Broadcast Channel You

I love Styrofoam

2011-06-17T11:24:00.001-04:00

I love Styrofoam for its plastic properties, artistic and chemical. Its form is as varied as its purpose, but as rendered objects always seem to self organized into categories of sameness. Experiments in repetition and variation. The outputs of a physical and chemical process that are visually engaging and denotes its highly technical birth, but mirrors the natural variation in organic life, all the while expressing the simplicity of a homogeneous mass. Its sameness of matter that request to be put together in a pattern for some greater purpose. The more rigid the material the more obvious the flaws in the production process, and in some instances the more joyous the visual experience, as if the flaw were an indication of some mutant gene seeking expression, almost lifelike.

To my Love in Berlin

2010-10-11T18:46:00.003-04:00

Hello Ms. Smitten
My kitten,
When can we fit in
a conversation or two
Between me and you,
It is what I want to do

Or is it forbidden
To chime in
Before I have ridden
my bike home to you?
But you are not there
I swear it tears me in two

A moon over Berlin
and I sit here wish'n
I was there with you

100 Greatest VHS Tapes of All Time, Sort of....

2010-08-22T20:57:00.004-04:00

Who needs Netflix/DVD when you have a vhs player and $20 to burn on old media! All that sharpness gives me a headache! And why would you want all the commentary, yakkety, yak, yak... make up your own mind about what the film means. Remember, DVD does not change the fantastic stories of these classic movies! $20 bucks gives you over 200 hours of cinema greatness that you can watch until the VCR breaks! Thats 20 cents a movie. Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Cohen Brothers, Howard Hawks, and a little known director by the name of STEVEN SPIELBERG! What more could you ask for on a Sunday afternoon. Txt me for pick up tonight: 646-489-9639.

Blown Away Action/Adventure S. Hopkins
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Action/Adventure Ang Lee
Ferocious Monk from Shaolin Action/Adventure Kung Fu
Five Venoms Action/Adventure Kung Fu
Mad Max Action/Adventure G. Miller Mystery/Suspence
Princess Monanoke Action/Adventure Miyazaki
Rumble in the Brox Action/Adventure Jackie Chan
Spiderman Action/Adventure Sam Raimi Star Wars
Starship Troopers Action/Adventure P. Verhoven
Target Eagle Action/Adventure Loma
The Matrix Action/Adventure W. Brothers
The Terminator Action/Adventure J. Cameron
Babe Comedy C. Noonan
Big Lubowski Comedy Cohen Brothers
Bridget Jone's Diary Comedy Sharon Maguire
Clueless Comedy Amy Hekerling
Dazed and Confused Comedy R. Linkletter
Deconstructing Harry Comedy Woody Allen
Dr. Strangelove Comedy S. Kubrick
Election Comedy Alex Payne
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Comedy Amy Hekerling
Galaxy Quest Comedy
Ghostbusters Comedy Harold Ramis
Ground Day Comedy Harold Ramis
Intolerable Cruelty Comedy Cohen Brothers
Mighty Aphroditie Comedy Woody Allen
Nine Months Comedy Chris Columbus
O' Brother Where Art Thou Comedy Cohen Brothers
Purple Rose of Cairo Comedy Woody Allen
Radio Days Comedy Woody Allen
Risky Business Comedy Paul Brickman
Rushmore Comedy Wes Anderson
Sixteen Candles Comedy J. Hughs
Spinal Tap Comedy Rob Reiner
Swingers Comedy D. Liman
The Secret Life of the Brain Documentary
8 Mile Drama C. Hanson
Alien Nation Drama G. Baker
Amateur Drama Hal Hartley
Before Night Falls Drama J. Schnabel
Being John Malkovich Drama S. Jones
Bogie Nights Drama Paul Thomas Anderson
Bugsy Drama Warren Beatty
Citizen Kane Drama Orson Welles
Clockwork Orange Drama S. Kubrick
Closer Drama Mike Nichols
Elizabeth Drama Shekar Khapur
Ever After Drama Drew Barrymore
Fight Club Drama David Fincher
Forrest Gump Drama R. Zemeckis
Heathers Drama M. Lehman
Igby Goes Down Drama Burr Stears
In the Bedroom Drama Todd Field
Last Tango in Paris Drama Bertilucci
Momento Drama C. Nolan
Raging Bull Drama Martin Scorsese
Saturday Night Fever Drama J. Badham
Sense and Sensibility Drama Ang Lee
Seven Drama David Finch
Sidewalks of New York Drama Ed Burns
The Doom Generation Drama Gregg Araki
The Ice Storm Drama Ang Lee
the Madness of King George Drama N. Hytner
The Scarlet Pimpernel (82) Drama C. Donner
Trainspotting Drama Danny Boyle
Union City Drama M. Riechart
Evil Dead 2 Horror Sam Raimi
Night of the Living Dead Horror G. Romero
The Shining Horror S. Kubrick
Human League - Greatest Hits Music Human League
Pink Floyd's The Wall Music Pink Floyd
Roxy Music - Greatest Hits Music Roxy Music
Cast a Dark Shadow Mystery/Suspence Lewis Gilbert
Chinatown Mystery/Suspence R. Polanski
Devil in a Blue Dress Mystery/Suspence Carl Franklin
Jaws Mystery/Suspence S. Spielberg
L.A. Confidential Mystery/Suspence C. Hanson
Manhunter Mystery/Suspence M. Mann
Miller's Crossing Mystery/Suspence Cohen Brothers
The Silence of the Lamb Mystery/Suspence Jonathan Demme
The Stranger Mystery/Suspence Orson Welles
High Fidelity Romance Stephen Friers
Princess Bride Romance Rob Reiner
Say Anything Romance Cameron Crowe
Shakespeare in Love Romance John Madden
Aliens Sci fi/Fantasy J. Cameron
Battle Skipper 1 Sci fi/Fantasy Japanimation
Dune Sci fi/Fantasy D. Lynch
Excalibur Sci fi/Fantasy Milos
Harry Potte and the Chamber of Secrets Sci fi/Fantasy Chris Columbus
Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship… Sci fi/Fantasy Peter Jackson
Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King Sci fi/Fantasy Peter Jackson
Muldiver #1 Sci fi/Fantasy Japanimation
Sobianca 2 Sci fi/Fantasy Japanimation
The Fifth Element Sci fi/Fantasy Luc Besson
X-men Sci fi/Fantasy Bryan Singer
X-men Creators choice Sci fi/Fantasy Cartoon
The Star Wars Trilogy Sci fi/Fantasy George Lucas
His Girl Friday Comedy H. Hawks

The video Monsters says "Movies, Movies, Movies"

2010-05-05T12:47:00.000-04:00

BRIGHT LIGHT THERAPY

Live in rooms full of light
Avoid heavy food
Be moderate in the drinking of wine
Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking
or the sound of running water
Change surroundings and take long journeys
Strictly avoid frightening ideas
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements
Listen to music

Cornelius Celsus (first century, A.D.)

http://www.cet.org/en/index.html?/en/Cautions.htm

Tek Yon (One Way)

2009-03-10T13:52:00.002-04:00

Butt moss slips, actually algae, he called you, Elma
Chai teenagers rendezvous on the Bosphorous
My waist expands, my waste a frothy head of spun sucre, sugar of fire,
The gates in Asia keep us out, but the security cameras keep us in
Cat count keeps rising...

Filthy viewfinder clouds finding giant television
It shows us media is Sultan across the Bosphorous
It would swallow us whole
While the giant eye watches while being watched
Heathens drown...

In delight, Turkish Delight
The Lira is not real, it is SUE|like| water
We do not drink as much as we should
Navigating the call to prayer...

My hair as soft as candy that we pop like pills,
Turkish Sheiks are we, shabby Americans underneath

Tesekkür ederim, teasugar eredem, tea sugar airy demI fed a lamb, I fed a pyro

Thank you for your support for this years MS Ride

2008-10-20T18:04:00.002-04:00

Hello All,

I wanted to thank you for making this my biggest year yet. Your donation put me into the blue bib category. MVP treatment at the end of the ride. Imagine endless banquet tables piled high with catered corporate food heaven or artery clogging dysentery hell, depending on your perspective and gastrointestinal fortitude.

The event collected over $2M and I think was the biggest year yet. It certainly was my biggest year. I finished the ride without to much trouble besides a few dark moments which I will share, but still much better than last year.

Last year I was not prepared for the Palisades hills. They made my legs wet noodles. And when I had completed 97 miles, I over-shifted my old-style derailleur into my spokes. I had to take the subway home while holding up a broken bike, wobbling with the turns and bumps of the train. When I got home, I laid down and closed my eyes. I was still peddling off into the night on a broken bike.

Again, this year was much better, mainly because your generosity really energized me. So I thought I should share with you some notes I jotted down during the 100 mile ride.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

10/3/08 6:00 AM, This morning is crappy. Rain and wind keep everyone cold. And wet. I did not over-dress. I jump around in place. Other cyclist weave through the crowd, getting closer to the start line. I scoff at them. This is not a race...

Baloney. Nobody likes to get passed. It is a simple, primal impulse. You pass someone, you get a little boost of dopamine. Dolphins know this. The way they swim along a ship. Dolphins don't want to be second. And there is not even a finish line in the ocean.

Two guys behind me are cracking bad jokes about the weather leaning on their very expensive bicycles, that I swear I do not covet. The horn finally blasts. We head down the West Side Highway and warm up. We are a tightly packed group. We are the front pack.

The front pack is wet. The front pack is yelling. The front pack yells things like "slow." It ripples through, like the wave at a football game. But the sound stays in the same place and it is the riders that pass through it, an audible gate. The pack yells "puddle right" and the pack squeezes left. Then pack yells "puddle left" and the pack squeezes right. Then the pack yells "stop" and somebody yells "yelling." It is funny the first time.

