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Story Starter

I don't know if anyone else had these in grade school - or if any of my teacher readers might use them - but I remember these things called "story starters."  I think they were a English class kind of thing, and what you did was, the teacher would give you the first part of a story - or a weird situation with no obvious explanation, and you had to get creative to see where things went from there, making up the rest, or explaining the mystery.  I saw a thing today that I think should qualify as a story starter.

Midday on a 49 degree Pensacola January day, Monday.  About two miles from our house, there is a derelict service station, right off of exit 7.  It used to be an Exxon all-night convenience place, with a Krystal tucked in the side, complete with drive-thru.  Not too long after we moved here in 2003, the Krystal closed down, and that side was off-limits.  Then, it became a place advertising Turducken, forcing me to find out what Turducken was, since I passed the goddamn sign all the time.  Eventually, they both ceased to exist - I don't know why, and now it has sat vacant for more than a year, the windows cracked and dirty, the pumps gone, the parking lot and small sidewalk in front increasingly littered with trash.  Today, as I was driving by on my way back home, I noticed two guys, sitting in deck chairs, out in front of the double doors.  Just kind of hanging out amongst the bags of trash and loose litter, the cracked glass and the empty cans and bottles.

They're not waiting for anything but the future, 'cause buses don't stop there, and the only reason to take that road now is for the residential neighborhood that faces I-10.  The only thing I can tell you from my 45 mph observation is that one guy was white and one guy was black, they were in their late 40s to early 50s, both wearing hats, and talking, just talking, it looked like.  Sitting in front of an old service station watching the traffic merge into one lane on Pine Forest, and chatting, waiting for Monday to be over.

Anyone?

I AM The Devil.

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Thank you, thank you very much.  Found on Kat's Blog, as always, of course, et cetera.  Moo-hoo-hoo-ha-HA.  Of course, the denizens of Pensacola had come to this conclusion long, long ago.  And the likeness on the card is incredible, too.  Now if there were only a test that would tell me which I Ching hexagram I am.  I will not eat green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Hexagram-I-Am.

Anyway - yeah, I am the devil.  Cue the Danzig song of my choice.

Stop Suing Us Now, Please

The Monkeyface Administration, the DOJ, and Alberto "My Official Photo Makes Me Look Like a Tex Avery Cartoon Peeper Lunatic" Gonzales would really appreciate it if the ACLU and the various people in the US who still remember civil liberties and privacy rights would stop bothering them now, since they have changed the whole "secret spying on people" program, which they call "bullshitting the American Public" "Domestic Surveillance."  They have attempted to incorporate this thing called "oversight" that most every other facet of American life already has.  The thing is, you can see how they could get confused, especially with a Brainiac wordsmythe like Dubya in charge.  See, "oversight" can mean overseeing a thing, but it can also mean something left out or undone, and I suspect that Dubya thought that's what it meant, and so he was providing what he thought the people wanted.

You buy that?

No, actually what probably happened is that, mad with power and with the Voice of God in one ear and his finger in the other, President Dubya Monkeyface commanded that the gubment would Nixonianly spy on who it damn well pleased, so we could eliminate the rights of all these Islamist, Al-Queada, terrorist drug addict non-Christian, non-Republican, lefty, pinko, commie, hippie, vegetarian, unAmerican bastards, and if some other folks got spied on in the bargain who maybe didn't really deserve it, well, at least those people were secure (whatever that means) and 'deserve's' got nothing to do with it, anyway.  Everyone's up to something, right?  Right?

This is one of those times I love the ACLU, an organization about which I often have profoundly mixed feelings.  The fact that they don't seem to believe, even with judicial oversight of the program, that this government can handle itself when it come to this; the fact that they don't seem to believe that the President even really knows when he might or might be breaking the law, warms my heart and lungs, and I'm glad they're there to pester the shit out of our immently pesterable President.  And disturbing-looking Alberto up there.  Just looks like a fucker who'd spy on you, doesn't he?

My Kids Rule

Some recent Maxisms:

"I think that when sometimes a person dies the spirit is still here, like a ghost.  It might be able to get back in.  I think.  I saw it in a movie in my brain.  When a movie plays in your brain like that, it's called an operation, and when you have an operation movie in your brain, it can make you realize things that you didn't know, and now you know."

"Did you know that Santa Claus has rainbow bones?"

