Overheard Starbuck

2007-11-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

"There wouldn't be a gay rights movement in America if prostitution was legal."
---"You mean gay activism would be different?"
"No. I'm saying prostitution is the fuel and prostitutes are the front-line soldiers for every major social advance gays (and many women) have made in America during the past sixty years."
---"You're nuts, you know that?"
"The idea came to me first thing in the morning."
---"And you thought I could decipher it?"
"Gays are a small group with a huge media presence. The number of news items and reports about gay issues rival the Israelis."
---"Gays are passionate about their rights."
"And most everyone I know gay, Jewish or otherwise are passionate about wages, job benefits and affordable medical insurance."
---"Do you know what editorial bias is?"

"Do you have the feeling that because of America's special relationship with corporations that more of our country's controlled by foreign interests then the smaller European countries and former Asian kingdoms where for thousands of years people fought and died over their rights and the land? America's founding fathers, after killing off the local residents like vermin, had stolen the land created a massive slave economy and began trading and selling every natural resource in sight--including the places on which they stood?"
---"'Bang the drum slowly'". ...And hundreds of years later you imagine hookers are playing a role? ---You're fantacizing people are now being exploited, like Amerca's natural resources!"

2007-11-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

"She's not demented, she's more likely going deaf."
---"Is there medication for that? She's getting pills for alzheimers--they're expensive."
"You should get a second opinion; maybe take her to an ear specialist?"
---"She's already got a doctor. Medicare's paying for most of the costs."
"Idiot."
---"She's my Grandmother and we want nothing but the best for her."

2007-11-06T01:27:00.000-08:00

"Her art pieces were so exquisite, so perfect she could call them anything. Her latest work she titled 'Protest'. --And everyone went, 'Yes! Yes. Protest. We see it--excellent.'"

2007-11-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

"When Native American and other spokespeople appear on tv and use the phrase 'our people', you ever stop to think what's involved in the use of that term? How does the media know he or she speaks for the people?"

---"How do they know who the people are? Who decides this person's authority to speak for 'our people'?"

"Blacks, women, Asians, gays and Hispanics don't have people appear on tv voicing their familiarity with the needs and wishes of an 'our people'."

---"Most minorities grew away from using the term. At any one time, the media allows two or three minority experts to represent the views of their minority people."

"Indigenous people around the world have too many talking heads for the media to fairly accommodate?"

---"Too many Indians, not enough chiefs."

2007-11-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

"How has a system failed you today? --Lately I've noticed that shop-keepers, clerks, messengers, repair-people, waiters and other service workers have gotten more efficient, more reliable, less cringeworthy. The stereotype of the no-nothing/care-less corporate lackey has all but disappeared."
---"You've been working customer-relations for how long now?"
"It's the machines, the devices I expect trouble from. The hand-held electronics everyone now uses are the causes of more problems, more anxiety, then the people using them."
---"You've become a people-person!"

"How have you failed to efficiently use a system today?"

2007-11-01T01:19:00.000-07:00

"It's almost like not being in a cult at all."

2007-10-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

"He had motive and opportunity."
---"And you have a tv set on which you watch cop shows. Seriously--who the hell talks like that?"

2007-10-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

"I don't mind being stupid once in awhile."
---"Once in awhile?"
"I don't try to put anyone on anymore. I like being off-putting."
---"Off-putting sounds like an olympic event."
"In my ill-fitting clothes I've grown into the useless man that women always knew me to be."
---"Grown?"
"From a half-mile away they see me for the waste of meat I am. As I get more comfortable with myself, their utilitarian hallucinations flare and they become more restive and fearful."
---"It's a restive world afterall."
"I don't like to watch them as they shudder and turn away but that's refreshing compared to the years of imagining that somewhere in one of their exquisite bodies my life's mate may be waiting."
---"The dream is over."
"Let's drink a toast for all the girls and women who never took time to make time with me."
---"Bitter, no? --A little bit maybe? --Just a little?"
"I see paddocks and pens. Men in thick rubber boots carrying buckets of feed through the mud, oblivious to the noise, comments and criticism."
---"Your lady-love waits for you, quickly find her and tell her about these sights you've seen. These things you know in your heart. There's still time to make a world together."
"You promised you wouldn't laugh."
---"How might $10,000 more disposable income a year spruce up that old feed lot."

2007-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

"She was sexy. She was beautiful. She was loving and she was sweet. But after living together for a few weeks he realized that on the existential spectrum that ran from imaginary to reality her experiences would always skew on the imaginary end. Even when making love she was more will'o'the wisp then flesh on flesh, soul-to-soul. It wasn't anybody's fault but they were doomed."
---"Dude of all the things that can wreck an intimate relationship who in their right mind considers let alone cares about reality? ---Poor sick fuck."

2007-10-26T02:46:00.000-07:00

"Everybody knows who has the money. Everybody knows what they'll have to do. ---That is everybody except for you."
---"Does everybody know what it turns them into?"
"Nothing they value is lost....it won't turn them into you."

2007-10-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

"Have you seen on late-night tv the 'Inspiratonal Bible Reading Hour?'"
---"I'm not entertained by preachers."
"A man or a woman dressed as a minister stands at a podium in front of a blue screen projection of a world famous cathedral, church or nature scene and reads as if in front of a congregation randomly strung together passages of a few sentences or paragraphs long from the bible. He or she doesn't stop reading, or make any comments, remarks or explanations, but keeps up a steady measured 'preacherly' cadence. The background never varies during the hour but changes from show to show. The use of the three studio cameras is a random as the words of god that find themselves at any particular moment falling from the readers lips to our ears."
---"Every minute of every hour of every day the words of god announce the way to eternal salvation ."
"God needs shills?"

