Author Archives: oinsketta

A Note About the Power of Words

This point hardly needs belaboring– what you call something matters, often very much.   For example, the phrase “sexual harassment” did not even exist until fairly recently when female lawyers coined it and began advocating for laws against it.  Before that time, unless a woman had been raped, or subjected to other forcible sexual contact, in front of witnesses, she had little to no legal recourse for something like a “male chauvinist” boss caressing her ass over her skirt, complimenting her breasts while licking his lips, pressing against her, perhaps even sliding his grubby hand down her shirt and kissing her.  Threatening to fire her, or actually firing her, if she objected to him continuing to do all these things, and other things too, wink, wink — no harm, eh, no word for the harm, no foul!  LOL!

There was not even a word for these still common little practices, they were, until some time in the late 1970s, 80s or 90s, something the law considered de minimis, and, as we all know, de minimis non curat lex.   The law don’t make laws against things we don’t even have a word for, sob sisters.  Ah, for them good old days when America was still great.

We can all rattle off phrases that were created at great expense to shape political discourse — if we can apply that term, which implies a reasoned back and forth conversation, to American politics.   Death Tax, Death Panels, Right to Life, Tax and Spend, Enhanced Interrogation, Right to Work, States’ Rights, Special Rendition, AUMF, Signature Strike, Collateral Damage, Friendly Fire, Climate Change Skeptic, Intelligent Design, Birtherism, blah blah blah.   

Here’s one that just got to me, hearing a discussion about so-called evangelical Christians who support an Alabama bigot running for the Senate in a special election.  This candidate claims it was God’s vengeance on American sodomites and blasphemers what caused the attacks of 9/11/01, though he hates Muslims too, and believes his fervor for the teachings of Jesus trumps any direct order of the U.S. Supreme Court, even in executing his duties as an Alabama Supreme Court justice.   He was twice removed as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, by his fellow Alabama state judges, for unrepentant contempt of court orders. [1] Like the affable idiot Dubya, he takes his orders from a higher father.  Law and Order, yo, as he waves his wife’s little gun at a campaign rally and the audience erupts in applause.  

Anyway, the word that got to me, as much as the fucking f-word, or the n-word itself (let’s all agree to ban the hateful word, shall we, instead of honestly dealing with its long, ugly history and ongoing American legacy) was Democrat.  We now have Republican values and Democrat values, the Republicans are no longer ceding the adjective “democratic” to the party that spawned the Klan while they, the Party of Lincoln, were fighting to abolish the Peculiar Institution. 

Note that subtle, but strong, implication of saying “Democrat” values instead of “Democratic”.  No more moral high ground for you, motherfuckers.  Note that we hardly even notice it at this point, the usage has become ubiquitous.  It was not in wide use until fairly recently.  There was always the Republican candidate and the Democratic candidate, the latter could also be called the Democrat, as opposed to the Republican.  But the D-word’s use has expanded, it seems to me.  It is used in its noun form, weaponized as an adjective, in a pejorative sense, often not undeservedly so, mind you.  It is generally spoken with a southern inflection, think of George Dubya Bush saying it, leaning derisively on that last syllable, Demo-CRAT.   It can be tastefully followed by a well-aimed lunger into the old brass spittoon, for emphasis.   

Words matter, sure, but if you say ’em right, you can make a polite word  just as potent as a darned fighting word, an ‘invitation to exchange fisticuffs’ as the fancy pants on the Supreme Court styled it.  Say the “n-word” with the right emphasis, boy, and it’s as good as using the old one, “nigger”, a word that will get you fired now faster than you can say Jack Robinson.  That was another of them politically correct, liberal Democrat triumphs, taking the castrating shears to our cherished vernacular.  How you like your damned n-word now, n-word?

Alabama Republicans can only thank the good Lord that nobody has a tape recording or video of Roy Moore saying the “n-word” for real.  Y’all would still have to double down and vote for him, but it would be a much harder pull than just against a handful of fifty-something year-old women claiming Moore felt them up when they were teenagers.   He said he asked their mamas every time, before he gave ’em a ride in his car and started sweet talkin’ ’em.   Plus, how come, if there was any truth to these anti-Christian lies at all, they didn’t start defaming his Honor’s good name with this forty years ago?

He’s the Law and Order candidate, unlike that one the Democrat party is running, Doug Jones.  All Jones ever did is prosecute some old men who, when they were young, blew up some little colored girls in a church.  If Alabama can keep enough coloreds from voting tomorrow, Moore has a fair shot at becoming Alabama’s next U.S. Senator.  The Supreme Court itself said we now live in a post-racial society where coloreds are done being the “special favorites of the law.” [2]  No need to enforce the Voting Rights Act down there, Lord no, as the Roberts Court so ruled.  Do not insult our honor, sir! 

States rights, except when it comes to carrying my concealed handgun in Times Square and all over the liberal states that hate the Second Amendment, to make sure it’s ready to fire at bad guys with guns.  And, of course, when it comes to federal action against the most dangerous and evil drug the world has ever known– marijuana.  Oh, yeah, and Monsanto selling its toxic agricultural products wherever it wants and fuck the wishes of local fucking hippies.