"This music isn't sweet & pretty.  This rocks!"  (In response to Aunt Julia's recent release)

"Do you know what I was playing?  I was playing where real Superman fights alternate universe Superman who's bad, and then they fall through a vortex and they see Robot Superman.  I really do think you could travel through time, and that I would like to go.  You wouldn't forget about me."

Add to this that I watched my daughter, who was eight months old on the 24th, entertain herself this morning for about five minutes by hiccupping.  This was funny.  After each hiccup, there would be this sort of "that's damned odd" look, coupled with a turning to me sporting a bemused smile that says, "you'll never believe what just happened."  Then, it would happen again, and eventually, she was laughing and hiccupping simultaneously.  She may have been laughing because I was also laughing, but then, she laughs in the morning when I brush my teeth, too.  I must be truly amusing.  My best time with Abby is between 5:30 and 8 in the morning, typically, when I am able to get my ass up and enjoy it.

There's something inherently wrong with having to leave them every morning.

Officer Cutie69

Every day.

Every goddamn day I hear about some idiot moron hardon pedophile pervert sex fiend foolish person who was snared by cops who were themselves pretending to be 14 year old sexually curious girls.  It goes like this; MoronPedo53 strikes up a relationship with some anonymous teenage girl, and because he thinks that porn movies are real and that what he reads in Hustler's letter page is true, he agrees to have sex with her.  Or he brings up the sex; I don't know, but I always wonder about entrapment.  He shows up at some strip mall or house or backwoods location with a pocket full of condoms and hope and is scooped up by law enforcement officers or worse, a TV fucking news crew with that guy with the mustache.

I am glad that the police are arresting adult men who want to have sex with teenage girls - and who act on that impulse.  A couple of things always drift through my mind, though, aside from the entrapment question, which I'm sure Mitch will answer, now that I have brought it up. 

Number One; Why does ANYONE believe that anyone else is who they say they are on the Internet anymore?  Or ever, for that matter.  For instance, I myself am a 14-year-old girl, ready to meet, blue eyes and red hair, tee-hee.  Text me at ZennitaQ on my mobile.  I like Incubus & Fall Out Boy.  No, just kidding.  (I'll bet that statement alone pushes my stats up, like this and this did.)  No, I am not a 14-year-old girl.  I am fifteen.  No, I'm a pickled brain in a jar on a desk in northern Tibet.  No, I'm an AI running in a bank of computers and programmed to write books in the style of Piers Anthony and Dean Koontz.  No, I'm a Nigerian scam artist.  No, wait - I'm the ghost of Richard Pryor, trapped in a white person.  I'm a gay vigilante superhero, The Spanker.  I make candy bars out of pork and mint leaves, and work in a transgendered brothel over the lunch hour.  My point is, no matter how hard up your pedophile ass is for some illicit sex, virtual or otherwise, why do you repeatedly bite this particular hook, you doorknobs?  Once you accept that the person on the other end could be pretty much ANYBODY, how strong does your fantasy drive have to be to sustain your own internal bullshit?

Number Two;  I've watched or read about any number of these apprehension things, and they always interview some large officer, Officer Large of the Sexual Predators Unit, sporting a mustachioed face and looking as though he knocks back a six pack of the High Life over a thick Black Angus steak once a night while occasionally slaughtering a deer with his bare hands.  How does a man like this get good at his job?  How does one talk like a 14-year-old?  How do you say the things you know will get this perv to jump for the bait?  I'm assuming "You wanna touch my coochie ho-ho" is inadequate, and "Hey, come check out my Remington engravings" is just wrong, so what kind of training (shudder) do these cop guys have that makes them convincing at this job?  Is it possible that we're only snaring the really fucking stupid sex offenders in the net of justice while the brighter gross guys get away?

Number Three; Is it illegal to have virtual sex with an underage person?  Seems to me that apprehending a guy for something he's about to do - showing up to poke the prom queen pretty much qualifies - is one thing, but what about for corrupting young kids over the Interspread?  I mean, that's something you actually DO, sort of, and it seems like maybe it deserves a level of gravitas just to the left of showing up at the house where the cops are.

I think I've run about as far with this one as I care to.  I'm really hoping that most of the hits I get on this post are from fans of the band Fall Out Boy.

(Ha, ha.  I sent you to Hustler, Incubus, and Miller Beer.  Happy "real" Birthday, Eric.  I mean, Happy Tote Bag, Eric.)

Stupid, Part 3

Yup.  If you need 'em, here's parts one and two.

