squidbag

Battle Not With Mazdas

"...lest ye become a Mazda, and gaze not into the Alero, for the Alero gazes also into you."   - Philosopher Fredrich Volkswagen Nissan.

For awhile, "road rage" was a huge topic.  In the news, in reports - it was as if, for a brief shining period, people had discovered a new phenomena - and then they petered out and quit talking about it.  But the actual occurrence of "road rage" didn't go away, of course.  It has, since the invention of the path, I would contend, always been with us, and always will be.  I, for one, have my whole adult life contended that road rage was nothing more than a person's regular rage with a car wrapped around it at the time.  There are far too many of us allowed to have licenses and vehicles who also have "unresolved past conflict" or "anger issues."  It's like setting up a time bomb with a time you can't see.  And there's no blue wire to cut.

I've been noticing - more so of late, hence the entry - some seriously assoholic driving going on out there.  Like the person who missed my front bumper by six inches to run a stop sign in front of me just this morning.  Or the widespread virus that hit Green Hills not long ago that deprived everyone of the ability to use their blinkers.  I can't stand it.  Not that I haven't been guilty of using my vehicle in anti-social ways - but I try to do something like the speed limit, signal, and I don't get too distracted while driving nowadays.  When I was growing up, my father was horribly prejudiced, and when someone would cut him off in traffic or just generally interfere with progress, he would look to see if they were A) Black, B) a woman, or C) Asian.  Now that I am older, I find myself judging people, too - but with a completely new criteria.  I want to catch up with them and get a good goddamn look because chances are - ah yes, there it is - the sonofabitch is on his cellphone, discussing something more important than preserving the fucking public safety!  Even worse, for some reason, seems to be those with hands-free setups or bluetooth.  California is passing a law later this year insisting on hands-free cellphone operation while the motorist is in transit - it won't help.

Adding to the general distractedness of people driving poorly everywhere, there are the privileged elite fuckknobs who think that the road belongs to them.  They drive, I have noticed, one of two kinds of cars - either the luxury job with the huge price tag, or the giant SUV which causes a minor eclipse on every roadway.  They are ridiculous, and apparently think that their insurance rates justify bad and impolitic driving.  Now, my story about road rage.

A few weeks ago, a BMW came screaming up behind me at a stop light on the corner where I turn to go home.  We were four deep at the light, so I was stopped, since I am not the Road Warrior.  Not yet.  This seeping jackhole actually honked his horn at me.  Then, he threw his car into reverse - with oncoming traffic, natch - and cut through the church parking lot (Wednesday night, so the gates were open) about the time the light changed.  I knew where he was going.  I kept my evil eye on him, bopped around the corner and, turning on my hazards, stopped dead in front of the outlet from his little cut-through.  I then laughed at him through my open passenger side window, something like, "HAHAHAHAHA - FUCKER!"  Backing up and cursing, he went for the other outlet, but I pulled up and blocked that one, too.

He welled up and stuck his quavering lip out, looking as though he might cry.

I couldn't feel bad about it.

Stupid road rage.

Monday = Survey

Because I am bored, and I hurt my foot, and I feel uncreative, unmotivated and tired.  I stole this from Melissa.

