The World From Monday Morning

Something that's really been bothering me recently is this whole fiasco surrounding the death of Princess Diana. I mean, Christ people. Am I the only person who thinks it no small irony that a woman who got killed after being hounded by the papparazzi is receiving more news coverage than ever before? Last week, I go down to Tully's get my daily dose of rocket fuel, and as I'm waiting for my short mint mocha brevé I look over at the magazine stand casually and my eyes bug out. The entire wall was covered with magazines with Di's face on the front. Not 100% saturation, but a good 75%. Enough to make me think that it's pretty damn absurd. But it doesn't end there! I get home that day, turn on the TV to the evening news, and kick back. What's their feature story? Diana was a victim of bolemia, and had come, in secret, to the Pacific Northwest to speak to a resident eating disorder expert. Now that Diana's dead, I guess the eating disorder expert came out to get her piece of fame. Why not? One more person making a buck off the death of Princess Di.

And do you know what makes this worse? All the people who have spent weeks mourning Di's passing. I'm not talking about the British subjects who mourn the passing of a monarch, or the people who's lives were made better by the efforts made by Princess Di. Nope, I'm talking about the flocks of neurotic women (and probably men, too), who have spent weeks weeping and sulking about the death of Princess Di. Did Americans really have that much of a tie to the monarch? Probably not. Did these Americans have no life, and idolized the "fairy tale romance" of Princess Di? I think we have a winner. And the sick part is, this is who the media is targeting with this coverage of the death of Princess Di. The same people who are mourning the passing of Diana are the same ones who buy this deluge of crap that the media is spitting out. I mean, I think it sucks that Diana died. But there's a finite amount that I can mourn the passing of someone I've never met, whom I've never paid much attention to prior to this. She was a good person, she worked really hard to do good for others, and she died in a terrible way. Why can't people just let her be dead.

In fact, I think that's what I hate most about society today. It supports people like this. I'm talking both sides of the equation. The companies that put out this crap, and the people who buy it. It's a viscious fucking cycle. Bill Clinton is sending Chelsea off to college. He's asked the media to leave his daughter alone while she's away from the White House. When the three major tabloids were asked if they were going to respect this, only one would say, without hesitation, that they would respect this request. One! The President of the United States asks that people just leave his daughter alone while she's off getting an education, and most tabloids cannot keep their grimy mitts off of her? Christ-all-fucking-mighty!

Now, don't get me wrong. I love freedom of speech. It's what allows me to put this Web site up. What I don't like is abuse of that right. Every right comes with a responsibility. A bit of a two edged sword I guess. The sick part of it all is that it's not entirely the fault of the tabloids. It's the fault of the people who buy it. They're the ones who actually support this kind of crap. When it comes right down to it, it wasn't entirely the papparazzi's fault that Diana died. It wasn't even the fault of the tabloids that buy these pictures. It's the fault of the consumers who make this kind of market exist. I'd say it's pretty safe to say that many of the poor girls who have spent weeks crying their hearts out over the death of Princess Diana are also the same ones who ultimately paid those papparazzi photographers.

So, my final message for this week is this: Diana is dead. D-E-Double-D, DEAD! Respect her death, people.

Man, I'm batting a thousand with this thing. Second week and I nearly forgot to put in another installment. This week I don't have much of a rant. This is more of musing.

A week ago, I went to my first "pro-wrestling" event. That's right, I went to WCW's Battle in Seattle. It was a bit of a strange event. I don't really watch wrestling anymore. The last time I really took an interest in it was when I was ten years old, and my grandfather and I would stay up late every Saturday and watch WWF. It's something I look back upon with fondness. Sure, it was fake, but I did it with my grandfather, and so it was fun just for that.

After my grandfather died, I just lost interest. It just wasn't the same anymore. Most of the wrestlers I watched are now gone. There's maybe three left from when I watched it twelve years ago. Now some of my friends watch it religiously, mostly because they think it's about the funniest thing of TV. So when WCW announced it was coming to Seattle, my friends hurried to get a seat at the Key Arena, and I tagged along.

I think I laughed the whole two hours.

It was frankly absurd. Entertaining. Well worth the twenty bucks I shelled out to go see it. But still absurd. The violence was blatantly fake. The only thing that looked like it might hurt were some of the falls that people took, and to be honest I've seen worse in aikido. If you know what you're doing, you can land on your back from a healthy height with little to no harm. Hell, towards the end the ring started to fall apart because it wasn't secured properly.

I think the only thing more absurd than the wrestling were the people who were there. Perhaps 75% of the people there were a subtle blend of white trash, rednecks, and buttrockers. The dregs of humanity. And they believed it was all real! One wrestler would receive several obviously fake blows to one leg, and people would be crying out that his leg would break. At one point a wrestler was knocked out due to a blow to the head. At first you'd think, "Not to hard to believe." Until you realize that the wrestler was 7'4, and he was hit over the head with a leather belt with a plastic shield on the front. (It was a title belt.) He went out like a light. Could not be awakened for quite some time. The crowd was outraged that such foul play had been committed.

Meanwhile, my friends and I were clutching our sides laughing.

Makes me wonder what's missing in our society that makes people want to watch this and believe it's real, or at least treat it as though it's real. Media saturation making you think you need to watch this? Violence on television? Too much red meat? I suppose this could tie in loosely with my Diana rant. I just don't get it. What's the fascination? Is there so little going on in our lives that we have to sit in front of a television and gain excitement through that? The Gulf War, the OJ trial, the Marv Albert trial, soap operas, infinite Star Trek spin-offs, yadda, yadda, yadda. Here's a quarter. Get a life.

I'd like to close this one with the following question: Does anyone else find it disturbing that you can buy a pack of 8 "meat franks" for under a dollar?

A couple things I wanted to talk about this week.

Last week, I'm watching Entertainment Tonight, and their "feature story" was a bit laughable. Seems that down in Texas, there's an actor who bears a rather vague resemblence to Chuck Norris. I think he was a bit too young and fleshy to really look like him, but I digress. He was making some money off of that resemblence, apparently, by appearing as a kung fu cowboy, a la Walker: Texas Ranger. Now, under most circumstances, Chuck Norris may never notice this commercial. It's a local commercial for a local car dealership, so it's likely to avoid the prying eyes for quite a while. No worries.

