Kerry Running Strong

Thursday night, I listened to Kerry's speech on the radio. I did not watch it on TV. TV can be a distracting way to absorb a politician's message because of the showmanship--and the showboating--that goes in to a speech. I wanted just the words. I don't care about the images, what color tie he was wearing, whether he looked like Gomer Pyle when he saluted the crowd as he took the stage and said "reporting for duty."

The words were pretty good. To get the negatives out of the way first, I rolled my eyes at the "born in the West Wing" joke. I've heard him say it before, and it's pretty old by now. It wasn't even funny the first time I heard it; it's too made-to-order to believe or even laugh at. Of the speech generally, I would say that like all major political speeches, it is full of plans which are doubtful or unlikely to come anywhere near fruition. I said in a previous entry that politicians are "fictions," and we vote for the fiction we want to believe in. I do believe that: we vote for the politician who presents to us the image of himself we want to believe, as well as the ideal society we would like to live in. Kerry did the latter in the "what if" portion of his speech near the end. I am cynical, in that I listen to these speeches and all I hear is verbiage. Does any of it mean anything? Probably not. I don't expect Democrats to have accomplished much after four, or even eight years of a Kerry administration. After all, eight years of Clinton demonstrated that the worst fears of those of us on the Right never came true and perhaps were mere chimeras; I say that despite my animosity towards Clinton. But one has to decide on some criteria for voting. Kerry's fiction is at least well-crafted and inspiring.

I particularly liked the note of optimism in Kerry's speech. He said at one point, "We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future." Then he had to ruin those lines by going by adding one sentence too many: "We're the can-do people." I groaned at that, picturing a class of special ed students saying, "We're not handicapped, we're handicapable!" Other than that, he gave an good, optimistic speech, probably one of the better nomination acceptance speeches in American political history. He tried to unite Americans by reminding us how partisan walls fell soon after 9/11. He blamed the reerection of those walls on the Republicans, if only by implication, but overall his message was that Republican or Democrat, America belongs to us all, not just to one party. My summary judgment is that Kerry made a good case for himself. He seemed competent, optimistic, caring. He did not lay out any specifics for winning the war on Terrorism, but I'm not sure he had to. Everyone knows he would handle the war differently. Bush, by contrast, needs to present himself at his convention as having concrete plans for his second term. So far, he seems adrift, saying yesterday he has a "clear vision" for winning the war on terror. As if this statement were enough to reassure us. OK, so what is you 'clear vision,' President Bush? What's next? Do we take down Iran now? Or what?

I extracted the following quote from a Post article on reaction among undecided voters to Kerry's speech. Right now, President Bush should feel some fear. Kerry is keeping pace with him in this race, and it won't take much for him to pull ahead of the President.

"He is not supposed to be full of energy," said Greg Maurer, 37, an intellectual-property lawyer and a Catholic Republican from a military family. "He was energizing me. I felt like I need to go out and do something for the country."

Maurer voted for Bush last time and said he would probably vote for him again -- yet Kerry's speech planted seeds of doubt. "You could picture him in the White House, and we would be proud he was there," Maurer said. "I never had that image of him before."

Apple 'Stunned' Over RealNetworks iPod Move

In case you missed it, earlier this week, RealNetworks announced the availability of a piece of software called Harmony which makes it possible to purchase songs from the RealPlayer music service and play them on the iPod.

This sounds to me like a kick in the teeth for Steve Jobs, who a few months ago rejected an offer for a partnership with Real's CEO, Rob Glaser. It remains to be seen how Apple will respond, but this article makes it clear that Steve Jobs is none too pleased. Dedicated Mac Heads are screaming foul and demanding Apple Legal come down on Real like a freight train on a Yugo. Personally, I don't think Real would have made a move like this without considering the legal ramifications. There may be little Apple can do, except to update the iPod regularly, altering the iPod continually so that RealNetwork's songs do not play on the iPod.

In the end, Apple may not want to do anything. All along, Steve Jobs has said that he sells iPods, not music. So if Harmony results in a few Windows users buying an iPod now that they can listen to Real's music on it, where is the harm in that?

On my iPod now: "The Seeker" by The Who. This is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite movies.

I looked under chairs
I looked under tables
I tried to find the key
To fifty million fables
They call me the seeker ...

The movie in which I first heard this song is called The Limey. Terence Stamp (General Zod, Superman II) plays a bad ass, old Brit, recently released from prison in England, who travels to America to seek violent vengeance on Peter Fonda. Fonda plays a wealthy, sniveling, aging hippie who seduced and then acidentally killed Stamp's daughter, who had come to California to make it in show business. Stamp is great in this film. Think of General Zod with gray hair, without the goatee, slimmer and meaner. Now that's a good movie.

Young Love

This entry is set to the easy melody of "Somebody Loves Me" (1946) by Buddy Rich, Lester Young, and Nat "King" Cole. Or, for those like me who have a bad, eclectic musical taste, this entry is set to Tab Hunter's "Young Love."

Once upon a time, there was a boy, a boy in the third grade at Ordnance Elementary in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It so happened that every Christmastime, on a day when music class was not in session, his school would hold a special fundraiser in the unused classroom. Teachers would take their classes to the Music room one at a time, and the students would file in a line down a row of tables and choose small, inexpensive gifts to buy their parents for Christmas. The gifts were invariably cheap, Made In Korea novelties or small appliances: a nose hair trimmer for Dad, copper rings painted gold for Mom, squirt guns for brother and sister. Being kids, the temptation was always to buy "gifts" for one's self and then give them to Mom and Dad, brother and sister, fully expecting the gifts to be disused and therefore appropriatable.

The school always gave us plenty of warning that "Santa's Workshop," as it was called would be held on such-and-such a date this year, and to be sure to bring our money. The event this particular year, my Third Grade year, turned out to be the most memorable of these events in my memory.

My third grade year was the year I fell in love with Carmen Westfall. Ah, what a beauty she was. Hair like gold, the finest pair of blue eyes, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. I think I loved her because all the other boys loved her. She paid no attention to me. I am not even sure I had ever talked to her. But I loved her for her very remoteness.

I recall myself and several other boys talking at recess, and that was when it was first suggested to me that I ought to buy her a present from "Santa's Workshop." It was a chill, December day, and we were standing around under the enormous maple tree on the playground, chattering away the recess. The other boys said they were all going to buy presents for the girls they liked. I should buy one for Carmen if I liked her so much. What kind of present? Julery. All girls like julery.

In fact, if I'd thought about it, I would have realized that Carmen probably stood to receive quite a windfall from all the boys in our class, perhaps even from the ones egging me on to buy her a gift, too. I did not think of this at the time. If I had, perhaps I would not have bothered, and thus saved myself two beatings.

As it was, I expectantly looked forward to "Santa's Workshop" day. No matter that Carmen still had not even looked at me. No matter that other boys hung around her tight as fleas on a dog. When she saw the present I would buy her, she would be mine.

The morning of "Santa's Workshop," my Mom gave me five dollars to spend on gifts for herself and my Dad. I was an only child, so at least my expenses did not have to be further divided between siblings. Until I got to "Santa's Workshop" later that morning, I thought everything would be fine. I was so young I had no clue how little one could buy with five dollars, even back then in the early eighties. I immediately received a fast and painful lesson in economics. I could not buy three presents with five dollars. Carmen's present alone, a pair of dolphin earrings, would take the entire five dollars.

Perhaps I could have worked something out so that everyone was satisfied, but in my childish mind, I had set my sights on this pair of dolphin earrings (all girls like dolphins, don't they?), and I could not figure a way to get them plus two more presents. With great trepidation, I bought the dolphin earrings and waited to go back to my classroom

"Mom has probably already forgotten about that five dollars," I said comfortingly. "I'll just not mention it when I get home, and everything will be alright."

Even before everyone was back in the classroom, boys were giving gifts to girls. I was shocked to see Carmen racking up quite a haul. Why, I hadn't even considered that others might buy her gifts. I figured I'd better move fast. So I went up to her and said, "Carmen, this is from me." She said, "Oh thank you. Why Chuck Wood gave me the same thing." She kept the earrings, to my chagrin.

Now Chuck Wood was a pretty tough kid; he had shaggy blond hair, and he was tall for his age; he went on to be a star quarterback at the High School during the 1990 football season. Chuck lived in my neighborhood, and I knew him for a lot of things: his ferocious pair of German shepherd dogs, his penchant for gleefully breaking other kids toys, whether friend or foe, and most important for this story, his habit of fighting over the least perceived insult. Chuck happened to be standing nearby watching when Carmen took my gift.

Chuck shoved in: "What's this? He give you the same earrings I did, Carmen?"

"Yes," she said demurely, actually smiling at my imminent demise.

"I'll get you on the playground. You just wait. Don't try to hide. Don't tell the teachers. I'll get you."