2007-10-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

"I was always in awe of women; scorned by men."
---"Your scornful compatriots were in awe of women too."
"No one was as drunk on beauty as I was."
---"When they weren't chasing tail, they were working for the cash to chase tail and support their families according to the means to which they were accustomed . What were you doing when everybody was busy getting dizzy?"
"I couldn't say but I know it wasn't that."
---"Do you understand how out-of-it-you were? Do you see how true believers might view what you weren't doing as threatening, crazy or criminal? They're working so hard to get them a little sumptin' something, and you...and you don't care. Don't even notice them falling over themselves, pants and panties around their ankles, tongues lolling, sweat beading from their faces.. ..How have you stayed out of jail? Stayed alive?"

2007-10-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

"There's nothing like watching one's reflection fade in the stare of a sadist.--seeing their anticipation of mastery melt into the certainty of boredom. Sometimes they'll shed a tear. You can get a glimpse of the synthetic organs and organizations which control their controls. New plastic-alloys are replacing the gems and the crome. New open, hipper bureaurats replacing the men in grey and the women in black and blue. The ice- cold sadness is the same."
---"Isn't it dangerous to look in their eyes?"

2007-10-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

"I read in Demographics Weekly the next presidential election may be decided by the self-hating gay vote. Some experts say radical Christian fundamentalism--maybe all religious fundamentalism-- couldn't exist without closeted gays."
---Gay-bashing as self-flagellating penance? Gay-bashing as self-flagellating penance turned into a world-over political movement?--You're blaming the victims: people who's identity and daily existence is threatened by god-damned homo-phobes."
"Hello? Hello? You've lost me there Rosa. The operative terms here are 'self-hating, closeted, christian gays'. I was wondering what if there were more gay homo-phobes then straight? What might such a closeted closet organization be up to? But I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm enjoying this fantasy a little too much. I don't want to add to any groups media constructed and filtered pain."
---"Bastard. Those crazy ideas of yours might be a hate crime."

2007-10-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

"For most people dying is a complete surprise: they have little time to realize what's happening to them?"
---"Is it; do they?"
"I'm asking, I'm asking."
---"If so it's a small mercy for a lucky few."
"Could it then follow that life is also a surprise. That most people have little time to realize how life happens to them? ...Are people surprised by life? Stopped in their tracks by 'uh-oh', 'oh shit' or 'gee whiz' moments?"
---"This is you trying to be profound --OK so then what? Are some experiences and insights more valuable then others?-- I've seen you barf on keyboards and copy machines during office parties: some ideas are best left to the publish or perish professionals. --Look your shoes untied."

2007-10-17T03:05:00.000-07:00

"About a hundred years ago my great-grandfather snuck into this country to work and live illegally. He met my great-grandmother got married and stayed. Does that mean me and my family could be arrested and deported?"
---"Are you Mexican?"

2007-10-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

"There's a little ball of fear and hate inside her that gives her life all the bounce it'll ever need."
---"What does it sound like?"
"It's silent but its menacing glow penetrates brick and concrete and alarms minorities for miles around. People swear it can spoil food and wither houseplants in a matter of minutes. Birds, dogs, cats and other small mammals hide. Children under three years of age spontaneously burst into tears. "

2007-10-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

"These days real men swagger a little when they hear the word 'torture'."
---"Is it because they think they could take it just enough to prove they're as tough as the next guy?"
"No, real men never put themselves in the place of the victim, detainee, minority, suspect, woman, etc.. It's bad mojo. It can give you the 'yips'."
---"Is it because these men think they have what it takes to be torturers themselves? To use on men and woman detainees whatever violence might prove necessary to get the information that'll save the homestead--long before the 24-hours is up?"
"Real men don't role play that much. I think most of today's men see torture as another tool, another powerful weapon in our military's arsenal. Men like tools; being the first in the neighborhood with latest. If the terrorists are fighting a new kind of war, it goes without saying our security forces need new weapons to fight them with. And we got them, before all the other so-called world powers. The President, the Courts, Congress, the Pentagon and our Christian conscience agree that torture is an effective weapon against this enemy."
---"Are you suggesting if terrorism became less of an threat--by what means, I couldn't guess--then torture as an American institution, within its venerable institutions, could disappear altogether, like a bad dream?"
"Hell no. Torture's gonna be with us a long time. Long after Bin Laden's mummified body is torn apart by desert jackels and long after AlQaeda turns into just another third world street gang and it leaders' books wind up on the Times Best Sellers list. Torture American-style will be exported to every country in the world...wait until the research from the past thirty years on the electromagnetic altering of the human brain begins to leak from the university labs."
---"And we'll see for the first time who the enemy really is."
"That doesn't sound right."
---"Well, lots of things will never sound right to lots of people ever again."
"Huh?"
---"I'm sorry I think I started channeling Bette Davis trying to recite a T.S .Eliot poem."
"Does that happen alot"?

