Monday, February 28, 2005

ALBERTO VILAR

I stumbled across this biography of my friend Andy, and I had to laugh because, amazingly, all of it is true.

Also, just reading this has sort of inspired me to do something great.

Also, I hope Andy never reads this, because his whim is rumored to have led to the death of many men, and I do not wish to make his list.

RSS FEED

I have posted the RSS feed for this blog under the links, on the right side of the page. I'm not really sure how one would use it, if one so desired, but I know that people have asked me to post it.

I now fully expect, in all seriousness, for this blog to become the most popular in the world.

SOUL-SHATTERING

This Yahoo news story about the congregants who attended the same small Wichita church as the BTK killer reads, if you were to strip it of the cold objectivism of the AP-style writing, almost as a short story:

Inside Christ Lutheran Church, neighbors and friends crammed into the pews Sunday, staring at Clark as the pastor made his way to a lectern. Latecomers, finding nowhere to sit, mingled outside in a hallway, peering through glass doors and straining to hear what was said.

Gerald Mansholt, bishop of the Central States Synod in Kansas City, Mo., spoke at the service and pleaded with the crowd for patience — to wait for the evidence. "We grieve with you," Mansholt said. "Words fail us at times like this. The very foundation of our faith is shaken."

Several women cried. One buried her face in her hands, bent over her knees and silently sobbed.

"The events that have unfolded over the past 48 hours have the power to destroy, to devastate us," Clark told the congregation. "These events have the power and energy to be a wedge that drives us apart, or they can be a force that will hold us together in these trying times. 'It makes no sense!' 'What has just happened?'"


I'll spare you my usual, painful attempts at humor - twice the effort for the half the laughs - and just say that this is damn interesting, damn dramatic stuff.

Friday, February 25, 2005

I MEAN, SERIOUSLY. COME ON.

Proving again that "conflict of interest" is not in their vocabulary but that "wut you gonna do?" certainly is.

THE AGE OF GOOD MEN HAS PASSED

News of the death of Robert Kearns, the 77-year old inventor of intermittent windshield wipers, has left me feeling hollow and defeated. Kearns was a part of that group of great American men that lived through the Depression, rose from its ashes, and fought the face of evil in the Great War. Overseas they did their duty and lost friends who, like them, had seen hell and vowed to restore peace and goodness to the world of men. They knew evil and desparation; had looked it in the eye and battled it, had conquered it. When they returned they hoisted this country on their sturdy backs and got down to the business of working hard. Because of men whose character was forged in the fire of battle, whose earliest memories were the hunger and cold of the Great Depression, we pluck the fruit that is fast food restaurants, endless subdivisions, and intermittent windshield wipers from the tree that is America. I take my hat off to you, Mr. Kearns, for you remind us why we forge ahead - it is not for glory or for fame, but for the betterment of our fellow man and the improvement of the human condition. You taught us to live, and you taught us to see - to see more clearly through the windshield of life.

Unfortunately, the editors of Yahoo news were not as respectful of your legacy as it deserved, for though you died on February 9th and were buried on the 14th, they have decided that only today, the 25th, shall you be remembered. For shame to them, they are imbeciles and they do not understand that the curtain is closing on the age of decent people. To you, Mr. Kearns - today I will wipe my eyes in sorrow at your passing, probably once every ten minutes, though maybe once every twenty minutes, or maybe every five mintues, but assuredly at a distinct and timely manner, intermittently and until the tempest in my soul has quieted and the rain in my heart has extinguished.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

A SMALL-SPOTTED MAN

It's been cold and raining the past few days in Los Angeles. Today the sun came out and things warmed up. There's a cool breeze, but not enough to actually make things brisk. Regardless. During lunch I walked to the nearby outdoor mall in search of the bookstore. I had perusing on my mind. Not halfway there I felt the hives bloom under my shirt. It felt like really bad static, like my skin was incredibly dry and my shirt was incredibly charged. Little missiles of pain shot from my immune system into my bloostream. My epidermis responded in kind, and my hair bristled. In those lonely dark days when the hives originally plagued me, the first part of my body to turn bright red were my forearms. As I walked down the street to the bookstore at the mall, I turned my palms up and waited to see the little pimples bloom.

Unfortunately, I got all of the pain and none of the pleasure. Like picking a scab, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing the hives cover my skin, a visual justification for the pain itching underneath. Once I got inside the store and settled down, the sensation subsided. On the return trip, though, my blood boiled and I took the shady route. Slowly.

This is just further evidence that the hives are induced by weather. Cold weather front comes in and my body adapts. Then it gets warmer and it freaks. Exercise or prolonged time in sunlight only exacerbates the condition. There has to be a reason for this, and the fact that no one has been able to figure it out means that the medical establishment is full of a bunch of dicks, or a bunch of stupid dicks.

