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Gutless, Brainless President

Iranian President Ahmadinejad wants to debate American "President" Dubya Monkeyface .  He wants to sit in a room and presumably construct some arguments about why a Mideast country would want to be enriching uranium, despite what The Great Satan thinks.  He wants to convince Bush that they are pursuing alternative energy sources, not weapons of mass destruction.  He wants to blow smoke up the ass of your President - and that his right to do so.  Bush won't go, though, 'cause he's a candy-ass wimp, just like his old fucking man.

Say what you want about Richard Milhous Nixon, and much of it will apply to the current man in office.  Haunted by his religion, willing to exploit minorities for their votes, bombs the shit out of other countries on a whim, lies to the press and the public, treads on the Constitution of the US like it was a floormat in a gas station shitter, makes a mockery of the office of Chief Executive.  Nixon, however, in spite of his viciousness, his brutality, his inferiority complex, and his murderous and decietful criminality, was no milquetoast, not like Monkeyface, the man without a brain, and now it would appear - a spine.  (A complete lack of frontal lobe and central nervous system would explain a great deal about this Presidency.)  Did Nixon back down from the Kitchen Debates?  Hell, no.  That would have been dishonorable.  Khrushchev debated Nixon throughout the entire trade fair in Moscow, in a series of unplanned impromtu exchanges, and did it at the height of the Cold War.

The thing is, one of the points Nixon made repeatedly during the kitchen debates was about how much freedom of information they represented. Here is a debate between two opposed world leaders, and everyone in the US would see it, whether their Preisdent "did well" or not. Would the Soviets make the same claim? Khrushchev was cagey on that one, and it intimated that he had something to hide. It's sad when I get that same vibe from OUR president, now.  The man has something to hide.  Maybe it's a motivational condundrum, maybe it's a sheer lack of brain power, or maybe the puppeteer team has to reassemble the "debate President" from 2004, this time without the lump.

Every day leads to just a little more hatred.  And now, I go listen to Charlie Parker.

The Game

Monday, Max started this year of school - the Florida voluntary Pre-K program, which is what we have since we are stuck in backwater fucking Florida, instead of having moved to a state that would let a kid who can do double-digit addition and read kindergarten and First grade material start real school, instead of sticking him in a class where they will make sure he knows how to use scissors and let him play with Mr. Fuck Potato Heads.  (He will grow up and swear at all of you in blog entries.  I guarantee it.)  Sunday, though, we had to finish this extremely complex game that we started on Thursday night, and actually, now that I think of it - it's still not finished.  Let me break it down for you:

It begins in a parking lot.  All good action scenes incorporate a parking lot somewhere.  I think 80% of everything that ever happened on Alias took place in parking lots.  Snake Woman (who may resemble the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman to you - I assure you, there are no Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar action figures) eats a number of cars and Nick, then goes behind a bush and gets skinny.  Some of you may recognize the opening sequence of Men In Black II.  She commands her snakes to fight Robin, Cyborg, UltraFast SkullHead and Shark Boy, who all have their own cars, which they bring to the battle.  They defeat Snake Woman (her snakes turn to the side of good) and put her in a box to be transported to jail.  On the way to jail, she escapes, and assembles a new force for evil, also getting her snakes to turn back to evil.  Sucks, huh?

The new battle has Snake Woman commanding a force which includes the snakes, Electric Hand Man, Syndrome, Clear Robot, Brainiac, Dragon Man, the Boy with the Evil Pet Zebra, a rhino, and Actual Doctor Doom. Actual Doctor Doom is called this to differentiate him from his brother Fred Doom, who was recently eaten by a tiger.  You would think this would have cut down on the confusion, but it hasn't.  The battle is viewed by a cadre of animals, including a huge gorilla with a megaphone, another zebra, some frogs, a sea turtle, and a pig.  Snake Woman's forces come up against the combined might of the guys from earlier plus Incredible Grey Hulk, Dr. Strange, KIrby, and Red Tornado.  There is a pitched battle, and the animals get involved, as do some movie monsters.  Halfway through, Dr. Strange has to enchant Incredible Grey Hulk so that he can escape from the Tent of Darkness and travel through time to the kingdom run by Shark Boy's father to bring back the Sphere of Magic which can make evil people good.  The Evil Pet Zebra is saved in this way, and thank your lucky fuckin' stars for that, right?  The Incredible Grey Hulk is kind of wiped out by the journey, unfortunately, and has to spend the rest of the battle sleeping on Huge Bear.

