Journal of the Demographically Insignificant

I'll Play

2008-09-17T10:06:00.001-04:00

I'm happy to help spread the meme: Republicans Are The Party That Wrecked America.

They Live

2008-09-13T14:39:00.003-04:00

K and I were looking at the section of our yard that we've decided to let become a mushroom patch, and which previously hosted a small colony of chanterelles until a horrible hard-raking debacle courtesy of K's wanting-to-be-helpful father (who really is incredibly helpful) a couple of years ago. Today we were lamenting the demise of the chanterelles when K spotted this:

Cue chorus of "Hallelujah".

But it won't matter...

2008-09-12T09:40:00.003-04:00

So, Sarah Palin doesn't appear to know what the Bush Doctrine is. The fact that she embodies its application in her willingness to kick some Russian ass is all that the mouth breathers need to know.

Bonus: shorter video Palin:

Gamed

2008-09-09T05:38:00.006-04:00

A standard knock against corporate media coverage of elections is that it resembles nothing so much as sports broadcasting--empty storylines about strategy (can USC stop the run? Can the Republican 9/11 machine dupe voters yet again?) , but nothing of substance. CNN literally cops with this graphic:

Seriously, it alternates between 'BALLOT BOWL '08' and 'CNN= POLITICS'. You can watch it here.

ADDING: Exhibit B: " In the heat of a campaign, operatives will pounce on any misstep and play to the referees over any arguable foul."

Worth Less Human Beings

2008-07-16T13:29:00.003-04:00

The AP's Seth Borenstein reports that the EPA has de-valued the worth of a human life by nearly $1 million over the last five years, effectively lowering the cost benefit of environmental regulations.

Good On Ya

2008-07-10T15:10:00.004-04:00

Let's raise a glass to L.F. Eason III, the (now former) director of the N.C. Standards Laboratory, who defied Gov. Mike Easley's directive to lower flags at state buildings to half-mast in honor of the odious Jesse Helms. Given the choice of complying or resigning, Eason chose the latter.

Jesus H. Christ

2006-10-05T14:44:00.001-04:00

“We are all anxious for some type of God’s presence,” said the Rev. Brian Jordan, who dedicated it.

While not exactly the virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, it's miraculous, really. I'm glad they're finding it a good, permanent home. What else could a bit of WTC rubble consisting of two beams connected at right angles possibly mean except a message from our team's god?

So, why aren't the pious asking why, if God bothered to leave his calling card at ground zero, couldn't he have, you know, come by a little earlier? Why is this "cross" a symbol of his loving presence and not his malevolence?

Georges Rousse Durham Project

2006-09-12T16:27:00.000-04:00

A really exciting project is underway in Durham: photographer/installation artist Georges Rousse is at work on four installations at various locations downtown.

Rousse is known for his mind-blowing trompe l'oeil works set in generally derelict buildings. In person, the installations look like an assortment of random geometric painted shapes and wall cutouts, until one stands in the magic spot where Rousse places his camera and it all resolves into an amazing mirage that oscillates on the retina between 2D and 3D. Indeed, a superficial first look at his photographs may elicit a response such as 'So what? The guy just pasted a geometric grid on top of a room in Photoshop'.

Then you realize how he did it, and the response is more like, 'Holy shit!'

Rousse was invited to Durham by Frank Konhaus and Ellen Cassilly, who kindly asked me to be on the photography committee for the project. This has involved helping to procure the necessary equipment and technical advice for the end result, which is Rousse's large-format photographs of the installations that he produces in editions of five.

I visited the first two sites this past weekend, and there is a very enthusiastic cadre of volunteers doing the grunt work of cutting, painting, and prepping the sites . Some photographs I took can be seen here (and I'll be adding as the project progresses). More on the project here.

A project by an artist of Rousse's stature in our midst is a real coup. Kudos to Frank and Ellen and everyone who contributed.

The Story of Christmas

2005-12-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

MAURY SHOW, "WHO'S YOUR DADDY?"

aired December 9, 2005 15:00 EST

RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[VOICEOVER INTRO]: These women have babies and deadbeat partners who are denying their children. Watch and find out who's your daddy, today on Maury.

MAURY POVICH, HOST: Hi, there, thanks joining us. Today we hear from women whose boyfriends and husbands are disputing their children and want a paternity test. Stay tuned.

[commercial break]

MAURY: Welcome back. Our first guest today on the show is Mary, a young homemaker. She has a young son named Jesus, a beautiful baby boy (CUT TO BABY JESUS IN GREEN ROOM) whose father, Joseph, now has questions about his paternity. We'll bring Joseph on the show in a moment, but first let's say hello to Mary.

AUDIENCE: [applause]

MAURY: Now Mary, I understand that the birth of little Jesus was kind of rough. Can you tell us a little more?

MARY: Well, we were goin' to where Joseph, that's my husband, where he from 'cause he, like, owed some money to some guy or something that he had to take care of. Well, I'm like real big at that point, I'm gonna drop this baby any minute, and I find out he didn't make no hotel reservation or nothing. So we're like out in the cold knockin' on doors and [deleted], tryin' to get us a room. Finally some guy say he got a place out back, like a shed or something, and I'm like, 'we'll take it, I think this baby's coming'. So we in this little tool shed and all of a sudden the baby [unintelligible] is out and we don't have no crib or nothing, so Joseph puts the baby in like a trash can with some hay that was lyin' around.

MAURY: Wow, that sounds like an ordeal. And when did Joseph start denying that he was the father?

MARY: Well, he was cool with the baby for awhile, but then he started talking some trash about how some friends be telling him that maybe the baby weren't his.

MAURY: Well, we've got Joseph backstage, but before we bring him out, we asked him about the situation. Here's what Joseph had to say:

[CUT TO VIDEOTAPE]

JOSEPH: My name's Joseph and I'm Mary's husband. We got a baby boy, Jesus, who I'm starting to think might not be mine. I heard from these dudes Gabriel and Angel that maybe someone else had something to do with it. I got my suspicions, and if it turns out that Mary is a low-down lyin' ho, we're through.

MAURY: OK, let's bring him out! Here he is, Joseph, come on out!

AUDIENCE: [boos]

MAURY: How you doing, Joseph, good to have you on the show. Now, can you tell us why you think Jesus may not be yours?

JOSEPH: Like I was saying, Maury, these dudes in the neighborhood, be telling me that they heard the child wasn't mine. But I had my doubts before that. Like, I'm a carpenter, all my people are carpenters, but my boy, he's like, showing no interest, know what I'm saying? He's hanging out with lambs and sheep and [deleted] all the time, you know what I'm saying? Ain't no shepherds in my family.

MARY: That don't mean nothing! You can't tell nothing from that!

[crosstalk]

JOSEPH: Plus, he don't even look like me! Look, Maury, look!

[jumps up and points to monitor at back of stage]

My eyes are brown, I got big ears. His eyes blue and he got tiny ears. And look at that halo! No one in my family got a halo!

MARY: That's on my side of the family! You're [deleted]! [deleted]!

[crosstalk]

MAURY: Now wait, wait, wait, wait, we're going to settle this in a minute, but Joseph, you said that you had other reasons for suspecting Mary wasn't telling you the truth. Can you tell us about that?

JOSEPH: Well, a couple days after Jesus born, these couple of high rollers show up with some real expensive [deleted], uh, gifts for Jesus. I never seen these dudes in my life, and they were like 'We come bearing gifts for the son of God'. I was all like, 'Who the [deleted] is God?' Mary was acting all stupid, like, 'they musta made a mistake'. She took the loot, though.

MAURY: What do you say about that, Mary?

MARY: Oh, they was just some confused old rich people. But you know how they always say if you don't order it but they deliver by mistake you don't have to return it?

JOSEPH: You didn't--

MARY: Shut up! Shut up! You [deleted]!

JOSEPH: You didn't tell them he wasn't no son of God! You [deleted] [deleted] deleted] ho! Plus, I did the math! I counted when he was born and we hadn't even did it yet when he was conceived!

MARY: You lying! You lying!

[crosstalk]

MAURY: OK, OK, OK, we're going to settle this right now. We've given Joseph and Jesus a DNA test and we've got the results right here

[takes envelope]

MAURY: Joseph, if it turns out that Jesus isn't yours, what are you going to do?

JOSEPH: I'm gonna kick her to the curb, yo. I can't be having that.

MARY: I'm telling you, he's your child! Take some responsibility and be a man!

[crosstalk]

MAURY: OK, calm down, calm down. Here are the results of the paternity test. Joseph, when it comes to baby Jesus, you are NOT the father!

MARY: Oh my God!

[runs offstage sobbing]

JOSEPH: [deleted] bitch! See? See? See? 'I don't know nothing about no God'! Lying skanky [deleted] bitch-ass ho!

MAURY: We'll be right back.

[commercial break]

That's, Like, So Gay

2005-12-06T10:23:00.000-05:00

Aravosis and crew over at Americablog have their letter-writing panties in a wad about something that just doesn't strike me as worth my bile: Apparently Ford Motor Co. has bowed to pressure from Dobson's clowns at the AFA and pulled their ads from gay publications such as the Advocate.

True, it's disappointing that Ford would even give those morons the time of day, but then again, they're a giant corporation that exists solely to sell as much shit as possible and so they apparently think they'll sell more monster trucks (perhaps their only profitable line) to homophobes and rednecks than to the Fire Island set. But is it really worth the time to undertake a campaign for what amounts to the right to be advertised to? "Dammit, we demand to see advertisements for Land Rovers and Excursions in our niche-market magazines!"

As they say, one ought pick one's battles wisely.

Mr. Mom

2005-12-05T08:55:00.000-05:00

Today begins my two-month paternity leave, as K returns to work. On this occasion I'd like to ask when our society will become civilized--put its money where its lip service to "family values" is--and pay mothers and fathers a decent stipend to stay home for a year after the birth of a child. The US ranks right up there with Lethoso and Swaziland in the realm of paid parental leave.

K and I have the relative "luxury" of enough accumlated leave at our respective jobs to enable us to be paid for almost all of our FMLA-guaranteed leave, but what about single parents? Those working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet? And once leave is up, what about the daycare prospects for those who can't afford the equivalent of a mortgage payment for decent childcare?

L ended up in a terrific daycare which she loved, and which probably more stimulation and learning opportunities than either K or us could have provided on our own, but still the fact remains: the first time I left L at daycare, in the care of strangers, was without a doubt the worst moment of my life.

Cool Places To Go

2005-10-04T11:26:00.000-04:00

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.

--Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity (introduction to Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle)

Raleigh is cool, man. Er, at least as cool as Athens, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, and Nashville.