And ladies, if you kept me warm at night, thus helping me maintain a perpetual inner degree, I wouldn't be having this problem. Do your best for science, and for the good of [a] man(kind). Oh Judy Budnitz, how I long for your well-written and oddly intriguing embrace.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE LAST TIME YOU WATCHED AN EPISODE OF SNL?

Yeah, me neither.


Seriously. Who are half these people?

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

SHE ALMOST MAKES ME FORGET ABOUT AUDREY

Here's the good news. After examining the picture found on this page, I can ascertain that Ms. Budnitz is not engaged, or worse, married. Do you see a ring? I didn't think so. Having clearly established her availability, let's continue tabulating positives. Brilliant writer. Which makes her beauty all that more difficult to stomach (her look not being that dissimilar to a certain Mennonite often discussed on these pages). What's more, she lives in San Francisco, which is at the least on the same coast. At the most, it's a reason to move.

The bad news. As a legal assistant and entirely unaccomplished (professionally speaking - I was once a sectional tennis champ), I don't feel I'd be able to go toe to toe with fair Judy on either an intellectual front or a physical one. Natural beauties like that don't come along very often, and if ever one was to cross my path, I would likely not notice, or perhaps ascribe to her some deficiency I would find appaling and thus not worthy of my (more than likely) futile attempts to bed her. Or just charm her. Regardless. If I had won the birth lottery (not that I'm complaining - I quite like living in America and not, say, some dustbin in the Sahara with my 12 dying brothers and sisters - but I mean the big one, the Powerball of birth lotteries, independently wealthy with beautiful parents and a heart of pure gold, not to mention a sense of humor and beguiling wit, all wrapped up in a veneer of humbleness and dedication to my fellow man), then I might say I have shot with Judy Budnitz. Or Audrey Tatou, for that matter. By why would I settle for an actress - a French one, at that - with her requisite fits of insanity and her character foundation of narcissism and insecurity, when I could have in her stead a woman who writes stories like "The Kindest Cut," in which the narrator discovers an old journal written by a surgeon during the Civil war who slowly becomes obsessed with severed limbs?

I see you do not have a reasonable answer to this question, and that is entirely my point.

Friday, February 18, 2005

I JUST GOT REALLY EXCITED BECAUSE THERE WAS A NEW EMAIL IN MY INBOX

But it was just an auto-confirmation from Amazon letting me know I had just purchased a CD.

AMERICAN SUMMER

The boy grabbed a deviled egg from the milky-yellow tray, danced around his mother's legs, trampled the brown spiky grass. Wound tight then set loose like a satellite, he rocketed down the slope toward the pond, shoved the egg in his mouth where he held it close to his cheek. He threw his arms up and waved them back and forth, an advance warning to the ducks resting on the surface of the water.

The girl sat with the women and listened to them talk about men and their smells. The conversation indicated that if you knew a man, he probably smelled poorly, certainly not better than the last man discussed. She had never noticed how a man smelled, except for her father, who smelled like cows. She wondered if different men smelled like different animals, but then thought that if that were the case, the women would have mentioned it already.

The people said "it's not the heat, it's the humidity," but really, it was the heat. The sun was so bright no one could tilt their heads, everyone shuffled about looking at the ground, sweating. The light went through leaves, through trees. It was like there were no shadows. Even the birds had to keep flying, just keep moving, to dry the sweat and cool themselves. Deer couldn't sleep because they were shifting in their thickets, trying to find a place to rest that wasn't too hot.

The boy reached the water and jumped, tried to sky the entire pond, then hit the water and relaxed, his body dropping and floating at the same time. He reached out and grabbed at the water with his hands, hoping to touch a turtle or a fish swimming by. He came up for a breath then went down again, got his body straight and kicked with both legs. Wondered if there was a bottom close enough to touch.

The girl got up and walked to the tire tethered to the large sycamore, slid her legs in and wrapped her arms around the hot rubber. She was either just sitting there watching everyone talking, or she was waiting for an adult to come by and push her. She knew that if they saw her they would say the same thing they always said, which was, "that Tammy is some creature."

The people agreed that the sun was danged hot. They wiped their necks with their handkerchiefs and squinted.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

IF YOU LOVE ME

You'll watch this.

SAWDUST TRAIL

Though I hate to admit it, this morning on the way to work I listened to Air America, the progressive talk radio station found in the upper reaches of the local AM dial. I hate to admit further that I laughed particularly hard at a call-in guest named "Laughton" who claimed that "God's got a wok and is stir-frying sinners". The line reminded me of my good friend Billy Sumday, a man know to a few of you here; a man not just of the cloth but one whose britches are aflame, lit permanently by the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Below is a quick excerpt from Sumday's sermon to the unwashed at a Bingo game in Sterling Falls, Montana, April 1937. Reprinted by permission of the Sumday estate.

