All Worded Up

I can read readin' and I can read writin' but I can't read writin' that's written rather rotten.
– Burt Sugar

I had a cousin who was an avid science fiction buff, back in that mythical time before George Lucas gifted us with the "Star Wars" culture, and true sci-fi addicts found their main fix not at the movies, but in the nebulous universe of trade paperbacks.

His pulp library covered a whole wall in his home – a fortress barricade of those 4"x6" tomes – Asimov and Clarke and Pohl, and hundreds of lesser-known authors of that past era. You find them now in used book stores. Open one and glide your fingers across the coarse, woody surface of those yellowing pages, turning to dust in the 21st century sunlight. Their time will not pass again.

The feeling from that wall of dog-earred volumes, was that a considerable chunk of someone's life had been spent reading. That Richard Matheson wasn't just pecking away on that soon-obsolete typewriter just to see his own words in a stylish font – much like thousands of bloggers (guilty as charged) do in this cyber-age of ours.

When I stroll through Borders – the French brothel of major bookstore chains – the paperbacks just don't give me any "feeling." The air I find in modern booksellers, is that the product gives off a foreboding pheromone.

When I browse through a book anymore, I sense that writers don't write for readers – they write to placate themselves, to secure some kind of symbolic ownership of a topic – to establish a documented expertise, that they can claim later on for a speaking fee.

Yeah, maybe I'd do it too, but not always.

A time ago I was approached by an aspiring author, to create illustrations for his still unpublished book. His idea was that my illustrations would help the book "turn the corner" in the hunt for a publishing deal. I wondered, and I think I actually asked him politely, that if the text was lacking, how would drawings based on those inadequate words improve them?

The more I over-analyzed it, the more it seemed like a whirling dervish of negativity. The guy was basically, indirectly, admitting his work is substandard, in the assumtion that the readers to whom he intends to peddle his underbaked drivel are gullible simps who'll never question its alleged integrity – if it's illustrated. He's hoping they'll see the pretty pictures, and think they've actually read something. In short, he didn't write a book to be read – he wrote a book to be bought.

He wasn't after a reputation as an author, good or bad. He wanted his fifteen minutes of fame on the talkshow circuit. And of course, lots and lots of money – enough to keep him from having to get a real job, until his next bigass idea for another ripoff.

Must be nice work if you can get it.

Unfortunately today's bookstores are ripe with these "authors" who aren't necessarily sating any cosmic urge to write and be read, but who've wrangled a book deal in a quest to finance a third home and a bigger SUV.

And in that bald pursuit of wealth, they're perfectly willing to undermine your perceptions (much like certain politicians I could name), and even empty the pockets of certain readers with disturbed, under-researched content. "The Secret," anyone?

As for the fans of this pabulum, the same people who gobble up these lukewarm distillations would probably be outraged if they discovered their cigs and lattés were somehow as deluded. "The Shack" ought to have a half-moon carved in the door – what you'll find inside amounts to as much.

Maybe it's always been that way, and I am vainly clutching the naiveté of my youth out of spite.

Sure, I think Writers have the right to make a living from their words, if their words are worthy of that reward.

But like the legal definition of abuse, judgment hinges on effect, not intent. That's why a hardbound book called "Bad Things" with only 50 pages, and a single incomplete sentence – in large type – per page (#5. Head lice.), can ask a $20 cover price, and make a million dollars for some non-writer.

The talent is in coddling network connections, rather than words on a page. I often refer to these books as "the big junkpile."

Also appropriate is my word, "copromage." The worship of shit.

That same author who wanted his book illustrated, posed a little question to me, to shore up his intellectual veneer: "You know the difference between a writer and an author," he asked?

A Writer writes for someone else who selects the topic and takes the credit – an Author works for himself, and writes about topics of his own choosing. Okay...

I had a comeback for him: A writer gets paid, usually because he's proven he writes well – while anyone with a pen or a keyboard can call themselves an author, whether they make a dime or not. (And "blogging" didn't even exist yet. O, what an asshole was I!)