2007-10-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

"There're no events, no catastrophes anywhere in the world, that I won't sooner than later make about me and my problems."
---"There're few events, few tragedies anywhere in the world, I can't ignore."
"'To Life!'"
---"'To life!'"

2007-10-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

"Defer to the experts already."

2007-10-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

"I hadn't thought about her for years until I saw a woman behind the counter at Kinkos with long brown hair like she wore making color copies."
---"The one that got away."
"After dinner that evening I sat on my bed and cried."
---"Because of what you've lost? Because of what you did to make her go; what she did to make you go?"
"Because of what I've become."
---"You're turning into a mauldin old man."
"I hadn't cried for a long time. It felt good to cry real salt tears."
---"I don't need to hear this. You're only a few years older then me."
"But you have Mindy, the kids and your half-wolf, half-huskies to fill your alone time."
---"I've always been more of a 'doer' than a 'dreamer'."

2007-10-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

"It's time to slay the dragon."
---"Don't you mean drain the lizard?"
"I'm talking about the alone time I spend reflecting on the forces and powers that brought me to this place. It's d.i.y. meditation."
---"Om mani padme paddywack give-a-dog-a bone."
"Lately I've been thinking by what tortuous metamorphosis night-blossoms become day- lilies.--That is if they do.-- How is it that soccer Moms blossom among gangsters and psychopaths: how does their indifference create a garden? Do gangsters follow orders and keep their distance from the right people while given carte blanche to harvest those who's committment to growth's fallen below the latest quotas?"
---"And for knowing when to speak out and when to turn away soccer Moms get bone marrow, blood, meat and cereals?"
"Life."
---"'Count Chocula'"
"On bad days my dragon finds me and ideas about flowers, blood, indifference and everything conceivable are trampled and singed in an instant."
---"Choke the chicken?"

2007-10-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

"Among the guards that came for him, making him in his darkened cell put on the dark goggles by himself, then in silence strapping him to the gurney, he noticed a pair of hands that were sometimes gentler then the others. He thought of his wife and daughters and often wept but not always because of what separated him from his family or from what the jailers' interrogations did to his flesh and bones. He wept because they couldn't make him forget what made him a man."

2007-10-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

"I've nothing against institutions: Boys Town, Masons, Act-up, SCLC, Mormons and that ilk."
---"One of my uncles was an Ilk."
"It's the institutions within these institutions that I see as a threat to freedom and democracy."
---"'It's the institutions within the institutions within these institutions, I worry about."
"Imagine if every mall cops--every security agency's-- primary allegiance is not to the public but to a nation-wide organization which dutifully does its job while also providing man-power and security for huge criminal enterprises using extortion, blackmail and a host of dirty tricks on groups and individuals secretly judged as too political, too poor and attractive, too effective, or too annoying? Thanks to Homeland Security grants and technological cloning and standardization, private and government security forces have created and control a hydra of real-time near constant surveillance. The security apparachiks within these organizations have gone way beyond the prevention of crimes against consumer items and private property. People are now property..."
---"Ok, ok. Very interesting; I've heard enough. I'm getting a headache. ...How about those Cubs--the bums?"

2007-10-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

"Did you ever wonder who's the world's richest heroin addict?"
---"How about the world's richest religious leader?"
"Besides the Pope?"
---"Who's today's world's richest man or woman with full-blown HIV-AIDs?"
"The world's richest grocery store clerk?"
---"The world's richest paraplegic or quadraplegic?"
"The world's richest adopted heir."
---"Over or under 21 years of age?"
"The world's richest dyslexic?"
---"The world's richest transexual?"
"The world's richest paedophile?"
---"The world's richest professional gambler?"
"The world's richest woman or man who's wealth comes from divorce settlements or other civil litigation?"
---"The world's richest convict who's not a drug dealer, human trafficker or head of state?"
"The world's richest pet?"
---"The world's richest lecturing and publishing professor?"
"The world's richest single mom without servants or nannies?"
---"The world's richest choir member?"
"The world's richest parole officer?"
---"The world's richest John Lennon impersonator?"
"The world's richest murderer?"
---"Who's not a general or a head of state?"
"Or religious leader."
---"The world's richest working nurse?"

2007-10-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

"People who can read generally agree--maybe only giving lip-service to a mostly forgotten biology class--that the the world 's facing an overpopulation crises."
---"We're running out of natural resources! We're using up all the oil!"
"So when an infant dies or a fetus is aborted, or for that matter when any of us die, who or what loses, where's the tragedy?"
--- "Your babies' lives may mean nothing to you, but our babies are special. Why don't you get a vasectomy if you feel that way?"
"As special as the brown, black or yellow babies in those parts of the world where they haven't the resources to mass produce and distribute condoms, and keep the shit out of the drinking water, or the sense to see the connection between over population disease and hunger?"
---"Are you saying anti-abortionists are racists?"
"I wouldn't know. I'm trying to understand the new laws protecting fetuses along with the constant flood of media reports on the evils of planned parenthood and teen birth control ."
---"Baby killer."
"Don't you see the contradition? Our sentimental feelings about fetuses don't reflect the realities of overpopulation one little bit."
---"I see one stone cold-hearted bastard. Die already and make more room for me and mine."
"Now that makes sense."

2007-10-02T00:11:00.000-07:00

"Sooner or later everyone thinks their parents are crazy. In time most of us get over ourselves..and them."
---"How many realize before they've kids of their own that they were raised by wild animals?"
"According to daily crime reports not nearly enough."
---"How many of us eventually build perfect cages for or make house pets of the ghosts of those beasts?"
"How many people live in trees?"

