way to becoming a world traveler.)I'm sorry, come here...I need another drink...

I've tried to stay away from the TV, but it's just hypnotic. The waiting and the waiting and the waiting. The reporters on the ground seem to be just as impatient and anxious as we are. "Just hurry the fuck up, already, you stupid bitch!!!" The same information over and over and over, nothing new, no change, steady course.

I'd get in bed, but I won't be able to sleep. There's no escape from the horror of anticipation.

I'm going outside to smoke. And I need another drink.

Sunday, August 28, 2005 7:30 AM What the fuck?

2008-08-28T07:35:00.007-05:00

This post is the seventh part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

My father just called and asked me if there was anything in our house that we wanted to save or absolutely needed to keep. I didn't know what to tell him. Even if I could think straight in the face of that question, I wouldn't in a million years be able to tell him where anything is.

My mother is hysterical.

Apparently, what was just a possibility last night is suddenly a done deal.

This can't be happening.

Saturday, August 27, 2005 Guess what I did today.

2008-08-27T23:52:00.004-05:00

This post is the sixth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

I'm totally exhausted from this horrible day, but I'm still (with two drinks in me) wired from driving, so what the hell - might as well blog.

So we moved the office. Forever. As I predicted, it took a lot longer than it should have. It wasn't helped by the several phone calls from my wife. She was worried, to say the least. I had her packing up to evacuate, but she managed to finish before I thought she would. I got a little angrier with her than I should have, I guess. She kept asking me, "Why do you have to this today?" I finally ~~yelled~~ raised my voice, "Because when this thing turns, I have to be at work on Monday!" That's probably not the case at this point.

Then my father and I boarded up his house. Then he helped me board up our house. I packed my wife, all of our stuff and the cats into the car, drove over to mom and dad's, parked our cars in their garage, transferred our stuff to mom's Explorer, and took off.

It only took us 5 hours this time. So either the State Police learned from their mistakes last year or not as many people are leaving as we thought.

We got to my aunt's around 10, kicked my cousin out of his room and I got the cats and my wife settled. I didn't realize until I was unpacking how much my wife packed. It looks like we're staying for two weeks. My aunt made a remark when I was bringing everything in. "Did you bring the whole house?" she said. Almost.

So here's the tally of evacuees at my aunt and uncle's house. I've added the familial relationships so I don't have to explain too much about our interactions. See if you can keep up.

So far:
Me
My wife
Our two cats (Jasper and Stella, for those who haven't kept up)
My great aunt, Carrie (my mother's father's sister)
Her three dogs (2 toy poodles and a mid-sized mutt)

Coming tomorrow will be:
My mother
My father
Their two dogs (Standard poodles)
My (second) cousin, Todd (my mother's father's sister's (not Carrie) son)
His girlfriend, Nikki
Their dog (Doberman puppy)

Add to that the regular inhabitants:
My aunt, Charlene (my mother's sister)
My uncle, Mark
My two cousins - Kathy, girl, 18 and Michael, boy , 15
Their two dogs (1 expensive rat thing and a "labradoodle", which I call a mutt)

For a total of:
11 people
8 dogs
2 cats

And maybe more on the way.

This is going to be fun.

Tomorrow I'm going to install City of Heroes and the Villains beta to my cousins' computer and pray that it works. If I don't have some respite from all of this family time, I'll probably explode.

Now I'm going to sneak out for a cigarette and go to bed.

*sigh*

Continuing...

2008-08-27T21:32:00.003-05:00

Since the latest advisory has Mr. Gustav taking a little jog to the SW and his winds dipping down to 45mph, I've decided to continue.

I have a feeling that this one isn't for us.

I hope that doesn't haunt me like so many things I said three years ago.

And that doesn't mean I haven't started packing, at least mentally.

Friday August 26th, 2005 - 10PM Weekend looking up

2008-08-26T22:01:00.009-05:00

This post is the fifth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

So this weekend may not be a total bust after all. I managed, FINALLY, to log on to the City of Villains beta. The lag was horrible and I kept getting kicked out, but I was able to create a character and fool around a little before the cutoff time.

First impression: It looks really cool, but the graphics are killing my computer amd I had to dial it way down.

The playing time is extended tomorrow and Sunday, so I should be able to get some good playing (oops, I mean testing) time in tomorrow.

This is assuming we aren't heading to BR. I wonder if my aunt's computer has a video card that can handle COV. Hmmm...

Friday, August 26, 2005 - 5:30 PM Packing and other annoyances

2008-08-26T17:23:00.006-05:00

This post is the fourth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

So after driving all day in the rain yesterday, today I got to pack up the whole office to move it tomorrow. Movers are coming tomorrow, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Background:
My parents have been running the business out of the second floor of their house, which is just one big room. My brother and I used to share it. For a year, it was just the three of us and the girl down the street who comes in occasionally. Now we have two more employees and six people won't fit in that room comfortably, if at all. So we're moving. Growth is good, right? Like my dad says, too much work is a problem we want to have all the time.

Right now, however, it's a pain in the ass. :)

And then tomorrow (Saturday!) I get to go unpack everything and set it up. Which shouldn't take more than a few hours, but will actually take all day, just like today.

The NHC keeps shifting Katrina's track westward, which is mildly disconcerting. It's a little storm and I really don't want to have to evacuate. My wife is already worried, though, and I guess we'll be making a trip to Baton Rouge (my aunt's house and designated family hurricane retreat). All I can think about is that dreadful Ivan evacuation. It took us almost 10 hours to get to BR. 90 miles in 10 hours. That's an average of 9 mph, for the arithmetically challenged. Incidentally, that's about as fast as the hurricane is moving. :) Katrina, however, is not in a car with an angry cat (not to mention a tired and cranky wife, sorry baby :) ). This year we have two cats, one just 10 months old. I can't fucking WAIT!

I'm sure it's nothing. If they keep moving it west it will end up in Texas or Mexico. That's what usually happens. My dad went through Betsy and he's not that concerned. Good enough for me.

Between this move tomorrow and dealing with my wife's storm anxiety, this weekend is really going to suck.

Interlude - Gustav approaches

2008-08-26T13:40:00.003-05:00

Wouldn't it be funny if I was interrupted in my recollection of three years ago by another hurricane?

Maybe God is trying to take out the gays again.

He better hurry it up, though. Southern Decadence is over Monday

It would be pretty fucking funny if he missed them again.

Thursday, August 25, 2005 It's like it's never rained before

2008-08-25T19:00:00.005-05:00

This post is the third part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

I really love to drive. I've developed a system on the Interstates that serves me pretty well. I set the cruise control at 79 and just cruise. 79 is really the perfect speed. Fast enough to glide past the slow pokes and stay out of the way of the speedsters, yet slow enough that the cops ignore you. It also keeps you from catching up too quickly to those pockets of traffic that form around trucks.

Traffic, though, especially traffic caused by one inconsiderate jackass, really drives me up the fucking wall. Being a weekday and after the start of school, I figured we wouldn't have a lot of traffic. I was right, but driving for ten hours gives you plenty of opportunity to find inconsiderate and/or just stupid drivers, especially in Florida, which seems to be permanently under construction.

A few observations:

If you can't drive 40 mph, then get off the fucking Interstate. Driving with your hazards on does NOT make it ok to endanger everyone on the road. You want to kill yourself, that's fine with me. I understand that unforunate circumstances sometimes require less than optimal conditions. That's still not an excuse to drive farther than the next fucking exit and call a tow truck.

While on the subject of hazard lights: Do NOT drive with the damn hazard lights blinking. It's distracting. If your hazards are also your taillights, I can't tell when you are braking. If they are orange, I have to drive with orange spots in my eyes for as long as I'm stuck behind you. If you are so concerned with visibility conditions that you feel other drivers may not see you, then it's too dangerous for you to be driving. Get off at the next exit. Pussy.

On being a pussy: If the DoT wanted the lane closed RIGHT HERE then they would have closed it RIGHT HERE and not half a mile further up. Don't get mad at ME because you merged half a mile ago and have been sitting still, while I drove up to the merge in the perfectly open and legal lane to your right. Traffic moves faster when all lanes are being used and drivers are considerate enough to alternate into the merged lane. It's not my fault that you are a too scared to merge. Oh, and if anyone out there drives a semi and gets it into their head that they're going to BLOCK the soon-to-be-closed lane, understand full well, that I am just going to drive around you, as I would any obstacle in the road. Once I do that, as so many of you found out today, the cars behind me will overcome their fear of your big bad truck. Fuck you and stay out of the way.

Please, please, please, please, PLEASE, people, learn how to maintain speed on hills. Slowing down on the incline and speeding up on the downslope because you're too stupid to regulate the pressure on your gas pedal is REALLY annoying. If you are driving a heavy vehicle that simply cannot make it's way up a hill without slowing down and cannot be controlled down the hill without burning up the brakes, then get in the RIGHT FUCKING LANE.

On the right lane: The sign reads, "Slower traffic keep right." I understand that you may feel that you are not driving slowly. You may very well actually be driving fast enough. You are, however, still going slower than me. So move over. If you can't, I understand. As soon as you are able, however, get out of the fucking way.

On the same point: If I move to the right to allow you to pass, then FUCKING PASS! Don't meander past me and get me stuck behind slow traffic. I cannot stress this enough.

That's the end of the driving lessons. :)

The beach was great, but I am fucking exhausted. And tomorrow we get to start packing up to move to the new office. It's not going to be a good weekend.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Vacation's End

2008-08-24T22:27:00.006-05:00

This post is the second part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

My wife and I have been in South Florida for about a week visiting my father-in-law. He's a few blocks away from the beach and the weather's been nice (but hot) so we've been out and about the whole time. Since we're leaving tomorrow, I needed to check the weather to see what we'll be driving through. It's the first time we've turned on the TV since we've been here. :)

So I turn on the television and there's a damn hurricane about to hit Florida! Just showed up out of nowhere! Really freaked me out. They've got it tracking across Miami and then up into the panhandle by the end of the week. My mother-in-law is right in the path of it and her house is surrounded by giant oak trees. There's absolutely no way to evacuate her and my wife is nervous about that, but it's looking like a Category 1 all the way. I'm not really concerned about it. I didn't want to tell her, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm driving all the way home and then six hours back this weekend. It's nowhere near us, but it's pushing out a lot of rain. That will make for a fun drive.

I should probably sign off and go to bed. I have to drive for 10 hours tomorrow. In the rain. Ugh.

I hate the going home part of vacation.

Katrina Anniversary Number Three - An Exercisorcism

2008-08-24T12:00:00.001-05:00

I didn't have a blog in August 2005. For the next several days I'm going to pretend I did. Aside from a few emails and comments around the web, I haven't really written much about the Thing. The Storm. That Bitch. The Flood. Hurricane Katrina.

You know, I was living in NYC on September 11, 2001. I was a temp at the time, so I could have been working anywhere that day. As it turns out, I was in mid-town and had been for a week or so doing an on-again off-again thing for Cablevision. Before that, though, I was in some fly-by-night "communications" company that sold over-priced international phone cards to immigrants. I don't remember the name of the place. I remember it was just two blocks from the WTC. And I had lunch and went to the bookstore at the WTC all week.

I was terrified that day. And everyday after that for a long time. The first day I woke up, looked out the window and saw that the fire was finally out, I instantly felt better. Still scared, but better.

It took a long time for me to shake that off. Went through all the stages. I didn't go anywhere NEAR Lower Manhattan for over a year. Then, one day, it was gone. I felt fine.

I guess it's different when your it's your home.

Some notes, caveats and liberties:

I promise this isn't just emotional masturbation.

Obviously I won't remember everything exactly. This is especially true of the days preceding the storm. My memory, like most others around here, is now in two separate pieces: Pre-Katrina memory and Post-Katrina memory. Pre-Katrina memory is mixed up to a ridiculous degree. I haven't said it in a while, but I've said quite often in the past that if it happened before August 29, 2005, then I do not remember. It's more important to me to express how crazy and mixed up everything was. If I get some things out of sequence, I'm not going to be too worried about it.

I'm not sure how the timing is going to work, either, so posts may be erratic as I haven't decided yet when and how to actually publish them. Just bear with me.

Comments will be turned off for some entries so I won't be influenced by them while I'm trying to recount all of this.

*Sigh* Three years. I have to get out from under this thing. I have no idea if I'm ready to do this, but I feel like I have to try.

Happy fucking anniversary. A few days early.

At last, someone who understands

2008-07-31T15:12:00.006-05:00

Thanks, as always, to xkcd

Would you look at that... Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost

2008-07-28T13:15:00.003-05:00

From the Associated Press:

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
---
Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.

Of course, it should have been apparent that things were turning around when liquor stores in Baghdad stopped getting blown up.

''I open my store at 10 a.m. and close it at 7 p.m.,'' Dawood said. ``The security situation is much better, and I hope it becomes even better because I believe that all Iraqis are brothers and deserve to live in peace.''

Compare this to a story from 2005

Mr Sabah has little competition largely because Islamic extremists now register their disapproval of alcohol by bombing his rivals' premises. The Rose, however, is unscathed, presumably because the bombers fear the proximity of US military hardware.

and another from just eight months ago

But even as Iraqis begin returning to liquor stores, they still take care to remain inconspicuous. On a recent day outside a liquor store on Saadoun Street, two men with a case of Johnnie Walker in their car were removing the bottles from the brightly labeled box and stashing them under the seats and in other hiding places.
---
A construction worker and Sadr City resident, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition he not be named, told of how he was beaten last year by the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, after his brother complained to militia members about his drinking.

Regardless of the legitimacy of this war's beginnings, regardless of your opinion of Bush, things are getting better in Iraq. I guess the mainstream media is finally realizing they can't cover it up until November 9th.

Not that we're finished:

U.S. commanders say a substantial American military presence will be needed beyond 2009. But judging from the security gains that have been sustained over the first half of this year — as the Pentagon withdrew five Army brigades sent as reinforcements in 2007 — the remaining troops could be used as peacekeepers more than combatants.

And it's still costing a shitload of money. What's the price for a stabilized democracy in an unstable region? How much is a military presence in the Middle East worth? More than we originally thought, but still less than the Democrats would have you believe.

Flame on, everybody. Don't disappoint me.

Oh shit... Shockey traded to Saints

2008-07-21T13:49:00.004-05:00

From Gambit:

Saints pick up outspoken, talented, temperamental disgruntled tight end Jeremy Shockey

New York’s loss is New Orleans’ gain?
---
We’ll see if donning the Black and Gold tames Shockey’s temperament and makes him more, well, gruntled.

And at nola.com:

Saints trade for Jeremy Shockey

Perhaps the Giants finally had enough of the tension created by their disgruntled star, who was reportedly pushing for the trade to New Orleans.

Like jeffrey says, training camp hasn't even started.

This could be really good or really, really, REALLY terrible.

Teeth in My Pocket

2008-07-21T10:12:00.002-05:00

Just because people are starting to think I don't have any fun at all...

CHEESE

Obama, McCain to New Yorker: "We're just as dumb as the rest of America" Related: Poe's law escapes internet; "never going back"

2008-07-14T23:52:00.019-05:00

Personally, I think that's pretty fucking funny.

Look at all the elements:

burning flag
Osama bin Laden
Lunatic black-separatist
Evil Muslim
in the Oval Office
standing on the Presidential Seal

It's a cornucopic festival of stupid right-winger paranoia. It's even funnier when you realize that all the idiots who think this is real wouldn't have picked up the New Yorker if their lives depended on it. After all, the cartoons just don't make any sense.

However, in a scene that has become all too common in this country, we get this:

Obama: "tasteless and offensive"
McCain: "totally inappropriate"

What a pair of idiot pansies! Have we become so scared and stupid? Really, guys, I think you'll find your balls rolling around under the campaign bus seats. Maybe some staffer found them and put them in the overhead.

I saw on the news tonight (the NATIONAL news) some idiot saying, "Some people will take it seriously and may use it in political commercials." Yeah, we have words for those types of people: dumbass; imbecile; moron. If we didn't dumb down everything in our society in order to cater to the lowest common denominator, perhaps we wouldn't have to worry about all of those idiots thinking this is serious. I mean, come ON! The only people not offended by this are the fuckers who are being ridiculed. And that just adds to the FUCKING JOKE!

To quote Mugatu, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

From SFGate

But Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and former New Yorker staffer, was baffled that much of the negative reaction to the cartoon was coming from Obama supporters on liberal blogs.

"They sound so elitist," Spiegelman told The Chronicle. "The essence of what they're saying is, 'I get it, but I don't trust the people in Kansas to get it.' But isn't that what the whole hope and change thing is supposed to be about? That they will get it."

What Art (Do you mind if I call you Art?) fails to realize is that the left-wing elite know that the rest of us are too stupid to get it. We need to have everything spoon-fed to us by the Nanny so we don't think too quickly and get our tummies all upset. Plus, as I've mentioned, people in Kansas don't read the New Yorker.