Except that this guy sent a copy of the tape to Chuck Norris himself.

Seems this guy really wanted to be a stand-in on the Walker: Texas Ranger set. Chuck Norris looked at it, and wondered, "Can he do this, especially with no disclaimer?" So Chuck calls his lawyers, and lawyers assure him that Fake Chuck can't do this. So the lawyers write Fake Chuck and tell him that he has to stop doing the commercials, or else they will sue him and the car dealership who hired him.

If I was in that position, I'd say to myself, "Alright, I screwed up, time to get another job."

Not so with Fake Chuck. Seems Fake Chuck was a little steamed, and his friends and neighbors helped him put up a billboard that said, effectively, "Chuck Norris cost me a job." I mean, Jesus, what a petty and pathetic maneuver. The Bible Belt had a ritual burning of Beatles memorabilia back when John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, and yet the Beatles still remain popular today. Did this guy think he was accomplishing anything by putting up one billboard in a medium-sized town in Texas? Give me a break.

But wait, there's more! This part I didn't quite comprehend, but I think I caught something about him trying to plea bargain with Chuck Norris, saying he'd put a disclaimer on the commercials, wanted to work on the set of W:TR (I think that the job was the price for putting the disclaimer on the ads, but I was busy bitching about what a moron I thought this guy was to one of my friends, so I missed some of this), and would publicly apologize on Entertainment Tonight for the billboard.

No apology came. To compound the matters, he claims that no dealership is willing to hire him now (probably a little worried about getting sued. Duh!) and so it's cost him something like ten thousand dollars, money he was going to use to send his daughter through college.

Now, check this out. Let's say I'm a drug dealer. I'm a moron, so I send a sample to the cops, thinking that I could start up a bit of business with them. So I get arrested, serve time, get out, and nobody wants to buy drugs from me because I'm on parole and the cops are watching my ass. What's more, I was going to use the money I used from selling drugs to send my daughter to college, but now I can't do that because the cops are watching my ass. Does that somehow give me the right to put up a billboard saying that the cops cost me a job, and say that I'd be willing to sell something else if I could sell drugs to the cops? No. You fuck up, you break the law, you pay the penalty. That simple. If you're doing something illegal, you should be willing to accept the consequences when and if your ass gets caught. You don't have some right to bitch and moan about it and try to get monetary compensation. Impersonating a celebrity without the permission of the celebrity, and without disclaimers, is illegal. Blatantly ripping off a copyrighted television show, especially to make money, is illegal. If they take offense at what you're doing, they have the right to sue you. That simple. You screw up, you pay the penalty. You don't get to extort benefits from someone else for your damages. Jesus.

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In other news, I've discovered what Kremlin agents used during the eighties to break the wills of many victims: The movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. May god have mercy on our souls.

Last night, running on a couple hours of sleep in the span of about 29 hours, and crowded onto a couch with more people than can comfortably fit, I endured SPLHCB. The small irony of it was that one of the people watching it with us had actually met Peter Frampton a few days prior, who admitted to having made a bad movie once, but refused to say the name of it. We discovered what it was. I'm going to tell what the story line was, and then rant a bit more if I still have steam. What follows below is a huge spoiler, so if you want to be surprised by the movie, read no further.

The movie is a tale of the legacy of a band. Formed in the 1920s, this band was a heartwarming inspiration, used even in World War 2 to make the Germans put down their weapons and listen to the tunes. The band was, of course, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a group of small town boys from the community of Heartland (where Mr. Kite, played by George Burns, is perpetually mayor, and at one point sings "Fixing a Hole"). Upon returning from the war, a magic weathervane that points to happiness is erected on City Hall.

Billy Shears (played by Peter Frampton), grandson of the original Sgt. Pepper, is chosen to start a new Lonely Hearts Club Band with three of his friends (played by the Bee Gees). The band gets an invitation to sign under a contract with a rather sleezy managing company, known for their other big band, Lucy and the Diamonds. So, Billy has to leave behind his girlfriend, Strawberry Fields, for the first time in their lives, and travel with the band to Hollywood where they are drugged, tricked into signing contracts, and have presumably naughty activity with various skanky women.

Meanwhile, back in Heartland, the notorious villian and ex-real estate agent, Mr. Mustard, is making his move on the poor little town. He steals the instruments used by the original Lonely Hearts Club Band that mystically protects the town, then brings in all sorts of bad elements into the town. Strawberry runs off to get Billy. Billy abandons his manager and runs off to regain the instruments. One is in the hands of Dr. Maxwell Edison (played by Steve Martin, who sings "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" as only Steve Martin could...), another in the hands of Father Sun (played by Alice Cooper, who sings "Because"), and one is in Mr. Mustard's van (which they stole to get the other two). The computer on Mr. Mustard's van that they'd been using to find the instruments (complete with super-distorted 70s-machine voices) breaks, and so they despair of finding the fourth musical instrument.

They return to Heartland to host a big concert where bands gather from all around to raise money to restore Heartland. In truth, though, you only get to see one band (Earth, Wind and Fire), who perform "Got to Get You Back In My Life", before the Lonley Hearts Club Band jumps into their propellor-driven hot-air baloon to chase after bad guys fleeing from the scene of the crime with Strawberry as their hostage. They track the villains down to the headquarters of the ringleader, FVB, played by Aerosmith.

"What's FVB?" you so foolishly ask.

"Future Villian Band". Kinda fitting if you ask me. Anyway, there's a big fight, Stephen Tyler and Strawberry Fields both fall to their deaths. There's a big long period of mourning that seems to drag on forever, until finally Billy Shears about to step off a roof and end it all.

Enter the notorious deus ex machina.

Remember that magical weather vane? Comes to life as Billy Preston, zaps Billy Shears and keeps him from falling off the roof. Zaps thin air and Strawberry's alive. Zaps bad guys and puts them in priest clothes? All while dancing around and singing "Get Back". But anyway, the scene then shifts to a large gathering of people singing the "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise". Who are they? People who were famous in 1978. Some of them are still famous now, like Tina Turner and Eric Clapton. Some aren't, like Sha Na Na, Donovan, and Carol Channing. Eegh.