Then the Lincoln Tunnel. They close the tunnel for the pack. They pinch off an inch and let it into the tunnel. I am in the front of the front. I lied to somebody once. I told them on a good a hill in New York you can get up to 35 or 40 mph. I swear this tunnel made me honest.

Top gear all the way until I hit the bump. As bumps go it is not so bad, but my water bottle doesn't' t like it and starts to want to leave on its own. Then the pump on my down-tube wants to dance with the bottle. There goes the rest of the pinch as I stop to gather my wayward things. I am last of the pinch pack. I am in stinking last. And it really doesn't feel good. But this is not a race...

I get back in the mix. I leave the tunnel at the rear of the pinch, but not last. And I see this cute girl with a megaphone. She is looking right at me. She is saying something into the megaphone. She is saying, "hello," she is saying "wait till you see me on my bike," she is saying "we will go riding together, into bliss," she is saying "watch out for that speed bump."

The handle bars are suddenly 6 inches above where my hands are. I sadly, know what is coming. I feel the compression of the Styrofoam that separates my head from the clean swept asphalt of Edgewater, New Jersey. I am severed from the pack. From WE to just ME in an instant.

Wear you helmet.

Adrenalin kicks in as a crane my neck like a turtle on its back. Shouts of "all right?" circulate, I right myself, pull the bike up. I curse the siren and then drag my 1984 Fuji Series IV Touring 12 speed bicycle to the sidewalk.

Embarrassment in check, the chain is off, handle bars turned, derailleur a mess. Pack after pack passes as I dirty my hands with the business of becoming mobilized. Wheels, check, chain, check, brakes, check, me, check, me.

I get back on the bike and think, what a glorious lesson I have learned. I should share this lesson with those that sponsored me.

Here is that lesson:

In life there are speed bumps. And sometimes those speed bumps will knock you flat on your *** because you were staring at a cute girl when you should have been watching the road. So watch the road.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rest of the ride was excellent but in a solitary way, no big messages, just that if you keep peddling you will eventually wind up back at the start. So lets keep peddling...and find a cure for MS.

Geolocative Phone Paranoia

2008-09-24T18:08:00.005-04:00

This is great! I get to walk around the 'City' and find out where my 'Friends' are located and I can move towards them or move away from them. I can even find out where they are when they should be walking in the door of the bar that I have been sitting in for the past 45 minutes sucking down seltzer water to the consternation of the bartender.

For example, we are walking down the block, me one way and you the other our, geo-locative boxes squawk in some way the proximity and direction of the other. So now having this information changes the entire direction and nature of the interaction.

One would consider the implications of running into each other, maybe someone was rude earlier or whatever...but the point is your analytical decision process kicks in and it imagines the encounter. The analytical mind would weigh the pros and cons and it makes value judgment. It would imagine these things, mind you, then you would determine if you want to run like hell the other way.

Now you might think that is great! You get to avoid all those people you don't want to run into. But of course these are people that have been allowed to be in your "network," lets say facebook friends, so they know you are there and are running away, but maybe you are invisible. Or maybe you drop somebody. So for people on a list you are now fully engaged in a continual qualitative judgment process regarding a persons character, views, impression, etc. Now you run away from the blip, regardless of the reason, to escape the perpetual recursive judgment.

The setting Pride and Prejudice, except now with our new tools Jane would continually avoid those meaningful confrontations with Darcy and grow into spinsterhood. Prejudice would limit your overall exposure to unforeseen circumstances, coincidences and "happenstance."

So you shouldn't move away from the blip, ignore the blip, and stumble upon the person.

Help Fight Multiple Sclerosis By Giving Me Money to Ride a Bicycle

2008-08-25T11:28:00.002-04:00

October is right around the corner, so I have started making my Halloween costume and collecting donations for the MS Ride '08. The ride is on October 5th. Last year I was very lame with my collections so I am stepping it up a notch.

It is also a little more poignant this year because Sheldon Brown passed in February. Sheldon Brown was an online bicycle guru that wrote essays and 'how to' articles on everything from touring Europe on two wheels, to explaining what a 'spline' was. His writing was extremely helpful, very funny and made you feel like you were getting advice from a well informed friend. He was diagnosed with MS in the waning years of his life and wrote this little essay about it that captures the tone of his personality.

I will be doing the 100 mile ride up through Congers, NY which is actually a real pain after you get out of Manhattan. The hills in the Palisades don't let you forget. After last year, I laid down at home, closed my eyes and felt like I was still on my bike pedaling uphill. So it was more like 115 miles.

If you feel like donating you can go to this site and do it all online!

https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=251540&supid=102798221

The Hidden Beach at Jacob Ris

2008-08-19T20:03:00.016-04:00

Cliff called. He said there was a ride today. He said I would not be alone. He said he had a mess of papers he had to sort out. He said he was up till three in the morning working on some data file. He said Dome Lady and Manray would be there.

I said OK. I would be there at 11:30AM. I said I would make some breakfast first. I didn't even chop the garlic. I just smashed it with the knife. The garlic went in a hot pan of olive oil. The smell filled the apartment. It was almost enough.

It was a quarter to 11:00AM. It was ten till 11:00AM. It was five till 11:00AM. It was going to be alright. I took the Panasonic down. It is a fast bike. It had a flat. I put the Panasonic back. I would settle for the Fuji Touring Series Four IV. Nobody is losing sleep over this bike but I like it.

I moved through the traffic on autopilot. Greenpoint Avenue past the water plant. The water plant smelled like shit. I weaved through Mini-van mitzvah tanks on Kent Ave. Flushing was nothing. I was water. I was there, it was 11:18AM. I was a God.

Cliff said come in. I sat on the couch. Cliff got a call. Cliff moved some data. Cliff made some coffee. Cliff gave me a cup. Cliff is a good person.

Another call. Later another call. It was Dome Lady. They were at the Park and ready to ride. It was Noon. Cliff was not ready. Cliff sent me to stall.

We said hello. I was lost in my Godliness. No one must know I am a God. Manray said he impregnated three women that morning. I said good job. I moved away. Manray said with his eyes. I moved away again.

I looked at their bicycles. Dome lady on a Panasoic DX-3000, Manray on a Surly Cross-check, I talked about bicycles. I know nothing about bicycles. We talked about helmets. My helmet is cool.

Cliff arrived. We discussed directions. Manray had the map. I decided Manray was Mapray and I would follow him. GPS Lady is not around. She got dumped. We went through the park. I talked more about bicycles. I still know nothing about bicycles.

We stopped at a light. Cliff was a Jack Rabbit.

We headed East. Past Canarsie Jack Rabbit thought we were going the wrong way. I got turned around. North was South, East was West. The Manhattan skyline was on the left. Mapray knew where to go. He was a fucking landshark.

We stopped somewhere. Jack Rabbit got me Orbitz. A bird shat on Dome Lady's head. There were people there. They laughed at Dome Lady. Dome Lady laughed. They laughed at the bird shit. But not mean. Everybody drank water. Mapray bunged the bags.

Jack Rabbit thought we were going the wrong way. We followed Mapray. The bridge was down. Took the free Golden Coach across the bridge to Broad Channel McDonald's' parking lot. Dome lady took some pictures. Manray bunged the bags.

Jack Rabbit yelled make a left. I yelled follow Mapray asshole. Mapray went left. We went left. We road on the boardwalk. The map said no bikes on Rockaway Beach Boardwalk. We said fuck the map.

Stopped at the grease pit. Jack Rabbit brought out the plate of corporate bar food. Cliff is a good man. It was devoured. Cliff finds my gum under the plate. We still want more. I borrow $20 from Cliff.

Cheezeburger, cheezedog, cheeze fries, cheeze coke, cheeze beer, cheeze cheeze. Mapray Bunged the bags. I said fuck. I said I left my bag at the grease pit.

We headed West. On the conrete sidewalk. Dome Lady pointed out the Empire State Building. We were on the 34th St extension. Jack Rabbit took off like a jack rabbit. He took a left into a bush. We followed Jack Rabbit. It was not a bush. It was a concrete path. It looked post-apocalyptic. It looked cool.

That was the road to the Hidden Beach at Jacob Ris.

Dome lady and I wore our suits. Jack Rabbit and Manray were like flashdancers. Manray said he hated gyms. I said why. He said he had athletes dick. He said athletes dick is when your dick touches an athletes dick and becomes a long black dick. He has some fucked up ideas about gyms.

We swam at the hidden beach. The water was incredible. I said a prayer for Michael Phelps so that he might obtain his eighth Olympic gold medal. Dome lady did the Australian crawl. We discussed survival strategies.

When you are in a riptide, do not swim towards shore. Swim parallel to the shore until you are out of the riptide. Then swim towards shore. Fat people float better. Become fat.

We raced back to the shore. I was a God. Manray offered sunblock. Cliff offered plums. Dome lady offered to take a picture. I offered dental floss. Nobody wanted to floss.

To reduce the public aversion to dental floss I made a garbage bag kite using dental floss as the kite string. It flew aproximately three and a half feet above ground. Manray bunged the bags.

Dome Lady wrote a song for Manray:

(Bootsy Collins)
Put the back
Pack
On the rack
Put the back pack on the rack

(Backing girl chorus)
Do that bungee thang
and make the thang twange

(Bootsy Collins)
Put the back
Pack
On the rack
Put the back pack on the rack

Manray couldn't outrun his top gear. Manray outran my top gear. I stopped at the best water fountain in Prospect Park. The best water fountain anywhere. The water was cool. The water was free. The water was America.

Dome Lady and Jack Rabbit were picking their teeth at the plaza. I still don't know how they got their first. It was a good ride.