Don’t forget to vote tomorrow, Alabama.  You may be number 44 (out of 50) in educational attainment in the U.S. for 2017, but there are still six states with worse outcomes for students (though five out of the six voted for Trump too).   Surprise us, Alabama.

 

[1] how he crawled back to his Chief Justice post after the first time, I have to check out some time, though I suspect the good, white, Republican Christians of Alabama re-elected him.

[2] This phrase is from a famous 1883 Supreme Court ruling in the mischievously named Civil Rights Cases that decided the former slaves no longer needed federal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and the legislation passed to enforce it.  The 8-1 decision, written by long-winded racist douchebag Justice Joseph P.  Bradley, contains this immortal paragraph which was, for the better part of a century, the law of this great nation, back when we were still great:

When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected. There were thousands of free colored people in this country before the abolition of slavery, enjoying all the essential rights of life, liberty, and property the same as white citizens; yet no one, at that time, thought that it was any invasion of their personal status as freemen because they were not admitted to all the privileges enjoyed by white citizens, or because they were subjected to discriminations in the enjoyment of accommodations in inns, public conveyances, and places of amusement. Mere discriminations on account of race or color were not regarded as badges of slavery….

read a more detailed account of this immortal piece of jurisprudence, including Justice John Harlan’s forward-looking dissent  here

Please continue to hold

‘You would have loved this shit, dad.  Now that we all have cell phones, in our pocket or charging next to the bed while we sleep, you get calls around the clock from companies you do business with,’ I told the skeleton of my father.   

“That’s the American way, Elie,” said the skeleton brightly.  “The business of America is business, and you can take that to the bank.”   

Yah, mon, 9:30 a.m. Saturday I got another call from the Internet Service Provider that has a monopoly in my neighborhood.  I had two more today, with important news about my internet account.

“Courtesy calls, Elie,” said the skeleton,  “Jesus, you’d complain if you were hung with a new rope.” 

I know, I know.  Anyway, they’ve called six or seven times the last few days.  I figured there might be some problem with the robot that processed my most recent payment, plus a ten dollar late fee, not on my bill, that the robot had informed me was imposed.

“A brand new rope, Elie, and here you  are bitching…” 

It’s my way, dad.   Anyway, the folks at Speculum were much faster than the Student Loan people, whose recording thanked me over and over for being such an important customer and read me information about how to pay them while reminding me that all of their representatives were still busy helping other customers.   

“Jesus, Elie, the problems of the living are tedious….” 

I’m hip.  Anyway, it was only five minutes and thirty-nine seconds before the Oklahoma Student Loan servicing corporation put a human on the line.   

“You actually timed it, you petty, seconds counting bastard?”   

The phone times it automatically, it’s right on the screen while you’re listening to muzak and ads and being thanked for your time and politely reminded to please hold, that all representatives are currently still busy helping other customers. 

“The technology truly is amazing,” said the skeleton. “I can’t tell you how fascinating all this is to a dead man.”    The skeleton turned to watch two squirrels leaping after each other in the dead leaves. 

“At least they didn’t refer to you as a ‘guest’, like at so many retail establishments now.”   

I used to say, ‘if I’m a guest how come you’re trying to take money from me?  Not a very gracious host, is Bed Bath and Beyond?’.  In the beginning it got a smile from the cashier, by now it’s just a stony expression and the predictable, deadpan “credit or debit?” 

“May I help the next guest?” said the skeleton. 

Yeah, so anyway, the guy at Speculum was quick to pick up.  He asked my name, which I spelled.

“A last name unique in the United States, at least as far as Social Security is concerned.  That was verified by  your uncle Paul Widem, my brother, and long-time Washington D.C. government insider.  You can remind your readers that ‘Widaen’ was mistakenly written on my birth certificate, it was an invention coined by a nurse at the hospital with the nodded approval of her collaborator, the illiterate patient, my mother.  It became my name, and later our nuclear family name, only once I got into the army.” 

Yeah, true.  So, anyway, I spell the name for him and he types it in.  Then he says ‘do you have an account with Speculum?’

“I have to admit, this is even more interesting than watching the leaves turn color,” the skeleton of my father said, pointing up to the tree over his grave, stretching out limbs and branches bare of leaves.   

I read the kid my account number and he tells me…

“That you’ve received a series of courtesy calls, dear guest?” 

Close.  That because I am such a loyal customer Speculum has been calling me around the clock to reward me with a special promotion.   

“Ah!” said the skeleton. 

I tell the kid, listen, I don’t have a land line or a television set, so I don’t need phone or cable service.  I’d appreciate being taken off the promotions list for these bundles.   Then, because I’d just spent ten minutes getting  useless and incomplete information about the repeated courtesy calls from the private Student Loan servicing corporation (they hadn’t yet received the payment I sent last week, had no record that I need to immediately re-certify my income to stay on the new income-driven repayment plan), I couldn’t help myself.   

“That’s my boy,” said the skeleton, “chip off the old crock.”

I told the kid the CEO of Speculum makes $98,000,000 a year, highest paid CEO in the U.S., and that all of the unionized technicians are still on strike, that Speculum, which has a monopoly in my area, has raised my rates every single year so that I am now paying almost double my “promotional” rate from three years ago, plus a brand new 25% late fee if you pay after a due date that does not appear on your invoice.   

