Just A Game

I don't really write about sports that much. Mostly it's because I disdain sports in general. And also because I hate jocks of all shapes and sizes. Probably has something to do with high school, which, at the age of 36, I should probably get over already.

But no matter how much I try to hate all sports, I can't help that I love baseball. I just love it. I've tried to not love it so much, what with my opinion that sports is for stupid people. One look at the average knuckle dragger known as the American football fan is all the evidence you need. I have struggled for years to reconcile my hatred for all things competitive-athletic with my love for baseball. I finally just reasoned that if Studs Terkel loves it, then it must be OK.

I just try not to think about the fact that a huge number of the guys that play it are right-wing, Bush supporting, gun-toting, Bambi hunting, Skoal dipping, bible loving, homophobic ass holes.

It is playoff time after all.

And what great playoffs so far. The underdog Tigers wipe the floor with the dreaded Yankees asses (hee-hee). And Alex Rodriquez, the most overpaid of the hundreds of overpaid players, had one hit in 14 at bats (double hee-hee). On the down side, baseball on TV requires that you put up with annoying announcers, especially on FOX.

The announcing business is weird. The stupid jock might be a broad stereotype, but the broadcast booth is where the ex-jocks go to prove it. And there are none stupider than Steve Lyons.

Along with his booth partner, the annoying-voiced Thom Brennaman, who, as Richard Sandomir wrote in the New York Times, sounds "like a parody of what a sportscaster is supposed to sound like," Lyons takes you right back to the days of the 10th grade gym class locker room.

The highlight of their juvenile behavior was a Dodgers-Mets game last week. The cameraman found a guy in the stands wearing a large, odd-looking contraption with a lens over his eyes. Brennaman and Lyons did the only thing sophomoric jocks (redundant phrase I know) can do when faced with the unknown.

They mocked it.

For almost a full minute these two dunderheads made fun of the guy with remarks like, "psycho-meter," saying the guy was in virtual reality and "should stay there" according to Lyons, and proclaiming that he got a digital camera stuck to his face, among other unfunny and juvenile remarks. It was a wonder that Lyons didn't just jump down in to the stands and start whipping the guy with a wet towel. They gave themselves, but I doubt anyone else, quite a chuckle. (Side note: this was during an at-bat, they basically ignored the game so they could make fun of somebody).

I remember thinking to myself during this little figurative swirly they were giving the guy that it would probably turn out to be a contraption that helps blind people see.

Guess what? It was a contraption to help blind people see. Which led to a required apology during the next game. Dumb asses.

Bob Costas would never be so stupid.

Of course the on-field reporters have their own brand of idiocy. Like over-dramatics.

In case you don't know what "hitting for the cycle" is, here is a short run-down. A player get a single, double, triple and home run all in the same game. It is the most over-hyped and meaningless stat in the game. Really, it is just a statistical anomaly. Lots of things are better. Like hitting three home runs, or three triples and a double, or three doubles and, well you get the point.

A guy on the Tigers last night hit a single, a double, and a home run. A great game to be sure, he was the star of the game, in fact. But at the the end of the interview, when sending it "back to the booth," the reporter said, "Brandon Inge, who came just a triple away from being the first player in playoff history to hit for the cycle."

Oh really? He came just the hardest hit to get in baseball away from hitting for the cycle? In other words, he didn't hit for the cycle and no history was made at all. What a stupid thing to say. Seriously, what a dumb stat. It's not even a stat, it's a non-stat. And being a triple away? That's like saying a runner came just ten miles from finishing a marathon. Or that Tiger Woods came just fifteen strokes away from par.

Hell, get away from sports even. You could say, "Hey I missed winning the lottery by just three numbers!" With that reporters way of looking at things, I'm not broke, I'm just $999,970 away from being a millionaire.

I'll have to watch an episode of Ken Burns' Baseball to see the likes of Studs Terkel, Bob Costas, Shelby Foote and the wonderful Buck O'Neill wax poetically and intelligently about the game, so as to cleanse myself of the stink of stupidity from watching the games on FOX this week.

Hey Katie Couric, This Is What A Real Journalist Looks Like

I was watching Keith Olbermann earlier tonight and, something that has become a regular feature lately, he had a special comment at the end of the show.

And what a comment it was. I'm sure a lot of you have seen his recent commentaries about Bush and 9/11, Rumsfeld's comparing people who don't agree with him to Nazi appeasers, or Bush telling us we are allowed to think. While the one from September 11th was the one that got the most notice, and was probably the most poetically written, the one from tonight might be his best one yet.

Olbermann is by and far the best journalist on TV (I know that's not necessarily saying a lot), and watching him take Bush to task tonight for his lies was more evidence to that claim. While the rest of the press sits there and lets Bush build his bullshit straw men and none of them will call him on it, there is finally someone who will call a turd a turd.

It's a shame that he stands out from the crowd in his field for doing something that they all should be doing. When Bush gets up and makes his claims about what his critics say, from his claims that we say that Arabs don't deserve democracy to saying that Democrats voted against listening to "terrorists' phone calls," no one in the White House press corps stands up and says, "who said that? Name just one person Mr. President." And back in the studio with Katie, Soledad, Miles or some other brain dead bimbo with nice hair, no one will point out that Bush is making shit up, even though they all know it and it is easy to check the facts. They usually play right in to Bush's hand and title the story something like, "Bush speaks out against his critics," when, in fact, what he is doing is speaking out against the straw men in his head.

But thank god for Keith. Someone in the media who's not afraid to call Dubya a liar, and call him out for his all out assault on the Constitution and abuse of power.

Thank you Keith.

Tie A Yellow Fuckin' Ribbon

My friend Barb sent me this link the other day to a video on You Tube by the Asylum Street Spankers. It's a song called Stick Magnetic Ribbons On Your SUV, and it is my new favorite thing.

It is a great satire of the idiocy and hypocrisy of the yellow ribbon "pro-troop" (i.e. pro-Bush) crowd. Funny as hell and a great tune to boot. But don't take my word for it, go watch/listen to it for yourself.

Evan Kremin - A Legend Of Guestian Proportions

A few Saturdays ago I went to a club here in New York called Snitch. My buddy Joe had a friend playing in a battle of the bands there as part of something called the Emergenza Festival, and we decided to go and offer some support. Now, battle of the bands type gigs are high up on the list of things I hate a lot, but I am really happy I went that night.

First of all, Joe's friends were great. Which was a relief. It would have been so uncomfortable talking to them afterwards if I had hated them. But it turned out that they played the kind of music I love (singer-songwriter/alt-country-ish stuff), and did it well.

But the highlight of the night was the side-splitting laughter caused by the group before them, The Evan Kremin Band.

You really had to see them to believe them. Or I should say him, it was all about Evan himself. Before the show I noticed that there were a line of "Evan Kremin" CDs lined up along the top of a corner booth, wrapped in a cellophane bag with a little box included. And there were lots of CDs, possibly hundreds since there was a huge bag with even more of them. But more on that later.

When they started, we noticed that there was an old couple standing in front of us close to the stage. They were obviously Evan's parents. That's another thing to hate about battle of the bands contests, too many biased family members show up.

From the opening riff it was obvious that this guy listened to waaaaaaay too many power ballads in the 80s. The dead give away was the god-awful lyrics that were nothing more than a series of strung together clichés, and the hilarious rock star posturing by a guy pushing (maybe even past) 40. Throw in the guitarist, who looked about 50, trying to do his best Jimmy Page impression, and you had just a hilarious sight. And the range of songs would go from sounding like Journey to Great White to Poison to, believe it or not, Michael Bolton.

And such deep lyrics like, "I'll sing the songs I've never sung, I'll do the things I've never done, I'll sow the seeds I've never sown."

And, "If you reach into a fire you're gonna get burned"

There was also a song, the name escapes me, where he kept singing about rats in a maze that was bringing on laughter and gag reflexes from me simultaneously. It was a song that could have competed for the title of Most Cliché-Ridden Song Ever if it weren't for the existence of Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn.

I had the hardest time holding in the loud laughter, what with his parents standing right in front of me.

He ended his night, thanking everyone for coming, telling everyone to give it up for the Emergenza Festival, thanking his wife for doing the CDs (aha, she's the big-haired middle aged woman shilling those out) and generally acting like the headliner, even though this is a battle of the bands. He introduced the last song, called Monsters Under My Bed, wasting no time and getting to the clichés right in the song title.

It was the performance of this song that really solidified the feeling that I had found myself in the middle of a real life Christopher Guest movie.

Evan, an aging, pudgy, almost mullet-headed, struggling front man of what could probably be a really decent wedding band (for those suburbanites who like those bland top 40 cover bands to play at their weddings) if they would stop doing his songs, fancies himself to be a major rock star. To call it delusions of grandeur would be an understatement.

He jumped off the stage during the performance of Monsters and walked into the crowd to sing straight at a girl for a little bit, and then point and scream/sing at a guy in the audience. Now I'm losing it (along with the girl he was singing at) and am just openly laughing because I can't help it. And I'm so happy at this point I got to see this, because just when you think that the characters in Christopher Guest's movies are too far over the top, you get to see living proof that they're not. It was beautiful.