Fixie Pretensions

2008-06-18T01:31:00.001-04:00

Tonight after a dose of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, I looked over the collapsible furniture at my latest symptom. A Panasonic DX2000 that was a little worse for wear. Not a great bike by any means but from crank to seat post it is a whopping 28" and the stem tube is about 11 1/2". It looks like a normal bike that has been put on the rack and still did not talk. It has a gangly extra foot of vertical-ity. It is larger than the Pursuit left up in Maine, itself a gigantic specimen. A bear could leap through the frame lit on fire and not singe a hair.

It was a quarter to eleven and I said to myself, I have to take it out for real spin. This was earlier than the time of night I actually acquired the bike from a 300 lbs ogre of a man named Juliolindo. I liken his appearance to the Ettercap that can be found in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragon's Fiend Folio page 35. I believe it was his strategy to arrive as late as possible, when wits are befuddled and sleep beckons, his special attack. Juliolindo, who answered all of my hesitations with irrelevant asides such has "I have a K2. a 2 lbs bike." He might still have been riding his K2 as his girth obscured so much posterior space.

I had taken the rear wheel off of the DX2000 for closer inspection and as I pulled the frame from the rack, it decided to lay on it's side. This was unfortunate for my downstairs neighbor has entered into a overt war of cool aggression with me, as a result of unavoidable bumps and bangs that are caused by one as clumsy as I. As expected Andreas appeared like a jack-in-the-box. He is my Albanian-in-a -box, ready to spring at any fallen book, glass or shoe. Though subdued in his expressions, as English is not yet a second language for him, he made clear his intention of reporting me to the sound police so that I might be exiled from his heavens.

Fuck you Andreas, because you do not know what real noise is. So besides a real flavor test, I have extra stress to work off. I am also giving my new bike diapers a dry run. I bought them today in preparation for Saturday's century to Montauk and they feel as if I have passed smooth firm latex into briefs. Outside, I struggle to raise the seat post 2" and climb on. Would you God damn believe it, it is still to low, I need to add another inch, but will do so later, then I immediately notice something...

Bikes are everywhere, as I ride towards the Boulevard of Death, I see three stream by me. I shag right back to Greenpoint Ave and see two more. They are everywhere, Down 43rd Ave towards the Chrysler building there are two more. I decide two things, bikes are like bats tonight, and I need to pick a gear and stick with it. I am big chain ring and second to highest. I then follow my commute route as I continue to see bikes all around me. I head towards the 59th street bridge and head up, and like drips from a faucet, bike after bike, mostly out of darkness come flying by as I huff up the Queens side. All quiet but for the click of coasting wheels and wind in hair, and of course the suppressed sound of car traffic on the bridge, which is in fact glaringly loud.

A hint of the future, a world of bikes, car traffic will be replaced by bike traffic, but for now it is exciting and modern, as they all race each other to the bottom of the bridge, ten of them, twenty of them, one right after the other and I am one of them. As I make it to the top, I am won. The stiffness of the frame, where my wrists, knees, elbows are balancing out nicely up that hill, with no crouching. The components are shit, it has stem shifters, the dérailleur is somewhat bent...this is it, this is the bike I will immediately begin converting to a fixed gear, so I too can belong to the night...

Now all I need is your help.

What do I hear in the distance?

2008-02-28T11:27:00.003-05:00

A dark sacred cave, my ear, there echos of a great run can be heard. On the walls painted, in ground earth, the image born eons ago. All of God's creatures fleeing the horizon, a stampede of terror, from the great behemoth born from the frozen wasteland of the north, MASTODON!

Labyrinth: Feminine Teen Fantasy or Aging Male Lament

2008-02-27T18:35:00.035-05:00

Last week I was home bound for at least a week with the flu. As soon as the worst of it was over, I downloaded Jim Henson's Labyrinth staring then teenager Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie. I cannot tell you why I sought this film out or what inspired searching for the torrent. But it occurred to me to go look for it and with such ready access to media, I obtained it with little difficulty.

After many repeated viewings I began to understand why this film surfaced in my thoughts. It was not nostalgia, because though I am sure I saw it in the 80's, I am equally sure that it did not leave a strong impression on me then. If anything, I remember it as one of the many failed attempts; Legend, Willow, Dragonslayer, to create a successful fantasy genre film. And I distinctly remember being disappointed by the impact the film had on my perception of David Bowie's image. His cool, soulful alienation that defined his iconography was exploited for a target audience other than me at the time. The film did not speak to me.

But now in my state of recovery I found the character of the film speaking to me in a very clear voice. First you must agree with me that a film actually has a character. The character that is not comprised of just the visual comprised of all the elements of film making executed by those individuals contributing.
It has presence, memory, and expectation. The traces of those beliefs are left embbeded in the experiece of viewing, more so as it is comprised of all other artforms. In this way, great spectacles become more than their sum, a collection of lies that tell some truth as guided by those beliefs of those all making the film.

If you agree with me then agree further that a film's depth of character cannot be fully understood as a singularity but obviously on many levels with many messages. Then there is the final contributor that closes loop, the viewer, who brings their own beliefs and sense of self to the experience of watching the film, where the film's characteristics are identified and resonate with the individual, some are augmented and others are suppressed as the viewer recognizes their own beliefs projected for consumption.

Simply put to me at a cocktail party, the subtext of the film.

And here is where I inject my fever vision of the character of Labyrinth. It is not the story of a young girl's realization that she is no longer a child and must change accordingly, but more so the lament for the aging male character Jareth, who can no longer play the role of suppressed sex object to the girl. In fact the strongest, more resonant vision of the film is the latter and can be supported by the structural elements that comprise the film.

Here is a brief outline that I will further develop.

o The labyrinth is "childishly" a metaphor for Sarah's repressed sexual awareness yet her character does not transform, only supperficially does she address the woe of adulthood. Sarah's sexual identity actually remains the same throughout story.

o Sarah's journey is one of moral growth not sexual growth, and her realisation is not self sexual realization, but of political realization, when she states to Jareth "You have no Power over me!" Sexual or otherwise.

o All of the creative leads were men in midlife crisis, and clearly confused the target of the film. That it did poorly at the box office only suports this view, the blink analysis is "Who wants to see Bowie in a codpiece"

o The lead creative forces were:
o Jim Henson
o Terry Jones
o David Bowie
o George Lucas

o The George Lucas factor applies here where all female sexuality is repressed and if possible eliminated where only the surface flesh and shape of the actor can denote any sexuality - and here is where Jennifer Connelly is distinctly non-sexual but acttractive none the less.

o The codpiece is the elephant in the room.

o The music is sung from Jareth's point of view. Written by David Bowie for the movie, each is loaded with ambiguity around desiring a connection with Sarah, and Within You is clearly what Jareth wants to be, but is refutted.
o Dance Magic
o Within You
o Underground

o The bog of eternal stench clearly represents decrepitude and incontinence, where hemrodial gasgets fart and emit the smells of age.

o The only true transformation that happens in the film is Jareth's, he the powerful Goblin king is returned to an intert state of the barn owl. This decline is clearly marked by periods of interaction with Sarah, at each one he is rebuffed, ignored and belittled.

o Snatching Toby - "Take this child away from me," Sarah prays to Jareth - metaphorically shedding the responsibilities of Motherhood but it is Jareth whose threats and posing fail to thwart Sarah visually fades away.
o Sarah and Jareth in the Dance, all wear masks, but Sarah, and when Jareth reveals hers she runs away.
o Final scene Jareth transforms to small barn owl.

It is key you have earphones...

2007-10-29T10:11:00.001-04:00

You should definitely have a pair of cheap headphones plugged into your computer at all times. You cannot trust your volume settings. It is the only way I feel comfortable turning it on, knowing I will not hear its "good morning" noise. Those type of noises never come at the right time.

I have a pair of fakey I-pod numbers always plugged in. Always on. I rarely listen to music, but have them on all the time to avoid meaningless chit chat with the office buddies. I always have them on, shaping the behaviour of those around me. Creating the image of a diligent focused person is paramount. Sometimes I forget to take them off. Ever.

Sometimes I wear them home, on the subway, to the market. It places an almost impenetrable layer between me an the rest of the world. Someday I will get an I-pod, but for now these headphones will do fine.

9/11

2007-09-26T19:10:00.001-04:00

I was listening to the radio this morning, npr, and they were doing their memorial show for 9/11. They had a moment of silence at 8:48, when the first plane hit. For the first time ever I was touched by the momment of silence gesture. I haven't grown more conservative, just more scared.

During the momment I actually thought about that day. It was sunny outside and I had just gotten out of the shower, the windows where open in the kitchen and living room. I lived in a room that I had painted the floor yellow with blue and beige concentric cirlces radiating out from just left of center.

I remember distinctly the live feed of the smoking first tower, people where already on the rooftops looking south. Richard had been on ours and told me so. It was just Richard and I, Jack had already moved out and Nick's band was using his old bedroom as a practice space.

I watched the TV as Richard went back up to the roof and then over to Leja's. I remember the instant of the second impact and crying out in chorus with the entire neighborhood, not believing what I was seeing. The disconection of the special effect on the TV and the comprehension that is was real - it broke one belief, created another and twisted a third.

I hasn't changed my inate life strategy or how I deal with stress or that I live in a world that was essentially cruel or that I live in a world that I am even more disconnected from on a daily basis. It was a momment I remember. And that has nothing to do with what I really want to talk about.

In the Pursuit of Personal Property

2007-07-27T11:49:00.001-04:00

They had added wireless this year. Just another small improvement in their investment that would allow them to raise the rent another point. More capital investments would happen in the fall that would increase the value of their property, maybe windows. They would have to look at the mortgage next year to refinance. They were getting older and they still had a long way to go before they could get out from under the Walter's bad decisions.

They hadn't lost everything, only the better half of it, so they had to make adjustments. After selling the house in Maine and the condo in New York, the biggest adjustment was renting the house in Bethany. They had bought it new before the Walter's mistakes became apparent. It was going to be where they brought everything back together. They had only spent one summer there. Now it was a source of revenue for ten weeks, $7,000 a week, $70,000 a year and crucial.

