Those two newspapers were leaning against my front door this morning. I can't find the envelope with my cash tip inside. What am I going to do? I stood, newspapers in hand, and looked down my long driveway. It is a white nightmare down at the end of it. Overlapping plows in unwitnessed combat have crisscrossed the cul-du-sac and left jumbled 'Tiger Teeth' of piles strewn everywhere down there. I cannot imagine making my way into that mess to find my papers. I have got to tip this mysterious elusive newspaper person. Christmas stress. I read Judith Warner, a replacement columnist for David Brooks in the New York Times. Where is David? Oh, he needed a break for Christmas, I guess. These 'princes of press' must have their rest. I mean, after all, it takes intensive labor to sit and write something interesting. Another Christmas crock. Like the garbage Judith wrote this day. Brainless. Let's see, she writes about the fact that reason and logic are triumphing over the forces that make Christmas what it should be...wonder, marvel and faith. I am paraphrasing, as her stuff is not worth memorizing. She calls this the 'Woody Allenization' of Christmas. I do like that line, however misplaced and addled it is. You see, Judith is lost in the combating and overlapping mythologies of Christmas in our culture. She is all caught up in the Santa Claus thing, I guess. I am so very sorry Judith, but even though Norad has been tracking Santa's Christmas Eve flight ever since 1955, he is not real. We made it all up to have fun with our kids...and quite possibly for control and discipline purposes as well.
Christmas is filled with wonder, marvel and faith. You just have to look beyond the mythologies. The wonder that people can take a bit of time and think about the plight and condition of others around them. The marvel that they will go out and spend time and money to get something for somebody else that is just right, just to have that person feel a little bit better about life, and maybe them. The faith that something is at work of goodness, driven by, well, you don't have to know. You just have faith that there are more people like you out there, buying stuff not totally out of obligation but because you really want to get stuff for them. There was an old school joke about faith that always liked, even thought the underlying premise was discomforting. Johnny is sitting in the back of his grade school class when his teacher asks the big question. what is faith? Johnny raises his hand, which the teacher tries to avoid, as Johnny is a notorious trouble-maker (i like that part as I was always in that coat closet in my Catholic School for shameful questions). But the teacher caves in when there are no other hands. "Alright Johnny, go ahead...," the teacher says, with disappointment and a bit of trepidation. "Faith is believing in something that you know is not really true," Johnny responds, in his normal fashion. Johnny went, of course, straight to the coat closet, to inhale the aroma of all the little girl's coats hanging there, if he was like me. But the premise of that story is not true. You can have faith in any number of things that may or may not be true. We just don't have enough data or life experience to know. God is like that too. Is He there? Is He a He? What is the deal? I think He is, but I am not sure. I am beginning to sound like Woody Allen, who I never liked, although he is funny...but with some real bad personal habits.
About teaching. The Times had an article about teaching in it. The writer combined the plight and conduct of my beloved auto workers with that of teachers. They are unappreciated. That part is true. But auto workers do not stay up nights working on their stuff, worrying about their charges and taking extra time and effort to help a small person who really needs it. Teachers are different. I know one well. I mean one right now, sleeping and shopping away because she is off for the holiday (one of the few small benefits of the profession). This teacher is kinda normal I think. She asked me to write a short story for her grade school classes. So I wrote The Treasure Pool, which is found somewhere back there in these blogs. She gave out forty-nine copies and then had all the students write reviews back to me. She copied and stapled, read the story to make sure I had not slipped in any filth (I am, after all, an ex-Marine!) and then spent time and trouble helping these kids to come to terms with the plot, the theme and the elements of English such necessary educational arrows to have in their quivers. The critiques came back, and they were wonderful. Oh, I got dinged pretty good on my grades in certain areas. I wrote back to those kids who had given me bad grades for the most minor of things. I was stung. I was nice, but I had to say something! But the story is not about me. It is about the extra time and effort this teacher, Mrs. Machado, takes to really help and advance her students. She is an example of what it is all about out here, and in this holiday season. She follows Sister Sarah Fogarty (my fourth grade teachere) and Sister Michael Marie (my fifth grade teacher) in being one of those unknown and unsung saints. Maybe here, in this lonely blog, she will get the only public recognition she ever gets. But she is all about Christmas. The embodiment. And she is filled with reason and logic and understanding the universe. But she is also a thing of wonder, marvel and faith. Merry Crhistmas Anise Machado. We love you.
So, have you been to an airport since 911? A lot of people have, but, amazingly, a lot of people also have not. For those of you who have been, I offer my sympathy and rage buried deep. For those of you who have not, but will in the future, all you get is my humor. God, are you in for it. But, in watching Sixty Minutes tonight, you would have thought they we, the prospective passengers, were all of the problem. Our attitude. Our treatment of the security personnel. We watched TSA training. And we got to view the new Gestapo oriented uniforms. For some reason in this culture we have the idea that violence is prevented, and aggression tempered, by authority figures wearing ever more militant macho costumes. Who the hell is advising these nitwits? And it's in our military too. Ever look at photos of our Doughboys in WWI? Our GI's in WWII, or even our troops in Vietnam? They looked American and they, almost one and all, aside from looking stressed and burned out, looked nice. Looked of quality. Looked like they were part of the Jeddi Knights fighting for 'The Force.' Now our troops look like nasty Imperium troopers, with insect dark glasses and ugly helmets designed directly after the hated SS helmets worn by the Germans in WWII. Jesus Christ, give us a break from this developmental stupidity. Where are all the gay designers? Have they all died of aids? Cannot a single one of those gifted geniuses 'not tell' when 'not asked,' and help us out? And then, when they are done serving us there, can they please move on the the police and security services? Get stopped by a local state trooper these days. The uniform alone (with, of course, the derigour insect glasses) will scare the crap out of you. We are leaning toward our gayer more gentle side these days. How about we do that with our authority figures. The results might astound us all. What if TSA agents were just nice? Maybe out Puritanical Calvinistic origins just cannot stomach that.
But I digress. It seems that the TSA is upset that we treat them so badly. I have been to at least fifty airports since 911. Guess what. I have never ever once seen any passenger treat a TSA agent badly. I have seen no verbal or physical abuse towards those people. But I have seen a ton of TSA types making complete nasty-tempered asses out of themselves. The public is, by and large, well aware of the overwhelming power of the TSA dolts to put us on 'no-fly' lists or 'danger' lists for the rest of our lives. We know it and we know that power is present, and right there in our faces. Clint Eastwood might have been referring to the attitude of most TSA agents of today: "Go ahead, make my day." There was a little glimmer of truth that seeped through the cracks on that Leslie (I do not wear a wig) Stahl presentation. A woman complained about being abused in her 'training' class but then was on a video where she was at an airport directing passengers. She sounded exactly like what I have described, and it was right there. It was obvious that she felt that her charges were timid dumb dolts. And the passengers responded like that, just before we cut away. This is media spinning. It was brought to us by this very same media, and it was authored into existence by the political advisors of running politicians. The idea is to immediately jump on the band wagon with facts that are just opposite of the way things really are. And that is what is going on today with the TSA. And Sixty Minutes, Investigative nothings. Purveyors of pablum and disinformation.
Here is the solution. Technology. Not agents. And technology of hardened protection, not detection. Yes, build better tougher planes. There ought to be no ability of the crew to interact with the passengers anymore. None. The bulkhead built between should be impenetrable. Then stop allowing all that carryon. Yes, limit us to little bitty purses and bags with stuff like books and snacks inside. Nothing else. No computers, no cell phones, no games or ipods. Nada. No overhead bins (and more headroom!). All luggage gets checked. And then the technology of the plane takes over. Make the cargo areas hardened to be able to take even a small explosion. And build them to be jettisoned in flight. Now, the detection. Let it all go toward the checked baggage. No people involved. Just stuff being analyzed. Forget about the penetrating radar images to view our bodies. And do not believe that they are not going to keep the images and play with them, and laugh at all of us, or sell them. Our social security numbers were once sacrosanct. Then our driver's license information. All gone to graveyards every one. Your credit data is now forever (not five years or seven....they lie), and our driving information is for life (not three years or five or even ten for a drunk driving...they lie). F. Scott Fitzgerald: "You don't get to start over in this country." No shit. So stop believing them and get skeptical. It is a whole lot healthier, and you are also less likely to find your corpulent body on Facebook or Youtube.
I am finishing my cards. I really am. I have gone to the basement. Or, at least, I am going right this minute. Harvey is waiting for me down there. He has the mistaken impression that there are mice down there, and he hunts madly through all the stacked boxes and piled chairs and just stuff. He came up with a mouse once, and I was mad as hell. He brought that mouse in from the outside and then stocked his basement for the future. I just know it. There have been no more. I caught that mouse (with Harvey's unwitting assistance) and he is running free, under the snow, in a nearby field. Or at least he was until it hit fifteen below again a few hours ago. Now he is paused. On hold for the winter, so to speak. The non-existent one's in the basement I refuse to consider further, but I am about to put up with Harvey going down there and making believe, just to drive me daffier.
