McCain

Again, Frank Rich nails it.

MSNBC is so bloody weak. If Chris Matthews would just embrace his innard liberal, he might have something to say. Instead he tailends whatever stinks at the moment, and dumps on any Democrat who shows signs of life. He even brings Keith Olbermann down to his level.

"Mac is back." Makes me sick. McCain eeks out a narrow victory, less than a third of the votes of one of the most right-wing electorates in America, over a nobody who represents a point of view that would have been reactionary in the 13th century. Big whoop. Meanwhile, Giuliani, the self-proclaimed hero of 911, managed to get 2% of the vote. 2%.

I am listening to McCain's speech. First of all, as a long-time resident Canadian in the belly of the beast, this guy would not win a seat in the Parliament of any country where we speak English. That evident fact will not prevent the "pundits" from proclaiming the speech "presidential" whatever that means in this era of the debased presidency.

But more to the point, McCain appears to have dodged his immigration problems ... to wit that he does not want to string 'em up which is probably the majority opinion among people who still think dubya is a good president. He evidently gained from the joke candidacy of Fred Thompson who suckered enough sub-90 IQ types into thinking that TV and the world are the same place such that he took some steam out of the Huckabee popcorn maker. We can thank the deluded for saving us from nine and a half months of worrying about how horrifying it would be if Huckabee actually managed to beat the Democrats. Now we only have to worry about McCain peddling the old "maverick" myth to enough independents so that he can spend four more years ignoring reality.

McCain does a touching nod to Mother. Touching. We all love our mothers. I'm sure she is a lovely woman. Now, what about the future of the planet? He waxes expansive about being "proud to be an American" and referencing his being a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." Yup ... nothing like 'publicans ... there is no stupidity too overblown for their denuded sense of what is at stake in this electoral process.

"... build an even greater country than the one they inherited." Sorry, John, that ship has sailed, and it is your party that has guaranteed that the next generation will be poorer, more desperate, less secure, and living in a world that is more depleted and in danger than ever before in history. Quite a legacy.

" ... the opportunity to serve this country that I love a little longer." The ultimate 'publican electoral appeal. It's my turn, now ... damn the facts.

The speech is finally over ... Olbermann thinks its a goodie ... I think it is froth with a covering of slime. Then Matthews starts sucking up ... he thinks that McCain should call Nancy Reagan, thinks he is a Reagan-like guy. Matthews, stop the blather and start thinking. Matthews signs off by promising us that "we will soon be hearing a lot more from Joe Scarborough." I think I'll go hide under a rock.

McCain is a foul reactionary who would freeze America in its present impending failure. He would be more loathed than dubya a year into his presidency. A disaster. A man whose only idea is that he deserves the presidency. A man without a clue of what faces humanity and how America might actually make a difference. Make no mistake ... McCain is an old fashioned reactionary. Nothing "maverick" about that.

That said, I still think we'll beat his ass in November.

ps ... Gloria Bolger, "senior" political analyst on CNN is the weakest chatter on TV. She exudes the desperation of those elevated far above their intellects. What a fraud.

Race to the Bottom, and Other News of the Day

Well, I was plain wrong about McCain in Michigan. I figured the low density of Romney was perfectly obvious, but Michiganers apparently see something where others see nothing. Perhaps it was his bluster about getting everyone to roll up their sleeves and revive the dying American mega-monster industry. Sorry, buds, but that ship has sailed. The opportunity to lead the world was lost. Auto execs are like crack addicts ... they know crack is bad for them, bad for everybody, and that they would do so much better on chicken soup ... but, ooooo, crack is so much better. Let's make as many Hummers as we can and watch the planet shrivel up and drown.

It is hard to remember a bigger phony than Romney considered as a serious presidential candidate. You can't compare him with dubya ... dubya played dumb and he was dumb. You really can't blame him for the fact that a near-majority of voters considered dumb as a qualification for office.

So the race appears to be open. I think Romney would be easy to beat, but I do not exactly grok the mentality of the uncommitted in the crowded spaces between here and there. Gawd noze what Missouri will think. And on that turns the fate of a planet.

BTW, I think that Giuliani has been toast for a month now. Nobody wants to say so out loud, just in case. But the man is obviously corrupt, and his "strategy" was a dishonest charade that allowed him to hide in the vain hope that somehow Florida would come through for him.

I watched the entire KTVU new broadcast tonight ... even missed the season opener for Remo 911 ... because I happened to catch the teaser that Dennis Richmond has a big announcement. It seems like he might retire, and that would be, locally speaking, earth-shaking. He has always had a little edge, like he might one day just be so pissed off that he up and tosses his papers at the camera. But he never did. Rather, a real class act. I rarely watch the local news, but I will be sorry to see him go. 30 years as an anchor 40 years on the air. KTVU may be local par excellence, but it is the best local in this locality, and Dennis Richmond will be tough to replace. And you have to hand it to KTVU, they stick with what works. The notion that any change is good is just churn. No churn at KTVU. Kudos for that.

Spent the day at work mastering Spry Accordion Panels in Dreamweaver. Notwithstanding that I loathe the fate of having to work, I love my job. At least I get to learn and grow and create. I have it good, notwithstanding the annoying occasional feeling sorry for myself.

Fog

Fog horns in the far distance before the sun rises. Silence in the city. The sky is clear over Buena Vista Park, and there is the Big Dipper.

Blue this morning because an old toad whom I have kept for a decade died last night.

Dog walk over, sun rises, I answer the bell.


Photos by Arod. Photo of my toad in happier times here.

Sidecar

RL, the Handel of bartenders with whom I am roommates, made us a sidecar tonight ... Courvoisier, Cointreau, lemon juice. He makes a cocktail ca 4 nights a week, and it slakes off the fatigue and doubt and makes home warm and permanent and the raison d'être.

