Monday, November 24, 2008

Presidential Portraits

My fat ass just strolled in from the pharmacy, where I go for my legal drugs, and I had a mildly upsetting run-in with the cashier. A skinny, merry fellow who is as socially retarded as I, but doesn't seem to know it.

Every time a customer paid for something, or he gave change, he threw in some painful banter. Like when co-anchors on the news converse in an awkward way that has people reaching for the remote control. But the remote control wouldn't work on this guy. He kept loudly pointing out the name of the president on each bill. Give him a five and he'd yell, "One portrait of Abe Lincoln!" A dollar, naturally, was a portrait of George Washington. He did the same thing with the coins.

My anxiety rose, and I inched closer with the size and speed of a Macy's balloon.

When I got to the cashier, I thought about bolting, but he nailed me before I could give it serious consideration. "Good morning, sir, would you like a million dollars?" he asked. Jovial. But I wasn't sure what the hell he meant, until I thought of the Big Bank Bailout (BBB). Confident that I had an amusing, amiable reply, I said, "Yeah, I could use a bailout!"

Silence.

He scanned my items, both of them (wink, wink) and weakly responded a full 10 or 15 seconds later. "A bailout..." he said. It was like I killed a mentally disabled songbird. I out-stranged him and murdered the jolly. It was like an enormous fart during sex, but much worse. And as I sauntered out the door (I saunter), I looked back on the wreckage left behind. A wake, if you will, behind the SS Fucknut. He was totally clammed up and stymied. Before I got to the register, there was joy. After, a strange little man in a blue shirt, with nothing to say.

Outside in the parking lot I took a deep breath and completed a pirouette to avoid the Salvation Army bell-clanger outside.

About 10 minutes ago I found out that they closed the pharmacy because of what I did. Well, not really.

So, pirates...that's pretty crazy, huh?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Everyone Wants To Hug Yang-Yang

But DO NOT hug Yang-Yang. Read all about it! I did not make this up. Sometimes, it's good right out of the box.

Student Bitten By Panda

BEIJING — A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) -high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten in the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clear-headed, he said.

"Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger, but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.

The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep.The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Midnight Notes

About twenty minutes ago it occurred to me that a bath and shave may make me feel better. Because studies have shown that shaving lotion and a hairbrush kill germs. Shit, why not. It does make me feel a bit better. That and 3 tramadol, 6 ibuprofen, nasal spray and a lorazepam or two.

I'm hoping what I'm about to write is in some way interesting to someone. Last night I had the chills and was coughing like an asshole mere inches from Linda's face (made me think of Doc Holliday and "Big Nose" Kate). So I emerged from that warm bed, like a Macy's float in an updraft, naked and sick, and went into the television room, also known as the "Green Room." There I found a pen and paper, and started to write for "Last American on Earth." This is what my feverish noggin produced.

The unfamiliar horror of living in a place empty of freedom and rational law made him think of terrible suffering he'd seen; the food shortages, the brutalization of a once delicate and compassionate people, and the cheapening of life that was once seen as a treasure beyond value. Thoughts of vengeance and cruelty mocked his now dead principles and stood astride them, cackling. Besides, his oppressor was not some raving lunatic, or cold, paternalistic bureaucrat committing crimes in the name of righteousness. Instead, his oppressor was just a frightened Ursine, willing to do anything to maintain control (wouldn't you?) while his master was away. To him, it was understandable, logical even, to use violence as a tool to keep his seat of power. Otherwise, it would be visited upon him and his 1000 fold. Everyone was correctly motivated in juxtaposition for a revolution. But for now, there was no talk of attack. People moved and spoke carefully, and time passed.

It seemed that, given enough time, such an arrangement would lead us backwards to the very moment when humankind first distinguished itself from his brutal, animal ancestors. To the moment of the Divine Spark, if there was one. He wanted desperately to believe one existed in him, and not in the thing ruling him. We are God's children, all us humans. That's the ticket. If he could believe that, that God was on his side, the revolution could begin the very next moment.

Stopping the Ursine would require an equal measure of brutality. The humans were ready for it, they thirsted for it. The Ursine and his governing body would need to be killed, as would their families. Their bodies would have to be displayed in the same way human bodies were hung upside down from trees, naked, and creatively mutilated by a psychopath, for unknown crimes.

As Garrett thought of these things, a vole scurried past his door, followed by more than a few hungry, desperate people.

Ta da!

Bit by bit, it shall be done one day!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Fond Of It

On Thursday, November 13, I found myself taking everything I own out into the rain, where it was then taken to another apartment. I'm meant to fill in the space in the same manner as I did before, or at least in a way that won't offend anyone. So far I'm doing well. Linda and I did most of the work, as my father is weak and somewhat ill, and age 76.