McCain should have, to stay on message, said something akin to Little Green Footballs:

The cover is obviously a moonbat parody of what they think are right-wing ideas about their messiah. But they got so meta with it, they ended up wrapping around and making themselves look stupid.

That's a perfect response. Just as much arrogant, snarky condescension as the cover, itself.

Obama should have said, "As bullet of mypantstheatre, a dear friend and, frankly, idol of mine, remarked, 'Personally, I think that's pretty fucking funny.'"

Or everyone could have, you know, ignored it. Like most of the country ignores every other issue of the New Yorker, which is, let's face it, a really boring magazine. Even when I was living in New York, I only read it because I felt like I had to. It never ceased to amuse me how important New Yorkers thought they were. Of course, I could hold that opinion because I wasn't one of the deluded East Coaster assholes who made living in NYC such a pain in the ass.

I'm going to have to stop. The irony levels are out of control! The ship canna take it any longer!

Is it November yet? I am so tired of this bullshit.

George Carlin... dead

2008-06-23T13:45:00.002-05:00

I've always been fond of saying that comedians are the prophets of our age. Among them, George Carlin was the greatest.

I started listening to him when I was 13 - A Place for My Stuff. With the volume so low we could barely hear it, my cousin and I tried as hard as we could to keep our laughter quiet so we wouldn't get caught listening to dirty jokes. We were rarely successful. Later in life, he taught me so many things: That it was the absurdities of life that made it both intolerable and interesting. That outrageous statements and behavior were ok. That I didn't have to think or speak like everyone else. That social mores are arbitrary and ridiculous. The joy of fucking with the English language and that words were more important than almost everything else. That intelligence is more important than compassion. I can't credit (or blame) him with my liberal use of dirty words, but he was obviously an influence.

He's also the reason I don't have a tattoo, reminding me on one of his specials that they can be used for positive identification.

Some of my favorites:
(apologies for the paraphrasing)

"You over here. You seven. Baaad Wooorrds”
(As Jesus) "I really coulda used a bicycle. You realize all the walking I did?”
(Still as Jesus) "[The loaves and fishes]wasn't a miracle. Turns out, people were puttin' 'em back. Didn't like 'em."
"Fuck the children!"
"L.A. is a small woman saying, 'Fuck me.' New York is a large man saying, ‘Fuck you!’"
"Apparently, in Los Angeles, people will stand on a corner, even when there's no traffic (or very little traffic that you could easily dodge) and wait for a light to tell them that it's OK to proceed."
"If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem."
"Nigflot blorny quando floon!"
“Even in a Disney movie you can say, ‘Snatch that pussy and put it in a box.’”

My very favorite, since the first time I ever listened to him:

Ratshit! Batshit! Dirty old twat!
Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot!
Hurray, lizard shit!
Fuck!

Exactly.

Attitude Adjustment

2008-06-22T23:30:00.001-05:00

With all the attitude I've been spewing all over the 'tubes the last few days, this struck me as an appropriate addition:

Once again, thanks to xkcd

More on the Midwest Floods

2008-06-20T23:37:00.004-05:00

The guys over at Humid City have been doing this a lot longer than I have and say it better than I could:

stop me if you’ve heard this one before

Yes, please do stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Because the punch line stinks.

For those who lined up to laugh at and mock the people of New Orleans for their “stupidity”... – can you really look at what happened in Iowa and still believe all or any of that heartless bullshit you threw at us? Wouldn’t it be more productive to simply take a massive crap in your own hat?

The common thread here isn’t in the unpredictability of Mother Nature. The common thread is the bad, incomplete, poorly designed, poorly implemented, and badly kept structures brought to you by our own Army Corps of Engineers. And the jackasses in Congress, in the Senate, and in the White House who refuse again and again to give money back to taxpayers in the form they need it most; towards the basic protection of American citizens in their own homes.

Be sure to check this one out, as well:

YOU’RE F**KING KIDDING ME, RIGHT?

Read all about President George W. Bush, going to Iowa after the devastating floods, saying he’s headed there “with the lessons I learned from Katrina.”

I would have used a lot more "fuck". So if you feel fucked out of your usual fucks, here you go: Fucking fuckity fuck.

Again thanks to Louis Maistros and Lord David over at Humid City.

On the Midwest Floods "They all told us, `The levees are good...' "

2008-06-20T14:11:00.004-05:00

From the AP on AOL: Midwest Flood Victims Feel Misled.

Same story, different headline in Idaho:
Flooded-out homeowners in the Midwest say FEMA gave them a false sense of security

Juli Parks didn't worry when water began creeping up the levee that shields this town of about 750 from the Mississippi River - not even when volunteers began piling on sandbags.

After all, local officials had assured townspeople in 1999 that the levee was sturdy enough to withstand a historic flood, and FEMA had agreed. In fact, some relieved homeowners dropped their flood insurance, and others applied for permits to build new houses and businesses.

<-snip->

"They all told us, `The levees are good. You can go ahead and build,"' said Parks, who did not buy flood coverage because her bank no longer required it. "We had so much confidence in those levees."

I feel for these people. I really, really do. This is so much bigger than the New Orleans flood. New Orleans was (mostly) flooded by a lake - 15 feet and then done. Rivers never stop. I will help in the only way I can, if I can, by donating to the Red Cross. But I have to ask:

Where the hell have you people been? Did you not pay any attention 3 years ago? Since? Maybe you should have.

Blame this on FEMA and the Corps of Engineers and the Federal Government (not just Bush). It's justified. Their levees leave a lot to be desired. But levee or no, you should have had insurance. Flood insurance is the cheapest protection you'll ever buy. Unless you live on a mountain or in the desert, you should have it. After all that happened down here, putting your faith in the CoE is just stupid.

I wonder how many of you have said in the last three years anything to the effect of "Why can't those people in Louisiana get it together?" "Why are they taking my money to rebuild?" "It's just going to happen again." "People shouldn't live there." Wait till everyone starts saying it about you.

Wait till you have to deal with the tragic bureaucratic disaster that is FEMA. Hope you like formaldehyde. And I wonder how many people are going to defraud the government this time around. I'll be sure to be just as shocked and angry as you were. For those that did have insurance, wait till your insurance companies try to screw you over, falsify engineering reports, try to trick you into giving up your coverage. And in the end, watch as the money you were promised, the help you desperately need, just sits and sits and sits in Washington and then is frittered away in "overhead" by the people who are supposed to be helping you.

I guess then you'll understand. But "they" still won't.

Maybe people will pay attention this time. If the majority of the country had actually cared about New Orleans for more than a few news cycles, this might have been prevented or at least mitigated.

Like I said, I feel for these people. My heart breaks for them. We know exactly what they're feeling now and we know what they face on the horrible road ahead. If I sound bitter, though, it's because I am.

Everyone needs to pay attention. For a long time. Until it's fixed.

I love the internet

2008-06-19T23:00:00.005-05:00

I've been having a really crappy couple of days. I know exactly why. I ran out of medicine on Monday and kept forgetting to get it refilled. 2 days with no meds = instant depression. Then I'm really irritable for a couple of days after I get started back up, so today hasn't been really peachy either.

Then I came across this on Penny Arcade:

I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogs came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes.

And then this, courtesy of the coolest seven-year-old blogger around

I feel a whole hell of a lot better.

Memorial Day - a different perspective

2008-05-26T12:29:00.003-05:00

For another example of how technology is totally changing the world and how we interact and relate to each other go check out Sanya Weathers' take on Memorial Day over at Eating Bees. It's a gaming blog, as Sanya was the Community Director for DAOC and now for GuildCafe and was blogging about MMOs before the term "blog" existed. So though the comments might be a little impenetrable for some, one can't help but understand this:

...I crossed off names with a yellow highlighter when Johnny and Jane came marching home or at least back to a place with air conditioning and internet access hurrah, hurrah.

Sometimes I used a black marker. Not often. But enough.

Regardless of your thoughts on the war (and please don't use the comments to discuss it), I'd like to remember this Memorial Day that people who are "just playing a game" have a great impact on each other's lives and that the loss of a member of a "virtual community" hurts, too.

On getting old(er)

2008-05-24T23:31:00.007-05:00

I often tell my wife, "The fact that I'm not as old as I'm going to get in no way mitigates the fact that I am already old." Sort of. I usually don't use words like "mitigate" with my wife because she laughs at me and then corrects my grammar. The point, however, stands.

At Voodoo Fest in October, I was with some friends waiting for Rage Against the Machine to take the stage when the following was shouted by one of them:

"I don't want to sound like an old man, here, but this little girl next to me is mad at me because I'm standing on her pants. Are you fucking kidding me?! Standing on your pants?! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I had to agree, especially since a guy next to me had just asked me rather politely if I could step off of his pants and I was happy to be able to properly ridicule the idea without directing it at him.

I found myself in a similar "I don't want to sound old, ..." situation tonight at the movies. (More after the break)

First off, let me say that I hate text messages or "texting". It is a thoroughly ridiculous and inefficient method of communication. I understand its advantages and use it (sparingly) in situations in which more conventional forms of communication (like shouting across the room)are rude and/or inconvenient. The middle of a major hurricane is one of those situations in which text messages are invaluable, if still distasteful. I'm not anti-technology, I just dislike this particular medium.

The kid next to my wife and I would not stop texting through the entire movie. What's the big deal, right? If he had been using a regular phone, maybe it wouldn't be. But he had one of those big do-everything-but-jack-you-off phones with a huge screen that was distractingly bright. We're not in your fucking living room, dude! Watch the fucking movie! He finally stopped when my wife leaned over and started reading over his shoulder. I was so proud.

When the movie was over, I saw upwards of ten kids ranging from 13 to 17 years old pick up their phones and start texting as they were walking out of the theater! Hadn't even gotten down the aisle. Please stop telling(?) Mary Sue Bob whatever drivel is passing through your under-developed noggin long enough to avoid stepping on my fucking feet. And dude, I understand and admire the dexterity involved in simultaneously texting and taking a piss, but just disconnect for crying out loud! At the very least, it's unsanitary. Yeah, you won't be laughing when you get gonorrhea of the face.

I know, I know. My parents didn't understand why I had to have music drowning out the world all the time and these kids will have children and not understand the constant need of the hive-mind buzzing in their brains. I just wish it didn't make me feel so old.

BTW, the new Indiana Jones totally rocks.

UPDATE 5-26: Apparently, the Russians are pissed off about Indiana Jones, which is off topic, but fucking funny. Thanks to Broken Toys for the link.

Big Brother Jam

2008-05-21T23:30:00.004-05:00

You are the witness of change
And to counteract
We gotta take the power back

From Rolling Stone, apparently Big Brother Is Producing Your Rock Video!

...the rockers performed in front of several of the city’s 200,000 CCTV cameras and then used something like the Freedom of Information Act to acquire their footage...

Gaming the System.
Social Hacking.
Culture Jamming.

Whatever you want to call it, it's cool.

Props for the discovery go to jeffrey over at Library Chronicles.

Art for art's sake?

2008-05-16T14:06:00.002-05:00

This is ridiculously incredible.

Don't ask, just go.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

Logic is Not the Opposite of Faith

2008-05-14T11:11:00.019-05:00

If you’ve taken the time to spy any chunk of ideas I’ve written about, it’ll probably come as no surprise that I am very into the strictures of debate, even the lesser frequented unwritten rules of plain discussion. Yes, my wife hates me. Points of order are easy complaints for me to make, as so many believe their own utterances to be expressed in a debate-worthy fashion when, in truth, many are just blathering intellectually without any steerage. Kind of like this paragraph!

This does not mean, however, that every discussion is a formal debate or that I expect hard core forensics to be applied to a friendly, verbal tête-à-tête. Sure, it would be nice, but I cannot, myself, maintain that infinitive level of focus. (One must always leave time to watch Star Trek.) So, a number of family members have seized varying occasions to ask me, “What tactic crops up most frequently without ever actually leading to debate?” Hands down, that would be the idea that logic is the opposite of faith. It deserves debate, but persistently comes from people who don’t know how.

While no one has ever said to me, outright, that logic is the opposite of faith, the notion creeps into and through plenty of discussions as if it is a given. A completely viable thinker can stand right there, ask you your reasons, listen to the dissertation of logical proofs you offer up as the very definition of REASON itself, and then counter confidently with, “Sounds like you have to give it up to God, “ or some non-sense about the great mystery. The problem is not that folks believe in such blueprints to the universe, it is simply that they’ve impacted nothing for the sake of the discussion. They’ve neither proved nor disproved, agreed nor disagreed, helped nor hurt the conversation. They’ve made the time you’ve taken to explain yourself, time wasted. It is little different from taking a half hour to describe your ground-breaking research on Project Blue Book, by request, only to have the requester respond with, “I hear the barley crop is in for a harsh season.” You might as well have been talking to the Wailing Wall.

While I’ve no doubt that the idea of logic as the “opposite” of faith began with logicians who recognized illogic in the manners that some people had chosen to express their beliefs, this wordplay now seems to get more often insinuated into conversation by the blind believer. It is used as a tool. It is meant to puncture a hole in any logical argument regardless of the subject matter or content. It’s treated as a trump card. By claiming that logic is the opposite of faith and thereafter claiming that you are a faithful person, it gives flimsy license to simply discount everything another person has said, baselessly. Its use smacks lightly of a child in the terrible twos.

“By comparing every layer of the Earth’s crust in reverse order, taking particular note of the fossils therein, we can see the slow and gradual changes that are the hallmarks of evolution.”

“Nope.”

“If you said you were going to clean the car on Friday and thereafter promised that you were going to clean the car on Friday and then you spent Thursday through Sunday as a vomiting drunkard in Tijuana, what you told me was untrue.”

“Nope.”

I suppose it’s natural to want a universal trump card. If you believe in whatever humanly frail configuration your own personal card presents in conversation, such eliminates a lot of petty annoyance, tons of conflict, and the need for anything mentally challenging on the spot. (Please read Idiocracy.) The problem with this particular zinger, the presumption that logic is the opposite of faith, is that it is not factual. Logic is not the opposite of faith. In fact, if one is truly faithful, s/he MUST embrace logic. We’ll get to that.

Logic is not the opposite of faith for a great many reasons. Among them, this Layperson’s List:

1) There are no universal opposites.

2) Logic exists as a part of “creation” and, if God exists, logic is therefore a gift from God.

3) Logic and faith are not mutually exclusive…they overlap.

The first entry on my Layperson’s List, “there are no universal opposites,” may sound highly philosophical, (meaning, of course, boring), but in actuality it is a simple misunderstanding about how we use the concept of opposites (and yes, still boring). This “opposites” concept is generally defined as “the one thing that is most unlike a given thing,” and is tainted immature in its over-application.

I touched briefly upon this misunderstanding in my piece Fun with Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling when I wrote, “Philosophy 101…Students are asked to think back to the beginnings of civilization [language] and list ideas that might have been perceived as basic, universal opposites. Inevitably, through common sense, students list right and wrong, light and dark, on and off, good and evil, man and woman, yes and no, happy and sad, and other appropriate notions. The problem with the structure of supposed universal opposites is the result. Woman is somehow placed on a list with wrong, dark, evil, no, off, and sad. This is the very tender root of association as used, even by accident, for prejudicial effect.”

The illustration is an intriguing one, mostly because reading between the lines brings something to light…antonyms are a function of language, opposites are a function of thought. Neither is a function of physical reality. You see, a man is the antonym or “opposite” of a woman in word alone, not in his physical being. This is difficult for us to accept. In plain conversation it is very easy to overlook the fact that the WORD “apple” has nothing to do with a physical apple. The WORD apple helps us communicate the IDEA of an apple, even if an apple is not present in the room to point at. Two people on the phone, one saying “apple” and one hearing “apple” both share a similar IDEA as to what the conversation is about. What they CALLED that idea, however, would never alter, impact, or otherwise affect an actual piece of fruit in a bowl. An apple, by any other name, is still whatever it is. “A rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

So, the WORD “man” is shown as antonym to the WORD “woman” because the language is thereby limiting the context of the communication to a DUALITY of sexes. Outside of that context (that supposed duality) might be the fact that nearly 9 percent of all newborns in the U.S.A. are born gender non-specific or the fact that “man” and “woman” are really talking about roles while “male” and “female” talk about gender. Regardless, using antonyms is a tool that limits the context to only an idealistic duality when a physical duality does not exist. Hence phrases claiming, “It’s like comparing apples to oranges,” or “What goes up, must come down.”

Let us not confuse that linguistic tool, those antonyms, those words, with limited perceptions or thoughts somehow invoking physical opposites. Let us not allow the useful existence of antonyms, antonyms that limit a context, to drive us to believe that there is never a greater context and therefore no more to understand than A is magically opposite of B.

Opposites, as a function of thought, are susceptible to all the pitfalls of subjectivity like any other idea. Hubris is one of these pitfalls, the egotistical notion that we can take a function of thought and manifest it as physical reality in order to discuss it as a fact. (Weird Science) We cannot.

