BBQ Y'All?

Joining Everyone's Mailing List

I'm mellowing out to the spare swampy folk of Sam Beam aka Iron and Wine right now, so righteous indignation is tough to muster, that is, until I peep into my recycling bin and note five pounds of mail from every do-good organization from the Sierra Club to the ADL to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and many more, that accumulated with alarming speed in my mailbox during my recent sojourn to the East Coast. During any given week, I'm bombarded by these mailers asking for volunteer time and precious cash. This is a fairly recent development, the volume of the solicitations that is, and I can trace it back to the day I decided to rejoin a group that helped to form my early-adult moral compass.

Early on during my four-year hitch in the U.S Navy, I decided that since I was serving the mighty sword of U.S. power, maybe I might take some time and join an outfit that sought to liberate the world from tyranny in a different way. I was mulling this, and wondering how I should pursue it, without raising the hackles of my superiors, when I came across a recorded benefit concert for Amnesty International. See, back in 1988 I was quite a Peter Gabriel fan, something I rarely admit anymore given the quality of his work since he scored The Last Temptation of Christ-- his creative zenith. His first three post-Genesis albums produced some of the better prog-art rock of the last thirty years, and his live version of Biko on the Amnesty International album was stunning...and not a little emotionally wringing.

Steven Biko, for those of you not aware, was a black South African political figure who wanted nothing more than equal rights in his homeland and therefore an end to Apartheid. Naturally, ruling South African whites frowned on such chicanery and repeatedly arrested and jailed Biko for his crusade, and eventually beat him to death in an interrogation cell. Folks like Peter Gabriel and Amnesty International helped to generate an outcry where there was none. Traditional news organizations didn't care, and international diplomats and politicians looked at the whole affair as a domestic issue.

Giving voices to prisoners of conscience

What a great idea, and the accompanying music was grand. As an added bonus, Amnesty International is a British group, and considering all the cool things the Brits have done for Western Civilization... It seemed the perfect counterpoint to my existence as a Navy Spook inside a satellite tracking room atop a frozen knoll in Adak, Alaska, so I sent a donation to the Amnesty International folks as instructed on the back of the album cover and became a member. I fired off a half-dozen letters to lend a voice to political prisoners from Turkey to Burma over the next couple of years, and it brought my Uncle Sam-addled brain a little peace in the process.

I do not recall being solicited by every charitable organization in the English speaking world during my first run with Amnesty International. There were occasional call-to-actions letters, and some UNICEF-type propaganda, but certainly not the deluge I grapple with now. It prolly helped that during that period in my life, certainly post-Alaska, I changed addresses several times a year. Times change, and the internet makes file sharing easy on many levels. Next time I move, the folks at Amnesty International will not get a forwarding notice. I'll make sure of that.

It takes time for me to rifle through this stuff, not to mention the twinge of guilt I feel at not having the bandwidth or resources to address every plea for help. Amnesty International, and similar organizations, would do well to keep mailing lists to themselves. When an organization feels more like an irritant than anything else, I begin to care not a whit what they do or who they do it to. This is important for a group like Amnesty International because they are one of a handful of organizations, like the Heritage Foundation, that I support despite the fact they are politically far to the left or right of my extreme moderate views.

When I read Amnesty's annual reports, which depicts the U.S. as being morally equivalent to Saudi Arabia or Burma, I wince for a moment and remember Biko. I remember voices for democracy in Iran and elsewhere who would've been killed and planted by now without Amnesty International calling attention to their plights. Thing is, it's a precarious balance, and when I internalize the fact that my time, money, and overall good will is slighted by Amnesty International as they ship privacy over to every friggin leftest NGO on terra firma, well, Amnesty International's righteousness becomes hard to stomach, and my gut reaction turns from support towards the darkness of destruction, or at least dismemberment, or maybe just a little virus to destroy their mailing lists.

There's too much information being thrown at us in the 2k5, and almost all of it is unsolicited and unwelcome. It's rude and tasteless for any organization to assume that we have all this extra time to sort through their crap. I won't even get into the environmental aspect of this for I can not begin to fathom how much material is used, and waste generated, by slapping together all these 'important' direct mailing campaigns. Is this the price we must pay to keep unemployment low? Being a telemarketer carries less baggage, another tangent of the same problem of course...jerks who steal your time. I want compensation!

In that vein, folk's musical resurgence makes perfect sense. Spare sounds better than ever when every part of your life, every nook and cranny, is strafed with some cacophony or another, whether it be direct mailing blitzes, telemarketing harassment, media saturation, fracturing under the duel strains of work and family, and many more little insanities I could list for weeks...giving you folks even more pablum to wade through, and thus contributing to a problem that'll eventually drive the better of us insane.

so i'll clear the road, the gravel
and the thornbush in your path
that burns a scented oil
that i'll drip into your bath
the water's there to warm you
and the earth is warmer when you laugh

- Lion's Mane Sam Beam (Iron & Wine)

...and thank goodness for that, it really does keep the edge off. The clear aching acoustic strings and sedated yet clear vocals...the occasional banjo flourish. Cut off the electricity, curl up with your best girl, and nothing else really matters. If electronic downtempo hadn't died, courtesy of 9-11, this stuff might have never burbled to the surface. Just try listening to Iron & Wine or Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) back to back and maintain anything like sharp vitriol. It's impossible I tell you, even though you're left wondering why modern folkies are switching up monikers like hip-hop MC's. Makes me feel nostalgic for summertime flings for childhood fishing excursions to a gravel-pit cum pond for bluegill with a half-bottle of good DEET on every exposed surface. Sometimes Iron and Wine is like humming an ode to your old best friends, lost to the past, and all the attendant shifting dispositions. Yo Amnesty: you cats better thank people like Iron & Wine and Bonnie Prince Billy, for they keep me mellow when I see my mailbox packed with 30 pieces of crap you assholes generated. By extension, they keep your mailing lists safe.

