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~ Tuesday, August 13, 2002
New LookIt's coming. I've got to do something about all this darned orange, but it's coming. Let me know what you think. And, yes, I will accept coding help. ~ Monday, August 12, 2002
GeriatricTracy has taken to sleeping in the doorway to the bedroom, a dangerous place because it lies on the direct path from the bed to the bathroom. I've already stepped on her as she lies atop the heap of dirty clothes which we habitually stack next to the door. "Tracy!" I whine as she squawks her outrage and moves a few feet before she drops to the carpet. I shiver when I think of how thin those legs feel under the part weight of my toe. This cat is old and brittle. I dread her impending extinction.. She presses herself against me -- my ankles or my calves -- even when it is hot. We have conversations, she and I, about mortality. My latest fancy is that she says to me: "Daddy? You know when I am as old as you are, I'll be dead." Yes, little Lamb. Yes, alas, you will. Spread the WordI've set up a javascript that will let you participate in Trackback discussions even if you don't have Moveable Type. Don't be left out! Check Ganesha's Logodaedalus for more information. ~ Sunday, August 11, 2002
Calves' BrainsOsijek, Croatia. July 1992. On a hot night very much like this one, my friend Lydia offered me a taste of the fried calves brains she'd ordered for her dinner. I took a small wedge and laid it on my tongue. The texture was something like stringy mushed banana, the flavor unmemorable. I thanked her for sharing and marked it as a food that I would not eat again. Tonight, as the residue of the sunfall bakes my cranium, I remember Lydia and the calves brains. This heat has not killed me yet. DreamI go for a walk around a marsh along the edge of a low, white city to ponder a snatch of a dream that keeps coming back to me. The Boy Scouts want me to keep showing up. They like my family tent. They insist that I come to their camporees even though I don't like them because my tent has plenty of room. It gets musty with age and they buy their own. They abandon their interest in me. Tell me to go away. That is the dream I remember as I cross a wooden bridge and get out onto a street. Some kids come along, mostly boys, dressed like kids dressed in the seventies. No skin heads among them. I go down the hill (this is a dream and it is perfectly natural for one to suddenly appear) and meet two, tall, Australian aborigines. They have spears tipped with silver daggers. The aborigines throw their spears at some trees and gesture at the boys. This enrages the children. They chase one of the aborigines into a thickly forested fenced lot. The other stays on the street and heaves his spear at the mob massing around his partner. He runs down the hill and I follow him. I think about what I will say when I get to a gas station with a telephone. Should I call the police? Am I calling to obtain the rescue of the other man or to bargain for the arrest of his faithless friend? How will I describe him? Will they know how to find an Australian aborigine on the street? Will they believe me? A LethargyA flash of something: alone in a boat on a gray sea waiting for a wind to give me speed and blow the light mist off the surface of the water. The present heat wave burns everything good from my brain: emotion, the wit I require to scratch out a fancy turn of words, and the keenness of memory I need to recall the random firings of dreams. Watching for the Red Storm
I made a point not to laugh at the early summer trials of my fellow chatters and bloggers. I knew this was coming: temperatures that kiss the underside of 100 degree Fahrenheit and bring Hell to the interior canyons and foothills. The NWS warns us that there could be death: STRONG HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT WILL RESULT IN MORE HOT WEATHER TO END THE WEEKEND. You can't see this heat. It show up uneventfully and squats. It's dry here, which is probably the only blessing of our long, rainless season. It's not like my first night in North Carolina some 22 years ago when the rain doused the pavement and turned to steam. We don't get that thickness of the air. You can wear your clothes for a couple of days if you don't move about and sweat. Every morning when I rise, I taste the air for crisp traces of smoke that might signal the approach of holocaust. I observe the tips of the eucalyptus trees that stand on the other side of Tim's condo for movement. A single spark impregnating a dry wind could mean disaster. I've got the rest of the summer and nearly all of the fall before I can relax. We have seen massive fires in these parts as late as December. The infamous Panorama Fire that dined on some 600 homes in San Bernardino was a Thanksgiving feast for Agni. Doom winks in every blade of golden wild oat grass until the first rain of winter, an event not likely to happen before October and perhaps as late as January. Two to six more months of uncertainty. The fear of flame insinuates itself into every weather report I make at this time of year. You will keep hearing about it from me until that day when I catch the scent of dust made mud by the first rain. On that day, I will be glad for the news. You can rejoice with me. I can take the heat. Even when it becomes so warm that the lack of humidity becomes irrelevant. It's that wind that gives me a sandpaper chill around my neck. It's the thought of embers wafting down the mountain that disturbs my sleep. Still air may not cool, but it also does not bring fire. I know peace of mind on dog days when the trees don't bend. When they do, I check our cat carriers and mark the shortest path to the swimming pool just in case the red storm roars into the development unannounced. ~ Saturday, August 10, 2002
My Multiple Personalities: An Official ListThis blog isn't all of me. I've been on the net since 1988, handing out my email account to people who mostly did not know what one was. You can imagine that there's a lot of material. Here's a guide to the other blogs of mine:
This site is also host to weblogs written by the Empress and many others. For more information, check out the links under "The Neighborhood". ~ Friday, August 09, 2002
