June 2005 Archives

Okay, call off the suicide watch. Don't bring me flowers. Don't sing me love songs. I don't care if you talk to me any more when I come through the door at the end of the day.*

I'm feeling much better. Two things helped:

First, I mowed the lawn. Yes. Mowing the lawn put me in a better mood.

I think it's the whole "toiling with your back" thing. Despite the fact that I was using a high-dollar Toro self-propelled mulching mower (that I got second-hand of my father, who's too indolent in his old age to mow the lawn himself any more), it's still work. Especially when it's 95 degrees, as it was when I mowed it.

And, of course, mowing the lawn makes my surroundings look better. While I'm not too keen on the actual act of mowing the lawn, surveying a well-groomed Delaware-sized stretch of grass, knowing it was my handywork that made it happen, well, that's real satisfaction.

Then, when I was finished, I played a game of what I've been calling "Charlieball". If that sounds like some kind of game of soccer where I kick the dog around, you're a horrible person for even thinking that, you monster! No, it's just me running around the yard, flailing my arms like a maniac, chasing the dog and barking at her. I have fun, the dog has fun, and, again, it's exercise. I went inside after I couldn't chase the dog any more to cool down and get some water, and I was covered in sweat, and the dog's tongue was dripping like a faucet. I think we'll both sleep well tonight.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Why do you call it "Charlieball"? There's no ball involved. I mean, here you are calling me a monster, and I'm just trying to figure out where the ball is.

Okay, you've got a point. Frankly, I don't know why I call it Charlieball. I wish I had an answer, and I apologize for calling you a monster. There. You happy?

Well, other than to assure you, gentle reader, that I'm in a better mood than yesterday, I don't have much today. I've been working on a treatise, whose working title is "Why Bob Geldof Is an Idiot (and Not for the Reasons You Might Think)", but alas, it's not done yet.

Um, let's see. What's happened in the news lately?

• I see that Prince Bandar has resigned. About frickin' time.
• Another beheading in Thailand. Perhaps they should consider dropping more origami swans on them.
• You've probably all heard about him already, but in case you haven't, I want to be this guy when I grow up.

Um, okay, that's about all I got.

* If you didn't get the reference, I'm sorry. I'll do my best to be less oblique in the future.

I'm in an unusually foul mood. I say "unusually" because, well, this may not come as a shock to too many of you, but I'm not exactly, um, in touch with my feelings.

Usually when I'm foul tempered, I'm walking around totally unaware of that fact. I usually don't realize that I've been as grumpy as I'd been until either A) someone points it out, like "Wow, J. You seem to be in a horrible mood lately." Or B) I notice I'm skipping around on the iPod more than usual. Unable to find a song that sounds any good.

But in this instance, neither of those were necessary. It's so bad it somehow managed to permeate the usual fog of self-unawareness.

So that's just a preface, in case it seems like things are a bit dark around here. Dark and Morrissey-esque.

*****

Let's see if we can't spot the error in this sentence. It's from a public service announcement, as read, I believe, by the person who played Florida on "Good Times". Or was it Dionne Warwick?

If these people are going to stay independent, they need your help!

The abuse of the English language and destruction the clear meaning of words continues apace. And don't give me any of this, "Aw, come on, J! Stop being so freakin' pedantic! I mean, you know what she means."

Yeah, I do know what she means. But still.

*****

I think Charlie is really getting the hang of the whole potty training thing, except for that last few seconds she needs to hold it in, when the combination of the full bladder and the excitement of me being home is just too much, and she ends up making a mess of the kitchen.

I want to minimize the amount of time between when I arrive and when Charlie has an opportunity to whiz somewhere other than the floor. So, when I get home, rather than going in the front door, I go around to the side and open the door as quickly as possible, whereupon she runs past me to her little yellowed corner of the lawn and makes her water. Then she runs over to me excitedly whereupon she gets a treat and a pat on the head.

Well, yesterday, as I was attempting to open the door, I look into the door and come face to face with a half-beagle through the window. And then it disappeared. And then I saw it again. Apparently Charlie has about a four-foot vertical.

Must be the Mountain Dew.

*****

So, in these trying times for me (not trying because of life circumstances, but trying because I'm not in a very good mood), it's good to have the ol' girl. She's obviously not going to be as cute as she was when I first got her. Since she her cuteness was so intense that it could warp space and time.

But she's still freakin' cute. Even when she's just peed on the floor.

Speaking of which, I need more pictures. I'll have the Cub around this weekend, and I'll be sure to take more. What I'd really like is another picture of Charlie sniffing Bud, so we can do a compare and contrast and see how much bigger she's gotten. She's freakin' huge these days.

*****

Just an FYI, I'm moving the hosting for this site to something more permanent, like. Right now it's running on my home PC, which isn't good. Especially when I'm downloading TV shows at the same time you're trying to view this.

So, they had an "election" in Iran. I put "election" in those quotey things for two reasons:

1. Apparently the whole thing was rigged from top to bottom. All those turnout numbers are apparently crap. There were people voting dozens of times. The poll times were rather, um, flexible. It was like Chicago out there.

2. Even if there weren't massive fraud, it doesn't matter who won the dern thing. This is the deal. To say that Iran is democratic because they elect their president is like saying my high school was democratic because we had an elected student council.

I mean, we did, but so what? If you got expelled, what good would it do you to appeal to the class president? If the student council decided it would be really cool if people could smoke pot behind the auditorium, do you think that would happen?

Of course not. In dozens of ways, democracy isn't about elections. In this case, it's about power. The Supreme Guide (that Khamenei guy you've probably heard about) has absolute power over everything. Any power he deigns to give to someone else he can easily take away. The parliament goes through their of kabuki dance to pass laws, and if Khamenei and his council of guardians doesn't like them, the laws are struck down, and they may as well have spent that time playing chess.