Of course you trust a middling financial publication to ferret out the coolest places to venture from your gated community.

They've helpfully included a "Not in NYC bonus" calculation to show you what you'll save by locating to one of these reasonable simulations of urban living, although they somehow didn't include a "Not in NYC penalty" assessment to show you the cost of having to drive every goddamn place or intangible costs like not having more than one decent Thai restaurant, grocery store or art gallery within 15 miles.

One of the "hipster" Raleigh hotspots mentioned in the article is a former strip of ho-hum business frontage on Glenwood Ave., recently gentrified and spit-shined with the contrived moniker of 'Glenwood South'. Here we find a perfect example of the 'revitalization' chicanery that catches the eye of young urban investment bankers: A place called Dive Bar, the typeface of which on the sleek black sign acts as quotation marks modifying the 'Dive' part. Dive Bar occupies a space that used to be an actual dive bar (I suppose they intend the name as homage instead of painful irony) called Mary Lou's. Shortly after moving to Raleigh, I had been warned against going into Mary Lou's, as it was alleged to be filled with suspect and potentially violent ne'er-do-wells. I wisely ignored this advice and found Mary Lou's to be a perfectly servicable drinking joint, with a couple of pool tables, plenty of ashtrays, and (most thankfully) only one small discreet television set that appeared to be primarily for the bartender's pleasure. The 'scariest' thing about the place was a large Confederate flag and the fact that the clientele most assuredly did not shop at Ikea. In general it was a fine specimen of the type of place I spent a sizable portion of my twenties hanging out in.

Such a place would not do for Glenwood South, clearly. But the idea of urban 'danger' appeals to the losers who populate such neighborhoods, so they create a theme park ride to signify 'edginess' without having to actually interact with anyone out of their demographic comfort zone. This Disneyfication-- the transformation of actual urban environments into their sanitized representation--looks to repeat itself all over the country, until every rough corner is smoothed over, every property value stabilized, and every unruly desire subdued to fit the contours of a commodifiable balm.

Yep, every bit as cool as Atlanta.

Let the grifting begin...

2005-10-04T09:55:00.000-04:00

The first order of business, even more important than re-building Trent Lott's house, is strengthening our casinos.

Basin St. Blues

2005-09-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

The news from Lake Pontchartrain is truly awful. You knew that.

Perhaps you know that FEMA, seriously neglected by Bush I, has been nearly crippled by the Boy King. It's interesting that it was another hellacious flood long ago that got the US federal government involved with disaster relief in the first place. Until 1927, there was no federal policy in place for such events--it was believed that disaster assistance was not within the purview of the federal government and that local solutions were the proper response to local problems. Then, in the age of science and the belief in the boundless capacity of engineering to solve problems, a young technocratic Secretary of Commerce named Herbert Hoover made his bones by convincing the country and the government that federal intervention into the crisis was necessary. His leadership in the aftermath of the flood paved the way to the US presidency (which ironically would come undone by another catastrophe that would radically alter the role of the federal government in the lives of its citizens). That we are witnessing the frayed ends of a federal policy begun by one Republican and now being starved to death by another is testament to how the party of Lincoln has led us back into a wilderness of our own making.

What I have been able to stomach of the news coverage has, predictably, been salaciously slanted towards the looting (or "finding", if the "finders" are white). I mean, really, who gives a fuck if some incredibly poor and desperate people avail themselves of Pepsi and Reeboks that would have been thrown away in the cleanup and written off on the insurance policy anyway? Especially when the cops are in on the action?

My biggest fear is the rebuilding of the city, which will undoubtedly result in New New Orleans a "safe" and "family-friendly" tourist simulacrum of the old New Orleans, and offer an opportunity to completely bulldoze anything (read: black neighborhoods) that doesn't conform to the sanitized and inorganic monoculture "aesthetic" demands of our current method of civic development.

New Orleans as we knew it is gone.

Riding The Storm Out

2005-08-29T11:43:00.000-04:00

K's grandmother and uncle are holed up in their home off Carrollton Ave. in New Orleans. Putting aside our urge to scold such a stupid decision, we send a mystical athiest prayer on everyone's behalf.

I'm Afraid You're Marking a Trend

2005-07-13T10:17:00.000-04:00

Oy.

It was sortv clever the first time around. Now the idea is poised to become one of those empty displays that apparently make everyone feel better without actually doing something about the problem.

A hint, tho: Most gestures have different meanings across cultures. A little research never hurts.

EDIT: Of course she would prefer the imitation.

London's Burning

2005-07-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

What can be expressed about the bombings in London this morning except for plain human anguish, shock and grief? Rage? Despair?

What's that? Resolve?

I was hopping around the radio on the commute, trying to avoid the inevitable "more prurient details coming in just now" play-by-play, and there, amidst the more-or-less articulate wordstream, distinct as a newly pubescent voice cracking among the boys choir, was Dear Leader, forced to extemporize a statement sans flash cards. But no matter, the result was yet another DJ Karl Rove talking points re-mix:

The war on terror goes on. I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is, we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists.

We will find them. We will bring them to justice. And at the same time we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.

"Resolve...blah blah blah...terra...will not yield...blah blah blah...compassion....blah blah blah...terra...blah blah blah...smoke 'em out...blah blah fucking blah". Bush was impressed with the resolve of all the leaders in the room. As if, upon hearing the news, Chirac and Bush and Blair and the gang all rolled up their sleeves or pulled down their pants to compare their resolve. Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!

*******

Later, listening to the BBC coverage, I heard a snippet of interview with Charles Heyman during which he made plain to me the contrasts between the British and American responses to crisis. For one, he detailed just how perfectly the London emergency response teams reacted to the bombings. Hayman couldn't find the tiniest complaint with the speed and efficiency of the whole system. Now, considering the sorry state of the US public health infrastructure and its willful neglect by this administration, one may only imagine how we'd compare if and when a DC Metro station or two go boom.

More importantly, Heyman said that in the next week we should expect a "massive forensic examination" of the bombing sites. At this point I'll ask you to remember the speed with which we dispatched the smouldering WTC rubble to Fresh Kills, won't you? All that evidence, get it the fuck out of here. The difference of course, is that mere moments after the World Trade Center attacks, we were all, "It's War!", which took it out of the realm of mere criminality into the glorified status of Battle For God and Country. And when you take casualties in an act of war, you don't ask questions, you don't call the cops, you send in the Marines.

The problem with calling this thing a 'war' is that in doing so, in a word we transform the criminals as well into warriors.

*******

I've heard Bush's lame-ass impromptu bullshit soundbite several times now, and the laxity, the indifference, the pure mouthing-of-words of it turns me so bilious I feel I need to check myself into detox. After listening to Blair, for whom I hold no great respect, and hearing at least the sounds of a man struggling with a terrible confrontation, to hear Bush's breezy and bored recitation about resolve is yet another small insult piled onto the tubercular remnants of the Republic. Of course the man doesn't know when the only proper response is an honorable silence. To understand so would require some honor.

Memorial Day, In A Word

2005-05-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

Goddammit

Bias: It's All In Your Hed

2005-05-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

Snapshot of a Google news trawl this morning:

ABC: "FBI Records Cite Quran Abuse Allegations"
Sydney Morning Herald: "US knew about abuse of Koran, papers show"
New York Times: "Documents Say Detainees Cited Abuse of Koran by Guards"
Chicago Tribune: "FBI told of alleged Koran abuse"
CNN: "FBI records: Detainees allege Quran abuse"
LA Times: "Detainees Told FBI of Koran Desecration"
Bloomberg: "FBI Documented Complaints of Koran Abuses in 2002, ACLU Says"

Etcetera, etcetera

And--wait for it--Fox News: "Gov't: Still No Credible Koran-Flush Claims"

Bolton For The Exits (Letters From a Crank Vol I Issue#2)

2005-05-12T15:31:00.000-04:00

Dear Nice Folks:

Got another empty earful this morning about that allegedly Nasty Man and the troubles with his confirmation as UN ambassador. This story was just like all the rest: namely, that the main problem with Bolton's nomination is that he is really, really mean to his subordinates, and that he demands pre-programmed results without regard to facts or principle. Hell, if that were enough to give someone the boot from a government job, Karl Rove would be working at White Castle instead of that other White establishment.

The funny thing is, in your copious reporting, I have yet to hear anyone mention what I--and admittedly, I am insignificant--would consider Bolton's most salient shortcoming for the postion: His relentless hostility to the very institution and its ideals.

Your coverage seems to me a bit like if Bush had nominated a member of Hamas to be ambassador to Israel and you reported that opposition consisted primarily of claims that he yelled at his subordiates about the color of their keffiyehs.

Keep on Schmuckin',

name and address withheld

A Taste of Her Own Medicine

2005-05-09T13:44:00.000-04:00

Someone finally engages Ann Coulter on her terms.

Pink Dubloon

2005-04-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

Here's why it sucks when I hear a song I like in a commercial: because the car/drug/tampon company, in trying to sell you their shit, is trying even harder to create a feeling in you, to hijack a few of your genuine synaptic responses and harness them to their goddamn product. It's not benign, it's not an even exchange (money for cred, is it ever?) it's not even selling anymore, it's fucking "branding" i.e. the attempt to create falsely transcendent associations in your mind with a corporate "identity": women in billowy dresses twirling in slow motion on a sea-cliff sunset or scruffy philosopher/mechanic-looking kids piling into that Cabrio and saying 'fuck you' to the jocks. So when I hear that Nick Drake song now, I have an interruption in the circuit in my brain that recalls the smell of apple blossoms at 3am on State St. in Ann Arbor or the play of the curtains in the bedroom of the then soon-to-be-Mrs. JoDI, and I also now involuntarily think of those punk kids who are being paid to act like they're not the type to care whether their car is cool but that's why it--and they, and you if you choose to buy--is so cool isn't it goddammit?

Etymology of Fear

2005-04-12T15:47:00.000-04:00

When did break-ins become "home invasions"?

Some Recycling

2005-03-30T10:56:00.000-05:00

From the Why Didn't I Think Of That Dept: We here at the JoDI have realized via our bettors that we can leverage our core competencies and utilize our vertical integration to maximize the value we represent to you, the reader. To whit: I'm feeling lazy so here's some bits and pieces from some of my past posts at plastic.

The corrosive effects of pornography correspond roughly to the degree that porn is a market product, and therefore inherently conservative. "Whoa", you say, "that's a stretch: I mean, aren't conservatives, you know, all religious and shit?" If there is one thing that social conservatives in the US defend more virulently than their hypocritical embrace of that social revolutionary Jesus, it is the glory of the marketplace. To believe that pornography reflects a representative sampling of sexual mores is to believe, for example, that television is an accurate reflection of society at large. But by and large, pornography presents a jaded, banal, tawdry picture with a heavy emphasis on violence...just like tv, the biggest market there is.