The last kid was out of college but staying in the mid-west, and only costing them a nominal sum, the other one was on the west coast and never getting married, at least not legally. From the outside, no one could tell that anything had really changed. It had been so long since the Walter had been officially with the firm, that keeping up appearances was relatively easy. She only had to worry about their friends.

It was harder starting in June. Every Friday morning at 6:00AM she would drive down from Washington with Lupe to clean the house for the next tenants. The house was rented Friday to Friday, but in reality it was Friday night to Friday Morning, giving them from 9:00AM to 3:00PM to get the house ready. Bobbie told her about a service she used for her six bedroom house in South Bethany. It was $250 a week, but she said no, because that was two and half grand that she was not going to give to Bobbie. She knew Bobbie ran the service herself using her niece to gather a bus load of workers to sweep two dozen or so houses that didn't fall under the supervision of a development board. She said "No thank you" and told Lupe to buy a second set of cleaning supplies in case they forgot to leave behind all they needed.

The first time she did this was hard on her. Not the work, or the idea that strangers would be in her summer home for the next two and half months, but simply put, that the things in the house would never be in the same place she left them. That her decisions regarding the organization of the house would be taken for granted, then mutated and distorted so that when she came back the following week, she would see the migration of objects as if they had been subject to the tides. The deck chairs in patterns that made no sense to her. As if high tide had raised them up just enough to float them to a new position within the boxed-in deck. The candles moved from the dinning table to the coffee table in the living room. The pillows had floated from the living room down the stairs to the den, mixing with the den's matching pillows.

She imagined the succession of hands touching, adjusting, moving everything in the house as she herself touched, adjusted and moved each thing. Besides the linen, the things that made her skin crawl when she imagined them being handled by others, she picked up, packed and put into the closet on the ground floor. Then she locked the door. There wasn't much that actually needed to be put away. They hadn't much time to own this place and when she inventoried the closet, it was all things that she herself had purchased. The crystal fish, the bowl from the potter in St. Michaels and the quilt she had found at a church swap, a church she did not belong to. While reviewing the list she realized that she acquired all of these things alone, while on quiet solo trips around Maryland and Delaware. It was when she was most comfortable.

Escalation Monster

2006-11-03T11:13:00.002-05:00

From: BXXXXXXXXXX X. XXXXXXXXXX [XXXXXXXXXX]
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 8:47 AM
Subject: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

I am forwarding this event information to you because I feel it may benefit you. If you do not wish to received future event information please let me know. Have a great day!

XXXXXXXXXX X. XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXX | Voice XXXXXXXXXX | E-mail XXXXXXXXXX
Microsoft Corporation | Communications Sector North America | Solution Specialist – Enterprise Project Management

Microsoft Portfolio Server and Office Project Server 2007 Value briefing:

Selecting the Right Work and Doing the Work Right!

50% of organizations today are applying a mix of enterprise project and portfolio management techniques. Of those 40% of the value of projects is still lost. However, companies that have put their focus on “Selecting the right projects, the right way, at the right time” are attaining a yield of 50% or more from their projects*. *Source: Dr. Howard Rubin Meta Group

Please join us on November 14th, 2006 to learn how you can align, prioritize, and optimize your project investments by 50% or more leveraging the latest Microsoft technology! In this webinar, LMR Solutions, a two-time award winner for Microsoft EPM Best Practices, will discuss the challenges that many organizations face in managing their project portfolios and how these organizations can alleviate these challenges through the proper balance of process, governance framework, and technology.

You’ll understand how to leverage the latest Microsoft offerings, Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2006 and Project Server 2007 to support an integrated portfolio and project environment so that organizations can synchronize their top-down portfolio management strategy with bottoms-up project delivery, effectively ‘Selecting the Right Work’ and ‘Doing the Work Right’.

Session topics will include:

· An overview of the Portfolio Management discipline and process

· Aligning, prioritizing, and optimizing your project portfolio

· A Roadmap to Project Portfolio Management Maturity

· Demonstration of an integrated Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2006 & Project Server 2007 solution

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From: Wolfe, Whitney
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:17 AM
To: Bell, James
Subject: FW: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

May be useful to you…

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bell, James
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 9:18 AM
To: Wolfe, Whitney
Subject: RE: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

I think you sent this to me already.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Wolfe, Whitney
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:22 AM
To: Bell, James
Cc: Geddes, Edward
Subject: RE: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

I just received this this morning…sorry if it’s the same email as a few weeks ago…I was just trying to keep you informed of potential developments which could help you and JAC. Forgive me for trying to foster an atmosphere of collaboration. You obviously want to perpetuate a silo’d approach to working. For shame James, For Shame…

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From: Bell, James
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 9:44 AM
To: Wolfe, Whitney
Subject: RE: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

I already signed up for this seminar in an effort to dispel your distorted, paranoid sense of reality. I thought by letting you know that I had not only seen but read and understood your previous forward you might release yourself from your own twisted perceptions. Alas to no avail. Will you always be trapped in this cage of self-deception? I have done my best; the rest is up to you.

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From: Wolfe, Whitney
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:57 AM
To: Bell, James
Subject: RE: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

I just got off the phone with Brian T. Makar. Your rights to any and all Microsoft related seminars have been revoked. I think you need an attitude adjustment. You should spend some time thinking about what you’ve done and the implications of your actions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Bell, James
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 10:44 AM
To: Wolfe, Whitney
Subject: RE: Value Briefing Webinar November 14th

You are an escalation monster. Clearly the only way you can express yourself is through violence and intimidation, but remember this…I am a cockney street fighting bitch that will scrapple with you any day. I just got off the phone with George G. Irwin, regional manager of six Manhattan TCBY stores in our area. You, my dear friend are BANNED! Yes BANNED! From enjoying the delicious yet healthy yogurt treats in a 12 block area from our office.

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Dick Cheney and Jules Dassin

2006-08-18T15:22:00.003-04:00

I recently learned from the commentary track on Jules Dassin's film "Night and the City" by Glenn Erikson that by the mid-sixties, right-wingers denied that there had ever been any black-listing in America during the forties and fifties. I would imagine they also downplayed the fact that fear mongering and persecution was the legitimate path to power for the Republican Party. By jettisoning the negative associations contained in the body of one out-of-control megalomaniac, other in-control megalomaniacs like Nixon could rise above.

Only in the 1970's, when films like "Night and the City" toured campuses and art house theatres did something like truth re-enter into the public conscience as the stories of those black-listed directors, and their stark films, became more relevant as Vietnam came home.

I wonder how long it will take for a clear vision of the damage Cheneyism has wrought on our land to be not just articulated, but accepted. What will be the form of this expresion? When will it be recognized by a majority of the public? How much of the public would be enticed to discern the truth from the lies? Regardless of the approval rating, the statements Cheney has made are calculated to impassion his audience with a strong narrative. And in that way, no supporters would see any connection in tactics between " Connecticut is aiding Al-Qaeda" and "Are you or have you ever been in the communist party?"

I can only hope that the wave of technology that continues to subvert the mainstream media will, in the short-term, create a more sensitive instrument for detecting falsehood. Only then will Cheney's outrageous statements sound as tinny as they truly are. Hopefully, like the delusional Harry Fabian, played by Richard Widmark in the film, his most extreme statements are marking the beginning of his political end.

Counting Calories

2006-08-18T15:22:00.002-04:00

I cannot become obsessed with the elements of my body that are real as defined by sight, touch, taste and smell, but only the signifiers that give feedback to my body image. These signifiers range from "state of body" feelings, to how one actually sees their own body in a mirror, all of which can radically alter as a day progresses as the body image is constantly reevaluated by my own conscience.

I cannot become obsessed about how my body feels, but only the body image itself. One might argue that using substances to change how one's body feels can be obsessive to the point of addiction, but it is clearly changing the perception of feeling, not the direct feeling one recieves from their body. Alcohol, when it is in our bloodstream, changes our bodies directly and immediately but more importantly it changes how we perceive our bodies. It is the impact on perception that is essential, not the dehydration, high blood pressure and impaired mental faculty.

In the same way, I won't exercise because it makes me fit, I will exercise because it allows me to change how I perceive my body image. I seek to be fit based on a measurable signifier. Enhancing the body image is dangled like a carrot. In Six Sigma speak, it is the statement "anything that can be measured can be improved". This might seem childish to those who are are comfortable with connecting the body, the signifier and the image, but for me, these are very different spheres and connecting them as related goals is impossible.

That is why I feel drawn to a a web site like this (www.fitday.com). It allows me to understand why the calorie counting craze has been so strong in our culture, all the way back to when my mother diet-ed in the 1970s. It allows you to create a portrait of your body image that is at once removed from the body itself and yet a perfect system for modifying, comparing, and adjusting. Always ripe for revision as I constantly alter my image defined by graphs of intake, output and waste. By modifying this image, I percieve I am changing my behavior.

Does it really change behavior? Of course not, but it does create obsessive behavior. What will drive me to change my behavior? Only when I willingly commit to the worship of the body image, one which I am constantly rejecting. It is a crisis of faith, one that posits that if you believe in the body image, you can attain the body image which is forever your true mirror.

Dim Bulb

2006-04-04T10:48:00.001-04:00

REWRITE:

Dear Sunbox Corporation,

Your website needs to be revamped so I can order light bulbs by lamp type.

I have a Sunbox DL and am disappointed I have to disassemble the front cover of my lamp to identify the bulb type. I then have to reassemble it to use it while I wait for the bulbs to show up. Then I have to do it again, to install the bulbs.

Why can't you list the width and lux power of the bulbs that go with the product on the product page? Then I could order replacements off the product page.

OR you could just link to the bulb page and list the models that it fits below.

Either way you are delivering extra customer service at little cost.

IF you do option one, it would allow you to up-sell extra bulbs that go with the product at the time of purchase. This would probably increase you revenue by 5-10% with only a little investment on your website.

