"Keep in mind: I'm rich, I already have health insurance, and I don't care about other people."

Ah, Stephen Colbert. God bless his honesty. Check out his interview about health care reform. On the same episode watch the interview with Corey Booker, who is one of the stars of a Bravo documentary, Brick City, about Newark, the city of which he is the mayor. While you're at Colbert Nation, hear the new Flaming Lips album streaming live, and see them perform. After that, watch the interview with Wayne Coyne, the singer, in which Colbert accuses him of trying to "expand his mind" through the band's music. How dare they.


"Cut the president some slack," requests Obama. And though I completely agree about Kanye West--I hope he gets crabs--it's never a good sign when someone refers to themselves in the third person... this bloggist would never do that.

I was more afraid he was going to start swatting heads, "c'mon guys..." remember the last pest he dealt with in an interview.

Last week: 2752

It was at least a bracket on which to construct memory and, more so, a place of departure—perhaps the wrong way, like an elbow bent backwards. It became context: a way to delineate and map New York’s, and my, existence.

It’s my A.D. she said. Yeah, everything is before or after. After is when it all started to go bad.

Did you loose someone? No, luckily. Not that day, but soon enough. At the time, I thought I could have lost anyone, everyone. Or I was lost, and others were mourning the loss. For some, close enough to the epicenter, all those in the falls were our loss, and, too, something that had been collectively all of ours before was now lost with them. Physical proximity can in part explain this discarnate connection between strangers, those remained and those gone; the ripple effect that dissipates as it moves outward from point of origin.

For weeks the smoke, ill-defined, crawled slowly out of lower Manhattan; crossing the East River onto Brooklyn, hanging in the sky over apartment buildings, like mine. Enmeshed with the afternoon sun of that clear day, the amalgam of the smoke and ash of paper and plane and body went on to hue the sunset a beautiful, if unnatural, charcoal-red blood orange.




This was from the Writer’s Almanac last week.

D.H. Lawrence: 'Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.'

It was on this day in 2001 that two hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City.

The first rule of Health Care Reform is you don't talk about Health Care Reform. (In honor of Teddy-bear Kennedy, R.I.P.)

The second rule of Health Care Reform is you DON'T TALK ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM!

No, I still will not talk about health care. But below is a surprisingly, from The Nation anyway, funny piece we all might enjoy in the current tumult.
















Your Questions About Health Care Reform Answered

by Christopher Hayes on 08/11/2009

Ok, so there's been a lot of misinformation about proposals to reform the health insurance industry and provide (near) universal coverage. Understandable! It's complicated stuff. Herewith, I'll try to answer some questions

1) Is it true that all of the bills currently proposed would end the practice of "rescission," whereby health insurance providers refuse to treat customers who've paid their premiums simply because they've become ill?

No! That's a common misunderstanding. Actually, all of the bills would ban incisions, that is, they would legally bar surgeons from performing surgery until a panel of twelve gay illegal immigrant government bureaucrats unanimously signed off on the procedure.

2) Is it true that health care reform would ban insurers from refusing to insure people because of pre-existing conditions?

Wrong again. To get rid of health inequality, the bills actually mandate that every American be given a pre-existing condition. A National Illness Commission, with academics appointed from Harvard, Reed College and Berkeley, will evaluate each citizen, and based on their demographic profile, choose their malady. Each disease or syndrome is scored on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most severe. White christian men will receive pre-existing conditions of 8 or higher. Black people, "wise latinas," and ACORN members will be exempted.

3) I heard the proposals currently under consideration provide seniors with option of free counseling sessions under Medicare, where they can discuss a living will and end-of-life care.

That's a huge misconception. The bills require all senior citizens (who are non union members) be euthanized on their 70th birthday. Under section 278(c)ii all last rites will be performed by Jeremiah Wright using a Q'uran.

4) I've heard the bills being proposed would require insurers to provide preventative care, like mammograms, free of charge.

No, but all lactating mothers will be forced to breast-feed poor children.

5) Will the current bills plug the "donut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug benefit so seniors don't have to pay exorbitant out of pocket expenses for their medication?

Absolutely not. The legislation will ban donuts.

Plenty of room at the Hotel...

Bed-Stuy, early last week.