The unhealthy attitudes toward sexuality in much of pornography likewise mirror the same repressions of the libido that have historically been applied in order to make compliant workers: We are sinners; to redeem ourselves we must be industrious and suppress our "baser" desires. This is the triumph of Calvinism over paganism, of abnegation over pleasure, that has been a hallmark of the church, the school, the civic group: to create the social conditions that produce wealth for the few and the social order that maintains the arrangement. But because sexuality cannot be completely repressed, it is allowed a thin diet of illicit consumption. And it just so happens that a lot of money is to be made by pandering to such malnourished and deformed desires. So the cycle continues. But it is the fruit of a conservative environment.

.......

There will always be partisans of film, (such as myself) who find the delayed gratification and the tactile pleasures of the medium essential to the charm of the art. Film will, for the foreseeable future, continue to be manufactured, although on a much smaller scale. Those who choose to use it will come to be viewed with bemusement as curious throwbacks, much like people who now still make daguerreotypes or autochromes or bitumen prints.

The advantages of the new technology for amateurs and professionals are obvious: in-camera light-balancing, instantaneous feedback, and the elimination of the need for toxic chemicals, as well as the satisfaction of avoiding the middleman when you plug your camera directly into your printer/computer to make your prints. The immediacy of digital photographs, and the need for a darkroom which is thereby obviated, make such cameras now essential for print journalism.

But those advantages aren't as clear cut as they may seem. Printer ink costs a fucking fortune (not to mention the paper) and is just as toxic as that developer/fixer combo you just got rid of. The archival qualities of the inks are relatively untested. And the biggest concern is the transferability of formats over technological time. It's great that you've got your masterpiece saved as a TIFF file, but who's to say that computers 50 years from now will be able to easily read it? Printing from a negative is a fairly simple technical process that can be done with easily found materials. Digital technology adds several layers of complication.

But the real problems with digital photography are more philosophical. The ease with which people may immediately delete forever a picture perceived in the moment to be unworthy means that posterity may be left with only the most prosaic images. And while the formal conventions of any given time may later become interesting anthropology, one potential loss to historians is the serendipitous "bad" picture that turns out, in time, to be quite beautiful. While in library school, my wife worked on a project to catalog the photographs of Bayard Wooten in the North Carolina Collection at UNC Chapel Hill. She says that some of the most compelling photographs that she encountered in the collection were "bad ones" that were never intended for printing or publication. But because they were imparted to a semi-permanent medium, they lived to tell their tale.

.......

I find it ironic that people consider commercial media to be "free market" and public broadcasting to be on the dole, when the funding mechanisms of public radio more accurately reflect the dynamics a true market: people paying directly for what they consume. It is commercial radio that operates under what is effectively a massive subsidy from advertisers in order that consumers may have it "free". It only costs you, the listener, your time and brain cells.

.......

previous commenter [who, by the way, is a dick]: There is a tendency to be overly-romantic (and sickeningly nostalgic) about "Mom-and-Pops"...Maybe I can buy my nails at OSH and Mom and/or Pop can be freed up to do what they'd really want with their lives. Maybe when Mom and Pop close their little hardware store they'll open a boutique record store that just sells old jazz on vinyl...

Well, here's my non-nostalgia-tinted complaint: There is no longer a hardware store in my town other than Home Depot. At the old place, the people who worked there liked it, were vastly knowlegeable, and were probably paid a decent wage. The profits of the store stayed in the local economy. They were conveniently in town and when I was done with my errand I could go to the sandwich shop across the street and shoot the shit. Now when I need some hardware, I have to drive to Outer Light Industrial Wasteland and deal with overworked, sullen and not very helpful drones who, if not "on break", are nearly impossible to locate and more often than not don't know the answer to my question anyway. They aren't paid decently and the store's profits go straight to Corporate Headquarters in Faraway State.

And just maybe Mom and Pop really loved running that hardware store. Maybe it was their contribution to a sense of community that, while priceless, is still tangible in its continuing erosion.

.......

The reason that mainstream Christian rock culture doesn't even acknowledge Danielson is the same reason "secular" music that sounds like theirs gets the leper treatment from corporate media: it just doesn't fit the format.

Danielson's music is compelling to me, a flaming atheist, because it is original and interesting and deeply felt. I love the Louvin Brothers for the same reasons, even when they are singing about sin and damnation, because their convictions suffuse their music with such passion and originality. "Christian Rock" bands, on the other hand, are shite because they are primarily market products, no matter how sincere their convictions

Interesting music is made from contradictory impulses. Ira Louvin was a gospel singer who was also a philandering drunk, and I suspect it was largely because of the tensions between his faith and his nature that he made such searing art. And let's not forget some other "secular" rock songs about Jesus that are far more compelling than any of the goateed jerkoffs singing about Jesus the brand. To name a few: "Jesus Christ" (Big Star); "I Just Want To See His Face" (Rolling Stones); "Jesus" (Velvet Underground); and, of course, "Jesus Is Just Alright" (the Byrds).

Rolling For Dollars

2005-03-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I'll share with you later the story of how today I unwittingly tracked dogshit throughout the very elegant, expensive, and art-filled house of a museum patron while doing a location shoot of some of his glass pieces, but right now I need to say something about this abomination.

I don't know where to begin. We've all seen "mobile advertising", those trucks that just drive around for no reason but to circulate a fucking billboard in a purely ingenious American combination of waste and effrontery. But my friends at MAP have really pushed the envelope. With their Tri-action™ signs--wherein the front, side and rear panels of the truck are comprised of triangular slats that rotate distractingly every few seconds to reveal a different advert--they've added 'significant traffic hazard' to the mix.

The thing is, to most people, this probably seems like a stand-up, clever enterprise. Really shows some get up and go. I mean, people spend more and more time in their cars, right? Why not take advantage of that and take the message to the people. An honest dollar, right? And really, in a landscape that is as generally degraded and toxic as ours, what's one more vessel in the shitstream?

RADIO UPDATE: I'll be on the air again this Saturday, from 6-8pm EST, playing music for the demographically insignificant, if you care to listen or collaborate.

sospettoso

2005-03-07T08:58:00.000-05:00

What I find most notable about the Giuliana Sgrena episode is not the singularity of the circumstances (this certainly hasn't been the first innocent victim of trigger-happy US checkpoint troops), nor the claims by Sgrena that she had been targetted for reprisal because of the US opposition to the practice of negotiating with kidnappers in Iraq, but this: that the Italian government (led by the pro-business, friend-of-GW conservative media mogul Berlusconi) worked valiantly to secure the release of a national who was a journalist for a communist newspaper.

Why do I find this notable? Can you picture GW sending the Secret Service to rescue Katie Couric, let alone Amy Goodman (for want of an example of an actual US communist), from kidnappers abroad?

Radio Goo Goo

2005-02-28T14:50:00.000-05:00

I've got several entries still percolating in the 'Drafts' folder, but wanted to say that I'll be on the radio tonight, 8-10 pm EST. If so inclined, you can listen online here.

Fucknuts

2005-02-04T09:19:00.000-05:00

So, US Lieutenant General James N. Mattis thinks it's "fun to shoot some people". Well, that's the gist of the headlines, at least. Surely, however, the caterwauling, pussified liberal media are leaving out the context, which appears to be:

You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil...You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

So really, the General is just a feminist at heart, you know, standing up for the poor abused Muslim women of the world.

I have to wonder if his enlightened philosophy might also apply elsewhere.

.......

Meanwhile, Bush's wife, excuse me, Secretary of State is claiming that military action in Iran is not on the agenda. Leaving aside the question of just how another military "action" could even be possible with an overextended and demoralized personnel that has too much on their hands already, my real question to the liberal media--who continue dutifully regurgitating the administration's line with perfect credulity is this: Why do you take anything said by these criminals as anything but the opposite of what is, in fact, true? As Bill Hicks so poetically said (and what might be considered a distillation of the JoDI worldview), If you do a commercial there's a price on your head, everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink.
Lo, the shadow of Condi's ass doth fall upon my glass.

Crisis of Consciousness

2005-01-27T13:28:00.000-05:00

I was all set to write about our trip to New Orleans--a place that K says fills her with a sense of impending disaster--and how the Charlotte airport, like all airports, is fundamentally alienating in the way that inspired me to start this enterprise.

But I can't get that photograph out of my head.

I can't stop thinking about how half of my countrymen voted for this. How they presumably think that such atrocities committed in our names are somehow making us safer and not what an American flag will come to symbolize to these children when they are old enough to fire a shoulder-mounted missile or get on the subway with an innocent-looking backpack.

I can't stop thinking about the utter inadequacy of language to name this madness.

Crumbs

2005-01-20T08:40:00.000-05:00

Well, it's Inauguration Day. Security will essentially turn DC into a police state straight out of a John Carpenter film. Strange, I thought that GW was making us safer.

.......

Speaking of strange, why is it that Americans who identify themselves as 'conservative' strenuously support a system that is built on waste and excess capacity? And why do so many conservative 'Christians' strenuously support a system that runs just about opposite to the actual things that Christ had to say?

.......

Why is it that the music made by folks like Gillian Welch, Neko Case, Iris DeMent and Allison Kraus--which reveals a far more direct lineage to the giants of the genre (Cash, EmmyLou, Hank, etc.)-- gets tagged with the label "alt-country" while what passes for modern "country" sounds indistinguishable from Budweiser jingles circa 1986? That is to say: overamplified telecaster twang ninth rate Mellencamprok with a 2/4 beat that's considered "country" by dint of the comically exaggerated hick drawl of the vocal. Music that's as empty as the expression you'll get from a Toby Keith fan when you ask him if he's ever heard of George Jones--let alone the Louvin Brothers.

.......

Why, lookee the time. C. JoDI is going on another trip with the family, this time to the Big Easy to visit L's great-grandmother. Gonna try to catch us a parade, too.

Placeholder

2004-12-27T20:24:00.000-05:00

Going to Memphis for a few days. Have a lot to say when I get back. Happy New Year to y'all, and shit.

Changing the Tone, or, My So-Called Interior Life

2004-12-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

Then someone get me a band-aid
Before I fall on my fuckin' face
'Cause I'm bleedin' all over the place--Randy Newman

DURM, Cackalacky--Amid faltering investor confidence, some analysts have suggested a risky re-branding move for JoDI. The site has experienced some difficulty in creating an image that connects with the coveted 28-70mm metrolingual pansexual demographic. Erratic production levels have further alienated the site from those who want More More More, and want it for less...