2007-10-01T02:34:00.000-07:00

"The women members of her tribe undergo scarification rituals on their faces and lips and have plastic discs inserted under their breasts. The men must be willing to give up the traditional jobs which they've been trained since boyhood to perform. Most men now work and engage in activities once solely the concerns of women."
---"While the made-over women do 'men's work'?"
"The women's jobs are less restrictive, since networking is now a marketable skill. Women are the pr people, the lobbyists and the representatives for the tribe. Men are cloistered in offices, laboratories and boiler rooms while women meet and greet, lunch and smooze actual people, not data from computer screens. Income is confiscated and redistributed through the tribal councils, controlled by women, and because of the absence of toys, cigars, and strippers some of men view their tailor-made suits as little more than business-men's burkkas."
---"And the women respond to demands by these men for more wages and benefits by withholding sex?"
"The Councils are calling their response to this year's labor demands, 'staying the course of freedom under the threat of annihilation'."

2007-09-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

"'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."

2007-09-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

"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?"

2007-09-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-25T23:53:00.000-07:00

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."

2007-09-24T21:43:00.000-07:00

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

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

2007-09-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-21T00:57:00.000-07:00

"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."

---I heard that anyone recorded singing for rebroadcast even a few notes of 'Happy Birthday' must pay the estate of the song's creator a hefty fee. "

"When Sinatra was alive he never alllowed recordings of his to be used on tv, in movies, in casinos or for publicity purposes."

---"Sinatra was an artist."

"How many American citizens would have to die in a terrorist attack during the upcoming Presidential campaign for the Republicans to have a better then even chance of keeping the White House?"

---"I thought the neo-cons plan was to destroy America's foreign policy, leaving it, the deficit and our falling down infrastructure for the Democrates to clean up?"

2007-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

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?"

2007-09-19T00:35:00.000-07:00

"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'?"

2007-09-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-17T02:14:00.000-07:00

"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'."

2007-09-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

"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?"

2007-09-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

"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'."

2007-09-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

"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."

2007-09-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

"They find strength in lies; they build their communities with them."

---"And this surprises you because?"

"Shouldn't more people be laughing?"

2007-08-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

"Everything ascends."

2007-08-31T00:14:00.000-07:00

"After Jason's ex-con cousin moved in his cat disappeared, his fish died and Jennifer won't go over there anymore."
---"How long is he going to stay?"
"Jason says Brad has a number of outstanding warrants and plans to turn himself in as soon as the producers of the reality-show 'Bounty Girls' set the date for the filming of his capture and arrest. ...Brad said they might even film the raid in Jason's apartment."
---"Jason doesn't mind?"
"You know how star-struck he gets. Brad says TV-Guide magazine plans to use his name and photo in an article about 'Bounty Girls' scheduled for their Christmas issue. His manager claims offers for commercials, public appearances and a book are already coming in."
---"He has a manager?"
"Brad promised Jason he'll soon buy him a car and put on the payroll as his personal assistant. Jason says he's looking forward to moving to LA and a new career in show business--he hopes to produce someday. ..He never knew there were so many different things you can do with a sharpened piece of metal."

2007-08-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

"Since whatever I got moved in and took over the spare room, the remotes, the closets and most of the refrigerator with its egotistical pain, it's been a struggle to give the better part of my attention to the things that make life matter."
---"Can doctors prescribe pain-killers for mystery diseases?"
"I don't know but I soon may wish I had a more moderate history with alcohol: treating it less as a social lubricant and more like an anodyne. ...I don't know if I can learn to drink just enough to take the edge off.. I don't want to walk around half-in-the bag, until it becomes necessary. Alcohol is expensive and why add the dull twilight thud of a hang-over onto the other stuff? "
---"I see how the criminalization of pot and other DIY-type herbal pain relievers becomes this whole other thing for you. It becomes personal."

2007-08-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

"How do you make yourself more of what they're looking for?"

2007-08-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

"He's not looking for a friend. He's already forgotten your name and if there's a woman nearby you're nothing more than furniture. You don't have any sisters; your wife's tied up with prior committments. There's no insult intended."
---"Funny, very funny.."
"Embrace him or more to the point what he stands for-- a reminder that sex between a man and a woman is more basic then gift economies, sexual servitude, currency or fashioned transactions. He/it is a force of nature, the last of a dying breed....Stay out of his way, lock up the livestock and keep the younguns indoors until his testosterone storm runs its course. ...Can you sense the women stirring? It'll be over soon."

2007-08-27T03:33:00.000-07:00

"Two brothers molested by priests..."

---"That's old news."

"Their mother went to Mass and said the rosary everyday. ...The brothers kept the secret."

---"The same priests? ...How many? How long did it go on?"

"Although they're now too old for the sanctum sanctorum, they're both on the payroll."

---"You're not suggesting..."

"They've become heretic-hunters, goons for God, silencing those with a unhealthy interest in the finances and daily operations of the Church ."

---"What's the point, the Church is prepared to pay hundreds of milions of dollars in civil settlements for victims of their paedophile priests."

"Some people insist it'll take more than lawsuits for 'traditions' inside the Church to change. So few priests were jailed for these crimes. ...I always wondered what other organizations, besides churches, allow their members to abuse children? Could the institutional sexual abuse of children really have been limited to American priests?"