That didn't improve my chances of getting hired by this guy, but by the time he began power-quoting himself, my mind was made up that I didn't want his partnership anyway. I went on being an arrogant prick with empty pockets. He probably got a book deal somewhere, and bought a Lexus. I don't remember his name anymore.

But it isn't only books and writers that have changed. Readers have changed too. I marvel at the new age of endless digital text, and those who sit in coffeeshops and stare at column-less waves of words on computer screens. It's a trancelike intensity that I admit I just don't get. I wonder how their inner circuitry processes all that data – if indeed they are "processing" anything. Gen-Wikipedia has added wider access and a deeper saturation point to our information age, but not necessarily improved accuracy.

And books themselves have strayed away from readability, in favor of attractive packaging and faux-prestige.

When I was in school, nearly everything eventually went to paperback – usually had 100+ pages, that cost 50¢ or 75¢... $1.50 by my senior year. Even a nerdy kid like me could acquire a personal library. Mine was never a fortress wall, but rather a box in the closet. And a paperback meant that you could read it in bed without it breaking your nose if you dozed off.

Even comic books operated on a higher literary plane during my kidhood. At least I recall it that way. My mother's constant reprimands against ruining my mind with "that garbage," was countered by my grandmother's tempered, "at least he's reading!"

Green Lantern may have been a poorly developed fantasy character with an overly dramatic costume and laughable motivation, but he spoke in complete sentences.

You could learn to read with comics, back in the day. It was natural to graduate from comics to more substantial reading, like novels – because it eventually dawned on us that comics were using up space with pictures, that could just as easily be occupied by MORE story! I say this, even though that very same artwork inspired my own desire to draw and illustrate – as much as the "all-word" books I graduated to gave me the desire to write.

Today's comics are previews for a video game – or toy – or movie – or, you name it. They don't inspire, they sell. "Tie-ins" the industry calls them.

They have adopted the "manga" philosophy, which I interpret as feeding the eyes candy, while letting the brain starve. The style favors simplified yet preponderant illustrations, and as few words as possible. Some are barely strings of spelled-out grunts.

This is basically a high-tech retreat to the age of cave drawings. And usually these books feature characters who have no basis in reality, other than having two arms and two legs – most times.

What a potent poison for a young mind in the formative stages. To matter in life, one must possess:
1. The visual appeal of the limpid-eyed nymph who lip-synced the opening song at the Beijing Olympics.
2. A martial-arts prowess somewhere at or above a Bruce Lee.
3. A badass wardrobe and a punk mane that holds it shape even in battle.
4. Futuristic toylike-but-lethal weaponry.
5. Most importantly, an indwelling mystical demon (don't leave the house without one) that grants you diety-like powers, in case items 1 thru 4 aren't enough to insure you a nice day.

Aren't there counseling groups for kids battling these very dysfunctional, narcissistic conceptions of reality? I mean the reality that kicks in, ready or not, when you wake up – not the reality that depends on a game control and a wild thumb technique.

Yeah, I read my share of Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Mad, Cracked, Creepy, et al., but just one ugly leap off the top of a playground slide, with a sheet around my neck, was enough to clue me in that the Man of Steel was just entertainment. The Fantastic Four never sent me into epileptic seizures.

Oh yeah, when I was a kid, comic books were 12¢ or 15¢. Ones with 100 pages, reprinting issues I may have missed, were a whopping 50¢.

Today in most bookstores, I need a $20 bill for a 70-page shelf-hog that will never be in paperback, can be read in 10 minutes thanks to 24-point size text, and claims to be the answer to life, the universe and everything. And I know it must be good because so many movers and shakers have endorsed it – 20 of those 70 pages are taken up by excerpts of their glowing reviews. This is reading?

No, it's bookselling, and that's... the secret.

Oktobre Randomfest

The first thing that comes to mind is its lack of content.

