In Which I Urge You Not To Drink And Drive

How many times do you have to be told?! Didn't you see The World According to Garp?! Didn't you see Parenthood?! No matter HOW much you think you can handle it, chances are you can't and someone might get killed. So, for the umpteenth time - NO MORE BLOW JOBS IN CARS!!

In Which Arkansas Takes Action

Futuristic films frequently show societies phasing out human concepts (names, unique styles) for mechanized substitutes (numbers, uniforms). In the future, you might see a news article like this one -

WEST MEMPHIS -- A campaign to fight childhood obesity is kicked off in Region eight. In a society that would often rather super size than exercise, it's no wonder childhood obesity is a growing problem.

Oops! That's a real story!

Arkansas, appearently, has the second fattest kids in the country. So, they passed a law to help find all the fat kids. And then tell the parents their kids are fat. Brand new digital scales (paid for by the taxpayers, no doubt) will be brought into Arkansas school gyms (unused due to budget cuts) to compute the BMI (Body Mass Index) for every school child in Arkansas. Why? Because the morbidly obese hide easily. An oversized sweater works miracles.

Don't think for a moment, though, that anyone's feelings will get hurt on this mass weigh-in of Moonie proportions. No other student gets to know whether their classmate is fat. Not even the child themselves! They have to stand backward on the scale. Fat kids have enough problems without knowing how much they weigh.

After they calculate the BMI, they'll send a letter to parents saying something similar to -

Dear Mr. And Mrs. ________________
The State Of Arkansas is not sure whether you know this, but your child is FAT! FAT, FAT, FAT! My GOD, what kind of parents are you!!? The State Of Arkansas says slim that porker DOWN! Or ELSE...!

Sincerely,

The State Of Akansas

Or words to that effect.

15 year old Ashely Finacci sums up the whole ridiculous situation best - "I don't need from people like the government, and stuff like that, mailing me something to tell me I'm overweight when I know that already."

In Which Cheney Kicks Off Campaigning For Bush

In Which It's Just A Bunch Of Movie Titles

Today's Bride
...To Shake A Stick At
A New Beau For Margie
Hard Luck and a Soft Boiled Egg
Gunmen
The Sandbank
Pilot the Police Pooch
As God Make Me
The Ill Wind Of Mr. Zephyr
The Mud On These Boots
Once There Was A Milkmaid
The Frizz And How To Tame It
Ho-kay, Boss!
The Zipcode In Hell
Conjugal Joe
Letitia's Secret Wish

In Which Geeky Old Me Makes The Globe

My little side bidness gets a mention in a Globe Article about home computer repair. But, for Christ's sake, don't call me a "digitician". I HATE that title and fought hard against the coining of it. EEEEEEYWWWWWW!

In Which I Checked My Email And Briefly Cursed The King

So much for going to sleep. Just as I tossed the coin to decide sleep or watch the rest of the Academy Awards, I got the email that I am NOT the King of the Blogs. Some kind of wierdness happened with god-knows-what and I'm not going to whine about it, but considering that I was 2.7 points off from the top spot, I feel comfortable with the tiniest of grrrrrrs. Since this is not Florida, I didn't even consider a recount. I want to restore honor to the blogging community. Nick, the-guy-behind-the-guy, sent me an email offering me a chance in the next contest, so that's nice.

Somehow, most of the judges missed the Challenge Submission that was, until recently, posted at the top of the blog. The Joplin post got selected for judging, instead. The new blog will have permalinks, which oughta clear that up.

Here's quick illustration of how subjective the competition is -

Bad Money saw the post as mostly full -
"Excellent slice of life story. Well told. I felt like I was there."

While Smartercop saw it as mostly empty -
"Maybe this guy writes on a higher plane of existence, but time to throw up the hands and say Me no understand. Ugly people, shocking people, coarse jokes.. had a hard time sorting out the jumble to get to the point. High school, indeed. 4 out of 10."

Go figuh. Can't please everyone. Especially Smartercop -

"Challenge - He interviews.... Mikey, from the Life commercials. Gets the kid to swear. Giggles a bit at his little prank.. something I fully expect Connie Chung to do. Not. 5 out of 10."

Hee-hee!

Either way, thanks to the judges and competitors for judging and competing.