Now, in case this isn't enough for you, consider the following:

• There was no dialogue at all, really. The only voices heard, when not singing, were George Burns and the distorted voices of Mr. Mustard's computer. At times George Burns would narrate something someone said, and the character would be lip-syncing, but that's about it. Otherwise, it was 2 hours of music.
• Picture every popular Beatles song, remade 70s disco style.
• The Bee Gees.

Now, don't get me wrong, they had a pretty good idea... kinda. It struck me as having the same kind of theme as "Yellow Submarine". But they dropped the ball. Bad. Like somewhere during the huddle. Blech.

Well, nothing has successfully pissed me off this last week to make me rant today (outside of some band using photos of Princess Di's car crash to promote concert of theirs... eegh). So, I think I'll just toss out one of my more insane ideas that I've come up with.

For those of you who lived in Seattle, you know we have a pretty healthy homeless population. Probably not as big as some of the bigger cities, but still not that nice. For a while I even lived in the University District, whose main drag was lined with homeless kids just hanging out and asking for change. They aren't looking for a job. They'd rather just slum about and bug people walking down the street.

I'm just not down with that.

I just don't go for the "I'm homeless and can't get a job" ploy. I just don't buy it. Maybe 1 percent of the homeless population in Seattle has a legitimate reason for not being able to get a job. The rest are just derelict mooches who won't get a job. I've been unemployed, and if not for the help of some friends who let me sleep on their floor for a bit I would have been homeless too.

I was unemployed for a couple of months. Largely because I wasn't looking for a job. I had this mad scheme that I'd lose weight and join the Air Force. No such luck. So, I got my shit together, begged for a job from an old employer, and went back to work flipping burgers at Jack in the Box.

Fast food. The unemployment solution.

I shit you not. A number of fast food restaurants hire along University Way hire homeless people. The way I figure, if you work 20 hours a week at minimum wage, you'll be pulling in a good 320 dollars a month. Not a hell of a lot of money, but it will get you a place to live. Yes, that's right, you can get a place to live in the University District for a little over 200 a month, and work only four hours a day, five days a week. I know because that's where I ended up living. You have to save up for a couple of months to afford first and last, do the whore's bath in the restaurant's bathroom if you have nowhere else to clean up, but otherwise, you're good to go.

But some people are just too proud to go to work at a fast food restaurant. They're not too proud to take handouts from the government. They're not too proud to beg for change. But they are too proud to flip burgers? What?

Now, for the most part, I don't care about the homeless. Many of the ones I run into are young and doing it because they think it's cool. I'll occasionally give them spare change, especially if they're street musicians, because I'm not a total selfish bastard. No, the ones that really get to me are the people that live off welfare.

I'm not talking about the people who lose their job, are stuck for a while, so they apply for welfare to help them through a rough spot. No, I'm talking about the career welfare recipients. The sit-on-your-ass-and-collect-welfare-for-life people.

So I've come up with a bit of a solution. You may argue the humanity of my solution, but I find it hard to doubt the effectiveness of it. My solution is that you allow a person who has no reason not to be able to get even a fast food job one year of welfare. One year. At the end of that year, people have three options:

1. Demonstrate justifiable reason why they can't get a job. Some sort of physical disability would count. So would a mental disability, though the insane would have to entrust themselves to a state run mental institution and allow themselves to be hung upside down in a rubber room while wearing a straight-jacket. You may think that someone may give themselves a physical disability just to stay on welfare. That's cool. Anyone with the balls to maim themselves in order to get a few hundred dollars a month in welfare deserves everything they get. Other than disability, I cannot think of a real good reason why they can't get a job.
2. Give up welfare, and find some other source of income.
3. Sell your soul to The Games.

The Games. That's my little idea. The Games. What The Games amounts to is that once a year you seal off a good sized area. One with lots of debris and other obstacles would be ideal. Then you give everyone who chooses The Games a gun and a head mounted camera, and broadcast the whole thing on Pay-Per-View. After one day of this, the survivors get a portion of the profits as well as another year of Welfare. No more than ten percent (rounded up to the nearest whole person) may come back out alive, so there's no alliance with everyone else to come out alive. The rest of the money goes to the cable operators and the government. Children orphaned by parents who participate in The Games will be supported by the government (using the money from The Games) until they reach their majority, then let out on their own.

You know it would work. After a couple years of this, not many people would be willing to risk welfare. Now, I'm willing to admit I may be wrong. This may not be the best idea. But hell, it's the best I could think up. Anyone who thinks they have a better solution for welfare reforms are free to send me their ideas, and I'll post them up on my Web site. Big kudos to anyone who is more creative than me. Toodles.

This is definitely not a rant. Sorry people, just nothing really pissing me off this week. Mostly just stressed after hunting down my three-year-old deaf nephew last night after he opened the door and wandered off to the local major road. Eegh. So, today you get one of my half-ass philosophical musings, since I've totally forgotten what piece of crap on the radio annoyed the hell out of me. I should write this stuff down.

One thing that's always amazed me about people is how they organize their priorities. What's important to them. It echoes out strongly into what they tend to like, I think. The values that they hold dear to their heart manifest so strongly in what they surround themselves with.

This came to mind after a... discussion I had a while back with a once extreme feminist friend of mine. That is to say, she's still my friend, but no long as gung-ho. It came up about, of all things, over Disney movies. Ah, what a loaded topic.

I'd been a little frustrated with the growing cynicism in Disney films. Powder (put out by Touchstone, which is owned by Disney), ended with the main character essentially ending his existence because he was just too strange to fit in in this sleepy little town. The Hunchback of Notre Dame ended with Quasimodo willingly giving up the woman he loved and risked all to the handsome blond-haired, blue-eyed protagonist (Phoebus?).

I was genuinely irrate at such a sell out, my feminist friend was apathetic, feeling that it was only realistic.

On the other hand, if you bring up Beauty and the Beast, she explains how it's formulaic for an abusive relationship because it's all about a cruel individual, who is pined after by a poor girl who is positive that there's still some good in him, despite the bad he does. The Lion King is blatantly sexist because the women lack the empowerment to overthrow the tyrany of Scar.

In short, she was irrate because she felt women were getting the shaft, and I was fairly apathetic to her point of view, if not contrary.

Now, I could try to argue why my side is better, but that's not what my goal here is with this one. It's to marvel about people's priorities.