And get me he did, as Carmen and a whole ring of others watched. He took me to an area between the main building and some pre-fab buildings used for special ed classes, where there were no monitors and no adults could see us, and he beat the tar out of me, as we say in West Virginia. He left no marks, though, a special talent only the greatest of the bullies have ever mastered. That was my first beating that day.

I went home that day feeling pretty low. I wished Carmen had at least given me back the earrings. I could have given them to my mother and at least salvaged something from the mess I had gotten myself into. Well, I said to myself, Mom probably won't ask about the five dollars or how I spent it. It'll be OK.

The first thing my Mom asked when I got home was, "What did you buy with the five dollars?"

I tried to play it off. "It's a surprise."

"Well, what did you get your father, then?" She asked.

I couldn't think of anything, and my facade started to crumble. I could not lie to her anyway; it was all bound to come out sooner rather than later. I told her what I had done, excepting the beating I had taken for it. My Mom was very angry. At the time, I thought she was angry because I had confessed an interest in a girl. In retrospect, I think she was just mad that I had wasted five dollars.

Mom had a belt that she used on me, a thick, wide belt about the size of what a State Trooper wears, called a Sam Brown belt. It was brown leather rather than black, though. All through my childhood, I had this belt used on my backside and legs many times. There is an early Simpsons episode in which the teachers go on strike, and one of the scabs who crosses the lines to work is the gnomish, bearded old man from the old folks home. In the scene in which he teaches, he is shown in front of the class, paddle in hand, saying, "Talking in class: that's a whuppin. Chewing gum: that's a whuppin. Askin' questions: that's a whuppin." The kids all look terrified. My Mom was a disciplinarian in that mold. Asking her once too many times to buy a toy at the store: that's a whuppin. Saying a dirty word: that's a whuppin. Buying a girl dolphin earrings: that's a whuppin.

She used the belt against my bare backside a few times. Again, it wasn't clear why. As she was whipping me, I was saying, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" and in my mind, I was apologizing for being interested in a girl. That's what I thought I was in trouble for, and that is what I thought for a long time afterwards. After whipping me, Mom sent me to a corner to cry until she felt I had been punished enough. I felt so ashamed of myself. I was angry, too. Inside, I hated my Mom. The next day, I went to school and found that I hated Carmen, too, with a deep, fiery hatred.

Okay. Imagine me as Neo in the scene from Matrix: Reloaded in which he gets some deep analysis from the Architect, a.k.a. Sigmund Freud. The Architect crosses one leg over the other as he sits in his analysts chair, makes a teepee of his hands, and says to me, the analysand, "This event obviously triggered an anomoly in the system, a profound break in your natural development out of the oedipal stage. You were beaten first by another male, asserting to your mind that you had no hopes of successfully competing with him for the attention of the girl; then you were beaten by your mother for, as you saw it, expressing interest in a girl; ergo, mentally, emotionally, sexually you remain a boy, never able to successfully achieve maturation beyond the age of eight when this break occurred."

"Nah, by the end of the school year, I was exchanging notes in class with Donna Shinn."

Donna Shinn was Carmen's opposite. For one thing, she actually liked me. She also was not attractive by many male standards. She was attractive to me because she liked me. Her brown hair was shoulder length and straight, hanging over her head rather like a Halloween wig. She wore plaid a lot, as I recall, and she had thick glasses like pop bottle bottoms, a simile rapidly becoming meaningless as the image of the bottom of a glass soda bottle fades from our collective memory. Donna only had one eye, too. Her other eye was covered by an eye patch. But no one beat me for giving her presents.

Reflections on Time Past

Recently I have been thinking about the past almost obsessively. Every once in awhile I become moody and preoccupied with things that happened a long time ago. From about 1978 to about 1984, I attended a small elementary school in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, called Ordnance Elementary. For many years, I have always wondered about the name of that school. Ordnance is defined as the materiel of war, such as weapons, ammunition, and so on. Perhaps the school was founded during wartime, and the founders had a sick sense of humor. At this point, who knows.

I moved away from Point Pleasant long ago, around 1984 when I was in the sixth grade, but over the years naturally I often remembered my experiences there and thought about my early years in Point Pleasant. When one has moved away from a town that is so prominent in the growth and development of one's psyche and persona, one always remembers it as it was and supposes it must remain unchanged until the end of time. I went back once soon after we moved away, but since then, I have never returned. As it turns out, through some simple research I did on-line, my old elementary school, Ordnance Elementary, is now defunct. The county built two schools to replace it, a primary school for grades k-3, and an intermediate school for grades 4-6. I recognized some teachers' names on the faculty list. The websites are pretty threadbare, though, as Ordnance itself was once, and as its replacements probably are now as well.

I never realized back then the impoversihment of the Mason County school system. Ordnance was a small, red brick schoolhouse, with about three classrooms per grade, and a student/teacher ratio of about 1:15. We had the same teacher all year in the same classroom. At the end of a schoool year, it was always a thrill to receive our final report card, on which would be the name of the teacher we would have the next year. Then we would go around asking, "Who'd you get" of everyone, and trying to form an idea of what our class would be like next year. I was always disappointed by the fact that I was never placed in the same class as my best friend, Mac Stricklen. He always got the best teachers, I thought at the time. I was only moderately lucky, in that I never got any of the "mean" teachers, but I also rarely got one of the "nice" teachers either. My teachers were neither especially nice nor especially mean, by pre-adolescent standards, though each classroom had a paddle that hung over the chalkboard. However, I think by then corporal punishment was outlawed. Even so, if corporal punishment was still practiced, I can well imagine our principal using one of those paddles. Mr. Barnett was a big man with a flattop haircut from which one could have launched F-16 aircraft.

My mother swears that Mr. Barnett paddled me once, but I don't believe her. My memory is not the greatest, but I think I would remember something like that, or at least I would have written about it somewhere. I do know that I found myself in the principal's office on a few occasions. Most significantly, one day I punched a bully in the nose. He had shaken me down several days in a row, and finally I figured I'd given him enough comic book money, so I slugged him. His name was Eddie Rice, a lanky redneck probably a foot taller than me ... or maybe my memory exaggerates his height to make the story better. He always wore flannel shirts--in my memory I see blue flannel--and the generic Rustler jeans that poorer kids like he and I wore instead of Levis. Eddie also had a flattop haircut. I remember that because it was unusual for boys in the early eighties to have short haircuts. Even though Eddie was a tough, boys older than him still teased him about that haircut.

Eddie immediately started crying, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, "He hit me! He hit me!" We were on the playground, and the two women teachers on playground duty started looking our way. "Here!" I said, trying to force the change in my pocket on him. "Just take it! Stop crying!"

His hands over his nose, he said, "But I'm bleeting!" and screamed all the louder. I felt ashamed of myself for hitting him, as well as afraid because of the attention Eddie was attracting. The teachers came over and broke us up, sent Eddie to the nurse and me to Mr. Barnett. I forget my punishment for that "fight." Mr. Barnett, for all his stern appearance, was a good man, and I don't remember being punished excessively. Maybe that was the occasion of the paddling my mother swears to, and I've just repressed it.

At Ordnance, our library was literally a janitor's closet converted into a library. Bookshelves lined the small room, and the books were stacked on every available surface, including on the top shelves way above our heads and on the floor. They were ordered not according to Dewey or LC standards, but according to appropriatenes to grade level. One had to get special permission from the teacher to read above one's grade level. There were no tables or chairs, so one spent only enough time in the library to choose a book or two, and then we went back to our classroom to read our choices.

Our classroom teacher would take us to the library once every week or two to check out a book, and somehow we would all crowd into that small space. I recall library time as a favorite with everyone, equivalent to recess. I don't think children learn to hate books until they reach at least sixth grade. To me, even though our library was a closet, the close-packed, high-stacked books always made it seem much bigger. I think my love of libraries and books stems from those early visits to that library. There was something comforting and cozy about being cramped in such a small place with so many books.

Not having a librarian on staff, the library was kept locked between class visits, so that made it even more special. I still remember many of the books I discovered there. I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I felt I had to surreptitiously check out because they were "girl's" books. I read about King Arthur. I even remember reading a book about Martin Luther. Not the civil rights leader, the boring, long-dead Lutheran guy. I read James and the Giant Peach. I read "junior" editions of classics, such as Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo, which was one of my favorites, though I liked to call it "The Count Of Mommy's Crisco," as a sort of inside joke. Crisco was a kind of lard my mom used to cook with; I don't know if it is even still available. I read a book called City Under the Sea about humans living under the ocean. It never occurred to me to think that our library, let alone our school, might be underfunded, or somehow inferior to other schools. Never did the thought even cross my mind.