The joys of drink ... this one an elixir of the relief in Paris after the first great slaughter of the last century ended. Jazz and joy and jivin' around. Gettin' loopy, getting plain drunk, and breathing as if there are no threats. People shattered by the first war, terrified of the prospect of the next, drinking, imbibing, sucking it down. Life without liquor ... that would prison, or religion, or an abstemiousness that cannot be healthy for the soul. Not thinking of those who can't handle it or don't like it ... perhaps being unfair. But a sidecar by night, warm company, the dog staring at the cheese that I will not give him. L'chaim.

One sidecar not enough for now ... two. Two is better than one, even on a Monday night when the sensible are thinking of the bell tomorrow morning.

Photo by Arod of a mosaic in Paris ... Le Marais, I think.

More after New Hampshire

Postscript: as usual, Frank Rich nails it.

It strikes me that the main utility of John Edwards at this point in this pivotal primary battle is too hold off the left and let the center of the party decide. The unions, who often act nowadays like the right wing of the party, have in greater proportion lined up with Edwards, and it is a safe spot for them because they can leap onto the appropriate bandwagon once the issue is decided. Given their impotence and recalcitrance, I prefer that they play no role, and they are saitsfying us in that zone.

The Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco's gay news rag of record, came out on Thursday with its endorsement of ... ta da ... Bill Richardson. Yawn ... how's that for turning your back on what matters. Not to mention that he dropped out some time between when the BAR went to bed and when it showed up on the streets. Notwithstanding that I still find myself a Hillary kinda guy, I think that gay organizations ought to be pressing Obama on some language for us ... something like "America needs to remember its legacy of openness and individualism, and welcome all its gay citizens into the mainstream ... the new mainstream, the mainstream of hope and blah blah blah." See, the "hope" stuff just flows like chocolate syrup on a warm summer day.

One reason why I support Hillary still is that I fantasize her appointing Uncle Bill ... or 42, of Mr. President, as you prefer ... as Secretary of State. "Here, Bill", she says, "here's an airplane, here's a staff. Get your sorry ass off this continent, solve some problems, shake some hands, and don't come back until I need you for the primaries in 2012. Luv ya', Bill. But, seriously, rack up some miles on that ole crate." If Obama would promise to make him secretary of state, I'd be there in a Bronx minute.

Let's turn to the 'publicans. Leaving McCain aside, if you ground up all the rest of them and reshaped them into some kind of body, you still would not have a whole man. Romney is just plain phony, Giuliani is so corrupt that he leaves oil stains wherever he goes, Huckabee is less prepared to be president than Ed Jew and his only appeal is his gleeful superstition, and Ron Paul is a gasbag whose "phenomenon"is explicable only as the last oxygen-free gasp of right-wing youth and former youth who cannot face just how disastrous the legacy of their party will be.

McCain, though, is a real man. A real rage-o-holic, so they say. A real right-winger. A real militarist. But a real person. Just the wrong person at a time when America stands on the precipice of doom. There is always ... at least in the last half dozen campaigns ...  a sense among the 'publicans that one of their number "deserves" the nomination. It is on that liquid ground that McCain stakes his claim. This "straight talk" notion is obviously canned; maybe it had a brief moment in 2000, but dubya put paid to the notion that 'publicans ever want to hear straight talk, or, gawd help us, speak the truth. There is nothing in the notion of straight talk that means it oughtta be true. It just means that the sentences should be short and uncomplicated by subordinate clauses. So straight talk leads to things like "We most secure our borders" and "we are winning the war." Right. 

No doubt he is the least creepy 'publican, and no doubt he will be the hardest to beat. So the Democrats have to use the current Hillary/Obama thriller to galvanize a party to seize the changes. Otherwise, we will have a presidency that is the grumpiest in history, and the least able to move America into the chilling future.

New Hampshire and all that

As I write, CNN has the porous Larry King interviewing that quacking fool Laura Schlessinger ... I flip to it for a second and catch her saying "... and drugs and drinking and sex ..." I flipped the channel real quick. I enjoy those little vignettes you can get from channel surfing, and that line is just about all you ever hear from the Schlessingers of the world. Meanwhile, the faux-stentorian Dan Abrams is interviewing some crime expert about some poor pregnant Marine who has gone missing.

How soon they forget. Is the news world so totally bereft of originality that all this is all it can gather together in the middle of the most exciting presidential race since 1992? Last night, the talking fools ... they call it punditry, but they give pundits a bad name every time they open their gasholes ... looked peacock proud as they ate a whole bunch of crow. Turns out everything they said about Iowa was, in a phrase, a crock. Never mind ... insta-invent another zero-sum analysis. Who cares ... they never get anything right anyway.

I think that the present race for president, at this frozen juncture between primaries in minor states, illustrates with singular clarity the three rules that head up this blog. Let's see:

No such thing as a zero sum game: Anyone who wasted a single neuron on the pontifictions of the pundits after Iowa knew that the election in November was bound to be Huckabee against Obama. Five days later, who the hell is Huckabee? (Except for Ralph Reed whom Anderson Cooper has chosen to resurrect from the sepluchre of his corruption, nobody seems to know anything about this Huckabee guy today.) It turns out that things are much more complex, and that a single event or a single factor does not suffice to explain. So for the Democrats, the pundits think that this is hope versus experience ... only that experience is hoary and hope is chill. But in reality, it is about neither. I think that Democratic voters are thinking about two things: who can win and who can govern. When McCain won Iowa ... I know Huckabee won it, but everyone knows that McCain was the real winner ... I figure it made a lot Democrats think that Obama might be more likely to beat him than Hillary. But that did not translate into Obama winning in New Hampshire not because Clinton teared up but because the race is not settled, there are more issues than one (whichever single issue the pundit is mindlessly repeating), and sometimes winning gains an advantage for the loser.