---"Doesn't Disneyland have a "Club 33"? ...On second thought what makes you think paedophiles-- priests, Mormons. pipe-fitters or Masons would require assistance, recognition, a nod-and-a-wink or fruit juice and cookies from their bosses to do what they do?"

"But you gotta wonder why the Church and not the pipe-fitters for example work to keep their perverts out of jail and on the job."

---"There is that."

2007-08-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

"I need a cool, aloof blonde to defile."
---"Doesn't everyone? Even blondes sometimes need cool blondes to violate."

2007-08-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

"Just because for the past 30 years a brick of heroin a week has been flown via Lufthansa into O'Hare, where a Federal Express driver under the auspices of US Customs and the Chicago Police Dept. makes sure it finds its way to an office in Bensenville--that doesn't make the baggy of pot you accidentally packed with your soiled clothes from your four days and five nights in Jamaica any more legal does it? Two wrongs don't make a right, Anarchist."

2007-08-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

"How can you not be in awe of the networks which allow us to ignore 99% of the people we come in contact with everyday? Imagine if we were required to give most everyyone we meet the modicum of respect any human being is do--father, brother, mother, sister, cousin, friend-- we'ld never get anything done. We'ld never get to work. Every commute, every public transaction, every walk down the street--a mosh-pit of meet and greet."
---"I'm imprinted on morning coffee, a steady paycheck, the company car and lately women's volleyball events on tv."
"Imagine if our loyalties were more fixated on human beings then tools like money and possessions?"
---"No one could live that way. We would all perish."

2007-08-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

"I can' t leave all of this behind. --it needs me."

---"Uh huh."

"They need me."

---"Have you talked to them lately?"

"She needs me."

---"Ha."

"If I'm on the table and heroic measures become necessary, would they give it just a little more effort if I was wearing jewelry: a gold wedding band, a diamond encrusted silver crucifix pendant, a praying-hands locket with photos of a boy and girl or a scapula certified as blest by the most recent Pope?"

---"I'm almost certain financial triage was done within minutes of your being admitted. So everybody in the room who cares pretty much knows your networth and the number of your dependents and probably what model and year car your drive. Consider yourself fortunate you may have a disease that makes you an unsuitable organ donor."

2007-08-20T02:49:00.000-07:00

"Wow is he depressed. What happened?"
---"He hasn't seen his father for years and this morning before work he turns on the tv and there's his Dad's name scrolling across the bottom of the screen under a video from a heliocopter of a house in Arizona, California or Florida while the voice-over explains there's a massive man-hunt for a federal fugitive wanted on multiple warrants for non-payment of child support and the production, possession and distribution of counterfeit beany-babies. The voice-over said the fugitive was considered armed and dangerous."
"Well that sucks."

2007-08-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

"Do you need to see more? Do you really have to get closer to them to know where Abu Ghraib, renditions and detainees come from? ...Let's get out of here."

2007-08-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

"Is a casino a 'hard target' or a 'soft target'?"
---"I'm not sure..."
"Is a church a 'hard target' or a 'soft target'? The National Cathedral? A synagogue? The church in DC where the Opus Dei Supreme Court judges worship?"
---"I'm not sure I'm comfortable talking about hard and soft targets."
"But every place in America is either one or the other. Homeland Security's got a massive list. When people are arrested for demonstrating, the DA will bring out the list to add to the unlawful assembly or disturbing the peace charges... Is a shopping mall a hard target? If it's on or near a US military base? How near?"
---"I don't like talking about subjects that can get me arrested in airports or on airplanes. It's a rule I made up since I saw a guy dragged off a plane after a fellow passenger asked him what was the title of the book he was reading and another passenger 'distinctly' heard him say, 'Bombed in New Haven' . It happened while boarding a flight from LAX to Atlanta."

"Who decides who's a 'high value' terrorist suspect? Are 'low value' terrorist prisoners treated that much differently? --Is there even a 'low value terrorist suspect' CIA classification?"--Do 'low value' detainees get to watch an extra hour of tv every night? Have a choice between the pudding cup or the fruit cup? Are given an extra pillow? Often have the cells with a window in which the sky is visible? Spend half the time on the dunking board as 'high value' suspects? Are only stripped naked for doctor's visits and showers? Are sometimes on a first name basis with their guards? Are allowed packages, photos and letters from home? Are permitted to sleep with lights out? Are given other books than the Koran to read? Sometimes get to choose the music the guards blare into their cells?"
---"Go ahead make jokes, but not around me --please."

2007-08-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

"Funny, as I grow older and more comfortable with myself, I see there are more and more people with whom I have nothing in common, nothing to say."
---"A club of one."
"Am I the only one who's noticed this growing chasm: otherwise ordinary people who've become as inexplicable as men from Mars, or head-hunters from Borneo?"
---"Ahh once you get to know their ways, they're not so strange. ..You're probably a little behind the curve. Most people have already barricaded their doors against the epidemic of inexplicableness with neo-racist political activism, old fashioned book burning bigotry and a refound committment to some ancient desert faiths' paranoid notions of chosen people. ...Maybe it's time you're reborn."
"But I don't want to be crazy like that! Not like that...not like them."
---"Then keep your mouth shut. You're a minority of one among the persecuted masses. It's not safe. When newly elected President Clinton shuts down Bush's 'faith-based' initiatives, a lot of newly unemployed faithful will have their faith tested like never before. Things might get ugly. The various incarnations of the one true god may instruct them to make new again the sacrifices of Abraham."