- k

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27may05

News For The Masses

SackNote: The quasi rant-essay-cum-blog item below was supposed to appear on the 25th, two days ago, but the regularly scheduled posting was thrown off course by a rather heinous, but thankfully brief, battle with either a flu bug or some form of food poisoning. Most of Wednesday and all of yesterday was spent sleeping, moaning, and or whimpering about my impending death. Yuck. Naturally, the weather has been dandy while I've been bed-bound, and now that I'm getting my sea legs back it seems that the next three days will bring cold and intermittent rain. Joy. Fargin Michigan weather. No wonder this place has been left to junkies and socialists...

Onward.

The recent Newsweek article and subsequent dustup regarding prisoner and holy book abuse by our uniformed forces have drawn plenty of fire, opinions, shrugs, and over in the lands of turbans and burkahs, riots. Plenty of angles regarding this story have been beaten to death: our cultural insensitivity, not calling out obviously backward and misogynistic belief systems, thinking the worst of our military while thinking too highly of jihadist terrorists and other stone-age thinkers, and of course the that ol' soapbox of bull about media bias. A couple quick points about the media bias thing then on to what hasn't been covered enough, which is, the fact that too many people, both here and in the Islamic heartland, take a hackneyed rag like Newsweek (the USA Today of weekly newsmagazines) far too seriously...and I'll have to add my piece to the moral relativism angle as well, since its such good fodder for blog-rage.

Both the right and the left ought to stop their incessant whining about media bias. Of course the media is biased, and fortunately for everyone there is a media outlet out there, somewhere, that will parrot your thoughts, gladly, so long as you support their advertisers. The Jack Van Impe show is more unhinged than, say CNN, but not to James Dobson or Pat Buchanan. FoxNews is the jingoistic mouthpiece of BuchCo. to the MoveOn crowd, and the New York Times are a pack of whining Jew commie pussies to the National Review cult.

For my money, the Washington Post and The Economist are my best and most evenhanded distributors of news, but even these stellar news outlets have their prejudices: both are pro capitalist and classically liberal-- not in the Ted Kennedy sense but in the John Locke sense. Animistic evangelical snake-dancers and Stalinists won't agree with much of what The Post and The Economist has to say, but these people wouldn't follow Newsweek, or for that matter, sanity, so let's leave those folks out the discussion. It says something about the general biased nature of the Western World's media outlets that The Post and The Economist stand out as organizations most informed people can agree on. That means that the majority of us are pro capitalist, pro civil rights, and centrist (something our political system reflects poorly). Newsweek generally reflects the same views as The Post and The Economist. Although Newsweek pretends not to take an editorial stance on issues it reports, I've always thought that the selection of one's content reveals as much bias as editorial pieces themselves.

Newsweek has a fantastically large circulation (~4 million) because its news comes forth in bite-sized and unchallenging nuggets. It's written for a 5th-grade audience which means these cats don't think to highly of the typical American news consumer. Fair enough, I don't see evidence, based on the popularity of reality TV and fad diets that Americans in general like to think things through, especially the cause and implications of our foreign policy. Newsweek is ideal for the Doctor's office or for some quick catch-up in an airport after a week of business-related boozing in Tokyo. If you're really tired or have mild brain damage, Newsweek is a great place to, ah, not exactly catch up, but at least acquire enough information to make it seem like you care to your equally misinformed peers. We've also seen that Newsweek is taken seriously overseas in the land of stonings and Madrasses...where someone with 5th-grade reading level is considered a Ph.D candidate.

I'm not ragging on the Newsweek's reporters who write this pablem per se. Most journalists there are smarter and more motivated than I am, but the mission of Newsweek is to sell as many copies as possible and after a certain point you're going to be writing fluff news to attract fluff minds. The Economist has a worldwide subscription of ~1 million and Economist readers do not read Newsweek. It would be like trading in dry aged beef for roadkill squirrel. You may do something like that on a bet but not because you expect to be a better person by doing it.

Newsweek writers are given their angles and talking points before they start a story. More importantly, they usually have about 1,500 words, at best, to analyze and otherwise flesh out the nuances of the story. As most of you know, since this site is not really a magnet for Newsweek readers, you simply can not work the angles of a serious feature story in 1,500 words, no matter how many nice photos and sidebars you throw in. Like I've said, if you've been in journalism long enough to write feature pieces for Newsweek, you absolutely know how to break down a story and cover every relevant tangent, but because you're writing to that 5th-grade audience, you don't have the bandwidth (eg copy space) to cover everything. I assume this frustrates many a Newsweek journalist, until payday that is.

Information gleaned from focus groups over the past 30 years has shown that Americans, if they must read something informative, want lots of pictures, graphs, and sidebar surveys, but for the love of Christ, no windy analyses in the story itself. The Koran desecration / torture story in Newsweek may have been 80 - 90% factual, I have no idea really, but the story left out a very important angle (actually many important angles but I'll focus on one): the implied moral relativism between folks who would kill you for talking trash about Islam, and the rest of us.

When I first saw reports that the natives in Afghanistan and Pakistan were rioting and killing because of a Newsweek story about Americans mistreating the Koran I shook my head sadly. These are the same stone-age asswipes who blow up Buddhist statues, treat women like low-rent property, and advocate death for all infidels and apostates. I doubt that such people account for more than 20% of all South Asian muslims, but it's sad to know that such folks exist at all. It was a friggin story by an American rag about soldiers beating up an Islamic holy book as told to a reporter by...wait for it...prisoners!