I read of a preacher who said that the miracles of the Bible were more of a hindrance than a help. When I called him on it he proceeded to spout some insane blasphemy the gist of which follows. The heretic asked me first to re-imagine the famous scene in which Jesus was talking to the five thousand. He said that like many speakers, Jesus was overrunning his time limit so that the disciples, who weren't too stupid to notice that nightfall was upon them, said: "Master, you have talked this crowd out of their supper and there is nothing to eat in this desert place; dismiss them so they can go into the towns and country and get food."

We all know what Jesus said and did. He fed the crowd with only one measly minnow and a piece of his flesh that symbolized a loaf of bread. Well, the old rooster I seen telling his congregation the Bible contained no miracles said that those words were merely a metaphor - a literary flourish, the poofer said - and that it was not "scientifically accurate" for Jesus to feed all those people with such a meager bounty. Well, damn it to hell if he wasn't right. I looked him in the eye in an effort to more closely approximate the influence of the devil in him and uttered with a clenched jaw, "You ignaramous, that's why they call it a miracle."

Some people will dazzle with shiny silk robes and a well-wood-worked pulpit, but try getting them to tell you about Jesus and what he stood for and you can here the neurons triggering in the brain vessel slower than a cripple dropping a dime in the collection plate. That's why I claim there are the agents of the devil in our midst - because God wouldn't allow such dunces to lead his flocks the likes of which you can find today.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the story of the prostitute from the city of Galilea who sold her body for a half-penny and ended being the queen of the Egyptian empire. Your life is like that, too - sell what you most prize and get the world in return. But at what cost, sinners?

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

FRANK MUST DIE

There are few things that warm the cockles of my heart quite like the triumphant story of a young child conquering a debilitating disease. Any disease will do, but my insides get especially warm and dewy when the specific ailment is of the terminal variety. We can even give it a name. Call it cancer. No reason not to.

With that said, I've got to admit that this story just doesn't punch me in the kidneys like it should. All the necessary ingredients are present. The young boy, with his can-do attitude and plucky disposition, makes for a wonderful victim. Only a Nazi would have found it hard to root for the little guy as he set out on his perilous journey through the Kindgdom of Endlessly Multiplying Cells. And who knew that during his adventure he would find a tumor the size of a grapefruit? Of course we all cheered as he valiantly duked it out with the strange intruder that had come to lodge itself in his brain, working to expand and destroy the fabric of nerves that served to keep the young boy's body functional and alive.

But did he have to name the tumor? And upon naming the tumor, did he then have to declare it's ultimate death? Wasn't that - and I hate to be the one to bring this up, because I'm sure it's crossed many of your minds - just a bit maudlin?

We live in a new world, people. A new America, a new culture. It's a culture of life, not death, and every living thing, excepting animals and the browner peoples, deserve not only a chance to live, but at the least, a chance not to die. It may be only one man's opinion, but for my money, espousing the mantra "Frank Must Die" does little to build the bridge between humans and the mutating scourge of cells we affectionately call cancer. Sure, one child won his battle, but what have we done to win the war? By anthropomorphizing a tumor, haven't we made the whole battle to find a cure just a tad personal? It would comfort me to know - and again, this is just me - that the researchers currently working to combat the havoc this condition causes are not naming the tumors they study and dissect. Nor would it give me solace to discover they were dressing the tumors up in baby clothes and small knit hats and attaching Mr. Potato Head parts to make them look more "like this dickhead guy I used to know who I totally want to fucking kill".

But maybe I'm reading too much into the story. Maybe the kid's on to something, and the world will soon discover that the best way to vanquish that which troubles us is to give our problems a human's name and use all the powers in our reach to destroy "him".

So, OK, little man, congratulations. "Frank" died and we're all very proud of you. Now it's my turn to give it a go and if there are no objections, here are a few things I'd like to erase from existence:

"John", my puss-covered and scabby rash that covers the outer half of my upper left leg.

"Jennifer", my constant worry that I will never make love to a woman more beautiful than the last.

"Larry", my need to always be touching something on the instrument panel of my car.

"Bruce", my occassional tendency to get an erection at the sight of a man or very unattractive woman.

"Peter", my irrational urge to live among the native people of the Amazonian basin.

"The Spoonbender", who is the author of the webpage, "The Spoonbender".

Friday, February 11, 2005

BRIDE AND BULLSHIT

Back from lunch, and two things.

First of all, I ordered sweet potato fries and little did I know they were going to be cooked in the same fry batter as the fish. Asswipes. So I could only eat a few fries before exceeding my fish oil intake level, and I believe I might have surpassed it. Back at my desk now and am feeling a bit woozy and light-headed. If I never blog again, you will know the reason why.

Pity me?

Second of all, I just have to say that the reason Jane Austen and Bollywood movies have never been combined before is because they're both really fucking dumb.