2007-08-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

"They're not as ignorant as they're corrupt."

2007-08-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

"It always comes back to this: he could've had a chance at happiness he he hadn't married a girl from Hadleysburg."
---"Life is not a novel."

2007-08-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

"What were you two talking about?"
---"We were trying to decide if abortions were cheaper and not a social stigma--or state and AMA sponsored murder-- when our mothers were pregnant with us, would we have been aborted babies?
"If abortions were as glamorous or at least as mundane as cosmetic plastic surgery?"
---"If there was no anti-abortion movement... would we be here to see the sunrise through Starbucks'window?"
"Did you talk about what your mothers now know about how much time and energy it takes to care for an infant?"
---"That and how much time companies now demand from their managers and executives in training."
(Both sit and silently stare at nothing for a long minute.)
"I'm pretty sure my mother would've been an aborted baby."

2007-08-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

"I call this one (hands-over print), 'The Artist as Hot-House Flower: Rare, Strange--A Sound Investment Opportunity'."
---"The plants around the edge look menacing."
"They're weeds."
---"Are these wallets and purses?"
"Or seed pods."

2007-08-11T11:14:00.000-07:00

"So I'm here Tuesday for my lunch break--you know they only give us 20 minutes-- and I'm standing in line wearing my Calvin Klein 'Severe' suit and he walks in clutching in his big hands a bouquet of flowers. Well. Without a moment's hesitation he walks up to me in front of everybody and says, 'here I bought you some dead flowers.' You coulda floored me. I think it was the first time I heard him use 'I' and 'you' in the same sentence...He's starting to think of us...as an us!"
---"He's a keeper for sure. ...How long have you two been going together? A month?"
"Six weeks."
---"Email and or text message each other everyday? Phone calls every other day? Spend weekends together? Home cooked meals and late night tv? Has he met your best friend and or parents?"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
---"I know a good caterer and one of my friends prepares pre-nuptial agreements for women who have more money then sense."

2007-08-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

"Even the extinctions of plant, animal and insect species we're now witnessing are part of God's plan."
---"Didn't God give man dominion over all the creatures of the earth great and small?"
"By directing multinational corporations to obliterate living creatures species by species, eco-system by ecosystem, God's saving them from the tribulations and horrors of the coming end times."
---"Yea god?"

2007-08-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

"Have you noticed how everyone on tv has more money then you...and me?"
---"They look like they do. ...Except for the stars of Cops, crowds in news videos, audiences for game shows and fictional criminals."

"Do you know anyone who's been on tv?"
---"I once recognized a guy playing a non-speaking role of a loving father with a wife, kids, and a dog in an insurance company's commercial. I never found out how much he earned or if the commercial was for local as well as national broadcast.
... I met him before this good fortune, around the time he went gay in a big way. He was love sick--dizzy and overwhelmed--with problems with his family--I'm not sure--and all I remember about him now is 'how did I not see what a transformation he was going through'? --I mean talk about being naked and exposed."
"Like a snake shedding its skin?"
---"Like a twenty-something year-old man being born without a mother. Everywhere he went the world he knew had fallen aside. Had dissolved and disappeared. Was swept, snatched, kicked or blown away and proven a lie. While his new world, of which he knew next to nothing--except that it was new and supposed to be more true-- came into being not baby-comfort, mother's caring hands-sized but fully formed adult and male."
"Where does the 'lifestyle' come in?"
---"I only now noticed how existential 'coming out' can be."

2007-08-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

"We were fighting for a better world and when we came back nothing had changed."
---"But you had. ...Didn't they warn you? Didn't they tell you, it was a job? And while it was the best job in the world as part of the greatest fighting machine the world's ever seen, the media, your family and even you will never know how your dedication and attention helped keep America safe and free?"
"Tell that to the men and women who came back missing limbs, organs or parts of their brains. Better yet tell the families of those who came back, neatly packaged, wrapped in flags: 'your son, daughter, wife, husband, father, mother, brother or sister was doing the best job they could, under the circumstances --a model employee--right up until the point..."
---"They became heroes?
"I was gonna say, '...they had their on-the job accident'."

2007-08-07T16:06:00.000-07:00

"Let me undress you with my robot. ...I want my robot to kiss you all over."
---"'And over and over again'?"

2007-08-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

"They don't have inquiring minds...they have acquiring eyes. ...They're not puzzle makers or puzzle solvers. ...What can't be held or touched is difficult for them to perceive, let alone value."
---"Things stand out under the spotlight."
"Don't you mean kleig lights? ..As I get old and my lights start to dim, I can see myself turning into them. ...Things I never bothered with: the latest cars, electronics, lean bodies and fine clothes, will grow--loom--in importance, while what I've been using as reason fades into shadow. I'll probably die clutching some fancy rag I pulled from the garbage."
---"The world goes on whether we're dreaming it or not."