Nothing in this race has yet convinced me that Obama would be a better president than Clinton, and I find his denatured "hope" cloying and evasive. He is certainly the better orator, and that counts for me. And if Clinton loses this campaign, then Obama is our guy. But that does not mean that this is a zero sum game. The experience of a genuine contest at least about style and approach is changing the party and the nation, and it will change the presidency if only we can grab it away from those monstrous 'publicans who only know how to push on a rope.

You can't push on a rope: Ever walk a dog on a leash? He's in front of you but you want him to move to the right. You do a little jerk to let him know where to go. If you and your dog are cocok (an Indonesian word meaning kopasetik, and I use the word because like all Indonesianists, I find myself thinking about the dying Suharto ... more on that anon), the dog groks your drift and moves to the right. If not, you just can't make him go by pushing on the rope.

American punditry has played dog to the 'publicans, panting and grinning as they eagerly grok the little leash jerks, and moving to where they have been instructed. But the public is beginning to understand in its majority that we are being leash-led down the garden path to perdition. So the 'publicans, going to where they figure they have been succeeding, keep trying to push on a rope, mouthing the contradictory platitudes of the three antagonistic wings of their temporary and corrupt coalition. Think of it this way ... do you believe that Dick Cheney gives a rat's patootie about rounding up homos and confining us to camps? Or, do you really believe that anybody who actually read and thought about the gospels feels that the most compelling issue of the day is to live the rich more tax breaks or to kill Social Security so granny can live out her life under a bridge?

But droning on with these incompatible slogans worked for them, so now they know no better. The grokking ... that is the putative dog listening and obeying ... has gone, but the leash remains, strangely with less and less effect.

I think that the Democrats for a long time tried to push on a rope ... mouthing the certitudes derived from nodding at each other in closed rooms. That's a large part of my problem with Obama ... I think he is speaking loud and sonorously, but the message is all form designed to satisfy without quenching, to give you the sugar rush of believing without the protein of proposals. But even so, he is not trying to push Americans to him with some rope of dishonesty like the 'publicans ... he is trying to entice them to his side with a proverbial cookie. Here, Fido, come and get your cookie.

Any force given long enough turns into its opposite, or things bite back: There's an easy one here ... the 'publicans are paying for the crimes of what will end up being 8 years of hubris and corruption and self-satisfaction. Well, maybe. Remember, it's not a zero-sum game, so gawd nose what'll actually happen. I don't believe that the 'publicans have turned into their opposite ... they have become more and more of the venality that is their root and branch. I don't believe that the Democrats have turned into their opposite ... they still rely too much on hoping and dissembling rather than thinking and acting. What I think may be happening is that Americans might in some measure turn into their opposites ... that Americans might be on the verge of demanding the enactment of their majority belief that climate change is real, that people should control their own bodies, that government has a duty to lead, that we are the stewards of the planet we live on, that basic decency requires that the privileged help the downtrodden. It is hard to imagine this nation giving up its hummers and parking lots and Walmart. But in our majority, we know things have to change.

So perhaps only in the sense of the things bite back rule does Obama represent something for me ... the indistinctness of the content of his message might allow that it be filled by spontaneous movements for environment and generosity. Perhaps the next generation, voting now in larger numbers so far than expected, might inflate the balloon of an Obama presidency.

Maybe. Still, Clinton seems the surer bet. As long as she can beat that old fart McCain.

Postscript: Nice piece on political rhetoric and the current campaign here by Peter Applebome.

The careful reader will note that I wrote this post over two days ... caught ... I am actually posting this on Friday night, 48 hours after the date stamp. Honesty, and a dollop of obsessive-compulsiveness, demands that I note this.

Ooops

Three decidedly cranky posts in a row. I am trying to be good about posting, and hence the crankiness ... I guess I had best try to have an optimistic day tomorrow so I can post something nice. I have a budding post on the key issues of early islamic history. But that will require an uninterrupted hour of quiet and reflection. Perhaps I will write about how nice puppies are.

Twitchin' 'n Grimacin'

Justice Stevens then pressed Mr. Englert to justify the state’s use of the second drug, and Mr. Englert replied that it served to protect the inmate’s dignity. The justice was unpersuaded, remaining “terribly troubled,” he said, by the fact that the drug appeared “almost totally unnecessary” except to spare witnesses the “unpleasantness” of seeing the inmate twitch or grimace. --New York Times, January, 8, 2008

To put this in context, the BBC reported today or yesterday that the Iranians in one of their gawd-forsaken outer provinces lopped off the right hands and left feet of 3 or 4 armed robbers. No doubt they are continuing their monstrous lust at hanging people in public as well.

Beware the company you keep. Americans in their self-righteousness should not allow the gore of the Iranian approach to obscure for one moment that we continue to slaughter people judicially. At a furious pace, with Texas gleefully leading the parade. "76 trombones lead the ..."

I am opposed to capital punishment in all cases. That said, if you want it to be painless, it's gotta be the guillotine. Or a properly conducted hanging. Saddam obviously suffered less than any ole Southern white trash drifter who figgers to rob a liquor store in Texas and fall afoul of the Harris County DA so as to be suffocated alive while paralyzed.

This country seems to know no shame. "There is no painless requirement" in the Constitution, states the professional executionist Scalia. What about yer Catholic Church, Mr. anti-abortionist?

Disgusting.

60 Minutes

Postscript: See the excellent article by Nicholas Schmidle in today's New York Times magazine for analysis of the state of Jihadi politics in Pakistan.

Let's blog 60 Minutes.