I'm an inconsiderate, yet very self-concious, ass who can't get a date. When I was drowning pretty heavily in self-pity, I was pretty into blaming it on the world around me. It was their fault. Though I'd like to think I've gotten past that part of my life, it still heavily colors my perceptions of the world. But at the time, my big role-models were the Creation from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the Beast from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Pretty diverse endings. One ended with the Creation running off to the far north to immolate himself, the other with the Beast becoming more than who he is and thus getting the fairy tale happy ending.

Sounds like a moral dilema. Resign to your "fate", or grow past who you are. I desperately wanted the fairy tale ending, but all I seemed to be met with was "detestation and scorn", as the story goes.

So I become one who supports the underdog in movies. The not-as-wonderful guy pining after the perfect woman. Of course I'm going to beam joyously as the Beast gets his girl, and I'm going to be pissed if Quasimodo gets passed up by a some Adonis. No matter how far I come in life, I will always have some echo of those same feelings.

You shift back to my feminist friend, and you'll see someone who's had to deal with a lot of difficulty getting ahead in what is still a male dominated society. While I strive for happy endings, she strives for justice. Equality. An end to being locked in abusive relationships and societal roles.

Should roles be changed in these movies, we probably wouldn't have nearly the same perspective. If gender roles were reversed in Hunchback, and it was a woman being scorned because of her appearance, I probably would not have cared, but Sarah would probably have ruled that it was sexist. Such is life. Very few seem to avoid being so obsessed with promoting their ideal that they can see the big picture, and I sure as Hell ain't one of those few.

Toodles, folks. My lunch break is over.

Again, this is not as much of a rant as you may have gotten into the mood for, but this time it is something that has been bothering me of late.

I haven't gotten this far in my little biography, but I'll do a quick synopsis of my recent history to give a bit of perspective to what has happened in the past couple years that bears relevance to my little story.

As some of you may know, while I lived my grandparents in California, my father married what would be his third wife while he was in Washington State. Her name was Robin. Their marriage lasted... about ten years, I believe. Along the way, Robin met an old high school friend of hers that had quit drinking and found Christ. Robin began to realize that her life was going down the shitter, quit drinking, found Christ, and presented my father with an ultimatum:

Quit drinking, or else she'd divorce him.

For me, that'd be a pretty simple choice. If I really wanted the marriage to last, I would have quit drinking right there. But no, my father just hid his drinking. She eventually moved out while he was at work, taking his son (my half brother) with her, then filed for divorce. My father, grandmother, and I had to move because he couldn't afford to pay the mortgage by himself, and I couldn't contribute much to bills since I was struggling to keep myself in school (financially, that is). Robin had always been the big bread-earner, and when she moved out, we were fairly screwed.

We all moved into an apartment complex about a mile from my original home. Then along the way my father ended up in jail a few times for drunk driving, and failure to appear in court. His employers, a hotel in downtown Seattle, lost patience with their head of maintenance repeated ending up in jail, and canned him. So he just sat at home and got drunk frequently, not trying to get a job. We got evicted, I spent the next couple years trying to find some degree of stability (both financially and emotionally).

Meanwhile, Robin has tried to maintain relations with me, and I've tried to reciprocate because I want to maintain contact with my brother, Robert (who is now 6). (She, by the way, has gotten remarried already to the man who helped her quit drinking. Can you talk about some bitter feelings ranging about with my father?) So, especially recently, I've been bussing over to the eastside to visit them in their house in Bellevue. It's a little awkward for me. Starting in high school I've developed a growing irrational contempt for Christianity. While my lack of desire to become Christian has been pretty well thought out, I don't know what it is about it that makes me so angry these days. It's made especially difficult since I've begun studying astrology seriously and have been a regular player of role playing games.

I've had this deathly fear that should she find out about my extremely non-Christian attitude, that I'd lose the ability to spend time with my brother. Not that she'd instantly remove visiting rights, but I have noticed that she's often too busy to let my father visit with his youngest son (when he's not in jail, that is).

So I go over there when I can, watch my language, hope strongly that they don't pressure me about my beliefs or pry into what I'm busy doing on my weekends.

This last time I went over, it was business-as-usual for the most part. The key difference, however, was that I was there when Robert had to go to bed, which was at the insanely early hour of 7:30 PM (which I guess allows him 10.5 hours of sleep). Anyway, I couldn't give Robert a kiss until he said his prayers. It was the classic "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep" prayer that I grew up with, but afterwards he had to say what he was thankful for. Then Robin and her husband, Jim, also told what they were thankful for.

Then Robert looked at me expectantly and wanted me to chime in.

Not wanting to cause a scene, I just did. I felt a bit awkward, not having had any warning on this one, but I think I did well all things considered.

But it bothered me.

Part of it was just this feeling that I was being subtly drawn in towards this. There was this lure that I couldn't deny the existence of. I've often felt like something of an outsider, and hence have gotten myself in some strange situations while trying to feel like part of the group. Self-inflicted peer pressure, I guess. Even though I've given a lot of thought towards my feelings regarding Christianity, the lure of what they seemed to be subtly inviting me into was fairly strong. It greatly disturbed me. Could I really allow myself to be drawn into their lifestyle? Especially if the whole time I'd know I was living a lie?

I guess I bring this up because it's weighing heavily on my mind. I suppose I fear a confrontation. They've done little probing into my beliefs. There was one time when they asked about how I maintain my spirituality, and I just tried to blockade them. But I'm worried that at some point they'll try and invite me in farther than I'm willing to go, and it becomes a battle of wills. It's that possible conflict that makes me worry that it may lead to losing what contact I have with my brother. I guess I don't have much of a solution or point that I'm trying with this... It's just really weighing heavily on my mind recently, and I thought I'd vent a bit. See ya next week.

Okay, yeah, I screwed up. Totally forgot to do this yesterday. Welcome to the world from Tuesday morning. No big flaming rants today, just a variety of small pet peeves.

I started this whole thing off with a rant about people making money off the death of Princess Di. Well, I'm back on that track again, though only for a moment. Elton John, as some of you may recall, did that whole remake of "Candle in the Wind" for Diana's funeral. Okay. I'm cool with that. The release the single and sell it, which annoys me a bit, but the money is supposed to go to a charity that Diana supported. Okay, I'm cool with that.