I underestimated the emotional impact that this move would have on me. More than a couple of times, I totally fucking freaked out. Like tear your shirt off "Bruce Banister" style freaked out.

But enough of that. Those episodes where I lose control and become very self destructive are rare, but they leave a feeling of distrust and sadness behind. And for me, guilt. I've started taking Effexor again, and it seems to be quite efficacious. A proper lithium level has been restored, and that has helped with depression, as well. If need be, I'll tap into my reserves of Risperdal, a potent but highly undesirable anti-psychotic. With me, it causes flu-like feelings and headache with chills. I'd rather that than telling my girlfriend that I want her to kill me.

Going back into a psych ward was something for me to consider. But I couldn't think of how I would benefit. I've been so many times, after all. So I took some lorazepam, slept, and found myself again over time. Both my girlfriend Linda and my father said, "It's so good to have you back." the day after my mania stopped. I wept like a babe when I found heard them say both exactly the same thing, a couple of hours apart. Linda got the tears as she said it second.

A kind gentleman left some information in a comment for me to consider about lithium. I'm going to look at it. I'm confident that lithium has worked well for me these past 8 years. But with lithium toxicity being such a concern, I can see how there would be many bad stories about lithium poisoning.

Tonight I'm battling a rather nasty cold. So much to talk about, but I feel strongly compelled to shed my clothes and seek the warmth of my other self under the covers on the bed behind me. Sleeping with the woman you love is an accidental gift of wondrous exctasy in a random universe. I'm fond of it.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Auto Extortion

The government is being extorted by GM and Ford to the tune of 25 billion of your Earth dollars. They say that they are too big to fail, and if they are allowed to, two and a half million people will be out of work, the sun will go black, and you'll have to eat turd sandwiches to survive.

I have a modest proposal. Let us instead purchase GM and Ford, as taxpayers, and then set up each company (or one combined company) as a not-for-profit corporation.

The capitalists are waving the white flag, here. A low interest loan will only delay the inevitable. But if you go my Socialist way, you don't have to even make a profit. Workers' wages could continue to be negotiated via unions. The board of this new corporation could be compensated through a salary and benefits package approved by Congress. A trust for profits could be established, and used to fund expansion and investment.

Just an idea, folks. A big, fat RED one.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Obama as "Mutt"

In his first press conference, President-Elect Barack Obama made a joke, one of two that have people with nothing else to do talking. I'm one of those people, apparently. There is something interesting here worth looking at, perhaps as a way of reminding you that most people need to be slapped. After election day, you may have noticed a general optimism about the future of mankind. Party-poopers are already at work. Give them a parade and they will bring the rain.

The wet blankets I have in mind are the biracial cry babies who take offense at Obama referring to himself as a "mutt." Specifically, found in Kimchi Mamas, a blog written by a Korean-American woman. By all means, check it out. She seems like a nice woman, but she's being too damn sensitive. If Obama is comfortable calling himself a fucking "mutt," then he can do so. If some biracial people find the term upsetting, you're just going to have to get over it.

Some people have this thing called a "sense of humor" and often try to inject conversation and speeches with good natured self-deprecation, thus providing levity, even approachability.

This chick doesn't have one. Kimchi Mama! Otherwise a good blog.

Friday, November 07, 2008

A Major Opus

This morning I was catching up on some old emails, and this and that, and discovered the final Opus comic, where he apparently doesn't quite die but instead goes to sleep dreaming of a better, kinder world. That's a fine ending as far as I'm concerned, but I'm sorry to see it go. Bloom County went off into the great beyond several years ago, and I remember it well.

For those who don't know, Bloom County by Berkley Breathed was a comic strip that ran in the '80's and probably into the '90's (memory fails). The main character, or one of them, was Opus the Penguin. Such was the popularity of Bloom County that Opus was brought back for "Opus," a couple of years ago. It ran only in the Sunday paper and was frequently, like Bloom County, the funniest and best illustrated comic in the comics. It was political, but lacked the poisonous, unfunny air of Mallard Fillmore or Prickly City. Even if you disagreed with the little penguin, you had to admire his fundamental humanity. Or penguinanity.

Among his possessions at his "death" was a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's compelling, and deeply moving to me, that Breathed chose that book. An innocent's desire for innocence and kindess in this world. I will miss you, Opus, as well as Steve Dallas, Bill the Cat and Bloom County.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The Day After

I'll happily enjoy a bong hit with you Man in Black. At this point, a lobotomy would help, as well. Despite this magnificent success and a most happy day (except for Question 8 in California) for Obamamites like myself and Linda, I'm in a terrible, suicidal depression. A perfect example of how it's all in the mind, this mental illness stuff.