1) Ecumenical Insanity
38.875

2) Walloworld
38.5

3) IBS
37.625

4) Miniluv
36.625

5) Blog Supplement
36.1875

6) Lobowalk
27.75

And for those looking for the Challenge Post -

Challenge 2
Pretend you're Barbara Walters or the news person of your choice. You're
planning an upcoming special interview that millions of people are expected
to watch. You can interview anyone you want. Who do you choose, what one
question do you want answered, and why?

I would be Connie Chung, partially because I’ve got a thing for Asian women and I’d love to know how it felt to look at myself in the mirror and marvel at how hot I am. Then I’d jump in my time machine that I made before I turned into Connie “Hottie” Chung and spirit myself away to 1972.

In some bucolic suburb, my camera crew would set up in the modern kitchen of a split level ranch and wait patiently for my interview with Mikey, the “finicky little 4 year old who hated everything” but loved Life cereal.



After the requisite small talk (“Who’s your agent?” etc), we’d get down to brass tacks.

Me (Connie): Tell me about your mom?
Mikey: She’s lady.
Me (Connie): Yes. She is, isn’t she?
Mikey: She wipes my…butt. (Giggles hysterically)
Me (Connie): Ha ha! Do you like her?
Mikey: Guess so.
Me (Connie): Ohhhhhh, come on now. You can tell me.
Mikey: I dunno.
Me (Connie): Oh, c’mon. You can tell me. Just whisper it in my ear.
Mikey: She’s a bitch.

Why do I want to interview Mikey? Because kids swearing is funny. And it’s all about the funny.

In Which I Really Should Get Back On My ADD Medication Or I Should Go To Sleep Or Finish Watching The Academy Awards Or...

I just too tired to commit to anything right now. I've got a sketch that's been banging around my head for a few days (Jesus at an Al-Anon meeting). I started writing it at Family Operarehearsal and it probably wouldn't take too long to bang out a draft but...I've got to get the new blog page finished but...I'm gonna need to get billing out soon but...I've got to figure out what the new site should look like, but...there's this idea for a flash animation, but...I'm just too tired.

And I've got to figure out when to smoke this fabulous Puerto Rican cigar before it goes sour.

In Which Technology Would Have Ruined It

Beth was my first love and my great frustration. Rather than get into the whole dynamic, just watch the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Great Expectations. It's fairly accurate. I never knew where I stood with her and, despite asking her repeatedly, we were in our late twenties until I found out. By that time, I was pretty much married.

In eighth grade, her parents sent her to boarding school in Western Mass. That put an end to any ideas of making her mine. We wrote constantly to each other and I looked forward to summers like an alcoholic looks forward to a drink. Her parents hated me.

One summer (eleventh grade, maybe) someone threw a party. Somehow, her parents made me responsible for getting her to and from the party. I could drive and they oddly trusted that my slavish devotion would keep their daughter safe.

Beth resented that her parents assigning me as her chaperone and spent the better part of the evening keeping out of sight. She was supposed to be home by one. At 12:30, I started scouring the party for her. I knew that if I didn't get her home in time, I'd more than likely be kept from seeing her again. Her parents did that kind of thing. Wealthy as all get out with a yatch and a summer cottage in Newport, RI., they loved to flaunt their power. After a drunken search, I found Beth, nicely toasted, and told her we had to leave soon. She laughed and disappeared into the backyard. Somone grabbed my arm and pulled me over to deal with a party go-er passed out on the lawn. As a budding co-dependant, I did what I could. I looked at my watch. 12:55. Fuck.

I screamed all over the house looking for her. No one seemed to have seen her. Finally, I found someone who said they thought she'd gotten a ride home. Bitch! If her parents were up, I was dead. Not only that, but I planned to try and get a little after I dropped her off. I jumped in the car and drove like hell, getting to her house around 1:15. The house was completely dark.

I had no way of knowing whether she got home safely and went to bed or whether whoever gave her a ride was still driving around. Maybe they'd crashed. Maybe they'd been pulled over by the cops. Maybe hundreds of things that I couldn't imagine happened. All I knew was that I'd promised to get her home safely. If I failed, I'd need the preparation to explain my way out of it. I had to know if she was safe.