“Fair is fair, Elie, they have a monopoly, what are they supposed to do?  Give you a break, sucker?”

One of us born every minute, dad.   Anyway, the kid tells me he’s sorry for all the calls about the promotion and that he’ll take my name off the promotions list.  Then he informs me it will take up to thirty days for the calls and letters to stop. 

“Is there no end to this courtesy call, Elie?” the skeleton said.

Yeah, that’s it.   

“So this was just a courtesy call?” said the skeleton.

Basically, yeah.  No action on your part is required.  However, if you wish to take action, we couldn’t care less, knock yourself out, be our guest. 

“Action-taking knave,” said the skeleton. 

I wouldn’t dream of taking action, dad. 

“No you wouldn’t, that’s the last thing you’d dream of,” said the skeleton, “now, if you’ll please excuse me, Elie, I have to take some action — get back to my nap here in my eternal dirt bad.”

Pleasant dreams. 

“Zzzzzzz….” said the skeleton, with exaggerated fatigue.

When a Bad Dream Really Sucks

Short answer:  when it is too close for comfort, it wakes you and prevents you from getting the rest of your badly needed sleep. 

Went to bed tired a few hours ago, quickly fell into a deep sleep, had this dream, that actually woke me, after less than an hour blissfully unconscious.  It is two, maybe three, hours later, I haven’t been able to get back to sleep.   The dream:

I was in a restaurant, it was late at night.  It was a huge place, virtually empty.  I ordered a vegetarian steak sandwich.  In real life, I haven’t knowingly eaten meat (apologies to the occasional sea creature) in at least seven years (except once, maybe five years back, when politeness obliged me to eat a small amount of chicken in a curry my host had prepared for me — the one pot dinner he made for his family and me that night–  there was no avoiding the finely chopped chicken).

The waiter brought the large open-faced sandwich on a platter and left without making eye contact or saying a word.  In fact, I never even saw the waiter’s face.   I studied the very realistic looking steak, which seemed to be uncooked.  It was cool to the touch.  The other face of the sandwich was definitely sliced turkey and something that looked like ham.   I waited for the waiter, who was nowhere to be seen, so that I could exchange this for what I had ordered.

I eventually wound up carrying the plate around the empty restaurant, unable to get the attention of anyone who worked there.  The place was deserted.  I scanned a menu looking for what I had actually ordered.   There was no vegetarian steak sandwich on the menu.   I found another menu, completely different from the first, and began searching it.  I saw yet another completely different menu on a nearby counter and began to lose hope. 

As I waited with a dish I would not eat, it became clear that I was in the kind of restaurant where you fucking take what they serve you, eat it, pay and shut the fuck up.   You also leave a nice tip, if you know what’s good for you.   

Waking from that all too realistic dream, in a chilled room, with about 28% of the bed available to me, and unable to get comfortable, the new line of stitches down the side of my nose, covered with a jerry-rigged dressing over a corrosive antibiotic salve (learned how like battery acid it is the hard way, painfully blinded and desperately groping in the shower) starting one millimeter from my left tear duct, on the side of my face usually against the pillow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still in a booth at that accursed restaurant.   Rattling the keys here has made me no more optimistic about falling asleep if I manage to secure a bit of the bed when I crawl back in it. 

I am wearing fleece pants, socks, slippers, a fleece lined shirt, a hat and a fleece jacket with the hood pulled up.  It’s not a matter of being cold at the moment.  Though, at the same time, I’m not exactly toasty.   Even the Baron was happy to nap under a three or four layer cape today, even wearing Sekhnet’s fake fur vest as a Liberace-style cape for a while. It’s chilly in here, yo.   Although, admittedly, it did give the dying cat a bit more pep today, when he was not sleeping on his perch above the radiator or doing his Liberace imitation huddled under a warm pile of capes.

It was too hot for days, sauna-like, and the cat looked wilted, was very sluggish.  Now it’s too cold, since the temperature outside dipped into proper winter range just as Sekhnet climbed up on a step ladder and propped a large screen in a window she opened, a window that is behind bars,  bars that have a variety of things hanging from them.     

Theoretically, I could open that gate, climb up on a ladder and take the large screen out of the upper window, close the window, hang everything back on it, and the room would eventually warm up.  But I’d have to turn on the lights, take down everything hanging from the bars, wake Sekhnet in the process, ignore the surgeon’s advice by lifting, and toting, exerting, forcing blood to my face.   

Jesus, what am I talking about?  I’m still asleep, still in that dream, holding a plate of meat served by a faceless waiter to a vegetarian customer who is left with one choice, eat what’s been served or shut the fuck up about being hungry.   

It reminds me of the dilemma of the would-be satirist, living in the Age of Trump and fucking Roger Stone.   All roads lead back to these larger than life cocksuckers, no conversation can long avoid at least a mention of our current giant, angry, attention craving two year-old president. 

I see fucking Roger Stone’s face, as he promised a reporter recently that if anyone tries to remove Trump from office, for any reason, there will be blood in the streets.   Trump’s people have guns, he assures us, as is their God-given right under the Second Amendment, and they will not hesitate to use those guns, if it comes to it.  And we all know what the other side is like, fucking animals, and they all have guns too.  Stone warns of a blood bath, not that he’s advocating it, mind you, he’s just saying’, just putting it out there. 

