Overheard Starbuck

"'So this is the world of gift baskets.''"
---"'Thank you, thank you', she said to no one as she almost tripped over a basket near the bed."
'You can feed an army', she giggled. I hadn't planned on that contingency. Images of Napoleon's retreat from Russia came to my head."

"The French hate us."
---"What the..? And the Russians want our blue jeans? --Are you speaking in code? 'The grouse goes up at midnight?", etc. Or you've been watching Fox News again?"

"Her greatness comes from the things she's now free to ignore. The things which occupy most of our waking hours."
---"Food, shelter and clothing?"
"...No longer need concern her.
---"She's an exceptional human being."
"An inspiration for us all. --She should write a book."
---And donate the profits to food banks for the poor and health services for the uninsured ."
"She could become the 'Bill Gates' of the West Side--if she isn't already."
---"Well if you're talking real estate..."
"Someone told me she threatens the Mayor when he doesn't play ball to take her charities and investments to Africa or Gary."
---"She'ld better be careful and not order out for lunch for one."

Isn't it something that our female celebrities are skinnier than average women? While male celebrities--movie stars, politicians and athletes--are taller and bulkier then the majority of men?"
---"There's nothing unusual about it. Can you picture our ideal kings and queens in any other way? ..I've been told male celebrities are consistently photographed and filmed as larger then life."
"And female stars have various surgeries and the latest fashion to augment their unique stature."

"He craves silence now like he once desired the sounds from her honeyed lips ."

---"There're pills for that, ask your doctor."

"They didn't know what to do so they buried them by the roadway."
---"Salt of the earth."
"A similar fate awaited the remains of my great-grandfather when he was working in Colorado for the railroad had he been a clumsy, unlucky young man."
---"Are there many country and western songs celebrating the immigrants' contribution to opening America's West?"
"Back then I don't think the law recognized immigrant laborers as white. They were viewed by the majority of Americans as more white then black and Asian, but not white enough to share access to bars, music publishing and later recording studios and radio appearances. The traditions that define the songs we hear today on the radio are based on these century-old ethnic and financial 'preferences'. One can guess what sorts of special arrangements exist today---outside the music industry as well---for blacks and Asians."
---"No need for businessmen, politicians or bankers to have a single racist bone in their bodies."

"What's the matter with you?"
---"I'm thinking there're more people driving around on any given day of the year stoned---on legally prescribed medication-- then music lovers on illegal dope at all of the summer's music festivals combined."
"Chill dude."
---"Chill? I had to jump over two tables, a chair and a row of planters to avoid being pushed into a plate glass window by a sixty-something year old man driving a Buick and grinning because he'ld forgotten which pedal was the brake and which was the gas. I think I saw a pair of legs under the car.The car's drive wheel was lifted off the sidewalk just enough to stop him from driving into the store. He was still smiling and gunning the engine while his radio blared easy listening tunes when I decided I was okay and there was nothing I could do for the injured and left."
"Dude lawsuit: make the stoners pay!"
---"If they'ld grow their hair long, wear beads and funny clothes, we'ld have a chance to see them coming and get out of their way."
'There's more of them then there are of us, don't expect laws making it difficult for the drug companies to keep them high."
---"How about legislation stopping them from operating heavy machinery?"
"The feds raised the age of retirement. How will these people get to work if there were pharmaceutical restrictions on their driving privileges? Lawmakers would also have to look at drug interactions, and that's something no doctors, social workers, HMO providers or shareholders in the drug industry ever want to happen."

"If the Saudis or the US State Department---whoever---sold the rights of future Bin Laden videos to a sole media distributer that distributor could make his videos 'pay for view'. Everytime a news outlet showed a segment they'ld have to pay a royalty fee. Which could be a nice chunk of change for a private enterprise but also a fairly accurate measurement of the publics interest in what the experts say Bin Laden is saying."

Sometimes my head feels too heavy for my neck to hold."
---"Isn't that what the kids call 'nap time'?"
"I never knew my body's appendages could be a burden. A number of times I've needed to lean my head against the back of the chair or a wall to get some relief."
---"Are you bragging?"
"Are trees ever distressed by their own branches?"
---"In hopes of becoming long sticks in the ground?"