On the playground, probably every piece of equipment would be considered a lawsuit waiting to happen these days. I recall one day, a boy named J.R. Eads and myself were playing chase. On the playground, there was a series of metal poles sticking up out of the ground, their purpose long since forgotten. Maybe they were part of some kind of obstacle course. One of them had been dug out of the ground, and it sat in a hole, it's concrete base a kind of ovular pivot on which kids could stand and twirl around and send each other sprawling. As J.R. and I chased each other, he grabbed the pole and swung around it in a kind of Keanu Reeves Matrix-style move, with me right behind him, and when he let go of the pole it flew up straight into my forehead knocking me cold for a few seconds. I think it scared him to death. When I came to, it was like one of those movie moments where the hero awakens to a circle of faces looking down at him.

The teacher on playground duty took me to my classroom, and I lay on a table for awhile, a small bag of ice on my head. Finally someone called my mother, and she came and took me to the hospital. Nothing was broken, and as far as I know there was no brain damage. I had a huge knot on my forehead just above my eye, and to this day when I touch the spot I can feel a small lump just under the skin.

One other incident of note occurred in second grade. We were making a Christmas ornament with small beads. Another boy, Michael Taylor, dared me to stick a bead up my nose. What kind of dare is that, I thought? So I stuck a bead up my nose, and it stuck. "It's going to go into your brain, and you're going to die!" Michael said ominously. I started to get scared, and I picked furiously, trying to get the thing out. What a sight that must have been. Finally, my teacher, Mrs. Spurlock, noticed and said, "Matt, stop picking your nose."

I said, "I can't. I've got a bead stuck up my nose!" "What!?" She said. "How in the world ...?" "I dunno," I said, perfectly innocent. She sent me to the principal, and he and the school nurse worked over me for quite awhile. Their method was to have me blow it out, but it did not seem like it was going to work. Finally, they resigned themselves to the fact that I would have to go to the hospital. "We're going to have to call your father at work, Young Man. What do you suppose he is going to say about this?" Mr. Barnett said. At this point, I started to cry, and the lubrication apparently helped the bead come out in the next blow.

All so long ago now. I can now literally say it all happened in another century.

Kerry Arrives in Boston on a Boat (washingtonpost.com)

The striking thing about Kerry's entrance in Boston is that it mimics President Bush flying onto that aircraft carrier last year. Yet President Bush has roundly been criticized for his arrogance in participating in what was clearly a stunt, a photo op, an advance campaign advertisement. Now how long before the Republicans start crying foul over Kerry's stunt, photo op, and campaign advertisement?

My question is, what are the differences between what Kerry did and what George Bush did? Both men served their country, though in different branches of the armed forces. Both men's military duties involved details consistent with their respective campaign stunts: George Bush flew planes for the National Guard; John Kerry was commander of a boat. George Bush wore a flight suit while Kerry wore a politician's suit, true. Other than that difference, why is one stunt more execrable than the other?

Apple: the Microsoft of Music?

It seems a bit premature to reach that conclusion, since the iPod has not yet been attacked by its first virus. Yet the Merrill Lynch analyst in the article linked to in the blog entry title believes Apple could become as dominant in music as Microsoft is in software. Clearly Apple holds a strong position in the realm of digital music. The question will be whether or not they can hold onto it in a field rapidly succumbing to overcrowding. Personally, I do not believe Steve Jobs is going to allow Apple to fall into the same traps that relegated the Macintosh into a niche market. In the same article referenced above:

The deal involves Apple creating an iTunes mobile music player for the world's No. 2 cell-phone maker, which Motorola will adopt as the music application for mass-market music phones that are expected in the first half of 2005.

This means that for the first time, Apple has licensed software it has developed, in this case its "fair play" DRM, for use in a device other than the iPod. That is significant, and it is not being reported. The equivalent would be Apple licensing the Mac OS to IBM in 1986 for use on the IBM PC. If only ...

Song currently playing on my iPod: "Behind Blue Eyes," the Limp Bizkit cover of the equally great (greater?) The Who version.

I have to buy anew iPod soon. I am still using the original 5 GB model first released in 2001. The battery has held up well. I keep charging and recharging it, and every day I think, "It's gotta conk out sometime!" But it doesn't. I still get about two days erattic use out of a charge. A totally dead battery would be a great reason to buy one of the new models.

English Lesson on Eponyms

Eponymous must be one of the most misused words in the English language. Many people use it; few know what it means. Its root is the noun eponym.

Epoynm: A person whose name is or is thought to be the source of the name of something, such as a city, country, or era. For example, Romulus is the eponym of Rome.

William F. Buckley uses the word correctly in his autobiography, Miles Gone By:

"...when I sail in the Caribbean, I go on what we call "Buckley Watch Time," the only eponymous enterprise I have ever engaged in."

Thus rock bands are aways engaging in eponymous enterprises, e.g., Black Sabbath released it's first album under the title "Black Sabbath."

Recently, I read the following in a Washington Post review of the movie I, Robot:

Asimov purists looking for a faithful visualization of the seminal 1950s sci-fi parables should check such expectations at the multiplex door. "I, Robot" doesn't do for the eponymous book what "Blade Runner" did for Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Correct usage? What do you think?

We think of the key, each in his prison

On the recommendation of a friend of mine, I am trying to keep my posts shorter, which may mean I post more than once in a day/lunch hour.

I watched the first two prime time hours of the Democrat convention last night, which perhaps resulted in my poor night's sleep and my need to read The Waste Land early this morning. I did not stay up for Bill Clinton's speech at ten. For someone who does not sleep well on a normal night, and who has to get up anyway no later than five-thirty the next morning, ten o'clock is too late to stay up for a speech, even if it were made by Christ or the Buddha himself. Clinton being neither, I had all the more reason to skip it. I listened to Gore's speech at eight, and I thought it was quite effective, though it is hardly remarked on in the papers this morning. Typically, the focus of the media is on Clinton. I do think he drew the wrong conclusions from his loss to Bush in 2000. Gore said the thing to take away from that experience is that every vote counts, which seems to me to stand in stark contradiction to what Election 2000 really said about the importance of an individual's vote.

That criticism aside, Gore asked exactly the right questions of those who supported Bush four years ago: did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for? Is our country more united today? Or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled? Or do those words now ring hollow? John Kerry needs to repeat these questions like a mantra to every crowd to which he speaks. And Gore ended on a positive note, almost a Reagan-like "morning in America" note, when he spoke of the need to make America new again. Optimism is the Democrats best weapon, if they can arm themselves with it. Contrary to received wisdom, I don't think the Republicans have much of that these days. For one thing, Bush's Achilles heal is the drama that has attended his Presidency. David Brooks says as much today in the New York Times, Kerry at the Wheel. So I guess I can't claim credit for the idea, though it really did occur to me first. I think it highly probably that a large number of undecided people who might otherwise lean to the right are simply sick of feeling afraid. If the Democrats can capitalize on this, present themselves as a sunny contrast to the Republican pessimists and fearmongers, the Democrats can win.

In contrast with Gore, Jimmy Carter was a sad, aged figure from the past with little to offer in his speech, except Bush-bashing. He may have won the Presidency one time, but it is a mistake for the Democrats to trot Carter out as some kind of elder statesman hero. It would equally be a mistake for the Republicans to give Gerald Ford a place on the stage. Carter is a relic, properly enshrined somewhere behind the altar for veneration, but not for use in routine communion. Carter looked depressed as he walked to the podium, as if he were doing something he really didn't want to do. Perhaps a couple Democrat thugs had shown up at his door a few days before with a suit and a speech and said, "OK, Boy, time to do your duty for Party, Country, and God." And so Carter, barely able to manage a smile, showed up and made his speech. He began by reminiscing about the Truman and Eisenhower years, which is hardly likely to invoke a tear of nostalgia from a crowd so young that the oldest of them probably can't remember back much farther than Lyndon Johnson. His first shot, though, was an all-too obvious crack at President Bush's National Guard service. I found that pretty crass coming from an ex-President, and an ex-military ex-President, at that. Carter went on to critique the Bush presidency, particularly President Bush's foreign policy. It all rang hollow coming from Carter. In order to keep from totally disregarding what he had to say, I had to recall that Carter was a one-termer, too, so he certainly knows something about failed Presidencies. Yet I could not get past the fact that here was a man, Jimmy Carter, critiquing our current President--the same Jimmy Carter who himself single-handedly ushered in 12 years of Republican rule through his mismanagement of the economy and foreign affairs. Who in America mourns the lost second term of Jimmy Carter? Why should we listen to what he has to say?

As I said, I did not stay up for Clinton's speech. I did not even finish listening to Carter. This morning, I did hear a clip of Hillary, shrill as ever, exhorting people to put Kerry in office in November. Maybe she can't control it, but when she is trying to rouse enthusiasm, the woman's voice goes up a couple octaves until she sounds like every man's first wife in a lamp-breaking, dish-throwing fit. Perhaps this is the result of learning to speak publicly at feminist bra-burning rallies in the sixties. It is little wonder so few men can bear her.