It is fifteen below zero out there, and the wind is whipping last night's five extra inches of snow into a moving white curtain of death. I went out in my robe anyway. Because I am more like Ben Stein than I care to admit. By writing that I mean, 'someone who is much more capable of transmitting the image of being intelligent rather than actually having that quality.' I am quoting one of the shrinks at the Naval Hospital, where I go every Wednesday, after he had been around me for awhile. I did not kill him, because I am not violent anymore. I swear. But I felt violent after coming back in the front door. I did not curse Harvey, who sat at the door looking at me with that 'Good Christ, but you are one stupid example of the species Homo Sapien' cat look. I had no rotten bleak words for him because I could not talk. I could only inhale. When I recovered enough, I looked over at the chair where I had carefully set out a huge sheep-lined Austrailian Duster the day before. Harvey sat there and looked at it too. Finally, regaining my voice, but having to discard my snow covered slippers (Ugh, of course), I was able to talk. "Don't start," is all I said, pointing at him with a snow and plastic covered Tribune. The mail delivery guy (I think he is a guy, but I have never seen him/her) has been dropping my papers at the door lately, ever since I found a note in the paper two weeks ago with an envelope for a Christmas bonus. What can I do? Put cash in it and send it off to some address in Elkhorn? I can't write a check because there was no name. Hell, I'll do it. I am such a pushover. I wonder if the papers will remain thrown to the doorstep instead of simply being dropped way down at the end of the driveway. That mail person. Clever bastard. I am caught in a vice.
Ben Stein was on television with one of his stupid droll commentaries, as I recovered my coffee and dumped the paper snow onto the fireplace ledge. God I can't stand that guy. His trademark smirking vocal presentation just drives me nuts. And then there is the content. "If we just go out and spend money then we won't need a bailout." That is the solution. Do not save. Do not hold onto anything. Well, I hope Ben is holding onto plenty and I hope that his investment counselor is named Madoff. He is another of these totally 'removed' talking heads making believe that they have a regular job and some sort of semblance of a normal financial life. He does not. He makes more in a month then the average person makes in two years! He can spend all he wants and never get to the bottom. He probably has one of those super-secret black American Express cards (twenty thousand in fees just to have, or so I am told). He is like that creepy baseball player who just signed a 160 million dollar contract to play baseball for a few years. The guy has barely a high school diploma. A box of rocks who can throw a ball. Which means he will also be allowed to become an author, a television spokesperson and honored member of our terminally sick culture. At least Ben Stein is smart. He is a short little troll example of a creepy man, but he does have a brain and some real formal education.
We have a guy, down in Chicago, named Steve Chapman who writes columns in the Tribune. Now there is another dumbo, along with Stein (when it comes to putting out garbage which is nothing other than vaguely disguised neocon philosophy). His solution to the financial mess is inflation. Yes, a true, world class, never call home, idiot. And he is too young to remember 1979 and 80. A home loan back then was written for around fourteen percent interest. Thats about fifteen hundred a month for a ninety-five thousand dollar home. Say what? So you get the loan and the house. No problem. When the interest rates go down you can always refinance, right? No. You see, because of inflation of everything else, except your income (note that they are talking about lowering all wages just now, and look at all the companies dropping contributions to 401k plans....the plans they all touted and pushed in order to get out of more structured and disciplined pension plans), you lose your good credit. So you can't refinance. And it is your fault. Just ask the lender. Under such circumstance they are happy to tell you that you are a loser, unless the outsourcing of today means that the representative on the phone says the word 'loser' in such bad English that you cannot understand it. Steve Chapman is just throwing crap up against the wall. Inflation. My ass.
Now John Kass, he is different indeed. He is the new Royko of the Tribune, and they have been running his articles on the second page of the paper. His nemesis is Governor Rod. Dead Meat Rod, he calls him. Dead Meat Walking, as of this morning's below-zero edition. I love his writing. He even swipes at our hero and savior (Obama) by inferring that his latest appointment from Illinois has ties to the Illinois mob (deemed to be the 'we-will-never-die-or-run-out-of-kids' Daleys). I love that too. Obama needs plenty of detractors, lest he fall down in his pew from absolute adoration of Rick Warren, his new spiritual guru (since that last black preacher was found to be 'socially unacceptable'). Kass is wrong, of course. He did say Governor Rod's "I will not quit" speech was okay. Okay? It was a 'Checkers' quality oration. He was great. He was perfect. Even his awful bowling ball hairstyle was okay. He even bent forward and down, so you could see that is is thinning on top. Now I really liked that. He is one of us. Oh yes, he is dumb as a post and he has some real mental issues. So what. Look at Senator Byrd or some of those other nuts we have in there. Larry Craig? Ted Stevens? Jesus. We have some goodies. Kass thinks that Rod ought to quit. He thinks that Rod is staying in to drive the best deal he can get. Well, no kidding Kass! Where the hell have you been? This culture loves a great confession, as long as that confession points the finger at someone else. "I confess, he did it," ought to be part of the Pledge of Alligiance. We could slip it in, right at the end, while we covertly point at the person next to us. "I confess I did it," on the other hand, well, we have electrical appliances and special injections prepared for those, soon to be dead, special cases.
And so this miserable representation of a Sunday morning ends with two cups of strong Alterra coffee. I must go out in the garage and pull all the cords from my generator. The power went out last night. The Alliant Company, our local electrical co-op, decided to experiment. Since it was the coldest night in a year, they thought that it would be great if we all remembered how important Alliant really is. Especially at this time of the year. So I turned on the infernal generator, but I have not had time to wire the thing into my electrical system. So I had extension cords running all about. Not enough to run the lights in my office, however. So I have cards to finish. The damned infernal custom cards. What am I doing out here? Why am I not in Hawaii, spending the money Ben Stein tells me will save everyone? I am being wary. That is what I am doing. I am hunkered down out here, extension cords piled high, the wind and temperature near absolute zero, my cards strewn everywhere with glue all over, and Harvey, laying right here under this monitor, studiously ignoring my slow descent into nonsensical madness.
Ami Pedezhur, columnist with the New York Times, writes to us this day about the spawning of terrorism. You see, in her view, it goes all the way back to the sixties. It was just not called terrorism then. More high humor from supposedly intelligent writers, or maybe writers who simply have a goal other than that which they claim. You see, terrorism began when we wanted it to begin. It has been a very useful word, since it was coined and then converted into our modern linguistic medium. We actually have a war on terrorism. War on a word. Not a specific enemy, no that was back in the old days when we fought the terrible Hun (Germans), the Japs (well, you know who) and the Gooks (Vietnamese). Now we no longer need to specify an opponent, and that is so much more convenient for the military industrial complex and governmental leaders. Terrorism, even using the modern definition, is merely that activity which opposes any current government or force in control, with violence. What kind of violence does not matter, although it seems to be better for everyone if it involves suicide, bombs of any kind, and damage to 'innocent' victims. That we carpet bombed and burned Dresden, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, well, that would never ever be termed terrorism. Nor A-bombing Nagasaki or Hirosima. Those were not exactly military targets, and we could have picked military targets if we chose to at the time. So terrorism is really more like piracy. It goes way way back. In fact, it is all over the Old Testament. That we rail against terrorism all the time now is indeed true, but the question is why. Why do we so go on about it? Because it supports decisions to spend money and control people's lives. We won't even let our vaunted, and supposedly free, press view and report on such stuff anymore. We have not covered Iraq or Afghanistan anything like we covered Vietnam. The complex and the government did learn a lot from Vietnam. Tell the people nothing and they have nothing upon which to make decisions. Kill the reporters, if necessary. Bar the reporters from the return of our dead troops, from going to the funerals. It is all there right in front of us. We will always be at war against terrorism, unless intellect and sanity take over. Which is not likely. Oh yes, Barack is intelligent. There is no question about that. But does he want to give up the war on terror? Does he want to give up the perks available to people who maintain the war on terror? I don't know. This coming year is going to be a really interesting one. And it is portended by ominous talk on Obama's part. He wants a huge surge in Afghanistan. What for? Whom do we have to beat over there? The Taliban? Who the hell cares? The Taliban, last time around, eradicated the Opium production of that country. We took over and brought Afghanistan back to being the world's largest opium producer. So what are we doing there? Really. We don't have a clue. We are depending upon Obama. And the outlook is not good, not in this area.
