carried away

"But I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I'm going to ram it into your stomach!"

The Washington Times reports that Hollywood heavyweights are taking a stand against Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor.

Mr. Schwarzenegger's election to office "would be the worst tragedy in the history of California," actress Cybill Shepherd told "Access Hollywood" this week, calling him a "hypocrite."

She also told the San Francisco Chronicle that Mr. Davis is a "great kisser."

As much as I doubt an Arnold (Drummond or Schwarzenegger) would be able to run a State, I'm even more leery whenever Hollywood "liberals" try to pass themselves off as politically concerned citizens, as if they have other people's best interests in mind. I always think of that scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt is talking about how (his character) Tyler is fed up with millionaire rock stars and Hollywood pretty boys. "We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning slowly that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." And then Pitt goes back to his trailer. Its kind of like that.

Anyway, if I lived in California I'd expect phone calls like this as (r)election day nears. "I wanna ask you a bunch of questions, and I want to have them answered immediately!"

"I'm not saying I condone murder, but I understand."

The ex-priest and convicted child-sex abuser John Geoghan was murdered in his cell this weekend. The Boston Herald reports that the killer, another inmate serving a life sentence and who was sexually abused as a child, confessed to having planned the murder for a month. Some of the victims are dissappointed that Geoghan will not be alive to stand trial for all the other incidents. Others are worried that the ex-priest didn't have time to reflect and become remorseful.

Personally, I feel different. To paraphrase Chris Rock: I'm not saying I condone murder, but I understand. Maybe someday I will feel different about that. Maybe the Catholic Church will treat this more seriously now.

I know a man who was sexually molested by a Catholic priest when he was 8 years old. It happens that his grandfather had just died and the adults told him that "grandpa is in heaven now. Someday, a long time from now when you die, you'll go to heaven too and you'll see him again." Trying to make sure he would get to heaven he consulted the local priest and asked if the priest could teach him about God. Instead the priest molested him. When confronted, in the presence of the parents and other adults, the priest pulled a power play on the boy. "Now this didn't really happen did it? Tell the truth. Lying is a sin and sinners won't go to heaven." The priest's attempt at manipulation didn't work, it only scared the boy into standing by his claim. When the parents threatened to file suit, the priest assured them that the Catholic Church would excommunicate the entire family if they did so. The suit was dropped.

The New York Times reports:

Professor Pope, the theologian, said it was troubling that an inmate convicted of one of the most despised crimes among prisoners — sexual abuse of a child — was left vulnerable.

"It's an irony that his criminal behavior was facilitated by a church that was negligent, and now his death was facilitated by a criminal justice system that was negligent," he said.

Mr. Geoghan had been living in a protective custody unit, which held 24 inmates, a Department of Correction spokeswoman, Kelly Nantel, said. Inmates in the unit sleep in individual cells, but can mingle during the day, Ms. Nantel said, and are placed based on the nature of their convictions, their notoriety or whether they have enemies.

Phil Saviano, founder of the New England chapter of the Survivors Network, said he expected many of his victims to feel responsible for Mr. Geoghan's death.

"He needed to be off the streets and away from children," he said, "but that prison sentence was never meant to be a death sentence."

Phil Saviano is a survivor of child-sex abuse and the founder of SNAP-Survivors Network of those Abused by Priest. His own story tells of how far-reaching the damage can be:

Like other survivors of sexual abuse, Saviano had spent his entire life dealing with the fallout of what had happened to him: the loss of his faith and his ability to trust other people; feelings of worthlessness; depression; the struggle to have healthy intimate relationships.

Update (Aug. 29): To the dismay of many of the victims, Geoghan's conviction may now be erased.

Case law dictates that the court where Geoghan was tried will be ordered to invalidate his 2002 conviction, said Emily LaGrassa, spokeswoman for the Middlesex district attorney's office.

"The Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that if a defendant dies while his appeal is pending, the indictments are to be remanded to the trial court with an order that they be dismissed," she said.

The Boston Globe features an indepth Spotlight Investigation section covering all aspects of the recent scandal with the Boston Archdiocese.

Top 10 Commandments

According to 10-commandments.org, these are the Top 10 Commandments:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image - any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

MLK: Add me to your TypePad People list.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. King was a prolific writer and Sotheby's will be displaying a collection of his unpublished documents on Tuesday, ahead of a private sale to be held later next month. From CNN.com:

The ownership and potential sale of King's archives has generated controversy over the past decade.

Boston University owns a separate, pre-1962 collection of papers that King's estate tried and failed to reacquire in 1993. The Sotheby's acquisition covers his adult life from 1949 to his death.

The Library of Congress was prepared to pay $20 million in 2000 for King documents, including many of those now at Sotheby's. But Congress withheld any appropriations after two experts -- a King biographer and an appraiser for the library -- disagreed as to its value to researchers.

Although it is hopeful that The Library of Congress or some other agency may someday digitize these documents making them more easily accessible to the public, I can't help but wonder how the current state of technology may have been utilized by the great writers and speech makers of the past.

How Long Will America Be Occupying Iraq?