*******

What am I doing here? I have nothing to report. There are those who have a much lighter touch, are funnier, are more well-adjusted. Much as I try to attenuate my congenital earnestness, I can't help myself.

I once read about "spa" where upscale wooey people go to clean their innards via some new-age voodoo high colonic. The regimen is primarily two weeks of fasting along with some secret herbal concoction and meditation. The proof of the pudding is, after several days of zero bowel movement, a final and particularly nasty ur-shit, a purge of all that lingering red meat signalling a successful bowel rebirth. This technique is not new. Michael Ondaatje wrote a shimmering bit of historical fiction in his imagined life of Buddy Bolden, Coming Through Slaughter, in which we find this passage:

He tried offering Crawley a banana.
Banana, hell, I'm dieting. Just this special water.
Go on, take one. You look sick.
I can't. Jesus, I'd like to. Do you know I haven't had a shit for a week?
How's your energy?
Slow...this time I'm aiming for the tail of shit.
The tail of shit.
Yeah...got to it once before. If you don't eat you see you finally stop shitting, naturally. And then about two weeks after that you have this fantastic shit, it comes out like a tornado. It's all the crap right at the bottom of your bowels, all the packed in stuff that never comes out, that always gets left behind.

Consider this entry a purging of some mental turds, a project not unlike Vonnegut's stated intention at the beginning of Breakfast of Champions that

I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there--the assholes, the flags, the underpants...I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago..

*******

Things I Need To Shit Out of My Head:

I was born under a bad sign.

It's too late.

Magic.

*******

A couple of months ago on the occasion of myimpending 20 year high school reunion, I wrote a little "potty-mouth rant" (as an old friend called it) which created a minor but satisfying conflagration on the reunion listserv, one which elicited all sorts of interesting interpersonal revelations. One of my former classmates wrote to me and remarked how entertaining and self-flagellating he found it. Now a very demographically significant fellow spending his days on an upper floor of Deutschebank, he made an interesting claim: that he would consider it a high achievement that, if Googled, his name would return no results. I think that's what I want: to not need to be noticed.

But here I am. How do I look?

*******

At JoDI, we're constantly striving to make our product more product-like. Won't you take a moment to fill out the following brief evaluation?

How would you describe JoDI to a friend? (circle one)
1. Pathetic scrawl
2. Sandy crotch
3. Spanish fly
4. Planck's constant
5. Smoke 'em if you got 'em

What qualities come to mind when you think of JoDI? (circle all that apply)
1. Resolute
2. Unwavering
3. Fast and bulbous
4. Frothy
5. Make mine a double

How could we make JoDI more appealing to superstitious morons like yourself?
1. Chase scenes
2. Vanilla scent
3. Body modification
4. Sign on the dotted line
5. White noise

Please tell us about yourself.

What is your household income?
1. Jerry Springer
2. Rikki Lake
3. Maury
4. Montel
5. Oprah

Do you enjoy any of the following hobbies/pastimes?
1. Curling
2. Auto-erotic asphyxiation
3. Bint ear cloth-ing
4. Taxidermy
5. Applied hedonics
6. Compulsive winking
7. Shrinkwrapping
8. Beer can collecting
9. Recreational hermeneutics
10. Amateur keratotomy
11. Pig latin
12. Competitive mastication
13. Agoraphobia
14. Smelting
15. Cocaine

Thank you for your participation. Results will be tabulated, numbers will be crunched, big wheels will keep on spinnin'. You need not be present to win. This message will best self-destruct before the date stamped on the lid. Don't touch that dial.

Sportsmanshit

2004-11-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry to add to the foofaw being made about the rash of human nature breaking out at an otherwise wholesome NBA game the other day, but as this incident is in some quarters being portrayed as a reflection on my old hometown, I just have a couple of things to say.

I know that for many, the words "Detroit" and "riot" in the same sentence immediately conjures images of all those darkies going wild, like something out of Bill Cosby's worst nightmare. But here's a little reality: the Pistons play their games in Auburn Hills, MI, a very white suburb about 45 minutes from the city proper. Ticket prices there preclude most but the wealthiest (ergo whitest) from attending games, and the famously aggressive cops in the four or five Oakland County suburbs one must traverse to get from Detroit to the arena serve as a further encouragement for any nonwhite Detroiters with less than shiny cars or less than spotless paperwork to watch the game on TV. The fan identified as the one who tossed the cup that launched a thousand fat lips is one John Green of West Bloomfield MI, a demographically significant white enclave. Funny how no one is talking about those goddamn junglistic white folks in the suburbs who just can't control themselves over a goddam game and have to ruin it for the rest of us.

Finally, why does this collateral damage get the most serious sanction and public scrutiny, while this does not?

NPRrrrrgghh! Or, Talk Like Scott Simon Day

2004-11-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

This morning on NPR:

STEVE INSKEEP: Joining us now are Don Gonyea, White House correspondent for NPR, and Scott Horsley, who covered the Kerry campaign. We'd like to ask them to wrap up this election season by offering some superfluous confirmation of the fatuous insights regarding the candidates that they've treated us to for the last six months. Don, let's start with you.

DON GONYEA: Thanks, Steve. I'll happily talk about Bush The Likeable Guy and refrain from discussing anything resembling the reality that our President is still a functional illiterate with an intemperate mean streak and by most accounts is probably a dry drunk.

INSKEEP: Scott, is it true that Kerry was just Too Goddamned Stiff? What's up with that?

SCOTT HORSLEY: Absolutely, Steve. And let me just add a colorful human interest anecdote that re-affirms the 'effete and austere' stereotype: There's this guy from USA Today who compared Kerry's reaction to microphones to a vampire's reaction to a cross. And I hope that you're appreciating my subtle reiteration through the use of this story the meme that Kerry was insufficiently or insincerely religious.

It's Fall Fund Drive this week, and as usual it has me cursing the fact that I can tune in WXYC for only as far as the halfway point of my commute. But I couldn't help but notice the premiums that our local NPR station is offering for a Cheapskate Level pledge of $75: A BBC coffee mug and a year's subscription to Newsweek.

Doesn't that just say it all?

Leaving alone the coffee mug that could only serve as a daily reminder of the fact that Americans have to tune into the BBC to get any decent reportage of the Iraq war, don't they think that most NPR listeners listen mainly to avoid just the sort of facile regurgitation of conventional wisdom practiced by the likes of Newsweek? Or am I just a bitter communist or something?

Mourning in America

2004-11-03T21:43:00.000-05:00

Well, there it is. I'm going to pour myself a bourbon and put on some Glenn Gould and allow myself a few final hours of sorrow.

Then it's time to fucking fight.

I'll be back in a day or two with something to say. Until then I commend you to the tender and uplifting mercies of the Rude Pundit.

A Prediction

2004-10-28T15:57:00.000-04:00

It's been quiet here at the JoDI, and I extend sincere apologies to my two readers. C. JoDI has been working a second job of late in a desperate bid to maintain his champagne lifestyle. But despite the Red Sox portending the end of the world, I am confidently predicting a Kerry victory by a large margin, a margin so large that even Karl Rove won't be able to pull it back out of the dustbin of history. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.

That said, it'll only get Rove and Co. rested and ready for '08, when Kerry is likely to have not quite finished cleaning up Bush's mess, only then it will be his.

What Took So Damn Long?

2004-10-04T11:02:00.000-04:00

I wouldn't call myself a huge fan of the Boondocks (though it beats the hell out of most of the creaky shit that still lingers on the comics pages), but I've got to give it up to Aaron McGruder, who amazingly was allowed to finish the following exchange with Aaron Brown on CNN (scroll down) the other morning:

MCGRUDER: You know, what bothers me about shows like this, and all the news shows, after Bush talks I hear all these smart people completely ignoring the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room, which nobody wants to say, is that Bush is not a smart man. He can't articulate well. He doesn't speak in complete sentences.

BROWN: Well...

MCGRUDER: And everyone just ignores it, like that's OK.

BROWN: OK. So...

MCGRUDER: But he's really dumb.

BROWN: OK. That's a different thing. Let's say he is not articulate. And I think they would concede he's not the most articulate guy on the planet. It doesn't mean he doesn't have convictions. It doesn't mean he believes in some things. It doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. It just means he can't express himself.

MCGRUDER: But beliefs don't mean anything if you're stupid. And not only that, but he -- it's almost as though he's talking to the dumbest segment of society, whereas Kerry...

BROWN: Aaron, don't you think that's an incredibly arrogant way to look at the world?

MCGRUDER: It's -- you know, it's real, you know? It's just that nobody is saying the obvious, which is the man is not smart and he's the president.

BROWN: I wouldn't say that...

MCGRUDER: Everybody knows it, but nobody is saying it.

BROWN: What does that say, then, about the 52 or three or one, or maybe it's 49.5 tonight, percent of the country that not only believes he is smart enough to run the country now but should be the guy to run the country for the next four years?

MCGRUDER: I think they have been woefully misled. I think -- I think Americans have a natural inclination, like all people around the world, to believe that their government is not corrupt, that the people are fair and smart and they're not lying to them.

And history doesn't prove that out. And current events doesn't prove that out. The American people have been lied to, and it's at the point now where I think that that percentage of people simply are not interested in the truth. They don't want to go down the road the thought that the president, one, is not intelligent; and two, the people behind the president who are intelligent are deliberately lying and misleading the American people constantly....

...But nobody just says the obvious, that their president can't articulate himself and is dumb. And it drives me nuts.

You know, if there were actually such a thing as a liberal media, don't you think that expression of this sort of viewpoint would be commonplace? As it is I had to do a doubletake, and then a standing cheer, as the stunning clarity of McGruder's observations seemed like nothing so much as a klieg light piercing the dawny mists of Market Media Avalon.

Adventures in Chicanthropy, or a Pound of Flash

2004-09-21T13:37:00.000-04:00

As some of you know, I work as a photographer in a fairly large public art museum, one which was founded with public money as part of an implicit social contract which held that one of the requirements of a civilized society is a at least a modest provision of culture to its citizens. A dying sentiment, to be sure.

Today my place of work was besieged by employees of a Giant Corporation, to fulfill the yearly commitment by said Corporation of a "community service workday", in which employees put on gloves, pick up brooms and paint brushes, and do some hard labor on behalf of a needy/deserving organization. So they came this year to the museum, to spread mulch, paint bathrooms, clear brush, polish bannisters, wash windows, etc. Sounds great, right?

Except that we already have people who do that. Granted, as an underfunded state institution in a "balanced budget or else" state, such things don't get done as frequently as would be ideal, but still, it seemed a little weird for a bunch of white collars to come around to clean our toilets. It made me wonder about the utility and motivation of the project. And it didn't take long to figure it out.