Bob Herbert wrote of the end of the war on American workers. We have a new Labor Secretary coming in who is fond of the American workers, and unions even. Supposedly. This person has never been a Secretary of anything, other than a steno pool, perhaps. Take a look at the auto bailout. It is so badly written that Ford opted out. They would rather risk bankruptcy than take that worm medicine. At the top of the agreement is wage cutting. We have got to get the wages of American workers down to those of the Japanese companies in the U.S. who have American workers. The fact that those companies have not been here long enough to have pension obligations, well, that is ignored. The unions must also accept the fact that, instead of money going into the current worker's pension plans, under this bill, they will get some kind of equity transfer. Have we not heard enough of this kind of 'garbage financial talk' from these creeps? The Congressional creeps? The Republicans? So the bailout passed American Auto Workers, but it is a mighty cold and snowy world out there this December, if you have not noticed. And those executives and members of Congress still have their residence addresses online and in phone books. Firewood is to be found there. The only. I repeat. The only way that our leadership is going to make the changes you need to survive yourself and your family in any credible and comfortable way is to cause fear to live and breathe inside these dreadfully powerful people. It is just the way it works. It has always worked that way, except for brief respites too short to even mention. You either run them or they will run you. Take note of the last eight years. We have been run right into the ground in just about every area that can be mentioned. The only person, whom I have noticed, that has done anything at all about it is locked up in an Iraqi prison, being tortured by our people right this minute. He threw his shoes at George Bush. By God that took balls. By God that took good judgment. By God I love that guy. If it could only start a trend. Wherever that Bush clown goes, people throw shoes. Not at him, as that will get you twenty years in administrative maximum in this country. No, people should just throw shoes before him. Let him get the idea. Let him understand that God, and we, can punish very very harshly and for a very long time. This guy and his people hurt the hell out of us and we are a long way from being beyond that hurt. Do you feel it yet? This country is built upon a Puritanical base of Calvinistic thinking and is righteous in the presentation of those ideas and philosophy. It is time to get righteous indeed.
My cards are not done. I labor on into the night. The foil is hard to work with. But the effect is great. That the cards will be taken from their envelopes, briefly read and then discarded is not the issue (although I do indeed sometimes think about that). The issue is that it is meaningful for me to do it. It is good to think of the neat nature of every one of the people I am sending to. I thank God that I have fifty of them. Many people have none. It is a Merry Christmas, as it has been for many years, at least for me. And it is snowing again. My Advent trees stagger under the weight. I thought it could not snow more than last year but I was mistaken. Global warming is making it colder. I do not understand that, but I think that I am not supposed to. Sometimes global warming, the phrase, seems to sound like terrorism.
My cards are like the song, maybe: Knights in White Satin, never reaching the end, letters I've written, never meaning to send. There was a television show on the science fiction channel a while back. I liked it. Most of the show was hookum (everyone above a certain age had died of a virulent virus) but the show always opened with this really poignant scene. The protagonist was standing over an open fire, reading a letter he had written to his father that day (the father had, of course, died from the virus years before) and then burning it. There was no point to it. But there was every point to it. Letters I've written, never meaning to send.
Rick Warren. The man is just a studied case of applied stupidity, and the celebration of that whole concept. It finds favor with a male oriented population which seems to take its roots from the 'Cowboy mentality' of the late eighteen hundred's. The Gran Torino (AKA: Dirty Harry gets old) is a perfect example of this mentality. And Obama and the Dream Team are throwing a bone to this grousing rat pack of carrion feeding mongrels. Rick Warren wants homosexuals dead or reduced to sexual predator status. Now, how in God's name, can we have a guy like that say the invocation for our incoming savior? This man is part and parcel of the same pack of assholes who have taken our country to the brink of total devastation, caused us to lose all respect around the world, entered us into evil rendition arrangements with the slimiest of torturing characters, and so on. Why stop there? Jesus Christ, this man is emblematic of the kind of person who, in the Old Testament, the Lord would have smitten with a sweeping vengeance. But here he is, right up there in a place of honor. That just sucks, and I don't care if Obama thinks that will help unite this country. Get it here, and right now Barack, we do not want to be united with this shit or any of his followers. We overwhelmingly picked you because we wanted no more of these self-righteous and self-enriching creeps around us. Now get to work! Or become what you sought to rail against yourself. Or at least we thought you did.
MTV is throwing 15 new 'unscripted' reality shows up against the wall this coming season. It appears that their viewership is down almost twenty-five percent. Dah! You are putting crap out there for the audience to view. We, as television viewers, lack the ability to throw vegetables at you, so we just switch off. We do not want any more of that dunce-cap reality stupidity, no matter how much you keep hyping that it is more 'real' than anything that has come before. We have reality right here, where we are living, and we don't want any more of that. We don't care about Donald Trump, or chefs fighting in kitchens over more stupidity, or people chasing about on obviously (and badly) scripted races. Get over it or die. Television, as with the newspapers, is going right down the toilet unless it gets over the producer's nepotistic self-love and self congratulation. You have to make the effort to give the audience good stuff. If you don't then we sit out here and drink, or go back to reading, or play Scrabble, or something. Rick Warren is emblematic of this, as well. Applied stupidity. It is, at times satisfying, but it is the way of the loser. In school and out here. At work and at home.
I am working on my Christmas cards. I create them from card stock I order from Italy, then build them with foil from Germany and stamps from the good old USA. I use a black ink fountain pen to address the cards and then the same pen to write inside. The actual stamps are from the fifties (I collect stamps too). The great old six and eight cent Christmas stamps that were put out back then. I have fifty cards to finish. That is about as many as I have ever made. I have been as low as thirty-three. Now, I lose people for entirely different reasons than in years past. Back then I lost people because they moved and I never heard from them again, or they simply turned out to be bad apples. Now I lose them because they die! And that is disconcerting, indeed. I miss them. The ones that die. I still keep them in my book, but there they are to remind me that they are no longer here. Shit. Why do I spend all this time to do such a strange thing, in a world where people do not even bother, for the most part, to even go out and buy cards and send them off? Because it is important to me. I am not sure why. Maybe because I am a writer and I think that the written word is special. And the personal written letter or card, the most special of all. Reality cards, if you will, but well scripted ones.
Governor Rod spoke! He came out and, backed by the fiber transmitted to him through the absorption of my blogs, stood firm. Meanwhile, the pundits complain away about the fact that nobody supports this governor. Another crock! The governor does not need any of the support they seem to think he ought to have. This guy is at the helm of the Illinois ship and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Now, idiots, pray that the captain does not aim the ship to run up upon the rocks, because he can certainly do that, and in so many ways. I detailed a bunch of them. There are more. I don't like the guy, or his wife. But I sure understand his situation, and the role he was elected to perform. If I were Fitzgerald, the Federal Prosecutor (who seems to have gotten the idea that he is Javert, from the Victor Hugo novel; Les Miserable), I would tuck my tail in and shut my mouth. If Governor Rod chooses to focus on him, that Fed will find out, for the first time in his life, what public and private pain are all about. You stand, Governor Rod, just as you are, as a beacon against outrageous public prosecution.
There was some war protest song written and sung by some great singer in the sixties. It had words within it, to the effect "hip deep in the big muddy." I liked those protest songs of the Vietnam Era. We don't have such songs any longer. Clear Channel, the Fox of radio, has assured us of that. We must always be reminded that the war on 'The Oceanic Front' is going well. That we have had our asses handed to us in Iraq, Afghanistan is besides the point. What good would have protests done, anyway? Saved four thousand young men and women who died for nothing? Well, ask Dick Cheney. He said it was a necessary sacrifice. He lost nothing. He lost no children. Neither he, his wife, nor any of his craven spawn have lost one damn thing. Quite the opposite. He, and his family, have tremendous power, have enriched themselves twenty times over since the start of Iraq, and will continue to hold positions in our new American Aristocracy. That is, until children come to visit them with matches. To those Gold Star families out there, my heart goes out to you. I left 211 boys behind in Vietnam. I remember every one of them. All good Marines. I still think, all the time, about Corporal Fusner (18), Buck Sgt. Stevens (19) and Sugar Daddy, my Scout Sgt. At this time of the year it is hard not to. I am living and they are dead. I know they would celebrate my living but I cannot celebrate their passing. A glass of that Val de Flores, lifted to my lips for one sip on Christmas Eve will be the only clue that they are well remembered. Their names are clustered together on one block of that black wall I visited in Washington D.C. My name should be up there, but I got a 'get out of jail free' wound that night, and ended up discovering that I possessed a 'survivor's body.' Great. Maybe I am only here, in my own tattered form, simply to remember them.
