Don't Mind Us, We Just Pay You

Once again the Executive and Legislative branches of our government are so at odds with each other that they are paralyzed. This seems to happen every few years; sometimes the two houses of Congress get so balled up they have to schedule negotiating sessions with each other to iron out different versions of similar bills. It reminds me of those old Japanese monster movies where the big lizard is fighting with the huge gorilla. They end up knocking over the whole city while panicked humans run for their lives. I am not sure the analogy holds up, but we the people are going to at least be ignored for a while as the bullies face off inside the ring known as the Beltway.
I don't have a whole lot sympathy for any lawyer including ones that get fired. Poor rich ruthless--- finish that phrase with liars, charlatans, or thieves and it just does not bring a tear to your eye, does it? A lot of these US Attorneys probably have climbed to the top on the backs of truly poor ignorant minorities who could not afford a decent criminal defense hack to get them out from under a federal vendetta of some kind. A lot of them deserve far worse than to lose their job. But here they are crying to the cameras with the Democrats forced to take their side against the bile-spitting Karl Rove and whiney-voiced Alberto Gonzo. If the Democrats were looking for some poster children to parade around for contributions to their cause, they might as well have established a Pee Wee Herman defense fund for all the traction they are going to get from this. Don't get me wrong; I would like nothing better than to find a smoking gun and then turn it back onto the White House occupants and pull the trigger. In full automatic mode. But this is an unlikely, unfathomable, uninteresting and uninspiring vehicle for the revenge these sniveling cocksuckers (OK, I stole that from the current Rolling Stone but it fits) have so thoroughly earned. If the Democrats want a full-on hearing with cameras and bibles and gavels, let them call it. If they want to start nailing Bushies to the wall, I will buy them some nails. But let's not be surprised if the ratings fall short of the Sam Ervin show from a generation ago that energized the opposition with genuine outrage and righteous indignation. Most US Attorneys are assholes of at least the same size and output as those who hung them out to dry. And any boat that tries to rescue them is just not going to float very high in the water.

Parched in the Desert

Regular readers--both of you--will recall that I had a bad weekend upon finding a brick in the back window well of my car Saturday morning. It had come in from the outside and required refenestration of my otherwise original Mustang convertible. The car could loosely be called fixed if you overlook the ripple in the back window tint that gives everybody behind me carnival funhouse proportions. All the time I have spent waiting on the aptly named 911 Collision Center and being chauffered about like a helpless invalid has given me a chance to reflect, ruminate and descend all the more darkly into despair. My friends read my emails and reply they had no idea I was so angry and bitter and disgusted about my entire life. That's because there are generally two kinds of people; the half full and the half empty. I am a third kind: no matter how much is in the glass it is only going to get worse.
And the ugliest manifestation of this twisted take on the world goes like this: first our neighbor was murdered by a hispanic, now my husband and dogs are routinely stoned during exercise walks by a hispanic; do I think a white, black or brown person is most likely responsible for this latest crime against me? If that sounds like naked racism, you can join my friends who express shock and awe at the "real" Tom emerging from the shadows wearing a bulletproof vest and brandishing a grenade launcher. All of this will likely pass; but for now, my pollyanna friends continue to talk up the good points of Tucson, my lovely home, my adoring husband, my faithful dogs in hopes of hastening my rejoining of the human race. That might happen eventually, but for now I am up to here with spanish billboards, spanish radio, spanish TV, "bilingual preferred," "press 1 for english," Mexican plates on Tahoes and Hummers, and thumping salsa music from shops, cars and homes. Everything wrong with my life is their fault. And it is going to get a lot worse before it ever gets better. If it does at all. See characterization of water in glass above.
I am telling everyone who listens that I want to leave and go far away to the north where mainly pale white people live. Yet after a recent long weekend in Seattle, I wonder how much better off I would be. The trouble with white supremacy is that no safe haven for it exists. Any delusion that you are comfortably surrounded exclusively by your own kind is illusory by definition. Most obvious and current example of that folly is the Asian invasion of the left coast. My friend who has lived there his whole life now makes openly derisive comments about them within earshot when he sees them talking in their own language in a store or mall. My relatives from the previous generation who lived in DC suburbs harbored and nurtured similar hatred for Black people. I felt superior to them (my family, not black people) because I did not share such prejudice; I had been raised better than that. Yet now here I am turning into a borderland bigot who uses only a different color of sunglasses to filter his perceptions of other people. As does my Seattle buddy. My point is that no matter where a white supremacist seeks to call home, it is a losing battle to secure the perimeter against a conquering horde. Wave upon wave of them are paddling in from offshore by night to infiltrate and usurp and scrap and steal and practice social darwinism on the grand scale our system provides them. We have only ourselves to blame; not just because we have created our own twisted misperception of utopia but because rich white capitalists have marched to the bank on the backs of inferior beings for at least five generations. The model of behavior put forth turns every man against every other; lest he be trampled. Our system has managed to bring out and exploit the very worst in man, then go on to reward it. A truly altruistic liberal can rise above this programming. There was a time I could have done so. But right now I am so dying of thirst I cannot find strength for self elevation to a higher plane. And the water is evaporating out of the glass faster than I can crawl toward the oasis.