I watch the psychopathic Stone, as much as any single individual, responsible, along with his former partner Paul Manafort, for the current lobbyist-led negative campaigning black and white wedge issue kick ’em hard in the balls and destroy your opponents nightmare American politics we have today.   A political predator, and a psychopath. 

I see that fucking smirking, supremely confident face and realize, with a smile that is painful to smile, particularly at this ungodly hour when my eyes are almost crossing with exhaustion, the sun creeping up behind me, that someone just like him owns the fucking restaurant where I am forced to wander endlessly with a plate of cold meat I did not order.   

I was prepared to say to the Orthodox Jewish nephrologist the other day, after the third or fourth time he demonstrated he is something of a distracted, imperious putz:  Doctor, Ha Shem (God) does not make a person a mensch, it is left up to each of us to be a mensch or not.   But as I was holding a plate of human entrails, and a fork, as I sat in his office the other day, with a napkin across my lap, I thought: ah, fuck it, I just won’t leave him the full 20% tip.

Note to Rick L. in Chicago

I had a “follow” the other day from a reader/writer named Rick, a person who suffers from a sitting disability.  I read the well-written description of the problem and wanted to write an email, or leave a comment, but, outside of Social Media (aside from this blahg I am decidedly anti-social as far as Twitter, FaceBook and their intrusive intimacy-destroying, democracy-corrupting ilk go), there was no way to get back in touch with Rick L.  Sekhnet, a genius, suggested I write this post.  Hi, Rick.

Your sitting disability, unbearable pain when sitting for any length of time, will be familiar to my friend Rick in Poland,  who has made a religion of regular breaks from his desk to walk and stretch many times a day.   I read about your many attempts to cure the lumbago and sciatica — or even get an accurate medical diagnosis — and kept having only one thought:  Dr. John Sarno. 

Sarno recently died at a ripe old age, but he had a long (and controversial) career helping countless people who came to him in crippling pain (often related to the spine) who could not otherwise get relief or even a helpful medical diagnosis.   I have a post about Sarno here, which you can read as an intro.  I’ve heard (from your namesake Rick) that Sarno’s final book is an excellent source of his theory and practice.   

In a nutshell, Sarno found that much crippling pain of the kind described in Sitting Disability is the result of what he termed TMS, Tension Myoneural Syndrome.  The pain of TMS is the result of oxygen deprivation to the affected muscles and nerves.  TMS is a psychic defense mechanism, the body creates terrible physical pain to mask equally unbearable psychic pain.  Sarno found little correlation between crippling back pain and physical damage to the spine;  patients with TMS sometimes had relatively undamaged spines while patients with herniated discs and otherwise damaged spines sometimes experienced little or no pain.

I find Sarno’s work, which deals with the underlying psychological causes of TMS (which is very real pain), very convincing.  It is certainly worth checking out, especially since you’ve explored virtually every other cure imaginable.  The connection between mind and body is more and more understood today, even as the surgical and pharmaceutical industries continue to dismiss it as hokum.   

Sekhnet also recommends hatha yoga, the gentle daily stretching of all the muscles in the body.  She had relief from terrible chronic back and shoulder pain when she did yoga every morning.  Reminds me, I ought to get up now and stretch my back!

I’ve also heard that regular swimming is excellent therapy for sciatica.   A friend’s mother credited swimming a few times a week, in conjunction with working with John Sarno, for ending her long bout of sciatica.

Good luck with it, Rick, and let me know how it goes if you decide to check out Sarno’s ideas. 

Clarification on Net Neutrality posts

Everything I’ve written recently about the issue of Net Neutrality is as accurate as my understanding of the issue can make it.  I need to make one correction:  contrary to what I wrote, noting the custom of net neutrality from the inception of the internet, new FCC chairman Ajit Pai did not lie when he spoke of an existing government regulation requiring net neutrality.     

The FCC regulation in question determined that the internet is a “common carrier” for purposes of regulation by the FCC, like the publicly owned airwaves that make telephone, radio and television transmission possible. [1]  You can see why a former corporate attorney for an Internet Service Provider like Pai, now chairman and FCC regulatory swing vote, would want to nip that shit in the bud.

 

[1]   On 26 February 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in favor of net neutrality by reclassifying broadband access as a telecommunications service and thus applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 as well as section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996[88] to Internet service providers.[89][90][91][92][93][94] On 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of its new net neutrality rule.[95][96][97] And on 13 April 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new regulations.[98][99] The rule took effect on June 12, 2015.[100]

 
 

 

 

Post-factual Reality 101

“That ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ locker room banter thing I apologized on nationwide TV for saying?  I never fucking said it!  Fake Trump!​  SAD!” 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP (announcing largest roll-back of federal land protection in U.S. history to a presumably Native American audience): Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away. They don’t know your land. And truly, they don’t care for your land like you do. But from now on, that won’t matter. I’ve come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens. … Therefore, today, on the recommendation of Secretary Zinke, and with the wise counsel of Senator Hatch, Senator Lee and the many others, I will sign two presidential proclamations. These actions will modify the national monuments designations of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

source

Trump “unveil(ed) his plan to open up protected federal lands to mining, logging, drilling and other forms of extraction. The plan calls for shrinking the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears Monument by more than 80 percent and splitting it into two separate areas. Trump would slash the state’s 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50 percent.”

source

As that hideous, yet still somehow perversely sexual zombie-eyed scarecrow Kellyanne Conway described Trump’s preference for a lie: alternative facts.   You have facts that are just regular, garden variety facts, what you might call empirical, or verifiable facts, and you have, you know, “alternative facts,” which biased purveyors of “fake news” call “lies”. 