I read a review in the New York Times that was bleak and dark. About one of my favorite movies called "It's a Wonderful Life." I cite it often in these blogs, especially at this time of year. The review was harsh, because so much of the movie was 'real,' in my opinion. And the reviewer gave away much of his own battered perspective on life by his writing. It is a problem for us real writers. We live a lot of what we write and vice versa. Anyway, this guy wrote about how the raucous and wildly crass times, as illustrated by the shots of Bedford Falls portrayed as the result of 'George' never having been born, were much more cheerful, alive and filled with success. Those shots, rather than the boring and staid placidity of the 'real' Bedford Falls Jimmy Stewart was still alive in. About that, all I can say is that if you love what Las Vegas has become, then you agree and deserve such perspective on life. If you think that the Dells, in Wisconsin, are just great in all their neon and crappy water slide idiocy, then you deserve the poor taste you somehow got from your parents. The reviewer also screws up the 'mysterious disappearance' of the eight thousand bucks which the evil Potter found and squeezes George over. The reviewer goes to a prosecutor to determine that this eight thousand would be treated as theft, and George thrown in jail. It would not. Not unless it could be proven that it was theft. George's idiot uncle, responsible for the loss, might have to answer some serious questions, with respect to the loss, but it would not be likely that he would be held for theft. Certainly not George, who only entrusted the money to his uncle. The movie is dark in parts, especially the interpersonal relationship's of George and his family and his relationship with his brother. But good God, have you looked around at relationships in this country lately? What is our divorce rate? What is the holiday get-together like for most people? I can't say the following about most all of film that has passed before me during my life. But, I would love to have written that screenplay, or the novel behind it (there was no novel). I love real people. People with too much weight, varicose veins and bad hair. I love people who lose control on occasion but reel themselves back in. I love people who do things they need to apologize for and then apologize. I love people who tell me that I am full of shit, and then argue appropriately that I really am. I love people who say no to what I want to do, so that I am forced to convince them. I love people who drink too much of my wine and get drunk, and then drive when they should not, and then suffer a bad hangover and call to apologize for things they cannot remember. Am I this way because of Fusner, Stevens, Sugar Daddy and the rest? Is what I feel, as my true humanity, nothing more than post traumatic stress disorder from the DSM IV manual?
I don't know. Joe Campbell said that you must work and toil to finally, and only possibly, enjoy bliss at the very center of your being. I have that. I know it. Even if I am McMurphy (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) inside some facility, unaware of where I really am, I have this bliss. I just know it. Merry Christmas.
Bernard Madoff is at home in his seven million dollar penthouse. He is wearing some sort of GPS anklet or bracelet so the authorities will know that he is in residence from nine p.m. until nine a.m., when he gets to go out for the day. He was supposed to qualify for this privilege (of not sitting in a dank crummy holding cell downtown) by putting up the penthouse (which he bought with stolen money) and getting four friends or family to sign responsibility for him. It is extremely denigrating to go to friends and family for this kind of favor, by the way. So he didn't do it. He put up the penthouse and then the court decided to let him out of getting the four people to sign. Outrageous? Of course. The Federal Prosecutors are about ninety percent successful at getting their intended victims held without bail (or getting the terms of the bail so onerous that it cannot be met) for 'flight risk' potential. They get this through normally, even for people who have no passport, and have never been out of the country (you gotta leave the country to evade the Feds, and that will only serve you for a short time, unless you are Marc Rich), and have no assets to use to support any kind of successful fugitive evasion. But, what do we have here? Madoff, if convicted, would serve the rest of his life in prison, easily, according to the mandatory sentence guidelines. He has a chateau in France. He has two huge offshore yachts, staffed and waiting. He has tons of cash in all kinds of foreign accounts. He does not need no stinking passport! Oh, and they took his wife's passport. Now that was meaningful. More crap. We are being handed more crap. Like Caroline getting that Senate seat (forgone conclusion there). Just crap, repackaged with a brown wrapper and shiny brown ribbon. Merry Christmas America. And you think Governor Rod is going to prison? Think again. Picture Madoff up there in his penthouse, overlooking all of New York, while you sit down there in your one room flat you can't even make the payment on. I encourage you 'normal' New Yorkers to begin looking skyward. Madoff is up there, enjoying the Argentinian wines I write about, and laughing. What are you doing? Sit there and think. Playing with matches is not always something you should be punished for.
Writing of Argentinian wine, I have found another. Now, you know I am not a connoisseur, since I don't drink at all (I do consume huge quantities of Alterra coffee) and, when I was drinking, way back there, I downed Barcardi rum with coca cola. So, take all wine stuff with a grain of salt. It snowed over a foot last night and the stuff is still coming down. Jeff, the guy who plows me out, because i am not a John Deere kind of a guy, has had to come three times because his plow is not all that big. On the last trip I gave him my last bottle of Don David. You know, the good stuff that my guests have been raving about. Jeff frowned and smiled at the same time. The Don David is going to go down the hatch, for sure, but Jeff is more a Blatz kind of guy himself (I know, I know, they don't make that old beer anymore). I served this new stuff last night, which I found at a butcher shop in Port Washington on this recent trip. I was actually in there buying head cheese, a German delicacy which you, being assumed to be normal, will not eat. It was for my mother. She is not normal. Anyway, I spotted this dust covered bottle of Argentinian wine. It was priced at $7.99, an 06, and a Malbec from my favorite valley (the Mendoza). So I took it to the counter and asked the meat-remnant-covered butcher about it. "I don't know nuthin' about the wine. Its been here since I bought the place last year. That one's old though. You can have it for five bucks." So I bought it along with the head cheese.
It is called Trapiche. The company putting it out in the Mendoza valley is quite aptly named the Bodega Trapiche Company. Bodega being the key word here. My guest's drank it last night, but not the whole bottle. They just could not get that far. One of my connoisseur friends stated "it has the approach of fuel starved single-engined Cessna, the attack of a studded wet leather whip, and the finish of a greenish brown troll, like the one who lives behind the slats under your back porch." They drank almost all of it anyway, because I was saving the Don David for Jeff, and my supply is low. One neat thing, however. I poured the remainder of the bottle onto a clear white place in the snow this morning. It was beautiful! The snow has since tried to accumulate over it, but the intensity of color and the acidity of the brew has continued to overwhelm the tremendous building efforts of even this blizzard. If I order five cases, open the bottles and apply liberally up and down my driveway, I will not only add an amazing new color element to my home, but I will probably not have to pay Jeff for the rest of the winter. These 'Bodega' guys and gals have happened upon something they, as yet, have no clue about. This may be as good a product as synthetic rubber!
My Advent trees (you know, the five I have lit sequentially, making believe that I have some understanding of the Christian tradition in this area) have struck me down. The breaker blew last night around midnight. So the outside circuit is dead, unless I disconnect some of the lines to the trees. The breaker just keeps clicking off if I try to reset or keep them plugged in. The scene where Clark Griswald blows his own electricity out in the movie 'Christmas Vacation' is reminiscent. I plunged into the basement and figured all of everything I had to figure out to get back online. To no avail. So I am ruminating. Night will come and my unknown, but well known, and expectant, admirer's will be driving by and looking. Without the Advent trees all they will see is right into the back of my house, and I have been told that I keep too many lights on (true) and that people can vaguely see movement in the house at all hours (I have discussed this with Harvey). They never comment that it might be a violation of some sort to look in, or that it might be bad manners to tell me after they do look in. But I am not violated. I am just acting like I might be a bit violated. I don't know what kind of a guy I am but, whatever I am, I can handle the interest of friends and even those who don't quite measure up to that moniker.
Gifts. I am at the end of the Christmas rope here near Christmas. Things are so very far away from here. I mean 'real' stores. I wonder how much of America is in my situation with this. What can you buy locallly from a Home Depot or a Wall Mart? And these are Home Depots and Wall Marts that are stocked for country living. Just how many Toro snow blowers, Stanley levels or DeWalt drills can one give out as presents? And to whom? Women do not like gifts of tools (like a vacuum cleaner, which was portrayed as a gift that got a guy into a long term dog house in an ad I saw on television recently....a great ad, I might add). And many men do not like that either. So industrial strength gifts are out. That leaves me with a long drive to the shopping centers of Milwaukee or Illinois. I hate crossing the state line. I always feel like I am wanted by some shadowy authority when I go down there. The fact that nobody ever notices that I have entered the state, well, that is bothersome from a different, and more solitary, perspective altogether! And Milwaukee! What do I say about that place? Worse roads, from a directional standpoint, than Washington D.C. But I must get ready and get out there. A foot of snow today, they say, with more on Saturday. I better get out there and get under the lip of the coming white mantle. Hawaii beckons but I have miles to go before I sleep. Whitman. If you don't recognize the quote, I mean. I'll bet he was a great guy. But you never know about artists. We are a bit whacked around the edges, here and there.