1. Have you ever been searched by the cops?  Yes, and in more than one country.  Never the naked kind of searching, though.  When stopped by the border cops in Canada, they seemed to think that our carton of cigarettes, flask of whiskey, bottle of champagne, box of cigars, bag of pipe tobacco, and giant bottle of Aleve (which was not over-the-counter there at the time) constituted a lot of chemicals.  I found this amusing.  Mexican border cops found the pistol and ammo, and missed the chemicals entirely.  They confiscated nothing.
2. Do you close your eyes on roller coasters?  I don't close my eyes for much.  Kissing, sometimes.  Never anything that might hurt or scare the shit out of me.  And what's the fucking point of standing in line for 45 minutes and paying to get into the park only to close your eyes on the best ride?
3. When's the last time you've been sledding? On purpose?  I have no idea.  I did go accidental frozen sidewalk ass sledding a few times while living in Wisconsin, though.
4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?  Alone.  I mean, I picked who I sleep with, and I'm happy with my decision, so I read this as "somebody besides them, or alone," and picked alone.  Shit, I'd rather get some rest.
5. Do you believe in ghosts?  Not in the ones anyone else believes in, but it's hard to rule out the possibility from an energy conservation standpoint.  "Boo, I exist in a state of quantum flux."
6. Do you consider yourself creative? Sometimes.  I try not to consider myself.
7. Do you think O.J. killed his wife? I think OJ is Jack the Ripper.  Criminal douchebag.
8. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie?  For what?  Angie's more my type, in most respects, I guess.  Too much non-unified ink, though.
9. Can you honestly say you know ANYTHING about politics? Yeah, but it tends to annoy the dogshit out of people when you say that, so I try not to.
10. Do you know how to play poker?  Yes.  What a boring question.  I fold.
11. Have you ever been awake for 48 hours straight? Yes.  Big orange and yellow pills.
12. What's your favorite commercial? I fucking well hate commercials, but will stop fast forwarding my TiVo for movie previews.
13. If you're driving in the middle of the night, and no one is around you, do you run a red light?  It often doesn't even take that much.  Depends on the circumstances.
15. Do you have a secret that no one knows but you?  Maybe.  Who answers that question?  I got a secret for you - where the hell is question 14?
16. Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees?  Yankees.
17. Have you ever been Ice Skating? Not capitalized Ice Skating, no.
18. How often do you remember your dreams?  More often than I and the readers of my blog would like.
19. What's the one thing on your mind?  The idea that there's never nearly enough on my mind.  Peace is death.
20. Do you always wear your seat belt? No, but I do more now that I have kids.
21. What talent do you wish you had? Absolute control over matter and energy.  Also eternal life.
22. Do you like Sushi?  Yes, and I know how to play poker, too.  Wasabi.  I fold.
23. What do you wear to bed?  Black.
24. Do you truly hate anyone?  Of course.  Sometimes kind of at random.  You have to picture a sort of hate scattergun, and the true objects of my hate sometimes flee cowardly into a crowd of people.
25. If you could sleep with one famous person, who would it be? Anastasia Romanov, but I would have to be like, sixteen, which is how old I was when I developed this weird crush.  Maybe also Laura Bush, just because of the chaos it would cause.  Okay, maybe also Lucy Lawless and Rachel Weisz.  Not all at the same time or anything, though.
26. Do you know anyone in jail?  Kind of. There was this guy at my wedding who later turned out to be  a somewhat secret multiple murderer and went away forever ever.  I shared meals with him.  Now he works on not getting shived during meals.
27. What food do you find disgusting? Anything that should be hot and isn't.
28. Have you ever made fun of your friends behind their back?  Yeah.  But I often am just practicing for things I will later say to their faces.
29. Have you ever been punched in the face?  Are you kidding or what?  Look at my responses, form a hypothesis.
30. Do you believe in angels and demons?  I believe that Dan Brown wrote a book with that title.  And that I read it.  Lots of tortured holy people in that book.

I Wanna Be Pope

I have had a burning desire since I was in the sixth grade to the be the Pope.  I was not a normal child, but let's not belabor that point any more than we need to.  I would make a good Pope.  No, seriously - hear me out.  I have a rigid and structured belief system that's inconsistent with most people's daily lives and conceptions of common sense, and I can wear hats and rings and gesture, just like the current Pope.  I could deal with opulence and state meetings and ridiculous levels of saturation news coverage.  I can probably fake praying with people when I have to.  Maybe.  I have a grasp on Latin, left over from Miss Tracey's class.  And I like hats.  Did I mention that?