I was reading in a magazine a week ago that after many years of refusing to do it, Elton John is finally writing his biography. In it he's describing his friendships with various people such as Princess Diana, and that designer that was murdered earlier this year (Versace?).

I ain't cool with that.

I'm hoping that it's just something that comes up during the course of the story and the magazine I read about it in just thought it would be neat to emphasize that. I'm really hoping that. If it becomes a tale of "My Friendship With Famous Dead People", I'll be a little pissed.

Next in the news: Fame L.A. What the fuck. I remember when the original Fame was on TV. It was okay in its time. An insightful and original piece that covered a lot of controversial issues. This, however, is a blatant attempt to make money off of a 15 year old show's success. I don't know that I can really say much more on this outside of the fact that it just annoys me to no end. Actually, I guess I can say something about it: I know someone who was in the pilot. A friend of mine, whose name is Danny, apparently got to be in the pilot for the show. He was a piano player in a band. The irony of it all is that Danny really is in a band (called Mayfly), but he's a guitarist. Oops.

In other news, I thought I'd make a little commentary on my Halloween. Unlike the past few years, I didn't go out in some half-ass costume and proceed to get drunk off my ass. Nope, this year I spent it with my six-year old brother at his church's Harvest Festival. That's right, Harvest Festival. I guess they wanted to put a bit of distance between themselves and a pagan festival. It was a safe, Christian alternative to Trick or Treating. You got to go in, play cheesy, carnival-type games, and got candy in exchange. Dressing up in a costume was optional, and dressing as something... safe was considered good. Animals or celebreties were safe. However, some of the costumes I saw struck me as... not particularly Christian:

• Vampires
• Gangsters
• Flappers
• Hercules (son of a Greek god!)
• And by far the most popular: Princess Jasmine. There must have been at least a half-dozen girls dressed up as Jasmine. That's right, female protagonist of Disney cartoon based off of an Arabian legend. She cavorts with evil spirits (genies) and bewitched artifacts (a magic carpet), and assorted other evils.

I had a good laugh. Pagan costumes galore at a Christian Harvest Festival. For the record, my brother went as David. Of "David and Goliath" fame. It was apparently his idea. For some reason my brother's absolute immersion in Christianity shocks me less and less every time. I think I'll leave off on this one before I start off on another rant.

My, my, a busy little week. Collectible porcelaine Princess Diana doll on sale. Woo. Hoo. Also, I've noticed that there are lots of people going on trial. I suppose the ability for the media to market off of Princess Di's death has tapered off, so there's a bunch of media circuses going on around a variety of trials.

There's the child molesting Santa Claus, the au pair accused of killing an infant, but the one that caught my eye was the woman who killed a pedestrian while driving drunk. Yeah, I know. I'm pretty fucking biased on this one.

What the fuck.

For a quick recap, it seems that a woman with something like a 20 year long record of drunk driving arrests, and still managed to never go to jail for any significant length of time. Major case of miscommunication between judicial jurisdictions.

It never ceases to amaze me how people like this slip through the cracks so easily. It's like that nutcase that managed to hold off Seattle Police for 8 or 9 hours with just a sword, after some moron let him out of the mental hospital. Seriously! I don't know what's more sad. There's the fact that even if she hadn't slipped through the cracks, it wouldn't have mattered. She would have gotten maybe a year of jail time for driving while drunk and been out on time to kill this person anyway. Why such a short time of arrest for a drunk driver? Because the jails can't handle much more for something as sadly common as drunk driving. The other factor competing for more pathetic is that this woman has managed to continue drinking for twenty years, despite rehab and various arrests for her drinking. I would think that after TWENTY YEARS she'd say, "Y'know, I really should stop doing this."

Guess I don't have a lot of empathy for this woman. I can't imagine being ensnared by a chemical. I get small bursts of caffeine addiction, and that's about all I ever get. I can't relate to someone who can't just stop drinking. My father, who has been an alcholic all my life, could not quit to save his marriage or his job. It just boggles my mind.

But wait! There's more!

So, this woman feels really guilty about having taken out this poor pedestrian (and kept on driving for quite some time! Police had to arrest her later!), so she tells reporters how guilty she feels about the whole thing, writes a letter of apology to the family of the deceased, yadda yadda, and the jury thinks, "Oh, she's a really nice person. We should give her a shortened sentence."

How short you ask? The judge wanted to give her 10 years, but I guess some people were pushing for 5 and a half. That's almost half the original sentence! You know, this sounds like such a great fucking plan. If anyone pisses me off to the point where I kill them, I'm going to write a letter the victim's family and say, "Hey, I'm sorry. I fucked up. I have no excuse." and then hope they try to cut my sentence in half.

Eh, no.

I yearn for the days when public canings were a good form of punishment, and they put the heads of criminals on pikes outside of town in order to scare anyone else from breaking the law.

I can empathize to an extent with people who are down on their luck, had a shitty life, and do stuff that isn't exactly the right thing. I'm cool with that. I've known that temptation, and I can empathize with it. But how long do we give a person to clean up their act? If a person is going in and out of jails really quickly, I'm getting the feeling that they don't have any solid plans to "make a new start".

Geh. I'm climbing off my soap box now. See ya next week.

Morning folks. Have a few things to gripe about today.

Last night, I'm watching "The World's Funniest", which is the latest incarnation of "America's Funniest Home Videos". It specializes in showing footage of people in embarressing situations. The original show at least had the benefit of giving away prizes for people who made asses out of themsevles. This show no longer claims that distinction.

So, I'm watching this, and they had footage of a hot air balloon in Barcelona. It was in the middle of the city, the balloon went up about 50-60 feet, caught on something sticking out from a building, and burst. It bobbed around above the middle of the street as hot air began to rapidly escape from it, but luckily drifted back to where it could hook on a building to impede its fall, and the pilots of the balloon were able to climb onto the ledge in safety.

I'm sitting there thinking, "You know, I would not think it was fucking funny if I was in a hot air balloon that was about to plummet 50+ feet and kill me. Granted, I am afraid of heights, but that doesn't make the fact that these people could have died any more funny. Has America become so fucking jaded that something as blatantly lethal as this becomes funny?