Caroline Kennedy is not selected to fill Hilary's seat. Not yet, anyway. So there is a sliver of hope. We need some raucous junior legislator on his or her way up. Full of brimstone and testy brine. Ready to pull a Mr. Smith or Ms. Smith goes to Washington kind of thing. We don't need the faux royalty of this country doing more of their paltry do-nothing showboating. And then there is torture. Finally, the outrages committed in our name are receiving some notice. Mainstream media is hopeful that nothing will come of it, however. They want Obama to drop such 'rear-looking' investigations. But this is one that needs to be brought right up to the top of the table. We need to know. We need to consider and then judge. We need to make absolutely certain that this bottle, with the genie inside, gets corked and buried deep under some New York landfill. The only way to do that is to know, and then reflect, and then be sorry as hell that we allowed this current serving slime to represent us like that. And don't compare this to what was done by the idiots who flew into those buildings on 911. That is them. Screw them. We can't change them. But we can change us and assure that we do not ever resemble them. Let's do it.
I've got it! I can run another extension cord from one of the sockets on the other side of the house to run half the lights! Those sockets are on a different circuit, according to the weird scrolling written next to the breaker switches on the panel, so they should be able to distribute the load. Merry Christmas, from the Lake Geneva Griswalds!
It looks like we will just continue the "aristocratic movie star" kind of crap that has been going on in this country since right after television became common to most households. Fame is everything. If you are not known, or do not have a 'linked' last name, then you are a peasant, and you will not be allowed to rise above your status. Caroline Kennedy, without complaint and without any credentials at all...except great fame, looks to be the next Senator from New York. The woman who preceded her, and is now about to be our Secretary of State, lived in New York about three months before starting her run for that seat. And her husband was the former President. So there is plenty of precedent in New York and around this country. Arnold is governor in California. Dumb as a post. About as educated and life-experienced as a troll, but there he is. Nero is fiddling while Rome is slowly but surely beginning to burn. You can see the smoke. You can almost smell it, but not quite yet. I was up in Northern Wisconsin again, over the past few days, and several people asked me about the nation's anger. As in, where the hell is it. I did not have an answer for that question. I don't know. Maybe all this has to really come home to everyone's front door. Maybe the appointment and election of such dolts, and the disaster they leave strewn in their path, will only sink in when it is up close, personal and in everyone's face. Caroline will stroll into her new Senate office and set up shop, with the usual trail of servants, security, pomp and circumstance. We are giving away all of our country to this kind of deliberate stupidity. Without any anger at all. She will sit there and be honored and fretted over, while auto workers are laid off and dumped into the social and physical sewers of this land.
I notice that Gates, of the CIA, is apologizing for black permanent magic marker being used to 'highlight' secret documents that are now being declassified and given out under Freedom of Information Requests. It seems that black highlighters were used in order to, well, highlight the important sensitive parts of many documents. And this is told to us, the public, straight-faced. And the press just rolls over and eats it up. What a crock!!! They use black highlighters to redact. They use it on the original documents because the original document can still be read after highlighting (just hold it up to the light and the letters will be visible no matter whether they were typed, written with ballpoint or even pencil), but they are totally black to photocopiers. Get it yet? All Freedom of Information Request Responses are copied. You even pay for each copy they make for you. But the black 'highlighter' leaves you completely in the dark about whatever they want to keep you in the dark about. And now they lie about it. And get believed by the supportive donkey mainstream media. Actually the media is simply paid well to do just that.
I also heard some anger, while I was up there in the North, about the missing money. It is becoming apparent, with the toppling of the Ponzi guy in New York (for 50 billion, or so) that the whole derivative and hedge fund thing is nothing more than a series of Ponzi schemes (wherein the people who invest early are paid with the money coming in the door later, to keep them appeased and quiet) which were used to allow the schemers to take almost all of the money themselves. That money is offshore and tied up in many many luxury homes, boats and planes. As I explained about this fine mess, the real problem is that the very people charged with going after these people are all part of it! Yes, the Paulson people, and so on, have their own offshore accounts. Paulson is a multi-billionaire. Hell, almost all the people at the top now are. Have you not noticed? So what can we expect? What we can expect is that these thieving people are going to continue to divest themselves of dollars while they print money hand over fist from the Federal Reserve. You see, if you do not hold dollars (instead you have hard commodities like gold and silver and platinum) then you do not have to care that the printing of trillions of dollars of more money will dilute the rest of it out here. Stand by for some real inflation. Like twenty or thirty percent per year or more. But it will not apply to those people.
Oh, you will be mad about it. But you are not yet. You are still believing that Obama and the dream team are going to pull this thing out in the last reel. Well, they are not. They are not hear to pull us out. They are here to make us all feel better as we go through this terribly tough purge. We are at the end of the beginning. The winter will now grow colder and colder, and then colder still. Be as ready as you can. Where the hell is Bill Bennet hiding when I need somebody to take this out on?
The last 'advent tree' is lit. Christmas is days away. It is a wonderful time of coming change and challenge, of anger and deeper emotions. It is going to be a time of love and care, for those close to us. It has been quite some time since that kind of thing has been a part of this cold existential culture. Merry Christmas, and thank you God for giving us more problems so that we may grow stronger as we solve them.
In a time 25,000 years ago, a small tribe located in a primal valley attempts to survive the many threats from geology, weather, hunger and health of the times. The perspective of this sweeping adventure is from that of a young boy, cast down by not out, ignored by his family and friends, but accepted by the animal life indigenous to this period. It is a story of integrity lost and won, hard-earned honor and its meaning and effect, but above all, a romance of great proportions. The boy loses and learns, fights for love and survival itself, while attempting to overcome physical and social difficulties that at times seem insurmountable. The first novel of this series is called The Boy and it establishes a benchmark for the beginnings of the meteoric rise of the homo sapiens species, from its lowly beginnings to its eventual dominance over the entire planet.
And so reads the back cover of the new novel. I wonder what the public is going to think of it. So much of that (the public's opinion) is all about some of the things I rail about on this blogsite. Who has access to the eyes, minds, hearts and souls of this population we all belong to? Who has access at all to the outpouring of sensory pleasing technology? The books, the television and the movies? It is not me. I have a large voice in Hollywood, on two shows, but I am mostly unknown (credit is much harder to come by in Hollywood than money). I have a little bitty voice on the blogsites. Learning about how to have a larger voice is fraught with hard-work, serendipity and relationships. How to make it all work to get a message out. I ponder into the cold dark night. It is below zero here and the wind is right at twenty on my anemometer. It is to snow again tomorrow and the next day, and this is proof of global warming. I read that on Fox, one of the scrolls across the bottom of a screen that went by while ORielly was talking bad talk about Blogojevitch, the embattled governor of Illinois. He is even colder than us, up here above him in Wisconsin. Cold and becoming more alone with each passing day. Soon, the icicle he married will dump him too, and rejoin the ranks of Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Kelly Rippa and the rest of the brittle botox queens of advancing age and declining beauty.
There is not much good to say about the mess that Governor Rod has created for himself, and also the one that his enemies are helping to make worse. After all, they want to sell that senatorship themselves, and then the governorship itself. Just as soon as they can get rid of the Donald Trump Hair Guy, I mean. We have watched high offices be traded for favors and more ever since this country got under way. What is this new explosion of outrage all about? I mean, come on. The brother gets appointed, the son, the wife. All the time. To just about any office. Try Cheney's daughters being given jobs to run the Middle East! And look at New York. There is another do nothing law school graduate from a silver spoon background of no life experience being touted for the senator's job there. Her name is Caroline Kennedy. This is to be another of the leaders that is supposed to lead us where? Is there any wonder we are hip deep in the big muddy and sinking fast? While we go down, knowing and stating that we have been lead to our fate by idiots, we appoint new idiots to represent us along the way. Oh Caroline seems like a nice lady. All of us with age watched her at her father's funeral. But what has she done? Nothing. The advantage of gaining public office today is to have done nothing with your life. You cannot be found to have done anything wrong. At least she will be used to the limos and the private aircraft and the rest of the royalty perks we give our own aristocracy, while we look the other way and condemn those evil unions and those overpaid auto workers. Like she is going to give a damn about people like that. Our aristocracy is just like all the aristocracies which have preceded it. They are taught not to give a damn. It is simply a part of being what and who they are.