Most of the morning found me on the virge of tears, as did the afternoon. For much of the day, I've been drugged with lorazepam, Effexor and propranolol. It's difficult to explain, but I'm ensconsced in guilt, self-loathing and physical weakness. I'll not give into suicidal ideation, but I find it withering. A constant barrage of thoughts and feelings that almost seemed designed to reduce me to quivering jelly.

Irritability travels with it, as it would with anyone in emotional survival mode.

I'd like to say Congratulations to everyone. It is truly a magnificent victory.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Obama

This is just wonderful. Bye bye Neo-Con douchebags.

King of the Kangaroo People

But anything can happen. Do not be surprised if Friday morning's Boston Globe headline reads, "Xeitythotl, King of the Kangaroo People, ascends Glorious Throne of Buv'Tok." Well, that would be pretty fucking crazy, but it doesn't seem as crazy as planes knocking down the World Trade Center or Bush stealing the election. Or Gallagher.

I beg anyone out there with a gun of any kind, if this election is a 269-269 tie, come to my flat and blow my head off. Just do it in a cool way, like Anton Saguro from No Country for Old Men. Not with a bowling pin, like that crazy son of a bitch in There Will Be Blood.

I'm just saying, if you're going to kill me and base how you do it on a movie you saw, pick the method that will, you know, hurt me less. Think of me as a zombie and shoot me in the head.

You know what? Just scratch the whole idea, ok? Buncha fucking rubes, the lot of you.

Election Day Coverage

Earlier today I voted at the Precinct 1 polling place in my town. The crowd was above average for a big election, if memory serves. The kids in the school had a bake sale, which I thought was a clever way to raise money. One had to walk past sticky buns and hot coffee to vote.

This being a predominately white area, there were no lines and I was in and out in fifteen minutes. Reminds me of when I lost my virginity. The picture box reports long lines, and the people waiting in those lines (in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida) are mostly brown or black. I'm one of about 100 people in the whole country that thinks this is a national disgrace. It was just reported that 500 voters in an "almost all African American district" in Virginia were told to come back later, since the electronic voting machines were not working.

This may sound like hyperbole, but (mistake or not) these problems are dangerous. If Obama loses, these "kinks" will be seen very differently by various segments of the population.

Anyway, I'm beating away suicidal thoughts with drugs, the kindness of strangers, and the affection of my love. It has nothing to do with the election. I'm confident about every victory except for Question 3 (dog racing ban). For reasons that are unclear to me, vast numbers of people who wouldn't be caught dead at Wonderland Dog Park are defending dog racing. It's on the same level as cock-fighting, and I've been to Wonderland countless times. Even before I could bet, my father would take my brother and I to the races all the time.

That's how I know that Wonderland is NOT a wonderland. It feels as if it were built on an ancient Indian burial ground, next to a slaughterhouse or rank paper mill. It's the most depressing place on Earth, except for Twin Rivers in Rhode Island. That's because of what I witnessed there...a woman trying repeatedly to get a cash advance on her credit card so she could go back to the slots. I imagine that she is still there now, trying to get that cash advance. But the atmosphere is no better than Wonderland. Despair. Poverty. Terrible food. Animal abuse for fun and prizes. The patrons lurch around like those demons in Jacob's Ladder, and 3/4 of the people are wearing sweatpants.

So Wonderland is a Void, and it needs to be closed. It's fine to be pathetic, I'm all for that, but don't hurt animals or other people when doing it. My brother and I worked on the Grey2K campaign back in, of course, 2000. It failed, which shocked me, then Bush won, which shocked me. Within three years, I was at McLean's Hospital in Belmont literally getting electroshocked. It's been a shocking decade all around.

Tonight, and in the coming days, I'd like to medidate over all the right choices people made, from gay rights to marijuana legalization to the presidency. That would be nice. If McCain wins, I'll just take a deep breath and join the riots if there are any. If not, I'll enjoy watching McCain and Palin take this country right off a cliff, like Thelma and Louise.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Eve of the Vote

It's getting close to midnight and tomorrow is election day. My vote is going to Barack Obama, and the reasons are scattered throughout my posts. Linda and I have supported Obama since the early days of the campaign, when everyone assumed Hillary would get the nod. I genuinely like the man, and feel that he is decent, bright and principled. In all the best ways.

So I'll vote for him. And "No" on Question 1, and "Yes" on the other two questions.