This one's because I'm beginning to believe it more and more.  Today's question for the panel is this: How is it possible that a person could heap coals of anger, spite, regret and manipulation on others for over three years, and not be aware of the damage it causes?  How is it possible that someone could regularly engage in terrible (to me) behaviors, and then, when wronged parties have sat down with them and discussed it, written countless emails and several letters fully elucidating just what the perceived emotional infraction is meant to have been, STILL for fuck's sake be patently unaware of just exactly what the problem is?

"I just don't understand what the problem is."

You are no doubt thinking to yourself, "Ah, this person is a sociopath."  Or perhaps, "Subject A has suffered some sort of shocking cranial damage, like a Phineas Gage-type situation."  Or even: "He's obviously making reference to a retarded person."  Unfortunately, the answer here is more elusive than that, because I know this person's history of injury, and there is no head trauma on the list.  We are not discussing a sociopath, because she feels for others - just not very well, as if unacquainted with human emotions and expressions.  Aside from a six-lane highway-wide streak of evangelical Baptist thought, there is no obvious evidence of retardation, either.  So, once again, for the cheap seats; HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU ARE UNAWARE OF THE PROBLEM?

Many of you know me; do you think that it is within the realm of probability that if I had some sort of issue with your behavior that you would not know what it was?  I might be wrong, an asshole, or way the hell off base, but unclear?  I think not.  I think that I have in all of my interactions - and especially with Patient Fucking Zero here - exhaustively explained myself, using every tool in the box for drilling, driving, and maybe even blasting the point home.  I am officially blue in the face.  Could denial be the answer to my plaintive query?  Yes, but only in part.  Denial cannot make the sky red no matter how fervently one denies the azureness of the firmament, unless other factors are introduced. Insanity, or perhaps even simple color blindness.  There is no way that denial can possibly fully explain this away.  "Perhaps the person is being fed bullshit by others, and just doesn't believe your explanations, having been swayed by those who feed out the shit," I hear you in the back with the shirt murmuring under your breath while carving pictures of your forebrain into the desktop using a dented railroad spike.  This is almost certainly the case, since I have heard some of the aforementioned bullshit puked back up and spread around as if it were a real argument, rationally submitted in response to a posit.  However, I would once again say thee nay, because it doesn't go far enough - simple non-acceptance of my POV does not constitute a non-understanding thereof. (A sentence to make many of you cringe, I know.  Bear with me.)

"Okay," my mythical Greek chorus sings unto me, "perhaps, as your triumvirate of titles would imply, the subject is simply stupid."  No.  For those of you who have misunderstood me on this, the "stupid" of the title(s) is meant to apply to the situation and the action taken, not the person who is involved in the doing.  If only it were that damned simple.

What I am left with, in answer to my oft asked question, "How is it possible - after such a long road of trial and anger and honesty and explanation, after treading on so many broken ideas and feelings and hopes, after three long years of hacking through the undergrowth of thorny dynamic between us - how it is bloody well fucking possible that you cannot understand what the problem even is?"  is this: It's not possible.  I don't believe it.  Non-belief is kind of a default for me, but once again, hear me out.  I think one of two things has occurred.  Either a knee-jerk response has been elicited, and she said this as a metaphor, or perhaps unthinkingly (because that certainly would not be new ground) or - she has gone off some kind of deep end in terms of assimilation of information.  With too much to process in terms of this ongoing debacle, the switch has slammed into the OFF position, and the circuit required for dealing with this is simply...broken.

Doesn't make it funny.  Doesn't make it any less frustrating.  But I could maybe, just maybe, buy that explanation.

Tears, Smoke, Road, Friends

Keb Mo - It Hurts Me Too

My wife and I were reflecting as we got off of I-65 South and hit the interminable stretch of 113 that always seems to pull the end of the trip into a weird, disproportionate temporal mush, that in the last month - December 22nd to January 22nd - we have traveled about 4000 miles by various cars.  There has been much bad coffee & English comedy in order to achieve this.  We returned tonight from Nashville, the midpoint of the recent Chicago journey.  We were in Chicago, of course, to remember and celebrate the recently extinguished life of Evan Garfinkel, and this was done with excellence and style.  I only wish, as Rabbi Mike pointed out, that Evan had been there to enjoy the party, slices, whiskey, smoke, and friendship.  I also hope, in spite of my extreme Goyism, that Rabbi Mike will speak at my funeral, since he keeps doing such a beautiful and moving job of memorializing my friends.  I really do love playing dreidel, and could probably manage to keep Kosher.  Consider it.