Do you think prisoners ever have anything nice to say about their captors? Bottom line: people who subscribe to the tenants of Western Enlightenment are better than the assholes who would kill over perceived slights against their glorious whatever that has so far done absolutely nothing but leave them 1000 years behind the rest of the world and quite insanely angry about it.

If Newsweek was going to publish such an inflammatory article, using suspect sources, the least they might have done is publish an accompanying story about the moral relativism between the secular western world and the jihadists. I'd like to think that the average American and or average global Newsweek reader would appreciate such broad coverage of a sensitive issue. Actually, saying that Newsweek targets the average American is a bit harsh on Newsweek. Most Americans can't locate Iraq or Pakistan on a globe, and thinks that a CPU is a Star Wars character, and really, no news magazine is going to reach these folks and that's fine too. Evolution needs chattel to work smoothly so long as they stay in their trance, or maybe a trance is their highest state of consciousness. We're gonna get there, over here and over there.

- k

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23may05

Let The Sunshine In

Currently in Cleveland: Sunny yesterday, now crappy. This is tiresome. Cleveland's climate is similar to Detroit's climate, and both remind me of Flint's climate-- all part of the northern Ohio Valley. This area is overcast roughly during 70% of all available daylight hours. There is a metrological explanation for this. Wet warm Gulf of Mexico air often battles with cool and dry Canadian air for this region's climate control button. Furthermore, the jet streams which carry moisture and pressure systems from West to East often straddle a line running roughly from Minneapolis to Columbus. Finally, the fine inland seas known as the Great Lakes send cool moisture into the air, riling things up even more. All these factors and more conspire to create wild temp swings, almost constant cloud cover, and robust alcohol sales.

On a more mystical level, I think that crap weather pervades much of the rust belt to send everyone a message: get out, now...let this terrain descend back into a state of nature...humans have taken things as far as possible 'round here, and look what it's done to us. With the bad weather, economic depravity, and absence of decent sushi bars, it's just plain nuts to stick around these parts any longer than nessesary, but new Wal-Marts and bingo halls keep popping up, and so the torch keeps getting passed, yet I fear the talent may be falling off. When western boomtowns ran out of gold or whatever they were trafficking, the locals didn't stick around and bitch about their bad fortune, hell no, they moved on. And it warrants mentioning: It was sunny in them western boomtowns! The last ones standing in a boomtown gone bust were not the most motivated or creative souls the town had to offer during its heyday and I'll let you good folks draw whatever inferences you need from that.

Why do people remain? Manufacturing accounts for less than 18 percent of our economic output, and location-intensive manufacturing accounts for less than that. There is simply no good reason to set up shop in the middle of Michigan atop the corpses of failed factories and shuttered union halls and endure 200+ days of crap weather and an aging and expensive labor force. Anyway, to those who say they stick around for the four seasons, I say, move a bit south.

I've just returned from a rewarding, touching, sad, and surreal trip to Maryland. The differences between that fine state and the northern Ohio Valley, in just a weather sense, are vast, even though the two regions are separated by but a half day in a functioning car. Along the DC - Baltimore corridor, Spring begins a month earlier and fall a month later than in and around Detroit. True, from June through August the DC area is so wiltingly hot and humid that fragile types drop dead all over the bus stops and rest homes, adding to a vaguely old and menacing stench that makes DC - Baltimore smell like the north Jersey Shore. That's a small price to pay for additional sunshine. Besides, you have the cool resorts and hot springs of the Virginia Appalachians or beach towns along the Maryland shore should too much 90/90 weather (temp/humidity) conspire to dissolve you. More importantly, not only are the nice seasons longer around DC, the sun makes an appearance almost every day. Even torrential storms rarely last more than a few hours.

Sun is important, folks, and don't believe otherwise. A recently released study tells us that moderate exposure to sunshine, without sunscreen, actually lessens the risk of cancer in most people. Apparently, the Vitamin D that our skin manufactures as a reaction to UV exposure is much better for us than the Vitamin D we get via milk, supplements, and even vegetables. Sure, skin cancer risks remain, but as Dr. James Leyden, Professor Emeritus of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, says, "I like to have wine with dinner, but I don't think I should drink four bottles a day." Moderation, as always, is key.

Sun is prolly one reason why Europeans living around the Mediterranean are so much healthier than most Yanks who live in the Ohio Valley (and I've seen plenty of proof that such is the case). Med Euros, despite the fact that they are wine-gulping chain-smoking Marxist pansies, get plenty of sunshine and fresh vegetables. In places like Cleveland and Detroit, sunshine is something to fantasize about between visits to the Nuke'em Tanning Salon and veggies are something that the kids pick off from their Little Ceasar's pizzas.

When the best blue collar jobs were in Ohio and Michigan, roughly between the Great Depression and 1970, it made sense for folks to buck up against dreary weather and live around these parts because they made a good living, they could send their kids to decent schools, and drive decent cars, and eat as many heaping mounds of cheese-and-sausage-choked pasta as they could lift to their mouths. You have to give a little to get a little and if that meant sacrificing sunshine and good health for financial security, that's okay, I can buy into that...not the way I'd choose to live myself, but I won't poke fun at folks who do. But what about the last 30 years or so?