Okay, granted - I'm not Catholic.  But to be fair, isn't it time for some new blood in the office of the Pope?  A fresh perspective?  Some objectivity?  I'm certainly younger than your average Pope, and my non-Catholic experience and stance will bring a new vitality to the office of the Pope - really shake things up in my opinion, which is soon to be infallible.  I'd get rid of a lot of stuff, I can tell you that, and all this hugging & praying with victims of clergy sex abuse?  Fuck that.  I'd have the priests and holy men lining up in front of a small crotch-high Papal guillotine, and then we'd fry their sanctified and straying severed members in the rectory.  If they live, they go directly to prison, do not pass GO, do not head to a distant parish where no one knows what you've done.  If they bleed out, great.  We start over.  I mean, hugs, yeah.  But we need a bunch of this other stuff, too.  Or rather, the Church does.  Holy Mother Church.  See?  I can do it when I have to.

Despite the rules of the Church, I think that if I have to continuously be subjected to Pope coverage for an entire week during an election year, then the Pope is someone I should be able to vote for.  And if I can vote for the office, I'd like to run for it.  You want me as Pope.  You need me as Pope.  A black-clad Pope in sneakers stalking through the Vatican stroking his goatee & struggling to understand the theology and beliefs of the rest of the world, all the while checking out the secret porno collection and selling off the Church's real estate holdings to feed the world.

Pope Squidbag the First.  How sexy is that?

Look at it this way: When I die, you can all whack me in the head with a hammer.

Dream On My Face

I slept hard last night and woke up this morning on my face.  I don't often sleep on my face, because I find it's uncomfortable.  For my face.  At 6:42 this morning, I awoke from one of the strangest dreams I've ever had.  And now I share.

In the dream, a person I knew from high school, a woman, had died.  We'll call her Agnes.  Agnes and I were friends in high school, and went on a couple of dates.  In the dream, Agnes died, and there was a high school reunion of sorts at her funeral.  Apparently, her father had also recently died, but not in the same event.  It was a dual funeral nonetheless.  Very tragic, and completely awkward because of the reunion stuff.  Additionally, before I could arrive at the funerals, I had some kind of ill-defined sidetrip I made, through a parking lot with craters like the moon.  I have a vague recollection that this was something to do with Agnes' death.  Also, there was something wrong with my suit.  The pants were too short and the sleeves too long - the opposite of the problem I often have in real life.  So this added anxiety to my deep sadness, alienation and trepidation.

Friends of mine who never knew Agnes, and who I met about a year after high school, were for some reason in attendance at the funeral(s) and seemed very tied into what had been going on with Agnes in her life right up until she died recently.  These are people who, in real life, have never met her, and would likely not be affected if she actually died.  They met me in the funeral parlor prior to my entrance to the viewing room to let me know a couple of things about Agnes' recent life, and to be comforting.  And they were, despite the oddity of their collective proliferate information.

When I finally made it into the viewing room, both of the recently dead were on display on a raised dais, Agnes' dad up and behind her, standard in a suit and black coffin.  Agnes herself, by sharp contrast, had been laid in a bathtub, naked but strategically covered by soap bubbles.  I was appalled and pissed, and reacted as I do in real life, which necessitated me being kind of calmed down and swept aside.  Let me be clear on this point: I did not enjoy the funereal soap bubble shroud.  There was nothing consumptively  / Bram Stokery erotic about it, the funereal soap bubble shroud offended and disturbed me, and was not good.

I sat with the other people at the funeral and said the things you say about someone at a funeral, and meant them.  After a little while, I went back up to view Agnes again, and while I was up there, her hand floated to the surface of the bubbly water, her eyes fluttered, and she rose from the dead.  Seriously.  It was really quite dramatic, what with the wrath at having been dead, and the nakedness, and the water displacement.  A miracle happened in my dream.  Agnes was quickly covered with my suitcoat, and given a flask of coffee by my wife, who had not been there but suddenly was when the resurrection occurred.

For some reason, we decided to move based on these events.  And then I woke up, which is how all of these end.