Somebody really needed to tell this guy that you can't get away with rock star moves unless you actually are a rock star. Bono going out to sing to a girl is cool, a chunky middle-aged nobody from Jersey doing it is creepy.

And to top it off the song had a dramatic pause toward the end. The music stopped like the song ended, but the band kept a dramatic pose. A smattering of people were clapping like it was over, and Joe leaned over and said, "wait for it." And there it was, they started back up to finish the last chorus, and then ended the song with Mr. Kremin singing London Bridge Is Falling Down in a high voice to a fade-out. Oooooh, how dramatic.

Of course they won that night.

It was decided by audience vote, and from the looks of all the hugging Evan did after he got off stage it appeared that, along with his family, all of his old high school friends were there. He had definitely done a great job of stocking the audience. This poor guy really thinks that the path to a record contract and rock stardom is getting your friends to vote for you at a local battle of the bands contest. It would be sad if it weren't' so damn funny.

You might think I'm being a little too hard on the poor guy. After all, he is just trying to follow his dream, as unlikely as it is to ever come true. And I would agree, except for the fact that the only things more over the top than his over-wrought, clichéd lyrics, are his gigantic ego and shameless self-promotion.

The ticket I had for the night seems to have come through his allotment of tickets to sell. It had a sticker slapped on it that said, "THE EVAN KREMIN BAND LIVE AT SNITCH!!...Don't be late...your vote could be the one that made the difference." You've got to be kidding me.

And then there was his wife and the CDs. She was going around the bar after the set shoving them at anybody and everybody, "Did you get a CD? Here, I've got one for you." Oh goody, just for me?! I did take one, jut so I could get a laugh and to find out what was in the box that was wrapped with it.

I opened it, the outside of the package said, "Thanks for your support!" Inside the box was a miniature Magic 8 Ball. On the side opposite the answer window is was he Evan Kremin logo like on the CD cover, along with his myspace address (you really should check that out, it's got samples of his overwrought, cliche-riddled songs). And above the logo was the line, I kid you not, "The Answer Is In The Music..." I was laughing the whole subway ride home after seeing that.

People told me I shouldn't rip on the guy in my blog. Or at least don't use his name because it might hurt his feelings. And I thought about that, but hell, if his friends won't tell him his music sucks and he's never going to be a rock star, at least someone should write it. Now he may or may not see this, I'm just a dude with a blog, not a paid rock critic or a published writer. But something tells me he googles his name a lot.

I really decided is was OK to rip on the guy after checking out his myspace site and reading his description of himself. He truly is a legend in his own mind. Here are a few highlights:

Birthed as one of Bleecker Street's truly protected children, Evan Kremin has been mastering his craft on this legendary New York music strip since 1983. As a compellingly gifted singer, songwriter and musician, Evan was quickly adopted by club owners and industry professionals as Bleecker's own "favorite son".

As an independent, original artist Evan Kremin has matured into an "authentic rock reward".

His performances are invigorating - as he is not shy on warmth or sex appeal. It is Rock and Roll with all the quality and authenticity you would expect from a great performer. Hollywood can't make artists like Evan Kremin...they can only aspire to find them.

Remember, he wrote this about himself. And what the hell does "authentic rock reward" mean anyway?

Can you think of anybody who deserves to be made fun of more than this? I mean, besides George Bush.

The Original Swindle

So Pope Benedict has excommunicated an African priest from the church. Now, what grievous offense did he commit to deserve this ultimate punishment from the church? Well, he's one of those crazy exorcist priests, but that's not it. The church is all cool with exorcism, the main problem they had with his was that he blended in indigenous African beliefs in to his exorcism ceremonies. But there was more to it than just that.

He got married. And he started a group called Married Priests Now. And he ordained a few married men as priests.

Now people can get pretty offended when I slag on religion all the time, and I really don't care. What gets me is religious folks who seem to think that religion is the only place you can get a moral center. Which is bullshit and exactly the opposite. The whole basis of religion is based on a lie (a sin in all the major religions) or a group of lies. If you don't know what I mean by that, I'm talking about Adam and Eve, the burning bush, red sea parting, Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah's Ark, virgin birth, guy comes back to life three days after dying on cross, etc, etc, and so on as the King of Siam would say. And religion has been the main cause (or excuse) of every world conflict in human history. We atheists don't blow up clinics or do suicide bombings to get people to believe what we believe. We just roll our eyes and think what morons all the believers are.

Catholics tend to get the most offended, especially when you insult their pope. As I always say, "fuck the pope." He's an immoral ass hole. And I love it when things like this recent excommunication happen, because it just gives me more proof. If some Catholic starts talking to you about the "infallibility of the pope," this is a great opportunity to point out this little fact:

A Catholic priest who gets married, or is outspoken about changing the rules to allow priests to get married, has committed an excommunicable offense.

A Catholic priest who rapes little kids has.......not. And the bishops who protect those priests get promoted to higher posts at the Vatican, even after they are publicly exposed.

And then the pope and his minions turn around and accuse the gay people of hurting children and families.

But those believer out there will continue to defend these con artists and wastes of oxygen that call themselves "holy men." If a high school principal acted like the last couple of popes (protecting child rapists, letting them continue to work with children, advancing their careers), nobody would be defending them. But put a white collar around your neck and it's a free pass to commit whatever crime you want without consequences.

That's a great lesson all you Catholic folks are teaching your children.


The Original Sin is religion itself.

K-K-K-Katie, Stupid Katie

Did you 60 Minutes on Sunday? What the fuck was that?

With the current state of the mainstream televised media being complete shit, 60 Minutes has been the one place that I could count on for (mostly) good journalism. Not any more.

Not since Katie Couric has darkened their halls.

After that total fucking puff piece on Condoleezza Rice, the last bastion of respectable journalism on network TV has begun it's long slide into the world inhabited by Geraldo, Soledad O'Brien, Larry King and the rest of the "newstainment" hacks that have taken over the media.

I forgot I was watching 60 Minutes last night and thought someone had switched the channel to FOX News with the major ass kissing Dr. Rice was getting. At one point Condi got to get in her straw man argument, a favorite tactic of the Bush administration. She actually compared black people being denied the right to vote in the south during Jim Crow to those people that are against her illegal and immoral war in Iraq. The straw man moment came when she said this:

"Well, growing up in the South and having people underestimate you because one of the reasons for segregation, one of the reasons for the separation of the races was supposedly, the inferiority of one race to the other," she explains. "And so when I look around the world and I hear people say, 'Well, you know, they're just not ready for democracy,' it really does resonate. I hear echoes of, well, you know, blacks are kind of childlike. They really can't handle the vote. Or they really can't take care of themselves. It really does roil me. It makes me so angry because I think there are those echoes of what people once thought about black Americans."

No follow up question was asked. And , of course, that question should have been, "WHO THE FUCK IS MAKING THAT ARGUMENT YOU STUPID BITCH?! NAME ME ONE OPPONENT OF YOUR BLOODY WAR THAT HAS SAID THAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST ARE 'JUST NOT READY FOR DEMOCRACY.' JUST ONE."

Of course it should have been asked without the yelling, swearing and name calling, but you get the point. This is the way Karl Rove has taught all his evil minions to work in interviews. Instead of actually answering the questions or charges brought by their opponents, they just make up weak and dumb arguments that no one is actually making and knock those down.

And then of course, there was the dating question. Katie actually asked how one goes about asking the Secretary of State out on a date and then held her hand up to her head like a phone (you know, pinky at the mouth and thumb at the ear) and said "Hi, Madame Secretary? Listen," and giggled as she did it. Katie Couric is in her late forties, not her early teens, just in case there was any confusion.

I was reminded of a joke Tina Fey made on the SNL news when CBS was hiring Couric and said something along the lines of CBS was doing it because they wanted more uncomfortable flirting in their interviews. Well, here it was.

Really, at this point there would have been no surprise if Condi said, breathily, "Well Katie, I just haven't found anyone 'special,'" and then we heard a 70s wonkie guitar and Condi just hiked up her skirt, went spread eagle and Katie just dove right in for some porno girl on girl action. I mean, she was already doing it figuratively, why not just commit fully to the job?

Katie Couric gets $15 million a year to read a teleprompter for about 20 minutes a day and do the occasional People Magazine-like stories on 60 minutes. And in the process is destroying the road for female journalists that was paved by the likes of Helen Thomas, who has to spend her days getting ignored in presidential press conferences for asking too hard of questions.

I would wonder how Couric can sleep at night, but I'm pretty sure the 15 mil helps a lot.

But shame on her. And an even bigger shame on the shallow men who run that industry and hire non-threatening, airheaded bimbos instead of the real female journalists out there.