Ever since the manufacturing and mining bases of this country shriveled up and blew away, smart folks have been leaving this region by the millions. Since 1980, Michigan has tacked on roughly point-five perecentage points of people while the United States has added almost a third to its 1980 population. In terms of net gains, both coasts and the southern half of the country are leaving places like Michigan and Ohio in the dust. These trends will not change in any substantial way unless a new industry grows its legs around here, one that can offer endless 80k per year jobs to anyone who can walk and smoke schwag at the same time. One thing that San Francisco and DC had in common, in my experience, was that both places were heavily populated by mid-westerners who left the land of gloom and overcooked vegetables as soon as they could. The ones who stay are the ones who fear change. These are folks who by and large would rather live in a world of cold darkness than risk the unknown...yet gambling is a huge sport around here, but that's another rant.

The nasty weather really is the punchline to this area. Sometimes, when I'm driving past any one of a number of industrial graveyards in Flint, I see the rusting fabrication equipment, a smashed welding machine, and some tilted presses being slowly disassembled by the elements and I always think, wow, how picture perfect, what an epitaph. This is why they call it the rust belt. Then the rain starts and it's like no, THIS is why they call it the rust belt.

- k

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18may05

Delusions of Yard Sales

I've been on the road quite a bit lately, ever since my driver's license photo, accompanied by a rather nasty tribute, surfaced on America's Most Wanted and FoxNews. The disguises I've since employed are okay-- at least I get to stay up on costuming techniques, which is a marketable skill in film and politics, so if I slip the dragnet and make it to Brazil without getting whacked by banditos, feds, or a stray jaguar, you should all expect to see me reppin' in Lula da Silva's government. My gringo features will vanish, at least on the surface, but my heart and my unshakable doctrine of extreme moderation will live loudly in my advisory role to the Brazilian Presidente. Hopefully Lula will give me a swank apartment down by the 900ft Jesus in Rio. If he wants me to do my work in Brasilia, I may have to just keep going on to Argentina. Brasilia's too damn humid, 24/7...makes DC feel like Oslo. Y'all look for me. I'll be the funny-looking cleric wearing a hockey mask.

Indeed, I've come to like the disguises, but the cheap motels are a drag. One thing about being on the run with a limited budget, you either need to sleep in fleabag rental spots, in a tent, or in a ditch. Since I absolutely must have plumbing, it's been the motel way. Problem is, I've learned that 4th rate motel managers love watching America's Most Wanted, so pop into these places incognito-- as a modern caveman...Ziggy Stardust...Yoda. The inconvenience is already wearing on me, and I have yet to leave the country. Am I contrite for my crimes?

To a degree.

I may have overreacted when I set the lawn chairs on fire, and I was definitely wiggy by time I took out the display of framed paint-by-numbers abominations and ragged board games, even though my 4WD vehicle is tailor made for that kind of demolition. Thing is, I was in a rage and there are defenses for this kind of behavior, if only I could afford the right lawyer. If that yard sale host and his grizzled friend hadn't fired a volley of shots at me and my jeep, we'd all be cool. Far as I know, no one got killed. No harm no foul, right?

I went on with my planned trip to the East Coast, not thinking about repercussions at all regarding my multiple yard sale violations, that is, until I checked into a little motel outside of Gettysburg:

clerk: Hey, aren't you that lunatic who razed three yard sales?

me: No, no ma'am. I'm a goalie with the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3rd string. We haven't been practicing much lately. Besides, what kind of a depraved bastard would trash something as perfect and holy as a yard sale?

clerk: I'm telling you, I was just watching America's Most Wanted, and I was absolutely shocked at what this terrible person did. Property destruction! How low will we let these animals stoop before we put a stop to the madness?

me (backing away slowly towards the door...reaching for the keys to my Jeep): Exactly. Summary executions can't come fast enough. I hope that defiler of Yard Sales is brought to justice.

It's been furry faces and strange headgear ever since.

The yard sales themselves don't bother me. If people want to be free of their junk and have the time to hawk it from the comfort of their front yard, fine. What bothers me are some of the people who attend these yard sales, the people who park their monstrous vehicles all over the road, assuming that anyone waiting or hoping to pass through the rural congestion actually wants to stop and peruse mounds of clearance crap too. What bothers me is how supposedly functioning members of our society lose their ability to drive, walk, or think clearly when they see evidence that someone they don't know wants to unload velvet artwork and dented toaster ovens.

My zone of contention rests in having to play bumper pool with oversized Town Cars, Crown Victorias, and monster SUV's that invariably line both sides of busy two lane roads...where it seems all yard sales of consequence are held, and where I must navigate to get from my place to the expressway. There's nothing quite like the jolt of being simultaneously cut-off and nearly sideswiped by two conversion vans angling for the same stretch of shoulder after nearly taking out two drooling mulleted babes in short-shorts who are loping towards a rusted washing machine. I had to kiss the double yellow six or seven times before I reached the interstate-- which as I type this is being ground into powder and resurfaced along a 30 mile stretch...along where I live of course.

The breaking point, and the resulting hassles, came and went as I squeezed my vehicle past two Suburbans parked poorly on opposite sides of Mt. Morris Rd., north of Flint. I had been house-sitting for Mom while she visited friends and coconspirators in Tennessee and Florida. I was darting to her place to mow her lawn, with a full gascan in my Jeep since there was no gas in the lawn mower nor in her shed. I was in a rush because there was a thunderstorm about an hour away according to the radio, a lawn to be mowed, and a wedding party I needed to be at some nine hours away. I'm juggling this in my head, and cursing the plethora of Friday morning yard sales on such an otherwise fine spring morning, when a husband-wife team darted out from between two vehicles to a place bout three feet from my front bumper, safely on the double-yellow, to lecture me loudly on my driving skills. I was soon mad at myself that I'd hit the brake to begin with.

old man: Sonofabitch, watch where you're going

old lady: (shaking head sadly, as though I was some defective who needed to be stashed in a group home or in a relative's basement

me: (really really tempted to stomp on the accelerator)

They just stood there and stared at me, in the middle of the road. Soon there were a couple cars coming from the opposite direction, and since I had a third of my vehicle leaning over the centerline, oncoming traffic couldn't pass until both me and the oldsters moved away from this bucolic bottleneck. Then a car came up behind me and soon the horn was beeping and the two oncoming cars went into reverse and found shoulder/road space, and I'm thinking that there is some kind of yard sale mafia, that there must be some level of organization behind such evil happenings.