The whole shebang (from the Latin 'shebarare,' for 'party') was pulled together by Joe and Melissa Basilone, and this makes them a couple of the strongest, most compassionate, truly loyal and amazing people I have ever met.  People without peer, these two.  People who give you faith in people again, if only for a little while.  If my blog could stand and salute without attracting a lot of the wrong kind of Internet traffic, I would have it do so now.  It was an experience I needed - the excuse to sit in a bar and cry all day into my Guinness and whiskey, smoking cigars (thanks again, Jesse & Susan) and looking back on the years we had together with Evan.  I would once again like to thank, sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, Joe & Melissa.  People do read the comments here, so if anyone would like to add to that, feel free.

I'm still mad at Evan, of course, for taking Evan away.  Also, for what I will refer to here as 'suicide nightmares' which are keeping me from wanting to sleep for longer than a couple of hours at a time.  I needed this.  Thanks, however, to this past weekend in Chicago, I know I am no longer alone with this.  I seem to be developing what my wife says you folks refer to as "empathy."  (I was recently able to sit in my hotel room, watching a replay of the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle on ESPN Classics and for the first time, feel a little bit sorry for George Foreman.)  As screwed up as it is that this is what it takes to get us together, I am officially stating for the record right now: IF WE DO NOT STAY IN TOUCH AFTER THIS WE ARE ALL ASSHOLES.  I mean, there are some people I just met, and some others I had seen, emailed, or spoken to recently, but Jackson, Paul, Ian, Kelly, Pat, Jimbo, Rich & Tiffany specifically, I will likely be bugging the crap out of you in the coming months.  Sorry.  I feel like I had incomplete conversations with all of you, and was apparently in some kind of prick's denial about how much I missed you people.  Never again will any of you ask me to call "in the morning."  I also came back with way more stogies than I had intended, so call me from your local smoke shop and I'll give you a recommendation and a credit card number.  Good for two smokes.  Offer ends when I fucking feel like it.

Anyway, in spite of how I have been feeling - and the daunting amount of shite which now looms in my path - I really liked this weekend.  I wouldn't have missed it, and I am proud and glad to have so many friends who I can rely, cry, and lean on.  Thanks, everyone.

Finally, some notes about my top content. I'm going to stop ambushing you with pictures of Ev when you come here - the Evan photo album is for that from now on, and will be up for the foreseeable future. I will add to it as I get more photos, so send away.  I plan to fill in all the stuff people sent me for the collage, with as many notes and details as I have about each pic.  The Keb Mo song (I love Keb Mo) is something I thought Evan would have liked - It's got that whole "woman, you should be with me and not that asshole" thing going on, in addition to a great line that exemplifies how I feel right now, towards Evan in retrospect, and to all of you I have recently seen; "When things go wrong, go wrong with you, it hurts me, too."

Emotional Object Permanance

"How much should we judge someone for the last thing they did?"

Fair warning on this one:  I might ramble on a bit.  I feel a hint of the Dr. Phil coming on, or worse, the Freud, where I analyze it to death, and it's no longer fun.  See Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, by Dr. Freud.  Anyway;

Evolution dictates that we base our current reactions and interactions at least to some degree, upon those that have preceded it.  Failure to do this leads to a lack of continuity, an inability to make personal connections, a breakdown of logic, and feeling like you're living in the movie Memento all the time.  That being the case, when someone does something that is unique or remarkable or wonderful or horrifying, how much should their previous actions affect our assessment of what they've done, and how we respond to them subsequently?  If the lifelong criminal saves a life, what does that mean, and how should we treat it, and the criminal?  If Hitler spared a few Jews here and there, would that somehow ameliorate his actions?  No, it wouldn't, because that would be seen as aberrations to the pattern.  Likewise, JFK & MLK are largely forgiven their philandering, because judged in the context of what they wrought, it seems inconsequential.  To us.  To history.  I warned you, you know.

Say then, that a person who believes themselves to be quite pious, forthright, upstanding and loving - and is, in fact, capable of acts that exemplify all of these traits occasionally - but who also regularly engages in insensitive and heartbreakingly intolerant behavior, does something extraordinarily bad, something beyond the realm of normalcy.  What then?  Does that establish a new pattern?  I think not.  Let's say that this person actually has two distinct patterns of behavior, and that they, while being radically different from each other, are not mutually exclusive, since the mind is a flawed and often beautiful stone, and is capable of holding these on only two of its many facets.  So - great heights of welcome, generosity and love are not unexpected, while neither are great depths of pettiness, shrewishness, and anger are also not a surprise.  (I agree, Subject One has problems.)  The newest depth then, can be judged in the context of the other depths consistently and logically, and - and here's the rub - not compared to the great heights at all, since they are representative of two completely separated patterns of behavior.