Personally, when the light bulbs burned out in my original sunbox, I found it very difficult to get the correct replacement bulbs. And in my winter depressive state, I pretty much said "fuck it" and let the lamp sit unused for a long, long time.

In fact, your product went into storage for several years. That is years of bulb sales you missed.

Listen to me, I am the voice of the consumer.

Ambien

2006-03-26T16:09:00.001-05:00

Ambien is a sleepy cat,
But you know that
In fact, it would not surprise you
To see her go
To sleep on cue
Not put to sleep
But go to sleep
As in late at night
Counting sheep
Her teetering and tottering
Gives you a clue
Of what is about to ensue
But give a push and a prod
Keep away the nod
For now you have an opportunity
To let Ambien know what
How you think of her
It is a chance to explain
How you want to hang
Yourself
When she rants and raves
About herself
Her petty victories or backstabbing stance
Or personal affronts
Which all to often
You must bear the brunt
It is enough to keep you up at night
Your mind running in tight
Little circles
So be honest for a change
Get it off your chest
Because odds are
After you have expressed
Your anger, scorn and wrath
The the morning after the aftermath
It will not be on Ambien's mind
More likely it will be
Who left behind
The empty pint of Chunky Monkey and
Crummy cracker wrappers
According to her
It is all that matters

Luskins

2006-02-13T01:50:00.002-05:00

Scott borrowed the car his father had given him. He had gotten his permit a while back but there was ambiguity as to when Scott could use the car. His father had given it to him, but somewhere along the line there were limitations to when Scott could use it, possibly set by his mother or his sister, but something stricter than the just the DMV rules.

You could really sense something was changing about the culture, angles were appearing everywhere. Eyeglasses, clothes, and haircuts, but Scott's car had its four tires firmly placed in the Seventies American car opulence. It had two giant doors, a V-8 engine, electric windows, air conditioning, a caramel vinyl top, a creamy chunky bottom and a huge trunk. It was ugly. It could have been a Ford Grenada or a Buick Skylark.

I rode shotgun and Stephen was in the sticky back seat because the AC never really reached back there. Scott wore aviator sunglasses and drove fast. Years later, in a passing conversation, outside of his home, I learned that he was forced to attend driving safety classes because of speeding tickets. He told me how the class convinced him not to speed. Scott was very logical and swayed by empirical evidence. He quoted the most compelling arguments he found in the seminar. Two cars left from the same starting point. Car A disregarded the speed limit, car B maintained posted speed limits. The cars arrived three minutes apart at the destination.

Scott described the particulars of the experiment. These details worked to support Scott's acceptance of the fact that speeding does not get you there appreciably faster. It was the first time I realized Scott was making a decision about his life. He was exerting his will over his desire. Personally, it never occurred to me before. I was just starting to understand desire.

Our trip to Luskins was before all that.

Scott or Stephen, one of them had heard a story at school. You could walk into Luskins with a receipt for blank tapes and grab a cardboard box filled with a two hundred-dollar tuner and walk out. You had to have balls. You had to walk with confidence. You had to flagrantly wave the bill of sale around, you had to make sure no one stopped you on the way out.

Luskins was a Washington appliance warehouse store that had a vast collection of TVs, stereos, tape to tape boom boxes with detachable speakers. In the back was a giant sound room to test your component choices. They knew a lot about stereo equipment, about amps and watts. Each of them had a stereo. They were concerned with fidelity. I lived in a bedroom filled with my dead grandmother's furniture.

I became inaudible and all my insides started to bubble, hot. It was very hot. In the parking lot they were deciding who was going to go in with the receipt. Was I going to do it? They didn't really even ask me.

Minutes go by as I walked in circles around bins filled with plastic cases surrounded by cardboard boxes located in the front of the store. Each lap I looked around. I had lost sight of them, and was alone. They knew. Everyone knew what we were doing. Just by looking at me, they knew something was up and everyone in the store was looking at me. I was like that beaver at the Rock Creek nature center that had been hit by car on the left side. It suffered brain damage and could only walk to the right. Just looping around and around to the right in his cage endlessly as children on field trips watched. Insufferable, stuck there, I couldn't leave, where would I go?

Then here comes Stephen walking down the main isle heading towards the tinted glass door. There was no cashier in the way, just a glass top counter on the right. The store was run on a commission basis and it was expected that the stereo salesman would ring up the sale and bring the receipt back to the customer. This is what allowed the scam to work.

Stephen is struggling with the box a little bit. He was short, about 5'4" but it was an act. Stephen was strong and incredibly balanced. As he approached the door, he turned around and leaned against the door nodding his head and mumbling something towards the counter. I could not understand what he said, because he had the receipt stuck in is mouth.

I nearly puked as the bright sunlight from the outside parking lot framed Stephen's silhouette. I did one more lap then left. The box was sitting on top of the trunk. Stephen had a huge smile but was still playing it cool. The brightness was hurting my eyes. Scott comes up shortly thereafter and pops the trunk, then makes for the driver door.

Turning off Rockville Pike we took the back way home past the bike trail. Only a few years earlier we used to take that very same trail out to White Flint Mall a few miles from Luskins. Scott rode his silver Mongoose and I would ride my red Sting Ray I had won in a raffle in the sixth grade. We only went for one thing, pizza from the Italian counter at the International Eatery. Each nation lined up across from each other in a wide cafeteria on the third tier. The same kitchen replicated on down a jagged line with changes in the flag and color scheme, but I ignored the others and only went for pizza. I always got one piece of pizza because I couldn't afford more. It came as a small round whole pie. I loved that pizza. It took about an hour and a half for us to get there by bicycle. And on that final hill we would always have to get off our bikes and walk them up in humiliation. It was an all day journey and you would have to think twice before committing to it, but I loved that pizza.

Crowne Plaza Breakfast in 2004

2006-02-11T09:51:00.000-05:00

Foul ordered breakfast. One coffee cup missing from radiated scramble. Dyed yellow grey with Mexican catsup, knife stab opening mums or dandelions on the tray with two plates and one cup of ice water. Rotting fruit sweetness permeates the chemically baked bread molded into shape, never cut. Potatoes soggy with rot absorb a hint of dyeing strawberry. The plate uncovered behaves as if flatulent. It shows three strips of last years pig, a dull sheen daring you to consume.

Scared Straight

2006-02-03T23:52:00.001-05:00

I can't recall how I got there or what procedures I went through to get into the building. I do know that the Montgomery County Correctional Facility exterior was constructed of dull brown bricks, the kind you find in municipal buildings that have an ambiguous function. You have to learn what the building is for.

The similarity between its construction and some of the modern libraries we broke into occurred to me only later. In fact, I could be making it up, some disorder making me make connections that aren't really there.

The room looked like a cafeteria, the same brown municipal bricks on the outside were on the inside lit by fluorescent lights. The five or six of us sat on one side of a large folding cafeteria table in the middle of the room. Then after an introduction, the detective brought in the convicts. There were eight or nine of them. They walked in from two separate doors on the wall opposite us. The women came in on the right, the men from the left. Some were in orange jumpsuit. They were loud and we got quiet.

At some point after some more direction from the detective, he walked out of the room, leaving us. The juvenile side of the table was mute. I minimized my movements and sound. Shallow, light breathing, I gripped my elbows. Every muscle was frozen as if I was playing headlights. Headlights was a game where you would run around the neighborhood avoiding detection. It was never declared, but you would pretend you were a ninja or behind enemy lines and you must not be detected. When you see headlights you dive behind a tree, bush or ditch and freeze. Scott and I used to play it until we were twelve. It was really fun.

Back in the prison cafeteria they started grilling the kids on my left, making me last. One man would lead the assault by asking the questions. "What did you do?" He wasn't particularly tall or big, but he was a man. They were all fully grown people that bellowed, twitched and sputtered without suppression. They were nervous and on edge but that seemed to be from too much coffee. They seemed almost happy to be there, in front of us.

The first was a girl, she was about fourteen. Her story started with stealing liquor from the liquor cabinet, then going out after curfew, then shoplifting. Getting pregnant then an abortion. The man was pulling it out of her like taffy. We all witnessed how they worked her over. Drawing it out of her.
"What did you do?"
"Why did you do that?"
"Did it make you feel like a grown up?"
"You like fucking don't you..."
"You like speed, driving fast, and getting fucked up."

All of this was said with pride. You are a whore and you will keep getting pregnant and then abortions and the scar tissue will make it so you can't have babies and there you will be all fucked up and alone whoring yourself on the street. This is being yelled at her, while the rest of the prisoners chimed in with yodels and wolf calls and grunts of stupid bitch. She cracks.

Next up is a small guy who fights all the time and is proud of his accomplishments to date. He fights everyday and broke somebody's nose once, and broke into somebody's house and his stepfather can't tell him what to do. He is the one most comfortable here. He isn't easily scared but they go to work on him about his mother.

Then they talk about how he doesn't know a thing about fighting. In the can, where he is heading, you put someone down, they stay down. They tell him how no metal is allowed but they find it, and make a knife with it. One of the chorus guys gets up and shows a few scars where he had been stuck.

"You small skinny motherfucker is going to get cut up bad, talking all big. They will cut your ass up!" and right then it changes because now the prisoners are really getting into it, getting wound up. "Shit, I'll cut you ass up" and he is staring right down on him. He is a big black motherfucker now. No longer just a guy in a jumpsuit. And you know he will would enjoy it. The small guy cracks and starts bawling and he turns into a kid again.