That's when I retaliated. I found out something new about myself...that I have a taste for fires. Hopefully I'll be able to keep a hand around it. Like I said, no one go killed, and what I destroyed was already deemed junk by the original owner...yet John Walsh makes ME out to be the bad guy. Damn.

I've made this point before, and I make it again because I can't help it: Don't base your happiness on how much junk you can collect or how much buffet chow you can snarfle down your talking hole. If you are uncomfortable or disconnected to the point that useless objects are your lifeline to reality and sense of self-worth, for the love of God, man, get help. Absolutely no one should base their schedule on friggin' yard sales, it's not cool when there are so many more wondrous things to discover, like a.m. binge-drinking and snipe hunting. But what do I know?

Vive buenas!

I'm the same, as I was when I was six years old, and oh my God I feel so damn old...don't feel anything. - Issac Brock

- k

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12may05

Pistons Flop and Bolton Comes Up For Air

The Pistons played like b-ball freakin' GODS for about 12 minutes last night at the Palace. Tayshaun and Sheed were draining outside shots and driving for buckets in the paint. The passing was crisp and the Pistons defense and team speed gave the Pacers a collective Gomer Pyle face. 33 - 18 after one quarter, Detroit. I figured the rout was on, and the series over. Unfortunately, between the 1st and 2nd quarter, someone or some thing deftly removed my hometown 12's souls and spines and the Pistons went on to turn in the ugliest and most inept 3 quarters of basketball this side of an Inuit summer league game on the outskirts of Yellowknife. I felt as though I needed a blood transfusion after just watching the atrocity, the poison was that pervasive. Suddenly Detroit couldn't shoot, couldn't pass, nor could they rebound off the offensive glass. Did they all sneak into the locker room and violate Rasheed's bong when we weren't looking? Isn't Larry Brown paid to keep an arm around that kind of foolishness? No disrespect to Indiana, scribes in the Hoosier State are no doubt prattling on about a great Indy comeback, and touting Reggie Miller's shooting acumen while drawing AARP benefits, but shit, Detroit blew it.

Like sports, so goes real life, really. Just when you think you got your situation by the shorts, obstacles real and imagined emerge to derail your best laid plans. In Washington, where the spunky Wizards are turning to shamans and the ghost of Lee Atwater to avoid being swept by the Heat, people get crushed under sudden changes of fortune every day. By time you finish reading my this dose of babbling wisdom, many careers will have been lifted and crushed...sometimes that of the same person. DC is a freaky city, people. I spent 5 years of my 20s trying to make sense of it all and came away with a cynicism like armor plating, and a wounded liver.

Three weeks ago, John Bolton's chance of being our next UN Ambassador was equal to Reggie Miller popping up next to Katie Holmes on People's Most Beautiful People List. In the real world, and certainly in the corporate world, after you feel the boots of your colleagues for a month or three, you curl up into the fetal position and wait for a Human Resources generalist to drag you past the security guard and pitch you onto the street. Hopefully the site of stumbling bums and the stench of body stank and urine gives you a second wind to get up and pursue another career. Looks like John Bolton won't have to do that, because after withstanding everything the Democrats could throw at him, moderate Republicans, after some initial waffling on Bolton's nomination, are falling back in line.

Tangent: I'm wondering how Nancy Pelosi manages to wield power despite a political record on national issues that in comparison brings glory to the efforts of the 2k3 Detroit Tigers.

Enlightenment doesn't mean much in a theocratic democracy where no one between the Smokies and the Rockies agrees with a damn word you say. No, I'm not bashing faith, since most folks can't deal rationally and productively with the alternative, but there are good ideas that never come to the fore because those who propose good ideas can not hide their contempt for the vast majority of our electorate. This seems to keep us at an impasse and Dubbya the Junior is what we reap. Still, I say Dubbya can nominate damn near anyone he wants for HIS branch of government. John Bolton is something of an ideologue, does not think highly of UN bureaucracy, nor do I for that matter, and Mr. Bolton also seems to have an abrasive management style, which places him squarely in the company of 2/3 of the senior executives across our fine tax-slashed land-- including Pelosi's (and my) San Francisco.

John Bolton is a policy wonk who has worked under Republicans and Democrats alike. He is known as a gifted administrator, but not a leader. Early reports that he was serial sexual harasser and abusive administrator have wilted under close scrutiny. He can be forceful and animated pushing the policy of his elected bosses...but that is HIS JOB, that is why he clashed with Colin Powell over at the State Department. Powell sought to undermine Bush policy and Bolton did not. Bolton is the kind of man who can read a policy paper and tailor the actions of his work to fit the positions on said paper. George Bush wants us to deal with the UN in a certain way, and it does not matter who the face man is, the UN will be dealt with as a body that debates policy and ameliorates the stings of hegemony and nationalist desires, but not erase them. The World is in no position to lend every nation an equal voice, there is just way too much disparity in both powers among nations and who and who doesn't abide by the rule of law. Maybe we get to world government in a 100 years or so, I would like to see it, but we ain't there yet by a damn sight.