There might be some kind of double helix loop where I can make these spawn and feed off of one another, but I'm not there yet.

Let's try another one.  Say a wonderful person who has spent their whole life giving and creating and making others feel enriched, does, with a final act, a great harm to a great many.  This certainly does not wipe out the great good done beforehand, but it also does not establish a new pattern, as it is only one act.  It must be judged either on its own (which I have not discounted entirely as yet) or, it must be taken as a part of the pattern - which by its inclusion, might change the pattern - or at least our perceptions of it - fundamentally.  It would take awhile to wrap one's brain around the new conception of this individual, but it is my opinion that it would be worth it, and present a clearer picture of why an individual might do such a thing.

I am, in a way, analyzing a number of my own actions and decisions here - the path of my life in recent years, and some things other people have said and done.  Ultimately, the question is twofold?  Say someone does something really fucking shitty.  How accountable should that person be?  My old-school, black-and-white self (and I really miss him) would have said, "Fuck you," to that person, turned his back and walked away, maybe with some choice assaults thrown in for good measure.  My more recent self (who writes shit like this) has seen some genuine instances of redemption, and believes more that people who try to be decent should be judged in that context when they drop the eggs.  I may still not hand them any eggs to carry for a while, but I won't rule out the possibility any longer.  By the same token, a person with a uniformly shitty streak of behavior may be more toxic to me than they once were and may find themselves isolated from me.

All a justification for me being tired of taking shit from people?  Maybe.  The emotional effluvia of the last three years coupled with the recent deaths of a couple of friends all while I finally enact changes in my own situation and attempt to foster two young and beautiful lives into full blossom?  Well, yeah.

Prediction: No one runs with this one.

Happy Birthday, Champ!

Today is Muhammad Ali's birthday.  Aside from being a personal hero of mine, Ali is a strong role model for many different kinds of people.  Not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination, but a person of faith who never pushed it, an anti-war activist, a person of genuine charity and goodwill, and a man with a strong attitude and belief for standing up for what he believed in.  Ali bypassed the peak of his career because the US would not let him box if he would not go to Vietnam.  As his friend Bundini Brown said, "Of course Muhammad is a prophet.  He had two houses, one for his momma, a long table full of food, and he told them to take it and shove it."  Bundini was a little crazy, hat-wearing man, but he had point now and again.

Ali's words then, for today:

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."

"The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."

"This is the legend of Muhammad Ali,
The greatest fighter that ever will be.
He talks a great deal and brags, indeed,
Of a powerful punch and blinding speed.
Ali fights great, he's got speed and endurance;
If you sign to fight him, increase your insurance.
Ali's got a left, Ali's got a right;
If he hits you once, you're asleep for the night."

The Chavez

"Beware ye, the Ugo Chavez," it is written in the early texts of Nostradamus, "for he will rise up and become a terror unto the Earth; unrestrained, and oily."  This is corroborated by the Bible Code, the Oracle of Delphi, my I Ching set, and is generally understood to be about Hugo Chavez, current President of Venezuela, despite the misspelling.  Nostradamus got Hitler wrong too, remember.

I can't help myself, I love news stories about Chavez.  Ask me whether or not he's good for Venezuela - I don't know.  I know they keep re-electing him.  I know gas is cheap there.  I know he hates Monkeyface, so we've got that in common.  I know he's a crazy loudmouthed lunatic socialist, and that he's fantastic news.  He pisses off all the right people in the US.  And, he scares me a little, which is kind of exciting, in that 'having sex with Courtney Love' kind of way.  And why does he scare me?  Well, he's already going to be around longer than Bush, which probably gives him a hard-on, but that's not enough for him.  He's wildly popular, charismatic, and wants to change the constitution of his country so he can run for office forever.  So he can always be the people's maniac.

You know what I'd really like to see - and I bet Hugo would be up for this; a 15 round bareknuckle old school Marquis of Queensbury boxing match between Monkeyface and the Chavez.  No holds barred, no standing eight count, no asking for your momma, and no getting anyone else to fight your fucking battles for you.  We could cover the floor of the squared circle in Venezuelan oil and rent us a hotel casino in Vegas for a weekend.

Of course, I'm always for this sort of approach.  People like Chavez just provide me with a rationale.