Hit Me Like A Ton of Bricks

I went to put the top down on my convertible this morning in preparation to take my computer to the Geek Squad for some adjustments but I never made it. The normal hydraulic and canvas sounds were augmented by the grating crunch of broken glass. A brick in the boot well amidst chunks of my back window will do that.
I have been walking around in a daze all day wondering why this happened. Being afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder, I immediately assumed that I personally was the target; that this was not a random act of schoolboy pranksters. A neighbor tried to console me by saying her car had been egged once, and that such boys will be boys behavior is to be expected in all neighborhoods. An egg weighs about two ounces; not four pounds. So thank you for that but no I do not feel any better about this. Just now I went out to the alley to discard some recyclables. The sky was black and clear; Orion and the Dipper twinkled in place serenely. But as a car approached, I felt a weird chill. Like what if this is the person who did this last night returning to toss a firebomb?
Part of me is ready to put the house up for sale and move away. My partner has been talking in those terms even before this. A knee jerk move would be dumb; we are too old for such impetuosity. But a door has been closed; a curtain drawn; a corner turned. I don't like my home town anymore. I don't know my neighbors very well. I trust no one and I suspect everyone.

Plenty of Blame To Go Around

There is so little point in posting yet another screaming screed against microsoft and gates, but everyone within the sound of my voice must take note nonetheless. Lest more fall victim and be ensnared in the net of no return. I just returned from a junket to Seattle where my buddy Keith lives but somehow does not know anyone well enough to trust as his personal computer guru. Ironic isn't it, that the locals up there cannot walk into the front lobby of the most powerful corporation on earth that happens to be in their backyard for assistance with the products? We settled for Circuit City who wisely provide a buy-up plan to make the actual use of a new computer at least a 50-50 crap shoot for a neophyte. It only costs another $125 to get them to talk to you after the 15th day of ownership. We should count ourselves fortunate they deign to offer that much. The most immediate problem with the New Vista Operating System is that a bug exists in the turning off sequence. Short of pulling the plug, literally, there is no reliable or predictable method of putting the thing to sleep or having it do so for itself on a timed cycle. Call me insane, but I sort of expect to have control over an electronic product such that I can turn it off and on at my will. Not its will. If I could produce those Apple commercials where they make fun of microsoft, I would mercilessly trash them for missing this most obvious function. Now that I am back home 1200 miles away from Seattle, it is impossible for me to troubleshoot over the phone. So Keith is trying to get the retailer to honor their commmitments up to and including taking the thing back for a refund. But like so many of us, he has bought into the "need" for a computer. I did nothing to discourage this; his other friends have computers; his 75 year old mother has one over which she has some mastery; why shouldn't Keith have one too? After all, doesn't everybody need one to meet people, to buy toys, to read their bank statements, to do their taxes, to watch pornography? Well, for one: he has no idea how to do even the simplest tasks on a computer. And thanks to Gates' predatory business model, there is no entry level to this technology. Your only choice is to buy the four cam V-12 with 400 horsepower and accelerate up the on ramp. And hope it does not drop a valve at four thousand revs. Once on the information superhighway, the driver must dodge the wrecks of smaller slower hardware and human operators alike that litter the shoulders. If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch is how I think it goes. For an otherwise patient, bright, inquisitive person to be jerked along skidding on his belly by a great dane on steroids is a crime. To be asked to pay hundreds even thousands of dollars for the privilege is an insult. To voluntarily yield to the relentless marketing and consuming pressures that drive this juggernaut is idiocy. Yet here Keith and I are hating circuit city, hating hewlett packard, hating microsoft and not being real happy with our friendship. The computer is touted as a labor saving device. They tell us it is a communication tool. They want us to believe it brings us together. All of these are lies. Told to make profits for the owners of this technology. Computers are responsible for 90% of the incremental anxiety that plagues our society and drives people to violence. If you don't believe me, you must be sitting contentedly on the porch wondering what all the barking and snarling and wailing is out there on the street. But on the other hand, computers make blogging possible. And where would the world be without blogging?