"I've an idea for a tv show."
---"Shoot."
"It's a stagecraft thing that has to do with the actors... but you can incorporate it into shows that're already on."
---"Ok...ok."
"You insist the writers periodically and arbitrarily 'disappear' an actor."
---"You mean more story-lines in which characters die, get married or find work and move to other cities?"
"No I mean writers 'retire' a character without building a story around it, without any explanations whatsoever."
---"I don't think...""
An episode begins as usual in which Character A and Character B are involved in a predictably entertaining situation. There's a commercial break or some change and when Character B again shows up on screen there's no more Character A. The episode goes on as if Character A was never in it. None of the other characters explain what happened or mention Character A in subsequent stories again. It's as if he or she 'disappeared'. The show's producers maintain a press blackout. The stars refuse to talk about Character A, (as does the former 'A' actor) feigning complete ignorance. All the actors are held to air-tight non-disclosure clauses covering non-events like this."
---"I don't get it. What's the point?"
"They could also do the opposite: arbitrarily introduce and materialize full blown characters into episodes without histories, back-stories ---out of nothing, from nowhere."
---"Why exactly?"
"How about randomly changing an actor's role within a series? During an episode he starts out as the tough cop 'Randy Bison', a part he's played for a number of weeks and somewhere in the middle, a corner is turned and he becomes the heavy metal loving forensic lab geek 'Sergio Cephalapod'?"

"Can one say 'bomb' in a crowded airport? Not shout, not scream but in conversational tones to a friend close by and be certain you won't be taken into custody by guards with automatic weapons, interrogated, strip-searched, detained and or arrested and charged with a federal crime?"
---"I don't get it--say it again."
"Would whoopee cushions in an airport waiting room cause a panic? A group of men in beards? More women than not wearing scarfs on their heads--not even burkkas--in these places? A toddler marching up and down wielding a suspicious looking baby bottle?"
---"Damn you sure are obsessed with imaginary oppression. The real thing doesn't do it for you? These are dangerous times. People feel good when they strike a blow against crime and terrorism and help put someone not like them into custody. They won't soon forget how they may have saved hundreds of lives by informing on strangers in already secured areas. Why fault them for needing to feel safer?"
"Maybe the Department of Homeland Security can offer these quick thinking citizens certificates or coupon with which they can purchase, at a special price, framed letters signed by the President and emblems, pins, belt buckles or patches of commendation."
---"They could make it a tv game show and have the audience at home call in and pick out the one person from a group of five most deserving of that weeks arrest and further inquiry. The neighbor or the person in the street who first contacted the shows producers about the suspect can be rewarded with cash, vacation get-aways and the latest consumer items."
"America's Most Wanted for Further Questioning?"
---"Freedom's Eyes."

"I don't know where it came from, but you've got this crazy idea that USAs national security apparatus, which may at times use and can always overrule America's military, customs, immigration, DOJ, every last one of our 17,000 separate law enforcement agencies, along with our various nuclear and environmental regulatory agencies is partnered with organized crime."
---"It has to do with a Time-Life book I read in my early teens on assassinations in America in the 1960's & '70's.-- Including the attempt on that racist populist governor of Alabama.--Through ignorance, I saw the murders and attempted murders as less to do with destroying or attempting to destroy those particular men and their leadership and more about clearing the landscape. As a lesson to other politicians, to all Americans that the families who control America will no longer tolerate the popularization of certain ideas and policies and the targeting of certain criminal activities. The assassinations were part of a coup that took a number of years to complete and as far as I can tell organized crime and white collar criminals have benefitted the most while millions of Americans continue to watch the quality of their lives decline."
"That's right blame the oil men, the gangsters and their friends in the Pentagon for your inability to adapt to the new markets created by less government interference in our lives."
---"'Idee fixe'."
"What?"
---"That's what my feeling about America's gargantuan national national security state is called:'idee fixe'."