The good guys triumph (as you suspected they might) when several of the bad guys are turned by the Sphere of Magic, and also when Bubs sells them special glasses which let them see everything in the dark and the smoke.  Snake Woman is pushed into an oven - but I am assured that she will return and that this is far from over.  I believe it will involve pirates in some way before it is resolved.  And possibly Godzilla.

Raising a Geek Child

No, not a Greek child.  That makes no sense.

I have recently made little to no progress on my book these past few days, because I have been reading the Sun (as I previously mentioned) and reading far too many comics.  Some Tales of Suspense, some old TMNT, Iron Man, G.I. Joe, Transmet, and X-Men, and these.  The OHOTMU are great, and represent the height (says I) of the geek experience.  When you're reading a short history of an imaginary alloy, you have come to the geek mountaintop.  This has schematics of Iron Man and Dr. Doom's armor & even that of  Stilt-Man.  No, seriously.  Want to know what the Ultimate Nullifier is, aside from a plot device?  Dug?  It's in here.  Specs on the Mandarin's rings, Cap's shield, and the Darkhold?  It's all in there.  The book would seem by its use of the word "paraphernalia" on the cover to hold details about Wolverine's gravity bong, or Dr. Strange's blown glass collection, but alas, this is not to be.

The book at left is interesting, because it keeps sucking Max in.  The thing is text-heavy as a phone book, but Max keeps opening this and looking at the exploded views of Cyclops' visor or Moon Knight's darts.  I don't really know what that means, other than he seems to have a thing for organized diagrams, and he really likes Rom's spacesuit.  Max liked this so much that I gave him a copy, (yes, I had two) and have since seen him in his bear chair, reading (?) quietly about the tools used by imaginary good guys and bad guys.

On a side note - Dr. Doom is my favorite villain of all time, and so I have an extensive collection of crap bearing his face.  T-shirts, action figures, chess pieces, cups and mugs, cards, stickers, buttons, pictures, books, all kinds of shit.  This has begun to worry my son.  After all, Doom is a bad guy, and Max has seen the Fantastic Four movie, so he knows this to be true.  A couple of nights ago, after his bath, we had this exchange:

"Dad, why do you have a Dr. Doom collection?"

"'Cause he's my favorite bad guy."

"Okay.  But he's a bad guy, really bad, so you may have to get rid of that collection soon."

Dream - 8/26/06

If you can't put your dreams in a blog, where can you put them?

No anatomical suggestions, please.

I am driving an 18-wheeler, way too fast, across a bridge.  On the side of the trailer is "Pensacola Moving and Storage."  On the front seat next to me is my wife, and on a small video screen on the dash is live video of Max & Abby being taken care of in a yellow room by their Uncle Brian, who is playing what I think is a lute, but I shall have to look that up.  Next to us, keeping pace, is another 18-wheeler, which is black and unmarked.  In the back of this is a girl with her head shaved and electrodes attached named Annabel (probably because of Poe) who has the power to pull thoughts from other people's heads and actualize them.  Naturally, some insidious people have kidnapped her, and my gut is telling me, "government."  Black helicopters hover overhead.  I don't know how I know any of this.

The bridge narrows before ending, and already the sides of my truck are scraping.  The agents(?) in the black truck are shooting at us, small arms fire, like 9mm and .380s.  C hits the deck, and I swerve sharply, trading paint and shearing off mirrors.  The front left fender of their truck is torn off, and tears a huge gouge out of our trailer, shredding the word "Pensacola" on that side.  Furniture that I don't recognize begins falling out, blocking the road.  An RPG is aimed at us, and we push ahead of them, so that the rocket hits the trailer dead on, blowing it all to shit, disconnecting it from our truck (a Peterbilt, pictured above) and flips the burning husk onto its side, completely blocking the road.  Car wreck mayhem ensues.  C takes the wheel of our truck, and since we are faster now, two things happen: we are able to push them over into the side of the bridge, and we control the movement.

I throw open the passenger door and think "just like middle school."  Sparks flying, bits of metal going everywhere, the driver of the other truck looks over at me, his sunglasses askew, a panicked look on his face.  I hold up my left hand, opening it in a stop gesture.  An eye in the palm of my hand opens, and pinkish-purple light forms a solid beam and pushes both agents violently out of the passenger door, breaking it off, and throwing them off of the bridge.  I leap the four feet or so to their truck and take the wheel.  Their brakes are out.  C gets her truck off the bridge - which is good for her because of the heights thing - and I start working on how to stop a rampaging 18-wheeler.