Once people can no longer make distinctions well enough to discern the difference between facts that can be verified and alternative facts, you can effectively do whatever you want to these people, for any reason or no reason, or for any alternative reason the imagination of a psychopath might devise.   

This chat between billionaire mercenary Erik Prince and then radio talk show host Steve Bannon struck me the other day, and I made note of it to bring to the attention of any curious reader:

The Intercept reports Prince may have foreshadowed his new proposal [private contractor spies to capture or assassinate high value terror suspects– ed.]  in a 2016 interview on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s radio program, in which Prince proposed reviving a version of the CIA’s Vietnam War assassination scheme, known as the Phoenix Program.

Erik Prince: “Two: a Phoenix-like program. OK, remember the Phoenix Program was a root canal done to the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. It was a kill—”

Stephen Bannon: “You mean, this is the Phoenix Program—this is the Phoenix—hang on. This is the Phoenix Program in Vietnam.”

Erik Prince: “It was a vicious, but very effective, kill-capture program in Vietnam that destroyed the Viet Cong as a military force. That’s what needs to be done to the funders of Islamic terror, and that would even the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East, and any of the other illicit activities therein.”

source  (see The Intercept: Erik Prince headline)

the story in much greater detail, reported by Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole, here

Prince, who shared a $1,350,000,000 inheritance with sister Betsey (DeVos) and two other sisters, and is the founder and former CEO of now corporately reorganized Blackwater, speaks of the Phoenix Program, a long-running, systematic, un-prosecuted war crime, as destroying the Viet Cong as a military force.  You dig?  This is the reason America won the war in Viet Nam, because we had committed patriots with the will to do whatever vicious things had to be done to defeat and utterly destroy the unscrupulous enemy.   You see how this works?

And, you understand, whatever the fact, or alternative fact, of the matter may actually be, if you have a billion dollars and no-bid government contracts, and the right committed people in place, and the right contacts within the military, and the right party in power, you can secretly, and lucratively, hunt down and kill whoever the fuck you want, anywhere in the world. 

You read it here first.  Or not.

Conspiracy of Interests

Most conspiracies do not happen in the manner set out in the sensational, influential, wholly fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  There is no sinister midnight meeting of eternally scheming characters in an ancient cemetery, where they set out their devilish plans in painstaking detail, assign roles, map out larger strategies for global domination.   Most conspiracies happen on a much more subtle level, based on common interests and shared goals. 

A powerful group with a particular interest will automatically advocate for that interest, without any need for an actual meeting of principals or any assigning of particular roles — they just pursue identical self-interests simultaneously.  Very little systematic coordination is needed.  We see this, for example, in the recent return to Gilded Age style tax policy orchestrated by a loose coalition of Republican legislators, an insane chief executive and a small, determined band of billionaire “Libertarians”, corporate “persons” and upwardly mobile multi-millionaires.  Many super-wealthy people, and wealthy corporate “persons” made it happen, but it’s hard to call their efforts a conspiracy in the classic sense.   

The same thing can happen even within a small group, among people of limited individual power.  I’m reminded of this by a personal experience, brought to mind by the recent odd blind cc of an email string from an emotionally challenged person I long considered a close friend.  A person I now would not hesitate to punch in the face with the full force of cathartic American violence, that face triggering a hard-earned exception to my deeply held belief in the rightness of Ahimsa. 

It was a few years ago, Sekhnet and I were going to take Sekhnet’s then 90 year-old Aunt Lillian to dinner at a great vegetarian Chinese restaurant on Main Street called New Bodai.  Shortly before we were to pick up Lillian this friend called to say that he would like to take his daughter to the same restaurant, along with a mutual friend of ours, an angry and bossy woman he had suddenly become close friends with.  We told them what time we would be at the restaurant; they countered that they’d like to eat a bit earlier, they were all hungry.  We told them how long it would take to pick up Lillian and get to the restaurant.   They agreed to meet us at that time.

When we arrived there were several empty plates on the table.   They cheerily told us not to worry, they’d ordered the same for us, it was already on its way.  We endured a joyless meal, eating dishes we had not ordered, and Lillian was largely ignored during the meal.  We split the tab with these two inconsiderate creatures I eventually came to understand I was no longer friends with.   

It strikes me now that they had not “conspired” in the classic sense of planning to serve an old lady a plate of warmed over shit by way of throwing down any kind of gauntlet.   They had not consciously decided to shit on Sekhnet’s feelings, or her aunt’s, or mine.  They were just feeling giddy to have discovered each other, two long-time friends of somebody they were both in the process of actively alienating anyway.   