So I am trumpeting for the auto workers. Yes, those guys and gals who build Chevys, Fords and Chryslers across this land. I am looking to see that they get a fair deal, and they get to keep their jobs at an even higher rate of pay. I want the ideals of America, and how we go here, to this point, to be reapplied. How we got into space with real quality equipment. How we got to the moon. How we built world aviation almost single cultured. How we built the computer revolution step by step. How we did, and are doing, all of it. We did it with hard work, grit, and determination and talent. And we used our money to help fund those efforts. So, God Damn It, lets lay out the bucks to build these new cars that this fickle public seems to want. Give the building cars over to the rest of the world and we might as well just hang on to Mediterranean Place and Baltic Avenue, while ceding each and every other property on this World Monopoly Board to the rest of those cultures out there. Screw them. Let's fix our own situation. Let's get busy and build some real cars and show all those bastards a thing or two, again. And if our representatives stand in the way of this, lets show those people just what riots and tough times are like. They all live in mansions in D.C. and in their home states. Lets go get the addresses and start visiting. Hell, if those craven thieves have their way (the 'conservative' representatives) there will be plenty of unemployed auto workers to make those visits. With tools.
I have been brought up short, with respect to what have become known as the advent trees around here. My five trees, which I have been lighting sequentially, I mean. It seems, from writers out there who are not as Christian culturally deprived as I, that the advent wreath, as it is properly called, indeed has five candles. There is a center one I had forgotten. So, my five trees, symbolically, are correct. The fifth candle is in the center of the wreath (just as my fifth colored tree is in the center!). So I got all that right. A candle is supposed to be lit on the day of the beginning of each week until Christmas (starting on November 30). Roughly, I have accomplished that. The center candle is lit on Christmas Day. I screwed that up, as that tree is already lit and burning bright in multiple colors. I have one more tree to go, but, as it turns out, I have a few days before I must have it ready. Whew! And it is five below with a twenty mile an hour wind out there this morning. I kid you not. The wind chill is so cold that I did not retrieve the papers from my driveway in my ratty blue robe and slippers. I stepped out there, as did Harvey. We both stepped instantly back, with mutual shudders. I put my wool lined duster on to retrieve those items. This time Harvey watched from the window. No fool, that cat.
The Green Bay Packers are quite the thing here. And there is a pall hanging over this entire area, as the Packers lose game after game, Sunday after Sunday. It is like living in Rome, when the Colliseum was all the rage, on Sunday afternoons. Except lately, the Christians have been kicking the crap out of the Lions, so to speak. And that is terrible. Bret Favre, however stupid the spelling of that man's name is, compared to it's pronunciation (which, however, is explained by the stupidity he evidences every time he opens his mouth), has been winning up there in New York. You see, he retired a year ago, then tried to come back, but the current Packer management no longer wanted to deal with such an outrageously famous, arrogant and stupid movie-star-like player. This part of the American outback does not take to that well. So, they said no, stay retired, but then they weakened and allowed him to go play for somebody else. And now they are losing games while that New York team is winning. There is a quiet across the land out here. That quiet is the same one that comes before a storm. Current Packer Management is about to become the eye of that storm. And they better have some prospects (like maybe coaching for the Winnepeg White Doves, or somebody like that). All they had to do was have a winning season. Not even get into the play-offs. That would have been okay. Or, even if they had the current season (like two wins and a hundred and eight losses), and Favre had a losing season too, that would have been alright. But no. They are so screwed. Before this season is out, those coaches will be put in one those yellow and green wagons I see all over out here, and towed (by a hugely expensive John Deere) to the football garbage dump.
Writing of garbage, Governor Rod is still not giving up. Nope. He has been reading my blog and saying "Aha!" after he takes in the paragraphs I devote to him. He has not arrested Ms. Big Fat Lawyer Mouth Madigan yet, nor taken on the Righteous Roaring Ftizgerald in open combat. But he may at any time. It is so cold that he could call out the National Guard just to defend his population against that. The power of being governor is a marvelous thing. And he has that young cute wife to go home to every night. Rod toils and Rod bubbles....and what more can we, his bored public, ask for? Entertain us Rod. For sure that is the greatest thing you could do for us since you could never govern yourself out of a wet paper bag. C'mon Rod, Advent is fast closing in on us. Light that last candle early. I dare you.
According to Joe Campbell, it is all about bliss. That is the general feeling of goodness, wellness and self-worth, that one should be able to generate from deep inside one's center. Happiness, well, he didn't like the word, because it is linked (by its origin) to happenstance. Outside influence. We should be able to generate bliss no matter what the circumstance, or happenstance. So, I try. I do not always get it though. Some days 'happenstance' overwhelms me. This financially trade-oriented world has, at its very heart, discovery and negotiation as it's main tools. You discover knowledge that no one else has and you can make money. You negotiate from what you have, to gain more of what other's have. And so on. This is a life of some considerable worry and stress, simply because of that process. Then there are natural disasters. People dying or getting cancer all about. And other things. So, my bliss is regularly challenged.
Today, I have been out in the decaying melting snow sliding down hills with the two Indian kids that came here with the tribe the day before yesterday. I have been throwing snowballs (I used to be quite accurate and, on top of that, was willowy enough so that I did not get hit a lot...but now, I am riddled by small children, and I never seem to be able to hit them at all). Anyway, there was a lot of laughing, mostly at me. King of the Hill was a lot more fun when you just fell down the hill and didn't take half of it with you! And I can't type worth a hoot because I was too stupid to wear real gloves out there and my fingers won't work right.
I read the papers and watched the television, of course. Coffee and the papers, with Sunday morning visible just over the top of my pages. I watched Mr. Good Looking Even at Seventy-Eight (Robert Wagner) explain one more time how he and Christopher Walken did not kill Natalie Wood that night aboard their yacht off of Catalina Island. Which I understand and did not mind. I did not like the part where he gushed over about Jill St. John coming along in his deepest hours of grief and loss to fill the void. Oh Please! What kind of grief and loss is that? I mean, that it can be immediately filled by another Hollywood starlet? And then they sit there, Bob and Jill, doing the mutual admiration society thing. "Bob is the most wonderful human male on the planet. He is such a gentleman." And on and on on, until it is his turn to gush about her. Where are the decent reporters who refuse to put up with this kind of self-serving crap? Gone to graveyards, every one. Or maybe drowned and floating off of Cataline Island.
So I put my head back down into the editorials. And there was Governor Rod. I can't ever remember how to spell his last name, or even say it really. Sort of like that guy over in Iran. But, I digress. Governor Rod is being lampooned left and right. He is quite a wonderful target. It is written that he takes our mind off of our real problems. He is acceptable to Illinois because Illinois is so corrupt anyway. And so on. Then we have this new witch Madigan. She, State Attorney General of Illinois, has dredged up some variation of the 'disablity' act thing, whereby a governor can be declared unfit for duty if he is badly ill or hurt. Let's see, his disability, according to this 'Palin-like' Madigan, and I am not making this up, is a 'political disability.' You gotta love it! Governor Rod is politically disabled. Lisa Madigan and Governor Rod hate each other, by the way. She is another of these no-life-experience-but-I-went-to-law school types. She is friends with Obama (like most of the rest of us). She wants to be the governor or take the open Senate seat. Naturally. Mr. Smith, when he went to Washington in that movie, was the last politician to simply want to do the right thing for the good of all. But then, he was fictional, wasn't he.
Rod is hanging tough, trying to make the best deal he can. Call out the National Guard Rod! You will get more credibility. Or, if not that, at least more negotiation room. Barring all of that, get hold of whoever did the legal and P.R. work for Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken!
Another Argentinian Malbec (that is a red wine like Cabernet Savignon, but more mellow) has been served up, after I took a proper chastising on the internet. Yes, Val de Flores is much more expensive, and yes it got rave numbers in the Wine Spectator, but man-o-man do my guests like this Don David. And it is sixteen dollars a bottle, from the strumpet's 'going out of business anytime soon' paramour. Of course, my guests are currently Santo Domingo Indians and staying with me here in the main residence. But they are erudite, albeit very careful and limited, imbiber's of the red fermented grape. Such a thing is possible, in spite of all the stuff we hear about alcohol problems on reservations. Maybe the fact that these Indians are such fantastic artists in silver, gold and such means something. I don't know. My neighbors and friends have encountered these special tribal people and found them to be riveting conversationalists, as well. Tonight we shall reprise last night with the professor and his wife over to enjoy it all. Christmas. I love it.
My third advent tree gets turned on tonight. One more to go. I have so many strings out there I have to use three circuits to keep from clicking off the breakers in the basement. As it is, my lights dim a bit anyway. What are you going to do? A little bit of Clark (Christmas Vacation, the movie) lives and breathes inside my core. I love all the deocrations (not to the point of watching Queer Eye for a Straight Guy on television, however).