Faux NewsI found myself in a auto dealer service department's waiting room this morning while mechanics tried to play CDs on my car stereo. Salesmen ambled in to grab cups of coffee, to sneak peeks at what kind of donuts were to be had in a pink box, and to check out the girls on the local Fox News outlet (Los Angeles). Casting for this entertainment included a whore who wore a sleeveless blouse and a diamond choker; a good girl who covered her arms; and a wimpy middle aged geezer chosen for the fact that he wasn't especially handsome and so could be easily replaced in the fantasy of the average male. Both the women trolled for an audience with sex and long blonde hair. No talk of the flimsy case to war against Iraq or schemes to rob Social Security or Bush-affiliated corporations going bust. The whore, who doubled as weather girl, showed radar animations of storm clouds moving in on Texas. A film clip exposed three teenaged girls who ran the police on a merry chase from downtown Los Angeles through Hollywood and nearly to the sea. The newscaster identified them only as "known gang members". Another clip demonstrated how a man attempted to evade capture by jumping out of a stolen vehicle while it was still rolling through an alley. The news casters patted the news chopper crew on the back for keeping on the suspect's tail and sending reports so the police could intercept him. The last story reported that crop circles had been found in a Maine field. The owners of the field reported lights and loud noises. The Maine State Police investigated. No footprints or other signs that this was the work of local pranksters had been discovered on the scene, Fox claimed. The secret is out. If you want to get on Fox News, build a crop circle in your yard. Don't worry about evidence left at the scene. Fox will edit that out for you. The mostly male audience will fixate on two pairs of petite breasts and imagine themselves as the man in the middle. The whore with the choker will giggle and dance for them while the Republican Congress sells off the marble from the Lincoln Memorial. ~ Thursday, August 08, 2002
Camel ToesWhen Karen wrote of "camel toes", I had no idea what she was talking about. I went to the site she recommended I wear baggy pants and I am all too aware of the bulge that forms around the zipper line. Now Karen and Kelly Caldwell both have me paranoid: each either implied or said straight out that she looks at crotches. My pants don't fit me tight since I dropped from over 280 pounds to around 220. And to tell the truth, that big sack beneath my belt line is mostly air. Blush. ~ Wednesday, August 07, 2002
SusceptibleI've got to stop taking these quizzes. The "Tortured Artist" quiz struck a little too close to certain self doubts I carry about and gave me reason to be worry that I might be brainwashed into something that would not have happened had I not taken the quiz. I am susceptible. It used to be astrology and superstition that brought me down to a fatalist frame of mind. I now decline to state my sign, read astrology columns, or ask the sign of other people. This is the reason: My hometown newspaper used to carry a comic page feature called "Stargazer". I suppose its location should have tipped me off. I was young, uncertain, and hungry for some certainty. I'd look to this column mostly to see what moon face they put next to my sign. The face was a kind of prototype emoticon. You could see at a glance whether your day was going to be good, bad, or neutral. The actual horoscope was written out in a code. You matched the sequence of numbers next to your sign to a list of words in the center column. Thus did the author cunningly combine the mystery of a crossword puzzle with the promise of insight. I'd secretly glance to the feature every day. How my heart would leap up in delight when the moon smiled and the horoscope spoke of the coming of love or money. The frowning moon made me cringe and the moon which was divided into a light and a dark half made me feel no better. I wanted each day to bring something good. I managed to observe that when I saw the frowning moon, I shivered in anticipation of the soul-killing event that was due to ruin my life. Seeing the good moon also made for a bad day. The chart didn't predict events; it suggested a mood to adopt and all too often the promise of the happy turned into disappointment. Friends who claimed to be better versed in the logic and method of astrology sought to explain my tentative findings: "You're not suppose to pay attention to the sun sign," they'd say. "Look to the moon sign." I did. When they'd ask my sign and make their decisions about whether or not I was a worthy date, they'd still want to know the sun sign. I did a complete horoscope based on the charts that professional astrologers used. I painstakingly determined the exact latitude and longitude of my birth place. The chart suggested a personality to me. I tried to live up to it. The stars said that I was no artist, had no talent (despite the 5 I scored on the Advanced Placement English examination) for writing. I would be best suited, they suggested, to being an accountant. I hated math. I hated numbers. I read at a college level when I was in the Fifth Grade and struggled to learn my multiplication tables. The depression in me took my lack of keen judgement about myself as a sign that I was fatally flawed. Alas! I have since met other depressives who have been through the same self deception. Some are conscious of it, some remain its thrall. If astrology was true, the Beast led me to reason, then some darker force was at work. The same friends who told me about the importance of moon signs and of doing a complete chart had a ready answer for me that the Beast gladly chanted: I was one of those people who suffered from a syndrome in which you experience the precise opposite of what the stars are pulling you to do. I was a contrary. Recognitions of the flaws in such arguments and in the descriptions that astrology claimed to provide for me were drummed out by the Beast beating its drum of doom. My friends assured me that astrology always spoke the truth -- as did numerology, palmistry, bibliomancy, UFO paranoia, the visions of