This isn't to say that there isn't something to be learned from the results. First of all, however not-at-all seriously the Iranians (and the U.S. government) take the results of the elections, the Europeans (and the U.S. media) seem to take it very seriously. It frames what they're going to be saying to each other and what they think about the direction of the country.

The hardline nutjob won over the not-quite-so-hardline nutjob. And since that wasn't actually the voice of the people, I'm assuming the Mullahs had something to do with him winning. So, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what message they're trying to send.

If I were a gamblin' man, I'd bet the message is: Negotiations about nuclear weapons are over. No more Mr. Nice Guys.

But then, what do I know? I suppose we'll see.

This here is is story by Christopher Hitchens about his latest trip to Iran. Good glimpse of who the Iranians are, and very depressing as well.

Say what you want about the Bush Doctrine, but there seems to be an inverse relationship between the friendliness of our government to another country's government and the friendly feelings of Ahmed Sixpack towards us.

More commentary here, here, and here. If you're interested. Which you should be. These people are months away from having the Bomb.

First, Howl's Moving Castle.

The Cliff's Notes version of my review is that if you liked his other movies, you're going to like this. If you didn't like any of his other movies, your soul is dead, and I suggest that you go find a quiet place to wait to die, since that's about all you're good for.

There was something I couldn't quite put my finger on about this movie that I didn't like. Although "like" is relative, since the guy is a genius, and he doesn't make bad movies. You can't help but judge these things under the impossibly high standards of his other movies.

I decided it was the pacing. It didn't move very quickly. Granted, Spirited Away didn't move very quickly either, but there was something captivating about it, and I didn't find myself as captivated by this one.

The plot was a bit confusing. There was too much subtext. Usually in his movies, when there's subtext, at some point it becomes "text", and everything falls into place. As in, you see there's stuff happening around the protagonist, but then the protagonist gets involved and all the subtext comes into focus.

Not so in this one. The subtext is that there's a big war going on. Who's fighting? Why? I think all that is revealed in three lines total. Although, maybe that's the whole point.

And, Billy Crystal as Calcifer the Fire Demon was a distraction. There's a difference between having a character with a big personality and having a character who's being voiced by a ham. Calcifer was the latter.

But I'm being over-picky. It was highly enjoyable. Even if the plot was perhaps overly deep, it was still deep. Billy Crystal aside, the characters were all very interesting and well done. And -- this is the big one -- it's stuck with me. I've been thinking about some of the ideas, the characters, the visuals.

So, watch, enjoy, and for God's sake, pay attention!

***** One last comment:

One scene got the Cub thinking. I'm not giving away much when I say that the protagonist, Sophie, is cursed to become an old woman. In one scene she's just sitting in front of a lake, soaking in the scenary. She says that that's one of the advantages of being old, that you can appreciate beautiful things, and sit watching it for hours.

After the movie, the Cub commented, "Sure, I like looking at beautiful things, but after a few minutes it just gets old."

I said, "Well, when you get old, it doesn't get old. It'll happen to you some day. You'll just be able to watch things and enjoy."

"Man, I hope I don't have to do that."

"You won't have to do that. You'll want to do that. It'll be the same as spending an hour playing video games to you."

And then the wheels started to spin.

*****

Somebody -- I believe I was Aristotle, or maybe it was Pauly Shore -- said that virtue is what you do when nobody's watching.

So, while I think I've gotten the dog to the point where she won't pee in the house most of the time, I don't think she's very virtuous.

Like I think most of the reason she isn't peeing inside is because I've been good. I get up in the morning the second Charlie indicates that she might possibly be awake. I come home over lunch, let her out, let her out first thing when I get home. So, I'm thinking maybe I'm just getting lucky, I'm doing all the work for her, and I just happen to let her out often enough.

Then today, somehow, Charlie got out of the kitchen. Ms. Houdini figured out a way to pry open the little baby gate thing that was keeping her in there. (I hope that was just an accident on my part, and not something she'll take to doing every day) When I saw that she'd gotten out, I made a sniff check of the house, trying to see where she might have left a suprise puddle for me. Didn't pee on the hardwood floors that I could see or smell. But then I checked the bathroom. Turns out, there was a puddle in the bathtub.

Yes, the bathtub.

I don't know how or why it happened, but at some point today, Charlie climbed into the bathtub, thought, "Hey! While I'm in here, this would be a great place to do my business!", and then climbed out. Actually, she's right. If she has to pee anywhere in the house, I'd rather it be there. Actually, I'd rather it be the yard, but still.

Although she'd done me a great service, there was also a puddle in the entrance of the bathroom. On the tile, but not on wood.

So, maybe she's gotten the lesson about not peeing on the hardwood. Maybe there's some virtue in the dog after all. Or maybe she just happened to have gone pee while she was in the bathroom.

Moral of the story: if you happen to go to the pound, and you see a puppy there, just say no. Ask if they have a one-year-old. Who's already potty trained.

But then, if you hadn't already figured that out from reading this, you're either dense or a masochist.

Or you're thinking, "Yeah, well, J's kind of an idiot. I'm sure I'd do a way better job potty-training my puppy."

Half of that statement is true. Okay, arguably both halves of that statement are true. But puppies are a crapload of work under the best of circumstances and the most firm and patient hand, and I wouldn't advise anyone get one of them. Especially someone as lazy as I am.

One of my coworkers, whom we'll call "Dan", said to another of my coworkers, whom we'll call "Bob", "Man, Bob, thank God it's Friday."

Bob, who has a delightfully pessimistic attitude, responded, "What's to thank about?"

Dan said, "Well, it's the end of the work week and the start of the weekend."

Bob said, "Obviously you live in an apartment. If you lived in a house, the work week would be the time you'd spend relaxing from all the shit you have to do on the weekend."

*****

Bob is onto something. I've been busy as a one-armed paper hanger with the crabs all weekend long. Not to say it was neither productive, nor rewarding. It was both of those.

First off, spent the weekend with the Cub. Which is often entertaining and it was this weekend.