We all release a little. Next up is another girl who whines about her mother forbidding her to see her boyfriend. About how she runs away and gets high. But I am not listening to the stories anymore, they are the kinds of kids I don't care about. They are the kind that would pick on me. I don't care about them, but the show the prisoners are putting on is getting more and more intense. The stabbed guy is shaking his leg which is shaking the cafeteria table. He has been doing this for about the entire time he has been sitting there. Mid-sentence the lead guy interrupts the whiner and tells us all that the stabbed guy is masturbating. The lead guy tells all this while the guy jerking off is staring at the girl who stops talking. She is scared now. "You ever been gang banged?" he asks the girl. She stutters. He keeps jerking, hitting the table. Then they pile it on, "If I had you alone , I would hold you down and fuck you in the ass." At least I think that is what he said. She cracks.

Now there is no pretending that they are there to help us. They are there to get off and they are doing it. As each kid cracks they corral the dogs and smooth things out, and then unleash them again. And now it's my turn.

Another guy in the chorus starts in on me. "You there, what did you do? You look effeminate." It was weird that he would say that, why would he use that word. Was he trying to tell me something? "Why do you have your arms like that?" I almost think I am going to get off easy. I was wearing a down puffy green jacket with my arms held across my lap, gripping each elbow, still. Here it comes. "I am cold" I saw it in a way that I hope will say, I am not like them.
"What did you do?"
"I broke into libraries and stole the change from Xerox machines."
"You what?" says new guy.
"We, I broke into libraries and stole the change from Xerox machines."
"Why did you do that?" says leader guy.
"You think that's funny" says a new guy.
Then they go to work on me.
"You a faggot, aren't you?" I had been called a faggot many times, but never by a man twice my age.
"I would knock your teeth out so that I could fuck your mouth with nothing in the way"
"You would like that wouldn't you? Faggot."
It starts to get blurry now. My reflection from that point is of hot tears rolling down my face because of the shame of being here, surrounded by these shits, who see nothing of worth in me. The shame of not being smarter, better, of being a fuck up and a loser. I am worthless gripping my elbows.

I then knew, more than ever, that people were awful and that the way they treat you would never really change no matter how old you got. I learned that what makes prison so terrifying is not because your liberty is taken away. All kinds of social norms wash away that illusion, but what makes prison so terrifying is that your liberty is taken away and given to others.

Community service and getting back to normal is what happened next.

We Broke Into Libraries and Stole the Change from Xerox Machines

2006-01-02T08:44:00.006-05:00

Originally there were three of us. Scott P., Stephen S. and myself. We were an oddball crew. Scott was the smart "husky" from a broken home, Stephen was the short clown, who learned to juggle and ride a unicycle, and I was the tall doofus that stuttered. I say I was the doofus because I didn’t have an identity then. I was absent, silent, and rarely spoke. And could sit for hours with either of them without saying more than ten words. I imagine it was creepy for them at times, but I don’t know.

We lived not far from each other in a suburb of Washinton. Scott lived across the street with his mother, his sister and eventually his grandmother, in a house very similar to the one I lived in. It was painted white though and was on a hill. The fenced in backyard was a steep drop down to one of the only true alleys in the neighborhood, where the backs of houses could be seen through the trees.

Scott’s older sister was the same age as my second oldest sister, but Lisa was beautiful in a way that was unique on the block. She was young, thin, drove her own car, smoked cigarettes like her mother and cussed. She was the last generation of kids in my neighborhood to wear bell-bottoms unconsciously. Denim jackets and roach clip held feathers in her long straight black hair made her look American Indian, exotic and out of place. Bruce Springstein’s Born to Run would be blasting from her room as I walked up the stairs towards Scott’s bedroom. The door would fling open and she would race down the stairs past me, and then I would glimpse her profile. She was forever moving away from the house, the neighborhood, her mother, and me. I was comfortable with that, as I could rarely speak to her and could never look at her in the face for more than a second. Her physical presence made me flush. Most of my time in that house was spent looking at the creamy wall to wall carpet or a TV screen. How irritating that must have been.

Scott’s mother was pack-a-day Benson & Hedges smoker that was very depressed. Lacking the experience and perception to correctly identify it as a problem, I was never put off by the dark rooms, her slurred speech, or distant gaze. The lack of scrutiny of my person was welcome. I would ring the doorbell at her home and she would open it and either start moving towards the kitchen waving a hand up the stairs towards Scott’s bedroom, or she would hold fast to the door, preparing to send me away. This went on for years, with intermittent breaks as other kids in the neighborhood gained favor with Scott or his family, but I outlasted them. Scott would never answer the door. Running interference for Scott was one of Mrs. P.'s jobs, and I could tell instantly if I was going to enter or be brushed off.

Scott would never come over to my house and I never though it strange. Why would he? I had nothing to offer, but Scott had an open fridge and a long list of possessions that he shared freely with me. His father, who lived in the District, provided the games.

Singularly, it was the Atari game console that drew me across the street. Star Raiders, Combat, Adventure, Night Driver, Asteroids, Missile Command, Joust, Midnight Magic, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, dominated the afternoons after school. At weekend sleepovers, hours were spent in silent coke and cookie fueled sessions with the black and red button joystick. The TV glow would grow to outline our frames behind us on the creamy carpet as the sun set. No lights were turned on to replace it.

It is hard to put a date one when I started going over to Scott’s, both of us were born in the neighborhood at the same time. I do know when it stopped.

Poem

2005-12-08T14:13:00.000-05:00

There is a smile between you and me
Or so I think
At the time you give in the middle of a bridge
The knots pull out with the free hand
We stand, going subway to bus

Dum Dums

2005-10-25T21:43:00.000-04:00

Dear Owners of Dum Dums,

The rock band that owned www.dumdums.com broke up in 2001, so why have you not made them a small offer to acquire the www.dumdums.com web address?

I think it is very important to your brand identity to maintain a consistent product name across all of your channels.

To change the brand name to “Dum Dum Pops” for the web address and product merchandise is so disharmonious that it devalues the product.

To not have the "s" on the second "Dum" ignores your greatest asset. A product name that is easily remembered and fascinating to the young mind.

The young mind says "Dum Dums." The associations are fast and many, a dumbbell, an idiot, a hollow point bullet, a round lollipop... I can remember my own experience as a child during Halloween, repeatedly saying “Dum Dums” with poetic delight just to hear my own voice say those words.

The point is that “Dum Dum Pops” are just lollipops – but “Dum Dums” are much more than that.

Is it only the nostalgia of one of your customers? The answer is yes. What brands have lasted more than thirty years? The ones that recognized the moment a customer was made and did not tarnish that memory.

It is the name itself that is central to maintaining a position in the market as a lollipop staple. Crazy you say? Then why would a UK band name itself after your lollipop?

Sincerely,

James E. P. Bell

++++

Dear Mr. Bell:

Thank you for your e-mail to Spangler Candy Company.

In checking with our marketing department, they advise that all of yourcomments are right on target. They have contacted the band and offered tobuy the domain; however, they were not interested. Although the band didbreak up, the web site is still active.

Perhaps if you sent an email to the band via their web site about theimportance of the brand name here in the U.S. it would help.We will be contacting them again also.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXX

++++

Mr. XXXXXXXXXX,

I doubt an email from me will change their mind because it is probably more important to the people running the site that the 700+ members still use the message board and in some way keep the fan base active.

Here are some ideas that respect their fan base, and is in line with things like the Zach's Voting Contest. http://www.dumdumpops.com/zachvote.htm

Register dumdums.uk then offer to swap with them them in conjunction with some of the following:

-Send each member of the message board a box of dumdums.

-Send the owners/admins of the site a large box of dumdums.

-Create a limited edition of dumdums dedicated to the memory of the band - is that easy/cheap?

-Get some background info on the band beforehand: What is their music like? Do
you like it? Would you consider it working with your brand? Why did they name
their band dumdums? They chose it because it resonates, but maybe not because of
the lollipop, though lollipop and pop music seem to go hand in hand.

-Send each member of the message bored (sic) that wants one a box/bag of the limited edition dumdums.

-Set up a system to capture names, address and email addresses that you can verify against the users in the system.

-Ask the administrator if they want to supply you with a list of who should get dumdums for the swap.

-Send a box to each member of the band.

-Get press for both Spangler and the Band's message board, increase traffic/awareness of both.

-Allow people to order the limited edition online at your store using a special code.

That is all I can spew out now, but if you approach them with an easy switch solution - maybe techsupport during the swap, and a gesture that recognizes the event, like a commemorative box that makes it kind of fun for them, they might go for it.

I mean really, how valuable is your brand identity? BTW on all your merchandise you should really keep the DUM DUMS look that appears on the wrappers - especially on the baseball caps.

Thanks for listening.

+++++

[To James from Friend]

some questions:
a) are you affiliated with the band?
b) are you sure that dum dums were ever officially called dum dums? or was that just what people called them? for instance check out this old promo postcard where they are called dum dum lollypops:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Halloween-Dum-Dums-Candy-Pumkins-Postcard_W0QQitemZ6219634858QQcategoryZ29477QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

although in this postcard from the same vintage uses dum dums lollypops:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dum-Dum-Candy-Baseball-Bat-Ball-Postcard_W0QQitemZ6219634718QQcategoryZ3634QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

oh yeah, check it out, even on their own FAQ page they interchange usage. very strange:
http://www.dumdumpops.com/DDPFaqs/ddpfaqs.htm

Anyway, this is just more evidence that they should own both sites.

maybe they never cared from day one?

hmmm.

anyway, this is just more evidence that they should own both sites.

:)

++++

[From James to Friend] You are an awesome researcher! You have blown the lid off this whole dum dum fiasco!

+++++

Mrs. XXXXXXXXXXXXX,

My apologies for the incorrect salutation in the previous email, but I just wanted to follow up to clarify that I had made an incorrect assumption regarding the brand identity.

A friend did some research then sent me some links from eBay that totally dispel my belief that DumDum Pops was a tactical decision based on the url for DumDums being taken by the rock band.

Based on these images from eBay, and your own packaging, "Dum Dum Pops" and "DumDums" have been interchangable for a long, long time, maybe as far back as 1906. Though acquiring the URL is probably even more important because you have sustained both names for quite some time.