See, opposites, as thoughts, are necessary. In early childhood development, the use of opposites is a teaching tool that allows us to assimilate knowledge when we are still pooping pants. Saying that one thing is MOST unlike another thing teaches us how to reason. It teaches us how to recognize differences and eventually how to assimilate and to categorize those differences. An infant might learn to recognize a cartoon picture of a dog as a dog, but then most immediately calls anything with four legs and a tail a dog. By staying on and teaching the child that the cartoon on the next page is NOT a dog, but a cat, the baby eventually recognizes those differences and can pick between both animals. As well, those two images are so basic in the U.S.A., that the child somehow learns that a dog is the opposite of a cat. That’s great for learning, but we forget once older that, in fact, a dog is not the opposite of a cat. If “opposite” is tasked to be the object most unlike the given, well doesn’t a cat have a lot more in common with a dog than, say, a Twinkie or deep space or anti-matter? Who is to say which thing is truly MOST UNLIKE another? In the same way, “day” has more in common with “night” than it does with a bologna sandwich, “up” more in common with “down” than with pencil shavings, and “order” more in common with “chaos” than a fictional character in an unpublished manuscript who has a propensity for wearing chaps.

“Opposite” is a reasoning tool. It allows us to visualize one thing, and then, with no further input, visualize a new idea perceivably 180 degrees out from the original. We then label that second idea with a name. Anti-Christ, Bizarro, Evil Spock, they are all anthropomorphizations of this mental practice. They amuse us. “Dude, those jeans have so many holes in them, they’re like the anti-pants!” Meanwhile, our amusements overlook the same practice in everyday conversation.

“Unnatural” sounds like an opposite, it sounds like anything “not natural,” but then what is “supernatural” and how does it play into the relationship of such ideas? “Abnormal” sounds like anything “not normal” and then has the same problem with the concept of “paranormal.” If “alive” is truly the opposite of “dead,” then how can we even conceptualize fictions dealing with the “undead” or loosely related existential matters? If “love” is the true opposite of “hate,” bereft of any similarity or convergence, then a “love/hate” relationship could never exist, except among the happily schizophrenic. Come on people, pencil is not the opposite of pen, pencil is not the opposite of paper, pencil is not the opposite of eraser. If a pencil could exhibit some physical property defining it as opposite to any of these three, we could never discuss the remaining two in an “opposites” context without getting tossed in a loony bin. Yet we do discuss them. We discuss all three. Almost everybody has used pencil as the opposite of all three of these in discussion. Such proves that the practice is dependent upon shifting ideas, momentary opinions, convenient retorts, a simple call to meet an isolated conversation’s need. The practice is not, and will NEVER be what many speakers claim. They claim the “opposite” attribute to be a self-evident truth, a physical reality, a given, and state that they are merely acknowledging that “fact” before spurring the conversation on. Wrong! That’s faulty foundation.

Opposites, as tools, have their place in helping us make a point, but they are never a given nor the point themselves. We build our point in conversation the way we built our mental prowess from those early childhood beginnings and so it is no wonder that opposites are part of byplay. However, they cannot be the result of that disagreement, only one tool in arriving there. I can easily say, “The rough draft of your essay was INCOMPREHINSIBLE,” in order to illustrate through hyperbola how poorly a piece has been put together. Yet, as bad as that piece may be, “incomprehensible” is a stretch. Incomprehensibility would more literally dictate that it was in code, in alien symbols and, perhaps, somehow written fourth dimensionally. The opposite of comprehensible is used for the sake of exaggeration. Notice, though, that this could not be the point of the conversation. You should never hear a speech leading up to, “In conclusion, your essay is incomprehensible,” unless, of course, the essay IS written in code, in alien symbols, and somehow fourth dimensionally. The real life conclusion will always be something other than that. It will be, “So, I insist that you write this again,” or, “So, you’ve failed the assignment,” or, “You are going to have to look for a literary agent with a death wish before you can get this published!” There is no closure in a debate that ends on a note of opposites as absolute.

Heady? Yes, perhaps. Still, that’s a veritable litany of reasons as to why opposites of any kind are a misused construct in conversation. Opposites falsely group terms together that do not belong (i.e. women and evil). Opposites are treated as antonyms with no limit to context, a backwards process that attempts to take a word’s functional status and force it into being a physical reality. Opposites are a teaching tool for immature minds, one that must be outgrown if one is to partake in adult conversation. And, in the end, opposites are never the point, never the conclusion.

These misuses in our generation are taking place in countless households to innumerable volumes. How often have you heard assertions like,

“That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,”

followed by,

“You’re wrong! It makes complete sense!”

We’ll call these speakers Phil and Norma, respectively. Their tiff is just one example that simultaneously fails multiple rigors of debate as well as the intent of plain discussion to reach agreement, all through simple misuse of an opposite.

First, Norma’s retort presumes itself to be the point, as if just mentioning an opposite wins an argument. It does not. Whatever the point is, Norma has clearly missed it.

Second, though the two statements seem related because they use similar words, Norma has actually gone completely off-topic. When Phil presents the subject matter as a flawed train-of-thought, that suspect repartee is now the pith of the disagreement, the new content. Norma is beholden to address the subject matter directly. Instead, in this case, Norma says the one thing she anticipates will allow her to AVOID addressing any part of the statement. It’s not unlike Ann asking what Tully’s financial plan is to pay off credit card debt and Tully responding with, “I see no reason to help pay down our debt when you refuse to cook dinner all the time.” Sorry Tully. We are linear beings. We are subject to a force of nature called chronology. Ann asked her question first and deserves to have it addressed first. Phil brought the suspect train-of-thought to light first and deserves to have it addressed by Norma immediately thereafter. Save the other things you wish to discuss for later. The other things may be valid concerns, but they are not valid arguments when unrelated to the most immediate topic.

Third, there’s more to life, more to this context, than a perfect duality of sense and nonsense. These are antonyms, not universal opposites. As illustrated before, “sense” has more in common with “nonsense” than it does with marzipan or the voice-over direction in FernGully. Logical sense exists. Philosophical sense exists. We all know the literary dichotomy struck between sense and sensibility. Emotions are a part of making sense of things. Cultural differences lend interpretation to sense. Ethic is a biting factor in sense. Thomas Paine separated out common sense from all other sense. Sense has components, layers. Therefore, when Phil claims that something does not make sense, it is a call for Norma to compile all such applicable building blocks to restate and to support her premise. He demands explanation. It’s a dare of sorts, knowing that if Norma cannot, she fails her point. Well, stating an opposite does none of this. It’s just as much a failure as if Norma had clammed up and said nothing. In fact it is additionally a failure in that she’s both failed her point and falsely presumed that somehow she made a valid one. Enacting this assumed reversal is actually less meaningful than if she’d said nothing. You go girl!

So, logic and faith cannot fit some conversational mold as universal opposites simply because universal opposites do not exist. Even if one wishes to compare them via this structure, one is attacking the issue from a very childlike standpoint. That might be useful to start a dialogue, feel out your listener, but if you do not therein elevate the discussion by more mature means you are simply taking the standpoint of a mentally challenged four year old. A more mature debater would realize that a more proper antonym to logic is illogic. A more proper antonym to faith is skepticism. If logic and faith are polar concepts, then their antonyms should be as well. Yet, skepticism and illogic are not treated in this way. Skeptics can be logical and can be illogical. Persons failing logic can be secular skeptics and can be faith-driven. Skepticism and illogic overlap. They meet up in areas and remain apart in others. Therefore, if the antonyms are not polar, the chosen words are not polar, not opposites.

-----------------------------------------

The number two item on the Layperson’s List of reasons that logic is not the opposite of faith reads, “Logic exists as a part of ‘creation’ and, if God exists, logic is therefore a gift from God.”

I’ve always taken great offense at the implication that my simple ability to add five plus five is somehow directly influenced by Satan. “The heresy of numeracy!” Again, nobody ever actually picketed my calculus class nor did the devil himself ever bubble up in a fiery din whilst I hashed out a neat little truth table. It does seem, however, that when one gets on the specific subject of faith one is frequently asked to completely forego math, physics, and any critical reasoning skill in order to accept what another person shares at face value. It seems I am frequently put in the position of being asked, advised, or ordered to “let go.” There is merit in the act of “letting go” of course, but I am specifically talking about those who ask me to “let go” of cold, hard facts. Are not those cold, hard facts also a part of the existence in existentialism, part of the pattern in the multiverse that God designed? If I can do as you ask and let go of all quantum principal in order to understand your take on God, cannot you let go of religious staples in order to discuss another possibility? Letting go is meant to be applied to uninformed opinions. Letting go helps shed material possessions toward a happier, Walden life. It removes anger. It helps us move beyond the loss of a loved one or get over a substance addiction (in my case, bad tacos). It helps us accept defeat in order to fight again another day. Letting go is at one time a coping skill, a metaphysical practice, the foundation of peace, a test of maturity, a facing of fears, strength, and yes, a leap of faith. Given all its many flavors, it is even easy to understand why so many folks swear by it to such an exclusive degree. After all, in practice, the technique is said to lead one to realize just how things matter, how ideas stack up. Why is it, then, that “letting go” is so frequently used to inform me of what supposedly doesn’t matter. Happiness matters. Coping matters. Maturity matters. Faith matters. However things stack, doesn’t that mean that math matters and logic matters and the process of elimination matters? Yet, the clockwork of so many orations urges me to reject curtain number one in order to choose between curtains two and three. Hello? Monty? I’m willing to take that journey with you, but tell me why first. Presume you know something I don’t. Presume God has spoken to you directly and that you are strapped with the burden of explaining that wonder to a person completely out-of-the-know. You are going to have to start the explanation speaking in my terms in order that I should understand and come to share that newer knowledge with you. This means telling me why curtain number one (logic) is off-limits BEFORE we can go any further. “Letting go” CAN be alternatively accomplished by thoroughly accounting for the ideas that are to be rejected. I need not come to spiritual balance ONLY through leaps of faith. Perhaps I want my faith to be an informed one. If there is such a higher view to be achieved, one drawn from omnipotence or everpresence, its truth will reverberate down into the “lesser” things of this world and thereby make valid my desire to discuss them, negating your desire to ignore them.

Still, the offense I’ve taken in this radical supposition that my yearning for checkmate is a call to Beelzebub, doesn’t actually come from ridiculous notions like Satan loves Texas Instruments. My consternation more readily hails from the fact that this assertion discounts God’s presence, usually a discounting by the God believer. Given my values, folks may find it hard to swallow that I do believe in God. I MIGHT even go so far as to say that, while logically, I have no idea what that God looks like, how s/he is to be treated, or what form our interrelationship is supposed to take, there is the remote possibility (one in infinity) that the body of religious philosophies presented us might accidentally be correct, or might accidentally have one passage or two that is correct. I’m insulted by the hypocrisy in the assertion, not the assertion itself. If Satan wants to live in my underwear drawer, let him. It’ll make my life a hell of a lot more interesting than anyone else’s. But don’t come to me and tell me that God made [hu]man in his own image while part of that image, the basic ability to reason, is concurrently suspect. Don’t present reason, even reason used to discount the existence of any god, as a temptation outside of the body that need not be experienced. In order to conceptualize, to “know of” a god at all, one requires the basic ability to reason. Reason is not a choice. Reason is part of the definition of that “image,” it is plainly what separates humans from animals. It is a part of me to no more varying degree of difference than my leg, my arm, my personality, or my capacity for love…all treated as divine gifts by the way. If there is a God, s/he would WANT me to use my logic, WANT me to take full advantage of my divine gifts. Logic, and the mathematics it spawns, are not a work of the devil. To say so is to disavow the god who "sent" you.

Some very basic examination backs this up. By claiming that my logical discourse in debating you is some temptation from Satan or from tricky free-will in a materialistic world, you are submitting that logic is not part of the divine image in which you assert me to have been made. Therefore, either God did not have logic to give or God had it and purposely withheld it. Let’s examine those two possibilities while you try to convince me to “let go” of reason.

If s/he divinely withheld logic, then I do not have it and therefore you cannot ask me to forego it or let it go. I cannot let go of something I do not possess in the first place. My statements would be no more or less important than yours and must then be treated as such without subtraction. Further if s/he again divinely withheld it, then if I obtain it and use it, I am being Godly or God-like and you shant argue with me. Kowtow.

On the other hand, if God didn’t have logic to give, then s/he is completely illogical. This would be a very ironic construct, given that we usually attribute a massively chaotic state to hell and not heavenly dwellings. Irony aside, an illogical being defies explanation. You would have no way to discuss such an entity, no way to sell it. You’d have nothing to say. Whatever words in whatever order you’d attribute the attempt to illuminate the listener would be words classified as incorrect before even leaving your mouth. Essentially, this scenario beckons you to stuff a sock in it and shut the heaven up!

Well, religiously faithful persons cite neither of these scenarios. They do not refrain from speaking on the subject and do not treat my conversation as God-like. They do not present God as illogical nor treat my argument as equal to their own. So, in these practices, they are acknowledging logic as part of their definition of the divine. They must accept my grounds AND use similar anglings to justify their own beliefs. To be truly faithful, one must embrace logic.

All tolled, whatever shape the possibility of a divine plane or omnipotent entity might take, logic is going to be a part of it, a building block, a theme. With those kinds of pillars shoring up the vastness of creation, humans partaking in logic would be partaking in something far larger than the self, far larger than even all perceived reality and imagination. Humans exercising logic in a simple, every day conversation would be echoing a key element that permeates all which lies behind the veil of this world and the next and the next and the next. Mind you, a great many other human actions would likely also be a part of this theme. Emotion, life force, honor, valor, deeds, work, originality, talent, name your pick. I can easily make the same claim about almost anything people put on a pedestal. The point is not to escalate logic to some tensile strength that girds the structure of the unknown, but to say that it is undoubtedly one of the contoured chits in the jigsaw. We cannot aggrandize select divine morsels while sacking their counterparts.

Look, Jesus knew and used math. He didn’t just have some rudimentary understanding of math that might barely rival my computer illiterate father trying desperately to buy a broken Swatch on eBay. He was a carpenter. He lived with the complexities of practical math in the forefront of his mind, at the tip of his tongue and writ with his own meaty hand every single day. Wood was an enormous commodity. Math assured one that s/he got the designs correct prior to the first cut. Math would have been a large portion of his conversations and therefore his relationship with his “Earthly” father. Sure, if Jesus was somehow God or son of God or prophet of God, he may have known way back then the deepest fractal anomalies and cosmic string proofs. Putting together a goofy goat yoke for his neighbor wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. Yet, he didn’t miracle his wares into being. Poof! A quilt rack! Poof! A scroll shelf! If he did, we would have certainly read about it in Crap Not Edited from the Bible Weekly. He built them with bare hands and used plain logic to do it. If he didn’t exist, he didn’t exist. If he was just a guy, he was just a guy. But, if he was God, it is important to take note that he didn’t forego the math. He didn’t treat simple, human logic as something beneath him. He used it. He partook and did so in the positive. He achieved with it, worked with it, and to a certain degree exhibited faith in it. Jesus could be completely made up, but employing logic would still be a Christ-like endeavor.

----------------------------------

This brings us to the last entry on our Layperson’s List of why logic is not the opposite of faith, one that was described as “Logic and faith are not mutually exclusive…they overlap.”

Sum up all known logic, if you will, to be represented by a circle. Do the same, then, with faith. Draw it out, if it helps, just two circles on a piece of paper. Now, how do you place those circles, those rings on a page? If you are asserting that logic and faith are opposites, and you are my four year old nephew, you’d probably place them at the farthest corners from each other, never to intersect.

Or, perhaps, if you eat organic consume and wear a dress made of hemp you’d draw one ring on one side of your paper and another ring on the “back.”

A few Real Genius Lazlos will make two separate pieces of paper and rush them via AMC Pacer to trash receptacles in New York and L.A.

And, there’s always the defeatist simpleton on a high horse, usually with a three times life size bust of Heidegger mounted over his bed, who will simply refuse to draw either circle, claiming that sketching them out implies a relationship between the two and since they are “opposites” they have absolutely no relationship. Wow, kids! Isn’t drawing fun? Mmmmmm, glue.

Regardless of how lofty an approach one takes in this penciled exercise, illustrating how s/he perceives logic and faith to be opposites, the results are all the same. Each of these examples overtly claims that the sketcher cannot think of, cite, or even imagine a single, solitary instance in all of life and creation wherein logic and faith might conjoin. See, the crux here is not whether logic and faith as nouns ever truly overlay, one on the other, but rather the implication that the asserting individual cannot even THINK of a way in which the two MIGHT sync up. Ergo, if I CAN think of one way they might, and you cannot, I know more about them than you do and you must take the subservient position of the novice in the debate. If I can think of two ways they might overlap, your backseat would be all the more necessary. If I can think of one or two ways they DO sync up, that’s even deeper a reflection of my superior knowledge, etc. You can draw circles until you are blue in the face, plotting them out on all sorts of pages forcing them as far apart as you wish. You are simply making a model of your belief. What you fail to realize, however, is the brittleness of that model, the sheer fragility of that particular belief. It’s a belief, as represented on paper, that is so fragile, I do not need a proof to discount it. I need no facts, no studies, no surveys. I need no experts, no philosophers, no clerics. All I need to completely shatter that particular assertion is to MAKE-UP a single way in which logic and faith MIGHT be concurrent, and your models are completely defunct, confuted. Put simply, I can visualize all of your options….plus one.