Poverty's A Drag

I got called for last minute temp assignment today. I went to the place, I had been there once before, and gave the receptionist the name of the contact I was given to report to. She couldn't be reached and didn't answer page. I ended up waiting around for two hours while no one was able to figure out what was going on. Eventually the HR guy came to talk to me and told me there had been a miscommunication and they didn't actually need a temp today. On the plus side I finished Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell while I was sitting there. On the other plus side, I didn't actually have to do any work and I'll get paid for four hours even though I was there for only two. Gotta love those temp agency rules.

I was down in Union square and had a whole day left. So instead of doing something productive I decided to kill it at the Virgin Megastore.

Now I don't actually have any money, so going to a record store can be a kind of torture under these circumstances. And the Virgin Megastore can be a kind of torture under any situation. But there is one good thing about Virgin that is the only reason to go there. Listening stations. When you are broke but really want to hear a new album that just came out you can go see if they have it playing at Virgin. Now since they have so many of them it's not just crap like Justin Timberlake, though that kind of mindless shit is the most prevalent. I was able to stand there and listen to a couple of good albums. Not the new Robyn Hitchcock that I had my fingers crossed for, mind you. My fingers were crossed, but I wasn't counting on it because I knew there was no way they would have that one hooked up. He's only a living legend and a god among musicians. They wouldn't want to make way for him and have to bump the new Paris Hilton off the queue.

In fact, they didn't even have the new Robyn Hitchcock on their shelves at all. It's not uncommon for these big chain monster stores to have almost no Robyn Hitchcock albums, another reason I generally don't like them. But even the worst of them will at least have his most recent. Not Virgin. The only Robyn they had was Luxor (from 2003) and Spooked (2004) and that was it. Nothing from the Egyptians era of the 80s or his newest disc which came out nine goddamn days ago. You may not have to put it out for me to listen to for free in the store, but geez, how can you call yourself a music store and not sell the newest records from one of the two best singer-songwriters of their generation?

But I got to listen to the new Indigo Girls album, which sounds like their best album in about ten years. I wouldn't have thought I'd say that about an album that has Pink as a guest on a track, but there it is. I also got to listen to the Raconteurs album. Wow. Just wow.

Of course I would have preferred to be listening to these both in my Sony Discman on the way home on the subway, but alas, I had about nine dollars in my pocket and very sketchy employment of late. So standing in the middle of a corporate music store with uncomfortable headphones is my only way right now to hear some of the new stuff I want to own.

I also walked around and looked to see if they had other stuff I wanted, because I like to torture myself.

A trip to the DVD section. Yes, they have the Criterion release of Noah Baumbach's first movie, Kicking And Screaming. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. New digital transfer, deleted scenes, interviews with the cast ten years after the film, a movie geek's dream of one of my all time favorite films. And it's $30.

Wait, the used/clearance bin! They actually have some CDs there for as little as $3.99, surely I could find something. I made a rule, only a $3.99 disc. No $6.99s, even though I had just enough money in my pocket to do that, but I couldn't spend all of my cash. So I thought if I could find a super cheap CD, that would tide over my insatiable need for new music for a little while. I looked through every single disc, and despite my opportunities to buy a Silverchair (remember those Australian teenage Pearl Jam wannabes?) disc or Pat Boone's greatest hits, I took a pass.

I walked around the corner and found the box sets. Ahhh, the Billy Bragg Volume 1. Oh baby, come to Papa. Billy's first four studio albums and a live EP, all remastered for premium sound quality, each album coming with an extra CD of unreleased material from that era, with two concert DVD's included to boot, featuring his shows in Berlin, Lithuania and Nicaragua in the 80s. A total of 7 CDs and two DVDs. I stood there staring at it salivating. I even smelled it. $84.99

I have held this set in my hands at least a half a dozen times now and have never had the money to buy it. Well, sometimes I've physically had the money in my account but knew my wife would kill me if I blew money we couldn't really afford to spend at the moment. "Sorry Honey, I don't have my half of the rent, but look, I've got the new Billy Bragg box set!"

It's been out since Spring, hell Volume 2 comes out in less than a month, and I still don't have it. It is killing me.

When I was single I would've bought it and been willing to be late with the rent, or eat Ramen noodles for a month to afford it. But my sweetheart doesn't like Ramen and I don't find our couch very comfortable, so I've resisted against all my bad judgment.

I actually looked toward the front door to try to figure out how fast the security guy might be. They always hire big guys for that, not fast ones. I figured I could zip past him and make it down the street pretty easily. The only problem would be that I would have to avoid Union Square the rest of my life. But it's Billy Bragg, so it might be an OK sacrifice.

But I'm a pussy. So I wiped away a tear and put it back on the shelf.

It was a long subway ride home. But at least I had Billy Bragg's Back To Basics to console me.

Just because you're better than me
Doesn't mean I'm lazy
Just because you're going forwards
Doesn't mean I'm going backwards

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

There is an astounding article in Tuesday's New York Times that should be causing an a reverberation of amazing magnitude in the rest of the press and, even more importantly, the halls of Congress.

But of course it's not.

Read the article yourself, but the gist is basically this: After a inquiry by the Canadian government, the facts of the case of the Canadian man detained and sent to Syria to be tortured are now a matter of record. A Syrian born Canadian citizen named Maher Arar was, due to faulty intelligence originating with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, suspected of being an Al Qaeda terrorist. When he was traveling through the United States (JFK airport in New York) on his way home from a vacation he was picked up by the FBI. He asked to speak to the Canadian Consulate in New York and was refused, in conflict with basic international law. He was then transported on an American government plane to Jordan and then taken by ground to Syria. He spent at least ten months in a Syrian cell and was repeatedly tortured over that time, including being beaten with a shredded electrical cable.

Let me remind you that the Syrians were doing this to him at the bidding of the US government. The Syrians. The supporters of Hezbollah, a very well know terrorist organization. The same Syrians that have illegally occupied Lebanon for years.

And their torture worked. Mr. Arar confessed to training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. One problem, it wasn't true. In fact, he has been found to not had done a single thing wrong. This is the usual result of torturing suspects, false confessions and information.

So while George W. is out there publicly shaming Syria for all the bad things they do, he turns around and uses those bad things for his own ends. And you can bet that the Syrians didn't do it for free. I imagine they are making a pretty penny from the US for providing this service, part of which then goes to help Hezbollah try to destroy Israel.

This is the same government that puts commercials on TV telling people that if they buy a joint they are "helping terrorist" (by the theory of that money goes from the dealer to the supplier to the grower who might be connected to a terrorist organization).

Oh, and the US government refused to cooperate in the inquiry, and hasn't called their own.

And this is what isn't being talked about enough in the mainstream media, especially the television news. And it's also not being talked about by our politicians. This case should be front and center of the argument about why Bush should be stopped in his attempts to "clarify" the Geneva Convention.

Whenever some Republican hack says it's just loony partisanship to call for the impeachment of the president, this should always be the first thing brought up. If the right-wing can impeach a guy for cheating on his wife why is it so out of left field to want to do it for illegally torturing another human being?

I'd like to say just a couple things to the President:

Sir, if you don't know the basic right of human dignity then you are beyond reproach. The Geneva Convention is not "vague" you evil bastard. If you don't know what "outrages upon personal dignity" means what you can't do to people, then you have absolutely no moral center.

What is being done to these people in your name and under your authority is not a game like your fraternity's ritual hazing, despite what your little pea-sized brain might think.

God I hate you.

Into The Fray - Part 2

"This is hollowed ground! This is not the place for your political agenda. The truth is you're a fuckin' ass hole! Fuck you!"

This is what a middle-aged guy in a suit started screaming at a protester holding up an effigy of Bush with an American flag tied like a noose around his neck. Written on it was something about Bush being the world's biggest terrorist and seeking the truth about 9/11, hence the "truth is you're an ass hole" line. I watched this same guy in the suit, screaming at the anti-Bush protester that this isn't the place for political agendas, look up at another guy holding a sign that said "9/11/06 - Commemorating 5 years of the Clinton legacy," and he just smiled and nodded. Typical conservative, I remember thinking to myself. It wasn't that the day was being politicized that he was pissed about, it was that it was being politicized by people he doesn't agree with. As for the "hollowed ground" we were supposedly standing on? We were standing on the sidewalk plaza of the PATH station entrance, outside the entire 16-acre area of the WTC site. I just have a hard time buying a place as hollowed ground if it's where you catch a train to Jersey. I wanted to ask him how far away one would have to before he doesn't consider it hollowed ground anymore.

Oh, and the guy holding up the Clinton bashing sign had written on the other side "When the left says 'peace' they mean 'surrender.'"

But don't accuse the conservatives of politicizing 9/11, they're just "honoring the victims."

So what was getting a lot of people's panties in a bunch was the conspiracy theorists everywhere. And they were all over the place. They were wearing black shirts that had variations of "9/11 Truth" on the front and the backs looked like this:



Most of them were affiliated with the movie Loose Change, a documentary that puts forth alternative theories about what really happened that day, and followers of this guy names Alex Jones.

Now I'm as big a conspiracy theorist as the next guy. But I'm more of a "Oswald couldn't have acted alone" and "What was the involvement of the CIA in the El Salvadoran death squads?" kind of conspiracy theorists, not a "the moon landing was staged and the earth is flat" kind of one.