2007-08-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

"It happened so fast, I didn't have time to get to my gun."
---"Where was it?"
"Locked in the glove compartment."
---"Didn't you say there were about two dozen people standing around?"
"Right before all hell broke loose."
---"Did you see who starting shooting?"
"Oh yeah, I'll never forget his face. ...Maybe I'll install a spring-loaded holster under the dashboard closer to the steering wheel."
---"Wouldn't've waving a gun around made you a target?"
"Maybe I'll buy a smaller weapon that'll fit in the console between the seats."
---That's right Travis, you'll get the bad-guys next time."

2007-08-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

"That so many people are consumed with envy and not hate for the people who appear in magazines, on tv and in the movies must be one of the greatest feats of advertising and America's public relations industry."
---"What makes you think it's more envy then hate?"
"Because celebrity translucent for public consumption, press agent rewritten lives are all over the media."
---"Your assuming celebrity news is the promotion of a brand or a response to consumer demands and not also a means to shape how we look and what we think about them, their lifestyles and most importantly their attitudes towards the luxury products and services they enjoy. ...Nathaniel West was wrong."
"Who?"

2007-08-03T05:09:00.000-07:00

"If I didn't have a good job and all my cool stuff, living alone would be a hardship."
---"Family and other people are what the poor have instead of I-pods, I-phones and clubs."

2007-08-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

"It's not 'mission impossible', it's his baby's bath."
---"Makes a big thing out of it, huh?"
"Once he's focused and locks onto the completion of a goal or a task, no matter how mundane--look out. ..I've seen him get this way over some pretty stupid things, things people wouldn't think twice about. He becomes like a force of nature."
---"You got you're own wild beast in your duplex there on Oak Hill Ridge Lane."
"It's amazing, sometimes exciting or surreal to watch but before it passes I always worry he won't come out of it. ...I don't think his job challenges him anymore."

2007-08-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

"It takes tough men to make tough decisions."
---"Not more lay-offs!?"
"No I'm talking about America's rendition and detainee secret prisoner programs."
---"Whew. You had me going there for awhile."

2007-07-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

"One Tuesday in June she had a mystical experience. She got to see her future. She spent time with an older woman who was the epitome of eveything she was working towards. It was a singular experience--a sign--as if the fates had picked her out and gave her a whole day to get acquainted with the person she will someday be. She felt the oddly familiar gentle yet insistent touch of time close in around her as she saw that all her childhood daydreams might very well come true.
One might ask why did she then within the week quit her prized internship, have one of her friends house-sit her apartment and take her dog for an extended vacation: 'to see the buffalo herds on the high plain outside the Black Hills of South Dakota' or so she claimed?"
---"Was it a sign? Was she a special person singled out for greatness?"
"Of course she's special. ... As for being singled out for greatness, it may be too early to tell but a surer sign of fate directing the course of her life might've been not having the foresight of seeing her future self in that older woman?"

2007-07-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

"They 'monitor' the police and the police don't mind? The police don't 'monitor' them or tell them to back off?"

---"They've a number of retired and ex-cops so the police know there's nothing to fear. Plus they volunteer and help the local police with their charities and regularly throw great parties for the heroes on the front lines. ...They're not the Black Panthers."

"Do they follow cops on patrol, or wait until they see flashing lights or what?"

---"They know which guys on the job who don't mind being followed and if there's something in progress they're always welcomed. More eyes equals more witnesses and a lot of them have carry permits if there's a situation."

"I mean how do they know when something cool's going on?"

---"They've got state of the art police radio scanners. They got walkie talkies and even their own encrypted radio band and more then a few half-blind ham radio and computer operators and their wives and kids listening in or logged-on day and night. Along with cell phones, text messaging---ipods?---and laptops for their men in cars. They get state and federal grants. Even when there are no emergencies or arrests, they keep records of incidents and addresses where police are sent. It's also been rumored they have extensive files on local teens who're 'coming of age'. With names, addresses and bios.--likes and dislikes--maybe photos and videos--collected by the observant men who drive around or while attending school functions open to the public."

"There isn't much that escapes their attention."

---"Most people would say they're every communities best defense against crime and terrorism. Others if they knew how extensive their networks have become might call them our worst offense against individual freedom and democracy."

2007-07-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

"I can picture her or one of her clones reading my blog. She's in her thirties or older. Perhaps she's not quite twenty years old. She's a Christian or a Jew but never an other. Although in California, parts of Up-state New York, Vermont and the Pacific Northwest she could be an other. She may be married or not; she may be a mother or not, but she looks like somebody's daughter. She'll always look like some man's daughter. She's the keeper of the secrets, the one that keeps things right.
When she was a little girl her Daddy asked her to keep a secret and she did! As she grew there may have been times when she was asked to keep the secrets of her Daddy's friends too, or not. Keeping secrets was important.. and fun! She got gifts for being a good girl.
When she was a young woman away at school, she learned everyone had secrets to be kept; even clubs, organizations and institutions. And helping the right people keep their secrets was just something she knew how to do. She couldn't explain it but there it was.
She's so finely tuned she can sense the questioning stare of someone who should know better but doesn't, as well as the yearning burning eyes of any one among the unwashed masses murdering each other to get a glimpse of the gate in the wall of the castle where her nightly banquet is set.
When she hears or reads an impertinent question barbed like a hook that once set and reeled-in would bring to the surface a secret from the world she's sworn to protect--the world she's devoted her life to keep pure and inviolate--she becomes annoyed. And when she's annoyed women's legs around the country close like scissors and the men who watch fight each other like dogs to prove who's the best to make things right again. Of course they never know what displeased her or if it was a question or something else again, but they will drain every lake, pond and moat and scour the earth to find and punish those who're responsible. She and the secrets are that important.
Questions are like knives: you can poke, slash, stab, cut, butcher, dissect or perform surgery with them."
---"What a load of crap."
"You don't see aspects of paganism at work in most institutions then?"