Most of his time was spent playing the video games and going outside and chasing the dog around the backyard.

As for myself, it was lots of laundry and cleaning assorted things. And Charlie, despite the vacant expression that often hangs on her face, I've decided she's actually some kind of James Bond supervillain. Perhaps Max Zoron.

Seriously, you say, "Charlie, I'm very upset with you chewing on my elbow, and I wish you'd stop", she'll just look at you idiotically for a bit and then proceed to... you guessed it, begin chewing on my elbow again. Whereas, if you set her outside for longer than 20 seconds, she'll be in the next door neighbor's yard. I don't know how she's doing it. There's a gap between the fence and the ground that, in most places, looks like it's roughly big enough for a flattened snake to get through. And those places where the gap is a big bigger has been turned by me into a miniature Maginot Line, complete with reinforced trenches, cyclone wire and landmines. I think she's developed some kind of miniature helicopter, and has hidden it somewhere under the tool shed. Or perhaps some kind of Dog-a-pult® with which she hurls herself over.

Or maybe she's going through Belgium.

So, I spent most of the weekend walking next door and trying to coax Charlie out the gate, while not letting the two other dogs out.

I also recreated a scene from Apocalypse Now. By which I mean, I mowed the lawn, which was starting to look alarmingly like Vietnam. But it had be tamed, and it was very hard work. The lawnmower engine stalled a couple of times going through some of the deeper grass. And Lawrence Fishburn was killed, listening to a tape of his mother.

He will be missed.

***** But it wasn't all work.

I did see Howl's Moving Castle, which was highly entertaining. I'll talk about it more tomorrow, when it's sunk it a bit better. Like most Miyazaki movies, there's a lot going on, and it's hard to get a handle on it.

And, the Cub and Charlie chased each other around the fresh-cut lawn, and I joined in a few times. Nothing Charlie likes better than chasing things and being chased.

The Cub's verdict on Chateau de J is in: "Man, this place is awesome." Good neighborhood, huge yard, adorable puppy dog. He liked it so much, I noticed he referred to it as "our house" a few times.

And finally, as an early birthday present and wholly undeserved Father's Day present, I got... a Weber gas grill. This gas grill to be precise. I have everything but gas, without which I essentially have a large, complicated hunk of metal out in the yard. But I'll be getting the gas tomorrow, then I'll be living the high life.

To think, a few weeks ago I was living on the Loop, doing about as close to a Bohemian lifestyle as I could get, being that I do, after all live in St. Louis. Now, with this grill, I've gone about as suburban as someone can get. Life moves quickly.

Right now, though, it's time I hit the sack and did my usual corpse-like sleep. Unlike the literal corpse-like sleep that Mr. Fishburn is doing out in the yard.

Man, I should really move that guy's body somewhere.

This is a banner day. I've been letting Charlie have more and more freedom the less likely I think she is to start whizzing all over the place. Well, today, this evening, I'm in my room and the dog is here too. Rather than us both being outside or me being here and the dog being in the kitchen whimpering because she's so lonely.

We'll have to see how this works out.

I'm gambling on "poorly".

*****

I am utterly unable to fold a fitted sheet. Every time I try to do it, I end up with something that looks a lot like a ball of fabric.

I say this neither with pride nor with shame, for the simple fact that it is impossible to fold a fitted sheet. I feel the same way about it as I do about not being able to jump 50 feet in the air. It can't be done by anyone, so the fact that I can't do it doesn't cause any emotions one way or the other.

The last load of laundry was sheets. I thought, "This is it! Today is the day I finally do it! I'm going to fold the freakin' fitted sheet!"

I mean, it seemed logical enough. The fitted sheet comes folded in the little package of sheets. So I assumed that it can be done.

I did a web search to see if anyone else had solved the problem. And I found this article from Target Australia.

The first three times I read this, it didn't make any sense at all. Then on the fifth time I read it, I thought it might make a bit of sense, and if I just followed the instructions, all would be well.

Didn't work at all. I tried a couple different times, and each time, I ended up with a tangled mass of bedding. I suspect they left out an intermediate step 3.5: Use witchcraft to cast a spell that makes the sheet fold itself.

I checked out a few other articles. They all seemed to be presenting the same "tuck the corners into the other corners and voila!" idea as the first article.

In the end, I ended up with what might have been a slightly tidier and more compact version of the same ball I always end up with. But then, that could all be in my mind, since I didn't want to think I'd done all that research and all that folding for the same mess I would have had if I'd skipped the whole thing and just done the same half-assed folding job as I usually do.

And in the end, that's all it can be. A ball of bedding. Because, as I've just demostrated empircally, fitted sheets can't be folded. I've decided that the only reason they're folded in the package is because that's how they come out on the other end of the loom.

The hand-folded fitted sheet is a myth, like the Sasquash or the female orgasm. And if anyone says to you, "Oh, I know how to fold those fitted sheets," do me a favor, and please respond by saying, "That's a God damned lie and you know it! You can't fold those things! Nobody can! Famous J said so!"

*****

Postscript: I was right. Shortly after I wrote the above, Charlie wandered into the living room. I walked in just in time to catch her in the act of creating a puddle big enough to reenact the Battle of Trafalgar.

Oh well. Maybe next time...

Well, Michael Jackson walks. Should I say "moonwalks"? Or is that one overdone? And for that matter, does he ever do the moonwalk any more? Am I the only guy who spent several hours trying to figure out how to do the moonwalk, and why it was I wasn't doing it like he was? (I think the secret was in the loafers.)

These are some of the many questions racing through my mind as I contemplate this miscarriage of justice.

Here's a thought: the last halfway decent Michael Jackson album was Dangerous, which came out in 1992. If memory stands, the rumors of the pederasty came out shortly after that. Which means that unless you're older than, say, 15 at the very latest, Michael Jackson has been nothing but the punchline to a joke for as long as you can remember.* And that cohort is getting older each year. In a few years, the only people young enough to still be impressed by the Gloved One's long-distant stardom will be legal consenting adults.