"I can't stop imagining I'm seeing suicide bombers everywhere I go."
---"Is it like the time you saw those Mark Chapman clones hanging out in doorways?"
"That was when I was working downtown. ...Now it's pregnant women in their loose clothing and big bellies. I keep expecting them to explode."
---"What do you think about young mothers pushing baby strollers?"
"Don't get me started."

"He's lost a lot of weight. What diet is he on?"
---"That's the 'Get Cancer and Waste Away Diet'.Very popular now among baby boomers."
"He's more interesting looking; almost handsome."
---"I read Weight Watchers may have patents for the most effective carcinogens , dosages and copyrights on the scientific studies measuring the speed of the test subjects weight loss."

"My wife's a swinger."
---"Another lyric? A September song? ...Is this a lament for the Judy that once was or an anthem for all the fun she's having with her new friends? --I can see it now: as the first guitar chords are struck and the lasers kick in, everyone in the stadium's standing, stomping, clapping and cheering. It's more popular then 'Like a Rolling Stone'"
"She'ld like that. ...I don't think I'd want her to like it."
---"You can't stop progress...fight city hall...know a woman's heart...the reach of America's national security agencies or why power trumps love every fucking time."

"I hate her. She reminds me of everything I'm not."
---"I like her. She reminds ME of everything I'm not."

"I'ld say the more rules there are; the more a job, a project or a event is structured, the better I perform and the happier I am. ...That's probably one of reasons I'm such a big sports fan."
---"I thought you were all about the uniforms, the balls and the big bats."
"What?
---"Nevermind...Did you ever think how insane the rules governing competitive sports are?"
"They only appear that way to the ignorant and the uninitiated."
---"How the rules of any sport--those watched each week by milions of viewers around the world--if taken out of context could be the invention of teams of insomniac ocd-ers, poor souls crippled by multiple obsessive-compulsive-psychiatric disorders?"
"When did you become such a stick-in the mud?"
---"I enjoy how so many close-minded fans can be entertained for hours watching the innane, if highly skilled and specialized, behavior of people in uniform they'ld never tolerate for a minute from lone non-competing less physically imposing crazies."
"Nobody likes amateurs."

"There were too many lesbians."
---"Is there ever just the right amount? ...How did that make you feel? Frustrated? Redundant? Endangered? Pointless?"

"She had nothing until they chose her for a bride."
---"He was no one until she showed him his true worth."
"Put an organization in charge of helping these two meet, give them a safe place and some form of community to welcome their love and you've created a motivated group of grateful people."
---"Are you describing those groups disguised as grass-roots organizations from which Republicans motivate the masses and grow or season their future leaders?"
"Democrats too but nowhere near the scale of those primarily church-sponsored missions ...From all classes, not only the under-priviledged, kids are being taught to embrace cult-thought, cult-speak and behavior at younger and younger ages. Individuality is already suspect, soon to be criminally taboo.
--Now let's talk about the issues voters want their candidates to address and how these Republican PACs make them disappear of remake them acceptable to their foundations and leaders."

"How do I make things mine? For example how does a pop song like 'Yellow' after hearing it once become mine forever and another song, say, 'You're Beautiful' means absolutely nothing no matter how many times I hear it?."
---"I always wondered why Paul Klee and not Marc Chagall."
"Why am I interested in scruffy impassable mats of weedy plants and not more stately conifers?"
---"Given all the images and the variety of things to mull over--the sense of ownership for example of one pop song versus another-- isn't the real mystery in the choosing itself? In the speed and certainty of the rightness of our selections and our ability to stick with these favorite things for more than a few minutes?---For a lifetime?!"
"What if we aren't in complete control of this process of choosing? Of how we decide which found things we call ours are ours?"
---"You're not talking about phermones or marketing chemicals again are you?"
"No, I might be talking about gravity, the weight of things. The way mundane objects and ideas can influence the dreams and behavior of human beings everywhere."
---"Can you inagine somewhere in America today demographically ideal men or women whose fantasy lives are uncluttered by objects and ideas, like weeds or conifers, that promise no steady profits for advertisers and retailers?"
"There could be in the US and on our military bases overseas thousands of such ideal consumers. --How many years have Republicans controlled this country?--Individuals and families who can only think in terms of brandnames, products and prices. So that for example those oddly attractive plants in the empty lot on the way to the train station are not fully perceived, certainly not appreciated, until these consumers somehow if ever make a connection between them and plants one can buy. All manner of things without price-tags have ceased to exist, simply diappeared."