Invasion: Day 368

In the days following the invasion of the Earth by the creatures from Zarffon, the people re-grouped and fought back, bivouacking anywhere they could find purchase and shelter.  Cities were mostly abandoned, since the aliens targeted the largest masses of people first, and the survivors turned zombie in the first six weeks anyway.  No, humanity's unlikely rescue came from the suburbs, of all places, with roving bands of resistors striking out from America's outlying areas, staging pitched battles on well-manicured lawns, and using the soccer mom's modified and newly-armored SUVs & minivans as personnel carriers for humanity's vanguard force of the last stand for Earth's freedom.

Eventually, poeple won.  After over a year of bloody & ichor-drenched give and take.  Our resolve, coupled with some last-ditch innovation, killed the last of the invaders here in my neighborhood.  The smoking ruin of the Primary KillShip still lies smoking on top of the swingset in Anders Park, and now my neighborhood's original denizens have begun to trickle back into our homes, our communities.  To assess the damage, to rebuild our lives.

And to a person, we have wondered: Why so messy, Earth defenders?  Okay, I understand that a force of ten was living in my 3 bedroom ranch-style, but did they have to draw maps on the walls?  Would it have been such a big deal to throw out the trash in cans, instead of in the backyard?  Nothing's more disgusting than a three-month old can of beans, let me tell you.  Unless it's some guys' socks, worn day in and day out to run and fight zombies and aliens, and finally discarded under a chair in my living room, which, I might add, can no longer be sat in!  I mean, it's bad enough that the whole front of the house has the bullet holes and the laser scoring, shattered glass and alien acid blood eating through the siding, but the interior damage from a group of steel-willed avengers camping out for a couple of weeks before moving to the next house will lower your resale in nothing flat.  Carpets are ruined, pantry's empty, plumbing's backed up, and I think someone did an amputation or something in the guest bath.  Gross.

And did you really need to suck down all of my 12-year-old Scotch?  I understand a little victory celebration here and there, but come on.  All my cigars are gone, too.  I mean, yeah - I appreciate the salvation of the planet and everything, but how much partying did you guys do?  By the look of my bedroom - quite a bit.

Anyway, as Earth's citizens return from the forced exile of the woods and treeline back into suburbia, they will find a landscape changed by a forcible invasion - and also by big mud tracks on the carpet.  Did they park a motorcycle in here or what?

You Are (a Love Poem)

You are the caffeine in my bloodstream;
the optic in my telescope,
the crossover in my comics,
the extra memory chip in the camera.
You are 64 pages with no ads,
a chimpanzee running fast,
and three pages of copy with no typos.
Sometimes you are the wind after a heavy rain,
and sometimes you are just walking with no pain.
Occasionally, it seems to me, you are
a full basket with padded handles,
and also my video game thumb callous.
You are the chocolate in my milk,
the squarish whiskey glass,
the brake fluid in my lines,
and the soles on new Airwalks.
The simile in my Sinatra,
an extra hour of sleep,
the car chase in French Connection,
and these new ones in the Bourne movies.

You are.

"What Is Scientology?" Part 2

Well, it's first and foremost important that you understand that Scientology is not a cult .

I'm a little over 250 pages into this thing, (having taken a break to read a couple of novels) and they seem to think that it's really important to clear up this pesky misconception that's out there about Scientology being some kind of cult.  They're not.  Despite the fact that they're going to take you in and get a bunch of money from you to "put you on the bridge," and that they're going to do this by teaching you how you think and how you should be thinking, they're not a cult.  Even though they hook you up to a machine of their invention and interrogate you in a special way first.  Because there is no hypnosis and no brainwashing, simply a correction of your erroneous ideas about your mind works.  Despite the esoteric system implemented by them where everything, including basic conceptualizations and simple words are redefined and, in many cases, re-named, they are not a cult, just because they're going to ask you to re-examine and redefine concepts like consciousness, love, anger, life, and indeed, cults.