The main reason is PR. Being able to promote itself as a "good corporate citizen". To project an image of caring and a willingness to "give back to the community". As with any business decision, however, corporate philanthropy is subject to the same cost/benefit calculus which demands that any action undertaken must yield more benefit than cost. What is played up by the PR department as altruism is really a very cheap and effective advertising buy. Here's how this particular game worked: By having its employees do labor, the company doesn't spend any cash, and to have 100 or so workers out for a day doesn't really affect long term productivity in any appreciable way. So the calculated value of the labor (assuming they weren't required to take unpaid leave), along with the nominal expense of materials gets entered in the "tax-deductible" ledger. But the real payoff comes when the local news stations show up to do the uplifting human interest story, or when the pictures by the hired photographer (not me) show up in the next annual report, video news release, or ad campaign.

This same sort of sketchy bullshit self-promotion masquerading as charity happens all the time where I work. An example: The very rich founder of a local software company offered to host a fundraiser for the museum at his fabulous estate, knowing that a big draw would be the insatiable curiousity of the lumpen for the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous. And it was fabulous: giant Out of Africa tents with parquet floors and antique furniture, floral arrangements costing roughly the same as a new Toyota, outdoor bathrooms housed in doublewide trailers with mahogony trim and attendants, glass dancefloor over the swimming pool, the full monty. But it was fraudulent as well: the whole shebang was the leftover getup from the previous day's wedding reception for Mr. Big's daughter. The museum got sloppy seconds in order to provide the rationale for a tax writeoff.

Another example: upscale restaurant chain offers to host--you guessed it--a fundraiser. A decent crowd in a passable venue, as yours truly was there to document. A few days later the chain--let's call them Shinola Steakhouse--arranges to present the proceeds to the museum. The museum stages a fairly elaborate photo-op to show the museum director engaged in an appreciative handshake with Mr. Shinola. So the day arrives and with it a shit-grinning Mr. Shinola carrying a fucking giant prop check like he was Ed McMahon stepping onto our front porch with the answer to our prayers. Except that this check was for a hair over $2500. An amount that in the real world wouldn't have paid for the photo shoot that we had constructed. Not to mention the fact that not a penny had come from the company's pockets. The money was the net take from ticket sales to patrons. To add insult to injury, in the following weeks I was instructed to provide, as a "courtesy", the museum's own images from the event to Shinola's PR firm. It is only my assumption that they were used for something other than snapshots for the company bulletin board. So let's review: for hosting a fundraiser, Shinola Steakhouse got a beautiful PR photo in the museum's magazine plus free unlimited PR usage from the museum's photography of the event, all for the price of a '92 Accord. With no money down. Brilliant.

And on and on and on. There is no shortage of such offers of largesse from the local captains of industry. For while we don't have enough money, we do have an enormous amount of cultural capital. To the business community, such cachet is in their eyes a seemingly endless vein of raw material to be converted into the lucrative dross of a branding campaign. But it is finite, and it dwindles all the more under each successive dollop of corporate "generosity".

EDIT: I don't mean to denigrate the good employees of Giant Corporation, who to a person were fun and nice and swell people genuinely committed to helping out.

The Tipping Point

2004-09-15T13:59:00.000-04:00

Assertion: tip jars anywhere one must stand in line to give one's order (such as the "taqueria" where K and I went today) are an abomination, a form of remote buggery. Any questions?

Wow. That's pretty harsh. What's wrong with tipping?

Well, the whole custom is pretty weird.* I think in general it denigrates the service profession. It also is symptomatic of a very ambivalent relationship between tipper and tippee--the implication that the server is at the mercy of the served. This establishes a definite power imbalance and a resulting cognitive dissonance with our belief in a classless society. In Europe, waiting is a fairly esteemed profession, while here it is considered something one does while waiting to sell a screenplay. To a large extent, this is due to the way in which each are paid, and by extension, how each are valued.

When I lived in Detroit, there was a very good restaurant that initially attempted a no-tipping policy: the waitstaff was paid a good hourly wage and an 18% service charge was added to all checks. The experiment flopped. Customers were loathe to relinquish that power. So they went back to the old way.

So, what is the difference between tips for waiters and tips for baristas or tacoistas?

Well, there's not so fine a line between someone who comes to you and who is charged with overseeing your experience, and someone who is essentially a cashier. Do you tip the checkout girl at Kroger?

What about tipping bartenders, then? They stand there, you come to them, and they don't do any more than a skilled coffeeshop jockey.

You don't drink much, do you? Let me put it this way: I can consistently not tip the guy at Starbucks** and yet get roughly the same service. He may not like me, but when it's my turn at the counter, he's gotta serve me. Try stiffing a bartender and tell me how strong your next vodka and tonic is. Bartenders actually enjoy a more or less equal relationship with patrons, because they control the booze--and whether you'll get any. And good bartenders are skilled at an array of nuanced social transactions that are irrelevant to cappucinists. Finally, don't even try to tell me that making a good cafe au lait demands the deft touch required for, say, a perfect Sazerac.

You sound like a total snob. I'm surprised, given all your previous egalitarian invective.

Look, I'm in strong solidarity with anyone who's underpaid. But why should I be goaded into supplementing the wages of someone who is doing what previously required no such expectation of subsidy? In the "true" service professions, for better or for worse, the practice of tipping is entrenched. For a whole host of superficially similar occupations, however, such a custom is an affront and a guilt-trip. The fact that one must set out a container with instructions is an indication that there is something untoward about it. It smells like a racket. And we here at the JoDI don't play tennis.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I spent a good portion of my adult life as a waiter/bartender, and made good money. As a vocation, waiting tables is to be commended for flexibility and the excellent money/time spent at work ratio.

**I don't go to Starbucks and I often leave a nominal tip at [preferred coffee place]. For rhetorical purposes only.

You Had To Being There

2004-09-07T08:34:00.000-04:00

Writing in the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch offers a not-so novel appraisal of GWB's, um, underestimated verbal skills and the danger of dismissing his allegedly formidable political intelligence. This is a variation on a hypothesis initially suggested by Mark Crispin Miller in his book, The Bush Dyslexicon. But where Miller claims that the public perception of Bush as a genial cretin is a fatal "misunderestimation" of the man which actually serves as camoflage for a ruthless political adroitness, Gourevitch takes a more literary tack: Bush as the master of a peculiar but brilliantly effective political vernacular.

...He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.
But here is my favorite bit:...Bush has created a language of his own—as austere and strange as that of David Mamet or Samuel Beckett, with whom he shares a taste for speaking in spare absolutes that can sound simultaneously profound and absurd.
Yes, that's just who Bush reminds me of--Samuel Beckett!

If Gourevitch offers evidence of a compelling, if coarse, intelligence in the stupefying and robotic repetition of his "message"--Will Not Waver, Tough Decisions, Smoke 'Em Out, We Will Prevail--I humbly offer in response a depressingly typical Bush moment: his prepared speech on May 24, 2004. Fast forward to about the 20 minute mark, where he addresses the then-breaking Iraqi prison scandal. When he tries and fails three times (this after practicing, ferchrissakes) to pronounce "Abu-Ghraib"--a word that would roll effortlessly off the tongue of any imbecile in the country who'd seen a television newscast in the preceeding month--he looks and sounds as if the words on the teleprompter have been mysteriously rendered into Slovak. He couldn't have appeared more moronic if he'd drooled. But what propels this moment from a bad actor flubbing his lines into genuine theater of the absurd is the ovation he gets from the War College audience once he gets past the "Abooga...Rrrraip"s and finally chugs to the end of the paragraph. Hearing that applause--applause!--cosseting Bush's look of vacuous, blinking relief was more chilling than the breathtaking idiocy of his remarks. But I digress.

All such interpretations strike me as supremely overstated or overly politic ways of saying that George Bush is an effective speaker. In the most limited sense he is, as evidenced by an approval rating that by all accounts should be in the single digits yet fails to go much below the halfway notch. Further complicating such theories of "effectiveness" is Bush's well-documented penchant for eschewing any unscripted appearances in favor of hand-picked and friendly crowds (no one since Stalin or Castro, it seems, has appeared more times in front of a military backdrop). Like his putative idol Reagan, he is a salesman, pitching Brand America, and salesmanship is the language that Americans most understand. He is a useful idiot, selected as the paid spokesman for an ad campaign to put the face of Everyman on the corrupt and imperial business plan of his masters. But what bothers me most is that, now that BushCo has been shown to have tanked the company stock by peddling a faulty and lethal product, so many shareholders still refuse to examine the annual reports.

While it's clear that Bush is skilled politically--in a backroom good-ol'-boy sort of way--we should not mistake raw cunning for intelligence. I suspect that such qualified assessments of his hidden depth are not a reflection of any such reality but rather defense mechanisms against the only other possibility: that such a complete and utter moron, such a spoiled and petulant embarrassment could become a real-life Chauncey Gardener. Really, I think people like Gourevitch are constructing elaborate denial schema in an understandable and subconscious bid to explain what needs no explanation--indeed, what is as plainly apparent as it is terrifying: The leader of the Free World is fucking idiot.

A Prarie Home Conundrum

2004-09-01T10:48:00.000-04:00

I'm giving up on the news. Not going anywhere near a radio or television. And limiting my internet travels to the personal, not the political. Close to 50% of my demographically significant countrymen still swallow with mind-numbing servility the idea that the Worst President Ever is somehow a "man of conviction, willing to make the tough decisions".

What, pray tell, is their threshold for failure? What besides a blowjob would elicit the slightest perturbation, let alone a demand for impeachment, in the flag-addled minds of these red state imbeciles?

I mean, how far do things have to go to get Garrison Keillor pissed off?

Lake Effect

2004-08-29T14:48:00.000-04:00

Back from Up North, almost over the cold I always seem to get whenever I visit family, either one, no matter the time of year.

Torch Lake was beautiful, despite the infernal whine of the two "personal watercraft" moored (all too infrequently) at the pier of the house next door. Goddamm aquatic leaf-blowers.

We stayed at the home of an acquaintance of my mother's, a modest and comfortable house on the water. The kids ran around and made kid noises, I had fun cooking despite the dreadfully 1970s equipped kitchen (is there another kitchen in America without a single wooden spoon?).

The modesty of the house made me ruminate on the diminishing prospect of meaningful middle-class leisure. Such homes are no longer being built anywhere near water, as evidenced by the $1.5 million homes being constructed down the road...on spec. The fact is that people of modest means no longer can afford a second home, let alone somewhere as beautiful as this corner of the world. Increasing population and finite land resources are one reason, certainly, but more suspect I think, is the decline in prosperity for the middle class, coupled with the concentration of development exclusively for the upper brackets. This same phenomenon is replayed all the way down the Carolina coastline, as charming and unassuming cottages are bulldozed for the five story condo monstrosities that are the sole province of the new Republican haute bourgeoisie.