I hit everything.  Mile markers, signs, an abandoned car, one of those lit "Construction on Wednesday" boards, and I cruise off of the main road onto an exit ramp, exit 23.  Shit's flying everywhere.  I aim for a stand of trees.  Turning the truck without gunning it kills some of the speed, but not enough.  I start hitting trees, and one big oak stops us dead, showering the cab - which now has no glass in it at all - with branches and leaves, a few acorns.  I get out, looking at the exposed engine block bisected by a tree, and walk around to the back of the scarred and crooked trailer.  I adjust my shirt, which has ripped at the left shoulder, and regard my shoes, which, as it turns out, were wrong for this trip.  I wish I had my boots on instead of Chucks, but you take what you can get.

I hold up my hand, and the eye rips the doors from the back of the trailer.  Four agents leap out, and the eye flings two of them into the tall grass instantly.  Another draws his gun, only to have it melt over his hand.  He falls, screaming.  I climb up into the back, and the last guy trains a huge fucking (I think it was a Mossberg) shotgun on me.  I flatten his knee with the eye, and there, cowering in the back, is Annabel.

C pulls up in a 60s model Lincoln Continental, and we get in...and that's when Max woke me up this morning.  Too many comic books?  Easy dream symbolism?  Or just too many different unresolved emotions before bedtime?  You tell me.

Dubya's Jedi Mind Trick

This might be one of my favorite news stories about the Monkeyface administration ever.  Hopefully, when we look back longingly in VH-1 specials (Behind the Mask: Stories of the Monkeyface Years, hosted by Gore Vidal and Michael Schiavo) this will be one of those incidents we can afford to laugh about as we toast each other with our absinthe (if the Plutonians don't wipe out Prague) and Red Bull cocktails.  Last week, a federal judge in Michigan (who my co-workers seem to think was a man) ruled that the Presidential Illegal Wiretapping and Invasion of Motherfucking Privacy Plan (they call it something different at the White House) was unconstitutional.  This came as a shock to absolutely no one.  Even the egregious mongers of this particular trampling had to have been expecting this to come down the pike for quite some time now, so I was a little surprised when, instead of a complex and strange argument designed to mislead the general public, Alberto Gonzales and the Monkeyface said, in response the federal court's "Hey, that shit's illegal,"

"No, it isn't."

"I heard you was tellin' some jokes about me."

"No, you didn't." 

"Maybe I didn't.  Gonna beat up the fool that told me them lies."

Guys?  It says right there in the movie, Jedi mind tricks only work on the weak-willed, and I know your dumb ass made it into office twice, but we're not that fucking stupid.  This kind of contempt for the  American people, this blind, unswerving faith in what you believe, new information and the facts be damned, kind of makes you wonder why no one's just bashed all the President's damn teeth in, forcing him to aspirate his own blood and molars as he lays gasping on the Oval Office carpets.  You feel this way about the people that you govern - "ah, they're easy, just frikkin' tell them anything" - and well, we see how that worked for say, Marie Antoinette, or Mussolini.

I get the same gut reaction that I did around the time the 9/11 report came out - this is a simultaneous representation of the best and worst about America.  Yes, we can investigate, accuse, and ultimately sit in judgment upon our own government when it fucks up, as any government of people must often do.  It has to matter, though.  The judgment must have some effect, some lasting consequence, or we're just pretending at democracy - which we haven't really had since 2000 anyway, I suppose.

"Yes, we have."

Oh, well, maybe we have.

"Piss Off, Tommy Wingnut!"

In recent months, it has seemed that Tom Cruise is on a mission.  Impossible?  No, just risky.  Business being what it is in Hollywood, anything you can do that can set you far and away from the pack is required.  His days of thunder behind him, no longer a top gun in the industry, but still a legend to be reckoned with, he needed something quirky, something unique to make people remember who he was.  He needed all the right moves if he was going to reinvent himself, he needed the firm conviction of his principles, and to show that he was a stand-up guy. Or failing that, a decent human being, who could kick back and have a cocktail under a magnolia, and just chill out in the rain, man.

Unfortunately for Tommy, it became clear that he was just losin' it.  Aaaand I've lost my patience with this joke.