self-proclaimed psychics, and whatever guru or gura happened to be popular at the moment. Following that morning when I sat up in bed and told my wife that I had come to the conclusion that I was mentally ill, I went through a psychiatric screening and was put on Prozac. My resistance to the insidious culture of the Signs began. I stopped sneaking peeks at my horoscope when Lynn wasn't looking and I stopped braking suddenly to determine the color of the darkish cat that had just crossed the road in front of me. I was cured of superstition until I found online quizzes. The Empress loves them more than I do. She introduced me to them. Then I started finding them on other pages. I took them, Posted the more flattering or humorous results to my pages. I am starting to find in myself the rough edge of a consciousness that is the symptom of mindless incubation of the ideas of the self-appointed behavior mavens and cunning sadists who press their judgements on me via the mechanism of the quiz. Not all quizzes are evil: Belief-O-Matic performs a service by pointing its takers to a religious congregation that might suit them well. My results on that quiz (Theravada Buddhist, then Unitarian and Liberal Quaker) made perfect sense to me. Other quizzes, like the "Which Star-Crossed Marvel Lover Are You?" make me laugh. More often, however, I find that the prognosticators who analyze me through their quizzes strike out wildly in many different directions. I've seen myself chopped to fit many "personality" molds from "Tiger" to "Healer". I conclude that most quizzes tell you much about the attitude of the person who wrote them and comparitively little about yourself. The task that most quiz-writers set themselves to is the fitting of others to the stereotypes they have made in their minds. I've often found myself not finding the answer I would have given to a question, mostly because it wouldn't have occurred to the quiz creator as a valid response. The danger of quizzes for me is akin to that of astrology: i start letting the quiz define for me who I am. The author of the "Tortured Artist" quiz said this describes me [sic]:
Why do I give any credence to the opinion of some mediocre "needs-a-life" programmer who is, at most, only a few years out of high school? I've lived my life, thank you, and I have developed nuances from experiences that this fellow hasn't even begun to realize exist. Why do I waste my time worrying that this guy might be right about me? The effect of the Prozac must be weakening. Or maybe I am just bored. Lizza....wrote a kind and generous apology. For my part, I wish to apologize for anything extreme that I might have said about her here. She, like you and me and everyone else, is a buddha struggling to be realized. Agent Provacateur?We had a guy come into the #politics channel today, fishing for support for the idea of violent revolution and secession. I spoke with him for a moment, just to judge where he was coming from. Why is it, he asked, that we can never effect change without revolution? I replied that I felt that we didn't need violence to effect change. Change usually occured after economic disaster. He kept pressing. But you need to take action, right? I said that I put my trust in the nonviolent civil wars that we schedule every two years in this country. They're called elections. I set him to /ignore. In this day when the Attorney General raises the most corrupt of snitches to an honored place at the table of citizens -- over those who work for peace and justice -- one can't be too careful. Past "law and order" administrations have pulled the very stunt. One friend of mine, who was active during the sixties, responded to my warning that there might be such a person coming onto our channel thusly:
My position had always been this: I don't organize or train to kill or maim or destroy for anyone.
QuizNo, I'm not addicted. (Though I am still laughing about how my friend meaghan took the Marvel comic lovers test and came out as "Dark Phoenix".)  What's Your Movie Dream Car? by Auto Glass America ~ Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Crazy Tracy vs. the VaticanCrazy Tracy is rapidly becoming the Howard Stern of blogdom: you read her to see just what she's going to say next! Her latest rant on the Vatican decision to excommunicate the seven women who were ordained as priests three weeks ago (but apparently not the bishop who did it) sounds like a classic case of Tourette's Syndrome. You can almost believe that someone shot her into space, then caused her to fall to the earth without a parachute at Grand Canyon Village; bounce off the South Rim; skip and roll down the Bright Angel Trail (taking short-cuts whether or not they were possible); slam into the magma wall of the inner gorge; splash into the river, bob downstream until she came to Hoover Dam where she was sucked into the turbines and chopped up only to be miraculously reconstituted when her remains went through the sluiceway at Davis Dam; floated down to the Gulf of California where she was picked up by a passing fisherman who landed her ashore at the Bull Ring by the Sea at Tijuana where Pope John Paul the Second was waiting to tell her the news. It would be to his advantage if he were a eunuch because, if such a meeting were to take place, I am sure she'd kick him in the balls. Yes, she's that mad. It came as no surprise to me that the Vatican did this. For many years, John Paul has been applying the political litmus test to prospective bishops to ensure that no daughter of Eve would ever acquire "apostolic succession". Even after two thousand years, they're trying to keep the Touch off the females. Jesus himself had no problem touching women. Nor do most priests. If the Creationists are right and if Eve is responsible for all the nasty aspects of our present existence (including Creationists, I might add), isn't 6000 years a long time for a species to hold a grudge? More seriously, I can't for the life of me see why the Vatican doesn't think that women are fit to preach the Gospel. Jesus himself was once set straight by a Canaanite woman who told Him that he had no business not helping her. [cf. Matthew 15: 22-28] If the spiritual advice of a woman was good enough for Jesus, why