Unfortunately, a big number of the people at the event this last Monday were the second kind. I'm not saying they don't have a point to a certain extent. I do believe that there should be a much more independent investigation in to the attacks, rather than one run by old government cronies with an interest in the results and friends to protect. I also believe that there is a lot that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice and others knew and know that they are not telling us. Well, I believe that everything that comes out of that group's mouths is a lie. So I'm with them there.

But some of the things that they are purporting are a little far-fetched, and really, unnecessary to support the idea that our government had something to do with 9/11. There's a great article at Salon about this.

And the thing about conspiracies is that they require a small group to be involved, not a large one, or the secret part of a conspiracy in unsustainable. If you buy into a lot of the claims made by these guys, hundreds, if not thousands, of people would need to be in on it.

Now the Loose Change guys aren't part of the groups that believe UFOs destroyed the World Trade Center or that no planes hit them (there is actually a theory that they were holograms, seen by everyone in the area from every possible angle). But they do believe these basic things, as just a small example:

The planes that hit the WTC were remote controlled drones with no people inside.
No plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
No plane hit the Pentagon.
Flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, actually landed in Cleveland that morning, with all of the passengers and crew from the other flights on board. This is my favorite one, because it just doesn't make sense in any way. As the Salon article asks, "...why would the government spare the lives of the people on those planes only to kill thousands more" at the World Trade Center?

Anyway, I'll leave it to others (this one is great, run by a guy who thinks there is a government involvement himself, just not done the way the Loose Change guys think) to debunk the conspiracy theories. I'm here to describe the action from the day.

Like I said at the end of the first part of this, the conspiracy theorists were a major presence. There were definitely several hundred of them and they were armed with copies of the film on DVD to give away for free to anybody who would take them. The interesting thing that happened was the spontaneous debates that broke out in the crowd. Someone would challenge one of the black shirt posse and there would be an exchange of ideas (sometimes heated and contentious, other times just someone wanting to know what makes the person believe 9/11 was an "inside job") which would attract a crowd gathering around to hear. Like this:



And this (guy making some sort of point like "why didn't that building fall if the one next to it..."):



It would get heated when people accused the conspiracy people of being "un-American" or "insulting the families" of the victims or claiming that they were "supporting the terrorists." It was always, as I saw it, the challengers that got all wound up, and for no reason. Especially this guy, with the Yankee hat:



He would follow the arguments around and get in the face of the people supporting the conspiracy theories. Unfortunately for him he didn't really have good counter-arguments. The 911 Truth crowd, while believing some really whacked out claims, were really articulate about why they believed what they believed. Some of these things were based on what people would call "junk science" but they made their side of the argument well. The angry guy with the Yankee cap (and really if you are a Yankee fan, why are you a chronically angry person?) usually only had the argument that "I was here," which really seems to be well beside the point. The guy claimed that he helped in the recovery after the attack, and that he saw body parts with his own eyes. How this made him "know that Osama did it" I never really quite got from him. He would also off to the side be saying things like, "I'll bet none of these black shirt people even got jobs" and "get these guys to a fuckin' employment office."

Super-duper arguments, Angry Guy!

And that was all he had. Really, nobody was able to counter them with anything smarter than, "if you don't like this country fuckin' leave." Ahh, nothing like a return to the good old Cold War standard of "love it or leave it" and "move to Russia."

I just watched this whole time, never really getting involved in the arguments. I did have a nice little conversation with a fireman about Wilco because he saw my shirt. Found another fan in the crowd. But I couldn't believe how little the people arguing against the conspiracy theorists could make a good point. When one would say that there's no way the fires could burn as hot as they claimed the one in the WTC did because kerosene doesn't burn that hot, no one could bring up that jet planes don't run on kerosene, but on jet fuel (hence the name).

It could have something to do with the fact that most of the people trying to argue with them were brain dead zealot Bushie types with American flags all over their clothing along with phrases like "let's roll" in silk screen. Or the woman holding the sign that said something along the lines of "People united + Support for troops = defeat of axis of evil."

The only thing in this country dumber than George W. Bush is one of his sheep using his terminology. What sucks about these people is that they say "united" but what they mean is that I should believe in their ideology or shut the hell up.

And another thing, I didn't get a picture of them (I guess I just couldn't stomach it) but the flag wearing government/Bush supporters are really crappy sign makers. Everyone who had a sign of some sort that bashed on Clinton/Democrats/liberals or used some sort of Bushism in it was holding the most pathetic piece of poster board that was scrawled on with black magic marker. Crooked and uneven. At least the paranoid people know how to go to Kinkos and get a slick banner made. I mean come on people, your hero spent good money getting his "Mission Accomplished" sign made.

Of all the wacky things I heard that day, from holograms faking the plane crash to Bush being a Trotsky-ite (seriously, some of the paranoids, calling themselves "real" conservatives, think Bush is a Commie. I wish), I didn't hear anything that made me laugh/wretch more than these two comments:

"Our government wouldn't purposely hurt its own citizens." This guy needed to go to a history class that talked about the Tuskegee experiments the Bonus Army or the Japanese American prison camps, among other things.

"Nobody benefited from 9/11." Apparently this guy never heard of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, or Wolfowitz.

The black shirt crowd might be paranoid, but at least they don't blindly trust our government no matter what. Thomas Jefferson would be so disappointed.

There was also the admonition that this is the wrong day to do this and that "you can do this the other 364 days of the year. So I guess there is no-1st Amendment holiday of which I was not aware. And I wondered how it could possibly have been so easy for Dubya to convince people that the Patriot Act was a good thing. And the whole idea that they had a problem with politics being injected into the day was a weak argument at best. Bush has been propping up his presidency with the dead from that day five years ago (and would do so even more later that night to celebrate the anniversary), and Giuliani was down in the pit of Ground Zero running for president at that very moment.

Eventually the conspiracy crowd gathered for the rally to listen to Alex Jones talk, among other people, but mostly him.





And he screamed a lot through his megaphone and some of the flag waving crowd around me made statements that went along the lines of blowing him off as a misguided academic or a liberal nut. And this is where I get bothered. Alex Jones is a loud-mouth radio host, not an academic at all. He is also a religious nut who has a lot more in common with the Michigan Militia types and Pat Buchanan than he does with Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. Don't put him on us liberals, he's not our fault.

There was also this guy:





He was your basic ranting bible-thumping loon who didn't really make any sense. He kept saying that all the "stupid, stupid people" would be going to Hell. It made me make the joke to the guy next to me, "Wow, all of Alabama is going to Hell?" He laughed.

All in all it was a trippy day. It almost made me proud to be American. Lots of ideas, albeit a lot of crazy ones, debated in a free-exchange of ideas in a public forum, and no punches thrown. Sometimes it looked like someone might take a swing, but as far as I saw it never did.

But that mild pride is easily dashed by seeing shit like this:



Apparently Captain America was hanging around somewhere but I never spotted him.

Let's See, The Answer To That Is.....Wait, What Was The Question

OK, so I know I ended yesterday's post saying that today's would be about the conspiracy theorists at yesterday's memorial/vigil/protest/gathering of weirdoes. But I haven't found myself in the mood today to do that yet. I still haven't quite digested it all and am still letting the whole experience and feelings all sink in and.....oh, OK, that's plain old bullshit. I'm just lazy. I know it will be a long post and I just don't have it in me right now. Sometimes I'm a real lazy ass. As lazy as Reagan's imaginary black welfare mother with the Cadillac.

So bear with me, I know all three of you are waiting with baited breath for more of my long-winded observations of Monday's happenings. I'll try to get to it tonight or tomorrow. But like I said, I'm feeling pretty slothy right now.

A quick story from today though. I went down to pick up my paycheck from the temp agency I've been working for. While waiting for the sole elevator in the very old building they are in I started chatting with the other guy standing there.

Another sign that I'm not living in Boston anymore. You know, people actually talking to each other and being friendly.

Anyway, turns out this guy works at the agency I use, but I had not met him before. We were chatting about what places I've been working and other things (this elevator is incredibly slow), and at some point he asked me where I was from.

And this is always the tough question in my experience. Asking me where I'm from is to invite me to recite the "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." speech from Julius Caesar, it's so damned complicated. I never have a easy quick answer to that question if I want to be honest.

I have, like a lot of people in my generation, lived in quite a few places. Counting my place of birth (where I only lived until I was six) I have lived in the states of Iowa, Georgia, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, and now New York.

So what do I say? I grew up in Georgia, but when I use that as my answer I always then have to go in to an explanation of why I don't have a southern accent (Midwest parents, didn't move there until I was six, explain that I used to, etc.), which just adds to the confusion. I used to say Seattle a lot, but I didn't move there until I was 23. It's probably the best answer since it is the first place I lived as a post-college adult and, let's face it, it is really cool to be able to tell people you lived in Seattle in the 90s when you were a twentysomething. How very Gen-X of me. But the whole "from" Seattle thing always falls apart when it turns out that the person you are talking to is from there and they ask you where you went to high school. Or it comes out during the conversation that I moved there in my twenties, and the person will say "No, I mean where are you 'from' from?"