Anyway, if there is a positive that might come out of this, it's that everyone in America will get a quick civics lesson. That lesson is: "A verdict of 'Not Guilty' does not mean the guy was innocent. It just means the prosecution didn't prove their case." Did he do it? Well, of course at some point he did. Did he do it with this particular person? Most likely. But there's enough fishy about this kid and his nut job mother that the jury probably made the right decision.

This is not, of course, what I was thinking about when I heard the verdict. I was thinking, "Jesus, what the hell do you have to do to get convicted in California?" Of course, we all know the answer. Two things will get you convicted pretty quick: 1. Being black, and 2. Not being famous.

This isn't to say that I have much sympathy for the line of reasoning that says, "It's not fair that poor black men get convicted more often than rich white men." I mean, it's true, but so what? The only thing I'm be concerned about is if we were putting away a bunch of innocent people. And nobody ever says that. Nobody says, "It's not fair that there's all these poor, black, innocent people in prison." They're just complaining that rich white folks figure out a way to beat the rap.

By my reckoning, there are only two ways to fix this. Either A) send more guilty white folks to jail, or B) let more guilty poor black folks off the hook. Obviously, I'd be for A, but let's be honest here. Ain't gonna happen. Rich folks can always afford better lawyers. Unless we're going to do away with letting people hire their own attorney and be represented from the same public defender pool as the poor folks (even assuming that's constitutional, try getting that law passed), it'll always be that way.

Nor do I think B is possible. To quote the Kids in the Hall: "Free lawyer? The only lawyer you're going to get for free is some guy with a head injury who can't find his own briefcase." No, the people using the free lawyer are always going to get sent up more than the people who pay someone. But even assuming it was possible, would that make our society any better? I suppose if poor guilty black folks skated in the same numbers as rich guilty white folks, that might be more fair, in some cosmic sense. But are we any better off with more guilty folks walking the street?

What the hell was I talking about before I wandered off into the weeds? Oh yeah, Michael Jackson.

Actually, I think I'd said about all there is to be said. The guy should be behind bars, and it's a shame this case was as problematic as it was. But still. I don't envy the guy one bit. I guess having to live life as that deeply disturbed freako will just have to be punishment enough.

*****

I'm sure you've all heard by now about Mesa, AZ considering adding monkeys to their SWAT team.

Or maybe not. I find myself reading a lot of stuff, and I'm sure you all do much more productive things with your spare time than read stories about monkeys. Such as... well, I think anything would be more productive than that.

(There's a good slogan for you: Salivating Dog: We read stories about monkeys so you don't have to)

Anyway, this guy wrote a fictitious memo from whoever brought up the idea, listing the possible advantages the monkey would bring to the team.

Example:

Monkeys can throw feces quicker than any guys we currently have. When you throw feces at a perpetrator, you buy valuable tactical seconds.

*****

This story is a shout-out to my friend Jen, living as she in in Virginia, where this story takes place.

Reading it, I believe my exact thought was, "Hey, that's where Jen lives! May God have mercy on her soul!"

The subject of the story is a pair of Democratic political consultant who's target demographic is Hoosier backwoods folk, and how to win them back. Interesting reading and these guys have some good ideas.

* The actual punchline is "He heard there was little boys pants half off!"

So, here, belately, is how the weekend went.

But first, a bit of business. I've been attributing the name "Richard Delicious" to Ben, because he's who I heard it from.

Not true. The name was actually the work of Mr. Bally. As he himself admits, he rarely comes up with clever ideas, so we all must pat him on the head on those occasions they come to him.

*****

Right. Onto the story. And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that this is long. So if you really don't care about my world debut with the Deep Donkey Crew, feel free to just skip this and read something else.

I landed in Oklahoma City at 10:30 on Saturday morning. Ben picked me up.

They've been doing improvements to the airport, trying to make it look less, I dunno, purely functional and more pleasant. And boy howdy did they succeed. Lots of cut stone. I suspect in 20 or 30 years, people will say dismissively that it has a quintessential "Aughts" look, or whatever we end up agreeing to call this decade.

But for now, it looks really nice.

Unfortunately the "Welcome to Oklahoma City" sign on the way out is covered with gang graffiti, thus spoiling whatever goodwill the decorating of the airport might have gained.

After about 10 minutes of being in Oklahoma again, I had the odd sensation of feeling all my energy and ambition falling away, and this strange inertia take over me. I don't know what accounts for it. Could be that I spent some odd times in my life in Oklahoma, and thus have odd feelings about the place, but I suspect there might be something about that place.

Okies, if I haven't mentioned it before, are a very strange people. Basically the state is full of people who found some other part of the south intolerable and struck out to make a better life for themselves.

But then... they didn't keep moving, as all the rest of them did during the Dust Bowl, on out to California, or wherever pastures might be greener. (And the pastures are quite a bit greener in many other places.) No, these people stayed behind. It's a group of people whose ancestors had ambition and a desire to improve their lives for one generation, just long enough to drive them to leave their Carolina home, but somehow none of the ambition transfered to their kids.

Back to the story: I dropped my stuff off at my brother's house, said "Hello" to his dog, named Mr. McDog. It's a Jack Russell, but he has this big fat torso and these tiny legs and feet poking out the bottom. And his legs move at 100 miles per hour. It reminded me of some character for a Bill Plympton cartoon.

At this point, I started having a bad feeling. Usually, when the band plays, they have a guy on keyboard and a drum machine. The keyboard player was the guy I was replacing, i.e. out of town, so we were going to use the original backing tracks from the CD. The problem was, they'd never actually performed with them. What's more, Daniel, AKA Cornelius Cravecock, didn't ask for the afternoon off of work, so it looked like the first time the band would be using the backing tracks was going to be live on stage.