I still do not know who I will vote for in the coming election. Luckily, for most of us, our lives go on much the same as always regardless of who is in office. There are very few personal tragedies, save the death of a soldier, one can lay at the feet of the President. But this does not solve the problem of who to vote for, because there are differences, if only cosmetic differences. I've heard Limbaugh, apparently speaking from Republican talking points, saying that the Democrats are forcing upon themselves an extreme makeover to hide their essential ugliness from the American people. Teresa Kerry's "shove it" remark is, in this view, an example of the mask coming off and the true face of the Demcorats showing itself. Typically, Limbaugh neglects to mention that the Republcians are hardly honest in their presentation of themselves. No one expects honesty, really, no more than people expect others to come to work looking exactly as they did when they fell out of bed in the morning. We all construct appearances which we present to others, and political parties and political candidates are no different. Politicians are all fictions. For ordinary people in an election year, the question is "which fiction do I believe?" For thinking people, the question is, "Which fiction do I want to believe?"

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour

At least once a year, I take time to read The Waste Land. I never plan precisely when I will read it. Like rain after a long drought, it just happens. At one time I attempted to memorize it, but I only managed the first two "chapters," though theose two chapters have stuck with me fairly well over the years. This morning, unable to sleep, I lay awake in the dark a long time remembering these passages before turning on the light and taking my small paperback copy of Eliot's selected poems from the bedside table drawer. I felt that this morning was the right time, and so I sat up in bed and read The Waste Land in the early morning gloom. At five-thirty, I finished reading, closed the book, and got up for work. What shall I do now? Hot water at five-thirty. No breakfast, and out the door. Hurry up please, it's time; doors closing. Boarding the train, the faces around me are already exhausted at six-twenty. We shuffle on like dead souls boarding for the final journey across the river. At night--"the violet hour," Eliot calls quitting time--we return, no more happy to be returning than we were unhappy to be departing ten hours previously.

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many ...

Unreal city. I sometimes feel I sleep all day and remain awake all night, though in darkness. I don't sleep well, but my day passes in a daze. I can't remember much of what happens to me during the work day, maybe because nothing happens and I am left to write, once again, about the grinding ritual of getting up for work in the gray early morning.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down...

down East Capitol Street, and to work. Eliot worked in a bank when he wrote The Waste land, so I have always read the poem as in part a horrific reflection of the modern working life. He was also suffering marital problems, and so those troubles are also reflected in the poem. It is a long, anguished outpouring of depression and misery, comparable to Munch's painting "The Scream." What does it mean? Nothing, nothing. Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing? I remember knowing what it meant once.

Rip It Up

This is the real deal, my blog entry for Monday. So a woman goes into
a pharmacy and asks for a product to remove the hair from her
schnauzer ... Wait, that's a bad dirty joke my Grandpa told me last
week. And by "bad" I don't mean "good." I mean bad. Suffice it to
say, it ends with the woman unable to sit down for a week.

OK, rewind. I'm bopping along to Elvis on my lunch break, so I'm
feeling free to ramble. I'm just rubbernecking today, watching the
news go by and events transpire. Just so I can earn the right to be
critical of the Republicans in September, let me make a few cracks
about Kerry and his compatriots in Boston.

The song currently playing on my iPod is in honor of John and Teresa
Kerry and the Democrat Convention in Boston: "I Got a Woman" by Elvis Presley. No, it isn't "I got a woman mean as she can be ..." that's a different "I Got a Woman" (Mean Woman Blues by Roy Orbison). This one goes

I got a woman

Way cross town

She's good to me

Yesterday, Teresa apparently exhibited two of the more charming traits of the Parisian French: 1. Inability to admit she is wrong, 2. Rudeness. Here you can check out the story and video behind Teresa going all-out French on that Pittsburgh reporter. Go get 'em, Ketchup Queen! Actually, any number of Elvis tunes could apply to John Kerry and the Democrat Convention right now. Take the tune "One Sided Love Affair" for example. Or how about "Money Honey."

I called the woman that I loved the best.

I finally got my baby about half past three,

She said I'd like to know what you want with me.

I said,

Money, honey.

Money, honey.

Money, honey,

If you want to get along with me.

The protesters in their razor-wire "Mad Max" cage could always sing "Jailhouse Rock" to pass the time. If the convention gets out of hand--or even if it stays under control--some might say the song "Paralyzed" fits it pretty well. And if Kerry loses in November, he can offer as his farewell a cover of "I Was The One."

I read today in the New York Times that the Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps. I have to wonder whether or not it even matters whether bloggers are covering events in Boston from Boston. Everyone knows there is little news that actually comes out of these conventions, and so I suspect the bloggers will be left to report ironically on the ironies of a stage-managed political convention. They could do that from the comfort of their home. The Washington Post has a lengthy article about Kerry's political life, John Kerry: A Political Life: Shifting Within Party to Regain His Footing. The media latches on to these handy generalizations about candidates, such as Kerry's waffling, or Bush's stubbornness, and pretty soon the candidate is trapped in his own caricature. Every Senator who has ever run for President, including Dole in '96, has the same problem: overcoming the fact that to the critical eyes of outsiders, for various reasons, their voting record may not be consistent. Consistency may be something one demands of a spouse, but why do we expect our political leaders' views to be immutable once they take political office? Is it not a good thing to change one's mind? To me, inconsistency reflects a willingness to reconsider one's actions or beliefs in the light of new evidence, better logic, or simply a change of heart. Oh wait, that's constancy we demand of our spouses, not consistency.

I intend to watch the coverage of the convention tonight. I hope to have something to say about it tomorrow, but I would not want to make a bet on that. My past experience tells me these events are real snoozers, like the State of the Union, or any other public political event where all spontaneity, imagination, and vision is sytematically sucked out of the event like the spent confetti after the event is over and the delegates have gone home.

Song playing on my iPod now: "Le Monde Comme Un Bébé" by Angélique Kidjo. My transcription may be imperfect:

Je sais le monde imparfait

Je sais comment le changer

Imagine le monde comme un Bébé

Carresser et beaucoup pardonner

Those are sentiments to which I would hope everyone can assent.

Ooops

I just spilled a cup of water into my trackball. I think it might be defunct, now. Lucky I have my original black Dell mouse in a drawer. Who would think that not even a quarter cup of water could do so much damage to technology? I turned the trackball upside down, and a stream of water poured out of it. So anyway, I've got that all cleaned up, and my trackball is lying on the bookshelf beside me, drying out. I'll plug it in again tomorrow, after it has had time to recover, and if it still doesn't work I'll report it to our tech people as "mysteriously" not working anymore.

I am ashamed. I feel like I just stole office supplies. This on a day when I am writing up a report on my activities this past year prefatory to my annual performance review. I think I'll be leaving that out of my report.

There's a song in one of my son's Thomas the Tank Engine videos:

Accidents happen now and again

Just when you least expect,

Just when you think you

Know what you're doing...

I am on lunch now, and I am trying to think of something more interesting than spilled water to write about. At the moment, this is the best I can do on a Monday.

Bowling For Columbine

I have not seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, but I watched Bowling For Columbine last night. It is the first Moore film I have seen. As polemic, it is pretty good. Moore is best when he simply steps aside and films someone making his case for him, such as when he interviews the brother of Terry Nichols, James Nichols. Nichols makes the usual case that Americans ought to be free
to own any weapon they choose, and Moore asks him if Americans ought to be able to own a nuclear weapon, or weapons grade plutonium. Nichols acts flummoxed for a second, and then says perfectly straight, "No, there are too many wackos out there"

Moore is a zealot in his challenge to received wisdom, and sometimes his zealotry damages his credibility. He shows a management level employee at Lockheed Martin in Littleton stating that the difference between what Klebold and Harris did and what the United States Government does when it bombs foreign countries is that the government uses its weapons to defend the nation. Then Moore shows a montage of captioned historical footage from all U.S. military interventions since World War II. He presents them baldly, without considering the justifications the President at the time may have made for taking action to, for example, install the Shah of Iran. I can accept that style of presentation on its face because maybe, historically speaking, justifications do not matter. The questions raised in the mind by this confrontation with the bare, little known facts of United States history is, has any one of those interventions resulted in any good? However, where he crosses the line is in his presentation of the 1991 Gulf War. He shows a clip of President Bush the First and some men in Arab garb at the White House, and he captions it, "Bush reinstates the dictator of Kuwait." No matter one's opinion of the just-past war in Iraq, the first war was wholly justified by most standards used to justify such actions. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, had enslaved its people, looted its economy, raped its women, murdered its men. And the United Nations, for once in its pointless history, decided to take action. Iraq was defeated, expelled from Kuwait, and placed under harsh sanctions for its violations. Even those sanctions come under fire from Moore, for in the next clip his caption repeats the claim made by the wackiest of the left that the U.N. sanctions against Iraq resulted in the death of 500,000 children.