In other news, I guess our local baseball team, the Mariners, is about to lose their star pitcher. Why? Because he wants something like 10 million dollars a year, rather than 5 million, and the Mariners aren't willing to pay that.

The first thought that comes to mind is: What are you going to do with 5 million MORE dollars? Really? Let's bust out my Win95 Calculator. Given that my current salary is about 20 thousand a year, it would take me TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS to make 5 million dollars. For those who are a little slow, that's a really fucking long time.

I'm pretty happy with my lifestyle. I don't know that I could afford a house, but I can live in relative comfort. If I made double my current salary, I'd be pretty comfortable.

I'd be at a total loss to know what to do with 250 times my current salary. Have big BBQs with my friends? Get extra cheese on my Whoppers? Charter a yacht for a weekend and have a big party? Maybe buy a house? Travel around the world a few times? I mean shit, 5 million dollars should last me quite a while. The only way that much money could not last you is if you're stupid and/or greedy. That's the only two fucking reasons. I just don't understand what the need is for atheletes to get several million dollars to throw a ball around. I've heard the "limited time they can work due to age and injury". Oh, well that's pretty fucking bad. Except for one thing: a million fucking dollars. With a million dollars, if they only make it one fucking year, they could easily support themselves for a really fucking long time at a nice level of comfort. When you start getting up into 5 or 10 million, you're just getting absurd. And that's all there is to it. Whatever happened to playing the game because you enjoy it?

Well, I had kind of a shitty weekend, the highlight being going to see Starship Troopers. Lemme tell you, when that's your high point, things are sad. Oddly enough, my rant is not about this weekend, though I will take a moment to say an obligatory, "Chicks suck." I actually took notes on what I wanted to write about this Monday, so I've got a bit to say. Add in my shitty weekend, and I'm on fire.

First off, my fucking phone bill. For those of you who don't know me, I've got a shitty credit history which I've been working hard to repair. One of the things is the matter of a few hundred dollars owed to the local telephone company, US West. I owed them this money for something like a year or so, without having a phone in the interim. I managed to get by pretty well without one.

Since I moved into a new place, I thought I'd get my own phone line. So I called them up, explained my situation, and they were glad to oblige. It took me well over an hour to get things marginally straightened out, but it breaks down to this: I am allowed to have a phone, on the conditions that I'm not allowed any long distance phone service or operator access and stuff until I have my outstanding bill cleared up with them. It's been broken up into nice little chunks spread out over 6 months. Since there's no one worth calling outside of my calling area any more, I didn't really care. However, I was checking out, for the first time, an itemized list of my billing, and saw something that quite readily caught my eye. You see, it broke down about like this:

• Standard Service: $16.00
• Restricted Service: $2.00

For those that don't quite catch on, the restricted service is what prevents me from doing certain expensive things with my phone. Not only are they sticking me with a punishment, but they are fucking charging me for it. Is that insidious or what?

Next up, child abandonmnet. You may have heard about this case recently. It seems that some firefighters burst into an apartment because of a fire in the neighboring apartment with smoke going into neighboring apartments. They opened the door to discover a 14 month old child, gaunt as hell, lying in the middle of a filthy apartment, clad in only a diaper filled well beyond reasonable capacity, with a serious infection on his thumb. How come on his thumb, you ask? Because he had nothing else to eat, so he started gnawing on it.

Turns out his mother had gotten into the habit of leaving him there days at a time, by himself, with peanut butter sandwiches and juice left out for him. As the story evolves, she claims that she'd moved into her boyfriend's apartment, but there wasn't room for both the boy and his older sister, so only his older sister got to move in. She'd just check up on him once in a while. This last time it had been five days since she'd been in to check on him. She also claims to have been sexually abused frequently in the past, thus her problems with raising the younger of her children.

It later turns out that her boyfriend claimed no knowledge of what was going on with the son, asserting that his girlfriend (I think her name was LaJump or something like that) had told him that her mother was watching the baby. She would frequently avoid even mentioning the kid. He doesn't think he ever wants to see her again.

As you can guess, the mother was not watching the baby. Though her mother was willing to make excuses for her daughter. Pointed to her background, said her daughter needed help raising the child, etc, etc. I'd like to point out that her mother was the one who got her sexually abused so frequently in the past, and is in drug rehab right now.

LaJump's husband (yes she has a husband and a boyfriend) is currently in jail for driving with a suspended license. He was shocked at what she'd done too. The last he'd apparently heard from her was when she told him about her boyfriend, and about how nothing could come between them. Looks like she was fucking wrong.

I think the absolute icing on the cake is that she wants a second chance. That's just fucking wonderful. She says she just needs a bit of help raising her kid. What the fuck. I mean really, people, what kind of fucking moron would let her anywhere near a kid again? A person who goes out to the park with her boyfriend to play with her daughter, all laughs and smiles, while her 14 month old son is sitting in her apartment starving to death. She needs help, but not with her kids. I'm talking the rubber wall and straightjacket kind. She flat out lied to her friends, family, and neighbors about the condition of her son, while she let him fucking suffer. I can think of no punishment within the legal system that would really serve proper justice in this case.

Moving on to a lighter note:

Was watching the Discovery Channel this last weekend, and was reminded that such creatures as marine iguanas exist. These are like your standard iguanas, except they swim in the ocean, and have to bask in the sun frequently to maintain body temperature after a brisk dip in the icy ocean waters.

What kind of evolutionary cock up is this? I mean, here I am watching this iguana being buffetted against rocks as he tries to get a grip on them and climb up to safety, and I'm thinking, "If that was me, I'd fucking not go back in the water. I'd get up on the shore, and make a serious reconsideration about my lifestyle." Really, if I was a marine iguana, my fat red and green ass would be chilling out on the shore hunting seagulls. If some other marine animal asked me about it, I'd simply reply, "It breaks down like this: I'm a fucking iguana. I'm not a fish. I'm not a fucking penguin. This is not the body of a fucking Olympic swimmer. It's the body of a fucking lizard who is very sick of freezing his ass off just to enjoy a bit of seafood. I don't think mandatory basking is really a fun price to pay for a fucking oyster. Piss off."

First off, deep fried turkey rules! Yeah, I had a good Thanksgiving.

Next up, body bars: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just an overrated name for soap?