The guy, I learned from his bizarre email string, is in the process of divorcing his longtime wife, Hitler.  His sex life with his new girlfriend, he reports, is frustrating and joyless, sad to say.   I haven’t heard from the woman since her mother-in-law’s funeral, which I idiotically attended, though it is certain she still publicly whips her hapless husband in the face with the same sickening gusto as always.

If you deeply share interests with somebody, more likely than a plainly laid out plan of attack, all you will need is a nod and a wink to put things in motion.  As much as many of the super-wealthy hate Trump, a crude, lying, ill-bred boor, when he abolishes the “Death Tax” and they can give every penny of their fortunes without any tax payment required of their chosen heirs, they will nod quietly, savoring their fleeting taste of immortality.

Briefly Describing the Indescribable

Yesterday I had a basal cell removed from the left side of the bridge of my nose.  I’d detected the cell myself, pointed it out to the dermatologist who said it was probably nothing.  I told her I’d only felt this particular intermittent pin-prick of pain twice before, on the other side of my nose, and each time it had been a basal cell.  The pore eventually bleeds and then it is easy enough to detect.   By then, past experience shows, a skin graft is needed after the basal cells and surrounding skin are removed.  The dermatologist told me she’d never known a patient to diagnose a basal cell, took a precautionary biopsy, which hurt like hell, and later called with the bad news– it was indeed a basal cell.  She sent me to a surgeon.

The surgeon who operated yesterday was a diminutive red-haired woman whose card identifies her as “Director of the Comprehensive Skin Cancer, Director of Dermatologic Surgery, Dermatology Department.”   She too expressed surprise that I’d been able to feel the presence of the basal cell at such an early stage.   She assured me that since it had been detected so early only a tiny line of stitches, and no skin graft, would be required to close the wound.  I’ll take my good news wherever it can be had these days.  No skin off behind my ear.

During the surgery, my eyes shielded from the high intensity light by a towel draped over them, she asked me what I did for a living.  I borrowed the phrase of a former judge friend (who always claimed it was my line), to tell her and two other doctors, and their nurse, that I was a “recovering lawyer”.   

I briefly described my subsistence law practice, defined subsistence for the nurse who was unfamiliar with the word (“like a farmer who grows just enough to pay the rent on his land and feed his family”) and was praised for my noble work protecting the city’s most vulnerable from eviction, a compliment I shrugged off sincerely as they were burning and cutting my nose. 

“If the smell bothers you, breathe through your mouth for a minute,” said the surgeon as the waft of seared flesh hit my nostrils.

In response to the follow up about what I am doing now I told them that I am writing a book about the remarkable life of my father.   

“How is it remarkable?” asked the surgeon, poking unseen at the basal cell.  I felt only minor pressure, after the painful injections of lidocaine.

A canny self-promoter would have had the canned thirty second elevator pitch talking points ready to go.  Always be selling, the mantra of the salesman.  If you have talent, sell it, otherwise you are a failure.  I paused for a second and said:

“He worked in the Human Relations Unit of the Board of Education in the sixties and early seventies, intervening in schools where there had been race riots.”   

Everyone was very impressed, by the sound of their collective reaction.  It didn’t occur to me then that the life of every individual is remarkable, for uncountable reasons.  We are trained from birth, in a commercial society like our own, to believe that some lives are remarkable, the life of a baby born a billionaire, for example, a baby!, while others, well… the only remarkable thing is that these determined fucks hang on for as long as they do. 

I described to them some of the things I learned researching my father’s life.  I told them that there were no child labor laws in the U.S. until my father was twelve, that, but for the worldwide Depression, he could have been legally employed as a chimney sweep or something.  I described the NYC Division of Human Rights’ report on an early seventies riot in a Brooklyn High School that my father and his team had been called in on afterwards.   

That report, I told them, would be unimaginable today.  It was a candid and detailed search for the causes and solutions of the tensions that led to the riot.  There was no blame or finger pointing, there was no agenda, except to try to honestly understand the dynamics and solve the problem that led to the violence. 

“Did they solve the violence?” one of the doctors asked, foolishly.   

“My father would take the gang leaders off for sensitivity training and he said the rivals often became friends, or at least no longer enemies. Peace would reign at the school, until those kids graduated and their little brothers and sisters began stabbing and shooting each other.”

Then I went into the domain that makes the man truly remarkable in my eyes.   This part of my answer they were neither prepared for, nor particularly interested in.  I reasoned, if it can be called that, that they had asked me a question and I was doing my best to answer it.   That the question had been asked out of mere politeness, and for the purpose of having me talk as another way of measuring whether I was experiencing any pain during the surgery, did not occur to me then.

“One remarkable thing is that this idealistic peacemaker, sensitivity trainer and advocate of social justice was called the Dreaded Unit by his children.   He had this bottomless reservoir of anger, which is, in a way, hard to reconcile with his social conscience, although, blah blah blah….”

I rattled on in this manner for a while, telling them of the pseudo-closure of the last night of his life conversation, and then summed up, saying the ms. was now almost 1,100 pages and that I was going to try to sell it and have it published.  They were even more clueless than I am as to how one goes about doing this.  I explained that I need to find a literary agent, who would then shop it to publishers.  I’d prepare a sample of the book, send it out in hopes of interesting an agent.