"Did you like her?" Good grief. Is that what 60 Minutes has come to? Lara Looloo, whatever her name might be, is a pale shadow of a journalist, softballing Musharraf with questions like that about Bhutto, and then faking toughness about Osama, apparently trying to play to the imagined vast crowd of the ignorant who prefer to know nothing about what it is that makes Pakistan such a hopeless place. It's not Osama ... its much more than that. Pakistan may be a tough country, but the politics is real and subject to analysis that goes beyond "liking" and Osama. This looks like the same sort of method that the "pundits" use to support 'publicans ... phony questions that let a smiling crook look good.

Don't get me wrong ... I confess to having been a little soft on Musharraf who was ... was, past tense ... the best dictator Pakistan ever had. Not a tough competition. He replaced the venal and, frankly, stupid Nawaz Sharif whose claims to legitmacy rest on ignorance ... he didn't know about Kargil, he didn't know that the army actually runs everything, just another innocent caught in the lights. Hmmm. Give me a break. The worst thing about Bhutto's death may be that it gives cover to that creep.

"Misperceptions of American thinking" says Musharraf ... but Lara Looloo misses the moment, no doubt because her knowledge of the background is rather less than any other miscellaneous sorority girl elevated to newsperson, and she lets Musharraf off the hook. Then, she pretends to get get tough about Al Quaeda without evidencing even the slightest background in what the frontier provinces represent. Gawd, this is awful.

But remember, 60 Minutes is actually the best, notwithstanding the temporary sidelining of Jon Stewart.

Story 2 is a mobster executioner with Steve Kroft. Entertaining, not important. 60 Minutes excels at this sort of thing. "Are you still a Catholic?" Steve asks ... and the mob executioner finally squirms a little. Fascinating ... I'd still rather have a proper story on Pakistan. Some touching remembrances of Ed Bradley who curiously played high school football with the future mobster.

And now story 3, the dastardly Roger Clemens. Seems a lots like the Bonds line except that instead of flax seed oil, he got B-12 ... yeah ... I don't believe him any more than I believe Bonds. I don't really care, and I don't doubt that he worked hard. Frankly, Clemens looks nervous, and I think he's lying. What do I know? That said, I also think he played by the de facto rules that management and players AND fans silently agreed to. But I think he dunnit.

"I was eating Vioxx like it was Skittles." That's pretty frightening. But then he criticizes steroids as a quick fix. Hmmm ... which is which?

It ends up being a pretty compelling interview, and I probably like the guy better than when it started. I still don't believe him, and I still don't care. Just as long as they apply the same standards to Bonds as they do to Clemens. And just as long as sooner or later we apply the standards of science to steroids and figure out what part is good and what part is bad.

And finally, Andy Roooney on the primary season, singing the praises of Roosevelt and Jefferson. Seems safe. So he devolves into pointless meandering about names. Cmon Andy. There's more grist for the mill in these bizarre early primaries than that.

Four stories, one compelling, three misses. You can do better than that, folks.

Sodden Foolishness

Back to work today after 12 days off ... that's not the foolishness in question .... nor is the bizarre American habit of stooping to divine the future of the highest office in the land by a seemingly almost accidental canvassing of a tiny bunch of white farmers in Iowa who have the time and the inclination to take a drive in wintery weather to a local school or church. Foolish, indeed, but not the foolishness I plan to address. Certainly foolishness is the name of the self-congratulatory cackling of the TV talking heads who do not seem to have had an original thought on American politics since one of them hit on the red-blue thangie. But that is not the foolishness pursued here.

So I get back in the office, and I lose an hour with all the software updates that have accumulated in our absence. I work at a major research university which I call MRU ... not because anyone with the inclination could not figure out the name ... I mean, I live in San Francisco, I take the train about 40 miles, and it is not Cal which is where I got all my assorted degrees ... hmmm ... I choose not to name it because the blog is about my ramblings not about my place of employment, and I don't want it to show in searches.

Anyway, back in the office, finally looking at the rather sparse accumulation of email, and the first message of the new year is from a student who has signed on to the new University sponsored wellness program ... let's call it Wellness@MRU ... that encourages staff, faculty, and students to shape up and set goals. Here is what this poor sod wrote (enough changed to protect the sodden):

I'm R, an MRU grad and fellow Wellness@MRU member. It's that time of year when we're all thinking about our New Year's Resolutions, and I just wanted to share mine and how I'm using Wellness@MRU to help me stick to it.

This coming year, I've decided to drink at least 12 cups of water every single day (did you know that almost 90% of us are chronically under-hydrated!). That's my re-hydrating resolution for a thirst-quenching 2008. I set this as a goal on Wellness@MRU and track how many cups I drink every day.

I also set myself a reminder on Wellness@MRU so everyday at 11am I get a text message on my cell phone: "Drink More Water!" I invited a few friends to support me, and they've been good about checking in with me and letting me know when I missed a day here or there, and I've been enjoying interacting with people in the Healthy Eating Community who are making their own diet changes. My friends on Wellness@MRU automatically get notified when I track my progress, so it's been fun to get little well-wishes every time I update my log.

I thought it was a joke, so I clicked on the link, and sure enough, this guy thinks drowning himself in 12 glasses of water will improve his health. What a crock! It used to be 8 cups a day, so I guess the 12 cups of water a day is inflation.

The only thing more ludicrous than the 8 cups of water myth is the idiocy of people drinking bottled water in a modern industrial society. Idiocy. In fact, it is the single biggest scam in the history of humanity. It's like the pet rock thing gone nuclear.

What precisely causes perfectly intelligent people ... remember, this is one of the greatest research universities in the world ... to swallow this nonsense. "They did a study", and it turns out that there is a mechanism in the body to indicate when you need water ... it's called thirst. Drink when you're thirsty. Who'da thunk it?