+++++

[From Friend to James]

well, i don't want to freak you out... but i was just reading this:
http://www.americanprofile.com/issues/20050313/20050313_4507.asp during which the spangler owner refers repeatedly to these pops as dum dums. and most tellingly:

" Spangler, whose individualized Ohio license plate is Dum Dums, recalls driving down the West Virginia Turnpike in 1998 handing out Dum Dums along with his ticket at each toll booth. “By the time I reached the third booth, word had spread that the Dum Dum car was heading down the turnpike,” Spangler says, laughing. “When I reached out the window to hand the toll taker my ticket and money, she said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you have any cream soda?’ So people are definitely loyal to their favorite flavors.”:

+++++

[Friend to James]
somebody make me go to bed...
http://theimaginaryworld.com/gumbag03.jpg

+++++

Mrs. XXXXXXXXXXXXX,
I must apologies again, for I have made another error. Based on the company time line established in your corporate website, I see that the original brand was indeed named Dum Dum Pops and purchased in 1953 from the Akron Candy Co. of Bellevue, Ohio.

http://www.spanglercandy.com/spangler/aboutus/timeline.php

Clearly at some point the Pops was dropped in order to fit on a package or placard of some kind and the "S" was moved to the second "Dum".

I feel that the structure of my fascination with regards to Dum Dum Pops versus DumDums has been built on a false assumption and therefore my analysis has become suspect.

Thank you for your time. I will no longer be bothering you.

+++++

Inner Tubing

2005-07-14T19:10:00.000-04:00

This past summer Zed and Clarice had their wedding at the Full Moon resort in the Catskills. On the following day there was a white water rafting trip.

Spring Hear

2005-04-07T00:06:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of springtime and I am furious. I rarely get furious but I am furious now. My hip is damaged and I can remember the face of the bastard that did it. I am angry all the time. The seven train is about to make me murder. My bike got kicked in by some juvenile deliquents. I could shoot them in the head, not caring that they have family.

Christmas

2004-12-25T01:43:00.001-05:00

I was going to call Jon. I swear. Last time it wasn't so great though. Lisa was there and fully engaged in being a successful artist. She had landed in DC and was driving up to New York to catch a flight to Vienna. It was like Lisa was giving me the leftover Jon. She had him for a few hours to regale him until spent. I showed up and only had the story about the robot costume, which he had already heard, about the web site, which he had already heard, and the parade which he had already heard.

After Lisa left I looked at Jon and Jon looked at me and we collectively sighed. This time of year is never good for us. I had formally announced my opposition to Christmas in a power point presentation a few years ago. I explained why I would no longer participate in any of their "raindeer games".

Most of it has no socio-economic-political stance. It basically is the result of winter depression. I, like millions of others, suffer from S.A.D.- seasonal affective disorder. It is a condition that produces a deep funk and disconnection from people and activities that would normally produce a sense of warmth and caring. This condition produced the "theme" Christmas gift series, such as "the sneaker gift", where all of my family received the same red converse sneakers. I bought 13 pairs of sneakers that year. The following year was sweaters. My brother-in-law, Tom, still wears the sneaker/sweater combo long after my chucks became un-wearable. He clearly only wore them once a year, God bless him.

I believed I skipped the year after that because I could not pull it together enough even for the "Uni-gift". It was at that time I struck upon the idea that I still use to this day. I postponed Christmas to a more amiable date. It is now a floating holiday sometime in July or August.

I still pick a theme, but it is now directed towards the children, the parents being forgotten in the attempt to make an event. They are much less willing participants.

Last year's theme was "China" because Chinatown has an abundance of cheap plastic toys and bizarre items. I was in a especially dark mood that year. We did it over at my sister's house, less than a mile from where I grew up in D.C. - There was a big boulder in the backyard where we had stacked the gifts. Jenny and Zack came down with me from New York to help create the "event". Zack wrapped everything the way an underpaid moving person forced to pack cheap drinking glasses does.

To be honest, it was my sister's children that soured my expectations. They walked around like they owned the place, which they did, but it made me disappointed that they would rub it in so much. Julia actually said "What is this? I hate this!" Immediately the image of the Managing Director popped into my head, a big cow of a woman who had long ago lost all self-perception.

Corner office with blonde wood furniture, an Aeron chair and six inch piles of documents, personal mixed with business.

DT: "My friends dying of cancer, Metabolic Carcinoma, very serious. and when I think of the children..."

The tears well up in her eyes and immediately the emotions are no longer repressed. She had lost her mother 2 months earlier.

JB: "It is never easy losing a parent"

I say this dumbstruck, dumbstruck that a conversation regarding fraudulent budget reconciliation reports had evolved into a discussion regarding cancer. The more I think about it the more I think that cancer was the only thing we had in common. I hope this is not true with my niece.

After Julia's comment the gifts flew off the rock in and effort to end the excruciating failure of my "event", my effort, my marketing plan, to solicit the love and respect of my family, children and parents alike. Tommy and James each received a Chinese spirit mask, a Chinese hat, a tunic, and of course a sword. I bought it all at Pearl River, the premiere one stop shop for all things "Made in China".

I almost wanted to tell the kids the swords were plastic models of Japanese swords used by Samurai, not Chinese, but by then they were into acting like ninjas, so I couldn't even get that far before the video camera came out. Tommy and James were going at it for the camera.

James dominated the scene, hamming it up for the family while Tommy struggled with his lines. I told them to just mouth words and my brother and I would read the dialogue to simulate a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie. I wanted to make it epic, with ghosts and princesses and plot. But the girls had already moved on to Karaoke with Brittany Spears, belting out "Opps, I did it again..." while I yelled at Tommy for screwing up his lipsynced lines.

Back in Mrs. Molac's video class, first of it's kind in an elementary school I learned the difference between the stage and screen. We had done a skit as a class project that was a "news spoof". It killed, milk up nose killed.

Now this is my first failure that I can remember, so I cringe now thinking about it to this day. The skit had theater, explosions, slapstick, physical comedy. When we tried to duplicate the same show for video, I was flat and gray and no one laughed when my weather map fell down, while I gave out the fake temperatures. The skit died and a little bit of me with it. I was a nervous wreck and sat down and wished to be invisible. Tommy is struggling with that now. I don't know how he will do it. I don't know how I did it.

James and Julia had almost nothing to worry about, and that is why I almost hate them. Though I love them of course.

Maybe next year I can get them to act out scenes from "The Office" and dress them in suits and ties...

Baked Pork Chops With Apples

2004-09-26T20:17:00.002-04:00

Oven baked pork chops with apples and brown sugar and onions, new potatoes and avocado salad.

The Laundry Room

2004-09-25T16:13:00.000-04:00

I get so mad. Turn down my music? At 1:00 in the afternoon? I need to know these things. I am moving to Queens. I have things that need to get done before that happens, like get approved for the lease. And I need the rent receipts, but he acts like I am not there, going about the business of ignoring someone. He has them.

I can't wait to get away from it, because I am the same way as him, and at the moment that means an asshole. So I walk out of my room into him coming towards my room, startled I am. He mumbles, I can't make out what he says. I assume he means turn down the music because he has the air of the pissed. I see it and quickly turn around and turn the volume down, too much coffee, my movements are jerky and quick. But then can I ask him one fucking simple question? Where are the rent receipts? No! He had turned around and gone back to his little shit hole. I am so fucking mad. I am making a fist.

I have a week left in the lease, but by gladly ceding control in the beginning, I have no recourse. He sends in the rent checks in, he got the apartment in the first place. My checks just sit on the sill, ignored, then bounce when weeks later they get deposited. I have no money.

I was dancing two minutes ago, with the music up, folding the first batch of laundry as batch two and three dry. I think of new moves for the video, staring me as the star wars kid twitching and flinging a pole. Watching the laundry room on the Television. Channel 98 is a direct feed from the basement. The content: people washing and drying clothes.

What is he doing? He hasn't even looked for a place. He is sleeping! How is he going to pay the full rent? The lease is up in a week. He just plods on. There goes the security deposit! Fuck him. I got to finish the laundry.

I make a point of snapping the jeans when folding them. Snap! Fold, fold, snap! Fuck him. The dinginess of my clothes. The slow seep to gray they all seem to fall into. I think about the unscrupulous characters in magazines and books. Their clothing is always drab and dingy. A description of a supporting character whose death is not the point.

Am I unscrupulous? Would my description be one that characterized the dirty, the greedy, the poor, the unsophisticated. In a Vanity Fair article about the murder of some dim-witted yet glamorous millionaire's daughter, would my description illicit sympathy or disgust or just a simple "Blah" as most people who have not "made it" based on the qualifications devised by the Vanity Fair staff?

"The somewhat baggy cotton trousers blended, not with the accompanying shirt, but with the crowd surrounding it." Or "The coworker of the suspect was unshaven, in a dingy t-shirt and swim trunks. He stuttered when describing the elegance of the victim's car."

Or maybe better it would be in a Sherlock Holmes story, where one's character is never hidden to the rather racist, exacting detective. Where Victorian standards define good breeding. My character would be summed up through deductive reasoning, in a description of the hole in my sock. "The hole, above the right heel, showed the witness favoured the right leg, tight shoes, and had a lack of caring with regards to appearance common to the lower classes."

I make two piles of t-shirts, still white and then brown egg white. The brown egg pile is repulsive, on most of them are my Dad's handwritten tag saying "JEPB 95". I was 28 then. He bought them for me after Mom was sick, I think as a gesture that said, "There will always be someone to buy you t-shirts."

My Mother had bought all what I will call essentials up until a ridiculous age for both of us. She would bestow them on me with my quarterly trips back to D.C., until she became ill. I gladly ceded early and now have no recourse. Looking at the pile now I can't throw them away unless there is some horrible sign indicating masturbation or fungus. Bleach is not the cure to either.