“You might have a black eye,” said the surgeon, which sounded about right.  She explained that since the basal cell was close to my eye, blood from the operation might show up in the eye.  I’d heard it metaphorically as well.   They will beat the fuck out of you, and make you wait, panting and full of dread, before they finally finish taking care of you.

An hour or so later I was roused from my drowsing in the waiting room with the good news that only the one slice would be necessary,  that they could stitch me up now.   

Back in the operating room I had another painful poke in the nose with a needle.  The doctor explained that many people would not need additional lidocaine for the stitches.  The next injection was also painful, as was the one after it.   I winced meaningfully.  The doctor’s next question surprised me.   

“Did you have red hair when you were a kid?”   

I told her it had been dirty blond, but my beard had always been red (it’s now white).  She told me she thought she saw some red in the mustache.   People with red hair, it turns out, have more sensitive skin and it’s much harder to anesthetize them for dermatologic surgery.   A person with dark hair, apparently, would probably still be good with the lidocaine injected an hour earlier.  Another injection, another stoic, but determined wince from me.

The notes they sent me home with a few minutes later told me I could expect mild discomfort and that I should take tylenol for it.  I was already experiencing some pain before I even left the hospital, it was beyond mild discomfort.  The nurse gave me two tylenols.   By the time I got home, twenty minutes later, the pain was excruciating.   

Sekhnet stood crying in the local pharmacy as I called the doctor twice to get a prescription for pain medication sent over.   The bridge of my nose felt like a snake had just finished biting it over and over.  I was told the doctor was in surgery.  I told the receptionist that it was irresponsible for a doctor to send a patient home in pain without pain medication.  After a little less than an hour from my first call the prescription reached the pharmacy and Sekhnet rushed back with the pills in hand.  A half hour later I had some relief.   

An extroverted L.A. lunatic named Larry Fisher spent some time in mental hospitals.  When he was not institutionalized he’d sing songs for change on the street, often making them up on the spot, custom jobs for a quarter or fifty cents.   Frank Zappa ran into him, liked the guy and produced an album called “An Evening With Wild Man Fisher.”  Interesting work, this double album (if I recall correctly).   At the end of the record Frank asks Larry, from the control room, “what’s the matter, Larry, don’t you like making records?”   

Wild Man Fisher says “they’re all fucking bastards, Frank, they’re all fucking bastards.”

The Gifts that Keep on Taking

Here is a little illustration of my father’s generosity.

“Careful,” said the skeleton of my father.

Sometime in the mid-1980s my father gave me a car, his 1978 Buick Regal, a slightly sporty two-door car he bought after my sister and I were out of the house.   He replaced the Regal with a Buick LeSabre, I believe, on his way to a series of leased Cadillacs.   He liked a powerful engine, eight cylinders if possible, and the Regal had a borderline powerful six cylinder engine.  In any case, the car he gave me was in fairly beat up shape.   

“It was a nice car,” said the skeleton of my father.

It had been a very nice car.  When I was done scrubbing the black crud off the steering wheel, I….

“That’s a low blow,” said the skeleton.   

I never understood where that black gunk came from, I never knew you to be a grease monkey, never thought your hands were particularly dirty.   

“Move on, I assume you have a point here,” said the skeleton. 

The car cost me over a thousand dollars a year in repairs to keep on the road, a series of increasingly larger repairs, until I finally donated it to some charity a few years later.   

“Caveat emptor,” said the skeleton with a shrug, “nobody held a gun to your head and made you take the car, plus, you didn’t pay a penny for it, outside of the thousands in repairs.” 

OK, let’s just move on to Exhibit B– the couch and Lazy Boy. 

“Is there no limit to your pettiness?” said the skeleton.  “Is there no statute of limitation for these, apparently timeless, de minimis grievances of yours?” 

Mom was lamenting the fact that you had to throw out all of your beautiful furniture when you sold the house.  She couldn’t believe that nobody even wanted it as a donation.  There was a new pull-out couch in what used to be my bedroom, and a reclining chair that was in excellent shape.   

“This is exposition, I suppose, for the reader, I know very well what couch and Lazy-Boy you’re referring to,” said the skeleton. 

Astute observation.  Anyway, I spent several hot afternoons and evenings up in that filthy attic, removing grime encrusted articles, the things were literally blackened, and disposing of most of them.  You were very grateful for my help and urged me to take the new sofa-bed and recliner to my minimally furnished apartment.   You told me you’d arrange to have them trucked over. 

“And I did, those two Russian Jews Benjie recommended, and they brought the stuff right into your then empty living room,” said the skeleton.

Yes, and then handed me their bill, which I paid, a few hundred dollars, and a tip on top of that.

“You’d complain if you were hung with a new rope.  I always said that and it’s as true today as when you were a kid,” said the skeleton.   

I suppose so.

A King Ain’t Satisfied

“Poor man wanna be rich,
Rich man wanna be king,
And a king ain’t satisfied
til he rules everything.”

The Poet Laureate of New Jersey, saying it all.   This rich man we have in the never whiter White House is cantankerously unsatisfied with a job that does not have a Divine Right to rule attached to its job description.  Fuck that puto, in the stirring words of George Lopez, fourth generation American.