Her room overlooked the roof of the garage. In seventh grade, I discovered that I could climb the tree in the backyard and jump to the roof. We used to talk through the window screen at midnight. Very romantic. It had been years since I'd climbed the tree but, drunk though I was, I knew I couldn't very well ring the doorbell. I reached the roof and scratched at her window. Nothing. I scratched harder. Still nothing. I did a bird whistle and heard her stir.

"Whuh", she groaned sleepily.

"You there?"

"Yah." She came to the window in her nightgown. "What the hell are you doing out there?"

"I wanted to make sure you got home ok." God, she was gorgeous.

"Mmm-hmm," she nodded sleepily, "I couldn't find you so I got a ride home. My parents were asleep."

"Ok," I said. Pissed as I felt, I let it go.

"You're nuts to climb up here drunk."

"Probably."

"Look, you've gotta get down before my parents wake up, ok? They'll kill you if they find you up here."

"I know," I told her. "Let me in, though."

"No way," she laughed flirtatiously.

"Awww, pleeeeeeease!"

"Go! I think I hear someone stirring."

I didn't need telling twice. I scrambled off the roof into the tree, dropped onto the grass and sprinted into the tall grass behind her house. Her parents bedroom light clicked on and I walked home knowing that at least she was safe.

The next day she called.

"I think they knew it was you. Meet me tonight, ok?"

"Ok."

---

This evening after a gig, I watched twentysomething in the Hong Kong bar talking into his cellphone.

"Tommy? Tommy, where are you? Don't be a dick. Are you still in the Hong Kong? Tommy? Ok, meet me on the second floor."

Thanks to cellphones, kids will feel compelled to climb onto a roof to check on their true loves. They'll just call their cell.

Romance is dead.

In Which I'd Like To See Naomi Wolf In A French Maid's Outfit

I like to believe that I'm a pretty person-friendly person. People shouldn't distinguish between people. People should respect people as people not in some gender/race/religion way but simply as...people. Sometimes you slip, though, so I hope you'll forgive me when I say

Fuck Naomi Wolf

There. That's my outburst for the year.

Twenty years after the fact, Wolf accuses uber-genius and ancient artifact Harold Bloom of sexual harrassment. In fact, she published a whole article about it in New York Magazine.

In the late fall of 1983, professor Harold Bloom did something banal, human, and destructive: He put his hand on a student's inner thigh, a student whom he was tasked with teaching and grading. The student was me, a 20-year-old senior at Yale.

Talk about turgid -

The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh. I lurched away. `This is not what I meant,' I stammered. The whole thing had suddenly taken on the quality of a bad horror film. The floor spun. By now my back was against the sink, which was as far away as I could get. He moved toward me. I turned away from him toward the sink and found myself vomiting. Bloom disappeared.

Since when did feminists write like Danielle Steele?

She tells this story all the time in her lectures to "(mostly female)" audiences.

Where is the professor now? they ask. He is still there, I explain: famous, productive, revered. I describe what the transgression did to me—devastated my sense of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a pawn of powerful men.

A pawn of powerful men. Yes, that's all she is. That's all she's become. Poor, poor Naomi Wolf.

Here's what I hate. Here's what I can't stand. Here's why Naomi Wolf should close up shop - Naomi Wolf is the intellectual equivalent of the necrophiliac star-fucking. Or, in her case, not star-fucking.

Is that all? yes—that’s all. But the encroachment, the transgression—those words are so much more accurate, emotionally as well as legally, than “harassment”—had effects that went deep. What Harold Bloom’s hand on his student’s thigh set off was not a sexual crisis. I was sexually active—and not even especially modest. An unwanted hand on a thigh from a date was nothing. Nor was it an emotional crisis. I wasn’t that vulnerable. What it set off was a moral crisis, shaking my confidence in the institution I was in[Empahsis added].

No, it's not that it happened because she admits that it was nothing and had happened before. It's who perpetrated the crime. Poor, poor Naomi's delicate world shattered into pieces when life's complexity took over. It wasn't her thigh that got violated that night, it was the rigid categorization of how she expected people to act. Something bad happened to her at an Ivy League school! The upper classes didn't behave as they did in the movies! Holy shit!

"Banal, human, and destructive". Banal, yes. Human, yes. Destructive?

Given that Wolf somehow managed to squeak a career out of it, I'd say not.