Also, I mentioned to Trav that I wasn't sure about some of the words I was supposed to be singing. A lot of them I didn't understand and some of them I just hadn't listened to the songs enough to memorize them. I wondered if he might not be able to make me a crib sheet. He seemed offended that I hadn't had the DDC on constant repeat for the last year, and said that he'd see if he had time.

Trav had to run errands and had to pick up the closing act, Grand Buffet, so Ben and I got lunch.

As far as food is concerned, whenever I'm in another town, I make it a point to get some of whatever there is to be gotten in that town that I can't get back home. My longstanding complaint about St. Louis is that the Mexican food here sucks like a Hoover. It tastes like the kind of Mexican you'd get if you prepared all your dishes out of a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from the early 60's. Very bland. I think instead of proper salsa, they mix kechup and tabasco sauce.

So, I asked Ben where the best Mexican is to be had in that town. He said, not missing a beat, "Ted's Cafe Escondido". He was not whistling Dixie either. It might not have been the highest quality Mexican I've ever had (Dallas had that), but it was the tastiest. I had the enchilada and tamale lunch. Both of them were divine. And servings big enough to feed an army of five.

My brother was still out when we finished, and of course the Luddite doesn't have a cell phone so we couldn't get a status update. So we got some coffee at The Red Cup, a local coffee shop I'd frequented a few times when I was living there. Still no word from Trav. So we headed up to Edmond, where Ben and I had both gone to high school. We visited Ben's mother and then a mutual friend.

While at the friend's house, I get a typical Trav call: "I need you to come back here. Now."

"What for?"

"We need to rehearse."

"I thought Cravecock had to work."

"Well, he's getting out early. So get here. Now."

We headed back to his house, where I saw one of the members of Grand Buffet passed out on the floor and some kid with bad skin. He was a 22 year old (or so) high school drop out, alias Da Lil' Crippl'. The name is a reference to a since-abandoned bit where the Lil' Crippl' was supposedly a disabled person in the audience who was healed through the power of gay communist rap.

First off, I think the guy was high. A couple postings back, I made clear my opinion about the potheads of the world. Nor did he seem like one of those who would have brightened the world with his incandescent intellect were he not high. I suspect that the world of academia didn't long mourn the loss of him when he dropped out of high school.

I remember thinking, "Jesus, is this who my brother is hanging out with now?" I thought back to the movie 24 Hour Party People and thought I might have had a glimpse of what Tony Wilson must have felt when dealing with the heroin-addled Shawn Ryder and the rest of the Happy Mondays.

We went over to the rehearsal studio in one of the more, um, affordable neighborhoods in the city. I think the term in real estate literature is "colorful", since "riddled with bullet holes and littered with crack vials" doesn't tend to move property.

I decided that I don't spend nearly enough time in places that are emphatically "not my scene". It's something you can get used to, like eating exotic foods whose ingredients you can't and don't want to figure out. After a while, you stop asking questions and eat. Similarly, if you often drop by places you wouldn't normally find yourself in, you get better at repressing the confused and panic stricken face that your humble narrator must have had on, seeing the very seedy folks at the front sitting on the cigarette burned brown naugahide furniture.

Then we wound our way to the rehearsal room. We got the iPod with the backing tracks plugged into the cheap third-hand mixing board Trav had in there, and we realized Trav didn't have the right cable. So he took off and went to Radio Shack, leaving me with Mr. Crippl' to wait for Daniel. Da Crippl' tried in vain to make small talk in the iterum. In vain, since we couldn't have had less in common if he'd been a 70 year old war widow from Zanzibar. At some point he gave up and then I believe transacted a drug deal over his cell phone.

Trav and Daniel showed up at about the same time, i.e. 45 minutes of excruciating boredom after we'd gotten there. The only amusement, aside from the small talk, was a wretched cover band practicing next door. I suspect it might have been "Fools for the City: An Okie Tribute to Foghat".

Then we tried rehearsing songs. I was supposed to do the Diva singing, i.e. the stuff in falsetto. I didn't let 'er rip on the singing for two reasons: #1, while my falsetto is awesome, I smoke, so I have about 30 minutes of falsetto singing in me, tops, before my voice gives out. And #2, as I mentioned, I didn't quite know all the words. I kinda-sorta knew most of the words, but kinda-sorta knowing most of the words is little better than not knowing any of the words.

But aside from me, everything went very well, so I was quite a bit more optimistic.

We returned to Trav's place where I met up with Ben again. We had our agenda for the evening: the "dildo helmet" was stolen at the last show and they needed a replacement. So we needed to buy a dildo and a bike helmet and some shoelace to connect the two. Then meet them at the venue at 9:30. Since it was 6:30, no hurry at all. We watched the US under-20 team's famous victory over Argentina. About 7:15, with 15 minutes left in the game, and we get another call from Trav.

"The opening band didn't show up. We need you here. Now."

Always "now" with Trav. "What about the dildo helmet?"

"Forget it. Just get here."

We took our time getting there, since, as part of my get-up, I had to cut off more of my cut-offs, to get them to "Daisy Dukes" length. And we wanted to watch the rest of the game. (We won 1-0, and wanted to make sure we didn't blow it in penalty time.) Then we stopped in again at the Red Cup, since I was running low on energy and the weather was nothing short of sublime. And because there just aren't that many coffee places there that aren't Starbucks. Plus there's something about Oklahoma that makes sitting around outside doing nothing more attractive than it usually is. And it's usually pretty attractive.

When we showed up at the Conservatory (the venue of the evening), there was some punk band playing, so apparently the opening act crisis was averted, so I didn't feel so bad about taking as long as we did to get there.

The Conservatory was a very dingy roadhouse kind of place in another "colorful" neighborhood, and while it was less colorful than where the studio was, it was more colorful than where I'd like to park a car after dark. It didn't look like it had been thoroughly cleaned in several months, and the bathroom didn't look like it had been cleaned since Reagan's first term. Worst Bathroom in Scotland territory.