I woke up depressed. Or rather I got depressed quickly. First, I hear/read that the past few days I’ve been without TV or internet I’d missed the abdication of the public option by the Obama Administration from health care reform. I’ll be honest, I can’t say the public option is the salve needed to start the process of good health care reform, but I haven’t heard compelling arguments against it either (meaning I’ve heard more for it).

Then, another Obama-related tidbit: 57% of Americans don’t think the stimulus has made any positive difference. The help shoring up state budget deficits across the country alone has softened the blow. With most of us living in these biggest, most populated states, like NY and CA, as you’ll see below, it would seem the statistic is backward. But no, just fucked up priorities.

Can’t help the government because the government shouldn’t help us, because government is bad, because it’s un-American. Un-American? Really? You might want to wipe that subsidized corn syrup off your mouth before you speak. Or at least pull up your pants after you’re done fucking the economy from Wall Street, while, between de-regulation and tax cuts of the past thirty years, the wealth you’ve accumulated at the expense of everyone else is still intact.

But actually these two groups can’t compromise the entire 57%. Besides a few other specific groups, the rest are working-class poor (mostly white, non-urban and Christian) who don’t know anything more than the mantras of God and Country they were taught in elementary school, now echoed in the right-wing talk radio and tabloid cable-TV “news” and, lest we forget, Hollywood-ified American history.

To meet a critique of the last mentioned medium more than halfway, I’ll use a rare example of good historic filmmaking I’ve seen recently. Though it might be unfair to call HBO Hollywood, they’re close cousins, the John Adams bio-drama was a fair representation of some of the intellectual and philosophical strains surrounding the Revolution, the founding documents and early administrations. Still, even just an introductory knowledge of the documents and the histories of the time are needed for the dialogue to be anything more than mere platitudes.

I don’t claim expertise, but I’ve at least read most the writings and histories of the events of the era. So, do me a favor, don’t tell me what an American is, and I won’t tell you either. Tell me something about health care reform, instead of shouting at me and then telling me it’s your American right to do so. Nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers does it mention being an asshole. But then again, its better to be shouted by a mob than to be tarred and feathered by one, as was shown in the Adams series. Wow, so I guess we really are making progress! Adams, Jefferson, and the boys would be proud. Now I feel better too.


Actually, the real reason I’m in a better mood is that a piece in The New Yorker (with the bonus of it coming a few days earlier than normal, which is later than it should be, normally, which is today) about the Golden State that just happened to align with a piece I’d started earlier this summer about California, it’s budget, drug law reformation, the right-wing, etc.—you’ll see below.

So, apparently, now that the state has now been deemed “ungovernable” (what the once said of NYC; that is, before Giuliani; though, that is a myth) a revolution is a brewing. As opposed to the comparably conservative notion I talk about below—pot legalization as a revenue generator—these guys are ready to trash the whole government. I love it! These MF’s are crazy.

I’ll say it now, if this happens I’m moving to California; if not to be a full on citizen, than just to watch it all go down. I was already thinking of moving there anyway if they did, or were about to, legalize pot. And though, yes, I like pot, this has more to do with the revolutionary nature of legalization and its implications for drug policy nationwide, worldwide.

But, damn, they’re talking about an actual revolution—not just a green one. The beauty is that, so far, it has wide ranging support across the political spectrum in the state. I always liked the phrase, if everyone agrees but none are happy, then it’s probably fair. I’ll add the corollary, even though it’s the inverse of the usual formulation, that, in this case, if everyone agrees it’s probably a good idea. Even The Economist is overturning this old platitude, but instead for the "cash-for-clunkers."

After all, any scheme that so many politicians agree on is almost bound to be a clunker itself. Yet given the difficult economic circumstances facing the world, the policy looks like a nice little runner.


California, one of the wealthiest places on the earth, with a multi-millionaire governor and billions in debt, had to send IOU’s to residents for their tax returns this year after the state’s inability to pass a new budget.

No question the system is broken," said liberal Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who recently decided not to run for governor next year and whose city is grappling with a $530 million deficit. "It's a state on the brink, families falling through the cracks with IOUs as a safety net. It's mind-boggling to me how little controversy there is over the IOUs."

Then Schwarzenegger held a large knife in a television address about the budget and it finally passed. Unsurprisingly, the balancing came by cutting services not increasing taxes. What got cut? The usual: schools, the elderly, state workers.