The rampant narccissm of Wolf pounding away at Bloom (irony intended) cheapens her possibly noble intentions. Wolf could have found a Yale undergrad whose life truly was negatively affected by sexual harrasment. She might have subltly referenced her own story in an empathetic way that would lend power and credence to an issue that affects many women. But, she chose instead to cast herself as the Avenger Of All Women. That's a difficult role to live up given the abuse she suffered and it's negative impact on her career.

And, to end the article, the Avenger Of All Women simply lies down -

The saddest part? If a Yale undergraduate came to me today with a bad secret to tell, I still could not urge her to speak up confidently to those tasked with educating, supporting, and mentoring her. I would not direct her to her faculty adviser, the grievance committee, or her dean. Wishing that Bart Giamatti’s beautiful welcoming speech to my class about Yale’s meritocracy were really true, I would, with a heavy heart, advise that young woman, for her own protection, to get a good lawyer.

Don't take the hard road. Don't force change on the system. Don't stand up for your rights and force Yale to do the right thing. You might not get published in New York Magazine.

From the Globe article -

Yale has not officially responded to Wolf's account, but Susan Hockfield, the provost of Yale, wrote in an open letter to students published Tuesday in the campus newspaper that school policies prevent comment on specific cases, ``even when a report may be one-sided or not grounded in fact.''

In Which I Join In The Mix

This is one of those silly no-c'mon-try-it-it's-really-fun kinds of things that increases the bandwidth of the Internet with no real appreciable benefit to anyone. But since Dura-Luxe is depressed on the verge of suicyber, I thought, why not be supportive.

The Instructions
Step 1: Open your MP3 player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first ten songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing

Double Trouble - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Audio Documentary

I downloaded this about a year ago and, despite my best intentions, have not found the free hour to listen to the whole thing.

Jethro Tull - A Christmas Song

The most embarrasing thing on my hard drive, outiside of Forever Your Girl. I take no blame for this. Derek Gerry emailed it to me in hopes that I'd play it on my Christmas radio show. He was horribly mistaken.

Don McLean - Change Partners

I thought this was the Stephen Stills version that was one of the first 45's I bought. WRONG!

Laundry As You Like - Mrs. Kay Hodgins

From the now defunct 365 Days Project. 15mins of 1960's laundry advice sponsored by the Canadian Government.

15 Commandments - Mel Brooks

Boy. I couldn't really tell you. I think I was looking for 2000 Year Old Man stuff. The History of Civlization Part 1 marked the decline of Mel Brooks

Will Rogers Highway - Woody Guthrie

'Cuz I'm a Liberal

High Blood Pressure - Huey Piano Smith and His Clowns

Fabulous 50's group just on the edge between Jump Blues and Rock 'n' Roll

My Little Grass Shack - Arthur Godfrey

Arthur Godfrey fascinates me. He was a bastard to pretty much everyone who worked for him, yet America loved him. Until he fired Julius LaRosa on the air without telling anyone.

The Yanks Started Yankin' - Arthur Fields

Get yer minds out of the gutter! It's a WWI propaganda song from 1918. Sheesh. :-|

Black Woman - Jim Ingram

Another 365 Days cut featuring the lyrics:
When tall midget criticize
The black women we idolize
Something within us rebels
Whether or not they apologize
Amen

Well...that was nicely rationalized!

In Which I Post The Story Referenced In The Previous Post

“(Note for the record: I want heroic measures taken to keep me alive, and I demand the immediate arrest of anyone trying to remove my life support.)”- Ann Coulter

It’s little more than a one-room shack. The candles flicker in the drafts that leak through the broken windows and gaps in the logs. Three men huddle over a broken generator while a fourth pumps away on the stationary bike that provides auxiliary power on such occasions. A grim sense of purpose hangs over the room.

“How it’s comin’ with that generator, boys,” grunts the man on the bike. “My legs are startin’ to give out.”

“Hold out as long as you can, TJ,” says a man in a baseball cap that reads “Kill Those Who Kill The Unborn”. “We almost got it.”

He turns to the seven-year old boy reading the Bible in the corner, “Rush, grind up some more rats. She’s gonna need feedin’ soon.”

“’K, Daddy.”