This is what happens when your parents move you to a different school for your senior year. You end up graduating from a different school then where you went the rest of your childhood. I can't tell people I'm from suburban Chicago, because I lived there for only two years (senior year and the year after when I couldn't go to college for reasons I don't like to talk about, so thanks for bringing up bad memories you ass hole). And I really can't say I'm from Chicago proper because I didn't live there until after Seattle and for less time.

I know what you might be thinking. When in a new city the answer to that question is easily accomplished by just telling people the name of the last place you lived.

But I would rather jam an ice pick in my eye than tell people I'm from Boston.

And if I say I'm from "nowhere" or "everywhere" people will just think I'm weird.

Am I over-thinking this?

------------------------------------------------

Quote of the day, from Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot:

A person keen on all things French is called a Francophile. One who has a thing for England is called an Anglophile. An admirer of Germany in the 1930s and '40s is called Pat Buchanan .

That's the line that got me strange looks when I burst out laughing on the subway today.

Into The Fray - Part 1

I wasn't planning on going. I woke up yesterday and was having my coffee when I turned on the TV. The World Trade Center memorial was already underway and they were reading the names of the dead aloud. I decided to check out the cnn.com video from September 11, 2001 to see what it was like to watch it from the perspective of five years later. But more on that later.

I decided to go down there.

Now just about everyone who knows me knows that I'm not patriotic. I make no apologies for it, nor do I see it as a personality flaw or a bad thing. Patriotism leads to nationalism which leads to jingoism. Which leads to needless violence in the name of something that is just a bunch of imaginary lines on a map. I'm a Humanist, because I think that is so much better for the world than patriotism. And there are no pledges or bad theme songs that you're forced to stand up for at baseball games.

So god and country were certainly not my reasons for heading down there. But I was drawn for some reason. I figured I might find some inspiration for something to write about. Because, you know, there is such a shortage of articles, blogs and commentaries being written about the anniversary of the attacks that someone needs to fill the void. So I grabbed the camera and headed to the subway.

Being a New Yorker now for less than two months this obviously isn't "my" anniversary. I was in Chicago at the time. Hell, I woke up that morning after the towers were already gone and only found out something was going on when I headed out to the White Hen Pantry for coffee and saw bumper to bumper mid-morning traffic because they were evacuating the Loop. None of my friends in New York were killed or hurt. So the events of 9/11/01 don't really belong to me in that way. And I hate people that act like it's "theirs" when it's not. Mostly it's the flag waving, Bush supporting conservative types. Shit, there are so many of these people who act like it happened to them and they don't even know anyone in New York. So I was going to just look around and soak in the experience, and try not to get too annoyed by these people. And hopefully get some pictures of people I could make fun of in my blog.

Truth be told, I was hoping to see this god-awful truck that I've heard about, painted with the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty, a cop hugging kids, the names of people, lots of American flags and the words "Have you forgotten..." (sans question mark for some reason). Oh my god, yes! I've totally forgotten about that day because there is just no one in the media or the current administration who ever brings it up.

Guys like that are exactly what I'm talking about. So I was hoping to get a look at that dumb hick, as I read somewhere that he was driving to New York to be here for the anniversary. Alas, I didn't see him anywhere. Probably because he couldn't find New York, it being above the Mason-Dixon and all.

But there was another truck:




My buddy Joe wrote about it a couple of anniversaries ago, but seeing it for yourself is a sight. It looks like a monster truck got crapped on by both an American flag and a Thomas Kinkade painting. And there lots of people getting their picture taken with it, along with a few of us that were taking pictures of it out of irony and to make fun of it on the internet.

This is just another one of those people trying to make this event theirs, even though it really didn't effect them at all. And he wants everyone to know who he is. He actually has his name on both doors of the truck. It actually says "Owner:" and his name. My favorite part is that along the bottom of the truck it says "America, like Ford...Built Tough." Man, this guy loves America so much he compares it to his beloved fossil fuel burning redneckmobile. America combined with advertising slogans. Who wouldn't get choked up by that?

What I find really annoying about these people is how they act like they have some sort of love for New York. The fact of the matter is that guys like Mr. Ford Tough, before 2001, hated New York and probably had never been here before the World Trade Center became Ground Zero and the excuse for Bush to strip us of our civil liberties. They hate everything New York stands for, from immigration to liberal politics to cultural diversity to gay people to multilingual neighborhoods. To them, New York has always represented the worst things about America. But now it is their prop to use as their excuse for their militant nationalism and "with us or against us" nonsense. If it had been a Timothy McVeigh instead of brown people that attacked New York no way would they be rallying around the city like this.

It's a disgrace and a shame for New Yorkers to have to put up with that and the hypocrisy of Republicans' choice to use the city as the backdrop to their convention. A city that some of them used to compare to Sodom and Gomorrah.

When I got down there the memorial part of the event (with the families down in the actual pit, closed to everyone else) was close to ending and I walked around the area, doing a full circle around the entire site and ending back at the PATH station plaza with a photo exhibit and that stupid truck parked close by.

There was also a row of tables set up being run by what appeared to be two groups, NYPD Officers for Jesus and Firefighters for Jesus, handing out pamphlets. That's where I saw this guy:



I just found this shirt funny. I really wanted to walk up to him and tell him that if he really was committed to that statement he would be dousing himself with gasoline and lighting a match. I just couldn't help but laugh out loud and take the picture.

I wish these people would figure out that religious fanaticism is the cause of, not the solution to, world conflict. It should be fucking obvious, but, true to religious fanatic thinking, it's always the other religions' fanatics that cause the problems, not theirs.

The other major presence there yesterday, and I mean major, was the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.



And this guy.



More on them tomorrow.

A Perfect Example Of Sportsmanlike Conduct

When I was younger I played league baseball for a total of one season. I was really bad at it. I got put in right field, where they always put the shitty players, and I didn't get a base hit all season. I just never really had the fundamentals taught to me very well. So what was my coach's reaction to this? Was it to give me good instruction, also known as coaching, on keeping my eye on the ball, a good stance, how to hold the ball, the mechanics of my swing?

No, it was to berate me in front of my teammates. In practice one day when I came up to take my swings the coach suddenly screamed out, "Everybody can sit down, Mayer's up to bat!" What is it with jock-strap coach types always using last names? Is it supposed to give them some sort of feeling of power?

Anyway, he wasn't joking. The big fat ass, ex-minor leaguer who never made "the show," with a big "chaw" in his cheek actually made the entire team sit down before he would let the pitcher throw to me. He said nobody should bother trying to field since I wasn't going to hit it anyway. So I stood in the batter's box, looking out at an entire field of my teammates sitting on the infield dirt and outfield grass as I tried to hit a ball that everyone was just told I had no chance to hit.

I was eight years old.

Why do I bring this up? I always think of it whenever there is a crazy coach or sports parent in the news. I'm sure most of you have seen the youth football coach in the news who clocked some kid on the opposing team. A thirteen year old kid. A blindsided full-on body slam. The kid's crime? A late hit on the Mr. Testosterone's son. Thankfully, and surprisingly to me, the ass hole was arrested. They say he faces up to a few years in jail, but I don't buy that as a possibility at all. What will happen is he'll be given probation and community service and barred from coaching any youth sports ever again. In other words a slap on the wrist for a 36 year old man who attacked a child. That's the way it works in America. Get caught smoking a joint and they'll throw the book at you, get caught on tape attacking a kid and you get a firm "tsk, tsk." Oh people are outraged right now, to be sure. But this will blow over and the guy won't get any real form of punishment once he finally gets his day in court.

There are those that are already trying to paint his as an aberration. Well it's not. This is just one visible symptom of the cancer that is youth sports. Kids who play in these sports leagues grow up to jackasses who think it's OK to beat up children and solve your problems with violence. Or even worse, they become John Rocker. And don't even get me started on the pathetic parents who are living their failed dreams and ambitions through their kids. That guy who ran out to tackle the kid is a prime example of one of them. My old little league coach was an even bigger one.

And what do I think should be done to him? Ten years in Attica ought to send a message to these other failed jock fathers that this shit won't be tolerated. If you think that's a harsh sentence, let me remind you he violently attacked a child. Act like a violent criminal and you get treated like one.

And he can share his cell with Coach Scarborough from the Central Dekalb (GA) Sally League Cardinals. Ass hole.

Courage In The Line Of Water

One of the great joys of having moved to New York is how much there is to do in the summer, including free stuff. Which, after all the moving expenses, is especially nice to have right now.

And probably the creme de la creme, the Cadillac, the Paris, the prom queen of free New York entertainment is the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. An institution in New York, started by Joseph Papp 50 years ago, I've always wanted to see a production at Shakespeare in the Park. Well now that I live here I was going to finally get my chance.

We moved here right after Macbeth (starring the amazing Liev Schreiber) had finished its run, but the other show this season was Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children with a new translation by Tony Kushner, and starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Austin Pendleton. So we jumped at that.