can't John Paul take the hint? I have to admit that the first time I saw a woman priest (at an Episcopalian service), I was a little taken aback. Hearing the high pitched voice of Mother Franny intone the opening of the mass nearly caused me to drop the prayer book. I adjusted quickly to that, however, though I have never quite gotten over the darned Episcopal translation of the Mass which seems to prefer words with three or more syllables to the simple ones used in the English translation of the Catholic Mass. As a Quaker, I learned to reverence certain of the older women of the congregation, especially one Madge Seaver, who had studied the Word all through their lives,prayed on it, and thought about it every day. Madge brought a lifetime of experience and insight to the passages of the Gospel that she illuminated. Her impromptu sermons were at least as good -- often much better -- that the ones prepared by men who'd spent a good part of their Christian life incarcerated in seminaries. Madge made the words of Jesus live for me. She was a minister in the purest sense (unless she is still alive, in which case, she is still a minister in the purest sense): that of someone who uses her learning in the word and example of Christ to teach and heal others. The Catholic Church would only be helped by a Pope like Madge. I doubt that even with women in the clergy that the Church will give up its stands against abortion and I wouldn't necessarily want it. Religion serves a fine purpose in offering an alternative morality to the rather sterile one imposed by mere fear of the law. But the Church of my childhood is being hurt by its stubborn refusal to open the clergy to women and married persons of both sexes. The so-called Biblical texts supporting these positions are, like the injunctions we hear again and again "against homosexuality" vague at best. What is the Pope afraid that the ordination of women do? Create an embarassment larger than the one booming out of the Boston Archdiocese? It strikes me as odd in the extreme that a church that supports life should work so hard to avoid being embarassed by pregnancy, if this is indeed the case. Perhaps young women should not be priests. But then, perhaps, so should not young men. Let them both live, breed if they wish, raise a family, and then, in their old age, if they are suitable for the vocation, let them join the clergy and serve their fellow Catholics as Madge Seaver and many others like her serve their congregations. National Catholic Reporter Article on The Feast of Mary Magdalene At Tess's place I wrote:
And at Tracy's:
Events I am glad to have witnessedI promised I'd do this.
Desperate!The things I find to do in the post midnight hours.... I am 69% Tortured Artist Does this explain why the tiger at the LA Zoo walked right up to the window and mewed at me?  Somewhat of a loner, you prefer to remain hidden I confess: I love their curly fries.
~ Monday, August 05, 2002
Hiroshima DayHow odd to be arguing about the necessity of "acts of war" with Lizza Mayhem on this day of all days! She seems to believe that Israel's attacks on Jenin and other places are better than the suicide bombings because they are "acts of war" rather than of terrorism. How can anyone deem any nation that invests millions or billions in acquiring, perfecting, and using instruments explicitly designed to lacerate, implode, bruise, and incinerate human bodies to be the moral superior of a fellow who wraps himself in plastique for a visit to the local shopping mall? Folks are talking about the world becoming more Orwellian. I can believe it. To state on one hand that attacks on civilians is evil and then to belittle the stain of Jenin as "mere acts of war" strikes me as doublethink. Well, with the way most of us have been conditioned to think about "the necessity" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. To tell the truth, I'm feeling a little sick of the arguing. Lizza seemed positively delighted that I took the time to answer her. "Oh boy! A dialogue!" I think what she means is that we're having a fight and she gets to land a few blows on the next best thing to a Palestinian sympathizer. For my part, I'm not so pure. When I enter an argument, I often feel as if the angels sing with me. I feel that the righteousness I feel is pure and peals forth clearly because it is true. I see myself as something of a intellectual superhero, clad in an adamantium exoskeleton and powered by Reason and Good. But as I continue to engage, I begin to sputter. The meat inside the suit turns into an osterized pulp. I begin to leak through the cracks. And when I leak, I stain the suit. I look clownish. Though I remain certain about the good of what I am saying, I lose confidence in my motives. The engines that powered my crusade whimper to a halt. The confident steel blue knight becomes a tormented homunculous. There comes a point where you can only repeat your defenses of yourself. It comes very quickly for me when I am discussing my pacifism, the Middle East, or just about any other political cause. Then what started as "discussion" too often ends up becoming something like the the wars of the Dani -- spears being thrown back and forth. A person killed now and then. Lizza is repeating the same old arguments and making the same old misinterpretations I've heard from so many justifiers of war, terrorism, and battle. For my part, I see no hero. Just a dumb trout who took up some stink bait and is now spinning for his life, trying to break the monofilament. Claude Levi-Strauss wrote: "The function of repetition is to make the structure of the Myth apparent." Why does it seem that no one but me is starting to see the myths? Why isn't knowing this making me feel better and more at peace with the world? I could continue this ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Putting a response atop a response atop a response. I could point out the many ways she misinterprets, the ways in which she follows the current fashion, the ways in which she is too quick to summarize, the ways in which she completely leaves out elements of news that are inconvenient to her, the ways in which she speaks for peace and then calls for wars, the ways in which she does something