All eyes drift to the center of the shack where Ann Coulter lays like an aging Snow White. The heroic attempt to preserve her in amber has left her looking like Norma Desmond in a low budget remake of Sunset Boulevard. Hundreds of bottles of peroxide litter the floor, betraying the heroic attempt to keep her blonde. Garish swaths of red rise from her cheeks like the welts of a battered welfare mother. All but one of her teeth, long since fallen out, lie at the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels (with the label respectfully removed) that sits on the mantle of the fireplace like the Arc of the Covenant. The remaining tooth slowly dissolves in a glass of Coke, a reminder to the seven-year old of the hazards of sugary drinks. The men know she would approve.

Forty years ago, after the accident, telegrams, flowers and pledges of support flooded her private hospital room. State of the art equipment pinged and beeped and kept her alive. The top doctors in the world worked tirelessly, but to no avail. Brain dead, they said. The humane thing to do was to let her drift into the heaven she so fiercely defended. But, as she said, there was always a hope that she could recover as long she could be kept alive. And she could be. “Heroic efforts,” as Ann said.

The question remained. Where had the penny come from? Who had dropped it from the top of the Washington Monument? A child? A spurned lover? Hillary Clinton? The police report called the whole thing a freak occurrence. Quote-unquote experts bored everyone with the physics of trajectory in a vain attempt to prove that even Lee Harvey Oswald could not have purposefully aimed the penny that penetrated her skull.

And, yet, the questioned remained. Why had the doctors disposed of the penny after the operation? What of the business card found at the top of the monument that read “Parallax Corp.”? The child at the top of the monument was home schooled. Videotape showed two lesbians laughing just seconds after she crumpled to a heap on the ground below. And the date – 11/22/03. It all added up to something...something sinister. But what?

A conspiracy to sully her reputation erupted. The headlines screamed the news. “Tofu found in her fridge!” A Leo Buscaglia book on her bedside table. Lesbian dominatrix porn found on the hard drive of her iBook. Erotic emails between her and Midge Decter. All lies, of course. Slander. Treason. A pathetic attempt to blunt her legacy. Mother Jones called her the “Roy Cohn of the 21st century.” Some fell away, victims of the cowardly smear campaign. Rush Limbaugh, freshly sober again and seemingly on the right track this time, OD’d under suspicious circumstances. Robert Downey Jr. spoke eloquently at his funeral.

Her publishing firm used the occasion to hype her unfinished book Sodomy: How All Liberals Want To Molest Children and Then Eat Them. The book, released to lukewarm reviews, stayed on the NYT list for three years, providing fodder for jokes on late-night talk shows. The vultures had circled, landed and won, it seemed.

But the faithful stayed true. A 24/7 vigil around her bedside. Websites with PayPal donations. As her book fell off the charts, the hospital gently suggested new lodgings. A convalescence home was found. The bills started to pile up. A decade later, with Medicare bankrupt and her bank account drained, the home reluctantly evicted her all but lifeless body. Few remembered her. Many of those who did, did so malevolently. A vegan restaurant had on its menu a yogurt whose base, they claimed, was created on the day of the accident. They called it Cogurt.

For years, the faithful shuttled her from private home to private home. Due to the cost of the electricity needed to keep her alive, these stays lasted until the utility bills came through.

Two decades after the accident, Rush’s old dealer, now clean, sober and committed to Christ, offered his shack in the Ozarks and vowed to continue her care until the end of his life.

“Daddy,” the boy asked as he turned the crank on the meat grinder, “how long we gonna keep this up? I mean –“

His father cut him off with a glare.

“’Til she’s better, Rush. Ya know that. ‘Til she’s better.”

In Which I Rationalize My Inevitable Loss

The "best post of the past week" selection leaves something to be desired. But it's short, and I actually like it a lot. If I had a more customizable blog, I'd use the Cannibal Sketch. It's too long to repost, though, and it would drive the other posts onto the next page. So, that's thing number one.

Thing number two - In the middle of this competition I recieved my first notice of publication! Yup! Twenty-five greenbacks for me! Jest Magazine (with it's snazzy new flash site) saw fit to publish my story about a vegetitative Ann Coulter kept alive by rednecks feeding her ground up rats by in a one room shack in the Ozarks. It's a tasteful story...if you like eating dead rats or reading Ann Coulter, which works out just about even in my book. In the midst of all this self-congratulatory hubris, I slacked off.

Thing number three - Last week, my kids stayed home for February vacation. We played far too much GameCube to leave much time for high-quality blogging. One must have priorities.