The problem I have with Michael Moore is that for as many times as he correctly skewers the self-satisfied and self-righteous, such as Charlton Heston and the NRA, he skewers people who are mostly undeserving of such treatment, like the Lockheed Martin manager whom Moore goes out of his way to make look like an oblivious war monger. Moore can find no good in America itself whatsoever; he finds only evil and will not allow that maybe, on occasion, America may do the right thing as in the Gulf War. Even so, I thank God every day that we live in a country which allows its citizens such disdain for the government that rules it. I wish that Michael Moore could find some good in the country that supports his film making habit, but then patriotic films are just as polemical and far less interesting than a film such as Bowling For Columbine

A sanguine enthusiasm ensued

Note: following is a prose poem I wrote last night. I assembled it from random phrases gleaned from news stories and advertisements mostly in the New York Times. Perhaps it is better termed a prose collage.

"June 22, 2004: A Sanguine Enthusiasm"
In downtown Baghdad, a car bomb announced plans to merge Thursday with the key S&P 500 index. Holders of the Black Banner enjoy savings on summer essentials while quantities last. In Ramadi in Baghdad in Karbala in Fallujah more hostages taken. Who? Whom? This initial skirmish led to ensuing engagements fierce fighting clashes killed 25 insurgents and captured 25 others wounded 14 U.S. servicemen. In industry argot this fueld a pervasive bearish sentiment in the market. Meanwhile, "One of my former commanders, a good friend, a mentor, instilled in me very early on that there's probably a minority of your soldiers - he used the number 10 percent- that can be criminals ..." Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Elsewhere, Dr. Stephen W. Hawking threw in the towel. Said there will be a return to glamour. Meanwhile, some have their doubts and worry is marijuana bad for my unborn child? From the Keys to Waikiki, find your dream home. The statement said soldiers found a roadside bomb and a car bomb. Meanwhile, Professor Marmot presided over alcohol consumption in general. Elsewhere, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, found the severed head in downtown Baghdad's Haifa street. Meanwhile, McDonald's profit up 25 percent. And finally a sanguine enthusiasm ensued. Nationwide, 46 % compared with 44% approve or disapprove do or do not are likely or unlikely if named Bush/Cheney if named Kerry/Edwards who do you trust? Do you feel safer? Now or four years ago? A lifetime in mannequin years. Ronnie's awful fertile for a dead guy.

Won't Get Fooled Again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they'd all flown in the last war

The lead story in the Washington Post today, Shrinking Base, is that Bush is losing support among the military and their families. This is probably just wishful thinking on the part of the Post staff. Only military families, not active duty members, are allowed to be polled, and the culture frowns on a soldier speaking his mind freely to the press. So how can a reporter make the assumption that the "base" is shrinking? Especially when a poll in the same article says that Bush still enjoys about 52% support among military dependents? That said, it would not surprise me if support for Bush among active duty military and their families is indeed shrinking. It is unbelievable that so much of the occupation of Iraq has come to depend on reservists and National Guard troops. The United States National Guard are serving lengthy tours of duty in a hot occupation! I have trouble wrapping my mind around the kind of thinking that went into that. Who decided that yes, it's a great idea to take older men away from their families and send them to Iraq without proper training and with no firm date for extraction and return to the United States? We needed a draft. The fact that a draft was never seriously entertained raises some questions about the war in Iraq and the War on Terror generally. If we are really in a war, why are our volunteer military forces the only ones sacrificing for the cause? If our nation is in such imminent peril, why not institute a draft? Aren't moments of national peril exactly the time when a draft is needed? The politicians insist that a draft is not needed, and yet I read in the papers about the threat of Iran and North Korea, and I wonder, who will protect us from them? Our reserves and National Guard are in Iraq. Who is left to fight a war with North Korea if they decide to march across the 37th parallel into the South? And If the threat from the remaining members of the Axis of Evil, or from terrorists generally, is so un-serious, so not imminent, that we don't need a draft, then why do we need a war at all?

These are the wrong questions for a Republican to ask. I am a registered Republican. Not a RINO; I am someone who has voted for Republican candidates for President and other offices, and I am someone who has also voted for Democrat candidates for President and other offices. I should not be asking these questions right now. Perhaps it is the books I've been reading lately. First I read Gore Vidal's Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago. Vidal is viewed as kind of a kook by both the left and the right, and in his senile years he has said some kooky things about George Bush and the war in Iraq. Washington, D.C. was written a long time ago, though. It was published in '66 or '67, I think, and is largely forgotten. I picked up a tattered original paperback copy in a used bookstore for a buck, and I found it to be pretty good. It's the story of a war hero Senator who ruthlessly rises to power on the corpse of his mentor, an older Senator. When the young Senator decides to run for President, his enemies try to break his hero facade by revealing that the wartime events on which he has built his political career did not happen exactly as he has said. In any Hollywood version of this book, good would triumph and the scheming young Senator would be crushed, once he is revealed as a fraud. In Vidal's Washington, he goes on to win election anyway, and the book ends with him at a Washington party, choosing which young woman he is going to copulate with tonight.

The book I am reading now is The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon. I haven't even seen the original sixties film version, and I probably won't see the remake until it is released on DVD. But books are always available, and so I thought maybe the book would be worth reading. I bought it at Trover yesterday, and I am only a couple chapters in. So far, it's not a bad read, though Condon's writing is not perfect by any means. I don't like writers who expend a lot of words describing to me how a character looks, or who take a paragraph to tell me the thoughts in a character's head. To me, the first rule of good writing is "show, don't tell." Condon also likes to insert an erudite reference here and there. In the middle of describing his protagonist, Raymond Shaw, Condon suddenly writes a paragraph about the invention of the modern clarinet, which seems irrelevant, and seems no more relevant even after he gets around, a few sentences later, to saying that Shaw is like that clarinet. The Manchurian Candidate was written in 1959, and the subject is the threat of communism. Raymond Shaw is a Korean War veteran, purportedly a hero, who has in fact been brainwashed by the communist Chinese and inserted into the American political system to become President and take over the United States in a quiet coup. At the time it was made into a movie, the story was shocking enough that the movie was quickly pulled from theaters and was not re-released until the late eighties after the threat of communism had subsided. The plot itself is pretty original, which raises the book somewhat above the average political thriller. I believe Condon also must have been a war veteran, because his descriptions of war and military life are the best examples of his good writing. One thing a veteran will tell you, if they feel like being honest, is that in war, a wounding or killing is rarely a bloodless, quick affair. Only in Hollywood do characters get shot in the arm or leg with little effect. Condon describes a member of Shaw's unit being bayoneted by a Chinese soldier. The American soldier is turning to run from the Chinese soldier, and the Chinese shoves his bayonet into the American's rectum. When the American screams shrilly, the Chinese soldier freaks and tries to pull out the bayonet, but manages only to rip open the American even more. When Shaw returns home, he meets this soldier's mother and comforts her by telling her that her son was killed when a mortar round exploded nearby; he was trying to save another member of his unit, of course, because "that's just the kind of guy Eddie was." Quick and painless death, he says.

The Manchurian Candidate, like Vidal's novel, will do little to increase one's faith in American so-called democracy. Both books suggest that politics is less about substance or issues as about appearance and revenge. Raymond Shaw's mother is wife of a Senator, and she is ruthless in her promotion of her husband at the expense of her son. While he is in Korea, she sends Raymond a life-size cut-out of her husband, Raymond's step-father, and asks if he would persuade General MacArthur to have his picture taken with the cut-out of the Senator. Another theme of both books is how politicians will gladly spit on each other's grave if it advances their own political ambition. I was reminded of this last night, listening to Republican comments on the investigation of Sandy Berger. On Fox News last night, even Mort Kondrake came to Berger's defense, calling him an honorable public servant. Even that chronic sourpuss, Charles Krauthammer, did not leap to the conclusion that Berger must have been up to something dastardly and possibly seditious. Republican congressmen held no such scruples, however. Fox showed a clip of Dennis Hastert asking rhetorically, "What information could be so embarrassing that a man with decades of experience in handling classified documents would risk being caught pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets?" I burst out laughing hearing that; I think it was Hastert using the word "pilfering" that struck my funny bone. Hastert looked like a walking cardiac patient in that Fox clip. The man needs to look into exercising more, or at least he ought to ask his doctor about that new botox treatment for excessive sweating. Seriously, he did not look healthy.