I can perceive logic and faith to be at least this…

…if not this

… if not every permutation of this.

If you cannot perceive it, you know less and I win. If you can perceive it, even just after I show it to you for the first time, you acknowledge instances in which the two can overlap, thereby disacknowledging the assertion that the two are opposites at all.

------------------------------

So, to recap, there are no universal opposites. Do not claim, then, that logic and faith are opposites and treat your claim as a given, unless you’re bucking for village idiot.

Logic is a part of creation, and if you believe creation to be supernaturally sourced, then logic, like faith, is an important measure in understanding that supernature. It should be given quarter in all discussions on faith, lest you soundeth quite dumb.

Logic and faith are not islands. No more can you separate out logic from faith than you can faith from the many facets of living you wish it to guide. They interrelate. They cross-compliment. You may choose to pick portions of each realm which do not overlap for the sake of discussion, but by all means do not fail to acknowledge the other manners in which they do, or you go to the grave as blank as you came from the womb.

For my part, logic is not meant to explain the unknown. Rather it is used to explain the newly known. Faith, by comparison, is meant to carry through an element of truth uttered in something very old and make it applicable present day. As systems of thought, perhaps even as aspects of the human soul, these two foci are too often pit against one another in discussion, presumed at cross-purposes and treated like weapons. Instead, I feel they are each a differently functional environment in which to conduct that discussion and that the participants must respect those environments, sometimes simultaneously, or perish. Personally, if logic were the mountains and faith the plains, I’d simply want to camp in the hills. It would be so much more interesting there.

Can someone tell me when it will stop hurting?

2008-04-30T18:10:00.007-05:00

My best friend, displaced to Maine, the poor bastard, these 32 long months, sent me a great shirt for my birthday. I'm not exactly sure when we started giving each other birthday presents. I think the last one I got from him was a Wolverine poster when I turned 16. Yeah, I still have it.

Anyway this is the shirt:
Now, those of you who are not from Louisiana and not on intimate terms with the history of this great state will probably not understand why this is so fucking funny. Even knowing the facts of it all will not let you in on the joke, but I will try to explain it as best I can.

Edwin W. Edwards (the "occasional" governor of Louisiana) is a crook and proud of it. He is currently in federal prison on a bribery conviction involving video poker licenses. This was after his four (4!) terms as governor. The last time he ran was in 1991 against David Duke (as in, former Grand Wizard of the KKK...) and he won. "Vote for the crook" was a popular bumper sticker that year. If he lives to see the light of day again, I guarantee the citizens of Louisiana will elect him again. Why? Because the crook you know is better than the one you don't. Because it's impossible to steal nothing. Because he didn't give a shit about the rest of the country, unless they could help Louisiana (and his wallet). Hell, I'd vote for him. Can't be much worse than what we've had since.

---An aside: The 80's were not too great for EWE or for the rest of the state due to the oil money vanishing(Thanks, President Carter! You fucker.). I find it funny that, once upon a time, low oil prices were a BAD thing. When I was 15, my dad, who was in Applied Geophysics (look it up) said he would buy me a car once oil reached $100 a barrel. I've tried to get him to make good on that the last few years, but he's not having it.
End Aside---

So it's funny, right? It would end there, but for some other products on Dirty Coast. Then there's the link to the comic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.

I couldn't get through more than a few pages. I can barely concentrate now. It's been almost THREE FUCKING YEARS! When can I let it go? When will it STOP?

But Jazz Fest is happening right now. And my best friend, displaced to Maine these last 32 months (the poor bastard), is home for the weekend. And we will eat and drink and laugh and be New Orleans, for a little while. Maybe a long while. But we have another reminder in four months. And always another and another. Each step forward on the road to recovery is also a reminder of everything we've lost and might never regain.

I just want it to go away. I want my friends to come home for good. I want my broken heart to mend. Is that really so much?

A little intimidating...

2008-04-16T00:31:00.002-05:00

I just discovered Google Analytics. I don't fully understand all of the terms and numbers yet, but apparently a lot of people are actually visiting this site. A lot more than I thought, anyway. I'm sure people are bouncing over here from a comment on one of the real blogs and then disappear, but it's nice to know that stuff is being seen. Even when that stuff is as ridiculous as most of the posts here.

(One of) My Problem(s)

2008-04-02T00:17:00.002-05:00

Here's the deal. I don't want to be serious. I hate being serious. It feels like I've had to be nothing but serious since August 29, 2005*. Like if I wasn't, it would be some kind of betrayal or defection from what's still happening around me. Melodramatic? Maybe, but there it is.

I want to be silly. Comedians are the prophets of our age, but that's not why. I like to laugh, especially (my wife says) at my own brilliance. In the School of Theatre, my friends would anticipate my presence in the audience with either dread or relief but for the same reason. My laugh. I don't just laugh. I have been likened to a hyena on more than one occasion. My brother is embarrassed to sit next to me in a movie. I laugh with my whole body and my whole heart. I have received the scowls of the old matinee ladies and their admonitions: "You should be more respectful of the actors."

A quick aside on the matinee ladies: The Cherry Orchard is a farce. It's fucking hilarious. Americans are just being stupid when they imagine it as post-modern tragedy. Nordic melancholy is dark and tragic; Russian melancholy is fucking funny.

Anyway, my laugh is recognizable in a room filled with 1000 people, all (hopefully) laughing themselves and often when no one else is laughing at all. Nevertheless, "I could hear you out there," whether said with affection or derision, was always said with a smile.

And so I present to you a small piece of farcical brilliance that I recently posted on another blog. The blog is a Christian blog, but not a CHRISTIAN blog. Some setup - and no, I'm not linking you bastards there, he has enough trouble with me - The post is about Genesis and that it truly doesn't matter if it really happened or if Moses made it up or maybe God told Moses to make it up. That last bit got me thinking. Suspend your disbelief for a short time and enter such a world.

In my head with this one, God is appearing to Moses in the form of the guy who played Xerxes in 300 and Moses is more of a Bruce Willis unwilling-but-kick-ass hero type. Die Hard in a robe and a beard. Yeah.

GOD:So you know now what you have to do.
MOSES: I suppose. What if they need proof? What should I tell them about all of this?
GOD:Well, you see, I created matter. Then I compressed all the matter into an infinite space. Then it, um, exploded.
MOSES: What? Why?
GOD: Never mind, just tell them that I what I had left was a bunch of fiery rocks and I picked this one to cool down enough to put some living things on it, then guided those living things through the eons.
MOSES: Fine, but where did WE come from?
GOD: Honestly? I got the idea while I was working on monkeys.
MOSES: Are you fucking kidding me?
GOD: What? I like monkeys. (aside)Should have just quit while I was ahead.
MOSES: That’s never gonna fly. Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.
GOD: Look, if you don’t like it my way, then just make your own story. Whatever, I don’t care. Just get them on board so we can get the hell out of Egypt. I hate it here.
MOSES: sigh You got it. I'll come up with something.
(Moses turns to go down the mountain)
GOD: Hey, Moses.
MOSES: Yes, my Lord?
GOD: Don’t fuck this up.
MOSES: (walking away, to himself) What the fuck is an eon, anyway?

I would totally watch that movie.

/suspension of disbelief

You may resume your lives of despair and nothingness.

Also, this is a work in progress. No stealing. :)

*Except on Thursday nights (City of Heroes night) and just generally whenever I can lie down next to my wife and think about nothing but how silly the cats are. But publicly I'm very serious.

My 2008 Primaries Gift to Senator John McCain

2008-03-13T00:02:00.005-05:00

Not that the GOP smear machine has ever needed any help fabricating an issueless warpath to DNC shortcomings, but there is a blaringly obvious silver bullet in the news I’ve yet to see anyone capitalize upon. If I don’t talk about it I am going to burst and rarified Funk & Wagnalls colloquialisms are going to spill out over my hardwood floor. I hate mopping. So, Senator McCain, this is my gift to you.

As we forge ahead in veritable disgust that the outcome of an election might once again come down to a Florida court decision or its doppelganger chez Michigan, this time the decision as to who would indeed be the Democratic nominee, it is only natural to look back at 2000 and dream of sawing the whole peninsula off like Bugs Bunny. “South America, take it away!” My persistent migraine still swims with hanging chads, butterfly ballots, voter fraud, spoiled ballots, hot-ass Broward County, and a particularly disturbing image of Pat Buchanan looking accidentally sexy to voters. In that swarm of post-election answerlessness, the avalanche of particulars raised over weeks and over the year to follow was enough make me want to ride a Diebold machine over Niagara Falls…the Canadian side. Somehow, there were so many scraps of a demolished process to consider, no one sticks out in our minds as useful today. Or does one?

Am I the only one who remembers the embarrassment we were showing the world? How many times did they insert into the news broadcasts the opinions du jour from the common folk on the streets of Paris or expatriates working in the far Pacific rim? We were the laughing stock of the global political landscape. We knew it too. More than once the proceedings called for a more rapid decision making process, not only because the American people deserved it, but reportedly because we looked to the world like we had no idea what the hell we were doing. Him Big Chief Democracy, Broken Noggin. To this day I mildly suspect that Gore threw the extended fight so that his country might save face, and no other reason.

Well, for the Democratic Party, doesn’t a similar embarrassment apply now? Sure they were within their rights to punish state bodies when those states had broken party rules. Sure the candidates were reasonable to sign agreements regarding what would be zero seated delegates from those states. Now, barely a couple months later, months in which the race has proven too close to call, places like Florida and the campaigns themselves want to revisit the defunct primaries to hedge bets. It seems as if the Democratic Party doesn’t know how to run a primary in much the same way the U.S. seemed not to know how to count votes in an election. All party conventions should now hand out dunce caps.

All John McCain has to realize for an early and applicable snipe is that the Democrats as a group now look bad either way. If the candidates honor their signed agreements, as worthy as that might sound, they are in effect saying they hold with the idea of discounting people’s votes. If instead they keep with the belief that every vote should count, an ideal we hold dear, not only will they cost those states millions of dollars to rerun primaries, but they also look like hypocrites for going back on their signed, documented agreements. Hypocrite or anti-voter? Whom would you elect? Bracketed in this simple way, McCain could have his first one-two punch, still with additional room to portray Democrats as not knowing how to run their own primary. How can they run a country?

My personal solution to the disenfranchised Florida and Michigan Democratic Primaries lies in New Mexico. Remember when the 2000 election tally was still close and the media started running down the “what happens in the event of a tie” possibilities, state by state? Well, New Mexico’s contingency had something to do with five card stud, drawing straws, or a game of high card being the deciding factor. Seriously, that was the law. As history repeats itself, the news just yesterday ran the story about a game of stud poker in New Mexico that decided its elected Estancia Town Trustee. No wonder illegals want in!

Well, there’s our answer. The Florida and Michigan Democratic Primaries have to be declared ties. Surely each state has its own legislated tie-breaker, a legit’ one they should have already budgeted for or a silly one that involves something like monkeys ripping into cupcakes. Yes, we are not talking about tie votes, but there is more than one way to look at a tie. We could backwardly argue that zero delegates or zero outcome for each candidate in these states constitutes a tie. We could even go a more philosophical route and claim that despite the number of votes, New Mexico voters legally voted to play that hand of stud while despite the number of voters in Florida, Floridians essentially voted in hopes of effectuating some ridiculous tie-breaker when they were told votes wouldn’t count. In any case, I am positive that a documented election tie-breaker would save millions, eliminate fraud, and at least in that academically philosophical sense count votes toward an outcome.

Should the DNC take my advice, however, Senator John McCain is going to get a great soundbite. It’ll be speechifying akin to, “Do you want your President elected or decided by rock, paper scissors?”

No Cuss, No Muss

2008-03-12T07:14:00.007-05:00

Yep, while our backs were turned, feverishly reading my ever thought-provoking piece, Bar None, on the proposal to ban cussing in bars in St. Louis...South Pasadena, California snuck in like a cat burgling rapist and officially declared an annual "No Cussing Week."

AP Article via MSNBC

My conclusion, as before, Pasadena, California is now off of my tourism list. In fact, since the town went the step further to actually implement the idea, I may have to take a step further and march a million people to the Rose Bowl parade to scream out FUCK in unison every ten seconds, just for families and cameras.

Unlike the St. Louis idea, I don't read any criminality in Mayor Michael Cacciotti's move. The official week reads more like a Breast Cancer Awareness Day or a Great American Smoke Out. In a way, that might be considered endearing to have promoted civil discourse on an official level. However, it is again the subtractive phrasing of the observance that represents the slippery slope to free speech issues. "No Cussing Week" could have just as easily been called Professional Speech Day or Expansive Language Awareness Month, Pride in Our Civility Celebration or Champions of Maturity Week. With these titles you can build projects at school. Grammar assignments can turn into forensic debates, words-of-the-day contests can be implemented and involve speech games and communications fairs. The point is that recognizing the power of the English, verbal form in a positive light gives one something substantial with which to work. The possibilities, following a positive name, become as boundless as the imaginations of the program's willing participants. All a "No Cussing Week" offers is the restriction, "don't cuss."

I'm not splitting hairs here. To the reader, what the week is called might seem irrelevant. Few may care about the subtractive verses the proactive. Still, the subject at hand is one that deals with LANGUAGE, speech specifically, and therefore should have had consideration toward the language used to promote it. My complaint is a direct outgrowth of that content. The Mayor's people should have considered that the simple function of a negative phraseology on a speech driven initiative is a tool others use to try to undermine free speech. A "No Cussing Week" can easily lead to "no cussing laws," or "no cussing zones," or "no cussing in film." I mean, can we not see a correlation, extreme though it may be, between a "No Cussing Week" and a town-sanctioned book burning? Far fetched? One modern society did it. How are we immune from repeating those mistakes?

Don't take my alarmist word for it. Right in the MSNBC article it already goes beyond the intent of the official week and speaks of "no cussing" as one day becoming a "quality of life issue." That is so short-sighted. The Pasadena week just got approved and already the foul tool is working its dark function. I guarantee there is no family living in a slum with cracked windows, roaches, heat turned off in winter, hungry kids, and zero health coverage that would consider a cuss free environment an improvement on their day.

Not enough? The 14 year-old that started the club, perhaps even a grass roots movement, is quoted as saying, "I don't cuss...If you want to hang out with me, you don't cuss." It's a line in the sand. It's exclusionary. For instance, I don't drink alcohol, but I wouldn't ask others not to drink around me and I would never, ever imply that failure to refrain as I refrain carries with it some sort of punishment, even the simple penalty of depriving others my invited company. This is what happens when you let a 14 year old determine political policy. The kid had a great idea. He showed awesome initiative and objective. He displayed bravery and exemplified the gut American notion that one person, even a kid, can make a difference. I don't expect a 14 year old to grasp the nuances betwixt the subtractive and the proactive. I do, however, expect the full-grown, mature adults in any mayor's office to understand this and to act accordingly. Their mistake came in taking the idea of a 14 year old and implementing it unrevised, untempered with maturity or wisdom.

Inherently, days, weeks, and months made into official declarations of practice or awareness need to do so in the positive. Black History Month doesn't mean that you need to refrain from knowing other ethnically grouped accomplishments, or trickier, refrain from being a skin color. The Great American Smoke Out is called such for a reason. "Don't Smoke Week" might get some poor schmuck with a Marlboro stoned to death in line to see 10,000 B.C. Bring Your Daughter To Work Day would not work if it were called Ignore Children With Penises Day. I jest, but the philosophy persists into every facet of governing, including many far more important than Secretary's Day or Groundhog Day.

For instance, is it any wonder that of all amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the only one that "failed" or required correction was prohibition? Amendments are used to enforce rights, to acknowledge rights newly realized or admitted at the highest levels of leadership. Prohibition instead tried to take away, not to grant. It tried to limit, to control, to have people refrain from. At its heart, it failed because its attempt ran counter-directional to the purpose of a constitutional amendment. It's why I know that a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution preventing same sex marriage would never pass or last long. It too would run counter-directional to the purpose of ENFORCING rights or ACKNOWLEDING rights.