Democrats obviously want to stick it to Bush any way they can. The institutional hatred for our 43rd President by the left is a few degrees past hysteria. Battling Bush on social security, while unproductive and wrongheaded, is okay on paper and part of the political game. Similarly, I've never thought highly of piddling nomination battles, even when they were warranted, just because folks can get away with being difficult...usually manifestations of being sore losers. For example, when I was a tyke, there was a big dust-up over Reagan's attempt to bring Robert Bork up to the Supreme Court. That's okay. Supreme Court Justices are lifetime appointments and I don't think that justices ought to be far from the mainstream of American opinion, though thanks to our wondrous public education system, is not a mass opinion I often hold dear. Today, Bork would be just another Conservative jurist, 23 years ago he was an unhinged radical...and ah Ted Kennedy represented the center. Democrats hated the fact that Reagan was in office and tried to screw him whenever they could, and the result was an asskicking of historic proportions in the 1984 election. Anyway, Ambassador to the UN is not a lifetime appointment. It's not even a cabinet appointment. It's a diplomatic post, and one subservient to the Secretary of State-- our nation's top diplomat. Whoever ends up as our UN Ambassador will answer to Miss Condolezza and of course to Dubbya the 43 and a third.

In that context, throwing so much time and energy battling a sub-cabinet nomination seems very petty. It's akin to the Republicans blowing the Schiavo affair out of proportion. Of course major news networks don't cover it as such since maybe someone pays these dimwit hacks not to state the obvious, and I quote Bill Hicks: The difference between Democrats and Republicans is the difference in swishing a mouthful of Listerine from one side to the other. John Bolton will be the next UN Ambassador, and he will carry out White House policy regarding the UN. Senate Democrat fools like Carl Levin will go on Hardball and whine about the Republican colossus failing everyone at every turn, while Bolton gets up to speed on his new job and people will forget he's even there...and move on to the next petty distraction.

Bottom line, if you don't want someone like John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN, do not elect someone like George W. Bush to be President of the United States.

- k

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09may05

Sunshine and B-Ball

Had a great weekend. It's now 80 degrees outside, and I'd rather be frolicking in the sun and acquiring an el-negro-like tan. But because I have a lot of work, and I'm Irish, it'll have to wait till tomorrow. Then I'll throw on the speedo and the hiking boots, slather myself with some spf3000 sunblock and invade the Flint Public Pool with a bowie knife and bottle of Everclear...scarring every soul within 600 yards.

Okay, I'm not entirely serious about that last part.

Great weather be damned, I'll be spending a good portion of this evening in front of the tele. In about six hours, the Pistons and Pacers will square off in the first game of what could be the ugliest exhibition of basketball since the Knicks and Rockets put America to sleep in the 95 Finals.

On paper, the Pistons ought to win this series with ease. They are better at every position, given the fact that Indiana plays without defensive monster and reigning NBA psycho, Ron Artest, and with a wounded Jermaine O'Neal. Artest, as every sports fan knows, was relieved of his basketball duties for the season by NBA Fuehrer, Herr David Stern, for trying to return the cup-o-beer to the fan who had accidently dropped it forward and down five rows to the scorer's table, where Artest was composing himself after a little dance with Ben Wallace towards the end of a game Indiana was winning by a mile. I thought the suspension was a bit long, but then again Artest did punch THE WRONG FAN. Funny how that stuff tends to work out.

When Jermaine O'Neal is healthy he is a better baller than either of Detroit's Wallaces, by just a little, but O'Neal is essentially playing with one arm. His shoulder has been killing him for months, but he guts it through for the team. Similarly, Jamal Tinsley has been playing on a wrecked foot, and their biggest scoring threats are a 40-year-old jump shooter (Reggie Miller), and that crazy bastard who joined Artest up in the Palace stands (Stephen Jackson). Indiana should get swept in this series, but that won't happen.

It's the toughness and single-mindedness on Indiana's part that scares me, and the vengeance factor-- their season went to hell at the Palace, after all. The injured Pacer players are playing through their pain, and Stephen Jackson must be taking loads of lithium, since he's been damn near genial on the court when he's not manically defending the opposition's swingman or draining big shots. Seriously, electroshock has to figure into that somewhere...you don't go from crazy to cool-headed without a little help. The Pacers were given up for dead when all the post-brawl suspensions were handed out, yet Carlisle rallied his depleted troops and Indiana somehow leapfrogged the more talented Cavaliers, Nets, and 76ers into the 6th seed of the Eastern Conference playoff bracket. Then these guys went ahead and beat the immensely more talented, and 3-seed, Boston Celtics.

I'm eagerly waiting for Bill Simmons post-mortem on his beloved Celtics. What a bunch of hacks. Indiana is a limping wounded bunch playing with heart and balls under the guidance of the 2nd best coach in the Association. Rick Carlisle should be Coach of the Year, and Doc Rivers ought to be run out of Boston...and I hate saying that because I like Doc as a person, but it's the coaches' job, by definition, to ensure that his more talented team beats teams with inferior talent, especially in the playoffs. Anyway, Simmons, dude, publish that piece because I want the laughter ...something to point at every time you ignorantly diss the Pistons. Not that I expect our Motown 12 to receive love from a Beantown scribe.

Pistons - Pacers will go six games. Detroit will win the series. No team will sniff 100 points. As for the underground fight pool...and the over / under on whether the shots will be fired inside the Palace this time, well, I have faith in mankind, generally. But Southeastern Michigan and Central Indiana are not the most cultured outposts of Western Civilization so I've got $50 down for three ejections and one maiming. My friends say I play it too conservative, but what can I say, I'm a slow healer.