Ben seated himself at the bar next to one of the guys from Grand Buffet, the one who wasn't passed out on the floor earlier. The Grand Buffet guy proceeded to knock back enough Jack Daniels to stun livestock. We were impressed.

About 20 minutes before we went on, I got the set list and loaded it into iTunes.

And it was showtime. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the show way more if I'd been in the audience. Or if I had some kind of program that would have stopped the music after each song automatically. As it was, I was spent most of the time on stage worrying about manually stopping the music at the end of each song.

They had lots of energy, and lots of griding up against each other. I was lacking in energy, since on top of the technical stuff, I got caught up in how surreal the scene was, but I stayed in back enough that I think I managed to pull of an "in, but not of" the band kind of thing. Adult supervision, so to speak.

The freakiest was the band's dancer, Da Pool Boy, some guy about 6 feet tall, weighed about 90 lbs. Had these blond dreadlocks and blue nail polish, and really seemed to be enjoying himself.

I sang as best as I could remember the words, and other people filled when I failed, so it went off okay. My falsetto, when I let it rip, was pretty decent, if I do say so myself.

The crowd was, well, about as odd as you'd expect them to be, given that they had paid their hard-earned money to see a gay communist rap group. We performed about 30 minutes, which was too long for my tastes, but just long enough for the crowd.

I rejoined Ben, and we watched Grand Buffet, straight outta Pittsburg, who were really good, especially when you consider how shitcanned one of their members must have been.

After the show was over, Ben and I hit some tasty delicious Whataburger!, and then decided we'd go to his grandfather's house (who was in Cancun, I believe), and Ben was going to use the spare key whose secret location he was privy to, and crash there.

Alas, the spare key had been moved, and the code to the garage door had been changed. Either that or that knowledge had fallen out of Ben's head a beer or two ago.

So, we returned to Trav's place by around 3. There was was a small after-party going on that we waved to on the way back to the living room. We grabbed the softest bit of real estate we could find (the love seat, in my case) and went to sleep almost instantly.

I woke up the next morning with my back reminding me that I'm not 20 any more. About noon. Ben had returned to Dallas, and Trav was nowhere to be seen.

Trav got back in at around 12:30. I said, "Trav, I have a flight at 2:20. How's about we leave now, so I can drop by the Red Cup so I can grab some coffee, then you take me to the airport."

He said, "Now?"

"Yeah."

Now, let's all recall the two times when I was expected to drop everything and run to where he was right then when I say what his response was.

"Well, I need to vaccum the stairs."

Vacuum the stairs. Vacuum the @*#%-ing stairs.

"Um, can't you do that any other time but now?"

"It's really bothering me."

I walked off quivering with impotent rage as he got out the vacuum. I've known the guy long enough to know when he's got his mind made up and argument will just end up infuriating me further and making him dig in his heels out of priciple. This was one of those instances. He took about 20 minutes, wherein he ate up all the time it would have taken us to get some coffee and started getting close to the bare minimum amount of time we'd need just to get to the airport.

As we got in the car, I said to Trav, "There's no time for coffee. Just go to the airport."

"Yeah, I know," he said.

That was pretty much the last thing we said. We got to the airport just in time for the caffeine withdrawl headache to start. As I had my last cigarette before entering the smoke-free zone, I recalled the fact that Trav does that kind of shit all the time. Won't put himself out an inch for anyone, but expects everyone else to drop everything for him.

And remembering a line from a Chris Rock bit, and thought, "I'm not saying his wife should have left him. But I understand."

Highly uncharitable of me, but I was in a very foul mood, as those caffeine addicts out there might be able to understand.

So, that was my trip to Oklahoma and my debut as MC Richard Delicious. I ate some good food, got to spend the day with Ben, and saw Mr. McDog. And, knowing Shrewsbury, I'm almost certain I'm the first guy on the block to perform in a gay communist rap group. A very odd weekend altogether, and very exhausting. But I'm glad I did it.

I'm sure you're all just freakin' dying to find out how the show went.

Well, you're going to have to wait. I'm really tired now, and I'm sure if I described the weekend, it'd sound really bitter and depressing, and it wasn't.

So, let it suffice to say that everything went... okay, and I'm still alive, and managed to escape from this weekend without any guy getting the wrong idea and making some kind of highly uncomfortable advance.

Or at least none that I was aware was happening.

More tomorrow.

First off, a fascinating story about, among other things... Monkey prostitution!

(Note: link requires registration. It's worth it.)

***** QOTD (i.e. Quote of the Day)

"Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as "daring," though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it."

G.K. Chesterton - circa 1929

This has been a long complaint of mine, and I had no idea how old a complaint it is. Here's the deal:

I go to see a lot of artsy-fartsy movies, and when I suffer through the previews, that word "daring" comes up in at least three-quarters of them, for the reason that, check this out... it's, like, a love story, right? Only instead of a guy and a girl, it's, like, two girls! I mean, holy shit!

Now, really, aside from the rather dubious marketing strategy of not making straight males the target audience, what, exactly, is daring about that? The only people who might be catch the vapors from such a movie are people who A) probably don't even know it exists, and 2) if they did know it exists probably don't care, and C) if they did know and did care, nobody involved with that movie is ever going to meet any of them.

Might get a few letters from some angry 80-year-olds complaining about the coursening of society, or some such. Or maybe the director grew up in Middle-of-Nowheresville, Flyover Country, USA, and will now have a somewhat uncomfortable Thanksgiving, what with all the questions from uncles like, "How come none of your movies have explosions?".

It's not like anyone is getting fed to lions. Jeez.

*****

Disappointed, but can't say I'm particularly surprised that the Supreme Court struck down medical marijuana.

This guy has a pretty good take.

Let me state right now, for the record:

I haven't done the marijuana in years. Seriously. The last time I did it, I ended up getting really paranoid. Now, either that was bad stuff, or I don't have the emotional fortitude to deal with being high any more. In either case, I decided it wasn't worth it, and I didn't want to do it any more. Besides, my brain is my bread and butter. If anything happened to it, I'd have to get a real job instead of this sweet gig writing code for anal probes thing.