In short, LAWS are meant to prevent, to have folks refrain from well defined practices we as a society view as bad. They operate in the negative as counteragents to those who'd squelch life, liberty, happiness, and free market. That is the function of a law. Hence, nobody can open up an idea in the negative and sanction it officially without also opening the door to that notion one day becoming a law. The two practices are of the same grain. People who do so, even unintentionally, have their hand tipped. What they are saying may sound like a decent and feel-good proposition that everyone can agree upon. Yet, they are bluffing. If what they had at heart was in any way positive or feel-good, they shant have skewed negative in its expression. They shant have opened that dangerous, dangerous door. For what it's worth, with all our millions of laws on the books, chances are (barring new technological innovation) that everything that requires prevention already has a law against it. Logically then, pretty much anything that's existed for 200+ American years which does not have a law against it, most likely should not. It should remain in that grey area between controversy and blind acceptance that teaches us all how to get along and how to see alternate points of view. We are not just agreeing upon these measures as an existent society in 2008, but as a civic society in the broader sense that includes all American citizens from 1787 until now...possibly even into the future.

This was the vision of our founding fathers. They knew that the pursuit of people driven government and equality would rest upon a body of laws enacted by said people, specifically so that no one person with a myopic mindset could seek office to screw it up. They acknowledged that volumes and volumes of laws might be created in this pursuit and made room for that to be okay. Yet, at the same time, they created a structure and a list. No matter how many preventive laws might ever come to be in their future, every single one of them would be held accountable to, held subjective to this pervading structure and to this pervading list of acknowledged rights. The ability to prevent, to exclude from freedom, would forever be measured against this higher purpose, this documented inclusion or admission into American freedom. The negative would be governed by the positive.

“No Cussing Week” sounds pretty good. It’s not unlike a makeshift Lenten practice or a really good diet. I bet nobody ever explained to the youth that, phrased as such, it is also unconstitutional. Implemented officially, it is therefore a cause for concern. It means there is another upwardly mobile politician holding office in the U.S. who would forego the U.S. Constitution for either his own purposes or for lack of the two seconds of concentration it would take to change the name. His most likely accidental blight on our nation’s governing structure and on our rights masquerades under the guise of ceremony, holiday. If that’s to persist unchecked, why not KKK Appreciation Day? Open a present, burn a cross. Why not a Torturegiving holiday? Turkey, stuffing, and water boarding while we watch a parade.

Look, there are plenty of reasons not to cuss. Variant ethics aside, I like to refrain from cussing as often as possible because I think it means that much more when I do choose a cuss word in the craft of writing.

Refraining from cussing on the regular is also an exercise that elevates intelligence. One stretches the mind by always searching for alternative expressions to aptly describe anger or dismay, sort of the way an improvisational artist, while near boundless in presentation style, can keep a performance PG-13. It’s her/his boundaries that create the intellectual challenge until such time s/he would again artistically choose to reintroduce the blue language.

It almost goes without saying, even in a post-industrial, psychology-aware nation, that cussing in marriage is antithetical to what both people wish to achieve via marriage. Cussing interrupts real communication and thus partnership and slows the journey to common goals with innumerable, needless pauses to marital momentum.

Perhaps refraining from cussing can be used as a tool to set examples for young children, new comedians, etc. We all do it. Nobody would cuss in a job interview or a convent. We have no problem choosing alternative wording and tone when running for office, broadcasting news, or critiquing literature. There is a merit to practicing language in the subtractive from time to time, circumstance to circumstance. It’s a type of extra-sensory deprivation that achieves particularly coveted intellectual results.

However, theoretically that merit cannot be achieved if not for the greater prevalence of the explicative in common usage. A metaphor…the viceroy butterfly. The viceroy butterfly looks exactly like the more prevalent monarch butterfly and is named accordingly. The monarch butterfly is poisonous to birds. Birds have evolved to “recognize” monarch butterflies by sight alone and therefore steer far clear of them as food. The viceroy butterfly contains no such poison, but has instead evolved to look like the monarch butterfly as a form of defense against being eaten by birds. It’s an amazing interrelationship that deepens our understanding of the evolutionary process. Yet, as with all evolution, a delicate balance had to be struck and maintained for us to not yet see further changes in the viceroy. Meaning, the viceroy population must always remain in the minority to the monarch for the subterfuge to work. Once the viceroy might gain numbers over the monarch, the odds of a bird grabbing a poisonous insect go down. Without knowing an iota of math, birds would slowly begin partaking of the food again when fewer resources exist and fewer of their own kind die off in turn. In fact, to exist, the viceroy must always be limited in numbers as compared to a completely different species. Guess what, they don’t know math either.

The same holds true when we examine the relationship between the merits of not cussing and the pathology of cussing itself. The countless merits there are to be found, several of them enlightening in nature, cannot be achieved if there is nothing more common to refrain from. Challenging one’s self to use language empty of swearing would fail to be a challenge unless swearing itself not only existed, but existed to a far larger degree than the unique, individual choice to refrain from it. Cussing, like any other word or word group, MUST be far more commonplace in raw numbers than the personal choice to refrain from it in order for us to procure virtue in the attempt to subvert it. We can neither alleviate the need for the one nor the practice of the other without denying ourselves the rewards to be culled in the contrast. Picture it. How much more expansive would your vocabulary and your speech become if you honestly attempted to refrain from using the word “the” for a year. That would be quite the journey. “The” is throughout common usage in numbers too great to count. Your attempt to the contrary would be a grand challenge with who knows how many intellectual and disserting rewards? Now picture trying, instead, to refrain from using the word “otolaryngology” for a year. It would be far less of a challenge specifically because it is nowhere near as common in usage as “the.” Its raw numbers pale in comparison. Less of a challenge means less of a mental journey, less of an intellectual reward. In a Cartesian sense, we require vast platitudes in mere order to doubt them properly or advantageously.

Mr. Mayor, my fangs would retract if only you’d positively alter the name of your newfound, annual observance. Until then, in my mind, I have to question what you understand about this democratic Republic. Your intentions seem honorable, but your fitness to govern, suspect. It’s like when Katie Couric called freedom of speech a “privilege” or when former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer claimed people should “watch what they say” in response to Bill Maher’s firing from ABC. I’ll give you that cussing can be viewed as bad. However, to whatever degree it might be bad, your official “NO” week is far worse.

The play is the thing...

2008-03-03T00:00:00.021-06:00

Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of one of the greatest men I have ever known. I would say that he knew me as well as only four other people on this earth, and my wife and father are two of them. I miss him.

In the winter of 1992, at the end of my first semester of college, I was preparing an audition for the plays being presented the next semester. I had no idea what I was doing and I was scared to death. It was luck that had brought me together that night with a few other students to the mainstage of the School of Theatre. Each of us had independently decided to work on our audition pieces in the space where we were to present them just a few days later. They were theatre students. I was not.

In the group that night were a woman who was to be my first real relationship (and give me my first really broken heart), the man with whom I would share most of the next 3 years as friends and roommates and a man who is still one of the weirdest, most soulful and most interesting people I've met before or since (and also has the distinction of being the only Irish Jew I've ever known). I was intimidated by these three and resisted performing in front of or criticizing them. They were theatre students and I was not.

A man came into the theatre, a man I had seen before but didn't know; a teacher. He was balding, squinting behind his glasses and had both a wheeze in his nose and a scent on his clothes that betrayed absolute eons of smoking. He sat down among us, threw some insults at the others and proceeded to critique us on our monologues. He made me get up onto that stage and perform the absolutely ridiculous piece I had chosen. I don't remember the name of the character or the name of the play. I remember that it was a gay man bitching about the origin and accuracy of stereotypes. Ah, the ridiculous rebellion of the young and stupid!

I finished the first time through and the teacher started to ask me questions. "What is your objective?" "What are your given circumstances?" And many more. I had to tell him that I had no idea what he was talking about. The terms he was using had no meaning to me. I fully expected laughter and derision, crude comments and an invitation to leave the stage to the others who had real work to do. Instead, he smiled, and asked, "Well, who are you talking to? And who is that? Where are you? Why are you there?" All the same questions he had asked before, but in words I understood. And he guided me through it again and told me what to work on and, more importantly, how to go about it. On the next few nights, we were joined by others here and there. The teacher was there every night that week.

I was cast that semester, on the Mainstage, something that rarely happened to freshmen and almost never to non-majors. All four of us who had been there that first night were cast - in the same show, no less. None were big parts, but we were freshmen on Mainstage! I was to find out later exactly how big a deal that was and how much notice and expectation it afforded us.

Christmas break was cut short because we were the first show of the semester and had to start rehearsal before school reopened. School closed = dorms closed. I was thrown into improvised living arrangements with people I barely knew or understood. Rehearsal every day and not much else but a lot of drinking and smoking and talking. It was a wonderful introduction to this new life, the first one I had ever specifically chosen for myself. I switched my major to theatre within a week of school reopening.

I had to audition again that semester for one of the few and hotly contested spots in the beginning acting class. One of the teachers in the show with me was one of my auditors and that put me at ease. That evening in the dressing room, he asked me if I was interested in being part of the BFA program, a smaller and more intense program within the SoT (though the relative talent of the participants was a very touchy subject, particularly among those who hadn't gotten accepted). I wouldn't have to audition again (at their regular "tryouts"), they would just let me in based on the strength of the audition that afternoon. I had no idea how weird this chain of events was and I wouldn't really understand that until the next year, when I was able to fully immerse myself in the program.

Success and success and success. I was as amazed as anyone. Four of the most wonderful years of my life, followed by a professional tour, then a move to New York City.

None of it would have happened had it not been for that one teacher who stopped by in the middle of the night. He gave me the tools and showed me the first few steps. I always knew where to find him, day or night, and would show up in his office when I was bored or happy or upset or just lonely. He was one of the first people to teach me that I was good by criticizing me so harshly I thought I might cry.

He wasn't even an acting teacher. He was an academic, a dramaturg, an historian. He had forgotten more about American theatre than most people will ever know, especially actors. He had an insight into the process not only of acting but of living in the theatre. As is often the case, I had no idea just how much he was teaching me until years later.

After I graduated I saw him often. Every time I was back in town I would seek him out. He would say I was ancient history and insult me in font of his new young admirers. (Was I ever really that young?) But when he came to New York he would call and we would go out for drinks at his favorite old-man bar (the Blarney Stone, ugh). It was always difficult to tell if he loved me or was just tolerating me but, as a general rule, the more annoyed he looked the happier he was.

And then he was just gone. He didn't even tell anybody he was sick. He taught every single day until he went into the hospital. He never came out. His grad students say that he was teaching even then, at his bedside, through his assistants, however he could. I will never forget that phone call. I collapsed to the floor. It was the first and only time something had truly hit me like a brick. I hadn't seen him at that point for about two years, but I always knew where to find him. He was always just around the corner.

Not anymore.

A teacher told us, once, that we should never try to use a personal traumatic experience to inform our performance until several years had gone by and we were able to assimilate and understand it. I have gradually learned the truth of that as more and more of my life becomes past-tense. It's been four years and this is the first I'm really expressing much about it. It's the first time I'm telling this story to anyone who didn't already know it, basically everyone but the other three who were with me that first night.

There was a memorial that spring, in 2004, and I went and had bittersweet reunions with teachers and old friends. I remember speaking and feeling foolish. Feeling not up to the task of expressing how much he meant to me.

I should have simply said:

John Degen gave me my life. He showed me the door, how to open it and where to go when I got through. By taking the time to teach a kid he didn't know, he changed everything. Without him, I would never have known the joy of the stage or the ecstasy of reaching that exact perfect place where you become one with words and the set and the players and art truly becomes LIFE. I wouldn't have learned that even stupid choices make us better, as actors and as people. I almost certainly wouldn't be as harsh a critic or as patient a listener. Most of all, without his guidance into that wonderful world I would never have met the woman who is now my wife. That alone is a gift for which I could never repay him.

He would probably argue to the contrary and advise me to retrieve my balls from her purse.

I love you, John. I miss you terribly.

Fuck Art. Fuck Life.
Fuck Truth. Fuck Beauty.
The play is the thing.
-John Degen, 1947-2004

To anyone who can read this, please forgive the google spam.
John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen Florida State School of Theatre FSU SoT John Degen John Degen John Degen John Degen John Degen

I think we can all relate...

2008-02-20T23:32:00.002-06:00

Mouse over the image for the full effect.

I emphatically recommend xkcd to anyone who hasn't found it, yet.

Just Tuesday

2008-02-05T10:05:00.001-06:00

That's what today is everywhere else.

Happy Mardi Gras, y'all.

Laissez les bon temp rouler!

Urban Fat

2008-02-02T17:35:00.001-06:00

Okay, my bad idea to combat the American obesity epidemic is to make all the one-way streets also apply to pedestrians.

My bad idea to end the War in Iraq is to allow it to apply to be our 51st state.

My bad idea to combat global climate change is to have violent crime convicts on work furlough shave all the polar bears.

My bad idea to fix American health care is to have Canada forcefully annex the U.S. while our troops are overseas.

My bad idea to strengthen the economy is to implement an I.R.S. lottery in which everybody who pays a little more in taxes is entered to win the eternal right never to pay any more income tax at all.

My bad idea to solve illegal immigration is to spread cartoon pushpins over the Arizona desert.

...and my bad idea to have readers take me more seriously...write less seriously.

All Pharmacists Cannot Be Nancy Reagan

2008-01-19T19:09:00.001-06:00

Not quite an explosion onto mainstream media, more like a dribble over the affiliates, it has recently made national news that the Indiana General Assembly is trying again to pass an old bill that would create/ease a pharmacist’s “right to refuse” service, in this case based upon religious belief (among other factors). While there are already several states that support this practice by law, there’s no time like the present to address the situation either with national interest or in all remaining states.

This is not a new issue. “Right to refuse” clauses or “conscience” clauses, specifically as they relate to abortion drugs, have been around since Roe v. Wade. Clicking here gives a great breakdown of all the states pushing legislation in one direction or the other over this topic. Clicking here shows the verbiage in the formerly proposed Indiana bills.

Okay, so we all know where the argument goes. On one side it’ll aim to say that if any pharmacists are allowed to do this, then what’s stopping them from exercising a “right to refuse” over any other drug beyond morning after pills or any other customers beyond pregnant or possibly pregnant women? After all, a law cannot name a specific product or group. The other side will claim that these pharmacists are providing a Samaritan human service by “refusing,” similar to a firefighter that rescues a baby from certain doom or a conscientious objector soldier who refuses to fire in war. I’d like to take the discussion out a little wider than abortion drugs, though.

Even if a “right to refuse” sounds new to you, toward your likes or dislikes, it is, in fact, a concept we deal with everyday. Most of us have seen the sign in the convenience store reading “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” We all know that any clerk, customer service rep., sales person, or manager is permitted to simply withhold service if you are belligerent, cussing, threatening, physical, lewd, or generally being a pain in the ass. I can refuse you service if you’ve broken a contract or failed to pay. Libraries can kick you out for talking, cinemas for the same, museums for touching works of art, airports for being on a list, former employers for claiming you were disgruntled, some hospitals for having the wrong insurance, lending bureaus for having poor credit, restaurants for bringing in food from competitors, bars for drunken behavior, amusements parks for not sitting correctly in the rides, government buildings for failing to produce proper I.D., or even beaches for not swimming inside the ropes. All of these exercised “rights to refuse” seem reasonable to most of us. They are so commonplace, in fact, that we might consider them a required component of running a business.

Additionally, there is the more top-down notion that an employer or corporation should not be able to FORCE you, as an employee, to do anything that is against your moral beliefs or religion. Banco Popular cannot force tellers not to worship on Easter Sunday. Blimpies cannot insist that Muslim counter workers eat bacon on their lunch hour during Ramadan. Circuit City cannot add “stab that Commodore 64 moron in the neck” to a salesperson’s job description, even if that employee is a once violent ex-con. Yes, if employers ask you and you refuse them, you won’t be long for that job, but that is also why we have the fallback of wrongful termination suits.

Given this dual tier, common sense familiarity with “rights of refusal” in the conscious mainstream, it’s a surprising wonder that when applied to pharmacists it would get such a rise out of people. Sure, the focus on that one set of drugs brings with it all the ire of the medical abortion debate, but people who’ve never cared one way or the other about the legality of non-spontaneous abortions have thrown a great many hats into this “conscience” clauses ring. And, it is a dangerous, morally relativistic ring.

Assume for the moment that I am against conscience clauses, that I want them eliminated either from pharmacies in particular, or from all businesses as they relate to the customer. Perhaps the strongest argument to rid the world of the “right to refuse” is that the practice is a form of prejudice or discrimination. Refusing to sell a person a product is reasonably similar to a cabby refusing to pick up a pregnant woman. Refusing to fill a prescription is oddly comparative to not giving African-Americans a homeowner’s application at an open house. Even if the practice itself is not intrinsically biased, it is a very easy practice to abuse for the sake of bias. So, in order to counter the idea that “right to refuse” is similar to prejudice, my opponents will claim the act is based upon the pill, not upon the customer. They’ll make the counter-argument akin to the particular product, not the consumer. That’s a rough road for them to take, given that these pills, like others, will overwhelmingly be purchased by women, and that they will ALL be purchased FOR women like pre-natal vitamins, estrogen pills, medications to ease menopause, vaginal healthcare products, and anything bombastically pink.