Which leads me to this addendum / non sequitur:

Remember Bob Saget? America's Dumbest Home Videos? Full House? Level 12+ douchitude?

Perceptions are strange, and often wrong, but it's what we have to go on. Turns out that ol' Bob Saget is one of the sickest, most twisted degenerates roaming outside of prison walls. Check out this article, courtesy of the Observer. Like my friend Seth said, 'This means he @#$%ed the Olsen twins.' It's funnier than when I saw a wasted Bill Maher in a Hollywood nightclub hitting on an teenage Asian chicks. I love this country.

- k

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05may05

Slap The Greasy Palms

American politics rarely attracts top-flight talent to its ranks. Between the scrutiny, invasion of privacy, and equal loads of slime and bullshit, anyone who seeks to rule the world looks to the corporate world rather than government. As Michael Corleone would say, 'It's the smart move.' It also explains the longstanding relationship between company barons and their government ho's.

From the jabbering lackeys manning Flint's City Council-- men and women who have drawn checks, kickbacks, and ego inflating perks while my hometown enters its third decade on life support, to the congressional leaders who foreswear lobbyists on the campaign trail while the fuel for their private jets is bankrolled in silence by those same lobbyists, so long as said congressman votes the right way, our system so reeks of corruption and incompetence that I'm amazed any decent person can come with 10 miles of Capitol Hill without a gas mask.

I understand these dynamics, and given the nature of political work in this day and age, I expect the political profession to be packed with amoral hacks and ward heelers. It beats the hell out of The Totalitarian System and it brings more order and cohesion than anarchy. The thing that keeps our political system from sending our country into the ditch is our culture of professional advisors: specialists and proven winners in various fields who advise our honcho politicians.

Ideally, when the President sets policy, he gathers the opinions of business executives, historians, and scholars of many stripes, listens to what they have to say, and makes the best decision from the information given. That decision is supposed to be in the best interest of the country, since, you know, our President has been put into place to represent the best interests of our country.

And yes, I'm winding up to bitch about our energy policies again. Sorry.

I thought it odd that Bush's energy advisors were culled from the ranks of companies on the dock for criminal actions-- Enron, Duke Energy etc. Thought it more odd that Bush Co. sees statistically negligible oil fields across the ANWR as the answer to our voracious oil consumption. And now I'm just thinking it's criminally insane that this Texas Oil Ass Clown refuses to use the bully pulpit to nudge us towards more diversity in our energy usage.

The latest issue of The Economist has some wonderful content, as usual, about avoiding the next oil shock. The quick solution is diversifying our energy sources and shedding our reliance on crackpot autocrats for our fuel. We have passed a point of no return regarding the supply and demand of oil, meaning, we shall never see $1 a gallon gas again. China and India have been busy buying drilling rights across Russia and Africa, and are actively bidding against us for futures in South American and Middle Eastern markets. Foreign oil will continue to trend upwards as South and East Asia seek to emulate our 1st world lifestyle.

Bush Co. must know this, they have to, and yet their policy response is to ratchet up exploration and drilling, domestically, and chiefly over some contested land in Alaska, while allowing market forces to determine when to get serious about fuel cells. Proven reserves up in the ANWR have been estimated between 500 million and 10 billion barrels. We can split the difference and say there are 5 billion barrels (though personally I've to think the total is much closer to 1 billion barrels) up along Alaska's North Slope. Oil explorers figure we can hit peak production of one million barrels a day, tops. We currently consume ~20 million barrels a day, and that figure will rise.

The scenario with this Administration at the helm is thus: We spend two years to insert the infrastructure needed for that extra one million barrels a day. Oil futures go down a bit as greedy speculators factor this in and thus anticipate we'll be buying ever more SUV's once our ADD nation sees gas prices ebb. Meanwhile, real supply across the Middle East remains mostly constant, with more and more real output from there and Russia and Africa being sent to China (our next Cold War adversary) and India. During this time, our pursuit of conservation and alternative energy still moves at a snail's pace without government stroking, and when the ANWR is pumping at full capacity, gasoline is running ~5 dollars a gallon, exurban soccer moms can't spend on nice things any more, consumer confidence plummets, and Incurious George is back on the ranch, washing his hands of the oil shitstorm he helped to facilitate. Our next President is going to inherit a mess that'll dwarf the terrorism issue.

The argument from Bush's crew always tails back to trusting the markets, even though today's market system is not free, nor are the market's actors reliable when the are perceptions or realities of serious scarcity. I guess Bush's Harvard MBA didn't cover this. Or maybe the coke blacked out that portion of his life. Or maybe he's just being dishonest. I want to think the best of our chief executive and the 60 million good souls who gave him a second term, but I have to wonder. Herbert Hoover told the masses to trust market forces after that dark October in 1929, and we know how that turned out.

How does this happen? For starters, Americans are busy breed. We don't have time to properly vet every politician who wants the keys to our country. Our political system, and the media, are supposed to vet for us. Sadly, the political system is all about backscratching and fingerpointing, and our media is so shrill and shallow that it's damn near impossible to believe anything anyone says. It's all noise noise noise, yet these real forces that are shaping our future for the worse are in play, and an Administration we've put in power to guide us through a thorny epoch have instead decided to enrich their friends and close their eyes to the peril of our tomorrows.

Sorry, but that's f*&ked up.

- k

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03may05

Punk'd

Is it the recycled casino air? The booze, the chemicals, the food? Is it the lack of sleep? Could it be the overspending?