And even though Scientology erases any need its member might have for any institution outside of Scientology, like other churches, medical science, psychiatry, the courts, the rule of law and most governments, it is not a cult.  It simply has systems within itself to deal with any issue you have that might come up.  Yes, including legal trouble.  There's an Ethics Board for that, and its decisions are final and fair.  Scientology will tell you so.  Because it is not a cult.  Cults have, at their center, a charismatic leader who lays out unquestioned dogma, and that dogma is meant to be followed at all costs.  In Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard seems to have written everything from the Rosetta Stone to your school paper, and the only cost for not going along with what he says is expulsion and the loss of potential for happiness.

No, it's not a cult, even though every testimonial has paraphrasing of exactly the same language in it.  Even though people in it are called "clears" and everyone else is a "pre-clear."  Even though it's members describe themselves as "in Scientology" and everything that's not Scientology as "insanity."  Even though Scientologists seem to be in the grip of a continuous, pathological fear of crime, mental illness, nuclear holocaust, buried memories, changing mass in their brains, and societal collapse brought on by drugs.

Nope.  Scientology is not a cult.  It's something else entirely.  Something a lot like a cult, and  really fucking weird.

'Til It Hurts.

The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

I never liked this book, and this entry will constitute nothing more than a savage attack upon the work.  If you don't want to read this sort of thing, then why don't you cut down your best friend, hollow them out, and sail away in what remains?

Ahem.

During a recent workplace discussion, a co-worker, after expressing the desire to write a kid's book, asked what some of our favorites were.  Many books were thrown around, and they were pretty much what you'd expect from a group of guys ages 19 to 33, two with kids.  At some point - and I admit to being a bit blindsided by it - someone brought up this piece of garbage book, and it's been on my mind again ever since.  Silverstein in general can rub me the wrong way, but I'm willing to put that down more to my general irascibility and less to his style, except in the case of this putrid, horrible, useless work that was once foisted upon children as a lesson of some kind.  From the first copy of this inserted into the reading pile with my comic books & Garfields & Sherlock Holmes & sci-fi, right up to a certain unnamed Lipscomb teacher breaking down in tears while reading it, the book went from being something I thought was pointless and melancholy to something genuinely bad and potentially toxic.  It's clear that Silverstein is being ambiguous about the moral of his story (redefining moral ambiguity in a whole new sense) on purpose, but it's so vague as to risk harmful mistranslation, like the writings of Rousseau or the teachings of Christ.

For those unfamiliar: Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.  When the boy is young, they seem to have a pretty good relationship, as she gives him leaves and branches and apples and shade, and he gives her friendship and togetherness.  As the boy grows older and wants to make money, build a house or sail away in a boat, the tree gives up her apples, branches and trunk in short order.  Her happiness is short-lived, and she is mostly lonely, cheered only by the boy's brief appearances in her life as he navigates adulthood.  Finally, when he is old and beaten down by life, and she is but a stump, she offers him a place to sit as he contemplates the path of his life, and his impending death.  Presumably.  And the tree is "happy," at the end.

Essentially, the tree is loyal to a fault, giving the boy, who has no redeeming characteristics, absolutely every part of herself, so that his life is improved.  She is, after all, a giving tree.  And the boy takes.  He quickly, and without words or gestures of thanks or appreciation, even at the end of his life, takes all of that which is freely given, even to the expense and detriment of his loyal friend, who ends up a stump through his actions.  This is not a relationship of equals.  Either the tree is the co-dependent friend who only finds joy through problem-solving for others and whose life is unremittingly hollow and void as a result, or she is a helicopter mother, who gives so much she creates an entitled and ungrateful child in the process.  The boy is the most primitive of base human motivations, all bundled together - greed and expectation, without a hint of loyalty, independence, hope, or self-fulfillment.  If the boy could rape the tree, he probably would.  Because her gifts are freely given even unto their absence, and because his appetite for them is so voracious, they end up both with nothing at the end but sap, an empty acquaintanceship of nostalgia between them, merely the pantomime of affection, lonely souls desperately wishing otherwise, but realizing (I like to think) what cheap imitations of true mutual love and respect they epitomize.