And who with even the simplest rational mind can believe that 90% of Americans are chronically dehydrated ... would it be possible to palm off any more frivolous piffle than this anywhere on this planet of foolish mythologies? Lunatic beliefs are depressing enough, but when intelligent people create drooling foolishness ... is there no hope at all?

Have you ever seen these sexy young morons crossing campus carrying a gallon of water ... I mean, really, a gallon bottle of water. Even one of these two-quart bottles is moronic. These people are not heading out across the Sahara. They are going to class in a private university in a wealthy community in the richest country in the history of the world. But they seem to think that they have to drag a gallon of water along. What happened to their grey matter? Who taught them this nonsense?

I posted a comment on the guy's site including bottled water = global warming and referred him to this item on snopes.com that exposes this fraud. Or check out this refutation of the superiority of bottled water.

Friends don't let friends drink bottled water!

Photo by Arod ... a fountain at MRU.

Walking with Loki: Happy New Year!

Somewhat worse for the wear, and the time nearer to noon than an early riser like myself would prefer to admit, I managed to drag myself and the dog into our magnificent '86 Honda Civic and headed over to Fort Mason for a long New Year's Day walk through Fisherman's Wharf. On NPR, Sam Keen was discussing his Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds. It was a re-run and I had heard part of it before ... no matter because thinking about the miracle of birds is pretty much as spiritual as I get. I tell this anecdote, because Loki and I had unusual luck in casual birding during the three hours we wondered around.

But back up a little ... last night, we had a pleasant, long dinner with a few friends upstairs, eating AW's exquisite offerings and slowly, slowly drowning the old year in fine booze. We basically missed the big moment ... no countdown ... Frobisher quickly found a complete version of Auld Lang Syne on the net, and we sang that all the way through. And then we scattered just like the bunch of early risers we mostly all are, rebeling against being forced to stay awake past midnight.

And so it is 2008.

2007 for me: I started a blog, upgraded my computer life with a new desktop and laptop. I visited Vancouver. I read and read and read. The job went well, and the new boss has turned out to be even more revolutionary than I had imagined. Gave a few good parties, and the Christmas party was perfect. I think we ... that is my roommate and I ... made a lot of progress in ecologizing our personal habits. A good year, not earth shattering. Maybe that is why the days after Christmas often leave me a little melancholy ... good, not earth shattering. It's not that I am objectively stuck ... I have a good life, great friends, comfort and happiness. But some part of me keeps nagging ... isn't there more? Am I missing something that would require more guts, more glory, more risks?

So as Loki, my dog, and I wandered around the piers behind the tourist hordes at Fisherman's Wharf, and as the birds reigned above and on the water, I thought about guts and glory and risks, and living well, and figuring out what to do next.

The night heron at the top of this post was the most sublime avian encounter we had today. You don't see them that often. I saw three today, and one on Sunday when we also walked along the wharfs. I am assuming that they are night herons, but they might be green herons. I asked a couple of cops who were obviously part of the water patrol and who had stopped to look at a rather large starfish. Cops, even when you're being nice, have a tendency to look at you with undisguised skepticism. They didn't know. A couple of young, rough-looking fishermen did confirm they are night herons, and then volunteered that the night herons don't like gulls and harass them. Nice folks ... happy new year's all around.


We also saw several great blue herons. The pic above I actually took on Sunday. My little "belt camera", a late-model Canon Elph, has many positives, but a long telephoto is not one of them. 2008 will see some camera-upgrading once I have caught up with Christmas expenses. In the meanwhile, birds in my photos seem a little far away. But birds are never far away from my wandering thoughts. I have more or less given up on the iPod when walking the dog because I couldn't hear the birds.

Anyway, we also saw grebes, sundry gulls including one that I could not identify (gray body, white head). I'm not an expert of any type, so the assorted sea birds are confusing ... but I assume that we saw lesser scaups and some kind of merganser. We also saw a white egret ... or is that a cattle egret or a snowy egret. An egret nonetheless, and any day in which one sees three different species of egret/herons, well that is a good day. And once we left the shore, we saw and heard all manner of songbirds.

Before the walk, I had decided on creating New Year's resolutions that would be a series of monosyllables. I had three ... write, make, break ... and I wanted to add another ... go. But I tend to avoid even numbers of things ... that's a little nutty, of course ... so I set out to think of another monosyllable. The birds helped out ... fly.

Write, make, break, go, fly.

Write means that what I have started here I need to continue and expand.

Make means that I want to create photos and objects and aquariums and collections.

Break means I need to break up those parts of the comforts that I enjoy which interfere with thinking and changing and growing ... in particular my great comfort in solitude.

Go means I need to travel on down my roads gamely and boldly, and not be afraid to let go instead of running away.

Fly means I go to Europe again this year after taking a year off in favor of dentistry.

Living in comfort and as much security as any working middle class person can pretend to ... it obscures the fact that our world appears to be on the brink of an epochal change, and that change does not appear to be promising. So I can plan to write, make, break, go, fly, but what will it mean if the climate continues to decline more rapidly than even the most pessimistic scientists predicted only a few years ago? What does it mean in a society that continually accelerates the pace of living to the detriment of personal lives and the deeper satisfactions? What does it matter when I live in the midst of the greediest society that has ever dominated the planet, and as the lust for commodities crushes more of our planet ever passing moment?

I do not have answers for that ... not now at any rate ... but it did stir me to some side-vows that this will be a year in which I will not let the anger at the decline in our world impact my personal behavior ... no more fingers at Hummers, no more angry glares at the brain-dead cell phone herd, no more lectures to the passing impertinent. I still get to be cranky here, of course ... what the hell is a blog if you can't be cranky. But I am going to try to blithely ignore the ugliness through which I swim every day as I go about my business as best I can.