While the counter-argument might not be completely convincing, I, as the presumed opponent of conscience clauses have to account for and deal with it anyway. This generally ropes me down from my “discrimination” high horse and lands me on a platform of “domino effect.” That’s to say that I would need to change angles, take the next most obvious route, and instead argue that if a pharmacist is allowed to refuse any customer one set of pills, what’s to keep her/him and all pharmacists from refusing all kinds of services based upon all kinds of belief systems. Pharmacist Edgar might refuse my anti-HIV cocktail because he believes my impending disease to be a gay curse and further proclaims that homosexuality is a superlative sin. Pharmacist Tallulah might fill 400 milligrams of my 2600 milligram prescription because she believes doctors over medicate. Pharmacist Deepak might refuse to give me any service whatsoever because I mentioned, three conversations ago, that I was a divorcé. Well, this is a great argument. It makes sense to so many people. Granted, opponents will claim such things will never happen and then we wind up in this junior high school debate spiral.

“Yes they will!

“No they won’t!”

“Yes they will, poopy head!

The spiral aside, domino effect is an understandable platform. I was vey careful NOT to discuss my political affiliations and points of view with the dentist right before he gave me a root canal. Sure, he picks up CNN on the same monitor with my dental x-rays, a monitor that during my exquisite torture only he could see and watch, but the last thing I needed was him taking out his election primaries dismay on my exposed, raw nerve. Duh! None of us like to imagine how that situation might turn out if we were forced to agree with all dentists’ political leanings before getting extra Novocain. We fear domino effect. We perceive it, acknowledge it, and prevent it. Recessions and depressions are domino effect. Nations falling to Communism was a domino effect. Why not pharmacists’ “right to refuse?” It’s a great argument. Don’t let any pharmacist refuse to give out any drug and we’ll never have to worry about all of them doing it with all drugs. Oh wait, where have we heard that argument before? Ah yes, gun control!

Here comes the dangerous moral relativism I spoke of. If I make the supposition that many of the people who’d oppose a pharmacist’s right to refuse skew to the political left by nurture, well then they are the same people that have been trying to convince right wingers there would be NO domino effect if we take away certain firearms. One cannot make the anti-domino effect argument for conscience clauses without opening up the door on overblown NRA assertions. By arguing this way that Donna should get her pill after she was raped, is to also argue that Manny the American ex-con gets his pick of AK-47 arsenals. Damn! So near, and yet so far.

Now, let’s go the other way. Let’s presume for the next moment that I am pro “right to refuse,” if even because I am simply pro anything with the word rights in it. Perhaps the easiest way to start this argument is with a future tense.

“So, one day, American doctors and psychologists and legislators decide that suicide is not a form of murder, but a patient’s choice. I, as a pharmacist, in good conscience am supposed to give them a big death pill? Am I as a pharmacist supposed to trust more in my nation’s ability to promote the common good than I am my own ability to spare a life standing right in front of me?”
There’s something basically human about the idea that doing one’s job well is defined by the limits to which we’d take it. We don’t think that a professional football player is any better if he keeps running to Montana after scoring the touchdown. In fact, we’d think he’s nuts. No reasonable person would claim that self-inflicted 17 hour workdays are anything but highly negative workaholism. Heck, we even give the most powerful job in the world, the U.S. Presidency, all kinds of limits, parameters, checks and balances and thereafter define a President’s “job-well-done” by how precisely s/he stayed within those strictures. Is it at all odd, then, that some doctors under the same Hippocratic Oath refuse to perform abortions or that some pharmacists under the Oath of a Pharmacist, an oath that includes a passage on ethical conduct, exercise their right to refuse? Isn’t setting limits part of a job-well-done? Are they really supposed to become a doctor or a pharmacist one year and then dole out every drug and every procedure that crops up in years to come no matter how radical or controversial? Do we not simply think they are better at their own jobs if they take the mental moment to say, “Stop, wait a second, let’s examine if this is really in congruence with my patient, my oath, and my knowledge?”

Opponents to this view on conscience clauses often go right for the frequented point of view, “What about the rights of the patients?” The law said they could have the prescription. The doctor who examined them lent all the professional weight of making out the prescription. The insurance company was even willing to pay for the prescription. Who is a pharmacist at the tail end of the service provider chain to say that a particular person should not be sold that particular prescription? Even more so, who is a pharmacist to countermand a medical doctor? The argument is the basic, tell-tale wisdom our parents taught us about rights. We were never to let the exercising of our own rights extend to the tip of somebody else’s nose. That is the historical difference between “rights” and “equal rights.”

So, this time, as the presumed pro “right to refuse” junkie, in accounting for the most frequented counter-argument, I dial my stance down a few notches from the lofty oaths and good job defense to now land these shoes on a platform of endless examples.

“What if women, once again, no longer had the right to refuse any random guy for sex?”

“What if Nancy Reagan never taught children to just say no to illegal drugs?”

“What if unions had never strengthened employees’ rights, many of which were based on the refusal to be abjectly abused?”

“What if the Boston Tea Party never took place?”

Insert your own pre-1964 examples here. There are a million of them. The new argument becomes the simplified idea that there is a lot of good demonstrated throughout history by both the practice of granting legally covered rights to refuse and, by extent, in listening to the very words that make up the phrase. Refusal empowers, it protects rights, it prevents catastrophe; it draws a line in the sand defining character, change, and perspicacity.

New opponents then jump in on this litany of examples with their contrasting case that states “none of those examples have anything to do with the sale of products and services.” They wish to assert that in order for equal rights to prevail through their infancy in a system of free enterprise, then at the very least we must make all products available to all consumers. We must collectively decide that the historic examples of “right to refuse” cannot apply to a product line or supply chain, to a service driven industry or person to person transaction. This leads again to the now familiar gambit,

“Sure we can.”

“No we can’t!”

“Of course we can, poopy head!”

I don’t truly see, given the eventual degradation into poopy head byplay, how anyone can firmly stand on any of the common arguments for or against conscience clauses. Sure I don’t want to have to go to seven pharmacists to find one who’ll fill my anti-anal leakage prescription. But, you know what? I also don’t want my daughter to be forced to sell a house to a customer who’s cupped her ass in the real estate office. I don’t want to be coerced to do every damn thing my yutz employer might insist I try, yet I also do not want do any damn thing the customer thinks I should do whilst calling me a fuckwad and insisting that the customer is always right.

My take is two-fold. First, we have laws, with regard to equal rights, that provide we cannot disallow anyone from entering our businesses based on race, ethnicity, creed, etc. There are still African-Americans alive who remember not being able to go into certain lunch counters or play on certain baseball teams. This is not some figment of revisionist history. They sat at the back of the bus, drank from separate fountains, used different bathrooms, went to different schools, and altogether were treated as less than. Those laws provided a necessary component to a truer America, one that did something to rectify its own atrocities. I find it interesting that pursuant to the interpretation of these equal rights laws and the simultaneous interpretations of “right to refuse” legislation, that any customer might now be allowed, by law, into the neighborhood, via the front of the bus, through the front doors of an establishment, up and down the aisles, only to still be refused service at checkout. By “interesting” I mean, how is that different than 1942?

I think there is some through line to a logic which would imply that if a customer is allowed into your business, that same customer must be provided your service within that business. Would this not be a self-evident truth? So long as a customer is not tampering with product, disturbing the peace, or doing something else worthy of getting them thrown out (acts that are covered by other laws and therefore not needing “right to refuse” clauses), then that’s it. Your personal feelings about their choice of product are irrelevant.

Secondly, let’s remember, with regard to pharmacists, that prescription drugs are controlled substances. They are legal controlled substances, but nationally controlled nonetheless. All of the legislators, companies, lobbyists, scientists, doctors, researchers, voters, officers, and associations involved with deciding how a substance is controlled are far too vast for any one crusader to veto solo. They’ve determined the exact process a person must go through to obtain said substances and when a person does so IN GOOD CONSCIENCE only to be turned away, it completely undermines the masses it took to make such a grand decision structure in the first place. Pharmacists are not the leaders of their own little nation. They didn’t go to school to become Ivan the Terrible. I understand that part of the job is something that goes against the grain of your ethical make-up. Then why do you have that job? Is it true with every job? Can we “refuse” to do any work based on the notion that all jobs go against our religion?

If it’s going to be right against right, right to refuse verses consumer rights, then I believe they stack like this. The person in the role of the pharmacist can go anywhere, anywhere at all to practice their right to refuse. Simply sitting on the couch NOT giving out pills is an exercise of that right. It’s a non-act by nature. You can go NOT do anything, anywhere. On the other hand, your establishment is the only place that rape victim can go to exercise her rights, rights that were already violated at least once. Taking away her one place to practice her right in order to maintain ALL your many places doesn’t seem equal with regard to rights at all. For Americans, rights without equality mean nothing. Don’t take my word for it. Here are some other entries:

Druggists Refuse to Give Out Pill

Pharmacists Rights at Front of New Debate

The Right To Refuse Service

Should Pharmacists Be Allowed to Refuse Service

It seems to me that nobody can force a store to carry a particular product, distasteful or no. I can't make Target carry Super Juggs 2008: The Sleeze Expo Edition. I can't make Dillard's carry unitards for men studying ballet or Japanese import Music CDs. Each business decides upon its custom consist to maximize profit and to evoke an atmosphere attractive toward targeted clientele. In the case of controlled substances, however, targeted clientele is EVERYONE. We control controlled substances in a manner that impacts everyone. Everyone needs to go through the same process to get these products. Everyone is subject to the same punishments if they get these products any other way. Everyone is still liable after getting these products for subsequent abuse of said products. It's a web of necessities used as both control and deterrent. One doesn't need to jump through any hoops to order off of Overstock.com. However, if one does choose to navigate the web or jump through the hoops to get the proper medications, webs and hoops that we all set up for society's benefit, then we cannot opt to penalize righteous care seekers for doing so in the end. We cannot make the act of obtaining something illegally, wrong, AND the act of obtaining something legally, wrong. Pharmaceuticals distribution is a business that has no particularly targeted clientele. Everyone gets sick and hurt and therefore everybody needs care. This indicates that business owners who opt-in to an industry that serves all people have opted out of the choice of what products to carry or to sell.

Bobby Fischer

2008-01-19T09:52:00.001-06:00

I don’t know what the blogging equivalent of a moment of silence would be, but I’d like to make one for Bobby Fischer. Having passed yesterday,1/18/2008, the famed Fischer was a never-ending inspiration to logicians and chess enthusiasts like me. Where “inspiration” would fail to articulate what he meant to the world, “paragon” might better scratch the surface. He was enigmatic, dauntlessly passionate, and an icon of fragile, human Americana even beyond his time as an American citizen. Yes, the very notion of his passing ripples through the chess world like an earthquake of sadness and loss. To whatever degree he was the living embodiment of the art of chess, his death is all the more palpable, an unbeatable king laid down in resignation.

Yet, limiting Fischer’s 64 years to the mere 64 squares on a chess board is to rob the meaning that this particular life provided our sometimes forgetful and frequently fickle lot. To say that only chess masters, strategists, gamers, or mathematicians mourn his absence would unjustly frame his death as bleakly more untouchable than his life. Bobby Fischer was the proof, the PROOF that a mind ever set on perfecting even a particular aspect of conscious choice is one that functionally reaches distant, distant realms of human capacity. If any of us put half the mental energy into our marriages as Fischer did into chess, dysfunction would be eliminated from psychology’s bag of couplehood labels. If anyone put the certainty of concept to execution into their career the same way Fischer planned out not only his next game, but his next fifty games, all rewards of the American dream wouldn’t be far behind. Fischer was a master of refining infinite possibilities into a manageable, beneficial series of choices foreseen before such choices had even presented themselves. He wasn’t a psychic, a soothsayer, a magician, or an angel. Rather, the multitudes of future things to come were genuinely interesting enough to him in his present to study, to anticipate, and to be wholly involved with as if they were physically realities in the now. He made things happen, a simple person outrightly attacking the complex. He took much joy in the doing. Winning was to be like him and our plain, old losses made us marvel and wonder as to how Fischer did it.

It’s almost as if the reclusion Fischer experienced through much of life was aptly meant to prepare us for his absence in his death, to leave us with the feeling that somewhere, somewhere out there is a hidden champion we can aspire to equaling, to surpassing. Fischer may not have defined the win, but he unquestionably redefined the winner. With a game, perhaps one of the most trivial aspects of humanity, Fischer carved out an exemplary path from obscurity to titan, and then just as easily showed us that there was no difference between the two. It was as if to say, “Here America, this is how you do it.”

Now, it’s our move.

Bar None

2008-01-15T11:53:00.002-06:00

While I’m not up enough on the early release of AP affiliate news around the globe to bring you information you probably haven’t already heard, I did think this article about the proposal to ban swearing in St. Louis bars deserved some further debate.

The article contends that police officers in the area need greater leeway in promoting the public peace, specifically in rowdy, night-crowd bars. The proposal is said to lump in the act of cussing with a short list of other “questionable” practices which, if outlawed, would give police the exceptional berth they’d need for better crowd control.

Um, am I allowed to say “screw debate” or “this is fucking ridiculous?” Perhaps “pish-tosh” would be more appropriate. Our illustrious Bullet of My Pants once put it very succinctly. “You cannot make being an asshole against the law!”

I suppose, however, that my mere swearing in an obscure blog entry does little to show these life-o-phobes for the mental nonparticipants that they are. I am absolutely certain that the St. Louis meeting scheduled to discuss the topic will be all but laughed out of existence. Nonetheless, if I trust only in the skimped human gathering of a far off Metropolis to learn from this proposed, obtuse doctrine, I’d be failing my readers. Okay, reader.

Why? Why bars? Well, let’s first handle the “why not” of the tale. This is NOT to give law enforcement officers more leeway for crowd control. That’s a lie. I am well aware that the tenants of freedom as observed in our nation leave a great many law enforcement officers with the feeling of having their hands tied. It is the observance of that feeling that actually makes a great many heroes, their awareness of their limitations, their need to supplement allowable force with immense doses of simple human appeal. An officer who refuses to overstep bounds or who acknowledges the privileges awarded her/him in enforcement is usually a fine example for the rest of the force. More often it is the staunch, black-and-white philosophy of law enforcement that sees hypocrisies and even law breaking on the part of officers and legislators.

I guarantee this “outlaw swearing” idea is not coming from an officer(s) who feels her/his hands are tied. Those officers already know that there is far and away enough existing legislation to do what they need to do in a bar crowd or any other crowd. “Disorderly conduct” ring any bells? Do “noise ordinances” sound familiar to anyone? A heavier handed “inciting to riot” might even come into play here. “Public intoxication” laws have a million incarnations across the country. “Failure to comply” is another funny derivative of “resisting arrest” that, dare I say, might take place in a St. Louis bar from time to time. “Indecent exposure” continues the list while “disturbing the peace” sees countless applications and “reckless endangerment” pretty much knocks the point home. By almost any of these existing laws, the law enforcement officer is provided the authority to exercise good, common sense between arriving on the scene and determining if an arrest is necessary. With any of these laws, it is up to the officer to determine whether somebody just advised him to go fuck himself or if the patron uttered “fuck” when his quarterback’s pass was intercepted in the third quarter. The simple fact is that sometimes swearing constitutes disorderly conduct, and sometimes it does not. Sometimes swearing is part of inciting to riot, sometimes it is not. Sometimes swearing is a direct failure to comply, and sometime it is not. The determination is now up to the officer on the scene. Legislate anti-swearing law, and the officer will have no choice. Any cuss would represent a failure to comply. Any drinking game would be tantamount to disorder by definition. No reasonable police officer wants this. They do not want what little authority they DO have, even with “tied hands,” to be taken away, therefore further tying their hands. It’s a no-brainer.

So, if it is not officers who feel they have tied hands bringing the topic up for proposal, then who…and more importantly why?

The first possibility is the staunch black-and-white legislators and enforcement officers mentioned above. Look for the hypocrisies people! If good cops would never bring it up, then bad cops have an ulterior motive in doing so. Don’t fall for it, whatever it is!

The next possibility is the Disneyfiers of the world. These are the corporations that think all reasonable people want to live in a Magic Kingdom and wear purple pants with great big buttons. Not too long ago, New York City’s Times Square and its surrounding areas were home to an urban nightlife which included a huge real estate swath of cheap, overtly disgusting, adult-only entertainment services. During the day, Times Square was a tourist attraction like none other, drawing in families and theatre-goers, PG-13 seekers and photophiles. Late night Times Square was a completely different place, a place that would sell double-sided dildos on the street, third hand, and home to a clientele who would buy them. Several conservative mayoralties later, for better or for worse, Times Square now looks like the Lion King threw up on it. Candy shops, Mickey merchandising, authentic Bugs Bunny tie-tack outlets and retro’ themed cafes have all obliterated any trace of a single glow-in-the-dark condom within walking distance of the Marriot Marquis. While I was no fan of 25 cent peep shows or those who’d freelance the same outside at 8th and 42nd, I can’t say that I’m all that enthralled with New York City being a big Betty Boop cartoon either. Sex slave DVD knock-offs disgusted me, but near zero variance in the available, touristy, consumer wares, none of which I would ever buy, doesn’t seem quite like Times Square either.