There are no new taxes. But hammer blows hit the poor, the elderly, the infirm and students and will keep them staggering for years.

Because California is one of only three states that require a two-thirds majority to approve a budget or even a tax increase, the small GOP minority had just enough votes to block passage. And entrenched gerrymandering makes their seats invulnerable, allowing them to take the most extreme positions. "For me it has been heartbreaking," said Democratic Assemblyman Kevin de Léon, one of ten conferees on the budget. "Back in February we came up with a good budget but with those two minor taxes--on oil and tobacco. That money would have gone right into education. But because of the two-thirds rule, and even though a majority wants it, we get handcuffed by a small group."

Over the past three decades, California has tripled the number of prisons it operates, has more than quintupled its prison population and has gone from spending $5 on higher education for every dollar it spent on corrections to a virtual dead-heat in spending.

Perhaps, in the next logical step away from the War on Drugs, after legalizing “medical” marijuana (was in LA recently and saw pot stores advertising along with prescription writing doctors in local papers), the state will realize the cash crop they’re sitting on, and legalize pot completely.

Here are some excerpts from two great articles from The Nation. Most quotes above are from a more recent piece about the "ungovernable" state. The pieces below give a more than decent overview of the past and present failures of the War on Drugs, both nationally and in California.

For Betty Yee, chair of California's Board of Equalization--the office responsible for collecting sales tax in the Golden State--the changes, especially around drug-law enforcement, can't come soon enough. …Specifically, she has become an outspoken advocate for legalizing pot for residents older than 21… Yee wants to levy fees on business owners applying for marijuana licenses, impose an excise tax on sellers and charge buyers a sales tax. Do it properly, and the state could reap about $1.3 billion a year, she has estimated. "Marijuana is so easily available. Why not regulate it like alcohol and tobacco?" she says, and gain additional tax revenue into the bargain?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger… announced that the state should at least consider the merits of pot legalization. He wasn't advocating it, he was careful to stress, but he did think the time was ripe to debate the issue.

Huh, what?!? Did say debate? Well, I’m sorry but that just sounds waaayyyyy too reasonable to me—I smell a rat!

"The budget is so bad now, the populism of the issue is beginning to work here in the Legislature," Ammiano says. [Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a former San Francisco city councilman, is pushing just such a bill in the State Legislature.] "But there's a lot of policy wonks" supporting it. "There's very conservative support from the oddest sources and locations." The GOP chair in the state, as well as Tom Campbell, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, have indicated their support for his bill, Ammiano declares. "When it starts to cost more money than it's worth even in the eyes of the pooh-bahs, then you can accomplish something."

Oh, right: the fiscal conservatives. Normally used to justify uninhibited financial gain, advance moral (read: crazy-Christian) agendas, or service Congressional rapacity; the more logical, fiscally responsible conservatism is coming to the surface. In large part, this is what is fracturing the Republican Party—to their credit, their benefit and ours.

The Right is finally waking up to the costs, monetary and philosophical, incurred after years of indulging their base: generally, white southern (east and west) and middle states who have co-opted conservatism to fit their xenophobic and Christian-based ideals; e.g., the abortion/execution paradox—love that one. Only, this definition of constituency is incomplete, leaving out generally more affluent whites of the northern part of the country and in urban centers.

These are libertarian folk who believe in states rights over federalism and the right to bear arms as a means of defense from an authoritarian government. Over time, this focus on civil liberties by the founders and the traditional brand of conservatism it spawned, including both fiscal and religious freedom, were split; the former joined the opposite of the latter: the desire to keep the government’s hand out of our pockets, taxation, was melded with the seemingly contradictory want to dictate people’s behavior morally, religiously.

This conservative-Christian alliance is something that’s always stuck in my craw (and, yes, I do have a craw). Conservatism shouldn’t have shit to do religion. If anything, the Right should be the most irreligious—the separation of church and state, anyone? Anyone? Buhller? Buhller? Yet, I can’t remember when the two haven’t been fused. Truly, this is puzzling.