AND THE WORLD CANNOT HELP BUT CONTINUE TO CRUMBLE

Future Readers

Editor, Times-Union:

I just read the Times-Union with the pictures of the babies (Future Readers of the Times-Union). I wish them all the best for a bright future, but I have some doubts. I have heard about some people graduating that couldn't even read their own diploma.

Reality came to life when I was talking with a neighbor boy. On the back bumper of my truck, I have a plate that reads "Disabled American Veterans - Life Member." He asked me what it said. I told him, "You read it!" He said, "I can't read." I said, "I thought you graduated from Mastodon Valley High School." He said, "I did, but I can't read."

I thought he was joking, but I found out later, he wasn't.

Allen D. Regenos
Mastodon City

Thursday, February 10, 2005

YUCKRAKING

Sinclair Lewis's legacy of the muckraking journalist gets a shot of life in this latest report from Fox News.

No rock is left unturned in this damning expose of Michael Jackson's accusers, who claimed to have been "kidnapped", despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Indeed, one of the author's confidential sources has this to say: "The mother loved Outback and wanted to eat there all the time." What kind of woman consumes blooming onions while her son is molested and held hostage by the King of Pop?

Amazingly, the evidence against the defense continues to accumulate. As the author writes, "I have seen receipts that show that the family had a telephone in their hotel room and used it constantly during their five-night stay." Seriously, people, hasn't this witch hunt gone on long enough? Can the regular law-abiding citizens who frequent this site really imagine using a telephone, not to mention repeatedly, if they themselves were kidnapped?

Something smells fishy about this case against Mr. Jackson, and it's not the wine the nice man in the white military uniform just put in my Diet Coke.


Billy Jean is not my lover. He's just a boy who claims that I am the one. Who molested him.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

TRAIL OF BULLSHIT AND TEARS

First we called them Indians. But that wasn't sufficient. Not "accurate" they said. So we called them Native Americans. Because two capitalized words and six syllables was the only way to respect the majesty and history of those noble people. Now, apparently, they want to be called yet another name, and this time the moniker happens to be "punk clique". And though I agree it's a more appropriate title, can't we just cut out all this musical chairs bullshit and settle on "Redman"?


You can scalp our heads, you hooligans, but you can't scalp our common sense.

Monday, February 07, 2005

I'VE GOT TO ADMIT

I'm a little pissed that no one told me about this.

MIDNIGHT MOVIE

For a moment, I wondered what film the little tyke was trying to pick up at such a late hour. But really, I think you know the answer, and I think I do, too.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

CAUSE FOR ALARM

There is a black man that works downstairs in our office building's lobby. His name is Steven and he has always been quite friendly with me - to the point that if I see him in one of the restaurants or food courts during our mutual lunch hour, he will make it a point to wave and say hello to me. Which would be lovely indeed if he didn't always call me "boss".

"Hey boss. Good afternoon to you."

"Morning, boss. Have a nice day today."

This I would expect from a shoe-shine boy, but not a grown man that I call by his first name. And as I stated above, the man is black and there has been a history, in our country, of men of color calling white men "boss". My replies of, "Good morning Steven", or "Good afternoon Steven", would seem to fall on deaf ears, but what strikes me is that this man not only knows my first name and refuses to say it (this I know from the occassional utterance of my name), but he knows that saying "boss" chaps my ass and makes me feel awkward. How can I tell? There is a glimmer in his eye, a sheen of mischief and trouble that sparkles at the edges of his vision, watching as I enter the elevator and start my day, knowing that there is not a way I can prove to him my love for the darker races and my belief in man's equality, and shared noble spirit.

The man is a bastard, and an ass, and I've decided to not talk to him anymore.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

SUPERSTAR X

Last night I watched "Project X" with my roommate and now, looking back on those heady days of 1987, it must have been painfully obvious to anyone with a pulse that Helen Hunt was going to be a star.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

SOME NUTTY LINKS THAT HAVE TO DO WITH MORMONS

Here's a link to everyone's favorite Mormon comedy site, the Latter Day Lampoon.

Here's a link describing the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where 127 innocent settlers were slaughtered by Mormons.

Here's a link describing the secret rituals performed in Mormon temples.

Here's a link to Mark Hofmann's infamous and forged "White Salamander" letter which tricked the Mormon Church by telling a story (initially thought to be true) about Joseph Smith conversing with a heavenly spirit in the shape of a salamander in a field.

Here's a chipper link to Brigham Young's sermon on the nature of blood atonement.

Why don't churches organize their own militias for the purposes of retribution anymore? A quick history of the Danites.

That's all for now. May we all pray to be our own gods someday and populate our celestial planets with many wives and children!!

LET MY CAMERON GO

I just finished reading a great, long book called Kavalier and Clay.



Except for one part towards the end, it was nothing like the film Paris, Texas.