Growing up in the suburbs, we used to have a chain of franchised stores called Times Square Stores. It was a department store, of sorts, following on the heels of Grant’s and their competitors, with the exception of the fact that in each TSS department, some different franchise was making the profit. The only reason anyone ever went to Times Square Stores in the suburbs was the selection. It was the nincompoop, working class dream that one could get a new set of Good Year tires just paces from tiny, pink, Easter shoes that made it attractive. You could get a full set of earthtone, stoneware dishes in the department right next to the sale on imported newts and newt tank accessories. Before Wal*Mart and Kmart, before Target and Caldor, Times Square Stores made selection diversity synonymous with convenience. I knew about Times Square Stores before I ever knew about Times Square. Once I learned about the place the store was named after, I couldn’t wait to grow old enough to go there. I mean, if the price and selection at the store that BORROWED the name was so colossal, then the real Times Square was going to have products I’d never even imagined on the shelf. Sure, I was dismayed to eventually discover that the “products I’d never even imagined” were nipple clamps and assless chaps, but a guy’s got to learn somehow. Though I never made these impulse buys either, still, they were in fact things I’d never imagined, just as I’d suspected. Besides, lewd toys weren’t the only items available in Times Square, just the majority of them. Today, I can get the same Minnie Mouse pom-pom socks in Times Square that I can get in the Disney Store in Boise, Idaho. Figuratively, that’s about all I can get. Granted, I have to acknowledge the place is much better and that there is more to Times Square than shopping. However, homogenizing Times Square, in the end, gives me absolutely no reason to go there. Their money now comes from some one else and goes someplace else, eventually reaching old Walt in his hyperbolic chamber.

That’s the rub with the theory of Disneyfiers promoting anti-swearing law in St. Louis. If there is any truth to it, one must follow who’d be making the money. The city? The superstores? Special interest groups? Who would profit from a master plan to Disneyfy the area. Step one, make grown men say fiddlesticks. Step two, bring back floor length house frocks and put saltpeter in the food. Step three, build a rat in pants that can be seen from space. St. Louis, I ache for you.

In the end, however, I think it is neither of these groups that would try to suggest such legislation. I think, in our gut, when we look at both the absurdity of the law and the fact that it would only apply to bars and not St. Louis as a whole, we’d have to put our finger-pointing money on FAMILIES WITH SMALL CHILDREN! Ahhhhhhhhh!

This is my generation’s fault, yes FAULT! Oh sure, they lump us all into this Gen X category straining to find any one pan-spawn factor that unites us. That’s because they are looking for something positive. In practice, it’s much easier to find lists of similarities when we look directly at our own faults. We Gen Xers think that since the first step of a process is the hardest, we don’t have to take any of the other steps. We think that if we haven’t heard of something before, it must not be true. We think that part of the determination of whether an act is right or wrong is whether or not we get caught. We think that a two page email is way too long to read as books collect dust on our shelves. We think that everything old is useless and that everything new needs to be user friendly to be worthwhile. Convenience and comfort are actually priorities. And, and, and we think that every place we might ever set foot, even by accident, has to be completely innocuous to our children!

To quote George Carlin, “Fuck the children!” Listen, I write as a brand new father of an absolutely perfect 14 week old daughter. I hold her and feed her and change her diapers every day. I joke about her becoming U.S. President in 2042. I speak both baby talk and educational lingo to her on the regular while always making time for play. She is my light, my heart, and my hope. We waited and tried for a very long time just to have her and I relish what will be our time together. I fear for her safety, plan and wish for her future, pray for her happiness, and even wonder at her simple presence with my own child-like eyes.

Even I, however, realize that there is a difference between a child and an adult, the adult being the first tier. It’s not as vast as say, the difference between another animal and a human, but it is an enormous difference nonetheless. For me to expect that every single threshold I might cross, that each and every doorway I might darken, has somehow keenly brought itself up to the benign specs that would fascinate, but not negatively impact a six year old is the epitome of self-centered drek. Overwrite that MP3! Wear bulkier pants! Picket HBO! Give that guy a ticket for spitting! The color of that blouse is way to close to fleshtone! It’s like we want to raise a nation of Eloi.

As long as there are both adults and children in a free enterprise society, there will be businesses that target every niche. There are going to be some businesses that cater directly to children: Gymboree, Fruit Roll-Ups, rated G films. There will be others that cater to adults with a particularly naughty feel: Hooters, strip clubs, casinos. There will be still others that cater to adults with no such naughty feel: sports bars, cigar bars, red carpet affairs, wine tastings, gaming tournaments. Lastly, there will always be businesses that cater to the whole family: Red Robin, parades, zoos, Friendly’s, amusement parks, museums, etc.

To attempt to make EVERY place “family friendly” only serves to put other family friendly businesses out to pasture. Claiming and asserting that everything or that almost everything is supposed to fit into a single, American, child-proof niche, makes a shitload of competition within that niche and puts people out of work while dumbing down the consumer. Yet, you do not need demographics and economic mumbo jumbo to convince you. What you need is to swallow a much more jagged pill!

Starbucks is not responsible for raising your children! You are! Oh sure, it’s easy to agree with when stated like that, but have you examined where you’ve failed this test? In truth, the very existence of “family friendly” restaurants and their kind is because YOU are too much of a baby to make a sacrifice for your child. In American decades past, families took children to visit other family members and that was about it. The rest of the time, babies and kids were at home and at least one adult was too, parenting. Babies and kids, for the most part, were completely unseen in hotels, in restaurants, on planes, or wandering the exquisitely safe aisles of the local hardware store. Just the outside chance your child might cry was considered embarrassing, even rude. You’d catch a child or two at the movies or in a shopping cart, but they were frequently the exception…and if they so much as spoke too loudly they were immediately removed by the parent. Somewhere along the line, you, you who wanted to be a rock star and have the world on a platter, you decided that you weren’t willing to give up your daily mocha frappuchino. You weren’t willing to miss the limited time only bacon cheeseburger burrito at Taco Bell. You felt that just because you had a kid, that was no reason you had to give up going out on Saturday or had to put the last place bowling league on hold for a while. You didn’t want to learn how to cook for your child so you decided that the grillman at the local T.G.I. Fridays was going to do it for you, along with all the unyielding nutrition that the occasional cockroach and rat tail have to offer. You couldn’t miss the Joe Namath look-alike contest at Stumpy’s so you insisted that Stumpy add curly fries and clean peanuts to the toaster-oven menu. You decided that the seven dollars that was supposed to go into your child’s college fund was better spent on a Happy Meal because you just had to get out of the house. You were not okay putting your child first and your friends second so you dragged your little toe-headed pumpkin to every booze cruise, antique show, monster truck rally, spa day, tech expo, whites sale, treadmill workout, police auction, and quilting bee on three continents. Sure, you claimed to have ultra-modern parenting skills by virtue of the fact that your kids were exposed to so much, but we know you. More importantly, you know you. You filled the child’s days with all your personal, trivial pleasures because you, yourself had so little to expose them to at home. When it came to raising a child, you were a void, a vacuum of anything remotely relevant and you chose instead to distract your offspring from that with breads and circuses for as long as possible. If you truly wanted to infuse diversity of exposure into your child’s life you’d be taking them to poetry readings and religious studies, to live theatre and on camping trips, to political campaign headquarters and national monuments, to volunteer in assisted living facilities and to charity bike rides, to fireworks displays and to county fairs. Instead you took the child to Pizza Hut and came out the cool parent when you sprang for an extra topping.

Of course, anyone would have to acknowledge two more recent points of order to this trend. First, no one wishes to downplay the sheer torture it is to hold down a job or two and raise a child as a single parent. I doff my hat to those who do. You are heroes. Second, it is true that the very decades I speak of when explaining that kids spent much time at home were decades where a family could get by on a single income. Today, almost all similarly classed families require two incomes to make the same headway. It is not your hardship or schedule at which I target my venom.

I speak only of the parents of my generation that think the money they make is 100% their own to spend. I speak of the thick skulls who honestly believe they cannot leave the house without make-up, the lonely masses that have actually developed an addiction to shopping, the fence post geniuses who cannot “make it through the week” without a Krispy Kreme, the intricate thinkers that claim it will cost more to buy school supplies than it will to shut off the cable for a month, the consumer hoarders who claim that a cluttered house is still a clean house because clutter is not dirt. It is you. You with all your flimsy, flighty, whimsical personal wants, not a one sacrificed at the sudden alter of parenthood, you who still think you can have it all if you try and that dying by trying is somehow admirable, you have paved the way for the outcry, “Give us family friendly!” It is you, the enabler. You need someplace to go, go, go. Your condescending, uncompromising, unwillingness to stay at home and read a book aloud or just take a walk in the woods with your kid has sprinkled fast food chains and tabloid magazine racks over the blemished face of a once great country. Now, having expanded your kid-friendly options to McDonald’s and drug stores and Ikea, fashion outlets and racquetball clubs and virtual reality kiosks, travel and concerts and dance clubs, now you want to go further and take the bars too. Sure you could drag the entire family on an Amtrak excursion to the Mall of America, but you miss having a beer with the boys and watching the instant replay of the Chargers’ shoddy defense. You know Dr. Phil will hate you if you do it by yourself, so the only way to accomplish it is to drag Buffy and Jody into happy hour. That means unplugging the juke. That means you’ll demand pork nuggets and crayons at the table. That means the seat at the end of the bar is now the homework seat that makes your bartender no money. These are things you’ll demand to make yourself look like a good parent after having failed miserably at it. Not being a bar-goer myself, I’m almost apt to let you have them. After all, it’s no skin off my nose. You do all the work and that’s all the many more places I’ll be able to take my daughter to pee at the drop of a hat. However, when you are willing to rescind the basic tenants of freedom of speech by FORCING Big Tom and Stinky to say, “Fudge that coach in the patooty,” BY LAW, that’s where I draw the line. Every establishment will not be molded into a haven, bar none, that prevents me from calling Child Protective Services on you. If there is nothing good at home, then you are a crappy parent anyway and I am not going to reward you with cheesy fries and malt liquor.

There are plenty of words that offend me. There are even more words that I just do not want to hear. However, I am not indigent enough to think that people need to be ticketed or to go to jail for their use, even around my daughter. Has no one in the St. Louis legislature seen Demolition Man? Exactly what you are proposing was one of the biggest running gags in the film. Are you trying to be the laughing stock of the U.S.? Is there not one city representative who’d ever watched Footloose? Is Kevin Bacon coming to dance at your meeting? St. Louis, I love your zoo. I marveled at your basilica. The steamboats, the arch, every fiber of visitor in me found plenty to satisfy in your fine city. Again, I don’t even go to bars. Yet, if you see fit, under any cockamamie excuse, to pass a law against parts of speech; slang, cuss, or otherwise; you’ll pretty much be off my destinations list for good. Legislators are not lexicographers and passing the bar does not give literal dominion over them.

To conclude, I am probably wrong on all counts. Perhaps there are no bad cops, Disneyfiers, or marginal parents screaming for this St. Louis meeting to take place, for this law to become a reality. But you are having the meeting and you are then stretching for a way to explain it. Somebody out there has their underwear in a knot or is salivating at the prospect of making money at the expense of others. Somebody out there is hankerin’ for a Beverly Hills Cop style take-down technique or the chance to overtly redeem himself from being a crappy father. Whatever the source of the idea, you are not truly saying. You’ve refrained from stating a viable reason and in the doing are basically calling your own St. Louis citizens too stupid to notice. I don’t believe the people of St. Louis are that dumb for a second! St. Louis, you’ve got your work cut out for you and I hope the meeting is severely baptized in what will prove history’s greatest morphology of creative and everlasting profanity. Good luck pig fuckers!

Is this guy just stupid?Anti-Military Lawyer Damages Marine's Car on Eve of Deployment - via blackfive.net

2008-01-06T13:42:00.001-06:00

I got this in my weekly Snopes update, but the meat of it is from blackfive.net, blog of a former soldier.

The Chicago Tribune has a column on it, as well.

The gist is this:
Lawyer sees guy backing down a one way street. Lawyer sees military plates on car and becomes enraged. Lawyer keys Marine's car. Hilarity ensues.

Seriously, does this guy have absolutely no understanding of how things work these days? Attack an American soldier in an American city for the simple reason that he's a SOLDIER? The Internet is ripping this guy APART. His personal information has been posted. His website is down. His office phone numbers have been disconnected. His picture is everywhere so he probably can't even go outside.

I've fucked with cars for taking up too many parking spaces, blocking driveways and general asshat behavior, but I only move their mirrors. This guy caused substantial damage. Do his actions warrant this kind of response? Probably.

Shoppers' Delight

2007-12-29T13:05:00.001-06:00

A Christocentric moment, if you please.

I’d like to take this post-holiday moment to thank all the retailers and service providers out there at the winding down of your busy season. I know the lot of you get unfairly stuck with the bum rap that is the commercialization of Christmas and I feel that so few shoppers truly reach out to thank you for all the richness and splendor you add to our holiday.

I’d like to start by thanking all the showroom and floor designers who not only disallow space enough for a mother with a stroller to pass between racks and shelves, but who’ve thoroughly negated the ability of any two people to pass even abreast, making it easier for me to keep my fellow man at bay. How did you know I didn’t want to say Merry Christmas to just any old stranger? How did you know I was getting tired of my preferred method of birth control? And, thank you for allowing me to momentarily revel in the beautiful, almost poetic irony of the less-than-stroller-width aisles in stores that sell strollers. I never knew big business could be so artistically oxymoronic.

I’d like to thank all the planners, purchasers, and cashiers out there, who’ve never heard of an opaque bag (sack), as you’ve taught me that surprises around the holiday are just simply overrated. While, on an equal note, you’ve further taught me I should never have deigned to shop in your store without first taking Company training that would infuse ninja-like stealth techniques into my joyous shopping experience. It is these very forward-thinking translucent baggers that have revealed to me that the idea of a family holiday is a farce, instead prompting the need for me to leave alone, to shop alone, and to schedule my return around an empty house just after globally warming the planet by making a second trip to the overpriced, opaque bag store.

I’d like to thank all the vendors of big ticket items who’ve battled recessions and corporate competition to arrive safely in 2007 without the ability to print a gift receipt. I admire your sticktoittiveness, your old school ideals, and raise my fist alongside, these, my brothers, in proclaiming “Stupid Power!” Nothing says “the joy of giving” like the sensation of plain and simple purchaser’s risk. As I sit and wonder how you’ve been so masterful in staying afloat on the modern market without caving to the wants and desires of the consumer, I can only unravel the tapestry of how you did it just so far, concluding that to counter this gift receipt fad, your plan must have started way back when some one decided it took a full and unavailable manager to change out the register’s print paper for regular receipts. You are boldly pushing forth into a singular future, unafraid. Kudos! You’ve realized that my truer shopping need is to feel superior to your cashiers around Christmas-time and thusly you’ve seen fit to hire only those who are confused when I hand them a twenty and a penny on a purchase that rang up at $18.01. I feel alive!

I’d like to thank all the manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers who’ve displayed the wisdom of Solomon by putting their price tags on the INSIDE of the shrink wrap where I could never attempt removal. I appreciate the way you’ve scoffed at convention that claims “it is the thought that counts,” and how you’ve alternatively enabled me to sum up my love for my wife in much clearer and logical dollars and cents. “Honey, this year I love you $776.35!” You’ve given me the gift of exactitude, a gift that every husband and father wants.

I’d additionally like to thank all the glue manufacturers and price tag wholesalers who’ve somehow missed the fact that even stamps now come in the self-adhesive variety. As I gently scrape price tags off for gift wrapping, taking with them huge swaths of my gifts’ original packaging, I can’t help but feel the warm and fuzzy holiday fulfillment that I will experience giving something that looks damaged or used at brand new prices. It’s an unexpected reversal of fortune that speaks to the heart by instilling hope.

I’d like to thank the good people of Fortunoff and of Sears and similar places that understand I wish to go to two places to buy one item. We are, after all, fighting an obesity epidemic.

I’d like to thank the good people of GameStop for sharing an elongated and audible laugh with the other customers on my line as to my choice of PC game for my wife. Laughter gets us in the spirit.

I’d like to thank the good people of Coach for never, ever approaching a guy in camo-shorts and a Jack Daniels T-Shirt to ask if he needed help. In true holiday fashion, you saved him the embarrassment of giving you money in exchange for one of your products. Oh, how his bulldozing brethren would have talked!

I’d like to thank all the malls in the Midwest for imparting to me the truth about my intelligence, not a one of them carrying any adult chess set in any store. Whereas I once thought I might be intelligent enough to play chess, I have now been schooled in the truth, the fact that I am one of the masses and that the masses are not smart enough to play chess. Nothing says Christmas like mass!