With that out of the way, allow me to proceed, with you all knowing that I don't have any ulterior motives for arguing as I do.

Is it the cost (financially and to our civil liberties) of having this war on pot worth whatever benefits we're getting? I don't think so. Sure, smoking pot all the time runs a strong chance of buying you a first-class ticket to Loserville, but then, so do all kinds of things. Like drinking, gambling, dating, playing Halo 2 online, and blogging.

It is, or should be, a free country, and freedom is not just the freedom to succeed. It's also the freedom to fail. (Seriously, you can't have one without the other. They've tried.) So if someone wants to do nothing with his life, nobody should stop him.

So, I come down on the side of Peter Tosh and say, legalize it. And, I'll be perfectly upfront. Those anti-drug crusaders who suggested that this whole medical marijuana thing is just some kind of Machiavellian plot by the legalizers to gain acceptance for marijuana use in an attempt to push for decriminalization down the line, to them I say, "You folks got me pegged."

Okay, that's not exactly it. I do think there's a strong case for medical marijuana, and an egregiously weak case against it. But my personal hope for medical marijuana was exactly that it's a good first step.

Still, I'm not exactly manning some picket line to agitate for change. Since that would probably put me in direct contact with potheads, who are, frankly, some of my least favorite people.

If there were some organization I could join that would make sure that I didn't actually have to deal with stoned people and everyone would have bathed in the last week, I'd sign up tomorrow. But there isn't one, alas.

And, for that matter, I'm not exactly running out to vote for someone who will do something about our stupid drug laws. First off, try finding someone who will go on the record saying he's against them. Can't find anyone in either party, and I'm too freakin' practical to vote third party. It's either Kang or Kodos for me.

So, essentially, while I'm all for marijuana being legal, I'm not planning on doing anything but grouse about it.

Got a problem with that?

*****

Now it's time for the first ever

Salivating Dog Poll

Which word is more silly: "wiener" or "weenie". And I'm talking exclusively in reference to the male anatomy here.

If you could be so kind, mail me your answer to salivatingdog@gmail.com. And, if you are so inclined, your reasoning.

Thanks! Results in a week, or whenever I get to it. Assuming I get any answers.

I mentioned last week that I'll be heading to Oklahoma this weekend to visit my younger brother and perform with his "band". About that...

First off, if (somehow) you don't know anything about the band, here's an article from the hometown Edmond (Oklahoma) Evening Sun. My brother, AKA Dr. Dirty Knees, said that of everyone he's ever talked to, this guy is perhaps the only one who's "gotten" what they were up to. I agree.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I need a stage name. I called my friend Catfish, who is a world-class coiner of names. He's the guy who came up with the name "The Sausage Farm" for that house I lived in for a while in college.

As it happens, Ben was over there, and we had a bit of a three-person brainstorming session, wherein Ben came up with the name "Richard Delicious". I think that's what I'm going to go with, although I'll add an "MC" to the front. "MC Richard Delicious"

Doesn't have a bad ring to it.

***

June in St. Louis isn't exactly August in Georgia, but this weekend's weather was more than my delicate constitution could handle. And when the thermostat reads "89" inside the house, it's time to crank up the A.C.

You can imagine my surprise when I turned on the thing, went about my business, and noticed about an hour later that the house wasn't any cooler.

Turns out, the dern had conked out.

I'm not sure when this had happened. With this mortgage thing, I've become such a skinflint that I hadn't actually turned the thing on until this weekend. And it was late winter when I had the inspection, so I don't think we looked at the thing then. So it's possible the dern thing had never worked the whole time I had the house.

Fortunately, I had a plan. Something involving fuses.

Before I could put that plan into effect, I went to see the Cards humiliate the Boston Red Sox. Which was exciting stuff.

Granted, our seats were so high up, the only people further away than us were those watching from the top of the Arch. But, it's all right. One of those lemons-to-lemonade things people say when they're up in the nosebleed section is, "Boy, you can sure see the play develop from up here."

But it's true. The ball gets hit, and you see the fielders scurry into action in a way you can't otherwise.

Well, for reasons too long to elucidate, the dog ended up in the kitchen the whole evening. This was not good. The puppy seems to be getting the idea of the potty training. Pee outside good, pee inside bad.

Unfortunately, she still being a puppy, her bladder isn't quite on the program. Neither is her colon.

So, when I got home from the game, there was waiting for me two puddles and what might be the most foul smelling pile of dog stool that mankind has ever been witness to. It was that special brand of noxious that only puppies can really do.

The stench was beyond belief.

So, I'm cleaning up this Pike's Peak sized mass of doody, picking it up with toilet paper and tossing it in the toilet.

Allow me to digress briefly and sing the praises of the toilet, before I condemn it to almighty damnation.

This is one of the old 73-gallon flush toilets. The ones that came out before The Man dictated that we had to save water and use these new two-teaspoon flush pieces of garbage.

Under normal circumstances, this toilet can flush a head of raw cabbage. It's a dynamo of waste disposing and water wasting.

Not this time, however. I think the brimstone stench of the dog poo caused the ol' girl to malfunction, and the wads of toilet paper and doot got clogged up.

While this was happeninig, I had moved on to sopping up the puddles. So, when I went to toss the paper towels into the trash, I noticed water intruding into the living area.

Thus, I sprang into action -- a phrase that probably doesn't capture what would have looked to the outsider like a decapitated chicken -- and I turned off the water and looked frantically for something, anything, to sop up the water.

Lately, I've had something of a Night of the Long Knives with my stuff. I have too freakin' much of it. Like, before I moved, I believe I had 79 towels. I decided, "What the hell do I need 79 towels for? I think I need more like 2. Okay, maybe 3, like in case I have company come over or something."