One reason I can think of, according to Occam, would be that neither faction—the fiscally responsible (more in theory than practice, of late, seemingly only when it fits their politics—looked at the Iraq tab lately?) conservatives and the anti-poor (irony alert: most of them are working-class at best; What’s the Matter with Kansas explores this phenomenon), xenophobic bible-thumpers—have ever had even close to enough support individually to combat the wave post-WWII liberalism. But that’s just crazy, right?

Tough-on-crime rhetoric, and the policies and institutions that grow from it, emerged from Nixon's Silent Majority tactics, from his recasting of politics as a series of debates around "values" rather than bread-and-butter issues.

Oh, right. So maybe the usurpation of conservatism by the religious right mentioned above has it backwards, or at least only half right. Perhaps the traditional conservatives enveloped the Southerners, realizing that increasingly after WWII the numbers weren’t on their side. Between the radicalism and civil rights of the 60’s and affirmative action and de-industrialization of the 70’s, this country’s white-patriarchal tradition was existentially threatened—or so they thought.

In fact, recent Zogby polling commissioned by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency suggests that close to eight in ten Americans favor alternatives to incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenders. Another Zogby poll, from last fall, found that just more than three-quarters of Americans felt the "war on drugs" was a failure. The sea change in public opinion holds in California too. In late March the Los Angeles Times ran a column asking readers their opinion on marijuana legalization. So far 4,927 people have replied, and 94 percent of them favor legalization. A Field Poll in April found that 56 percent of Californians favor legalizing and taxing pot.

Checkmate. You guys loose—the drug thing anyway.

I will not talk about health care, I will not talk about health care, I will not...

The quotes below are from Media Matters, (yes, again) about the energy/cap-and-trade bill that passed a little while back. And though I’ve become aware that the main guy there at MM is of a somewhat dubious character, I still trust the quotes—I mean, if it’s easy enough to verify, why would they lie? That’s why I’ve like: though it’s no secret what side they’re on, they usually let the media’s stupidity speak for itself.

On Fox News, actor and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein described the president's plan as "the nerdy kids in high school who didn't have cars or had to take the bus to school or mothers had to drive them to school, they're taking revenge on the cool kids who had the cool cars."






Wait, Ben Stein? Isn’t he the branded-stereotype nerd of them all, since like the 80’s and Ferris Buhler’s Day Off? You know: Bueller, Bueller… Bueller?









Over on the Fox Business Network, Neil Cavuto likened the administration's plan to a fictional mob boss, saying, "It is not the American way, but it may be the Tony Soprano way."


Funny, I thought the Sopranos was based in New Jersey—god, if that’s Sicily, it has really let itself go. Kidding, I love Jersey. And though some might not like to be reminded of it, we can’t say that Tony Soprano isn’t as American as certain flavors of pies or sports games. Besides, what other country would a Don go to a shrink? Okay, perhaps Germany.

But, really, this is just another example of the American Dilemma—as in, there is no dilemma when there should be. We like to be proud of certain behavior and claim it as American, but we don’t own up to the stuff we deem bad; this goes for domestic and foreign policy. Bullshit, it’s all American. No, criminal enterprise is not uniquely American, but our brand is. One that is quite comfortable in the political and business worlds, among other things. Contradiction is okay; we can be good and bad, and not become schizophrenic.

Here’s another.

But it was MSNBC's Mike Barnicle who best illustrated what's wrong with the overwhelming majority of current economic punditry. On Wednesday, he asked his Morning Joe co-hosts incredulously, "What are they doing with the [stimulus] money?" Then on Thursday, he reflected on the detrimental nature of America's "amazingly impatient culture" where people can't stop asking, "Where's the money?" Simply put, this kind of schizophrenic analysis is still overwhelming logical thought, much to the detriment of the viewing public.

The Writer's Almanac, a daily antedote to existential crisis

I wrote recently about Hemingway. Below is a story about the author, summed up well by Garrison Keller's The Writer's Almanac, I'd been meaning to share. Added are a few other excerpts.


The Writer's Almanac for July 21, 2009

Hemingway said, 'The writer's job is to tell the truth.' In A Moveable Feast, he wrote: 'I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, `Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.'

There's a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to create a six-word story, and he said, 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' Inspired by this, an online magazine invited readers to submit their own six-word memoirs, a collection of which was published by Harper Collins in 2008 as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Six-word memoirs include: 'All I ever wanted was more' and 'Moments of transcendence, intervals of yearning' and 'They called. I answered. Wrong number.'


Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head

"Advice to Young Poets" by Martín Espada, from The Republic of Poetry. (c) W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.


Here's part of another recent day's Almanac, from July 13, 2009

Hislop once said: 'Satire is the bringing to ridicule of vice, folly, and humbug. All the negatives imply a set of positives. Certainly in this country, you only go round saying, 'that's wrong, that's corrupt' if you have some feeling that it should be better than that. People say, 'You satirists attack everything.' Well, we don't, actually. That's the whole point.'


Money is such a treat.
It takes up so little space.
It takes no more ink
for the bank to print $9,998
than to print $1,001.
It flows, electronically;
it does not gather dust.
Like water, it (dis)solves everything.
Oceanic, it is yet as lucid
as a mountain pool; the depositor
can see clear to the sandy bottom.
It is ubiquitous and under pressure, yet
pennies don't drip from faucets.
Money is so tidy, so neat.
It is freedom in action: when you
give a twenty-buck bill to the cabbie,
you don't tell him how to spend it.
He can blow it on coke,
for all you care. All you care
about is your change. No wonder
the ex-Communists are dizzy. In
the old Soviet Union
there was nothing to buy,
nothing to spend. It was freedom
of a kind, but not our kind. We need
money, the dull electric thrill
when the automatic teller spits out
the disposable receipt.

"Money" by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Farewell, Sweet Ditz

Palin’s out! Though I will miss her press conferences (see below)—more like a microphone and a few parkas, but hey.

"Let me state my reasons in plain English without any sports analogies: I'm resigning because I feel I can be a more effective leader operating from the sidelines. I'm no bench warmer," she added.

The above is from Robert Lanham, or FreeWilliamsburg fame, writing for the The Huffington Post.

Here’s her last day in office spent handing out hot-dogs. See? You just can’t makeup gems like that.

Still, it’s some of the best news in a while. I don’t think (hope to hell not) she’s leaving to parley into something else political. She’s kind of leaving her state hanging, even most. How is that helpful, as she puts it? Of course she blames the “media” for making her job impossible—like she didn’t give them more than enough ammo. Republicans aren’t being supportive. (Even they can smell blood in the water, perhaps. Scandal anyone? I think (hope) she’s leaving abruptly due to some close to being found out dirty secret. I say let her keep it, as long as she agrees to stay out of politics and the lower 49.




I haven’t read the whole thing, but this is supposed to be the complete Palin in one place.

Here’s another example of her douche-y-ness, from a little ways back.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced last month that she would reject nearly half of the $930 million Alaska was to receive from the stimulus package on education, health care, and labor. But after calling the stimulus "an unsustainable, debt-ridden package of funds," Palin has now decided to accept the vast majority of the package…

Wait, one more douche-bag Republican who decided to do a little posturing before caving in on the stimulus. Don’t they think the flip-flop would cancel-out any bonus points from standing up to Obama?

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) also recently backed down from his standoff with the White House over his desire to reject stimulus funding.

Yes, that Mark Sanford. This was before the “went hiking the Appalachians” scandal. Douche.

What a Dick & Bogart's North Korean Blowout

I recently watched the infamous Nixon interview (Is it redundant to call something Nixon infamous?). Not the movie of the play based on the interview, but the original.

There’s no way Nixon could be a politician now. His speech, mannerisms, and sweaty odd-looking face would be enough to make people not vote for him—besides the crap that comes out of his mouth, not limited to the stuff Hitchens writes below.

I’ve heard it plenty before that even in his first loss to Kennedy in ‘60 was due to the discrepancy in their TV images, that Jack knew how to work it and Dick didn’t. But supposedly that must have been countered by the time he won two in a row. Whatever coaching they did, wouldn’t be enough today. The sweating thing especially: in old movies I’ve seen, there are these incredibly sweaty guys, sometimes the main character—think Carl Malden or Gene Hackman. Unless they’re in the jungle or playing sports (or having sex) stars don’t sweat, not naturally and thus uncontrolled. But just that face, too. That shit is old school.