In further news: Disney is taking over the world. Was watching this show on MTV called "12 Angry Viewers" or something similarly clever, and they were supposed to be be 12 ordinary people giving their honest opinion of videos that might be going onto MTV. So they show this video that goes with 20th Century Fox's new animated feature, Anastasia. A lot of people said that they liked it, mostly because they always liked "Disney stuff".

IT'S NOT DISNEY!

I think it's a bit insidious that so many people just automatically see some commercial for an animated movie and think, "Oh, that's Disney." They just don't give it a second thought. Twelve people about my age on a stupid MTV show, and not one of them says, "Um, it ain't Disney." Not even the nerdy know-it-alls. As I'm prone to saying recently: 'supwitdat?

It gets worse. Does anyone else find it an uncanny coincidence that the same week that Anastasia is released in theatres, Disney also re-releases The Little Mermaid? We're talking about people who, as far as I can tell, bought hockey and baseball teams just so they can make a movie about them. It's... creepy. That's the only word I can think of for that. It's as though they want to instill themselves in the minds of America that they are the only providers of family entertainment in America.

Anyway, on another topic, about a couple weeks ago, the Seattle Times released various statistics regarding schools in the greater Puget Sound area. Here's a big surprise: schools in upper-class suburbanite schools do better than lower-class inner-city schools. Big surprise! Wow, glad we have all these tests to show us this.

In other news, US astronauts caught a satellite. Is this type of thing really in their job description? I mean, I don't relish the notion of being the poor shmuck who has to stand out there in the vacuum of space, feet hooked on the edge of the space shuttle, trying to catch a spinning satellite. Microgravity or no, objects still have mass. My reply would be something along the lines of, "Uh, Houston... you can kiss my ass. I'm coming back down."

A friend of mine tried arguing that it was going "only 3 degrees per second", which is slower than a second hand. Okay, let's put a little math to work for this one. Being really generous, let's say that this thing is about 6 feet across. The photograph of the thing looked pretty huge, if memory serves correct, but let's just use six feet. A little work with my PC's calculator gives me that that's a little under 2 inches per second. Now, this isn't linear motion. This isn't you trying to keep your car from coasting gently down a hill. This is you trying to keep your car from slowly tumbling sideways down a hill. Except that you're in the vacuum of space, in a space suit, on the side of a space shuttle.

Eh, no. Get JPL working on a bit better solution.

This week it's not much of a rant. This time is a, quite frankly, amazed pondering. I saw something last week that kind of blew my mind away for a few reasons, and I feel like sharing.

I went to go see my friend's band play at a local bar last week. For those who care, the band was Mayfly. Check them out. Anyway, the music was pretty good, and the bar was about on par for what it was. It was a college bar, filled with college students, most of whom probably only recently turned 21. I always find it ironic that even though I'm only 22, the 21 year olds at the local university always seem so young. Weird.

Anyway, my friends and I were watching Mayfly play. Between us and the band was an area that was being used as something of a dance floor. Most of the people there were college girls, who were sort of dancing, and a couple of guys who'd gotten dragged on by said girls who were doing even less. I've never been into dancing, just something I've never come to enjoy. Between self-consciousness and just not having a "dancer's soul", I guess, I just never really get into dancing. I do find it interesting what other people consider dancing. It's not that their dancing was particularly bad... it just wasn't particularly dancing. They'd wiggle their shoulders a bit, wiggle their hips a little bit, and that'd be about it. Every song, irregardless of tempo, they did about the same thing.

After the show had been going on for about an hour or so, a new guy came on the dance floor. He looked a good deal older than the others on the dance floor, maybe late twenties, early thirties. Not what I'd really consider attractive, either. Kinda goofy looking, actually. But he did dance. I mean really dance. He didn't really have any specific movies. He just danced. Utterly uninhibited. He seriously moved to the music.

A change came over the crowd.

Everyone just seemed to get into the music a bit more. They moved a bit more freely... seemed more alive. The few other guys on the dance floor actually seemed to get into dancing. The girls on the floor all seemed to eventually drift towards this guy at one point or another and dance with him for a while. One girl in particular, the cutest on there in my opinion, spent every opportunity she had dancing with this guy. Even when there was no one dancing with him, he'd keep moving. Some of it seemed almost mime-like. At one point he reached for his beer-glass and found himself pulled away by some invisible force, all while still dancing.

It's occured to me that people in general tend to live like this. They just sort of shuffle along through their lives, not really making any real contact with the world about them. Just going through the motions. Some people just sit on the sidelines and watch the world pass them by. And every once in a while, someone will come onto the scene and just send change through a group like a rock in a pond. For a moment in their lives they're a bit more alive. A bit more in touch with the world around them. Sometimes they stay that way. Sometimes they don't. Dunno how else to describe this, even though it's deeply impressed itself upon me.

As a bit of a follow up to this little story, two days later I was waiting for a bus, and picked up a copy of "Discover U", a little catalog of lessons for people who are busy. Flipping through it, the page landed on dance lessons, and I pondered for a bit the thought of doing it. I would probably have forgotten about it had it not been for the fact that as I read my newspaper that same night, I came across a letter to "Dear Abby", from a woman who complained that there aren't enough men who dance.

Ever get the feeling the universe is trying to tell you something?

I must have somehow gone stupid recently. Yeah, I must have. I have somehow totally overestimated the nobility of people living in the greater Seattle area. I had actually believed that our laid back, flannel and espresso Seattle culture had bred a society based off of fairly good tolerance. Not great, mind you, but pretty good. Sure, we have a few rednecks, but I always figured that they were this insane little minority. For some reason I had either been supressing something from my life in suburban/backwater Kent, Washington, or else just not quite realizing the depths to which my fair city had stooped.

While at a friend's place, I was watching him surf the cable channels, and on one (the Public Access) they were showing a clip from the show "South Park". I guess it was the Halloween special, and one of the kids had been dressed up like Hitler for Halloween. Anyway, we watched that for a bit with mild amusement, and then it switched back to the real show:

White Power Television

We, uh... ceased to be amused.

I just could not fucking believe it! It was a show dedicated to the "white seperationist movement", complete with a swastika covered flag behind them. I would have watched more of it to get a really good rant built up for today, but my friend was so disgusted that he changed the channel quite quickly.