and then denies she does it, the ways she projects herself on me. The feeling I get is that I am arguing by a book, albeit one I have written, to tactics I've seen employed in far too many places before. I am not so sure that I am any better as long as I keep answering her. Such houses of cards never fall as long as there is a willing exchange. Just look at abUSEnet, at the flame wars that last for years. I don't blog for this. Good bye Lizza. I just can't touch your pain and I can't cure your sickness. You've got to do that for yourself. I've got my own to mind. If there is a God and you are right, I hope you have the justice you hunger for. For those who savor such things: Lizza Responds to Me and I Talk Back There Events I am Glad I MissedIt's time for a little gratitude to balance out the woe I've been filling this blog with. Here is my personal list of places I could have been and things I could have done that I, thankfully, missed:
Watch for things I am glad I witnessed. Coming soon. Another unpopular positionA common argument you hear these days for ignoring Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians is the September 11 tragedy. The way this argument goes is that because the operatives of Osama Bin Laden were attacking on behalf of the Palestinians and the Iraqis, Palestinian civilians no longer deserve our sympathy. A variation on this argument derives from the understandable outrage that many Israelis, Jews, and others feel about the recent suicide bombing attacks. (See Lizzamayhem for a particularly vitriolic example.) Such reasoning I think plays directly into the hands of Jew hating organizations such as Hamas. One need only consider the application in other current affairs to realize the dangerous absurdity and injustice of the stand. Suppose we were to say that all those fools who have been supporting Traficant in his fight against the Government should go to prison. Or suppose we went farther and said that everyone who benefited from any vote Traficant made in Congress (he was bribed, after all) was fair game for prosecution? Only dogmatic Traficant haters would find this a reasonable next step. And yet, we think such reasoning is valid when we declare someone an enemy and expect them to sacrifice their lives. My beef with both the Israelies and the Palestinians is that they are waging unjust war against each other. Who started it? I say that question is bullshit and only serves to keep the fighting going. Palestinian and Israeli civilians are not fair game for the respective sides. In my opinion, the operatives of Hamas and Ariel Sharon all deserve to be punished as war criminals. Neither side is making any sincere effort to locate and attack the opposition's military force and neither side is attempting to bring about peace. Both sides are justly afraid of extermination. Both sides want land to live on. It can be given. Apologists for both sides won't make the first move. The Israelies want to keep Sharon because of Hamas and Hamas keeps attacking because of Sharon. Each side defends its own terrorists. If we truly hate terrorism, we must by obligation hate any extreme violence that is being done in the name of the safety of ourselves, our loved ones, or our people. This is the problem. I put it to Lizza and others on both sides of the fence: when are you going to start not being part of this big problem? My brief program:
For many reasons, I feel that both Israelies and Palestinians are not able to manage their own destinies fairly at this time: including the effect of oil money; the wild dreams of Christian fundamentalists who are just dying to bring on Armagaeddon so they can get into heaven (when you have friends like this, it's time to worry about what you are doing); the horrible memories of world wide Jewry from the Holocaust; the sheer opportunism of the international arms trade which keeps selling the combatants on both sides weapons, political in-fighting within the PLO; machinations within the United States to keep the conflict boiling for purposes of political opportunism -- to name a few. Both sides have some reasonable requests that greatly resemble the other's demands: freedom to live their lives in the towns where they were raised; security against attack; and self-determination. It's time to stop making the civilians suffer and it is time for both sides to honor the mandates that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It is time for people who say that they are sick of the violence wreaked by one or the other side to become sick of all the violence, to realize that when they react blindly in support of blanket attacks against civilians "because they support the people who are doing this to us" they have become true devotees and supporters of the Terrorist Mystique. I feel compassion for all the civilians. As each days news comes in with more atrocities (you get more information about the Israeli attacks in the international media than you do in the American) it becomes a terrific struggle for me to avoid playing into the hands of propagandists. All too many about me are losing their heads and giving in to hatred. Lizza and her counterparts on the Palestinian side (they do sound very much alike) will call this wimpiness. I think it is a measure of character to stick to my hope and my optimism when all about me are going crazy and screaming for blood. The wimps are those who can't hold the course for peace when rogues attempt to sway them or kill the innocent. ~ Sunday, August 04, 2002
The Humbling of ArroganceWe went to the Asian Garden Mall in Little Saigon, Westminster, yesterday. I was fascinated and intimidated as always by the sacrifice of the Buddhist monk who stood outside the back door. He stood barefoot. Looked down. Said nothing. His eyes were shut, contemplating the nothing that falls short of the Real Nothing which is Nirvana. The first time we encountered him, I made a mistake. I didn't lift the lid of the begging bowl. I just laid the cash out on the skin. A modest wind blew it off. It swirled around in front of the double glass doors. The monk made no attempt to pursue it. Nor did he thank me. I felt confused. Had I acted wrongly? Why didn't he go after the money that I had given him?