---

Hitchens on Richard Nixon from his column at Slate.com:

The impressive thing is that even in the smallest details, the obsessive nastiness and criminality of the bigger picture is further delineated. The foulness of Nixon's mind was not "compartmentalized" between one issue and another. For example, like most "family values" Republicans, he was distressed by the Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade. But, like almost anybody, he could imagine an exception where abortion might be excusable or even desirable. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." The association of ideas between the first mental picture and the second one is so clear as to be—if it were not so hideous—pathetically laughable in an individual, and really quite alarming in a president of the United States.

As so often, his remarks about black Americans are crude and often sexual, while his innuendoes about his Jewish fellow citizens are more sinister. And, as ever, the worst interludes of anti-Semitism occur when Nixon is chatting to his friend Billy Graham. This time—February 1973—the two cronies are discussing Jewish opposition to the evangelical Campus Crusade movement. What the Jews don't seem to get, observes Nixon, is that they bring dislike on themselves. Why, just look at the record—disliked in Spain, disliked even in Germany. It could be America next. "What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up." To this aperçu (incidentally suggesting that anti-Semitism "in this country" is not located all that "deep down," since it's being vented in the Oval Office), he adds, "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

---

Here's my impression and paraphrasing of Hitchens at a talk/interview he gave recently. I found the video at this pretty cool site: FORA.tv (thanks Allan).

(I know this poster is Chinese, but as close as I can get. Relax.)

Attempting, what he thinks an impossible task, to describe what life is like inside contemporary North Korea, Christopher Hitchens, after already likening the nation to that of George Orwell’s 1984, draws one contrast. While there is no mention of religion in the book, the state having taken the place of all things, the purported irreligious communistic country, North Korea, is, rather, similar to a particular western faith: Christianity. The president, the country’s founder, and his son, the current leader of the commi-esque party and the military, not president, are fused into one identity. Only, the president has been dead fifteen years. Hitchens quips, “It’s only one short of a trinity.”

Apparently, he's almost here. Won't that be a lot of fun. Actually, though, I feel better now that I know, like most heirs apparent of even anti-western countries, he was educated in liberal European schools. Sure, know your enemy. But now matter how careful and restrictive, they will encounter more people and things that counter the homegrown isolationist tendency.



Just look at what Europe did to Bogey.

Recess

Fuck it, I’m gonna open this thing up. I was reminded that if you’re going to bother to say it, then you might as well shout it. Shout it out loud. Okay, Kiss was the original, but I heard it said in relation to writing, recently—and it wasn't about coming out, either (although I suppose it would encompass that, too, but alas not here). And since I like to consider my self a poly-aesthete, then I’ll put my output where my mouth is—er, make that creativity, or something, where my mouth is.

Yeah, so, in this spirit, here’s a short story I wrote recently about a little boy who can’t sleep.

Recess

Ben’s tired, but not his brain. Head hums like the big, old computers at school, used only when newer, better ones weren’t working; the pushing, pulling spin of warm air through ancient-dust caked vents: cobwebbed dartboards forgotten in basements. Inside closed eyes glare TV screens. Eyes opened again. Better just to look into the dark. Spastic legs kick-off sheets, soon wrapped again, as Egyptian mummies. Ben saw a museum exhibit of a pharaoh in his tomb, hidden deep in a pyramid, surrounded by a lot of stuff. Food, water and even pets were buried in the tomb with the pharaoh. Why would he need these things when he’s dead? All is uncomfortable and nothing seems to work right.

Earlier, Ben escaped from recess. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go outside with the rest of the kids. It was just—well, his stomach hurt. He hadn’t felt like eating breakfast or much lunch. What he was able to shove down was barely warm and unrecognizable. Just before the end of lunch, he went to the bathroom. When he was done, instead of making a left and going back to the cafeteria, he took a right, and walked towards the double-doors at the end of the hall—flat, cold black cheeks below a pair of thin glass eyes crisscrossed with wire, each a lower eyelid: sets of curved, hanging arms holding dull metal bars. Above the doorway a light-box never lit read “Emergency Exit Only, Alarm Will Sound.” Ben had never heard it go off before. He opened one of the doors, waited a couple of seconds, and walked out onto the loading dock behind the cafeteria. Ben could hear the school janitor talking on the other side of the big garbage cans.