One other thing ... both books I've read recently seem to warn against trusting candidates who run for office on their war record. This is difficult for me, because I do inately trust a man who has been to war and served honorably, perhaps because I never served. I don't want to be perceived as one of these chicken hawks, like Limbaugh, who avoid service when there is a chance of dying. And so I naturally defer to military men. Also, I am deeply respectful of a man who has won a silver star. I suppose that makes me as shallow as a woman who votes for a man because of his good looks. I will say I am rather dubious about the merits of John Kerry's three purple hearts, though. He was only in-country for a few months, yet he won three purple hearts? It smacks of overachievement.

The Iran/AlQaeda Connection

This article from the New York Times, "President Says U.S. to Examine Iran-Qaeda Tie," reports a bit of news that may not receive the attention it deserves. Among other things, the 9/11Commission Report will state that links between Iran and Al Qaeda are more extensive than previously thought. Eight of the nineteen hijackers passed through Iran from Afghanistan on their way to the United States, perhaps with Iran's complicity. At least one reporter for the Washington Post contrasts this apparent Iran/Al Qaeda connection with the commission finding no evidence of a "working relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq (Dan Froomkin, White House Briefing).

It is indeed disturbing that Iran may have been so near the heart of the 9/11 plot. I think President Bush knew it from the start. It may be difficult to remember the consternation and surprise among the punditocracy when President Bush included Iran in his Axis of Evil speech. Wasn't Iran actually moving politically towards loosening the grip of its theocracy? What had Iran done to us lately? The question is, if Iran facilitated the 9/11 conspirators in any way, why not make Iran number two on our hit list, after Afghanistan? Why go after Iraq first? Comparison could be made to World War II, since President Bush already invites such a comparison with his Axis reference. We took down Iraq first simply because it was the weakest member of the Axis, just as Italy was broken first, long before either Germany or Japan. On the other hand, the comparison with World War II has always been weak, mere wishful thinking by the Bush Administration, which wishes to portray the War on Terrorism as an uncomplex struggle between good and evil, or at least opposing ideologies. For one thing, the original Axis actually had treaties which bound them to mutually defend one another in the event of war. No such mutually beneficial relationship ever existed between Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed Iraq and Iran were old enemies. But for just a moment, consider that the War on Terrorism can indeed be compared to World War II. Considering that at best, Iraqi agents met with members of Al Qaeda on occasion, with no apparent result, and considering the lack of any clear evidence that Iraq had a realistic potential to destroy or harm America--no matter Saddam's wishes and fanciful dreams--one could also compare the assault on Iraq to Roosevelt deciding to strike back for Pearl Harbor by declaring war on fascist Spain simply because Spain was fascist. No one would have questioned that Franco was a dictator, but was he worth deposing in the larger context of World War II? Was Saddam worth deposing in the larger context of the War on Terror? What was the hurry to take down Saddam, other than that it was an easy take down? And is that good enough? I'm sure that the President's men thought, "Good enough for an election year." However, that has turned out to be a miscalculation. With the defeat of Iraq the Axis is less one member, but I can't help but think that the other two members have been left unharmed, fully armed, and feeling relatively safe from an assault by the United States military, considering how tied down we are by our committments to Afghanistan and Iraq and our unwillingness to fully mobilize for war. Indeed, the way we have been so nuanced towards both Iran and North Korea has probably only solidified in their minds that we have no intention of striking at them militarily. For all of Bush's vaunted staunchness in his opinions and the clarity of his demands, he has been anything but staunch or clear in regards to what he will do to these last two members of the Axis. And after the way the President has been savaged by his critics for the war in Iraq--a savaging he facilitated by making the W.M.D. charge the centerpiece of the Iraq mission--can anyone believe that the President will have the will or the political capital to undertake another foreign venture, even if provided a second term? No, I think Iran and North Korea must be feeling pretty safe right now.

Drudge Report: Kerry Wrinkled Again

Could the rhetoric of the current campaign be any further removed from the reality of life in America? The headline at the Drudge Report today is that Kerry's botox injections have worn off, leaving him wrinkled again. Accepting, for a moment, that whether Kerry receives botox injections is of imminent concern, I don't see much difference between the two pictures of Kerry posted on Drudge's site. He looks more tanned in one than the other, but that may be the effect of the quality of the digital image, or it may be he was simply wearing that orange pancake makeup people wear before going on television.

Now that I have utterly befouled myself by accepting Drudge's premise, let me say I cannot think of a more irrelevant issue raised in any campaign in my memory. Yet I know that other members of the "alternative media," as Limbaugh calls them, have also raised the issue of whether Kerry receives botox injections. They make it a campaign issue based on the fact that Kerry has even denied knowing what botox is. Way I see it, even if Kerry is lying, if that is the only thing he lies about, I'm not worried. One can no more expect truth to consistently flow from a politician's mouth than one can expect spring water to flow from a sewer.

I detect some measure of desperation among the Republicans and their defenders. They just can't seem to find much of substance to criticize about Kerry, and so they go after his war record, his wife, his money, and now his "cosmetic enhancement." To be fair, the Democrats can be just as bad. The Democrats criticize President Bush's supposed ignorance, his inability to speak properly, and his own military service record. Politicians bemoan the fact that a minority of Americans actually choose the elected representatives for the majority, and yet they give us no reason to get out and vote. Voting is at best a duty one performs half-heartedly, always deciding between the lesser of two evils. No one ever votes for someone, but always against the other guy, who is necessarily evil incarnate. I think low voter turnout is exactly what politicians like to see. It means no one is paying attention, and the elected aristocrats can go on ruling as they have for decades, that is, badly. An election maintains the illusion of democracy, allows politicians to extol the greatness of that illusion, but if you really want to see a sign of just how little our leaders care for democracy in fact, look at the District of Columbia. 563,384 United States citizens, residents of the District of Columbia, are taxed without voting representation in the House or Senate. No one in power really cares to even address that issue. The Republicans are afraid giving D.C. two Senators and a Representative, all of whom would have a real vote, and who would most likely provide the Democrats with three more votes in Congress. At least Republican opposition is understandable, though. Why haven't the Democrats made it an issue? Wouldn't the eight years the Clintons held power have been a good time to finally fully enfranchise those five hundred-some-odd-thousand citizens?

Elections in America are always reducible to the most non-essential matters imaginable. Or else the campaigns become mired in "us versus them" rhetoric meant to stir the fearful mishmash of emotion that determines a person's vote. I listen to talk radio frequently. Drudge is apparently preoccupied by the possibility of Kerry having undergone cosmetic enhancement--perhaps he is still smarting over his failed "scoop" on the Kerry/intern affair. Limbaugh is as boring as a Robert Byrd filibuster; he has completely lost his edginess. Hannity is just Limbaugh Lite, a mocker of the Democrats and their positions and little else. True to his origins as a FoxNews talking head, he does sometimes have opposition voices on his program, which raises him a little above the crowd. Michael Savage is shrill and apocalyptic, foretelling doom if Kerry is elected. I can only listen to him in short segments when he is on the subject of politics. Neil Boortz ... now here is a host with whom I feel some affinity. But it's a complicated relationship. I appreciate his independence from the Republican party and his frequent criticisms of the Bush Administration, but I do not fully trust him to always demonstrate the kind of integrity I look for in a news source. He once used a quote on his program from a source he called "Alexander Tyler," supposedly an eighteenth century historian. The quote asserted the tyranny of democracy, claiming that democracy fails once the people learn that they can go to the ballot box and vote themselves money from the public treasury. I did some research and found that other conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, had also used this quote, but that there was otherwise no information about this Tyler, not even an encyclopedia entry for him. I did find an obscure historian named Tytler, however; but without reading his works page by page, I could not easily find any such quote in his works. It became apparent that somewhere between authoritative print sources and the Internet, Alexander Tytler had become Alexander Tyler, and he had even acquired a spurious quotation along the way. Not to mention, I find the idea behind the quote, that democracy only exists until the mob discovers they can vote themselves money from the public treasury, just a bit too pat. It sounds pre-formed for the modern situation. In what context would an eighteenth century historian have made such an observation about democracy? Boortz, reporting what other conservatives have said when using the quote, says that he wrote those words in the context of writing about the failure of democracy in Athens, Greece. Again, it sounds a bit too made-to-order, and probably is not even historically accurate as a description of why democracy in Athens failed, if it did indeed fail.

Well, I called the Boortz program with the findings of my research. The call screener heard what I wanted to talk about, said rather hastily "I'm sorry, bad signal," and hung up on me. I tried calling back for several minutes, but the line was always busy after that. I emailed Boortz but received no reply, either. I figured at that point I'd better stop before the police showed up at my door with a "cease and desist" order. It really burned me for awhile, and looking at the Boortz website today, I see that he still has that damned phony quotation on his favorite quotations page. Scroll down to the sub-section titled "Why I Think Voting Should be Restricted." I'm starting to get burned just thinking about it again. I hadn't thought of that in probably a year. Damn, that makes me mad. Maybe I'll send him another email today.