So yeah: I hate the Giving Stump.  A person who gives you this, especially for your children, is not your friend. The Giving Tree is a waste of good real trees.  If you get this book, think this: A tree had to give of itself for you to read this insipid imitation of a story.  Maybe it wanted to, maybe not.  Either way, this is a sick, sad story about a damaged relationship.

Pledge Drivel

Boy, do I hate me some pledge drives.

As my local public radio station's Spring pledge drive draws to a close, I am forced to reflect upon how much I really hate fucking pledge drives.  From WORT's community-driven operations to WUWF's University-managed high-mindedness (both of which had good & successful drives), nobody wants to bore and stiffen your soul - but they do.  They gotta come on twice before I can get anywhere, and this week, they kept me from hearing Frank DeFord.  The voiceboxes they get to push the pledge packages never seem to have the whole package in terms of salesmanship on these things; they're either too needy and desperate, relentlessly chanting numbers at you, or they're half-clever, making jokes that fall flat - and they know it, which is the worst part, or there are teams of them, and the two on the air at the same time have no chemistry and won't help each other out.  It adds a little bitter almond extract to the cod liver oil of the pledge drive, and I hate it.  But you're supposed to.  Everyone hates pledge drive.  Even viewers like you.  Thank you.

The one and only time I can remember a pledge drive becoming truly entertaining was when I was listening somewhere in the 1995-1996 period, when I lived in Sarasota, FL and drove to Bradenton for work everyday.  My drive itself was kind of cool, progressing as it did from gleaming metal retirement trailer-coffins to university/college area, through the main drag and into downtown lawyerville.  One morning during the pledge drive, though, one of the guys on the drive broke down and said,

"And I'd like to thank [LOCAL BAKERY] for the donuts.  Really brightens the pledge drive, a donut like this one. Perfectly round and sweet and delicious.  And it's the perfection behind the donut that's truly something - I think it was the inability, of both technology and baking skill, to catch up with America, in the realm of donut production, that this inability contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union."

Strep Inactivity

So, I was out of it for about a week there.

I had strep throat, which is why I felt bad all day Friday, and not because of recent stress or all the damn rain from last week.  Apparently, I was running a slight fever (for me) of 101 to 103 degrees all the way from Thursday afternoon up to about six AM this morning.  This was accompanied by fatigue, muscle and bone aches, inability to regulate my own temperature, sweating and cold chills, sore throat and ears, congested nose and throat and pronounced shittiness.  And the package is not yet completely gone.  I have to tell you (whoever "you" are), I am exhausted with beginning my every month being sick.  It sucks.  I've covered why before, but rather than make you re-read it, I will present you with the short version, to which I am unaccustomed: I feel like a big, unproductive burden on everyone else, in addition to all the pain and sleeplessness and gross fluids.

Fever dreams and mindless hours of TV are still cool, though.  This time around, I discovered Unbeatable Banzuke, which I enjoyed because of it's seemingly unmotivated and mindless callousness on the part of the spectators, and Sport Science, because it's not too much of either.  And Max and I finally beat Professor Calamitous' Doomsday Machine at the end of NickToons Unite, with the second controller Max bought.  It took us a week of broken play and two of us playing at the same time to do it, but we did it.

What I wasn't dealing with during this period: Charlton Heston died, ending forever Eddie Izzard's dreams of seeing a monkey with a gun turned loose in Charlton's home on videotape, the Fundie Mormons' breeding stock got thinned out in the name of justice and human decency, some people seem to care more about Tibet's freedom than a symbolic flame, and John McCain still seems to know jack over shit about Iraq, having made this particular mistake more than once.

More news at 11.  Hook 'em Harry.