So, Happy New Year. Write, make, break, go, fly.


Photos by Arod.

Bhutto and the Tiger

Three years ago, we were transfixed by the epochal tragedy of the great Boxing Day tsunami. This year, it is Bhutto, and Tatiana the tiger that could and did and paid for it. Tragedies both, but these victims unlike the innocents on the beach of three years ago, paid for playing. My point here is not to judge the fairness of any of this, but to look at the role of accident in history a bit.

Assassinations are quite common in history, tsunamis are very rare, and zoo-based tiger predation of visitors almost unheard-of. Almost. That's the key word ... almost. One in a million is not zero. So when the strangely unrattled parents stated that things like this never happened to people, they forgot that one .... one in a million.

Let's start with Bhutto. It seems odd to me that it took her enemies so long to get her. She's been back in Pakistan for a couple of months, after all, and this is a place where political murder has been a commonplace at all levels of society. It looked like a well thought out operation at first, but then we find out that there was essentially no security and that it is at least possible that she was killed by banging her head. Even if a bullet did kill her, scoring a hit even at short range would be a crap shoot considering the pressing mob surrounding her vehicle. If she's inside the vehicle, the suicide bomb doesn't get her. So my skepticism ... reeking, to use the phrase of a former colleague in the "movement", of coffee and upholstery ... enjoys the notion that she cracked her skull on an armored SUV sunroof knob. I do not enjoy the fact that she has been killed because in the darkness that is the Pakistani future, she was at least a 5-watt bulb of hope for some sort of ephemeral moment of stasis or quietude.

But the fact is that her assassination is an accident. It might not have occurred. If she hadn't cracked her head, maybe she could have shamed Musharraf into providing some security. Maybe she might have bought herself a pope-mobile. This is not a one in a million accident ... more like a one in a hundred, or in fifty.

There are definable, albeit highly volatile, forces at work in Pakistan. But the accident of this assassination is a wild card, and a deterministic view of history can't predict either the fact of accident or the effects. After the fact, we can point to the dominant factors. Before the denouement ... whenever that might be ... we can speculate based on the factors. But we can't account for the accident, and accidents do occur.

The press, and especially the droning reciters on television, provide no context and merely look about nervously to see if they can repeat what someone has said while appearing original at least to themselves. I have yet to hear anyone talk about the ethnic issues ... Bhutto is an aristocratic Sindhi, christian- and western-educated, and I recall that she is Shia but I can't confirm that. Musharraf is an Indian-born Mohajir, the first mohajir Pakistani head-of-state. Nawaz Sharif is a Punjabi. Punjabis plus Sindhis plus Mohajirs equal about 70% of the population; the tribal areas have about 15%, considerably less than 15% of the economy, and even less of the army which is what counts.

All that said, it is not clear who follows Bhutto. An accident trumps it all, at least until the accident becomes a stable part of the equation in the course of time's inexorable march. And that is part of the problem with understanding accident in history ... the accidents of yeteryear come to feel like they had to have been. Not so. Maybe it all would have turned out the same, but we don't, and can't, know that.

So to the tiger ... from tragedy to farce, as it were. I am convinced that the three little shits who paid with their bodies for the tiger's rage had goaded it into coming after them. The evidence seems to go there. The tiger was loose for 19 minutes, and only went after three people. The tiger grotto is 40 years old and no tiger has escaped before. Sundry projectiles are found in the moat ... by the way, is a moat still a moat without water in it? I think it's a ditch.

Even so, this is a one in a million accident. Little shits torment zoo animals all the time. I remember watching little Indonesian shits throwing lit cigarets at an orangutan who was mired on a treeless island surrounded by a watery moat. The orangutan ate the cigarettes. What sort of creep torments a zoo animal? How low can someone sink? Well, it turns out that the surviving Dhaliwal brothers are local tyrants who get drunk and act up and terrorize their neighbors. They have sundry drunk-and-disorderly type charges pending. Notwithstanding the valueless pronouncements of San Francisco's poster-girl police chief, this was a crime scene, and the tiger was the hapless victim.

Still ... one in a million. Sousa ... the dead one ... gets a Darwin award, but his elimination form the gene pool was not a result solely of stupidity ... stupidity has never been a bar to reproduction, alas ... but the result of dumb bad luck. Again, the coffee and upholstery skeptic in me wonders why a tiger with 19 minutes on his hands couldn't have saved the neighbors any further trouble with the Dhaliwal boys, but that too is accident.

You can't predict these things. The results will be reams of ink, as they say in the news biz, and at least three lawsuits. It will cost San Francisco and the nominally independent zoo a pot of money. And there will be breast beating about tigers in capitivity, and less attention to the fact that there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild.

All the result of an accident.

And then those poor sods washed out too sea three years ago ... I still think that the Indonesian death count is radically low. I have never seen a proper estimate of the number of people living on the northwest shore of Sumatra before the waves, or a reliable count of the survivors. I think ... again, coffee and upholstery ... that the Indonesian count is more like 300,000 than the official 170,000. To the victims, it was a bizarre accident, literally out of the blue. Maybe mother earth knows when massive earthquakes occur, but in history they come out of the blue even if we know that they must come sooner or later. That epochal accident cleared out the poor for Thai tourism developers, and it provided the basis for a settlement of the Acehnese war that has raged off and on for 150 years. It also gave a boost to the religious police who now wander about with whips and sticks to stick and whip insufficiently shrowded women and young folks sitting about and talking unchaperoned.

Out of the blue, one in a million. An accident. Never underestimate the accidents of history.

Photo by Arod: Street art at 14th and Valencia in San Francisco.