At least there is still some public land for a little while longer, until Bush gets us good and greased up for his vision of an "ownership society". I won't go into a rant about conservatives' baroque ontology of property rights just here. Suffice it to say that our public places, especially those as beautiful as the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Lakeshore where we spent a perfect day, are criminally underfunded and no doubt being salivated over by developers who are banking on a happy confluence of privatization and budget deficits to deliver onto their forks the last morsels of the commonwealth.

How Do You Feel?

2004-08-20T11:10:00.000-04:00

Good lord, Bakerina, I feel like that all the time. My serotoninergic factory defaults are set to tab A for anhedonia into slot B for blue must be the color of the blues.

Though I can't say it'll improve my outlook any more than the Wellbutrin I can't seem to remember to take on a regular basis, I'll be travelling as well: a year ago my mother arranged a family gathering for next week at a rented cottage on lovely Torch Lake in northern Michigan. I won't be savoring the O'Hare to Traverse City leg on what will undoubtedly be one of those tiny commuter jets that always seem to be plummeting into a light industrial sector somewhere in the midwest, but I will claim no small enjoyment in watching L cavort with her older and greatly esteemed cousins.

It'll be nice to be in my old home state. Play the lotto, stock up on refreshments sadly unavailable here in Cackalacky, maybe find some late season cherries for that Joan of Tarts, Bakerina.

Erm, maybe it won't be so nice after all. Wish me luck.

'Ho-lesome Fun

2004-08-18T22:41:00.000-04:00

This just in: satire is no longer possible.

Class Clowns Take 2

2004-08-16T16:22:00.000-04:00

A real world example of the forces described below, from the young neocon golems at the Stanford Review:

Apparently, all it takes to be a "conservative woman" (at Stanford, no less) is a disturbingly low threshold for nuance:

Bush isn't Hitler
The rich don't eat babies
Raising taxes is bad
US troops killing terrorists is good

And, obviously, a nice pair of tits.

Class Clowns

2004-08-16T10:27:00.000-04:00

Got the latest Harper's in the mail yesterday, and the cover story is an essay, The Tentacles of Rage, by Lewis Lapham. A longer-form version of his monthly Barthes-as-told-by-Mencken Notebook feature, the topic is one that I've spent no small amount of time being at turns alarmed and depressed about: the propaganda armature of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The piece chronicles the thirty-year philosophical and financial "re-education program undertaken in the early 1970s by a cadre of ultraconservative and self-mythologizing millionaires bent on rescuing the the country from the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism" and the resulting triumph of inanity that passes for conservatism these days:How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army, apply the phrases "personal initiative" and "self-reliance" to corporation presidents utterly dependent on the federal subsidies to the banking, communications, and weapons industries, square the talk of "civility" with the strong-arm methods of Kenneth Starr and Tom DeLay, match the warmhearted currencies of "conservative compassion" with the cold cruelty of "the unfettered free market", know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghdad? In the glut of paper I could find no unifying or fundamental priciple except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people.
Lapham runs it all down, from a rebuffed Goldwater as the avant-garde whose ideas are ultimately subsumed by the mainstream, to the paranoid strategizing of Lewis Powell's memo that launched a thousand think tanks, to the Reagan-era birth of fledgling "idea" factories such as the Heritage Foundation, to the present day state of affairs in which the field generals of the massive shibboleth known as the Culture Wars (Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors, etc.) pony up the capital with which the usual suspects (Heritage, AEI, Hoover, Cato, Hudson, etc) provide the matériel and tactical supremacy.

Of particular interest may be the swamp of conservative college publications, funded by the likes of the above and invariably, mimetically, named the (Dartmouth, Stanford, Michigan, etc) Review. If a certain creaky aphorism describes a natural trajectory of political consciousness, where on the spectrum does a nineteen year-old Grover Norquist acolyte go to die?

This has all been noted, investigated, annotated and pissed into the wind by so many others, why bother? The idea that a wholly market-supplied media, by its very decentralized and "free" nature, could permit a propaganda system much more insidious and effective than a hundred Pravdas is clearly demographically insignificant. That George W. Bush could represent for anyone the last best hope of liberation from the commie depredations of Time Warner, Disney and General Electric is a notion which is as apparently pervasive as it is unspeakably imbecilic. The resulting cognitive dissonance is for me, shall we say, considerable.

Letters From A Crank

2004-08-04T12:55:00.000-04:00

We're introducing a new feature here at JoDI: cranky letters to the apparatchiks of the Liberal Media Empire. Once we've generated a few I'll collate them in one handy location --ed.

Volume I Issue I

to: atc@npr.org; me@npr.org
cc: ombudsman@npr.org
re: a double dose of commentary joy

Dear Nice Folks:

As you may deduce, I haven't made good on my promise to replace my car radio with an Mp3 player yet, so I was vulnerable to the one-two punch of two successive classically fatuous NPR commentaries.

First, I was left woozy but still standing from the wisdom of Ted Rose's commentary about leaving his shallow Manhattan lifestyle behind for the austere comforts of enlightenment at the Shambhala Mountain Center (not without first letting it drop, however, that he had gone to Harvard). Rose lulled me into thinking that this would be a typical yawner of an NPR self-parodying bit of wooey bullshit--you know, the kind of Volvo-driving, latte-drinking "I'm-going-to-simplify-my-life" pukefest that in a single stroke laughably reconfirms the public radio stereotype no matter how many Heritage Foundation hacks are given NPR mic time in the hopes of counteracting it--so my standard "yadda yadda" defense left me unprepared for the sheer comic roundhouse which followed. Describing how his preconceptions of a buddhist retreat didn't exactly mesh with the reality upon his arrival, he depicted the scene as "something out of a Gene Simmons video". Despite myself I was suddenly intrigued; were the supplicants spitting blood? Licking guitars? Doing battle with Terry Gross? I know, I know, of course Rose meant that other famous Simmons who makes videos. An understandable, if regrettable mistake. Still, this was a bonus fulfillment of yet another NRP stereotype: that of the effete pseudo-intellectual with a farcically inept grasp of pop-culture.

Speaking of maladroit pop-culture references, the following morning's commentary by Joel Achenbach finished off the pummelling to my suspension of disbelief begun by Rose. His ascription of analogues among the Beatles to the American founding fathers was about as trenchant as speculation about who among the Constitutional Convention might have prevailed on Survivor, or whether Ben Franklin would have worn boxers or briefs. A truly interesting Revolutionary era compare and contrast exercise might have begun with an examination of the similarities between two hereditary heads of state named George, each fighting a desperate battle to maintain dominance through the support of the landed gentry at home and imperial loyalists in an insurgent war abroad. And each symbolically associated with the color red. Get back, indeed.

Down and out for the count,

Name and address withheld

Carolina Boogie

2004-08-02T10:17:00.000-04:00

One of the fringe benefits of my job is the occasional encounter with a legend. Last saturday night it was Earl Scruggs, who was playing in the museum's amphitheater. I caught him in the employee break room with the band finishing up their dinner (a telling detail--the big stars usually grub up in the Director's boardroom) and he graciously signed an old record (Live at Kansas State, Columbia, 1972) for me:

Taking in the photo of himself on the cover, Earl's son and bass player Gary was wryly amused by the hippie countenance of his youth. They were all perfect gentlemen, and although my wxdu colleague Dave T astutely reminded me that "you don't get real far in the bluegrass circuit by being an asshole", Mr. Scruggs and his ensemble each seemed to project a matchless grace.

Despite the kicking I gave myself for not trying harder to get a good portrait (even had the old Hasselblad ready with a roll of Tri-X) of Earl next to his formidable tour bus, it was a lovely show.

20 Year Itch

2004-07-30T15:06:00.000-04:00

Fellow members of B-- S-- High School Class of 1984,

I won't be attending the reunion this weekend. But I've been thinking about you.

.......

Imagine my surprise a couple of months back when my wife handed me the phone: Ted A--? How the hell are you, man? It just so happened that the recent death of a friend had started me on about all those things that those of us nearing forty are supposed to ponder mortality, The Path Not Taken, have I fucked enough people? and among them, although not specifically Ted whom, truth be told, I hadn't thought about since, well, high school, was a curiosity about the receding personae of my past. We had some nice chitchat and I naively still harbored the assumption that his call was somehow borne of a similarly curiosity. It wasn't until well into the conversation that I realized: this is about the reunion, isn't it? Indeed it was and is twenty years since we were last an accidental aggregate of acquaintances. And since Ted extracted my email address in a moment of weakness, so your names have flickered intermittently through my inbox, sparking little firefly flashes of memory.

I've had this feeling that I can't shake that somehow I share some intimacy with you--at least those whose names I remember--a feeling due, possibly, to the wondering that we all do about where we come from and what we once were. That we have no real ties to the past, every cell in our bodies has regenerated ten times over, our identities are simply continuities of consciousness, that there is nothing physical that binds us to our past besides our artifacts--except perhaps those whose divergent paths might be followed back to that former intertwining. So when we are pondering the halfway point of our lives, after we've discovered even our spouses and children to be strangers, and I haven't thought of any of you for twenty years, I can't escape this strange feeling of communality with you, a feeling which is of course ridiculous. Christ, some of you will be voting for George Bush.

.......

Since graduating, I've encountered perhaps half a dozen of you, and two of those I lived with in college (confidential to MH and LS: I'm sorry for being such a lame roommate). Thus, when I started receiving transmissions from the reunion listserv, I was hoping to hear some adult-type revelations/insights/transformations about the lives you've since led. Matt H. is a minister (quite possibly the most unsurprising outcome of any of us given the gentleness and sympathy I remember of him); Ann-Marie W. has without fanfare outed herself and (perhaps) made us think about how difficult it must have been back when to be unable to express such a fundamental component of self (Here's hoping they'll let you get hitched, Ann); a few of you live in another country. But apart from these tidbits I've been disappointed; the irregular influx of "hey whats up"s has left me with the banal realization that adult life is merely an echo of chatter in the hallways. I hope you'll indulge the following report from the dusk of my thirties.