People who aren't monks tend to see them as extremely unselfish and humble. A monk doesn't share their opinion of him. He suspects that he is both selfish and arrogant. He must stand there barefooted, advertising his sorry state by the wearing of flaming robes, the color of ripe peach flesh. To reaffirm that he is not an extraordinary being capable of great deeds, he places himself in a position where he must depend on others. I don't think the word "shame" gets at what this is all about. Nor does "self-sacrifice". The monk conditions himself to have no feelings. When he stands with his begging bowl, he merely stands. We are not to pity him -- he does not pity himself. We give to validate the purpose for which he lives, that of triumphing over our personal obsessions with the material. The monk will not own things because that joy is, to him, a sickness, a sickness unto death, the sickness of this world. I took a few quick pictures and then rushed in to buy some soft egg rolls and a few t-shirts that were three for ten dollars. I worried that he'd be gone when I finished. I wanted to give him some money the right way. He was. I shyly took a few pictures and gave the Empress a dollar to put in his begging bowl. He gave no thanks. We walked away carrying the artifacts of our own addiction to materialism in a pink plastic bag. America the Gangster LandThis is doubtless yet another of my unpopular positions, but yesterday's signing of the "Hague Invasion Act" marks a low point in American history. While the rest of the world demands accountability, we insist on not being accountable. And now we've put a gun to the head of international law: ~ Friday, August 02, 2002
A Point of EtiquetteWhat do you say to someone who apologizes for the way a friend acted? The way I answered this question today when the blonde barriste came up to me to say she was sorry for the other day was to thank her and then make it clear that I didn't feel that she had to apologize for her friends' inability to control himself. My favorite quizI call myself an agnostic, but the Belief-O-Matic quiz says that I fit in better as a Theravada Buddhist, a Unitarian, or a Liberal Quaker. Which is fine by me because all three religions put the emphasis on being a good person over shaking the beads, quoting the text, or calling other people unbelievers. I am a member of Palo Alto Friends Meeting, but I haven't transferred my membership south to Orange County Friends yet because of my ambivalence about God and organized religion. I think the question that made me more a Buddhist than a Quaker had to do with my attitudes about reincarnation. When faced with the question of what happens to us after we die, I applied the laws of physics, remembered energy is never destroyed but always reused, and answered appropriately. I don't know that I will come back in one piece. Chances are there will be little bits of my soul scattered about the landscape, some of it in human beings or animals, some in flowers, and some in the dirt. This personal idea of reincarnation puts a whole new spin on electricity: sometimes I look up at a neon sign and think "that could be Dad!" I'd love to hear about you scored. Go to Belief-Net, take the Belief-O-Matic quiz and then use the comments link at the end of this article to tell me how you turn out. A Comment Made ElsewhereKelly Caldwell has expressed her reservations about the televised debates around the Second Gulf War. I responded: It's a good thing that a free people can listen in on the Congress when it is considering whether to commit itself to becoming the world's chief bully and make a hopeless shambles of an already bad economy. I just wonder if the big decision is going to be a smart one. After the experience of the infamous fabricated Kuwaiti incubator story, I can't say that I am going into this war ready to trust any rationale for it. Madison Avenue's invented atrocities and skewed the picture before. I am just waiting to see what "killer argument" they are going to come up to counter all the UN fact finding teams? ~ Thursday, August 01, 2002
ViewsTook a walk out by Concourse Park to see how they're doing on getting the thing shaped. The sidewalks are in. They've laid out the foundations of the restrooms. No grass or trees or flowers beds yet, just cream-colored dirt and sterile white concrete. I'm dying for this park. I need to get out every day so that Lynn doesn't come home to an ogre and I need a variety of views so that my writing doesn't start running in a rutted road. From my favorite chair at Tully's, I can see the bar and the entrance to the bathrooms. When I sit in the comfy chairs of the corners I look out at the flower-rimmed parking lot, Lake Forest Avenue, a buckwheat-infested lot, the Foothill Toll Road, and the crenellated line of white townhouses that is Portola Hills, beneath Mounts Modjeska and Santiago. Switching chairs helps a little. I don't like sitting in the comfy chairs next to the window because they remind me too much of four years I spent imprisoned in an antique swivel chair at a Menlo Park plastic injection molding company, my last "real job". That company has thankfully passed into extinction due to the recession that followed what should now be called the First Gulf War. The place was filled with megalithic presses whose size was measured in the hundreds of tons. Part of the machine melted the plastic pellets. A gigantic arm shoved the halves of steel cubes that had insides carved out in the mirror images of parts for chain saws, automobile seats, and coffee brewers. The halves clanged together, dully as Spanish-speaking workers reputed to have green cards pulled the handle, waited a second for the polymer ooze to congeal inside, reopened the mold, pulled the parts, and then trimmed the