Why are the Republican's so powerful in Congress? I mean, they are in the minority. Why are they not even being forced to filibuster? What is wrong with the democrats in Congress? Why are we not supporting the car industry when they need such a small amount? Hell, we even bailed out American Express and they were not in trouble, by their own admission. What is wrong with what is going on? Plenty. It is still about getting all they can get before Obama and his team get installed. And it is running rampant. I don't know where this is going to go but I doubt whether any of it is going to be forgotten as things get worse. And I do pity the people who are doing this. They do not know. They do not study history and they have come to believe that the only authority they need fear is self-derived and controlled. It is what took the Illinois governor to his edge of doom. It is going to take those people too. You see, you are the ultimate power. It is just that you seldom ever, as a unit, take it into your own hands. Why are we allowing these creeps to demand that our workers make less? I am not an auto worker. I am not blue collar. In fact, you might make a case for me being a liberal 'elitist.' But I am not. I do well, with my writing and other business interests. I want everyone to do well, however. That is the liberal in me. I really do want life to imitate It's A Wonderful Life and other films of the same ilk. What is wrong with me? Why do I seem out of place?And, if I am, how did we come to be this cold uncaring culture? We ought to bail out the car companies, big time, and then fire all the top executives and find some new ones. We ought to give the auto workers, one and all a raise, just for being put through all of this crap! We have scared the be-jesus out of them all, and right before Christmas. That guy who runs Tesla Motors, out there in California...let's make him the Auto Czar! And Steve Jobs. Can't he take a break from Apple for a year or two and help his country out? An iCar. I love it. I would love it. You could just slap the name on a little chevy hybrid and it would sell millions! And then Bill Gates can come over and try to build something really super and attempt to make it a monopoly. He is great at that. These guys all owe us a lot. We ought to get them involved.
I would have a glass of Don David, like my friends downstairs, but then, I would end up in an institution somewhere, which would be bad. I have heard that some of our best comedians go to 'vacation resort institutions' from time to time. Maybe if I could go in with a one of them, like Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters....,now that would be worth doing. But, alas, I have obligations. I shall have some Alterra coffee, and just think about the robust flavor of a great Malbec.
My Santa Domingo Indian friends have descended upon Lake Geneva. They are driving back from New York. Yes, they actually drove into Manhatten looking for a place to stay, crossed the Narrows bridge three times (paying the ten dollar toll each time) until they got their bearings. Picked up a ticket for an illegal "U Turn" out on the highway, but, because the highway patrolman was pro-Obama (as are they), he gave them a non-mover instead. Anyway, they are here. A long time ago, the sagest Indian among them (Raincloud...the Shaman of the tribe) told me, on an bad weather day, that it was "indian Weather" that day. I asked him what the hell Indian Weather was. He replied, straight-faced (they have no other real expressions you would recognize), that the White Man had stolen everything, and all that was left to the Indians was bad weather. Indian Weather. and so it has become among all of us who live and work around Antares Research and Development, our company.
I note that the creepy righteous Attorney General down in Illinois is still after Governor Rod. Still making unethical statements and trotting out questionable evidence. His showcasing of the governor's plight is a display, in major proportions, of what happens to any ordinary citizen if he or she gets caught up in the same system. The prosecutor, with his minions of assistants, all paid by taxes, holds press conferences about the case. Basically, the person is convicted by the media and the people well before any real trial begins. Only very wealthy or powerful people have the ability to have a press conference to refute such charges. And then, the press does not have to give you the opportunity. It is up to them. Hence the over ninety-eight percent conviction rate of the Feds. Unfair? Yes. Outrageous? No, unless you are the poor target of such tactics. We have a culture which is really more like a huge swimming fish ball. The fish ball up so the attacking sharks will only attack the outside of the ball. The fish keep swarming, all fighting to get on the inside of the fishball. Our justice system represents the sharks. Don't ever get caught on the outside of that fishball. I also note that the governor seems to be taking it all pretty quietly. There are some moves by the State Attorney General to try to remove him, but, as I said, they must be extremely careful. The governor's office of any state is really not to be toyed with. Not with impunity, anyway.
I note that it is being argued on the Senate floor that American Workers need to get their compensation closer to that of the foreign competition in order to be employable. You are getting to watch, right from the front row seats, the neocons finish what they started so many years ago. The destruction of the middle class and 'flat-earth' application of global economy. That is where all workers here get paid like the Chinese there or the Vietnamese. It is important that the standard of living for the middle class plummet further. That is the only way the very wealthy can truly enjoy their wealth. That they get to enjoy only a short time before another French Revolution results, well, they don't worry about that.
Today I must get out and do the fourth 'Advent' tree. I have sworn not to use a ladder so I have to curl and toss one string of lights to the top, which is hard when it is ten degrees and the wind is blowing at thirty. That is the way it is right now. I kind of like the way it makes me feel. Fighting tough. Survival challenged. Some meaning in life. I am hunkered down here, only going out to hit the coffee shop, buy food and Christmas stuff.
Bloomberg just lost in it's request to prize 'Freedom of Information Act' stuff from the Federal Reserve. It seems that the Federal Reserve has given out two trillion dollars (which it does not have, so it had to print the money) to several different financial organizations over the course of the past few months. It seems that the Federal Reserve has a provision with respect to 'trade secrets' that allows it to dispense money to financial organizations without telling anyone anything. We don't know who got the money. We don't know what they provided as collateral, if any. We do not know what the provisions are for paying it back. The statement of denial to Bloomberg did, however, comment upon the need for transparency, with respect to all of the Fed's financial transactions! But, it seems, that need was sublimated to the need of the receiving organizations to maintain a public posture of strength. Are you getting it yet? Once again, we are redefining and legalizing theft. Where did the money go? We don't know. Trust the people at the Federal Reserve? Why? The top members of that organization have reached pardonable status. If they get caught then they will get pardoned, for working so hard on our behalf. We are a country of thieves and phoney heros. And they all live at the top. None of the people at the top are involved in anything of real life. They live in wealth and redistribute to their friends, and when they are caught in outrageous schemes, they are pardoned or able to negotiate their way out of any accountability. And so we will have it be at the Fed.
Down here, just above the level of rising muck, I write. On into a cold (zero) morning. It is time to go on out to Hawaii and sit on the beach with a Corona. No, I don't drink, but I do like the color (and yes, I am completely colorblind) of the liquid and the shape of that bottle. Maybe it is that I have just seen too many of the advertisements. I sit on the beach in my folding chair with an 'urban sombrero' to protect me from the sun. I wear a "T" shirt with a picture of Che on the front but the notation under the picture reads 'Obama.' I wait for something wildly droll but barely discernable to occur, like in the ads. And I wait. Like a drooling idiot. But I can't go out there yet. It is Christmas and I have the remaining two trees to decorate to complete my mad 'Advent' scheme up on that hill behind the house, which runs next to the road. People drive past on that road all the time. They are like readers of blogs. I don't know they are there, but they are. Every once and awhile, like an unexpected comment from a blog responder, they find a way to say something. Hence my mad scheme to entertain them. The third tree I decorated last night. This time I used multi-colored strings of light. The middle tree of the five. You see, advent calls for a wreath with four candles on it, when it is complete. So the fifth colored tree, the middle one in this case, represents the Christ. In my damaged way of thinking, anyway. Will my passing viewers get it? No. But here I am, about ready to enjoy the holidays and then run off to Ohau's Kahala Beach to sit and wait for nothing to happen. I have a laptop now so I can sit there and write more nonsense while I am out on the sand. Actually, I have a total re-write to get done. I am re-writing The Warrior, which is the follow-on book to The Boy (coming out in April). The Warrior is the 'real' novel that The Boy was written to introduce. But we'll see. You readers are a fickle lot and I don't understand you at all.
It is not funny that during this serious time (everyone always says that whatever time it is, it is the most serious of all time) that we have newscaster anchors like we have? I mean Newscasters Lite! Charlie Gibson, good old boy from morning radio, Wolf Blitzer, blowhard from Baghdad, and Anderson Cooper, our gay application with his 'Twiggy' presentation. Oh, I am forgetting Katie Couric, our Palin-seeming (she has a brain, however) sex kitten who made her bones by tearing her fellow cougar apart. Brian Williams is the only one who does not seem like some sort of human appearing iteration of the TeleTubbies. These are the talking-heads of our times, interspersed with various part-time talking heads, here and there. Bill Bennet was right up there as my favorite one of those, but now is out grazing off in some alcohol plant pasture, only holding his shaggy head up (with effort) in order to pick a new Keno number or check a lottery ticket. Rush grazes in that same pasture, from time to time, but just now is still on top of his game. Ever since he figured out how to change the labels on his pill containers they have not been able to farm him off that over-large office chair he spouts from daily. Are not these interesting news times?