First, there was the divorce from Nicole Kidman, proving that he was gay.  Sorry, but it does.  Then, the cover-up of the gay wrestling photos, just cementing that whole gay thing in the collective tabloid mind of the public.  Then, his freakish behavior began in earnest - and you know why?  Because Scientologists don't believe in psychiatry or take drugs that affect their brain chemistry - NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY MIGHT NEED THEM.

This all ended today with Sumner Redstone, who's just too wealthy to put up with this shit, finding Cruise and handing him his walking papers.  Basically, Tom's production company is too expensive, and rich men don't get that way by handing out free cash.  Also, Tom's a nut.  My favorite quote was from his production partner, Paula Wagner, who said, "This came out of nowhere."

Oh, yeah?

The infamous "couch-jumping" episode of Oprah's show, May 23rd, 2005.

Chastises Brooke Shields over Paxil, forces religious views on everyone, May 29th, 2005.

Squirted in the face by English pranksters, flips, drops charges later, June 2005.

Cruise attacks Matt Lauer over psychiatry live on the Today Show, June 25th, 2005.

Tommy stops those nasty South Park boys from making fun of him, January 2006.

Strange days of TomKat make all tabloids for like six months, hidden baby is born 4/19/06.

Vanity Fair to publish photos of Suri (after extensive re-touching), announced August 10th.

"Out of nowhere," my ass.

Much MORE Ado About Pluto

Astronomers, being the cowardly, unromantic, bickering fucks they are, have apparently shredded the agreement that has been put together in hotel bars over the past few weeks in Prague, in favor of something that will exclude Pluto as a planet.  Pricks.  One guy on NPR today went so far as to compare Pluto's continued inclusion in the list of planets to listening to a dimwit on a cosmic roadtrip.  Funny, 'cause that's what I was just thinking.

It's okay.  Make me explain to my son that Pluto isn't a planet anymore.  Assert on national radio that most people's attachment to the planet Pluto is because of Disney's yellow dog.  (Personally, I think of this guy.) Shit on Pluto.  It's okay.  Because when the sky is filled with the gleaming death ships of the denizens of the cold, hard surface of Pluto, you'll know the fuckin' score, buddy - oh, yeah.  When Prague is a smoking crater and the Earth becomes a blank slate upon which the Plutonians burn their vicious & brutal condemnation of our hubris, "Who's a Planet, now, bitch?" in letters high enough to be read from Mercury, you'll see that you shouldn't have stepped out of line.  When your back's against what's left of the wall and the leaders of Earth are running through their respective cities naked with hair aflame, asses still banging probes upon the now-liquid asphalt, the Plutonians will have made their point, on black anodized pikes adorned with the narrow-minded heads of astronomers who think that they own the universe.  Oh, yeah.  And no Killraven to save you, no viruses, no last minute monkey's paw bullshit.  Don't think there are Plutonians, you sniveling, arrogant fuckhead?  Wait until you're boiled down into a protein-rich victory shake, consumed and shat out through the bowels of a Plutonian buccaneer invader, kicked back eating cow lips and watching "Contact" over and over again.  Then, with what's left of your useless turd of a mind, you'll see.

Oh, you'll see.  And you better hope the Plutonians get to you before I do.

The Rosslyn Motet

Rosslyn Motet

Earlier this year (May?), someone finally set the carvings on the wall of Rosslyn Chapel that sort of look like musical notes to music.  Rosslyn Chapel is this half somewhat modern looking, half crumbling ruin of a thing on an island in Scotland that various people believe is connected to the Templars, Masons, Merovingians, and so on.  It figures prominently at the end of the Da Vinci Code.  It was built by the St. Clair family, one story goes, in 1446.  That predates Freemasonry by roughly 270 years, and is 139 years after the dissolution of the Templar order by the Catholic Church on Friday, October the 13th, 1307.  The interior chapel is fascinating because it seems to incorporate all kinds of things that would imply that it is meant to be something other than a standard Christian edifice - things like corn, pagan symbols, Masonic-style column placement, fertility stuff, and so on.  Anyone passing around the plate for my grant - I would really like to go here.