"The victims of most women who kill are their own children."
---"Statistics don't lie. To protect children from these homicidal predators, mothers should never be left alone with their babies."
"New laws can insist parents provide nannies everywhere babies reside. Insurance companies can help states create and enforce new criminal statutes."
---"Drivers need car insurance in order to drive. There should also be a system with similar 'nanny' insurance: including both civil & criminal punishment, mandatory jail-time, along with health and accident coverage for all household members, including the nannies and especially the children before breeding women are allowed to bring their children home from the birthing centers."
"Society can no longer permit giving these potential predators access to our infants."

"Wouldn't it be something if you two shared many of the same dreams?"
---"Dream buddies?"
"Everything except his 'certainty' dreams---his dreams of the power of armies, the tens of thousands of necessary deaths from the forces of nation building and the ease in which free markets will sprout from the blood buried with the rubble."
---"Even mass killers need their 'down time'?"
"Shouldn't we wonder where do your history making, nation building, freedom loving dreams show themselves?"
---"I enjoy fantasy football?"

"Why can't they see the god they promote in politics and on tv is psychotic, a dangerous imaginary friend? And his bible little more then hate literature with homilies mixed in?"
---"What makes you think the mechanisms for crowd control need be 'elegant'--in that classical biological design sense-- or even rational? ...When someone next starts talking about god ask them which one they mean: the god of war or the god of love."

"The problem with media is that anything twenty million people like can't be good."
---"You've got it backwards."
"Do I?"
---"What about popular music--or more to the point movies--where you need at least ticket sales, etc. from 20 million fans if only to finance your next project?"
"Everyone's got winning the lottery on the brain."

"Geez look at her!"
---"Shouldn't you introduce yourself? She obviously spent two or three hours this morning making herself up on the off-chance she'ld meet someone like you. Don't disappoint her, get in line. Let her know it worked."

"So she believes the two or three years you wasted 'experimenting' with pot is responsible for everything that's now ailing you, while her brothers' thirty, forty and fifty years of alcoholism has nothing whatsover to do with their health problems?"
---"Her brothers aren't drunks, they're veterans. The military not the booze changed them."
"I coulda told her she might be right:'you're saintly brothers never had their hooch (or everything else) dosed with paraquat'."

"Now that you're here, I love you and all your many mouths to feed. To do otherwise would be ungrateful and miserly. My world is big enough for everybody. I'm grateful for how easy it is for us to keep healthy and consuming the few mouths that sleep and shelter with us in this apartment. It's amazing how little we worry about food--except for eating too much-- compared to people in the other parts of the world. If the media's to be believed..
On a night like this it usually takes me more then a few bottles of imported beer-- while everyone's asleep and nothing's on tv and I can just barely see to write-- to realize how special I am and everybody I know is. It's difficult to feel special when so much looks alike, when so many talk and think alike.
Tonight with my stretching belly making contented noises I wonder if America's unique place on earth through secret reciprocal laws of economic alchemy requires that millions of other humans are doomed to live their short lives without ever feasting on the volumes and varieties of food-like products most Americans now work to avoid? ... What is the relationship if any between collateral damage in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lowfat yogurt in the fridge and the low calorie bread in our cupboards? Is it essential that we war on hungry people all over the world so that we maintain a comfortable margin of too much food, energy..of too much of everything? ---Because now anything less than too much would look like not enough? Like an end to growth--like god-forbid--starvation rations? Or like the others are not as envious of our plenty as we imagine?"
---"You're weird. The market decides when enough is enough. Who eats what and who gets eaten."
"Don't you mean who eats and what gets eaten?"
---"That too."