For all the time I've spent revisiting the past, high school was and remains a giant blank in my memory. For me it was junior high school where my adult neuroses were formed. For example, the embryonic class consciousness ignited by my apprehension of the palatial houses that the bus I now rode passed. How funny that must sound--I mean, I still lived in a demographically significant zip code (property values now through the roof, Mom's golden if the house doesn't fall down), it's not like I was being bussed in from the Brewster projects. Yet, for me in my uncertainty of place, there couldn't have been any more perceived difference between the single parent chaos of my world and the imagined happy family country club idylls of my new peers. The sudden inadequacy of my cookie-cutter bungalow neighborhood stood as shorthand for all my familial discontents, and the lack of any sensible countervailing influence to disabuse me of such phantom laments is something that to a degree corrodes my subconscious still.

It was also junior high where I found myself susceptible to the strictures of conformity. I can pinpoint with comic accuracy the moment of infection: several weeks into my first year, outside on the campus at lunch. Suddenly realizing after a few manic scans of the playground that I was the only one out of hundreds wearing plaid trousers. I'd happily wear such a pattern today, but any ironic detachment merely belies an unsettling intimacy with the demands of fashion. Consider me in partial remission.

Not least of all, those years were a primer of adult cruelties administered with the brutal frankness of children. I'm not exaggerating: I administered some of them. For my part I remain deeply saddened and ashamed.

High school? The casts cure; here's your diploma. Now what?

(ACT ONE CURTAIN CLOSES ON intervening period of continued confusion, menial employment, existential despair, dead-end psychopharmacology, profligate drinking, suffering for art, tawdry affairs, minor epiphanies, cocaine, etc.)

.......

I still don't feel like an adult. Let me clarify: I simply can't accept the world as it is. I am yet puzzled that all those sacred promises (democracy, love, the benefits to the consumer from competition) could turn out to be such an inside joke with such very fine print. I am shocked anew at the needless cruelty, the celebrated mediocrity, the pandering venality and willful ignorance of those who seem to make the world. My threshold for the ridiculous is at a nadir: hence a life of semi-voluntary poverty. How can one take oneself seriously doing any of the things that respectable affluence requires? My attitude is still that of Lloyd Dobler:

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

.......

I now work in a museum as a photographer. I take pictures of pictures: how very meta. I'm married to a woman of whom I can say with humbling gratitude: she comes from my planet. A librarian, a former biker groupie with a physics degree, she, too, is very meta. Along with my daughter, in whom I have discovered a capacity for love that is terrifying in its depth, we make (to adapt from Vonnegut) a little nation of three. I can't say that I have really learned anything, besides why Ayn Rand novels aren't considered literature, or that women often actually like sex. Perhaps it's because I have so much difficulty remembering who I ever was or what I believed at any particular moment of my life. I mostly remember, with relentless acuity, the consequences of my failings.

Here's hoping that your reminiscences are, if not deeper, sweeter and lighter.

Loud Music In Cars

2004-07-26T13:56:00.000-04:00

Speakers in the dashboard/Speakers in the door/
Speakers on the ceiling/Speakers in the floor --Billy Bremner

Sure sign that I am am officially a Grumpy Old Man: lately nothing--not even churchgoers--gets under my skin like car stereos. I'm not talking about the iPod in your Accord. No, what really gets me peering out in disdain through the blinds are the peeps whose cars just can't contain the bass. Of course, they're not supposed to. These fuckers want to strum your floor joists at 500 feet. I gather small consolation in imagining the irreparable reproductive harm that such frequencies are doing to the drivers, but I have recurrent fantasies about building a pinpoint electromagnetic pulse gun and the robust pleasure it would give me to use it. More practically, I wonder if it's time to exercise my second amendment rights: a friend of mine who once lived in a particularly dodgy part of Detroit had no troubles with break-ins once he began sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch every Saturday, carefully and visibly cleaning his rifle. I construct imaginary verbal exchanges with gangster-leaning drivers who become rehabilitated through my persuasive powers.

Me: Look, man. I know you spent a lot of cash on that system. But no one is impressed but you. I mean, in your social strata, maybe this rig fulfills its function as an ersatz dominance signifier, but to those like me it serves only as a nuisance and as evidence that your priorities are seriously fucked. Ever read any Lorenz?

Him: Who?

Me: Konrad Lorenz. Austrian dude. His seminal book is called On Aggression. He basically says that aggression is instinctive and phylogenetically useful among almost all species. In every creature but humans, however, aggression is directed only towards members of its own species, and through behaviors that are unambiguous. But the problem for humans is that we are a heterogeneous species with immense anthropological variety, so signifiers among one subset are meaningless to another. Thus, your clumsy bid to utilize your subwoofer as the mark of a superior mate and competitor has just the opposite effect on a majority of your fellow humans. Fortunately, as cognitive beings, humans can unpack the causal chain of maladaptive aggression instincts and deflect such tendencies into harmless or productive pursuits.

Him: Dang. I had no idea. I'm real sorry, yo. I'm a check out the library right now, right after I tune in NPR up in here. Peace.

......

The neighbors down the street from our house are a group of hardworking ESL fellows. They are sociable and like to congregate on the porch of their rented house, dubbed (by them--spelled in adhesive letters on the eave) Mancìon. Very friendly: when the gaggle of neighborhood kids hit their house on Halloween, the surprised and amused trabajadores were unprepared with candy. So they cheerfully gave the kids money, practically throwing bills at them. As with any group of immigrants, there are certain transgressed or unapprehended social conventions that serve as minor irritants to those around them. At Mancìon, the most flagrant is the use of street-parked automobiles for the enjoyment of music on the porch, as opposed to, say, a portable cd player or putting the living room speakers in the window at a modest and thoughtful volume. Instead, one of the many vehicles lining the street, invariably with the trunk and windows open, pipes a steady stream of bass-heavy ranchera to the congregants on the porch. And through the walls of the neighborhood.

......

Other night K was lying down with Lucie to try to get her to sleep. I was at the computer when I heard the familiar arpeggiated bassline that sounds like someone nearby endlessly playing the opening bars of "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da". Hoping that it wouldn't keep L (whose room is in the corner of the house closest to Mancìon) awake. No dice. At 10:00 K appears at the door, frazzled:

"Lucie is still awake. You have to go tell them to turn it off".

Oh, a father's austere and lonely offices! Very well, then. I'm off across the street, mulling my tack. Angry and stern? Amiable and concilliatory? Honey or vinegar? I decide that a dispassionate yet firm posture is the way to go. As I approach the gathering, I ask:

"Who speaks English?"

One guy stands up and walks toward me. His eyes are glassy, his face full of grim concern.

"Hello", I say, "The music is too loud. Well, the bass, really. El bajo muy ruidosamente. My baby is trying to sleep." Without apology he shouts a command to one of his friends in Spanish to turn down the music--which is, indeed, emanating from an open car trunk. Without thanks I turn and walk home as the volume is lowered not quite enough, but adequate to avoid any more confrontation. Returning inside, I can still hear the bass, more softly but unmistakable.

Another hour later, L is still awake and K is on the phone to the cops. This dismays me--I don't want to be the asshole neighbor. K says it's not like they don't know how loud they're being. "You did your duty and asked them first. Anyway, the cops aren't coming, the desk cop told me I have to call 911 to make that kind of complaint. Seems like a misuse of resources".

......

This was by no means my first trip to Mancìon, but I'm always beset by a melancholy ambivalence when I have to make my request. A better person would be more friendly, strike up an acquaintance, not be such a fucking homeowner busybody drag. Perhaps. But I've decided on my plan for the next outbreak of Desmond-has-a-barrel-in-the-marketplace: I'm not going to say anything, just gesture a wordless invitation for my amigos to come-on-a-my-house. I'll bring them inside so that they may hear that thumping in Lucie's room for themselves.

Lost In The Supermarket

2004-07-20T17:15:00.000-04:00

People say to me well, they don't actually, but if people were to actually read this thing, I imagine that they might once or twice ask: Chris, what do you mean by "demographically insignificant"? Some observations, then, to describe the feeling of utter alienation that befalls me on certain forays into the Spectacular landscape.

........

Sunday our mission was to scout a digital camera for K. I had an unavoidable doodad to return/exchange, so this involved a trip to a giant chain store which shall not be named but which should be familiar to anyone travelling upon one of our stultifying and depressing main thoroughfares. Situated in a similarly giant modern "shopping center" surrounded by a massive asphalt griddle. Of course there are no shade trees to park under.

Approaching the store, the wave of air conditioning is so powerful that one feels from several meters the cold wind as the doors open for preceding shoppers. Once inside, the climatic difference is so drastic that it is literally shocking. All of our senses (save smell, these places don't smell like anything--does a mirage have a smell?) are assaulted immediately. Imagine a confluence of Chuck E Cheese and a WWF event and you have an approximation of the ambient noise/visual overstimulation quotient, if not the social dislocation felt as you realize that most everyone around you seems to think that, yes, this is a perfectly enjoyable environment if not the best of all possible worlds.

We're immediately set upon by a guy wearing a neon polo shirt with the store's logo and a badge identifying him as an "associate". I guess that's so we'll think that he has a stake, really cares, isn't a salesman or anything even though he seems like nothing so much as, well, an animatronic used car salesman.

WHAT BRINGS YOU FOLKS TO [giant chain store] TODAY?!?

Within seconds of repelling this guy, another appears with the same robotic come-on that is designed to not seem like a come-on.

WE DON'T WORK ON COMMISION SO DON'T FEEL PRESSURED!

Everyone wearing a polo shirt with the store's logo and the title of associate has the exact same grimly "upbeat" demeanor, like they all went to the same capitalist re-education camp or are all taking some sort of Republican ecstasy: something that makes them impossibly energetic without making them feel good/relaxed/socially adept at all. And they won't stop coming, they're like zombies.

JUST LET ME KNOW IF I CAN BE OF ANY HELP!

We finally make it to the cellar door, err, camera department, and are pleased that there are so many cameras out on the shelves for us to pick up and try out. Until we realize that they are all tethered to the shelves with a generous 18 inches of retracting cable which makes attempting to look through the viewfinder feel like we're trying to land a 40 pound tarpon. None of the cameras have batteries. Now that we need some help, there is not a polo shirt to be seen. I go roaming and return with a fellow who doesn't seem so enthusiastic. He absently puts a battery in the camera and leaves before we realize that the camera doesn't have a memory card, either, and so still won't operate.

........

Having learned just enough about the cameras to know that we will never buy one from giant company, we have to make a final stop to exchange my doodad for another. The cashier puts my new doodad in a clear bag with an adhesive strip at the top with which she seals the bag, a gesture by which I'm equally puzzled and annoyed. I express a small bit of dismay over the loss of any future utility for the bag and she looks at me like I've just asked to smell her panties. I mean, what kind of fucking freak cares about using a plastic bag for more than the schlep home in the SUV and the toss into the kitchen trashcan? As I leave the register and we head for the door, it hits me why they've sealed my bag: so I won't stuff more doodads in it on my way out. And the reason the bag is see-through is made manifest when I encounter a final polo shirt guarding the exit with a demand to inspect my receipt: he can see if I've managed to circumvent the seal on my bag and liberated any doodads that aren't accounted for.