I wish I had a good idea for every spare pen I have laying around.

Anyone who quotes lines from "Star Trek" in a serious conversation, isn't worth spending much time talking to.

Few things are more pathetic than a group of activists who can't even find the people that they are supposedly protesting against.

I want to see an action figure called "Captain Apathy."

The Pony Express failed because it took a whole week to wait for mail, and then you couldn't buy stamps from a horse.

How to prevent being abducted by aliens: Just before you drift to sleep, concentrate on a mental picture of Jesus eating raw hamburger. The aliens will be too frightened to read your mind any further, and leave you alone.

Why do drunks always get home exactly as I get to bed?

Order another beer, idiot, she isn't pissed enough!

I wish I could decide what to throw out, and what to put away and never use again.

What do you call the fear of not knowing what something is called?

Yep, September Randomness

Another great 2-book set:
Looking For Mr. Goodbar
Goodbye, Mr. Chips

The "Secret" is how they can keep repackaging the same old shit and know you'll keep buying it. The producers of Three Stooges DVDs use a similar philosophy.

Finland has not participated in a war in decades now. What the hell's their problem?

The dinosaurs took care of the planet.
For way longer than we've even been on it... and it still got rid of them.

A bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos before bed will produce the same effect as some bad acid before bed.

Why do the neighbors insist on slamming doors? To convince them to stay closed?

When Hitler was dead, the war in Europe was over. When Saddam Hussein was dead, 20,000 more troops were sent in. What aren't we being told?

If you travel back in time and shoot your grandfather, you do not suddenly cease to exist. But your hair changes color. Your height possibly changes, and if you're lucky, the length of your shlong gets a sudden boost.

Sometimes I wonder, maybe it is worth it to go into politics, for all that money I wouldn't have to work for.

If sex were as good as root beer, would it be foamy?

All In My Head

I'm thinking of a radio advertisement. I heard it years ago, many years ago – we're talking 1973 or so. I don't remember what the ad was for, just the repeated catch-phrase that echoed eerily through a night-shrouded country bedroom, with dogs ruh-ruh-ruffing somewhere off in the distance, and crickets chirping just beyond the open window. "Did they die for us?"

Who? Did who die? I'm trying to remember it. It was spoken by a group of children – a chorus of nine- and ten-year olds. "Did they die for us?" Then a somber baritone announcer mumbled something no doubt poignant and sobering. Followed by the children asking once more, "did they die for us?"

That's all I have. No clues that will suddenly uncloak the answer the longer I ponder. Just the interesting notion of who "they" might be. The ones that apparently died. And made a group of children curious as to whom "they" kicked off for.

Was it about veterans? When I think sometimes of a radio murmuring in the dark somewhere next to my bed, I remember one particular veteran: my dad. There's no face connected to this particular memory of him – just the blackness of a dark bedroom, pierced by a tiny, glowing orange point of light. A cigarette flaring. Intensifying to a neon yellow ever briefly, then simmering down to a flicker of amber. A falling star in an empty night. He smoked in bed. Never fell asleep mid-cig. He was either very careful or extremely lucky.

Was it rabbits that died? The bunnies who bought the farm, so that the mothers of this group of kids could find out whether a nose-picking little radio actor was on the way? Those were the 70s, afterall. There were no little gray "+" signs that turned blue. No ultrasound photographs. The "rabbit test" involved the death of Bugs, so that Mom could find out if your new little brother was in the oven. In that case, kids, yeah – they died for you. The real question is, were you worth it?

Another memory I connect to a puttering little night stand radio is announcer Vin Scully ("Vinnnz Gully" as he himself pronounced it) fading in and out with "so that's the inneen, as thuh Daahhjers take a pawbuball to zekkun" (the Dodgers take a pop-up ball to second) and thah remines me, faahnz, how all other lunchmeats come in zekkun to Fahhmer Jahhnz lunchmeat..."