Assignation in a Summer House

Coffee of the day is: Ethiopia Sidamo. I need to lay off the coffee. It all tastes the same now; my palate is utterly vitiated. Song on my iPod is "Amanda," by Waylon Jennings.

I look in the mirror in total surprise

At the hair on my shoulders, and the age in my eyes ...

All my hair is on the floor or down the drain, but I sympathize, Waylon.

Here is a thoughtful tidbit I saw above a urinal in the men's room. Some wit wrote: "I shit on Islam. The Koran is Krap." For some reason, all the boundaries of civilized society fall away when a man puts a pen to the wall of a public toilet. Why is this?

For a change, the weather is perfect here in Washington today. The temperature has dropped to about 86, and the sky is partly sunny, the air breezy. As a result, I went out at lunch for the first time since I can remember. Every once in awhile, I think I will splurge and eat lunch at Bullfeathers. Usually, Pete's Diner on C street is my first choice when I go out for lunch because it is inexpensive and the food is good. Occasionally--especially if I haven't been out in awhile--I go to Bullfeathers or the Hawk and Dove or Tortilla Coast. Today I chose Bullfeathers, and I was looking forward to a burger and a beer. However, everyone else must have had the same idea, because there was a line of people waiting to be seated. I walked back up to Pete's. The beneficial result was that I spent five bucks on a burger and fries and a coke rather than ten or twelve dollars on a burger and fries and a beer. If you are ever in Washington, and your wallet needs a break from all the overpriced restaurant food, eat at Pete's. It serves traditional American fare in a diner setting, but there are also a couple Asian dishes on the menu. The chicken satay is very good.

That plug out of the way, and my lunch under my belt (or above it, as it were), I decided to walk it off. I took a stroll down the hill to the Botanic Garden. I fully intended to go in, but as usual, due to the security checkpoint, the line of tourists was out the door. Not so long ago, maybe even as recently as last summer, there was no security at all in the Botanic Garden. One could walk in and out freely. Now three Capitol Hill Police guard the garden. They stand inside at the metal detector and, in the winter, make people take off their coats and put them through the X-ray machine. Then they do their airport screener routine on the unfortunate tourist. I don't know why it frustrates me so much to stand in these security lines. I think it is partly because I see no earthly reason why the Botanic Garden needs a security detail. Second, it irritates me that through no fault of theirs, the hordes of tourists routinely prevent me from enjoying one of the few pleasures I take in this city, which is dozing thoughtfully on a bench in the Botanic Garden during my lunch break. I used to think traffic jams were frustrating, but now I think it is more frustrating to stand in a security line while every tourist in front of me suddenly forgets that they are carrying in their pocket a pound of change, a pen knife, a cell phone, a screwdriver, a corkscrew, and a loaded magazine for a forty-five automatic as they walk through the metal detector. "Well, Gee, I forgot about that being in my pocket!"

(sigh)So I saw the line and turned around. I paid my respects to Our Dear Martyred President, James A. Garfield, then crossed the street and walked back up the hill. Still not ready to go back inside and pick up my work again, I walked across the west front porch and down the path to the Summer House. The Summer House is an open, brick grotto designed by Frederick Olmstead in the late nineteenth century as a traveler's rest for people visiting the capitol on foot, which I guess would have been most everyone in those days, except for those who came by horse. Someone once told me congressmen used to hold (ahem) private "meetings" with constituents here. These days, I am sure they simply use their offices for any illegal or inappropriate activity. The AOC website says specifically that Olmstead designed it to be as public as possible in order to discourage inappropriate uses, but it is not very public today. Until one walks in front of one of its entrances, shrouded by shrubbery, one does not even realize it is there. It is a pleasant, cool place to sit, though one is never entirely alone for long. The fountain in the center used to provide drinking water to travelers, but now it is for display purposes only. I did not read that information before dipping my hand in it and drinking a couple handfuls of water. Great. Now I'll probably contract dysentery. Like everything and everyone in Washington, what once served a purpose is now mere decoration.

Today, two of the three entrances were padlocked. Only the one on the west side, facing the Mall, was open. Why? "Everything changed after 9/11," goes the platitude in my mind. But why? Last summer, all three entrances were always open. Now some overprotective bureaucrat decided to spend tax dollars on two Wal-Mart padlocks for the entrances to the Summer House, padlocks which serve no purpose anyway since someone who really wanted inside could probably squeeze between the padlocked iron gate and the roof of the doorway, or else clamber over the top and down through the open center of the structure. And why? Why is the Summer House a security hole? A bomb in the Summer House big enough to blow up the Capitol would be big enough to blow it up from just about any public space on Capitol Hill. I just don't understand.

I thought the one beneficial effect of the padlocked entrances would be that no one would bother me as I sat peaceful and contemplative. Yet soon enough, a family of tourists found the one open entrance to the Summer House. The mother mistook me for a tour guide and asked, "what is this place?" I explained it to her, with pleasure I should add so the reader does not think me entirely cynical. I really don't mind tourists. I am one myself, after all. Then the woman's son took my picture, for reasons known only to him. I don't wear a suit to work. He could not have mistaken me for anyone significant.

I took the flash of the camera as a signal that my summer reverie was over, and I left and started the walk back to work. A few final observations: I saw three men in suits standing on the west front steps of the Capitol, smiling and gazing about as if it were all their own. They could have been congressmen. Honestly, I don't think I would know more than a handful if I saw them. I did not recognize these fellows. They could have been lobbyists, for all I know. It reminded me of a scene in Vidal's Washington, D.C. in which Senator Day first meets an energy lobbyist in the west (or was it east?) porte cocher. The man offers him a bribe, but Senator Day turns it down indignantly, only to find himself contacting the lobbyist again one day not too far in the future, when the Senator needs a cash infusion to jump start his campaign for the Presidency.

Every time I see someone in a suit whom I think might be a congressman, I always end up staring too long, until the man looks skittishly at me as if he suspects I am about to pull a Charles Guiteau.

Construction is finished on perimeter security along the Independence Avenue side of the House Office Buildings. It looks quite nice. The sidewalk is wider now, I think. Finally, it seems like there might one day be an end to all the construction, and maybe Capitol Hill will even look better than it did before.

John Kerry: Restlessly On the Road (washingtonpost.com)

John Kerry: Restlessly On the Road (washingtonpost.com)

Washington is gray and humid. Actually, humid is an understatement. Murky might better describe the feeling of damp swampiness in the air. Today is a day to stay in the air conditioning. Coffee of the day: coffee. Just coffee. I did not even feel like walking to Starbucks, the air outside is so unbreathable.

The Washington Post has printed another article about Kerry. Last week the subject was, once again, his war record. This week, the subject is the "human interest" story of how he is coping with the campaign. I remember this same kind of article being written about W. during the 2000 campaign. I wonder why no one writes such stories now that he is President? I think it has to do with how little access reporters have to the President. It's a wonder we ever reelect an incumbent President, considering how little we are told about him once he takes office. Bush especially seems so remote, now. He exists only in caricature. I read an article in the New Yorker today on the train. To cite my source, it is the July 12/19, 2004 copy, and the article is titled, "Fathers and Sons" by David Greenberg. It is a review of several books about the Bush family. The passages on W. tell us little, if anything, we didn't already know about him and concentrate mainly around his religion. One passage in particular is interesting, if not exactly revelatory. I noted the day after the State of the Union his rather shocking and inappropriate reference to the old hymn "Power in the Blood." I'll quote the passage anyway:

Bush has not been shy about displaying his faith. Shortly after September 11, 2001, the President came across Proverbs 21:15: "When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers." Soon, "evildoers" became his favorite term for Al Qaeda. Bush's speechwriter, Michael Gerson, himself an evangelical, laces the President's addresses with seemingly innocuous terms that the devout recognize as laden with meaning: "whirlwind," "Work of mercy," safely home," "wonder-working power." Phillips refers to a study by the religion scholar Bruce Lincoln, who identified, in Bush's speech to Congress announcing the invasion of Afghanistan, allusions to Revelation, Isaiah, Job, Matthew, and Jeremiah. In private, Bush has been even more explicit. "George sees this as a religious war," a family member told the Schweizers. "He doesn't have a p.c. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know." Phillips says that Bush has spoken of himself as "an instrument of divine will."