The Christmas Hat

One should not cheat at Christmas, but I did ... I backdated this post to December 25 at 11:11 p.m. to disguise the fact that I was so utterly exhausted by my part in consuming the groaning board of seasonal delights at the Coleman's that I in fact went to bed with a post in my mind but not on the net. But I did think about this post last night, and so I employ the tiny vanity of prolonging Christmas by a few hours so I can post within its confines.

So in that spirit, I refer you to Maureen Dowd's compelling Boxing Day post on her Christmas love of Trigger the hobby horse. Dowd is by turns enthralling and annoying ... and in that she has succeeded in something to which other lesser lights, myself included, aspire. She concludes with this:

In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: “Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas.”

I remember Christmas as a time of plenty in our family. My Dad's business through much of my childhood always did very well in December, and I long suspected that my parents took advantage of the windfall to buy us clothing and sundries that would last a year. Christmas morning was an avalanche of stuff in a life where we were taught not to ask for things for ourselves. I remember the year I got a bike ... I was 10, and the rule was that you got your first bike at 10. I remember the year that I asked for a fort for my imaginary kingdom, Animelia, and its china King Elfie. That wooden fort, minus its draw bridge, is sitting on a chest a few feet from me as I write this, now a part of my annual ludicrously over-the-top Christmas decorating madness.

On Christmas morning, we would wake the parents vastly earlier than they would have preferred, and finally Father would descend the steps to turn on the Christmas tree. Every year he would call up, "You might as well go back to bed, the old bugger didn't come this year." The old bugger was Santa Claus, of course, and he had come, no doubt. We descended into this glittering excitement in reverse order of age, so I, as the oldest, was always last. No matter. There in front of the tree were Santa's gifts. It was the one day in the year on which we could safely think of ourselves first.

I had a "tradition" of not eating any meal on Christmas except Christmas dinner. This was a successful ploy to skip the porridge which was our every morning lot. I ate candy instead, and focused on playing with my new toys.

The toys are fewer now, and the gifts are mostly books. I buy my own toys, which is what adulthood is about. I suppose I am an old grump, but I feel sorry for children who buy their own and get what they want whenever they want. It must make the magic of Christmas so pedestrian for them. Christmas was then only one day as it still is, but it was the peak of the year, the highest joy, the reward for a year of obeying and striving and doing your part. It was a day apart from others, and that gave life some contours which still abide in me today.

Yesterday ... ooops, I suppose I should say this morning, given my conceit that I am writing this on Christmas Day ... I went on a two-hour walk with Loki, my dog. Christmas back then always had Laddie, our dog, who was invited into the living room only on that one day. Otherwise, dogs stayed in the hallway. I am sure we have a photo of him somewhere in the living room. I remember that he was very sheepish about it, but obviously aware too that this was a day unlike other days.

So the walk with Loki ... I wore my Christmas hat. (The photo above is of me and my Christmas hat in 2005 ... I look about the same now except without the long locks.) I inherited the Christmas hat from my friend Kurt who reintroduced me to the joy and uniqueness of Christmas. Kurt died in 1992, and he left me all his Christmas things. The party every year is for Kurt. And when I walk about in his hat ... my hat now ... I try to beam Christmas for him and for me. One gets a lot of looks, and I turn each of those looks into a jolly Merry Christmas. Perhaps one in three folks have the good manners to beam back "Merry Christmas", and I feel sorry for the rest who have lost that public sense of joy, not able to "make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings". Perhaps I am being self-righteous ... perhaps the quiet ones think I am a madman trying to interpelate myself into their private lives. No matter. Nothing for me is so joyous as the Christmas Day walk in the Christmas hat wishing the passing celebrants a Merry Christmas.

Two Merry Christmas's I remember in particular. A few years back, walking home at night through the Haight from Kerry's Christmas Eve party, I saw a young thuggish looking guy sitting on the steps of a church at Page and Masonic ... glowering, tough ... I briefly feared he might steal my hat. As I passed, I said Merry Christmas, and his face transformed, beamed, as he cried back to me, Merry Christmas to you. Yesterday, I passed a homeless man with an angry look and disheveled dress, and he too beamed with delight and returned my Merry Christmas in a sonorous southern accent.

And so to anyone reading this at any time of the year ... Merry Christmas to you and to those you love.

Light in the Darkness

Barely keeping my eyes open, but filled with the spirit of Christmas. I am listening to some St. Olaf's Choir in Norway singing in a catheral. I just dozed through Renee Fleming's angelic voice. Earlier this evening, enjoying Andrew's gourmet take on sundry Chrstmas delights, we listened to Sufyan Stevens' Christmas carols.

The myth of the boy king and his mother and the sheep and the Zarathustran visitors is lovely and everything ... but it does not touch on what touches me about Christmas. I am ineluctably northern, and Christmas is the festival of the deepest moment of the northern soul when light and warmth are at their least. And so the festival of that moment is filled with celebration of light and warmth ... the lights, the candles, the hearth, the roasted food, the libations. When life is at its ebb, we fill it with gifts and song and fellowship.

How terrible a world it is that this elemental return is hijacked by religion and commerce and their associated venalities. But Christmas is nevertheless a stepping aside from the venalities and an association again with what brung us. The song, the lights, the fellowship are of one piece with the huddled warmth of a burning log in a Celtic hut, with warming one's hands round an Anglo-Saxon fire, with peasants eating the one goose that they have laid aside.

Christmas is deep and old and the possession of all and of no one. Eternal and ephemeral. One day of sublime thought, hankered after, touched, remembered, gone.

And to all a good night.

The Christmas Party

We had a joyful gathering of 60 or so on Sunday night at our annual Christmas Party. The house was brimming with Christmas, more Santa's scattered about than I could possibly count. A dozen or so folks from work came, and that was a special joy. But no more of a joy than the old friends, some of whom we see only once a year at this party.