Clint Eastwood has made another movie. This time it is Grand Torino. How fitting. An ugly old car, even when it first came out. How the car resembles that man. And his dark lousy movies. The Unforgiven was such a trashy piece of Western film that I was astounded. It was like Cormac McCarthy's The Road (novel). It was so rotten and trashy that it won all the awards. The awards being totally meaningless, except for the cash they cause to roll in, of course. Eastwood made one brilliant movie, and that was his adaptation of the novel 'Gone To Texas.' In the eighteen hundreds a person that disappeared was noted on police reports as GTT. You get it. When people got caught doing something they should not they did not all go to prison. The one's that figured out that the jig was up split for Texas, or somewhere else. Anyway, the movie Clint made was called The Outlaw Josey Wales. The movie was not only brilliant in plot and theme, but Clint's own acting performance was overshadowed by the fantastic performance of an actor named Chief Dan George. Wow. But that was kinda it for Clint. And now we have the older, much more miserable Clint. Mad that he is getting old. Mad about his looks. Mad at just about anything that is not violent, jingoist or prejudiced in some way or other. Clint is the quintessential red-neck and proud of it (I actually saw that phrase on a bumper sticker yesterday!). Almost like inferring the Bush thing "I am dumb and I am proud to be dumb." But we watch him. Most of us just walking away, or driving by, like the admirer's of my decorated trees.
Between the governor of Illiinois story and the auto bailout odyssey, we have the usual collection of news features. Murder here and there, butchered children every once and awhile, and even a cat that had its face sewed back together after some accident. But it is the bailout that is the most ridiculous. Oh, I know what you are thinking. How can one top the dumbest most arrogant governor story to come along since Huey Long? Try this. We are spending day, after endless day, talking and arguing about whether the car industry of this country should get a fifteen billion dollar bailout. The Senate, House, Whitehouse and even our 'Proto-Whitehouse With No Real Power, But Ready To Serve,' are all working back and forth on this miniscule bailout. Ever uglier Pelosi is hip deep with, and attached to, Harry Reid (we won't even bring up his looks, except to say the word 'troll') just working day and night on this idiocy. Why is it miniscule? Simply because we have so far given the banks six trillion, or so, of all kinds of money to help them out of bankruptcy. That is right. All the news is on the 15 billion while six trillion, so far, is out the back door. It is worse than a joke. Mr. Righteous Prosecutor Fitzgerald (using the biggest legal bully pulpit every trotted out before the American public) has the Illinois governor by the throat, publishing tapes and statements from everyone. What about saving that stuff for the trial, you ask? This is the trial, you idiot! And we allow this under our unfair system of federal justice. Then, by the way, when Fitzgeald gets his appointment in D.C. to some big job, well, that will be simply because he was so good at putting bad people in prison. Bah! Humbug! It will be because he traded the governor's life for it. However dumb and arrogant Rod was, or is, does not matter. It is our system that needs an overhaul.
And have we really forgotten Huey Long? Do we really want to take on a sitting governor of a populous state in this way? What if he gets mad? I mean snake hissing, hawk spitting and hog pissing mad. What could he do? Well, for starters he could mobilize the National Guard of the State of Illinois and force them to arrest Fitzgerald and all of his people! If the National Guard would not accept the quite legal order, then what kind of wild precedent would that set alone? If they did it, or the State Police did it, what would that cause? Huey did it. What if he closed the borders of Illinois? He could do it. What if he closed the airports for 'security' reasons? He could do that too. I mean the things that an angry governor can actually pull are beyond belief, and I have just written a few here. What if he dismissed the House and Senate of Illinois? Yes, he has the emergency powers to do that too. We could actually end up with either a huge confrontation between Illinois and the United States of America or, if that did not go, then a precedent setting lessoning of state's rights that would follow all of us for some time to come.
Yet here we are, Charles Gibson is trumpeting the attempt by Governor Rod to 'sell' the open Senate seat right now. Go ahead, poke the Governor B bear Charlie. And then we hear that, oh excuse me, but the bailout for the auto industry (wherein the big argument in favor would allow the car companies get rid of the unions and hire people for 'what they really are worth') has, tucked in quietly, an across the board pay increase for federal judges. Yes, while we trumpet the big pay of those poor hard-working car workers we are going to give a raise to the federal judges, across this land, who are already making eight-five bucks an hour (if they worked a forty hour work week, which they do not) in just base pay. With benefits and retirement thrown in, it actually comes to about two hundred an hour. Yes, they need a raise. And, but don't we just really need to get rid of those car workers? Funny, but I also think it will take rulings by those same Federal Judges to get rid of the the pesky unions!
We have bought into some paradigms of 'justice' and 'fairness' and economics which are leading us right over the edge of a cultural cliff. At the bottom of that cliff, which we are determined to leap over, is a place called social chaos. It is a familiar place. You see, we all came from it, or at least our ancestors did. It took us three million years to pull ourselves out the muck to have even this vestige of civilization. Now, here we are, slowly but surely, and deliberately, sinking back into that muck.
There is not much about Christmas in these newspapers I get, nor on the television, really. We had the final show of Boston Legal the other night, and boy was that ever a neat Christmas trip! The legal firm is purchased by the Chinese (with plenty of anti-Chinese crap thrown in....they are dumb, dress and look funny and just don't get it at all about anything cross-cultural), and then we get the real delight. Denny Crane and his friend Alan get married. Yes, to illustrate the situation in California (and around the nation) where there are strong reactions against allowing gay marriage, the L.A. based show had to take a stand. Marriage between two guys, without sex, of course, is okay and legal. That was made clear many times. For the last year the show has been in the toilet, as it accumulated more and more producers and fewer writers (House is headed the same way). The final two hour segment was the flushing of that toilet. Another great show gone bad, with Christmas music and decorations all about, as it went down the drain. Great.
And today it was announced that we would have the transition of talk shows to 'Prime Time.' Jay Leno is going to be on here at nine (10 EST) against CSI and others of that ilk. We only turn to those talk shows in the evening because there is nothing else, which the networks have carefully constructed it to be that way. Now we have the big dope with the strange hair on in prime time. Talking to us. Ever talking. Having one vapid movie star on after another. They can appear totally drugged or on booze, and it does not seem to matter. They are our stars. We look up to them...until we are ready to toss them in the trash (got that Governor Rod?). But here we are. The networks even tell us that it is because of money. No matter what they pay Leno it is less than what they pay to put for dramatic or comedy shows. Which they are not putting on anyway! Reality shows were foisted upon us over money. They cost dirt. Because they are dirt. How much do you have to pay for bad singing, bad dancing and downright more stupidity from the 'judges.' The average I.Q. is 100. And so they prove, night after night.
The Illinois Governor is through. Hubris, comes to mind. "Testicular Virility" is what the online vehicle Buzzflash calls it. It is like the guy didn't care. But, I think the truth is that he did not know. I mean, seriously. Those people become so powerful in our culture now that they come to believe that they can do anything they want. It is all over the place, if you look closely. Ashcroft and the cabinet croonies of Bush during the last two administrations, are suing for "immunity." Immunity from what? Everything? Because of their high position they should be held accountable for nothing they did. And it is going to be heard and considered by this bunch of sitting dunce caps called The Supreme Court. Wow. But it speaks right to this issue of fame and isolation which we provide to such notables. They are chauffeur driven, private-plane'd, shopped for, chateau house'd and servant administered to the point where they have no contact with real humanity at all. Is it any wonder that they become convinced that they are serving from Divine Right? God has placed them there or they would not be there. So, they act any way they want. One day, a bigger god comes along and they are sent to the dungeon. Tortured along the way (how else can you describe going from receiving all that wondrous coddled treatment and then being roughly thrust into that awful and lengthy descent into an underground jail cell?). And that public, who so showered you with seeming devotion, now celebrating every step and bit of your misery. They are even going to leverage his wife against him. "Confess or we go after her." Who said the inquisition is over? They will force whatever goodness is left in the husk of this man (loyalty to his family) to be the instrument of his own total destruction. And everyone will celebrate that righteous Attorney General down in Illinois (who looks amazingly like Elliot Spitzer!)...until it is his turn.
So what of Christmas? I hope that God sends Governor Rod a Guardian Angel. Yes, he has sinned, but then, who has not. And he needs a Guardian Angel pretty badly, as I am sure he is going to bed nights thinking of that bridge where Jimmy Stewart stood and contemplated his own end (Its a Wonderful Life).
Late in the season now, I am working on my Christmas cards and getting the planning done for gifts. And the travel around to different parties and social events. I don't have many, as I am new to the country life out here (at least I like to make believe that that is the reason for so few invitations....try, none!). I can always go to the coffee shop and write. I have my Christmas disk to play on the machines at home and in the car. I have old Christmas movies and such. I have a fire. But most of all, I have the Christmas spirit and I mean well. And that is the big one.
Our culture too needs the work of a Guardian Angel. A great prayer to close with.