Now I am no longer angry as I go down to the basement for batch 2 and 3.

The Unluckiest Day

2004-08-28T16:09:00.003-04:00

It went totally dark on the bus. “ Let me off ta bus to go smoke a cigarette,” said the man in a deep baritone voice in the back of the bus. Probably about three rows behind us. “This is annoying,” said Abina. Yes, it was annoying, for today was the unluckiest day ever. I had moved back to New York three months earlier for no better reason than that was the plan I had made three months before that. Abina was visiting from Chicago where I lived for those three months.

“The mechanic is on the way,” the driver said.
I sighed, but knew it was only another step towards what ultimately would be my death. The lights flashed on and above our heads six televisions showed six different RGB settings of a Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant film. The total and complete lack of chemistry between the two made the film even harder to ignore, because I started to think about what they did during the filming that was obviously more interesting than the job on hand. Then it went dark on all parts of the bus.

A new bus arrived and we piled out and onto the second bus, it had been traveling for a long time. The smell of the puke didn't hit us until we sat down 3 rows behind it. Before we got on the second bus we saw a mass of black birds flying over the TA truck stop. I had made a list of all the bad things that happend that day. Here is the list.

12:00 AM QuickTime Edit Failure, lose 3 hours of work
1:00 AM Drag everyone out to bar
2:00 AM Harassed by "Bruce Willis" type bartender
3:00 AM Got stinking drunk
4:00 AM Stumble home - eat too much, lose Peter on the way
5:00 AM Wet bed - or seemed to
6:00 AM Throw back out
1:00 PM Leftovers were too cold, heartburn hot
2:00 PM Woke up with hangover again
3:00 PM Forced to make bacon and eggs omelets
3:10 PM Burned omelets
3:20 PM Forgot to put mushrooms in omelets
3:30 PM Informed Abina doesn't like olives in omelets
3:40 PM Dad expects us in Washington, D.C. by 3:00 PM
3:45 PM Missed 3:00 PM bus
4:30 PM While relaxing (sleeping) on can, repeatedly informed that it was 4:30 PM, with implication that we missed 5:00 PM bus
5:00 PM Close examination of skin/face
5:10 PM Attempt to install CD-R software to burn video "The 3rd Day" to disc fails
5:30 PM Sew button on jacket, then discover jacket is covered in stains
6:00 PM Computer CD-ROM drive stops working as a result of CD-R software instillation
6:05 PM After switching to Zip drives, discover all of my Zip discs are full of images that I need to copy to hard rive before deleting
6:10 PM Romantic fog turns to crappy rain
6:15 PM In Taxi, attempt to take photograph but battery dies
6:16 PM Replace battery but taxi stops at bus station
6:16 PM Step out of cab into puddle, sock wet
6:20 PM Buy ticket, experience awkward misunderstanding around "Belle" that denotes a cultural clash of aesthetics
6:25 PM Get in line for Silver Spring, Abina goes for water, line immediately moves forward to load bus- I curse "Where the fuck is she?"
6:30 PM Single TV on bus casting sickly purple radiation - it never turns off
7:30 PM Bus begins to stop every 20 minutes to wait on side of road for 20 minutes we never know why - driver ignores passengers
8:00 PM Attempt to write story "the most unlucky day" on laptop battery dies
8:15 PM Must pee
9:00 PM Interrupted every 5 minutes while trying to finish list
9:35 PM Bus finally collapses in truck stop, wait 30 minutes for new bus
10:00 PM Fight way on to new bus
10:15 PM New bus has a pile of vomit in last seat that is 3 rows back, everyone smells it

Abina made a list of all the things she thought were great about the day. It was half as long.

I Get A Hair Cut

2004-08-28T14:53:00.000-04:00

I ran around the block from work, thinking I can get a real cheap fix on my current hair problem. It was outgrown in all the wrong places, not giving the kind of impression I would like. I looked like a scrub. I had been there before. That time a 19 year-old barber palmed my head like a basketball while concentrating heavily on creating a perfect line while ignoring the greater whole. He spent 75% of the time on the "back." As in "how do you like da back?" I had picked up the term "natural" as a way of saying no geometric patterns.

He made a perfect line that delineated the connecting border between the back of my head and top of my neck while pushing my skull deeper into it. It was almost too much, between the vice grip on my head and the chisel work on my neck, I nearly freaked out. I didn't say anything to him about it though. I was scared. Or maybe I hoped he would hear and see my discomfort, somehow recognize me as being part of the same human community. I don't like criticizing people about their careers anyway.

I walked into the 6' by 25" room right next to a Juice shack that has a similar layout. I see new 19-year old kid reading the Daily News and a Slavic woman in her early 40's. No brainer. The women vacates her chair and I sit down. "Short on the sides, and if you could thin out the top." I guess I don't give off the most charming vibe when getting my haircut. I am strictly business. I don't chat, or attempt to ingratiate myself. My Social Anxiety Disorder prohibits such familiarity in a public space.

She begins very well, the way she lays out the apron, a gentle touch. I take my glasses off and practice my Clint Eastwood squinting. After the first pass with the electric razor, I sense something is about to go wrong. I start to get nervous. I smell beer on her breath. I am expecting the back/sides razor pass, then the ears and "back", then to the thin out the top with water, scissors, rush, then part and taming of the errant strands. She is stuck on the ears! Time is running out and she can't get past the ears. She goes from one to the other making the most microscopic advances to my hairline, as if it were a team of mountain climbers making a difficult ascent. Bit by bit.

I started thinking about good barbers. How they are gentle but strong. They are decisive. They understand the nature of hair and know how to work with it. They don't fear consequences. I am getting very nervous now, and know it will end badly. She doesn't seem to notice my growing anxiety until the owner of the barbershop comes in, puts on his smock and sits in the chair next to the one I am in. Now everything is tense, she speeds up. She gets past the ears and goes straight to the top with only the most perfunctory glance at the "back." Suddenly, I feel all the frustration of her life pouring into me through her fingers and implements for the next 60 seconds. She doesn't want to cut hair, she hates hair, and she hates the people whose hair she has to cut, she hates her boss, she hates the 19 year-old brat that has the better chair, she hates it all! She sets down the scissors and picks up the blow dryer, a signal that she is done.

I look retarded, I mean really retarded. The sides slope up like a grass hut with a radish garden on top, my bangs hang like a rusted collapsing rain gutter. Before she can yank the disposable fabric softener sheet like tissue from my neck, I ask if she can buzz the top. She goes back to the scissors and commences round two. My hair is losing the fight. I wait for a break in the melee to be clear that I would like it cut the same length as the sides. A tempest arises. Things are tossed around with disgust, then she shaves my head like a child erasing a drawing it was unhappy with, while exchanging terse comments in Czeck with the owner. "You szould have said four" is the final sentence of that conversation, she says directly at me, accusingly, "For next time, by number, four." The owner joins in now " If you want that hair cut."

At once, depressed and pissed off I respond, "I didn't want a number four." But now I have one. I went from scrub to County Jail escapee in under 20 minutes.

On the Radio

2004-08-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

I woke up to NPR on the clock radio. As I moved up, the story I heard was about the US Army finding a depot of missiles, grenades and suicide belts. A suicide belt is a belt that has explosives around the waist that are triggered when the suicide bomber raises both arms above his head. They reported that one belt was found to have blood on it. The supposition is that an Iraqi insurgent was shot while wearing the belt, so he returned to the depot, discarded the belt and I assume went to go get help.

Later I thought who could this person be? This man, who when shot and bleeding, felt that it was not the time to blow up. What did his friends say? Did they taunt him for not having resolve, or did they try to console him with statements like, "There was no way you were getting close enough to that Hum V, it wasn’t worth the try" or " They would have blown you up, long before you got close.”
I was thinking these things when flossing my teeth. I had moved to the bathroom to begin the hygiene routine.

Flossing can change your life, and at this stage, when I feel like I am loosing all sense of control over mine, flossing has grown in significance and stature in my world. It is more than just a noble activity; it is a solitary process with obstacles and rewards built in. Like rock climbing. Flossing has tools, styles and methods. I use Original Glide Floss - 50m from W.L. Gore & Associates from Flagstaff, Arizona. It has a smooth waxing surface that slips easily between the hooks of my teeth. Most would laugh at this amateur product, made for trainees. The real pros I guess use thick round tough garroting wire.

What made me have these thoughts was the hole in my back upper left wisdom tooth. I had been told by my dentist and her fellow assistants that I was “losing bone.” To this day, I do not know what “losing bone” means, but she planted the idea that my wisdom teeth, which had given me only minor trouble for 35 years, had to go. To bad for her, it was another dentist that did the work, but all the while I was losing bone, so I began an assault on decay. With electric brush and miles of floss. I won’t lie and say I have been doing this all my life, only after I got an office job where I sat in a real office cubicle, doing real office things did I start paying significant morning time on these bits of bone. I have a set program like most people. I hit all four back corners for they are the most fruitful raising my arms and shoulders up as I reach to the back of my mouth. More like lunging. Then in between the canines, then past canine back to the back of my mouth starting the cycle over again. For the second round can be as bountiful as the first.

When I was younger I dreaded flossing because of the blood. The copious amounts of blood that would show vividly on the white porcelain. Each spit a slash of red. It was shameful. With each sporadic attempt I would literally cringe at the idea of someone walking in, of someone seeing the sink full of blood. I was reminded of this shame, as the radio description replayed in my head. “…Marines found blood on the suicide belts in a warehouse siege today…” I thought of a certain kind of belt. Like the UN peacekeepers wore in the movies in the 1950’s. They are white with a shoulder strap and large box like pouches along the sides, that I guess held ammunition. I see them in my head, made of white leather, shiny, bright and polished. With a splash of red and a man running away, cringing from pain, or shame.