I could listen to this guy talk all night, about damn near anything. An Ell-Lay raydeeo dude fighting his New Yawka accent like a mailman swatting a pitbull with the Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes.

"An I godda pizzed-off bumble-bee in my trowzers, stingin' my azzzz, fanz, an boy duz it hurrrrt. Which remines me how all the other weener brands STING YOU IN THE AZZ at the subermarket cheggout lines. Unlike the deee-lishuss, wallet-friendly priced weenerz frum Fahhmer Jahhhn..."

I'd get up at 1:30 in the morning for a sandwich, to get that mean Fahhmer Jahhn bologna monkey off my back. Yes, I was a fat kid, until the few stations whose signals reached over the mountains to our house stopped carrying Dodger games – or at least just broadcast day games, when I was at school.

I'll never forget Scully translate the drama of a sudden homerun, to an audience that couldn't actually see the action. "Heeerrre's the pitch... An it's wayback... waaaayyback... and kiss it g'bye!!" I can hear it in my head, as clear as any 50,000 watt signal drifting north over the hills on a night sky crowded with thunderheads.

Scully announced Dodger games on the radio almost since Marconi invented the damn thing. I think Al Michaels first got work simply because his voice was a sound-alike to Scully's. Since the Dodgers themselves couldn't draw much of a radio audience by actually winning a game on a regular basis, they must have figured they'd better stick to SOMETHING that worked. Screw the game.

I just remembered that the foreboding "Did they die for us" commercial happened during a Dodger game broadcast. Maybe it referred to the Dodgers themselves. Or maybe just the ratings of their radio games.

Dodgers don't really die. They pop up to second.

Peevish Pastiche

I've had enough long-winded belly-ache about politics and all the crap served up hot on a paper plate by the media. They don't even spice it up anymore. Now the crap is sugar-free. Now it's bland and bereft of all zing and zeal. Sure, it's the same crap – but now they don't even attempt to make it look or taste like something else. Cynical turds.

Piss on our heads and shout that it's Free Lemonade Day.

How can I impress you with my rapier wit and wordplay wizardry when they bombard us with so much CRAP demanding comment!! Shitmeisters!!

Have you seen Madonna's latest concert snaps featuring those tendony forearms and sinewy inner thighs? That's what retirement home nurses see every day at sponge bath time. I'm turned on. Seriously. When you get to be my age, things that were repellant in my twenties suddenly totally DO IT for me.

I say, as long as you can hold that Schick steady enough for even crotch-frame symmetry, flaunt it, Madge! Play the Strat more often too!

I'm glad that one of my personal heroes, Jerry Lewis, doesn't look like an oompa-loompavitch anymore. He may be 82 now, but he looks like "Jerry" again, and that brings on a feeling of peace. That some things really are eternally correct. See "The Bellboy." That movie explains everything. When you walk through a storm...

Another Jerry – Reed – died. The slickest cracker in the box. A better guitargod, and a better actor, than a lot of folks gave credit for. And we're now "In a world" without Don LaFontaine. Sucks.

See this shit? There's TWO MORE 20th century icons that future dumbed-down generations of entertainment addicts will, ironically, not have frickin' clue one about. And when some old fart – like yours truly – attempts to explain to them what they missed simply by being born too damn late, they won't spend two seconds listening. They'll turn up the volume on their iUnipodphoneberry and lurch away. Fawk.

I see Karl Rove is back in the country, and still being given national airtime to spew his corrosive demon bile. Isn't he a fugitive? Shouldn't someone have met him at the border with handcuffs?? Wow, here's a guy doing Osama bin Laden one better – living right out in the open and still not being hauled in.

The Hadron Super Collider is due to be switched on in a week. There are some scientific types being spun into the wacko column, who think it worth talking about, that this huge "unknown" might shove us into a dangerous new territory that there will be no backing away from.