The 19th anniversary Christmas Party ... it started out as "A Victorian Christmas Party in 1989" when Kurt and Tom and I decided to throw a bash for everyone we knew in Kurt's home on Page Street. It was a wild night, probably 200 people over the course of eight hours. We did it again in 1990 and 1991, and even in that last year, Kurt was still vital and in charge. But AIDS took him only six months later. So this party has always been about memory as well as a joy. Tom lasted another year. So many of the men in my life from those days are gone. But the party lives on.

Gawd, I did not intend to be maudlin. But Kurt is always at the party. When we sang Silent Night, I asked everyone to think of those no longer with us ... and when I said Kurt's name, June and Dave and Kerry and I, the last of the originals as it were, all nodded and smiled.

We drank and ate ... two turkeys and a ham ... we talked, and said Merry Christmas as often as we could find an excuse. Christmas is about joy and friendship and taking stock at the darkest time of the year. It is about fellowship and giving. And it is about remembering.

More than anything, though, it is about Santa Claus. Let's leave it at that.

What Christmas Means to Me

I have been laboring away this week on the big Christmas Party ... the 19th anniversary of the first one that Kurt and Tom and I first held in another time. I have not had the time or energy to blog, so here is an essay on Santa Claus that I wrote in 1999.

What Christmas Means to Me

Christmas for me is Santa Claus! Equal parts fantasy, joy, giving, magic, and mystery, Santa Claus entranced me when I was a boy. It certainly had a lot to do with the fact of all the presents. But Santa's presents were always sheer whimsy ... no socks or pants, but instead a toy fortress for my imaginary kingdom, a bicycle of my own, and always piles of books about long ago times and faraway places.

But now that I am an adult, Santa teaches me more about fantasy and mystery. Here is a most eccentric man who has created a magical kingdom far from the humdrum lives of all the other folks. He lives in a strange, limitless house where he labors with his elvish helpers day and night, all year round, to create whimsy by the bushelful for the children whom he teaches to believe in whimsy. His life is the polar opposite of any that has ever been lived elsewhere. Yet it is still a life which he created for himself by means of his own imagination.

Santa Claus is the greatest wizard that ever existed. His magic brings only joy and good. His being shines light into the darkest recesses of our souls.

But no magical being is single-sided. Santa carries a stick also. This side of the Santa myth doesn't sit well with thoroughly-modern-parenting, so we hear little about it. But Santa knows that some boys need a warm posterior more than they need a new truck ... and he knows that the warm posterior is itself part of the mystery, an irreducible moment of the magic. Because the naughty among us need to learn that the joy and the good demand a commitment not only to receiving, but to giving as well.

Christmas is the age-old season of the winter solstice where northern folks shiver in the cold and long for the relaxation of warmth and sun that summer will bring. The twinkling lights, the songs and good cheer, and the mountain of gifts invoke both the memory of what will come and the remembrance of who we are and what our life means. Christmas is the time of year to pause to reflect about what blessings we have received, and what good we can do for others to make the world which we share a warmer place irrespective of the dark and blustery world outside our hearth.

In this sense, again, Santa shows us a way out of the darkness of daily existence into the light of joy and good cheer. How fat and happy is Santa Claus, because his entire year has been spent in preparing for this one day in which he will spread love and joy to innocents everywhere. His prosperity and happiness derive from his giving, and so might ours if we construct for ourselves a life based both upon our labors and upon our hopes, our joy, and our own special magic and mystery.

For at Christmastime, the fantasy is reality.

And so, from me to you,
in the spirit of Santa Claus ...

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

Tacky Sappy Corny

So we are listening to Mario Lanza belt out a martial "O Holy Night"and I just plain love it. Corny, but Christmas is nothing if it is not corny. RL thinks it is tacky, but the line between tacky and corny is gossamer thin. I don't think that this one will make the cut for our December 16 party medley ... but it is stirring and sappy, all at the same time.

I just plain love Christmas.

RL and I just chatted a little about the peculiarities of the corny-sappy-tacky that one prefers. If you like some corny-tacky-sappy thing, there is no explaining it, and if you don;e like it, you have nothing but scorn for its defenders. No explaining taste, but in particular there is no explaining the little excursions into bad taste in which one indulges.

Christmas is carte blanche to explore one's indefensible taste for the sappy-tacky-corny.

I managed to get the hallway garlands up, and then once done, one stretch of twinkle lights went out. Ouch. This will be a job for the sainted-ex, RB or Iao, as he prefers to be known. He is a lighting guy and electrician. When we broke up, I told him he could leave me, but he still had to do my electricity. Once you have lived with an electrician for a decade, there is no going back. I also managed to get a bunch of other garlands up ... RB comes by and "foofs" them so that they look spectacular. I sometimes wonder if I'm really gay because I just plain can't "foof"anything to save my life. I can nail a garland to the relevant arch, but I rely on my sainted ex to make it look like it belongs in the faggiest house in the Castro.

Okay, walking with the dog ... that'll be walking with Loki ... what is it about the scattered but ubiquitous clumps of people performing Tai Chi in the park that they have not learned that one can purchase for less than 50 dollars a sound system better than anything available at any price 20 years ago? What is it about Tai Chi that makes people broadcast tacky Chinese music at top volume on sound systems with more static than music?

Again with the "tacky" ... one's man's tacky is a nother man's screech. I like tacky Chinese music, but get real ... let's purchase an appropriate iPod-related sound system.

Whoops ... dinner is almost ready ... a long weekend of putting up Christmas grinds to a halt. I face work tomorrow that portends kudos on having been praised for my efforts as far as the Provost. I am happy. But all I can think about is the Christmas Party and the magic of those six hours on December 16.