I note that the Biblical references found in Bush's Afghanistan speech are all from the Old Testament, excepting apparently a reference to Matthew. It would be interesting to know specifically what these allusions were. Also, if Bush is fighting a war in the name of Christianity, he has an incorrect understanding of Christianity, which is a pacifist religion ideally, if not practically. Ideologically, except for the willingness to purposefully kill innocents in the name of God, there seems little separating Bush from those he opposes. Al Qaeda is also fighting the war in the name of God, and Bin Laden, too, as well as every man and woman who straps on a suicide bomb, views himself/herself as an instrument of divine will. Bush is in every way Bin Laden's ideal opponent because in himself he characterizes everything the fundamentalist Muslim fears about America, and what's more, in seeking vengeance disguised as justice, Bush has provided Al Qaeda with the war it has long desired. I no longer know what is to be done. If we could kill every single Muslim fanatic who seeks to harm Americans, and by doing so, assure the world of no more 9/11's, I would be all for such a war. Unfortunately, I no longer believe the pace of our killing them can outstrip the pace at which they reproduce.

Oh, but I was supposed to be writing about John Kerry. It's sad that the only alternative to Bush is a man who, four months until election day, is still described as not quite comfortable in his role as candidate. Uncomfortableness, stiffness, awkwardness ... these are not good qualities for a candidate in a modern election. The Post article mentioned above comments on how Kerry chose in Edwards a complement to himself, then goes on to bemoan the fact that they have to campaign separately on occasion. Edwards certainly does make Kerry a better-looking candidate. Kerry seems less gloomy, more at ease, friendlier, funnier, when Edwards is by his side. Kerry made absolutely the best choice in a running mate. Kerry himself is not an unattractive candidate, though ... at least not to a college-educated civil servant. For example, his reading gives heart to those of us who like books and people who actually read them. Kerry keeps a half-dozen books going at once, and the list detailed in the Post is impressive and includes The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, David Halberstam's The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship and Robert Caro's Master of the Senate. I note that his choices in reading matter are all non-fiction. Apparently, he is not going to repeat Gore's mistake of saying that The Red and the Black is his favorite novel, and thus providing Bush the chance to choose something a bit friendlier, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Americans prefer their Presidents to read history and non-fiction anyway. Fiction reading smacks of too much free time, laziness. Poetry is just, well, effete. The only way a NASCAR Dad can justify reading is if it's either sports-related or work-related. At the same time, Kerry's image takes a bit of a hit at the mention of his singing with Peter of "Peter, Paul, and Mary," and his appreciation for Woody Guthrie. An interest in folk music might win over the PBS and NPR bloc (as if Kerry didn't already have them locked up), but it is hardly likely to impress any factory worker I've ever met. Democrats always have a problem overcoming their association with the intelligentsia. On the one hand, Americans want a President who is smarter than average, but not too much smarter. Clinton rode that fence particularly well. On the other, they are also willing to vote for the C as well as the A student. But pure intellectuals never go far in politics. If it were otherwise, Adlai Stevenson would have been elected President one of the times he ran. Candidates risk alienating a large segment of the population, mostly men, when they appear too intellectual. Gore's appreciative recommendation of Stendhal to the American voter may have cost him even more votes than his bland personality.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Where do I start? Start with an image and work outwards. A man lies on his side across the top of three newspaper boxes, sleeping. He is slightly curled up, due to his height, and his arms are folded into each other across his chest. Why am I still shocked by scenes such as this? It's been nearly three years that I've been living here. I've seen enough squalor I ought to be accustomed to it by now. On the train platform this morning, a man unzipped his pants and pissed off the edge, down onto the tracks. Lucky he didn't hit the third rail. I wonder if he even thought of that? Everyone watched. No one said anything. However, I was less shocked by that act than I am by people sleeping atop newspaper boxes, or on benches, or on the ground. Why shock? It's disturbing, that's why. Disturbing to what? Disturbing to me. To your self? Yes. I don't understand what kind of world this is. I've seen people holding animated conversations with no one visible, and sometimes these people are normally dressed, otherwise indistinguishable from me or people like me. I saw a man walking a large Rottweiler on the sidewalk purposefully let its leash play out enough that it could chase a frightened woman up on the grass. The man laughed, "He's just playing, bitch!" One day I was waiting for a bus. There was a man lying on the concrete directly under the bus stop sign, just lying there, the hot sun shining on his sweaty face. Drunk? Sleeping? Diabetic attack? Heart attack? The bus pulled up and people stepped over his body to board the bus. I stepped over his body. I sat down on the bus, and a woman who boarded after me said to the driver, "Should someone call 9/11?" The driver hesitated, looked perturbed, then called his dispatcher on the CB. "There's someone lying on the ground at the bus stop at [he gave the location]." The dispatcher replied, "Is he breathing?" The driver stood up and looked out. "Yeah, he's breathing." The dispatcher said, "Carry on." And the bus moved on.

Now I am holding a conversation with my self, too, only I am not standing on a street corner or waiting for a bus. No one is moving away from me or avoiding eye contact, at least I don't think so.

No coffee of the day today. I need to drink less Starbucks coffee. It is losing its punch. Used to be that first taste of good coffee would be a real kick, similar to the first cigarette for a smoker. I don't feel anything anymore. Not so much as a tingle. So today I ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios™ and drank some milk without my usual coffee.

Song currently playing on my iPod: "Blue Angel" by Roy Orbison. I first encountered Orbison's music in the older films of David Lynch, specifically Blue Velvet. Thus there has always seemed to me something a bit perverse about these songs. I can't hear "In Dreams" without thinking of the manaiacal Dennis Hopper huffing on oxygen. "The candy-colored clown they call the sandman / Tiptoes to my room every night / Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper, / Go to sleep ..." There is just something wierd about that song, and I think Lynch obviously detected it, too.

Listening to Orbison now reminds me of something a roommate of mine once said about Freddie Mercury. My roommate liked Queen and often listened to their songs, but one time out of nowhere he said, "You know, only a fag could sing that good." I think we were listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody." My roommate was no bohemian. I moved in with him in the winter of my third year of college, by which time he had already graduated with his BS in Business Administration and was working for a bank chain, but still living in our college town. One other thing I recall about him, during the particularly cold, snowy January of 1994, he said that cities need a good freeze every once in awhile to kill off some of the homeless on the streets. I only lived with this fellow one semester. At the end of the spring semester, he wanted to move his girlfriend (a freshman) in with us, so I figured that was a good enough reason to move. The walls being thin, and myself being an unintentional celibate, I had already heard enough of their shagging during the long winter months.

One eye in the mirror

I have slept poorly the last couple nights. I live in a very old house here in Washington. It dates from the early years of the last century, and at least one person that I know of has died in it. The most recent death was very recent, perhaps 2001, shortly before I came to live here. Last two nights I have awoke sometime in the night with the cold fear that someone is in the room with me. I am blind without my glasses or contacts, especially at night, and so for a minute or two I lie there staring blindly into the dark rather like the cataract-eyed old man in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." I can feel my skin going cold and sweaty, the hair rising on my arms and head. Last night I had the impression that whatever was in the room was actually on the bed, slowly pressing down on me. I crossed myself and began praying, asking God to protect me and cast out whatever evil it was I felt. After awhile, the feeling of oppressiveness left me. This has happened two nights in a row. By now, in the light of day, I have convinced myself it was a matter of my dreaming mind spilling its terrors over into my waking life.

Coffee of the day: Gazebo. It is supposedly a strong blend, but I did not find it particularly powerful. I also bought a plain croissant for breakfast, today, which always raises the troubling issue of, "How do I pronounce it when I ask for it?" Do I pronounce it in French, thus sounding pretentious to all those around me? Or do I try to muddle out an American pronunciation? I don't even know if there is an American pronunciation. Croysant? "Crescent roll" is perhaps the closest American term. Usually, if I can do so, I just point and say, "One of those." Today, I tried to say "croissant" under my breath so the people waiting in line behind me wouldn't hear.

Song on my iPod today: "You're So Vain," by Carly Simon. I like this song mainly for the line "I had some dreams / They were clouds in my coffee ..." I also like the image of the man keeping one eye on the mirror as he walks into the room. I have always had a fear of mirrors for as long as I can recall. I recall seeing some scary movie or other long ago in which a woman looks in a mirror and sees a ghost in the room with her. She screams and throws herself out a window ... or something like that. My memory is imperfect, it was so long ago. The movie The Ring revived this theme in my life. The movie itself was not particularly good, but the image of the woman combing her hair in a mirror was creepy. I have always been afraid of what I might see in mirrors, and so I try never to look into them unless I have to. When I shave, I focus on my face and do not let my eye stray to the periphery of the mirror image for fear of what I might see in the room with me. In the house I live in now, there is a mirror on the bathroom door as well as on the medicine cabinet, which is opposite the door, so that when I shave if I focus on the edges of the image I can see multiple reflections stretching backwards into infinity. I don't like that; it disturbs my sense of stability. Sometimes I open the door of the medicine cabinet and shave at an angle so I am not tempted to look into that infinitude of reflections.