The most extreme nightmare scenario: it conjures up a mini black hole – on earth – that does exactly what the big black holes in space do, that is, devour light and matter. That would pretty much be the bad hair day from hay-ell, bee-otch. Incredible to watch. Impossible to run from.

Suggestion: Give Rove an up-close-n-personal tour of the contraption, timed just as the toggle is flipped.

The most far-out & groovy possibility: it creates a method of time-travel. Sign me up. I'll even join a gym and start eating right to qualify!

When the atom bomb was first invented, there were well-educated folks who predicted it would trigger some kind of doomsday chain-reaction into motion. Hasn't it?

Who knew I'd give myself a shit-fit being more green. I put all my empty bottles in a plastic garbage bag in the kitchen – once a week I can make a single trip to the recycling area with my big bag-o'-bottles. One problem: the bag eventually gets too big, and I get too lazy to haul it downstairs. Those bottles aren't exactly designed to stack well. And they make the darnedest whack-a-pow on a formica floor. You know what the favorite time is for a pile of plastic bottles to shift and tumble? Strange question, sure – but with a definite answer.

Two-fricking-fifteen in the a.m. Twocka-bucka-kapow-poppa-bang-doo-dup-dup. I'm in bed, tryin' to get my nightly 'old guy with work in the morning' snooze, and suddenly I'm jolted awake by what sounds like a midget wearing clogs who's decided to jump out of hiding and trash the kitchen.

I was cleaning my fridge one night (gawd I'm glad those 3-month old apples were in a tied baggie) and there was something big and black, squashed, stuck to the back wall. I jumped. Ow my head. What the shit is THAT!

Whatever it was, it had died horribly. And had been preserved by the cold. Some mysterious dark brown roadkill, had met the Reaper while foraging in the frozen white alternate universe that is the fridge, and was defiantly still holding ground in grim repose.

I wadded up a mighty ball of paper towels, to grab the creature without its icky inner ooze grabbing me back. I reached forth. Crackle. Crunch.

A frozen round of brown wax paper – that had once held a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

I rose, looked at myself in the reflection of the microwave oven window. Slack-jawed, worthless, pouty-lipped, girly-man.

Now I'm listening to a radio ad for one of those psychic hotline scams. "The tarot tells me that this man you've been dating can be stubborn and hard to deal with?" Yes, the woman caller giggles. She asks how the online psychic could tell that? Well, I think, possibly it's because everything he does for you is judged against the advice of some astrological shit-heel with pat answers for every conceivable bird-brain scenario you insist on letting her be a third-party to?

What they see in that crystal ball is your Visa card, putz.

Just letting the thoughts blow through my head like old pillowcases through a dry cleaners. Leaves through an alley. Bologna through a puppy's tummy.

One political note: as I write this, the Republican Convention is in full swing. It's performance art, you know. All these people really care about is hanging onto their earmarks, their perks, their private jets and reserved parking. Cuff links aren't free.

It's bedtime. That means that another workday is about 12 hours away. I wonder what I'll dream about tonight? I hope it's the Swedish women weightlifters team again.

August Randomness

Just about anyone can beat me at chess. I don't play poker enough to know how bad I am.

Does Batman ever eat nachos while working in the batcave on a slow night?

The world's first biologist was the caveman who took a crap, looked down at it, and thought, "what IS that shit that keeps coming out of my ass!!"

That couple in the restaurant with well behaved kids – they deserve a medal. Both them and the kids.

Irony is nearly destroying a suppository getting the foil off, finally getting it inserted, then having a sudden involuntary fart attack.

Don't marry any metropolitan woman who does "Hillbilly Night."

Send me twenty dollars and I'll send you a shiny new penny!

What does it mean exactly, when through the wall, you can hear the landlord crying?

Roger Ebert's movie sucks!

Just because it rhymes doesn't make it a poem.

What ever you do with another consenting adult is yours to feel guilty as hell about the next morning.

Can you listen with the same intensity that you dominate the conversation with?