Why do I always get sick after a couple days in Vegas?

Better still, why do I always go back?

Today I feel like someone has injected me with a cocktail of toxic refuse and the blood of Keith Richards...wait, what would set those two ingredients apart?

All questions, no answers.

I had an absolute blast in Vegas, let me be clear about that. There was a time about 3am Saturday morning inside the Hard Rock when I felt 2,000 feet tall and ready to challenge heaven's current monarch for The Throne. Well, we learned in Dogma what happens when you try to pull off that nonsense, and since, I have been sent to my place.

I'm a shivering, shaking, chattering mess. Wait, that's because it's 32 degrees outside my fine fine Flint, MI bungalow. But it is May. Freakin May! Dammit.

Anyway, I made a vow some time ago never to write about actual Vegas experiences, only hypothetical Vegas experiences, just in case one of my friend's decides to make a serious run for a high office. Sure, the slogan says that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but bet your ass that what happens in Vegas gets shown on grainy video via CNN if you choose to run for the Senate. That's just how it is, and I'm too tired right now to change the rules, or even try...but since there's no way in hell Seth would ever degrade himself with a career in politics, lemme give a shoutout and a reminder that some antibiotics will clear that right up, Mr. Wolters. I'm kidding, Heather. Indeed, I'll skip the particulars of the weekend itself and focus for a moment on the interesting bookends to my weekend.

Dee-troit Basketball.

On Friday, with drink in hand, I talked a ton of poo inside our Flamingo suite while the Pistons and Sixers went hammer and tong at each other. They played fast and loose, and that's usually bad for the Pistons, because they are about defense, not playing the run and gun. 115 to 104, Philly. Allen Iverson poured 37 points and dished 15 assists. He did it from every angle, and he was knocked on his ass at least 15 times. I was pissed that the Pistons lost, yet I enjoy Iverson's game so much I couldn't really stay mad. He has the biggest stones in the Association.

Ben Wallace led Detroit with 29, and while it's nice to see Big Ben go off, when he's leading the offense, chances are that there's trouble on the horizon. Piston players even admitted later on that they were caught up in the high flying atmosphere, thinking more about acrobatics and no-look passes to the detriment of committed defense. It happens. I was already a mess by time Game 3 was finished on Friday, and so was everyone else, which is probably why I didn't catch too much abuse. It's hard to properly rag on someone when you've lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.

Then, ~40 hours later, there was Game 4 at 10am Vegas time Sunday morning. Eiiiiiiiiowwwww. Garbage time, baby, garbage time.

I dragged myself down to a Flamingo casino lounge to watch the game and drink away my hangover, cursing all the while that I was unable to snag an early flight out of Vegas, while all my friends were either en route or already home...sleeping it off or getting their emergency transfusion. My eyes were almost welded shut, and the slits of my whites that were visible matched the flaming red carpet around me. The area was bedlam with people running to flee Vegas and a whole different crowd coming through to vacation for the week. I'm very suspicious of folks who, of their own free will, choose to vacation for a week in Vegas...as in Monday through Friday. Sure, it's cheaper by the day, and you'll have more luck finding $5 blackjack tables, not mention discounts galore on lap-dances, cheaper bribes, etc., but still.

Game 4 was about what I wanted it to be except for about one minute in the 3rd quarter when Tayshaun Prince got tangled with Marc Jackson and went down hard, pounding the floor with his fist. I almost lost it right there...the combination of being stuck in Vegas for another 8 hours, my body on the verge of collapse, and now this? Larry Brown rushed over to Prince's side, patted him like a concerned parent, and suspect he said something to the effect of, "Tay, we're toast if you can't play." At least that's what I was thinking, because the 76ers were playing like they expected to steal the series. Had Willie Green not missed a free throw near the end of regulation, I write this piece with an even darker demeanor. As it is, Prince has a mild ankle sprain, which he'll undoubtedly play through.

Until the very end of the game, no one for Detroit was making shots when made shots were needed. Philly played outstanding defense, the crowd was insane, and then there is the Iverson factor. Have we not learned yet that close games are not what you want with AI on the other side? Look, I'm a Pistons fan, and all that entails, to the core, so I know what it means when I say this: AI is the best small man of all time. Better than Stockton, better than (saying this through clenched teeth) Isiah. AI was on fire all over the court, making shots with his body parallel to the floor, guarding like an insane pit bull, and coaxing all-star level play out of Chris Webber. That was the craziest part. C-Webb had a stellar playoff game, and having AI nearby was a big reason for that.

Heart means a lot to me, even though heart means little in athletic competition without talent. C-Webb and Iverson were blessed with similar amounts of talent if you think about it. AI of course was blessed with the heart of giants, an almost immeasurable amount of it. If Game 4 was any indication, AI's heart is having the same effect on C-Webb as Whoville had on the Grinch. If that's the case, Philly ought to be a blast to watch next year. Let me repeat, NEXT YEAR.

Somehow Sheed and Chauncey found their respective shots, and Detroit heads back to the Palace up 3 - 1. Tayshaun says he's gonna play on his sprained ankle, and the smart money says Detroit finishes this round of madness in about nine hours. It has to be that way, Philly's getting better, they're starting to figure it out, and when you get a maddog competitor like AI saying 'sure, I feel bad that we lost, but I like how we played,' Well, you wanna nip that kind of nonsense right in the bud. When Game 5 is over, I'd just as soon have Iverson quote Charlie Brown: "How can we lose when we're so sincere." Yes, that's the quote they should paste up at the entrance to McCarran Airport.

ungh

- k

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