I just can't believe it. I find it hard to believe that people in this day and age could admire a man like Adolf Hitler for his persecution of minorities, though I know it happens. What really got to me was that this was so close Seattle! My home! Granted, their PO Box was in the neighboring city of Renton, but it's still waaay too close for comfort! I mean, Seattle is so diverse, and so generally tolerant. It's hard not to be. Your surrounded by it every day. It's a "fucking deal with it" environment. You can dislike it, but you can't make it go away.

I just can't believe that there's an organization in the Seattle area dedicated to such a separist movement.

Here's the real fucking irony. Okay? You ready for this? These white power groups are tired of immigrants coming over. Would like them all to just go back where they came from. Talk about your instant karma.

White settlers come to the America's fleeing oppression, shove the natives out of the way in order to establish their own way of life in the "New World". Then a couple hundred years later other immigrants come over, and the whites are bitching about being displaced? Hey man, what goes around comes around. I think Dennis Leary put it best when he said, "Life sucks. Get a fucking helmet."

Sure, send the foreigners home. Just great. Ideal solution, really. I'll get my fat white ass on the boat right after the charming skinheads at WPTV shuffle their sorry asses on first. First in, first out baby.

First off, the Supreme Court has upheld the ruling that chicks suck. Which Supreme Court would uphold a ruling like that, you ask? The Supreme Court of Bolthy, magoo.

Next up, Chris Farley. Why do people find it so much easier to believe that he died of a normal heart attack in his early thirties, rather than fess up to the harsh reality that it was probably drug-induced heart failure? C'mon, it's the nineties, people. Wake up and smell the tall triple shot mint mocha breve with whipped cream and a big fucking cherry. Sure, he was fat and high-strung. But so am I, and I have no concerns about dying of a heart attack in ten years. Why? Cause it's bloody unlikely, that's why. Now, if I develop a sudden crack addiction, I may have a problem, but otherwise, ain't gonna happen folks.

In further news, post mortum babies! Woo-hoo! Now there's something really neat. Seems a girl, who I'll refer to as "Jan" since I don't remember her real name, died of leukemia not too long ago and, before her death, had several of her eggs fertilized then frozen in case she got better. She wanted to have kids. Okay, no prob. But she died. In her will, she left said frozen embryoes to her parents. I don't know what the common reaction to something like this would be. Hell, I don't know how I'd react to this. What would I do with a half dozen frozen embryoes? Bronze 'em or something? Despite my inability to envision what I'd do with them, the parents of the deceased had a pretty strong idea of what they wanted to do with them.

They wanted to have the kid. Y'know, a little thing to replace their daughter. So they were going to have a surrogate mother give birth to the child, then have Jan's sister, "Marsha", raise the kid as their own. Seems Marsha and her husband, "Greg" have been having fertility issues.

Does this strike anyone else as being a little fucked up? I remember when the threat of being adopted was enough to shit on any kid's day. Can you imagine getting this one dropped on your lap.

"Son, I must confess, I'm not really your mother. You were created by the artificial insemination of my now-dead sister's eggs with the sperm of some anonymous donor, then carried to term by a surrogate mother, whom you've never known."

I can't even imagine elementary school kids forming this into a succinct insult, except maybe "freak". I mean, think about the kid. Don't think about, "Oh, I'd love to have kids." Think about the kid. Think about the look on the kid's face when you tell him that the person he calls daddy isn't really his daddy, but really that he was conceived through use of a sperm bank and a turkey baster. That is a shitty fate I would wish on no one. There's almost 6 billion people on the planet, we don't really need more.

On the topic of freakish things done with babies, a pro-choice organization in Seattle invited law-makers to a luncheon with a rather unusual exhibition piece: an aborted fetus. They cleaned off all the blood and crap, and it looked like just a piece of mangled meat about the size of your small finger, or so I've read. I'm not a lawmaker, so I didn't get to see this little morbid exhibit.

I mean, does anyone else find this a bit excessive? The pro-choice group allegedly did this in response to pro-life organizations displaying ads with almost-fully-developed butchered fetuses. ("Tommy, don't hit Billy." "But MOOOOOM, Billy hit me first.") Well, that's just great. So you're both sick fucks. Here's your medal, and your cookie, now go get a fucking life people!

Morning folks. First up: Be afraid of the Department of Energy. These guys just weird me out. I mean, really. They've declassified all this shit in the past couple years about experiments on prison inmates, the mentally ill, and US troops, testing the effects of nuclear radiation on them. Now they're saying, "Oh, we won't classify stuff like that again."

Yeah, fucking right. Sure. We believe you.

Next on today's list: Christmas. I had a fucked-up-weird Christmas. I spent Christmas eve, as has been my tradition for a few years now that my family has made it's big disintigration act, with my friends down in beauteous suburban Kent. Christmas day though, I got out of bed way too early for a holiday, and rode the ferry across the Sound to the thriving metropolis of Bremerton, where I spent Christmas day with my brother and my dad's ex-inlaws.

Creepy.

These were the people I had spent Christmas with every year for maybe six or seven years. I felt pretty awkward being around people that were no longer legally family, whom I hadn't seen in a few years, and had made no attempt to get in touch with. That was what it was, really. Just discomfort around people I had lost touch with. No psychic premonitions of ill feelings, despite what at least one person may claim. ;)

As the day went on, it began to seem much like all the other Christmases I had spent there, with just a few subtle differences.

One thing was time. I don't really think of myself as being much like the person who had been there for Christmas a few years back. The cousin I'd always hated had grown up, in more ways than one. A few other people had changed a little bit since I last saw them.

The thing that didn't dawn on me for some time as to having changed was that one person in particular was missing from this little Christmas celebration: my father. While I was riding the ferry across the water to Bremerton, he was getting out of jail. At Christmas, playing the role of Robin's husband was Jim, her new husband. In some ways, he reminds me of my father, but in most other ways, he doesn't. It reminded me of a Red Dwarf episode, where an android travelled back and forth through time, removing the people who had wasted their lives, and replaced them with other people who could have been them in their place. The sperm that never made it to the egg, so to speak.

Dunno. It's weird. I felt like I'd stepped back into my life from before the facade of stability shattered, and had everything somehow... fixed. I'm still a little wobbly over the whole thing, so apologies if this whole little tirade today seems a little disjointed. Toodles.