My buddy Joe and I went last Friday to wait in line for tickets for us and our wives. See, this is how it works: they give out tickets at 1:00pm on the day of the show, two tickets per person, first come-first serve. People start lining up outside the Delecorte Theater in Central Park at an ungodly hour of the morning. We got there about 7:45am and the line was really long already. So we sat on the ground, with the woman next to us nice enough to share her blanket, and began our 5+ hour wait for tickets.

After a while, of course, it started raining. Not heavy, at least at first. It rained about three times during our time in line and I forgot my umbrella. At one point it came down kind of heavy. And sitting on the ground is something you couldn't do at that point so the rest of the time in line was standing. And rain makes it impossible to read or play cards. But hey, we were getting free tickets to see Meryl Streep on stage, so no biggie.

You can probably see where this is going. We didn't get tickets.

We came seven people short of getting them. Seven. Over five hours of waiting in the rain and nothing to show for it.

Well, not nothing. It was five hours of hanging out with one of my best friends and favorite people having great conversations. Conversations that included my glowing defense of my view that people who like Larry the Cable Guy, the Marmaduke comic, and Thomas Kinkade paintings are not just people who have different tastes than me, but rather brain-dead zombies who are a waste of the earth's precious oxygen. I think I won that little debate.

We blew off some energy after the annoyance of not getting tickets by playing some frisbee. Funny how the rain cleared after we didn't have to sit outside anymore.

It looked like we wouldn't be seeing the show at all, but thanks to a change in my schedule we got to try again on Tuesday. We got there at 6:30 this time and were a lot farther up in line. In fact, this time we over compensated and could have shown up several hours later and still would have been fine. This time we were prepare with blankets, trash bags to wrap them in, and umbrellas. And boy did it rain that morning. Harder and longer than the first time. So even with the extra precautions we got pretty damn wet. Six and a half hours this time. But dammit, we got the tickets.

The show was still in danger of getting canceled because the forecast did not look good for Tuesday night. But we went. And it rained. Most of the night. But it was light enough for the show to go on, so we sat and watched in the rain.

It sounds bad I know, but it was actually the opposite. Man, what a show. Watching Meryl Streep just electrify the stage all night long made the dampness completely irrelevant. Words can't begin to describe watching Streep inhabit the character of Mother Courage. And Austin Pendleton is nothing short of a comic genius. A brilliant show filled with top-notch performances.

Something Joe said to me during intermission was right on. We were talking about how lucky we were to be able to see her on stage, and he made a great analogy. Yeas from now when we tell people (be it grandchildren or some other young people we annoy with our old man stories) we saw Meryl Streep it will be a lot like those old guys who can say they got to see DiMaggio play. And really it's true. I really got the chance to see the greatest actor of the last century, perform one of the great roles right in front of my own eyes. Not on video, but right there. And for free to boot. It just cost 12 hours of waiting in line in the rain. I would have sat through a hail storm and a plague of locusts and it still would have been a good deal.

I am so glad we live here.

Oh, and something I found out after I got home. The light rain didn't keep Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Austin Pendleton and the rest of the great cast of artists from spilling their souls and guts on stage. But a few miles away the same rainfall was too much for the Yankees to play a children's game. So Meryl Streep spent about three full hours acting her ass of in the rain, which sometimes included flopping around in mud, but Jeter, A-Rod and the rest of the baseball jocks on the Yankees wouldn't even play a little game that involves them sitting in a covered dugout half the time anyway.

Fucking pussies.

Stop-Immigration.org Is Just One Sad, Pathetic, Internet Troll Loser

Like my post title? I love that it will show up on the front page of the stop-immigration.org site when I post it, because of the way that site automatically links to blogs that mention the words "illegal" and "immigration." That's why I picked such a title.

But I've realized by reading the comments of the single person that comes over to my blog from that site that it's not just a joke, it's actually true. I've been checking my site meter and no one but this idiot has found my site by reading that moronic, jingoistic, racist site. So if he's the only one that reads it, he must be the guy who made it. I speak, of course, of the dipstick who's been leaving bizarrely reasoned arguments against all immigration the last couple of days. He calls himself "Patriot Rightly," which besides being stupid sounding (I've never understood the whole internet "handle" thing. Why is the internet like CB radios and rap names that way?) just doesn't really make any sense.

If you've read my last few postings you've probably seen the completely senseless comments he's written, along with some brilliant counter-points made by Armando, Jose and Ben. So I'm going to just touch on a few of the "points" good ol' P. Rightly made, not because they are valid in any way, shape or form, just that they are the same arguments the rest of the racist agenda crowd has been trained to repeat ad nauseum.

Of course the first argument against the racist charge was "I'm 50% Peruvian."

Well goody for you! This has become the new "I've got lots of friends who are..." Black or gay being the most popular of the words to finish that sentence. I find that most people who ever use that phrase to defend themselves against being called a bigot are usually talking about someone they work with or lives in their neighborhood. Which isn't exactly the same thing as "friends" now is it? Of course now it's the claim that "I can't be racist because I'm a minority." Especially if they are the same minority as the one you are accusing them of being biased against. Well I've got news for you Mr. Rightwingly, you can be half Hispanic and still have a hatred for your own kind. In the gay world it's called "internalized homophobia" and in the black world it's called being Clarence Thomas. So don't even try to pull that crap on us.

Of course this is one of the new tools for the racist agenda. Get a minority lackey to be the mouthpiece for your hate-filled ideals to deflect the charge of racism. Why do you think it was Michelle Malkin, an Asian American, they got to write that silly book defending the use of prison camps for Japanese Americans in WWII? She, like you, can state that because she's the particular race she's disparaging she is immune to the racist charge. Well I've got news for you Jingoist Righty, Malkin is one of the most disgusting racists in the country. She has even been going around promoting the idea that the Mexicans coming to America are largely a part of the conspiracy called "reconquista" that aims to take back the southwest U.S. for Mexico (she actually claims that's why most illegal immigrants are here) and call it Aztlan. Well, as I've pointed out to my old hick friend Kyle in the past (when trying to make him realize that Lou Dobbs is a racist ass) this whole conspiracy is not true. It was made up by white supremacists and neo-Nazis to strike fear in the moron masses. It's similar to the way the anti-Semites made up the Protocols of Zion to stoke the fears and hatred toward Jews.

I don't care how dark your skin is, if you aid in pushing the agenda of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis then you are a no good racist pig. Again, see the Clarence Thomas example.

I'm sorry you are a self-hating Hispanic (if that's really true anyway, this is the anonymous internet after all). It must be sad to look in the mirror and wish your skin would lighten so you could be like all the happy white people. Don't fret though, you've got company in Ms. Malkin and Michael Jackson.

And if you don't have a racist agenda yourself, then why are you peddling a racist book from a hate monger on the front page of your site? Look here and here for a run-down the racist drivel coming from Pat Buchanan's book State Of Emergency. Here's a few bits from it:

"This [immigration] is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history." [p. 5]

"We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene, now well underway, is the invasion unresisted." [p. 6]

"Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war." [p. 12]

"[W]e are in the midst of a savage culture war in which traditionalist values have been losing ground for two generations." [p. 28]

As for the "issues" caused by immigration, well as usual for the anti movement, if you can't find a real one make some up. The "environmental problem" being caused by immigrants is laughable at best. That these people pretend to care about the environment is sickening.

I'm sorry that "the woods and streams where (you) once played are now houses that all look the same" but the fact you try to lay that at the feet of immigrants is ridiculous. You think all those Mexican farm workers are buying those tract houses in your old playground? You know, a lot of the area where I use to ride my bike in the woods has been turned in to an office park, which sucks. But they didn't build that place just to accommodate the extra janitors they had available. You know what caused that? Your precious capitalism that you proclaim such love for.

And highways keep adding lanes because our elected officials don't have the political will to address the transportation issues facing this country in a real and reasonable way (public transportation) and instead pocket the money they get from the oil and auto industries and just build more roads. That ain't even close to being a migrant worker's fault.

The refusal of most of America's cities to control sprawl and implement policies to encourage and demand sustainable growth policies is the real problem. Why don't you join a pro-public transportation advocacy group, or a local environmental organization? Oh, you'd rather bitch about foreigners?

And they could stop putting lanes on those highways if Americans like yourself would bus, train, walk, and/or bike to work instead of jump in their SUV. I suppose I don't know for sure that you don't, but since your IP address says you live in Texas I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time on the public transportation services in oil-land. By the way, a much higher percentage of immigrants take mass transit than native born Americans.

Population problem? You lay that at the immigrants coming in? What about the white couples from Iowa mainlining fertility drugs and popping out litters? They don't count in the population problem? Do a little research and you'll see that since 1960 alone the world population has more than doubled from 3 billion to over 6.5 billion. Population is a problem everywhere man, because people are having too many damn kids.