........

I won't bore you, dear reader, with any more minutiae or with a tired tirade about the spiritual dead-end of consumerism. But the whole experience was depressing in a way that is persistent and soul-sucking. Why does our landscape look like this? Could it be other than it is? Is this really the best we can do? Whose prerogatives are served by such a design? We are told that it is all for us, it is so that we may be blessed with choices choices choices and that if you were to plot a graph of lower lower lower prices, the angle would be of the same degree and incline as the stairway to heaven.

Maybe the Talking Heads were right.

New Dog, New Couch, New Word

2004-07-14T12:38:00.000-04:00

Email from the missus:

This morning on the way to K--* I was talking to Lucie about the possibility of leaving Roxy** out of her crate tomorrow morning, and how the worst thing that could happen is that she would pee on the couch***. Lucie said, "If Roxy pee on the couch, Daddy will be fucking mad."

[mea culpa, I can't help myself it's such a useful word at least I've taught her something]

I said yes, that is true, then explained about "cussing" and "foul" language and how some people (such as Nana and Papa and other people's parents) would be really upset to hear her say that word, so she should not use it around anybody but us. She said, "Don't worry, Mama,**** I won't."

I hope I handled that situation correctly.

Indeed.

*L's daycare: a really good one--not named "kinder" or "kiddie" anything--but what an antiseptic term for the odious modern social necessity of paying people to simulate a loving family while the actual loving parents rent themselves in exchange for survival.

**new dog--see below.

***new, beautiful, first actual piece of quality, made by decently paid North Carolinians non-thrift-store-hand-me-down-composite-board-Ikea-wannabe furniture I've ever owned--precipitated by the masticating proclivities of aforementioned dog rendering lame my $75 flea market orange vinyl couch so I suppose I should thank the bitch for that.

****This word lately being included after almost every other clause in speech to her mother--pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable and a slight 'n' consonance at the end like the French girl we secretly wish she were because that would make us French too: a relief from these ugly American times.

(Afro) American Gothic

2004-07-08T15:52:00.000-04:00

Playing hooky from work for K's birthday....

The scene: Pepper's Pizza, Chapel Hill. Killing time before the start of F 9/11 matinee next door at the Varsity (it was funny and maddening and brilliant BTW). Waiting at the counter for our slices. Perusing the motley yet amusing collection of hipster band/smartass political stickers visible on the back of one of the refrigerators.

C [reading]: "Goth: The Other White Meat".

K: Do you think there are black goths? Do they wear whiteface?

C: Now that would be a great documentary! [Pause] We could call it Bleak Like Me.

Dead Dog Stories

2004-06-08T14:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning Roxy awoke earlier than her usual 6:00, meaning I did as well. I was too tired to wait for her ritual pre-voiding lollygag tour of backyard smells, so I left her in the fenced yard of the empty house next door and went back to bed. When I finally did wake up she was waiting, escaped, outside our kitchen door. From her panting I could tell that she'd gotten some ya-yas out in the neighborhood and from her dripping I could tell that her journey had included a stop in B--'s meticulously landscaped fish pond. It wasn't until she'd been back in the house for a few minutes that I noticed that she'd also been rolling around in shit, some of which still clung to the fur under her neck. I hadn't yet had enough coffee to afford an even-tempered response, so she got a cold garden hose shampoo that was about as comfortable as a boot camp physical and as gentle as a decontamination scene in Silkwood.

On my way to work that morning travelling south on 147 I spotted a DOT truck at the side of the road. There a man was shovelling, yes, literally, lifting with a giant implement that could only be described as a shovel, the body of a large setter. I took in no more than this impression in passing, so how ever in that second or two could I have perceived in his labors such a melancholy grace?

Later in the car on the way to dinner, K told me that when she arrived home, Roxy was lying motionless in her crate and showed no response until K said out loud: Roxy, are you dead? She said she now knew what it would feel like to come home to find the dog dead. She then asked me about a story I'd told her long before about burying the family dog, an episode I was now surprised to find hadn't wafted into my brain when I'd passed that setter being shoveled into the truck. Her question was somewhat odd: Did you leave the dog in the house while you dug the hole, or did you take her out right away?

My mother had phoned me and my brother from her office and gave us each the same message: Jet is dead. She's on the couch. You and your brother have to deal with her--I can't do it. I called Craig to decide what to do. He took a pragmatic view.

"Can't we just take her to the vet?"

"No fucking way. A guy I worked with who had worked in a vet's office told me that when you take your beloved Fluffy to be cremated, it's done in batches. The ashes they give you may or may not contain trace amounts of your pet. Absolutely not. We're burying her in the backyard."

"It's February. We live in Michigan."

Reluctantly, my brother agreed to go with me to the hardware store. I rented a pick-axe, bought some lime, wondered how much the cashier was wondering about the combination. When we arrived at our mother's house, our boyhood home, I began sobbing even before making it to the room where the body of our eighteen year-old dog lay on the ratty couch upon which she mostly spent her final years, curled up napping like a cat. Later, when I would recount this story--the surprising violence of my grief for a dog--to my shrink, she would tell me that it's because our feelings toward our pets are (unlike those about our families) totally unambiguous that their deaths may be particularly mournful. For several minutes I sat crying and stroking her lifeless head. I got up. We went outside. We selected a spot in the corner of the yard and marked out the grave in the snow.

"How deep, you think?"

"I don't think we'll need to go all six feet for a dog." A good thing, too, because our initial blows with the pick axe were for naught. Thirty minutes later we had barely scratched the frozen soil. I don't recall how we came up with the idea, but after a visit to a tool-savvy neighbor yielded a beat-up circular saw, we proceeded to cut a grid into the icy dirt so that the incisions allowed us to much more easily break the soil. And so we travailled: cut a grid, chop it out, cut another grid. After a couple of hours of trading the axe back and forth, we'd gotten maybe a foot into the ground. Stupefied by exhaustion, I suggested to my brother that maybe mass cremation wasn't so bad after all. And here comes the transcendent moment in this story: my brother, who'd indulged my insistence on burying the dog in the frozen yard with the grumbling acquiescence of a younger sibling, was now himself insisting that we finish the job. He took the axe out of my hand and returned to digging with an energy that was both disquieting and heroic. I tried to keep up with our alternating shifts, but when my turn came I could barely manage a couple of pathetic swings. Finally, when my brother as well was on the verge of collapse, the frozen ground gave way under the axe to reveal beautifully soft brown dirt. After the weight of the pickaxe, our shovels felt as light and wieldy as spatulas. We shovelled spongecake.

When the hole was finished, we paused to stare into the ground that would receive our dog. We went inside the house. Too tired and purposeful to cry any more, we lifted her body onto a sheet and carried it to the grave. We lowered her down and paused again. Had either of us believed in God this moment would have been a prayer. Instead it was a silent benediction to the order of things.

From inside the house Craig had gathered an orphaned bag of Jet's food along with what might have been considered her affects--some toys, a couple of beef bones, a leash--which we placed alongside her in the grave . It was only when I began to dust her corpse with the lime, the white powder falling on her still and perfectly contrasting black coat, that I fully apprehended her death. My sobbing, renewed by the task of turning the dirt back into the grave, ceased only when her body was fully obscured.

We continued in silence to fill the hole. We returned our borrowed tools. We went home.

"Let A Thousand Hagiographies Bloom...."

2004-06-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

Reagan is dead. Many others will flog this horse better than I, so I will only say that I won't be able to go near a radio or television set for at least two weeks.

Wait, let me also say this: If Bush II is significant for being our first "MBA President", it is often undersung that Reagan was our first (well, by trade, anyway) corporate shill president:

GE positioned Reagan as a respected TV spokesperson and corporate ambassador--casting him in the role that would take him all the way to the White House. During the series' eight-year run, Reagan made hundreds of personal appearances around the country on GE's behalf. There was even an LP for sale in record stores around the USA, Themes from the GE Theater, with a smiling Ronald Reagan on the cover.

Reagan was "the Great Communicator" not because his regressive vision naturally resonated with the average American, but precisely the other way around: as a trained pitchman, he was skilled in conveying a sincerity that was purely professional and therefore convincing almost by definition. "Morning In America" was about as genuine a political philosophy as "We Bring Good Things To Life".

Beyond tax-cut-and-spend-Republicanism or the emancipation of the insanely rich from the bonds of noblesse oblige, Reagan's true legacy is first and foremost the end game of the Spectacle: celebrity as not merely prima facie qualification for high office, but as a manifestation of the divine.

Anyone want to stick their neck out for comparison's sake?

I can't take credit for the title, but unfortunately, neither can I give it

Conventional Wisdom

2004-06-04T14:05:00.000-04:00

This is a bigger and better version of a comment I originally posted on Plastic.

Even though I know that such things are planned way in advance, the sites chosen for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year produce some purely baroque cosmic poetry. Consider:

Boston: A city with a populist revolutionary past, yet synonymous with sclerotic blue blood. Known for its primary export of effete smartypants. The city of choice for the latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, elitist East Coast liberal caricatures that the GOP has so successfully invented in order to demonize. For chrissakes, even Jerry Bruckheimer would pick anyplace but Boston for the scene in which the war hero scion Democratic senator from Massachusetts with the initials 'JFK' culminates his come-from-behind story. Which makes it the perfect place for the can't-win Democrats to confirm their stereotype in the minds of those all-important red state fair weather voters. In other words, a predictably bad move.

New York: a city of tough talk and impetuous braggarts. A city which, like its imminent GOP guests, has had some success in masking its sordid and violent aspects. Yet beyond the exterior bravado that wows the rubes, New York is most importantly Corporate HQ. DC may be the nation's capitol, but the Big Apple is the nation's Capital. What better backdrop for the CEO President and the party that, before wanting to drown it in a bathtub, wanted to run government like a business? There's a reason that those "freedom-haters" bypassed the Statue of Liberty in favor of the World Trade Center: they knew as well as John Dewey that "government is the shadow cast by business over society". How fitting, then, is ground zero for the mis-en-scene in which Bush steps out from two colossal shadows to polish his crown in the footlights of his masters?

But in an age in which political analysis sounds like the halftime report and political debate is reduced to rabid partisan screaming, the most salient comparison is, of course, to the most heated rivalry in sports. Will the lovable but hapless Democrats/Red Sox finally take one away from the imperial and spectacularly bankrolled Republicans/Yankees? As Babe Ruth or Jim Jeffords might tell you, it could just come down to a key trade.