Goodnight, everyone. I've not been in the best of health lately, but hopefully will have some more thoughts in the coming days and new posts.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Studs Terkel

Obituary of Studs Terkel. I thought of him, and will ever think of him, as an artist and political activist. A wonderful man.

CHICAGO — Studs Terkel captured the essence of Chicago in the pages of his best-selling oral histories, chronicling common people and celebrities alike.

Along the way he became an ageless master of listening and speaking, a broadcaster, activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Terkel died Friday at age 96.

"He found his home in Chicago and he found it in the gritty aspect of Chicago life," said Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum. "The ne'er-do-wells, the outcasts, the bums, all these people were people he was curious about. They intrigued him."

Dan Terkell said his father died at home, and described his death as "peaceful, no agony. This is what he wanted."

"My dad led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life," Terkell, who spells his name with an extra letter, said in a statement issued through his father's colleague and close friend Thom Clark.

Terkel was a native New Yorker who moved to Chicago as a child and came to embrace and embody his adopted town, with all its "carbuncles and warts," as he recalled in his 2007 memoir, "Touch and Go." He was a cigar and martini man, white-haired and elegantly rumpled in his trademark red-checkered shirts, an old rebel who never mellowed, never retired, never forgot, and "never met a picket line or petition I didn't like."

"A lot of people feel, 'What can I do, (it's) hopeless,'" Terkel told The Associated Press in 2003. "Well, through all these years there have been the people I'm talking about, whom we call activists ... who give us hope and through them we have hope."

The tougher the subject, the harder Terkel took it on. He put out an oral history collection on race relations in 1992 called "Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About The American Obsession," and, in 1995, "Coming of Age," recollections of men and women 70 and older.

He cared about what divided us, and what united us: death — in his 2001 "Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith," and hope, in his 2003 "Hope Dies Last."

Terkel won a 1985 Pulitzer Prize for "The Good War," remembrances of World War II; contrasted rich and poor along the same Chicago street in "Division Street: America," 1966; limned the Depression in "Hard Times," 1970; and chronicled how people feel about their jobs in "Working," 1974.

Said Andre Schiffrin, Terkel's longtime editor, publisher and close friend: "He liked to tell the story of an interview with a woman in a public housing unit in Chicago. At the end of the interview, the woman said, `My goodness, I didn't know I felt that way.' That was his genius."

He also was a syndicated radio talk show host, voice of gangsters on old radio soaps, jazz critic, actor in the 1988 film "Eight Men Out," and survivor of the 1950s blacklist.

Terkel's politics were liberal, vintage FDR. He would never forget the many New Deal programs from the Great Depression and worried that the country suffered from "a national Alzheimer's disease" that made government the perceived enemy.

Terkel was born Louis Terkel on May 16, 1912, in the Bronx. His father, Samuel, was a tailor; his mother, Anna, a seamstress. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and ran a rooming house where young Louis would meet the workers and activists who would profoundly influence his view of the world.

He got the nickname Studs as a young man, from the character Studs Lonigan, the protagonist of James T. Farrell's beloved trilogy of novels about an Irish-American youth from Chicago's South Side.

Terkel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932, studying philosophy, and also picked up a law degree. But instead of choosing law, he worked briefly in the civil service and then found employment in radio with one of his beloved "alphabet agencies" from the New Deal, the WPA Writers Project.

His early work as a stage actor led to radio acting, disc jockey jobs and then to radio interview shows beginning in the 1940s. From 1949 to 1952, he was the star of a national TV show, "Studs' Place," a program of largely improvised stories and songs set in a fictional bar (later a restaurant) owned by Studs. Some viewers even thought it was a real place and would go looking for it in Chicago.

The McCarthy-era antipathy toward activists cost him his national TV outlet. But his radio interview show flourished, first at WFMT in Chicago and then, through syndication, in many markets.

Alton Miller, an associate dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago and a friend of Terkel's for more than 20 years, said Terkel hoped to live to see Barack Obama elected president.

Obama called Terkel a Chicago institution and national treasure.

"His writings, broadcasts, and interviews shed light on what it meant to be an American in the 20th century," Obama said in a statement Friday night. "He will be deeply missed by all who knew him, all who loved him, and all whose lives were enriched by the American stories he told."

In 1939, he married social worker Ida Goldberg, a marriage that lasted 60 years even though she couldn't get him to dance and always called him Louis, not Studs. "Ida was a far better person than I, that's the reality of it," Terkel later wrote of Ida, who died in 1999.

"She had a certain empathy I lack. And she was more politically active than I. ... Did she play a tremendous role in my life? Yeah, you could say so."