I’d like to thank the good people of the fiber-optic Christmas tree outlet for creating a dark and ominous atmosphere that draws out my baby’s seventh cry for the day when the clerk approaches unseen from the side and startles us with his overzealous, yet invisible elf joy. Only three more cries to go before bed now. You are a wizard!

I’d like to thank Billy, the aspiring restaurateur, who took it upon himself, paper hat and all, as I pulled into the Steak ‘n’ Shake under the huge “Open Christmas Eve until 4 PM” sign, to come out to the icy parking lot and let me know they’d closed. It was 2:30. Not only was Billy providing me with vital information, the likes of which you just don’t hear, save for around the holidays, but he also offered up those rare, between-the-lines inferences that let me know if I’d insisted, I’d get a holiday loogey in my steakburger. Billy, you are a God among men!

I’d like to thank the cashier at the gaming store who allowed me to open the box on the last floor model of a specialty game I wished to purchase. I felt like the customer was finally “always right” as she understood that I’d want to look over the quality of the floor model and to count the game’s pieces. I gently pulled back the taped corners and released the folds of the box. I carefully lifted the single piece of Styrofoam that had been form-fitted to house each individual piece in its proper place against the board that was attached to the box interior. Then I watched as the cashier, with one heavy wave of her arm, purposely knocked down and mixed up all the pieces in preparation for closing the box again. Wow! That half hour she and I spent together trying to figure out which of all 45 specialty, puzzle-like pieces fit where in the form-fitted Styrofoam was quality time for us. I feel closer to my fellow man.

I’d like to thank all our online retailers, the ones who guarantee delivery by Christmas during the checkout webpage and then list the delivery date as December 27th on the digital receipt I get via email later. You pranksters, you. Ah, good times.

I’d like to thank all the gift wrapping stations peppered over the holiday consumerscape, specifically for both your unparalleled oragamic prowess and your unwavering memory that lets not one package go through without affixing a tag with your store’s logo on it. Amazing! You are operating at 100% capacity. I now share with ALL my fellow shoppers the special knowledge that our spouses will know we didn’t wrap the thing ourselves. I gave the gift the consideration of seeking it out and buying it. I gave the gift the sacrifice of my time as I waited on a second line to have it wrapped. But there’s nothing like your wife complaining that your gifts count less because you didn’t take the time to wrap them yourself. Brilliant! In the end, I now understand that the sweat and strain that is put into gift giving is perceived as part of the gift itself and that on Christmas I could never ask the stores to lie just a little. Could I? I mean, the wrapping stations are there to help you, but to truly help you is to get you to realize that you should not have been offered a single convenience in the gift giving process. If you falter, if you take that one, time-saving convenience, you are a bad gift giver, end scene. I’ve never felt such a brotherhood of guilt! Rock on! I go out into the world, wiser.

We all could use a break from the frenzy of holiday shopping. It’s true. A little escapism never hurts. And that is why I’d like to thank our local, super-duper, triple giant, multiplex just for being there. From it I can choose Academy Award nominees or holiday themed special viewings. I could sink myself into a drama or just let loose with a good comedy. I can pre-screen what my daughter will be watching or just take in a guilty pleasure or two of my own. The possibilities are endless. Here’s a big shout out to our friends at the cinema, especially to those who’ve unilaterally decided that an advertised 12:01 a.m. on the 20th is actually 12:01 a.m. on the theatre schedule for the 19th. Not only have you single-handedly negated the need for a 12:01 movie start time, a minute on the clock originally decided upon to waylay confusion involved with a midnight show, but you’ve successfully condensed my escapism from a two hour cinematic experience into a three second “It ended yesterday, sir.” Thank you. Thank you for refocusing my time management skill to the holiday tasks at hand.

In the end, there was only one holiday destination that was everything I’d expected it to be, both the things I hate about it and the things I love about it…church.

Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

2007-12-11T02:33:00.001-06:00

The ideas expressed herein are written in direct response to Selwyn Duke’s piece in The American Thinker entitled Stereotyping 101. While I tend to disagree with the author’s content outright, my main purpose for this response is to challenge Bullet with Selwyn Duke’s same task here in My Pants. Content aside, I feel that the column did a poor job of laying out its argument, end-to-end, and I very much feel that Bullet might achieve the intended anti-PC result in a far more insightful, logical, and convincing manner. I’m listening. Teach me.

Selwyn Duke’s take on PC speech and text is, by far, not the only such sentiment out there for the public to consume. From Lou Dobbs’ multiple allusions to Orwellian thought to televised, impromptu debates over Don Imus’ shock jock tactics, from complaint blogs by the thousands to the “legitimate” media jumping on every brain fart and every slip of the celebrity tongue; there is no shortage of Americans out there who simply feel painted into a corner when it comes to politically correct speech.

I chose specifically to rebut Duke’s piece in that it is exemplary of the relatively insupportable arguments used to counter PC mores. It is a very typical assertion about the stereotypical. By addressing this one commonplace tack, I hope to address several.

First, I submit that politically correct speech is not, as many might portend, a restriction on speech or an enforcement of one opinion over another. I further submit that it is neither an inherently righteous practice to use terms equated with political correctness by choice or by social coercion. Politically correct speech has seen masses of people dividing into two camps as if it were a yes/no question. In one camp are folks unfairly labeled as bigots, fundamentalists, and the brain-dead simply for questioning PC. In the other camp are very similar people just as unfairly labeled autocrats, elitists, and hypocrites pursuant to them voicing insult or finding merit in PC. Substantively, PC is not as simple as a true/false scenario. It is not a pro-life/pro-choice type issue. Treating it as such close-mindedly ignores all the many and often complex shades of understanding that reside between these two extremes.

Political correctness, among other permutations, is a linguistic movement. It is one of many thousands of otherwise benign movements in language that have added richness and depth to the freedom of speech we hold in such high regard. Language is constantly reshaped and evolving. It is contorted and challenged through slang and cussing. It is enlivened and intensified through new compound words, brand names, and fictional offerings. It is diced up and constructed anew via professional telephone decorum, sales pitches, improvisation, poetic license, correspondence, legislation, contracts negotiation, commercial ads, books, words borrowed from other languages, critiques, science, investigation, humor, and a never-ending stream of expansive usage. Language is a confluence of every communication ever attempted in every form by every person who’d ever existed. Therefore, language carries with it all the strengths and all the flaws of its infinite participants. Metaphorically, language exists as an ocean of ideas shared in countless word combinations and artistic expressions. This ocean is so vast it is without shore, but familiar enough to evoke patterns, like tides and currents. Much as real tides work through the night while we all sleep, so too do immense and powerful linguistic movements usually go unnoticed.

I describe some other linguistic movements for the sake of example, here.

PC is a simple, neutral, linguistic movement like any other. It, like many, represents language’s constant penchant for self-correction and precision. Wherever there is even a modest need for proper grammar and an interest in accuracy, that’s where you’ll find this particular linguistic movement manifesting itself in conversation.

One might ask, then, why we hear about this morphology so often while others remain silent. The answer seems obvious. These are the words we use to describe people. When language drifts around correcting terms for, say, flowers, the flowers can’t answer back.

That stated, I find Duke to be a very forward and rational thinker. The referenced entry, Can We Please Define Racism? made compelling arguments that were both insightful and balanced. Perhaps this is why I was so disappointed in the methodologies used for Stereotyping 101. I took the piece to be a flimsy assertion as opposed to a good argument. Arguments can be divided into parts: premise, inference, and conclusion. These parts did not stack well.

Duke’s premise was essentially “Are the generalizations true?” Well, frankly, no. Generalizations are never true for very elementary reasons.

Firstly, if generalizations were true, the word generalization wouldn’t exist. We already use a wide, almost poetic, vocabulary to nitpick at any idea’s proximity to truth. Take the words truth, fact, accurate, realistic, exact, axiomatic, self-evident, veritable, on-the-nose, correct, right, assuredly, and precise. They are all expressions defined directly by their perceived CLOSENESS to accepted truth. Conversely, words like generalize, approximate, about, relative, estimate, abstraction, almost, and theorize are a family of expressions specifically defined by their DISTANCE from perceived truth. Their very meaning attempts to imply that no matter how closely they might approach a truth, they can never be one.

Secondly, while generalizations are, by definition, untrue, and therefore frequently false, they additionally fail the litmus test of truism because they are intrinsically subjective. Truth, itself, to whatever degree it does exist is by all means objective. Truth needs to ring true regardless of all perceivers, a practice that generalizing cannot accomplish. Objectivity wins out over subjectivity in every conflict and such is the inequality between truth and generalization.

Duke’s premise is a two-fold disprovable notion, as above, before it even deals with some of the detailed examples meant to illustrate the point. Yet, even as it goes on to cite the case that spawned the blog entry, the common sense purpose of the example in Duke’s text refutes itself further. Referenced are alleged profiling/stereotyping entries in police training documents. The highlighted passages inform about behaviors and weapons of choice particular to ethnic groups. What jumped to my mind outright was the danger this text poses to officers of the law. It was obviously meant to protect our keepers of the peace, when instead it puts them at risk. Police MUST be so skilled and so savvy when sizing up situations in the moment, that even a split second of thought or decision can cost them their lives. An officer need take in every relevant element of her/his surroundings in order to effectuate the best course of action possible. Imagine, if you will, a police officer, during a truly split second decision, expecting a Latino suspect to pull a knife when instead the perpetrator pulls a gun. That finite miscalculation could be a life-ending mental burp. That officer, in all ways, would have been improperly trained to handle the situation, a matter of course that hinges upon a notion as short-lived as the speed of thought. Logically, if the example is meant to assert that officers are better equipped to handle calls with profiling in their training, my idea discounts that. If instead one wishes to counter me by saying these deaths never happen or that we trust our officers to be savvy despite the training text, well then the profiling language doesn’t need to be in the documents in the first place. Either way, the example is a defunct note.

I also feel compelled to point out that this particular example’s phraseology is part of Duke’s problem with carrying the argument through convincingly. The verbiage quoted smacks somehow personal. Hispanics generally do this. Hispanics tend to do that. Hispanics prefer these. Hispanics predominantly choose A over B. I didn’t think I could put my finger upon why I was so personally offended by statements of this sort, even though Duke never wrote any such thing. I know I disagree, but an articulated reason had been escaping me. Finally, I figured it out. This is the same type of language styling that hunters and trackers use to pursue wild animals. Think about it.

The Sunderbans tiger prefers to attack from behind, stalking through both water and on land, but opting not to reveal himself in open water if at all possible. This killer tends to go for a throat strike first, but will drag human prey by a limb to an invisible location before finishing them off. Without an alpha male structure Sunderbans tigers are generally rogues seeking out meals singly rather than in groups.

Language like this is used as simultaneous warning and disclaimer to educate hunters, trappers, trackers, and zoologists about the dangers of the breed while also covering one’s liability should the creature instead decide to leap from a tree or attack in a group. It’s a litany of probables profiling lesser life forms on the basis of their instincts. Humans, on the other hand, deserve not to be treated as prey or as lesser life forms, even in language, especially language that dictates, controls, or instills training for authority figures. Humans, by contrast to animals, make choices rather than instinctual judgments, thereby indicating that police profiling language structured similarly to the hunt is completely baseless. We would not use, say, the now very well recognized speech patterns that precede our ride on a roller coaster to welcome us to our MRI.

Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you’re having a great day here in New York City and welcome you to the MRI Room 12! Please keep your hands, arms, and torso completely still at all times! There are no metal objects allowed on this slide! Enjoy your scan and thank you for choosing Six Flags 51st Street Diagnostic!

How then did hunting and tracking language and speech patterns for animals get lumped onto people? While there would be something equally as tactless in both applications, the profiling language is being learned by an individual with a firearm. The insult is clear.

Duke’s premise put in a double spotlight of failure and the originating example also discounted twice over, I now move on to the inferences portion of the argument. This is where Duke normally excels with contributions and insight. As such, I must say that the following quote from Stereotyping 101 is a golden nugget of food for thought:

“While we must judge everyone as an individual, there are differences within groups but also differences among them. Thus, it makes no more sense to paint every group with the same brush than it does to paint every individual with the same brush.”

This is the inference, eloquently stated and thought provoking, that Duke thereafter tries to prove out. The piece enmeshes linkages, points of order, bold statements, and correlations into an entire matrix of support that I think falls far short of doing the job. Duke may have been better off making the statement quoted above and then leaving well enough alone. Why? Again, I can think of two reasons overall.

The first is a lesser ingredient, but an important one nonetheless. Readers should not interpret tactic as argument. An argument is a clear, concise string of related statements that hash out the conclusion in an agreeable manner. A tactic is a practice of mixing words so that the reader/listener is forced to comply either consciously or unconsciously. Everybody who has ever had a door slammed in their face knows about tactic. Everybody in this country is familiar with the number of times Iraq was mentioned in the same breath as 9/11 as a tactic. Duke’s piece, wittingly or no, contains both inference and tactic. It is the reader’s responsibility to sort the tactic out from all the assertions and then intelligently judge if what is left constitutes an argument. The Iraq-9/11 tactic is one that is used here.

In the same set of paragraphs, Duke mentions stereotype, profiling, generalization, leftist agenda, biases, thought police (a menace to civilization), political correctness, diversity, and ideology. Duke interrelates these terms, and masterfully so, in such a way that the reader is meant associate them. I am supposed to conclude that political correctness and thought police are related. I am supposed to conclude that the negativity of bias is somehow similar to the positivism of ideology. I am supposed to conclude that Iraq, first and foremost, is directly responsible for the events of 9/11. This is tactic and nothing more. It is the practice of choosing the ideas one wishes to degrade and sinking them into a pool of otherwise poor associations with language that we know invoke distasteful connotation.

Philosophy 101, to parody Duke’s title, includes an exercise altogether demonstrative of this practice. Students are asked to think back to the beginnings of civilization and list ideas that might have been perceived as basic, universal opposites. Inevitably, through common sense, students list right and wrong, light and dark, on and off, good and evil, man and woman, yes and no, happy and sad, and other appropriate notions. The problem with the structure of supposed universal opposites is the result. Woman is somehow placed on a list with wrong, dark, evil, no, off, and sad. This is the very tender root of association as used, even by accident, for prejudicial effect.

I am certain that there are strong arguments to be made that Iraq’s very outlook under Baathist control had something to do with 9/11. Constantly mentioning Iraq in the same breath as 9/11, however, is not one of those arguments. It is a tactic. It is guilt by verbal association. Similarly, immersing a neutral linguistic movement like political correctness into a bath of stereotypes, generalizations, and agendas is not a supported argument. It is the exact same tactic, meant to be used in place of connectivity. I submit that Duke’s usage of all the listed terms are not connective at all, but disjointed hopes that the reader will fill in the gaps autonomously, or read without questioning. Duke’s subjective opinion of PC clouds the notion in with the very bully language that the PC movement is meant to address, to self-correct over time. It is incumbent upon the reader to sift out this tactic from the argument and decide if what is left still constitutes a valid point. In the case of Stereotyping 101, what is left is a disconnected list of highly separate talking points without any connective tissue. Those points, each standing alone, are my second foray into rebutting Duke’s inferences. Alternately said, each point on the list can be discounted of its own merit, allowing the argument itself to fall apart.

I counter some of those individuated points here.

Duke concludes with a call for people to stand up for truth in all its forms, restating the claim that there is, at least, an element of truth to profiling or stereotyping or generalizing (an element of untruth to PC). Duke seems savvy enough to draw this conclusion without supporting those who’d abuse said truths and for that I applaud. Still, the most important distinction I’d hope readers might draw between Duke’s conclusion and my own is that more than one truth can exist at the same time.

It is entirely possible, to the point of being numerically probable, that part of a whole is coincidentally true, while the whole itself is true, while the linguistic movement meant to explain those truths is factually neutral. I conclude that it is this simultaneity of legitimacies that put PC in an agreeable light, without actually being pro’ or gung ho for PC. I believe it is my allowance for multiple truths in our one reality that quashes Duke’s more singular perspective on stereotyping. While “Oriental” was once used to refer to a group of people, the word “Asian” is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While some people in our country prefer to be referred to as “black,” those who’ve chosen the moniker “African-American” might note it is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While many use the word “white,” the terms “Caucasian” and “European-American” are ADDITIONALLY TRUE. PC is not a question of one word verses the other. Both pro-PC and anti-PC camps fail to realize this. The pro’ side would do better not to enforce and the anti’ side would do better not to point fingers. PC, as a linguistic movement, is about language’s constant forward momentum, a momentum that can no sooner be necessitated than it can be stopped. If PC were all positive and not neutral, advocates would not have to fight for its use. The change would evolve naturally. If PC were all negative and not neutral, nobody would elect to use it. Language would jump to the next logical stage of evolution for this family of words with another, similar movement we might as well call PC2. That’s the beauty of language, all parts of language. It self-corrects. To whatever degree PC terms are currently inaccurate or hypocritical or elitist, our language will eventually correct those as well, but not if we don’t start down the road.