Ben likes the janitor. He has a small hoop earring in each ear, a jerry-curl and cool tattoos. The janitor, or School Superintendent, like it’s painted on the parking space filled by his sparkly-blue van, is the coolest adult at school. He gets to wear a uniform with his name on it: “Mean” Joe Green. That’s what all the kids call him, and, just like the jolly-green giant, he towers over them.

The janitor was talking to one of the lunch-ladies about things Ben was used to hearing grownups talk about: their jobs, their kids, and money. But he was cussing, too, which Ben wasn’t used to hearing from adults, at least not in real life—they cussed all the time on cable. “Mean” Joe was talking about a “big mess” that “poor folk” had to “clean up.” What big mess? Was the janitor poor? Ben heard him say Wall Street. Wasn’t that where his dad works? Recently, Ben’s dad had been picking him up from school, something his mom had usually done. He thought he heard the lunch-lady say, “stalks.” Like beanstalks? Hopefully they were having beans for lunch tomorrow. No, she said “stocks,” like socks. Ben didn’t know what stocks were, but they sounded familiar too. His heart beat loudly in his ears. The janitor wasn’t being nice at all. Sick and hungry at the same time, his stomach still hurt. Making sure the door didn’t slam shut behind him, Ben went back inside. He ran down the hallway towards the playground, the blacktop, and recess.

A week late, but who's counting?

July 4th 2009. Louis Armstrong on the radio. It’s his birthday too.

Reading The Great Gatsby, again. Jonathan Franzen on NPR says he revisits the book every year or two. I’ve always leaned toward This Side of Paradise, though Gatsby is possibly, as the people on the radio had been proposing, the American Novel. More true lately, with the rise and fall of big things. The stock market, gangsters, bond-traders, “self-made” people, indulgence, arrogance, and tragedy shared, or not.

A good story tendrilled to today, Gatsby props up American myths to stand or fall against the winds of human frailty and liability. The land of opportunity; to do what? Somewhere to re-invent yourself, start over. That’s kind of what Agniezska, my friend, recently-citizened, whose validity I gladly vouched for to the proper authorities, said. Besides the, perhaps, more common conflation of “opportunity” and money-making, she says, to leave all you’ve known and what’s been expected of you can too be a compelling a reason to come to America.

I’ve decided to stay put today. I’m staying on the block. Not as much action as I would expect, but it’s still early. 1:52 pm.

A Louis classic is playing, a slower romantic one. He’s singing something about giving him your lips. “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” that’s the Armstrong title.

On the corner of Gates and Marcy, the next cross street up from here at Monroe, stands the Louis Armstrong Public Houses. I wonder if anyone over there is listening to this sweet, indulgent daylong-plus retrospective of the erstwhile jazzman. It’s one of the least attractive, though they’re still common, places I’ve seen in Bed-Stuy; at least that’s within spitting distance of my place and sometimes crossed in normal route.

Firecrackers and some small fireworks have been going off for days. Today there are more, gladly. Just a bit rebellion, and not just for the metaphor of artillery, fireworks that fit well with the underlying ethos of the day: don’t tell us what to do. A silly law easily broken, a way to, more than just let off work-a-day-steam by indulging in ritual, convenient and relatively safe. We need this. For America, born of rebellious teenage-logic—like, the battle of attrition—law breaking for the sake of it, anti-authoritarianism just because, is part of its creation myth.

Triangulated by a milk-mouthed jazz radio voice, car stereos throbbing whoomps, and the tinny jangle of tiny speakers in windows turned street-ward, I woke up from a nap. Then a new theme is introduced: the ice cream man’s Scottish-jig-something-or-other-ditty playing on and on, and forever; just beneath, an aftertaste of subtle but substantial lawnmower-roar of the truck’s refrigeration.

Black Power-fists exchanged for Barack Obama portraiture on t-shirts, the now iconic image made by a white man of a man half-white. Beneath the shirt still angry, but anger more stilled, more patient and, perhaps, more optimistic; perhaps there’s more reason to be.

Fountains of silver and orange fill front steps of brownstones, whistle-crack. Night has come. Whistle-boom. The sun has gone. Whistle-crackle-fizzle. Darkness only broken up occasionally by—crash, like metal doors thrown off rooftops onto sidewalks below.

Thunder? Or the low rumble of far dark sky disturbed. Pop, pop: go the smaller firecrackers kids get to set off.

Momentary anarchy. Insurgent ritual. Rebellion distilled.