parts of that thin plastic leakage off the sides that those of us who have been in the trade call "splay". Parts came out in colors like royal blue, coffee brown, red, blue, yellow beige, and dark antelope. Sometimes operators had to set small nuts or other parts in the mold itself. Or they added them after they were pulled. One crew did nothing but assemble pieces that we shipped to Livermore where they were added to automotive seats. The folks who worked in Building Three had it the worst. They spent their days in temperatures that exceeded the low hundreds and in atmospheres that reeked of musty polypropylene, ABS, and other polymers. On hot days, the odor drifted over to Building Two where I worked. It gave me a stinging headache right behind the eyebrows, an evil complement to the aches in my neck, shoulder, and temple that developed from the stress of working for and among managerial barbarians. To while away the tedious hours and to keep some creative impulse alive, I composed a little ditty that I would sing to myself to the tune of "Home on the Range":
I had an office job. I managed the computer network such that it was, compiled spreadsheets that never seemed to be right, and hid in the bathroom when I couldn't think of anything better to do. In those last years of legitimately elected Republican rule, I felt helpless. The only way I could think of to fight the bastards was to write a novel about them, against them, out of that awful place. I'd come home tired, however, and to an answering machine full of messages about the Peace Committee of the local chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, which was always riddled by finger pointing and long arguments over the definition of the word "racism". I had no mind for writing after working at that place and after coming home to that. I'd log into my PeaceNet account, get on the Net, find a vulnerable news group, and flame some bastards who probably hated their jobs as much I did mine. These hours made me feel something like life, though I have to confess that to many I was something of a horror, one of those fiends who made meaningful the nickname I coined for newsgroups: "abUSENet". I had a better computer at home, an XT I'd assembled from component parts for less than $500, than they had there. Management bought early CPM -- Morrows, Osbourne portables, and some custom job that served as a network -- and never upgraded to DOS. Hidden behind the president's office was the shame of the company, an IBM System III that took punch cards. I never had to work off that, thankfully. They thought the CPM machines were treasures. I thought they were junk and danced elatedly every time one burned out because I held out hope that at last they would see sense and overhaul the accounting and production tracking systems. They never did. The boss knew how to find technicians who'd fix any machine he brought to them. A dead Morrow would go out for a few days and come back renewed, a zombie that drained the life force through my fingers. I struggled with management every day. They were too cheap to fire me without cause (they'd have to pay my unemployment) and I was too stubborn to quit. I stayed there for what might have been the worst four years of my life, when I worked for barbarians in an annex to hell. My desk stood next to a door that management insisted be kept locked because they were afraid of someone "from the neighborhood" coming in to steal our precious CPM computers and to snatch an unguarded purse. My Morrow was set with its back to a window. I remember the view. A narrow bed of junipers shaded my spot for most of the day. I could peek through the door and across a parking lot which was rutted and cluttered with debris. I did not see its like until I visited near the front lines at Osijek, Croatia. The parking lot drew pebbles, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, sea gull feathers, dead leaves, and a grime that seemed to have no place of origin unless it was in the relentless grinding of the macadam beneath the wheels of cars and the tread of feet going from Building Two, where I worked, to Building One. And back again. A line of elms feebly hid our cars from peering eyes that rode in trucks and autos down the street and from the off-duty drivers who hung out in front of the local taxi cab company which was across the street. Next to the cab company was a trade school called the "Opportunity Industrialization Center, West" or OIC as we called it because it almost sounded like "oink". There wasn't a single attractive building on that street. Everything was built of concrete painted in the same dirtied, flaking bone colored paint. The elms saved me. I'd look at their bark towards the end of the day because they were the one thing that was natural. I trusted them to make the air outside breathable for long enough to get into my car and drive away. If you went outside, you choked. The neighborhood had its own local inversion layer. The elms checked the carbon monoxide levels and helped me stay awake as I sat in on yet another meeting called by a manager who was a proud Jew who often spoke of how he hated any kind of moral teaching and that of the rabbis most of all. I depended on that window to keep me from losing my mind in that place. Sometimes I amused myself by attaching my eyes to passing cars, hitching a ride to unimaginable places that didn't stink; offices where the people were kind and the assigned tasks made sense; somewhere out there in a dream, over the monochromatic rainbow called the Dumbarton Bridge. To shut that view out of my brain I now think of our new park and the adjacent chaparral. I want to be a cipher sitting on a bench overlooking the Whiting Ranch badlands. The passing wind doesn't need to take me anywhere.