2007-07-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

"I'm gonna call INS on you!" (shouted at man walking out the door)

---"Shhhh."

"I mean it. I will."

2007-07-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

"I don't like soccer."

---"Look around, you'll find no arguments here."

"I don't like football either."

---(mock gasp) "Dude!"

"I don't like sports in which the physical use of one's head can change the outcome, win the game."

2007-07-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

"They were lucky men. As their obsessions or addictions turned them into facsimiles of their former selves; frightened their family and friends and grieved their wives, girlfriends and mothers, the organization recognized the changes and promoted them to jobs which found best use for the forces at work inside them and upon them.
If they were forced to be truthful, they'ld say they were miserable but they had little incentive to change, to question or explain, to stop. They were well-paid and successful--at the top of their game. The company like clockwork acknowledged good work with letters of praise and generous bonuses of cash, coupons, women and the latest consumer electronics. They had all the right things, things they never imagined they'ld have: secure in the eye of the storm their lives had become."

2007-07-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

"I had this dream about reading a printed page of instructions for medicine or an electronic device. I can see only about a dozen words: the others are blurred or out of focus. I then dream that I'm hearing myself read as if every word on the page was printed clearly, in English and part of my vocabulary. While reading I notice I never hear any of the few words I was at first sure I could pick out. The page still appears blurred and unreadable but there I am 'reading' it with ease.
The dream ends with me feeling I've learned something new and useful--that I've been informed. While knowing what I thought I was reading , what makes me feel informed, isn't anywhere on the page. I woke-up feeling good."
---"God that was awful. Why can't you dream about celebrities appearing at your front door wrapped in nothing but a black satin sheet worn as a burkka but open in the front, like everybody else? ...You're as dull as you look."

2007-07-23T23:54:00.000-07:00

"That neighbor of mine who claims people are using aerosol pesticides on him and his family says that the number of bursts from passing cars directed at his windows and doors noticeably increase on Wednesdays and remain about the same through Sunday. Suggesting to him that most of the people using these weapons have a five-day work week starting on Wednesdays. Or they make-up a percentage of the total population, so that as traffic increases their numbers increase. They're not limited to, for example, a battalion sized force in control of a certain section. Where traffic congestion would sometimes cause them to be less vigilant. Or maybe there're special activities in town or nearby that brings these people past his home. Bar-hopping for example. Perhaps they're mostly weekend warriors who enjoy taking side trips to harass those who have the gall to stay put and try to make a life after being ordered to run."
---"I like your friend's wacko attempts to make the craziest ideas sound logical. Psychotropic drugs and the neo-compassionate conservatives' thirty years war on crime have all but put an end to the producers of and interest in insane ramblings. 'Zero-tolerance' and all that. ..Wiped-out a whole literary genre along with a once suitable subject matter for painting and performance art--no loss there. Successful people, patrons of the arts, people who buy books--people who have lives--have no time for stories like his. ...Oh, I forgot how semi-automatic weapons used on unsuspecting crowds by America's disgruntled lone-gunmen and disturbed teens may've also changed our ideas about mentally ill people with their notebooks, drawings, crazy theories and eccentric behavior. No one's buying that kind of brut art anymore."

2007-07-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

"She's not spending enough time on her eyes."
---"Her lips look ok."
"I don't like that color on her."

2007-07-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

"He's a wealthy man with a penthouse suite a ten minute walk from his downtown offices, a home in Vail and a ranch in Costa Rica where he breeds dogs for racing. He has children younger then his granchildren. He's working-on his third wife and second transplanted heart. A self-made man who didn't have 'the legs' to make the A-team; he used his partial athletic scholarship to help earn a degree."
---"Business?"
"Engineering. He builds police stations, courthouses and jails."
---"And you know all this because?"
"I heard him speak at a dinner in his honor. His 'Rabbit Foundation' donated trampolines and gymnastic equipment to the highschool."
---"'Rabbit Foundation'"?

2007-07-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

"Remember nobody there wants to hear anything you have to say and whatever you do say is of no consequence whatsoever or wrong . You've been invited as a favor to C.. So don't break anything or otherwise cause a scene... relax, have a good time, enjoy yourself."

2007-07-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

"If she was less of an authoritarian, less of a bigot and knee-jerk neo-fascist would she have room in her heart for me?"
---"Sounds like it's pretty crowded in there already . 'Spite makes right' is all the fashion now, she'll never be lonely. So what's in it for you? ...You'll have to remove the gag sooner or later."

2007-07-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

"As the pain increased and his movement was further restricted he took it out on his tools, the furniture and the other inanimate everyday things that conspired to add to his misery. He was frightened. Frightened that it would only get worse; frightened at the way he was behaving--how easily he went from man to monster.
If there were animals or people around --underfoot-- would he take it out on them too? Could 'that guy' really be so near at hand?"

2007-07-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

"She's very intelligent: she's studying fashion."

2007-07-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

"'See you at the studio'?"
---"'The studio' is what he calls his one room apartment."
"Oh, for a moment I thought..."
---"He does fool around alot with his video camera."