I made do with what I found, though (two of the towels, a couple blankets, etc.), and the water was sopped up in record time.

Or so I thought.

What I didn't notice was that there was a nail-hole on the floor, and all the water ended up dribbling into the basement.

Oh, well. The basement doesn't have hardwood floors, so if the water's going to end up anywhere, I'd rather it be there.

So, after cleaning up dog mess, and water, and running three loads of laundry, I mopped the floor. After which the place smelled... still horrible.

So I spritzed the floor with liberal amounts of puppy odor remover, and got the smell level down from "gag inducing" to "tolerable, but only if I'm just passing through".

Thus it was time to test out the A.C. and my Fuse Gambit. Well, apparently it's not the fuses. So I still don't have a working A.C.

On the positive side, we had a cold front move in yesterday, so the temperature is somewhere below normal, and somewhere at the upper end of "comfortable". And, after having aired out all day and me having made some delicious meatloaf for dinner, the kitchen doesn't smell bad at all.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

***

It's been a long several days. I have about seven other things I'd like to write about but none of them seem as important as getting some freakin' sleep.

I have a new hero, a new guy I want to be when I grow up: Mike O'Leary. He's the president of Ryanair, the airline whose dearth of amenities makes Southwest look like a cruise ship.

He's apparently ruthless, fiery, stubborn, tenacious, and he hates unions. What's not to like?

Read this story here for more a bit more.

The most intriguing thing was their "Absolutely No Refunds Whatsoever" pledge. I've known a few people who worked at Southwest Airlines customer service. I'm sure they'd have a lot higher job morale if their work consisted of writing letters back saying, "I'm terribly sorry to hear about your flying experience, however you ain't getting a plug nickel from us. Deal with it, jerk!"

***

The Dutch, bless them even more than the French, have put what seems to be the final nail in the coffin of the E.U.'s monstrosity of a constitution. They had a referendum yesterday. The final tally: 63% no, 37% yes.

This was apparently a non-binding referendum, although the various ministers had said that they would honor it if the turnout was above 30%. Well, the turnout was 62%.

Well, I suspect that this isn't actually the end of things. That there will be a few attempts to do an end-around on the will of the people, none of which will exactly endear the E.U. types with the folks they're ostensibly representing.

Interesting commentary from this guy. This guy has some good points too.

***

I thought this was both wildly entertaining and interesting.

***

So, while unpacking, I came across a copy of 3 Feet High and Rising, the classic De La Soul debut album.

This is one of those albums like The Soft Bulletin that I can put in once every six month, a year, for the rest of my life, and listen to it and nothing else for a week or two.

Suffice it to say, it holds up well. It's especially inspiring for me, since, at some point, I'm going to be doing a remix for my brother's band, and I need ideas about how to do sampling.

3 Feet High was, well, some people try to oversell it as being groundbreaking. I don't think they did anything they hadn't already done on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, or Paid in Full.

But there's a difference between being groundbreaking and being good. (q.v Jimi Hendrix. Undoubtedly groundbreaking, but also totally over-freaking-rated.) And Prince Paul's production was outstanding. So, I've been tuning my ear, thinking about what he splices together seven or eight different samples to make one cohesive whole. And it's not enough to just have the samples all mesh together, it's that they mesh together with some final effect in mind.

So, that's what I'm trying to figure out how to do. And it's good that I ran across 3 Feet High and Rising when I did.

Although I suppose, rather than going crazy on the sampling, I try to could come up with something original. But let's be honest here. I'm creative, but I'm not exactly an innovator.

In any case, if/when I get that finished, you'll all be the first to hear it. Other than me, of course. And Charlie. Can't forget the dog.

Lots of news lately.

First off, the French, bless their cruel, manipulative, black hearts, rejected the EU constitution by 55%. Apparently they were running about 57% before some St. Louis-style voting shenanigans, i.e. keeping the polls open late in the "Oui"-stronghold of Paris. But all for naught.

As usual, Mark Steyn has it about right.

My take: overall, I'd say it's a good thing. Europe has huge problems, the cause of a lot of which would be encased forever in this constitution. The basic problem being that they can't afford their welfare states. Sure, it would be great if the government would provide the elderly and the poor with a decent meal, fantastic health care, a nice place to stay, a car, a pony, cable TV, a Play Station Portable, and then make sure they all go to heaven. But someone has to pay for all that. Especially the heaven thing.

So, the burden for writing the check for all these promises falls on those who aren't unemployed and don't work for the government. All 30 or 40 of them. Who, by the way, only work 15 hours a week, are guaranteed three months vacation, and can go on disability for a papercut. And they can never, ever get fired, no matter how incompetent they are.

But that's just what this constitution does; write all these guarantees in stone, thus making it that much harder to do what everyone knows needs to be done to turn their economies around.

I suppose it's nice to give to the downtrodden of the world, but there's a thin line between society assisting the less fortunate and the treasury being looted on behalf of the less fortunate. I'm not sure when one becomes the other, but (hopefully) you get the point.

Granted, none of these are why the French rejected the constitution. In fact, they rejected the constitution because they thought it was some "Anglo-Saxon" conspiracy that would, in the end, force them to give up on all that. Which, from the standpoint that the French polity is way out to the left of the rest of Europe in general, is probably true to some extent.

But, whatever. You can vote for the right thing for the wrong reasons, and democratically speaking, the vote is all that really matters.

***

Then we hear that Deep Throat of Watergate fame has revealed himself.

Don't care.

Well, I don't care, except for this: If there's one thing I hate, it's when Baby Boomers to talk about how special and important they are. They won't freakin' shut up about it under usual circumstances. And when some Defining Moment of Their Generation comes up in the news, I want stick my fingers in my ears and sing La Marsiellaise.

So, we'll all be hearing plenty enough about it, and nobody needs my contribution.

***

And finally, the most important news: Congratulations to West Ham United for their triumphant return to the English Premiere League.

Look out Chelsea! The Hammers are back!