I'm not really sure what you mean by your city was 2 million growing up and is 5 million now, because there is only one city in America with that much population and that would be New York, with over 8 million. The second largest city is L.A. and it has less than 4 million and rounding out the top three is Chicago with about 2.8 million. So where the hell is this "city" with 5 million people? Your IP says you live in the Houston area, so we'll assume that you meant metropolitan area when you said city. But you should really learn to distinguish the two. But it's like I said, you live somewhere where the leaders you put in office won't do anything to address the growth and sprawl issues and are controlled by the oil cartel. It's rich white guys adding more lanes to those highways, not Mexicans.

Besides, if you kick out all the immigrants, it would only be fair that all the other countries kick out the American ex-patriots so we would gain back about 8 million people (counting overseas military) anyway.

Now these issues that are being used now by the anti crowd (environment, population) are real, but the blame for them is not. It's really about wanting someone else to make the sacrifices to make their world better. It's a total smokescreen. Stopping immigration won't solve any of the problems these people claim to care about. And the real solutions to these problems are usually opposed by these same free-marketeers and libertarians. Bring up that we should outlaw all cars that get less than 50 mpg, institute congestion fees for driving into an urban area (like they've done in London with fabulous success), or actually make people drive slower than 60 mph and they cry communism. Oh no, you can't make any testosterone toys or behavior illegal.

But declaring a human being illegal, for no other reason than trying to make a better world for their family, is OK. It makes me sick.

One last thing. Your comment, "World hunger is not my problem. My pantry is full" (after calling my friend a one world communist, which just made everyone snicker at you) says pretty much everything anyone needs to know about you. And I really don't have any more poetic of a response to it than this:

Go fuck yourself.

Some of us see the world in larger terms than what goes on inside our tiny little isolationist world and our own families.

So go back to your bunker and let the rest of us work together to solve these problems.

Diversions Of Politics

They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.
---Yaphet Kotto, as Smokey James in the movie Blue Collar

I want to just write a little bit today to expand on yesterday's post. First off, the first anonymous comment was from someone who came to my blog from a site called stop-immigration.org, which is an organization that promotes ending all immigration to America, legal and illegal. A little searching around that site and you find little tidbits comparing Mexicans coming across the border to the Nazi invasion of Poland. I don't think I need to point out to anybody why that's just insane. What's weird is how fast this guy posted a message on my blog. A little looking around that right-wing, jingoistic, hate and fear-mongering site and I found that they have an "immigration blog" section that puts up links to any recent blog posts that have the words "illegal" and "immigration" in them. So that's how some nut ball responded to my post so quickly.

Oh, and the link to the study "proving" the horrible effect that immigrants are having on Social Security is from one of those anti-immigrant organizations that sells itself as a "non-partisan" think tank. Typical of the way conservatives run studies, they pick the answer they are looking for and then craft a study that will lead to that predetermined answer. Not what you would consider good science. It's similar to the way they claim that there isn't global warming by pointing to a study done by the one scientist, funded by an oil company, that disagrees with the other gazillion studies and scientists that say otherwise. Or those nefarious studies that claim to "prove" that gay marriage is bad for children, when in fact real studied have proven the exact opposite. They had similar studies that "proved" interracial marriage was bad for kids too.

Anyway, that's not the point today.

I've written about this before (here and here), and I have yet to see anyone make a reasonable argument to me that this whole anti-immigration movement is not based in racism.

And I know that's a loaded term. Calling someone a racist is a very serious charge. It used to be a term that got thrown around too much, so now we are scared as a culture to use it at all. But as the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck blah blah blah. You know what I mean. And because I call them racists, they claim I'm inflaming the issue. But you want to talk about inflaming the issue? How about trying to link Hispanics crossing the Mexican border to terrorism (or "terror" as the low IQ set likes to call it) or calling it an invasion?

How many times do they need it pointed out to them that that's not how terrorists get into the country, running across the southern border? And they know it, but since the attacks on the World Trade Center they found an issue they could use to scare people into being fervently anti-immigrant. Well, most of these people already were anti-Hispanic immigrant, now they've been armed with a justification beyond that they don't like how "those people" pack too many people into an apartment or park their crappy cars on their lawn.

And that's how this movement has gotten such a footing. It s a movement that drapes itself in populism and solidarity with the working class, while playing on ignorant poor people's bigoted tendencies. Human beings tend to want to blame someone else for their lot in life, and there's usually a politician or greedy business owner willing to offer up a sacrificial lamb for their own aims. It's how they keep the masses in line, give them a boogie man to focus on and distract them from the fact it is the said politician and business owner that is the real cause of their oppression.

A century and a half ago it was often the Irish blamed for the country's problems. In my lifetime we saw the disgusting way Ronald Reagan demonized the so-called Cadillac driving welfare mother who keeps having children so her checks get bigger. In one swoop Reagan put the idea in all Americans' heads that the reason their lives were so hard was because all the black women in the country were on welfare and driving big luxury cars on your dime and were getting rich by having more kids. Never mind that none of it was true, not even close.

But the die was cast. Reagan made sure the minimum wage was never raised during his presidency, gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy, busted unions the best he could, handed out corporate welfare like Halloween candy and created a record (until recently) national debt that hurt our economy for a generation. But he had people believing that it was the poor women on welfare that were the reason they couldn't pay their bills.

And he had his help from the media. Some because they were just stupid, bad reporters, and some because they were just plain evil, like Lou Dobbs. And it continues today. Dobbs whole life is about demonizing Hispanics and propping up racist groups that claim, and this is just one example, Mexicans are trying to take over the American southwest by invasion and will call it Aztlan. And immigrants have become the scapegoats for the problems with our health care system, our public schools, reason we won't have Social Security when we retire and why the minimum wage is so low. And just like the fictitious mother with the Cadillac, people believe that illegal immigrants are coming here and going on welfare and sitting around and lazily collecting free money.

And of course, just like that stupid white guy you know who can barely tie his own shoes who claims the reason he didn't get that great job is because of affirmative action, it is not true. Our health care system, public schools and Social Security are messed up because of our elected officials and corporate greed, not because of a few Mexicans living on the fringes of society. And the minimum wage is low because the Republicans have controlled Congress for the last twelve years and they would rather cut the capital gains and estate taxes for rich people than give poor people an extra nickel an hour.

The diversion of "immigrant are the cause of your problems" is just another way they keep the poor people fighting each other so that they are blind to the real reasons they can't get ahead.

The saddest part is that it works so well.

Bum On The Rod

author unknown

The bum on the rod is hunted down
As the enemy of mankind;
The other is driven around to his club
And feted, wined and dined.
And they who curse the bum on the rods
As the essence of all that is bad

Will greet the other with a winning smile
And extend him the hand so glad.
The bum on the rods is a social flea
Who gets an occasional bite;
The bum on the plush is a social leech,
Blood-sucking day and night.

The bum on the rods is a load so light
That his weight we scarcely feel,
But it takes the labor of dozens of men
To furnish the other meal.

As long as you sanction the bum on the plush,
The other will always be there,
But rid yourself of the bum on the plush
And the other will disappear.

Then make an intelligent, organized kick,
Get rid of the weights that crush;
Don't worry about the bum on the rods,
Get rid of the bum on the plush.

Politics Of Diversion

If there were ever a question that this country is made up of the moron masses, just look at the immigration debate. When you wonder to yourself how people could actually believe things like Bush is a good president or that Republicans care about the middle and lower classes, just remember what stupid nonsense they'll buy into about illegal immigration, mostly thanks to the propaganda from the Republicans and Lou Dobbs. I got an email the other day from someone I went to high school with in Suburban Atlanta, who also went to my college in Illinois. She has since moved back to Georgia. Anyway, it was one of those pointless internet petitions she was forwarding to everyone in her email address book. This is what it said (I have not edited any of the following email transcripts, except for spelling and to not include the names on the petition, not to protect anyone, there are just too damn many):

It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If they give benefits to "illegal" aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave us that have paid into Social Security all our working lives?

As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow "illegal" aliens access to Social Security benefits. Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship for eligibility to that social service.

You can Agree or Delete. Instructions are below.

PETITION FOR: President Bush

Mr. President: The petition below is a protest against what the senate voted on recently which was to allow illegals to access our social security! We demand that you and all congressional representatives require citizenship for anyone to be eligible for social services in the United States.

We further demand that there not be any amnesty given to illegals, and NO free services or funding, or payments to or for illegal immigrants.

We are fed up with the lack of action about this matter and are tired of paying for services to illegals! Tell Senor Fox to pay for his own people!

Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.

This was followed by a list of 323 names and their home towns with my "friend's" being the last one. Then continued:

If you don't forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone you know. Thank you!!! To add your name, click on "forward".You will be able to add your name at the bottom of the list and then forward it to your friends.