Yes, that's an Hassidic cop.

Re-edit of Spring, you bastard

As opposed to fakin' the funk, and just going back to edit or update the previous post, I thought I'd include you in the "creative" process. So, here is my new (final) version of this poem. Happy 4th of July.

Spring, you bastard:
Give it up already.
Calendar summer has nearly begun,
and you're still here.
Cool and blustery,
no hint of humidity--
though we will curse it when there is.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Like so much else,
we like you when you're gone,
want you when you're
fleeting,
retreating.
The way
New Yorkers want
nothing more than to escape—
till we do, then can't wait
to return to
your sweltering
embrace,
your suffocating
comfort,
your painful
familiarity.

For years now,
you've had barely a week,
sliding from winter to summer
graceless as the city itself.
So maybe you're not a bastard,
born of slovenly winter
and wandering summer.
Maybe, finally, like a
phoenix born from the ashes of fall,
summer grants winter custodial rights,
and brief spring, you
come for
court ordered visitation.



Interestingly similar shape as the graph I posted with the original version of the poem, showing that more people now believe global warming is not man made. Seems at odds with this graph above in some way. Hm.

The Fonzi Scale

Perhaps a reaction to my economics schooling, I’ve had the habit lately of thinking about things quantitatively. Recently, when two friends—yes, still have a few—were talking about the pot consumption; e.g., how much they need, want, can afford, and my brain started graphing consumer demand curves, morphing with the discussion.

So, from this inclination, I give you the Fozi Scale. Pretty much a rip—off of the +/- point system that The City Paper’s of D.C. and Philadelphia use to score how well (or not) their cities are doing, Newsweek’s up, down, and horizontal arrows.

Please forgive the more than usual reliance on The Economist, my inputs have narrowed lately. I’ll try to do better.

Thumbs Up:

--India’s government announced that it wanted to withdraw troops from the inhabited areas it controls in the divided region of Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of troops are stationed in Kashmir, which has suffered two decades of insurgency. –The Economist

--Peru’s government said it would repeal two decrees facilitating investment in the Amazon jungle, after two months of protests in which 24 police and perhaps 30 Indians died. Yehude Simon, the prime minister, said he would resign once calm was restored. –The Economist

--A judge allowed a civil lawsuit to proceed against John Yoo, an official in the Bush administration who helped form policy on the treatment of suspected terrorist detainees. José Padilla, an American citizen who has been sentenced on terror conspiracy charges, is suing Mr Yoo for $1 and for an admission that his incarceration as an enemy combatant was unconstitutional. –The Economist

--Russia’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial of three men acquitted of being accomplices in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading journalist whom Vladimir Putin described as a “marginal” figure. None of the men are accused of the actual killing. –The Economist

--Al Franken (yes, from SNL) finally declared Minnesota’s newest Senator by the State Supreme Court. Democrats now have a filibuster-free majority of 60 in the Senate. Kinda.

--Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, caused a stir when he disappeared for five days. His staff said he had gone hiking in the Appalachians. In fact, Mr Sanford had been in Argentina. On his return he admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman there. –The Economist

It’s just really funny: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR show, has coined the phrase “gone hiking in the Appalachians,” meaning “I’m leaving town unannounced to shack up with my infidelity.”


Thumbs Down:

--In Northern Ireland more than 100 Romanians, mostly Roma (gypsies), fled their homes in south Belfast after a spate of racist attacks. The deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, called the attacks a “totally shameful episode”. –The Economist


Splitting the Difference:

--Iran’s Revolution-revolution; crazy good, crazy scary.

But: Neda Agha-Soltan—the beautiful woman shot and killed in front of her father, completely caught on video, in the aftermath of Iran’s presumably fraudulent presidential election. If you want to cry while wanting to throw up, you can catch it on YouTube. It’s really haunting me.


--Mr Obama signed an order that extends benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees.

But: Health insurance is not included, provoking more criticism from gay groups that the president is not fulfilling his promises to them. –The Economist

--“Public Option” part of American universal health-care; to soon to tell if either it’s any good or if it will fly. From what I’ve heard, though, it still seems tied to work or pay-roll taxes: what about unemployed?

But: Single payer health-care option for health-care reform is off the table, according to the administration.