There was only one reason to vote for this lying fucking puto that was not irrational: naked self-interest.   Sure he got the vote of every hater of “minorities”, sure he got the desperate, uneducated vote.  “I love the uneducated,” he said, on the campaign trail.  He also famously bragged that he could go out on to Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and that his supporters would be too fucking stupid to realize what a bad hombre, in the whitest sense of the word “bad”, he is.   But the haters didn’t actually get shit from this billionaire celebrity asshole, nor will they ever, unless they are also very rich haters.

There was only one rational reason to vote for him: greed.    It was rational to vote for him if his/the Republicans’ tax plan would net you an extra million, or in the case of someone like multi-billionaire opinionated ignoramus Betsey DeVos, ten million or more, every year in unearned, but richly deserved, tax savings.   The rich had a good reason to vote for this puto, if also a despicable one.   The never-Trump wing of the Grand Old Party held their noses for this glorious moment, when they’d get to ram a massive, multi-trillion dollar deficit fueling, Obamacare-sabotaging tax break for the super-rich through a spineless, partisan Congress. 

I know, predictable outrage from a powerless fuck.   It’s not as though the Kenyan-born secret Muslim did not ram through a health care bill, after long one-sided debate, benefiting no rich person in any conceivable way, using his narrow majority in Congress to get a hated health care law passed that benefited mostly “takers”.  It’s not as though Obama didn’t sign plenty of Executive Orders to get around a determined, organized, highly principled opposition party of corporate persons and their human counterparts.   

Take a look at this list, recognize anyone?

20170810_233631_1512286536441.png

Ha ha, it’s the old psychopath test used by FBI profilers when chasing serial killers.  I captured this frame from a brilliant documentary about the modern corporation which I recommend to everybody.   You can see the entire movie for free here.   The filmmakers point out that corporate persons routinely display every trait on this psychopath list.   In fairness to corporate persons, they have only one duty, to increase profits, the Supreme Court said that in the 1940s and it’s the law in this land.  There are people, some of the best people, the best, like Trump, who also fit this definition of corporate personhood.

Now, I was never a big fan of “The Boss,” though he’s a hugely popular musician and, apparently, a very smart and sensitive man who has taken progressive political stands over the years.   I never liked that he was called “The Boss”, for one thing.  I can’t think of a boss I ever met who wasn’t something of an asshole.   Then there’s the white soul man routine he does sometimes when he sings.   I was relieved to hear him at least acknowledge his great love for Sam Cooke, but still.   His voice, a bit macho and Jim Morrison-like for me.  His guitar playing and songwriting are both top notch, but I was never a big fan.  For one thing, I’m not from New Jersey, for another, and odd for me to say, I rarely register the lyrics of songs, no matter how evocative or poetic.

The Boss has made millions and millions of dollars and I do not begrudge him a dime of it.  Good for him.  I was happy that he was not mentioned in the Paradise Papers or the Panama Papers, those leaked reports of all the rich people who legally hide their fortunes in shady off-shore entities that allow them to avoid paying tax, in a fully legal, if also highly shameful and secretive, manner.  It would have made the news if The Boss had his money stashed tax-free on some island paradise like the rest of the fucking richest of the rich.  Bono, for fuck’s sake.  Hey, Bono… fuck that puto.

My few wealthyish friends (most still likely victims of the “Alternative Minimum Tax”[1] under the new law) are not thrilled by this massive giveaway to the already rich that a gang of determined partisan reptiles gang-banged through the narrowest of majorities.  “We drive on the roads, call the fire department when our house is burning, call the cops when there’s violence, send our kids to school, like electricity delivered to our homes, and water, and the toilets to flush and the sewage be treated, we like emergency health care for everyone, and homeless shelters and programs that feed American kids growing up in poverty, all the rest of the comforts of a civilized society that Libertarians, staunch defenders of freedom like Charles and David Koch, pretend have nothing to do with government or the tax coffers,” say my friends who have money.  “What the fuck is wrong with rich people?”

I have an old friend who has always worked very hard.   He makes a very comfortable living yet he has the same strong social conscience he always did.  I suspect this would be true if he had ten times what he has now, or a hundred times.  Not everyone who has a lot of money is as despicable about it as the many cynics who voted for an ignorant billionaire who wants to be dictator, the boss of everyone, with their collective “fuck you” to anyone not already wealthy, just so they could become a little bit richer.

He told me there are many of our fellow Jews, wealthy ones, living in the Pale of Settlement not far from Mar-a-Largo, who voted for Trump strictly because they wanted the tax break.  Rational, if also despicable, we agreed.  Check this out– they apparently hate Trump now.  Yeah, a little less now that they got their cash from him, but they still hate him.  Why?  He comes to his Florida White House often, and every time he does, there are massive traffic jams on their affluent roads.  Fuck those Jew putos, seriously.   

Steve Bannon, a person who needs no introduction, spoke before the Zionist Organization of America during their annual awards dinner recently.  I sent my friend the photo of Bannon sitting under a big Mogen Dovid with the subject: all a Jew can say is “oy, yoy, yoy.”   My friend wrote back:  and then– vomit. 

Dig it.

 

[1]   Each year a taxpayer must calculate and then pay the greater of an alternative minimum tax (AMT) or regular tax.[2]

This tax does not apply to the truly wealthy, nor has the income limit to trigger it been adjusted in the decades since it was enacted in 1970.