The Old Rover Boy

Executive privilege is not a license to have fun breaking the law. We are currently plagued, however, by quite a number of governmental types who seem to think that's exactly what it means. Recall one of Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon's famous quotes: "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Only Karl is not the President (there is a God). In fact, he's not even a certified member of government anymore. He's a private citizen who somehow still believes in his federal immunity to his own past.

His business card now just says the truth, plain and simple: Karl Rove, Motherfucker.

One of his dreams was a permanently established republican majority in Congress. Sorry, but that not only isn't how a democracy works, it isn't even how a REPUBLIC works.

He still has his ensconced friends, whose skirt tails he predictably runs behind, in these last few months of an administration that he used as a giant personal dildo upon the American public. Only the clock is ticking. Day by day, more of his pals will abandon him in their own mad dash out of the federal whorehouse. It will get difficult to keep washing his hands harder and harder and still smell that lingering trace of butt lube on them.

If 9-11 was indeed a covert government set-up foisted upon its own people to create an excuse to re-invade Iraq, here is a leading candidate for one of its masterminds...

Outing government covert agents – endangering them, their families and other federal agents in doing so – all to keep a lid on the cauldron of lies concerning the Iraq War. A nobler nation would call that high treason.

Tampering with the Department of Justice to promote party agendas. That's called malfeasance.

Scapegoating cronies. (Can you say "Scooter?")

High-up monkeying with voter counts in the presidential elections, not just for his boss, but quite probably to insure his own continued power base. Well, alright, Karl isn't the first to do that one.

Firing 9 U.S. Attorneys simply because of their personal politics.

Destroying incriminating e-mail evidence regarding all of the above. That's a felony if you or I do it.

Casting all blame for federal inaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina upon the local (Democratic) officials whose homes and livelihoods were annihilated along with those of their constituents. That's like the fox blaming the chickens for being in the coop in the first place.

And let us not overlook... flagrantly ignoring a Congressional Subpoena and... skipping the country (!!!). Didn't a few Nazis try that after Germany surrendered?

Everything listed here has already been reported on, exhaustively, by the media. Could anyone scan the previous decade's résumé of this individual and not see an unwavering career of festering deceit and criminality? Yet in each grandly staged photo-op, there he is, unaware that his immense evil is telegraphed to the lens with even the slightest shifty eyed grin. He is polished, speck-free, possibly even "bright." In the way that the sheen on the skins of wet dog turds may be said to be "bright."

He makes Richard Nixon look like Henry David Thoreau.

A hundred years ago, such a person would face a firing squad.

But no – he will likely get away with it. All of it. He's untouchable – at least in his own twisted mind. He's a higher species than you and me – unshackled by mere morals or ethics, he's that uncaught bird, flying away to some branch too high for any predator – legal or otherwise – to reach. But always certain that the chosen perch is suitable from which to freely crap on those below daring enough to look up.

It will be truly amazing to watch. This living embodiment of everything wrong and ugly about the current condition of government, will continue to be coddled, championed and in some cases sainted by a league of tunnel-visioned loyalists – in the halls of politics, the private sector, and even the media – and his fetid, flatulent influence will continue to spread like mold in the forum of public opinion, as he takes his place among the talking heads and pundits. He did get them to write him his own Rap song, remember?

Then he'll write his obligatory tell-all bestseller, in which he will betray every former ally, and smugly claim victimhood. His controversial past in high office will guarantee him a publishing deal – rather than any discernible writing talent. He'll hire some flunky to check commas and semicolons. There's no way to hook a book to a lie detector. He'll be assured of a continued life free of all money woes. He'll never have to use a time-clock. He'll never wait in line for lunch. And all us tax-payers, with anuses still hurting from his days of unelected, undeserved privilege, will only be able to stand and watch his limo roll by.

But even then, let us never forget, this is that special brand of fiend, whom acquired a high seat of power and used it for every wrong purpose. This is the guy who took a shit in our plate, and told us it was chili.