Amongst all the crap carved into the walls are 213 (or so) squares whose intention no one really has been able to divine.  Even sites that deal with the Motet have language in them like "the most successful attempt to decode" and such the like.  However, these guys (I guess they have a grant) went and applied a sonic theory I'm not going to even pretend to try and grasp (although there is a video on the first site), and came up with this thing above.  And also an album.  The weird part (no, really) is that they think that this piece, played at the proper volume and on period-accurate instruments, would cause an Indiana Jones-style opening of a secret passage, thus releasing the supposed secrets of Rosslyn.

So - at the risk of participating in the making of mesas out of mashed potatoes, I present the Motet here for your consideration.  Either this is an unearthed piece of music replayed now by dedicated researchers, or it's a secret code, or it's a wild shot in the dark room that is esoteric knowledge and history.  Anyway you slice it, I thought it was cool.

I Hate (x3) Sorority Girls

Yeah.

I just came to the realization this week, when I had to layout a book for a customer who we'll call Kappa Kappa Blonde, even though she isn't, but she is, anyway.  You know what the fuck I mean.  It was one of those things that began as a slowly-encroaching feeling, eventually becoming a full blown hatred upon the third mention of "kitten heels."  The idea that people exist who know what a "nice blouse" is without any further expansion on this completely subjective terminology annoys me under my fingernails.  This book I worked on (which isn't even due to be printed until next week sometime, so think of this as a "sneak peek"), is a Panhellenic (which they go to the trouble to define on the inside cover) recruitment guide, and as such, passes along little histories of the various sisterhoods, including their official colors and mascots and things.  Little pix of the girls are also included.  Sort of like a Playboy centerfold stat shot.

What bothered me: the pretense that the "sisterhood" you'd be experiencing if you joined was some kind of all-inclusive warm hug of an empowering bonding moment that would last four years.  Looking at the women in these clubs, I saw no women of color, no overweight girls, nothing but skinny, medium-length haired makeover beauties, 92% of whom (yes, I counted and did the math) were blondes.  I can only imagine that these are social clubs for women - not a bad thing, to be sure - I just wish they'd come right the fuck out and say so.  "This is a form of social networking which will help you make lifelong connections with people who were probably just like you in the first place, and someday down the road we can help one another get jobs."

Cliques were bad enough in high school, and will occur naturally for you in your adult life - I see no reason to solidify and officialize the structure during the college years.

Armageddon Has Begun

...and I bet you don't even have tickets yet.

I'm sorry, but I did the late night grocery shopping this weekend, and you will now bear the brunt of my waiting in line.  Often, I carry a small paperback in my back pocket, but the book I'm reading currently would require me to bring extra pants if I did that, so I sampled the Sun.  The Sun seems to be an American Media knock-off of the Brit publication of the same name.  American Media also puts out the Examiner and the Weekly World News, so you can bet that not a lot of facts are going to be in here to get in the way of your reading.

The front of the magazine, you'll notice, promises "Who will go to Heaven and who'll be left behind."  You'd think the newspaper would be a lot thicker, yeah?  Can you see the interview with St. Peter being conducted to get this information?  Or Santa using it as a preliminary guide for his annual definitive list?

So - Armageddon, then.  According to the Sun, (after the articles about pet psychics, slaw, the guy who makes stuff out of shopping carts and the haunted boat story) Dead Sea Scroll researchers have used what they know from the scrolls to point out that the battle for the end has already started.  Who wins?  The Iranians will defeat missiles launched at them by Israel, and the "army guided by God's wisdom" will win the day.  They actually incorporate some of the real information about the Dead Sea Scrolls and what has been more recently discovered, even throwing in some stuff about the book recently found in an Irish bog.  That's what's kind of creepy about anyone reading this shit and taking it seriously - there's just enough real thrown in to kind of make it work for them.  There's a prayer to keep you safe during the coming tribulations, and a song that cures arthritis and shit.  All of this ties into Armageddon.  And if it sounds a bit like Nostradamus on Robitussin or a State Fair Psychic, that's the vibe I got, too.

Scariest thing about all this? Monkeyface believes a lot of this 'end times' shit.  It's his religion.  Picture copies of the Sun in the War Room and try not to have a prolapse.  And you have to wonder; What effect does it have on you, emotionally, when some stuff you believe is actually happening turns up on the front pages of the supermarket tabloids as pap for the bored linear masses?  Does it scrap an unscrappable faith?  Does it do anything at all?  Does that sort of person even incorporate new information?  Based on his Iraq policy, t'would seem the answer is, "no."

Anyway - Armageddon.  Get your T-shirts!