Tully's AgainI went back to Tully's today, made my peace with the manager, and found we were both happy with our mutual understanding of what happened there the other day. The barristes had been wondering among themselves about what I was always writing about. This one day they let a goofball boyfriend of the soccer girl know about their curiosity and for reasons that probably had a great deal to do with classic late adolescent testosterone poisoning, he decided to "out" them. He thought it was cool to put the squirm on the guy who was different. Maybe he felt threatened. There is a stage that young people go through when they think that being an artist is utterly cool. They don't know yet that we sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of the night or work for hours in public places ignoring people or whimper when our pop tarts go cold because we have been just too busy doing our thing. I suspect it was a calculated move on his part to belittle me and shame his girl into complaisance. Kind of like the evil king in the Mahabharata stripping the clothes off Draupati so that he'd embarass her brothers. I let the manager know that the kids can ask about my writing. I can't always share it -- I definitely do some stuff which is adult content, but they can ask. I am a bit secretive and I do have that "look of Baudelaire" to protect me when I need real privacy. But they may ask. I don't have a problem with that. There's only one dread remaining, something I am not sure I know how to handle yet. I can handle puppy love. I can hold any woman at arm's length without, usually, hurting her feelings. But what am I to do if they start bringing me their poetry for me to read and critique? There's a scary thought. Bearded Crazy ManI think I'm on to something. There's a broad conspiracy afoot propelled forward by the satorial industry. They're trying to make men look like dykes. How else can I explain all these men who eschew the natural foliation of their chins and cheeks to choose instead the bare butt face look? Look at me. That face exists in the natural state of maleness, with little grey wires telegraphing forth from the chin and a long sideburn thick enough to make a toupee gracing the cheeks. That's a man's face, even if the rest of the body is wimpy. Men grow beards. Except most men have been shamed into thinking that they look funny with them. Some do. Especially the ones who leave just a little wisp on the chin and declare it a "mere goatee". No male goat would be caught dead with that little fuzz on his face. Go look for yourself. They're the ones in the segregated area at the petting zoo. They've got attitude. And full beards. Most men are fascinated by lesbians. Just checks the stats of any porn site and you will see that the lesbian sections consistently score the highest. I've known some men to go to the extremes of pretending to be lesbians and hanging out in chat rooms or game servers looking for partners. They've confided their secrets in me, you see. And as a one-time Mush god, I personally know of a few occasions when a couple of closeted heterosexuals found each other as lesbians and went at it like bunnies in the bushes. Except they didn't do it in the bushes. They did it on the Internet. Surprised as all hell when the big secret came out. They do things like that because they're frustrated. Lesbians don't like them. They can figure out why: Is it my breath? My hair color? The length of my penis? One need only check one's email box to learn of secret exercise programs and food supplements that purport to cure a small penis. But my impression is that most men don't really care about the size of their penis. If they did, you'd see these supplements on the shelf in every drugstore and every grocery store along side the aftershave and the soap on a rope. You don't see them, however. What you see is shelf after shelf of products developed expressly for the purpose of razing the natural woodland that develops around the peaks, slit gullies, and expansive plains of a man's face. Most men, I dare say, would be happy with a penis the size of a clit IF it would bring more lesbians to their door. Castration is out because it is painful and removing one's testicles kind of defeats the purpose which is to attain more sexual pleasure, so they do the next best thing. They destroy their beards. Some men are more honest about it than others. Look at hoopty. If his picture is any indication, he shaves his face. Grows his hair to his ass. He's even joined the Dykewrite Ring and added his breasts to the rack. Hoopty I tell you is living the man's secret dream. I can't say that he's making me want to remove the fuzzy brillo pad that I use to guard my mouth, but I respect his decision. He's open about it. He's out of the closet. He wants to be a dyke and he's living his dream. All the more power to him. The only thing I do to my beard is trim it. Beards do develop a mind of their own, you know. If you let them get too long, they sneak up your nose when you are sleeping and get caught in your teeth. I have a pair of stainless steel scissors made in Germany that get used for no other purpose than to trim my beard. It's the holiest of acts, performed once a week or so before the same altar that I visit to send the liberal coatings of plaque to the sewer gods. I like having a beard. I like being a man even if I am a Prozac eunuch. I've got no sex drive -- and believe me, when you see a pretty woman, it can be a blessing that you don't have a penis declaring your admiration for all to see -- but I've got a beard. I have no doubts about my sexual identity. The Empress loves my beard. Every time her grandmother or my mother hints that maybe I should cut it off, she puts down her foot as hard as any Quakeress can manage and says "I like it." Things have been getting better with Lynn's grandmother lately anyways. She has cataracts. The last time she saw me she praised me for cutting it off. It's still there, I assure you. My mother hasn't given up. While my childhood barber was still alive, she used to urge me to pay him a visit, "just for old time's sake". Now she just recites a litany of all the horrible skin diseases that you can develop under a beard. I confess I've had a couple of them, but they go away if you wash it regularly. I think Mom is dead set on making me into a dyke. She wants a lesbian daughter-in-law. And the funny thing is she sort of got it in the Empress who is bisexual and, like me, really not interested in threesomes. But please don't tell her. Mom hates it when her hidden motives get exposed. She's a bit like George Bush in that fashion. She's going to hate me for saying that, too. Please keep it quiet. |
and stared at the photos for about fifteen minutes, trying to figure out why none of them showed anyone's toes. I proceeded on the theory that "camel toe" referred to a large nose until I found some pictures with no faces in them at all. "The history of the camel toe" finally clarified what I was supposed to lay my eyes on.
"You're not going to get a thank you," my friend Tony Chen from Hong Kong explained. Though his begging bowl looks like half a bongo drum, he doesn't sing or dance for your donations. I had not done wrong to give him money. I needed simply to make sure that the money went into the begging bowl, to make it clear that the money was certainly intended for him. He wasn't allowed to ask me for it or to thank me for it. He couldn't chase the loose change. For my part, I was to stay silent and not gloat over my donation. If my soul is better or worse for the offering, I could not tell you. One gives. One receives.