THE 2,000TH PERSON SEND IT ON TO THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS: President@WhiteHouse.gov

You've all seen these before. I'm not sure what I think is funnier, that people think these things work, or that the person who wrote this one actually wrote that if you don't want to sign it at least send it to everyone you know. Yes, because I'm all about forwarding spam to all my friends with political agendas I don't agree with. The other thing that is always stupid about these things is the claim that if you don't forward it on all the names will be lost. If anyone actually took a second to think about that they would realize how stupid that is. Even if I don't pass it on, it's likely that someone on the list will, so the names won't be lost. In fact, what is more likely with these dumb things is that so many copies get flying around that most of the people who've "signed" it are on many, maybe hundreds or thousands, of them. This is why email petitions are stupid. Not only are there many of the same names getting sent to the target of the petition, but you can't even confirm that all the people on it are real. I could easily make up 2,000 names and places and send it out. Also, how do they decide on 2,000 as the number to then send it to the prez? My guess would be it was just pulled out of someone's ass.

So anyway, I sent an email back to Deb, and even though I was thinking about really going off on her, I just wrote this quick note to point out one correction to the claim that illegal aliens don't "contribute" to Social Security:

That's actually not true. Most working illegal aliens contribute to Social Security but don't get to take benefits later on. If they put in, they should be allowed to get the benefits of it.

You should learn the facts Deb, before you send out propaganda.

Now this is a little thing I like to point out to people. Most illegal workers actually get taxed because they use a SS# to get a job, but they don't actually draw on it when they get old, because they would get caught. So she emailed me back, and the true colors of the anti-immigrant agenda came flying out:

I have learned the facts and this isn't propaganda. Illegal aliens work by using forged or stolen document which is a felony in this country in which individuals usually go to jail, except if you're Hispanic. Let's not speak about that one social security number is used by several individuals at one time, so you think the government should figure out who worked where and pay the person appropriately. The fact is the government won't do that, instead the same amount would be paid out to all using the number, in which the funds for it would come out of another hard working American Citizen's account. And of course you're not putting a lot into social security right now, so it doesn't matter that someone else will get your money.

Let's not speak about all the other federal assistance the illegal aliens get that they don't contribute to, or really shouldn't get since their not American Citizens. OR the fact they are a driving force for why hard working American Citizens aren't able to get the minimum wage raised. The minimum wage needs to go up! The truth is American Citizens would work the jobs the Hispanic community does, but American Citizens aren't able to take care of their families by working those jobs. American Citizens choose not to break laws by living 10 to 20 individuals in a two bedroom apartment, or six families in a single dwelling home. And as long as industries know they could go get a day laborer off the street for nothing, their lobbyist will continue to grease palms to keep the minimum wage were it is now.

Of course if I lived in your reality, and had someone taking care of me, than I might believe your way that everyone should be taken care of at any cost. Man it be so great to have your blinders on, and not see how this country is being rapped by all the illegal aliens; as they negatively impact the health care, education, governmental and industrial systems.

As long as the individual is an illegal alien, that person does not have the rights that apply to American Citizens. They have the right to be treated in a humane manor, but not the right to break the laws of this country.

Well, now the gloves came off. Besides the fact that this was a racist-tinged rant against "Hispanics," she decided to claim that I feel the way I do about the issue because I'm lazy. I also assume she meant our country is being raped by Hispanics, not "rapped."

So I wrote her back:

Ahh, nice racist rant against Hispanics. The fact is, like I said, that undocumented workers put money into Social Security that they never get to take out. That completely goes against your claim that they have "never contributed." That's what I mean by false propaganda, which is what is being used to drive the racist-inspired anger against Hispanics.

It is the politics of diversion by our government, blaming the working poor for the country's problems instead of where the real problem lies, like in the boardroom of Wal-Mart and in the US Congress. It is your anti-immigration Republican buddies that are against raising the minimum wage, and illegal immigrants have nothing to with that, nor do they have any affect on it. They would prefer to cut the estate tax for lazy cunts like Paris Hilton rather than help the working class in this country.

And your claim as to American Citizens don't break the law by living too many people in a house is complete bullshit, I've seen that tons of times. Poor people, illegal or not, end up having to do that all the time. I've seen it a lot. You must never visit the trailer parks in your area.

It's obvious that your real problem is with Hispanics and how they live, regardless of their legal status. This is how the government and the big corporations keep us down, divide the poor masses against each other and stoke the flames of racism.

If you were really interested in doing something for workers rights you would involve yourself in protests against Wal-Mart and their union-busting, low-paying, no health-care business practices. But I'm willing to bet you give Wal-Mart your money all the time. Am I right? Feed the machine that keeps the people down, and blame the brown people for your problems. You could be out there helping to organize a union for Wal-Mart workers, instead you forward pointless petitions against Hispanics.

As for your dig and me and my wife, my so-called "Not putting a lot into social security," or that I have "someone taking care of me," well now, you don't really know dick about my life do you? You aren't the first, and you probably won't be the last, of my old friends who haven't seen me in like forever who make some assumptions about my life because I married someone with an MD behind their name. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but they're not true. I work both in the medical education field (for over five years now) and still have a fledgling theatre career for which I continue to get paid work. As someone who gets most of his money as an independent contractor/self-employed person I actually pay a higher rate to both federal taxes and Social Security since I don't have an employer contributing half like most people do. I'm willing to bet that I've lived in the blue-collar, working class, low-wage world a hell of a lot more than you ever have, especially during the entire 90s when I was in my twenties. So if one of us is likely to have your so-called "blinders" on it isn't me.

Calling someone lazy because they have a different opinion about the illegal immigrant situation than you is just a tired old tactic by you racist hate-mongers form the right. I'm used to it, people call me lazy all the time because I happen to be somewhat poor. It's completely untrue, but I decided a long time ago I didn't care what stupid hicks thought of me.

But you basically called my wife a sucker and accused her of being an enabler of some lazy bum, and that is something I will take offense to. You don't know my wife one bit (if you did, you would know that supporting a lazy do-nothing husband is not something she would ever put up with) and know nothing about our life together, or how much money she makes (which is a lot less than some people want to think), so I'll thank you to leave her out of any argument you might have with me.

It's sad and pathetic the way you feel the need to blame the Mexicans for the world's problems. The old white men in the boardrooms who control this country and its economy count on ignorant fools like you, with your easily exploited racist leanings, to keep their control and keep the working class from getting ahead.

I had originally written that if she insulted my wife again I would catch the next bus to Georgia and beat the snot out of her, but I thought better of that comment and deleted it. But I certainly felt that way, insulting someone's spouse is so low. And like most people, I won't stand for that shit.

I figure that's enough to digest for today. I'll have more comments about this "dialogue" tomorrow. Maybe I'll hear from her again in the meantime. Won't that be fun?

Immaterial Girl

I saw this little news item the other day. Seems that the Dusseldorf, Germany authorities are going to be keeping their eye on Madonna this weekend to make sure she doesn't offend anyone. If you haven't heard, Madonna is pissing off people with her mock crucifixion during a part of her show on the current tour. The Catholics in Italy are not happy and the Germans are giving her the stern warning that if she does it there it could be "construed as insulting religious beliefs."

Geez, who cares? I still don't understand at all what is wrong with insulting people's religious beliefs. It is no different than insulting people's political beliefs, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Hell, turn on FOX News or any talk radio and you'll see my political beliefs insulted about once every ten seconds. I don't see the difference, beliefs are beliefs. And actually, most people don't actually have a problem with religion in general being insulted, they have a problem with their religion being insulted. Nobody makes fun of other people's religion better than religious people.

Remember the comet people from several years ago? The ones who committed suicide together because they believed that an approaching comet was going to pick them up and take them to heaven? Well, nobody stopped themselves from making fun of that. Of course, with them all dead I guess there's no danger bashing them. Everyone I heard calling them foolish and misguided for such silly beliefs was usually a Christian. Right, believing in a magic comet is so less believable than a guy born to a virgin mother (with God's seed) dying on a cross and then coming back to life three days later. Or that the same guy turned water in to wine. Or some guy took two of every animal on the entire planet and fit them on one boat, and then sailed for forty days.

Talking bushes, parting whole seas, walking on water, images of Mary in grilled-cheese sandwiches. And the comet people were the crazy?

And I know what you are thinking, "But Deni, you make fun of religion all the time."

True, but I don't believe in any of that nonsense. I make fun of all of them. I don't defend one while making fun of another or get all offended when mine gets insulted. Making fun of, or insulting, religion is fair game.

And really, don't these idiots realize that this is exactly what Madonna wants to happen? She's pushing fifty and nobody really pays attention to her anymore. Controversial shit is how she gets noticed. And apparently it doesn't even have to be very original. All that's happening is a rehashing of her shtick from 1989. Yawn.

Have the anti-free speech nut jobs learned nothing? Ice-T and his band Body Count sold so many more copies of "Cop Killer" because of the attention they brought it. And one of the worst rap groups of all time became huge because some right-wing Puritan ass-hole in Florida was offended by "Me So Horny." As soon as he tried to get it banned it went to the top of the charts. Then we all had to endure that fucking awful "Banned in the USA" song.

So all they are doing is making Madonna feel important again, when she really hasn't mattered for a long time. Just ignore her and she'll go away.

All this fuss over Madonna, who is about as relevant as.......well.......an unemployed guy in his mid-thirties with an opinion and a blog.