Now would be a good time to re-read James Fallows' "The Fifty-first State?". Written almost a year ago, Fallows goes into detail about the accountability America would have to a post-war Iraq. The November 2002 article, and the magazine The Atlantic that published it, was awarded top prize in Public Interest by the National Magazine Awards.

Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilities of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders—and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?

An Interview with Douglas Coupland

[Link found via CUP OF CHICHA]

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Douglas Coupland. He is referencing the crime scene of the Columbine shootings after a number of students were found slain in the cafeteria:

RB: You designed the icon that is on the cover of Hey Nostradamus! And on your website you have that photograph from the Columbine cafeteria that you entitle ‘Tropical Birds’ after the ATF agent’s observation about all the cell phones ringing. Why haven’t you put more visual elements into your books?

DC: What I am doing now is – I used to do a lot of non-fiction and short fiction and now it’s just long-form fiction, novels, and a lot of visual work. And it’s a conscious decision. The ‘Tropical Birds,’ that happened, I was in Harbor Front (I can’t wait to get to the telephone and find out what the hell is going on there) 400, 500 people and someone’s phone went off in the middle. And it just brought to mind that exact paragraph from the Rocky Mountain News…

RB: Where the ATF agent says the phones were going off and it sounded like tropical birds?

DC: Yeah. So without telling anyone in the audience why, I said ‘Okay, who’s got a phone’ and called them up. ‘Now go to your neighbor and find out their number and phone them and they’ll phone you back or whatever. House, could you dim down the lights?’ Everybody thought it was ‘hee hee, really funny.’ Or whatever, David Byrne-postmodern. And then it went on for a minute and it had its own texture. And then the lights came up and the phones turned off and I told them what I was basing this on. And there was this reaction like everyone had been kicked in the gut. Then in Paris, at the Parisian Literary Festival, I did the same thing except I told people in advance why I am doing it and they did it and then the lights came up and everybody was in tears. There was this gasp of astonishment. Like how often do you hear the singing voice of the human soul?

September 11

Late. Again. You jerk out of bed. Fast. There's no way you'll make it to work on time. Again. Shocked. You're in the shower brushing your teeth. Call a cab? You're hand is on the phone, you're putting on pants. "Hello, I need a cab right away please." You're running. Late. The cab never came. You're on the train, your unpressed shirt is sticking to your sweaty back. You're standing still on the fast moving train.

You have a presentation. You have 3 minutes. You're 15 minutes away. People are gathering in the conference room. You need to be vested. Your father is retiring this year, you want to send them on a trip. You need the bonus. Your nephew is turning 1 this year, you want to set up a trust fund. People are having coffee. You're 10 minutes away. Standing still on a moving train. People are making pre-meeting small talk.

You're at your desk. The meeting is 15 minutes old. Fast. You're grabbing your presentation, you're sweating. You woke up late. You wake up late the next day. You wake up late everyday. You stay up late, reading about HTML, XHTML, DHTML, XML. Creativity is not guaranteed everytime. They think it should be. They tell the you it is. You work to build business. You work to make money. You need to be vested. You make other people money. You need the bonus. You move. You move near work so you can walk to work. And not be late. You need this job. You don't wan't this job, but its the right thing to do.

9.11.2001 The arlarm is set. It is set to 8:20 am. You live in Chicago. Chicago is one hour behind New York. At 8:16 am you jerk out of bed. You beat the alarm today. Something seems wrong though. That's never happened before.

You're half a sleep, you wait for the coffee. The woman on the morning news show seems upset. Like she just got some really bad news about her family, but has to do her job anyway.

The World Trade Center towers are on fire.
But its not true, its a mistake.
Its not a mistake, it is true.
2 jets just crashed.

You stumble to work.
The buildings in New York fall.

The water supply is locked down.
Downtown Chicago is shut down.

Everyone leaves.
Everyone is confused.

Its such a beautiful day,
the sky is so empty and so full of blue.

People are standing around very calm.
No one is talking. Just looking at each other,
and the sky.

You sit at home all alone on the couch and cry. The tv is on and I sob every hour until I'm so tired.

I'm not patriotic. I don't believe in God. Later that week, people downtown gather at noon and sing "God Bless America" and you cry.

All day and all night I watch the news. You wonder what it means. You ask yourself question after question.

How will people react now? How will this be rebuilt? What about the familys? Did our government know? Who did this? What about all those people? What about the people that jumped? What about the people on the planes? What about the people who rushed to work today? Is everyone going to be more critical now? Will we all want to seek vengence now? What if we get the answers wrong?

I rarely cry, I cried all day. Since then you cry a lot now.

1998, 3 years earlier I was having lunch with some people at work. Another job, not the one I'm talking about before. For some reason we were discussing war.

"The next World War is going to happen after another country attacks America's financial districts," I said. "Probably not in our lifetime, but some day another country is going to want to take the power away from America. A lot of other countries hate America.

If you look at old maps of Europe, different countries have held power at different times in history. The boderlines change. At one time the Roman Empire owned everything, and then France. America won't always be the world power."

There was a guy at work that always had to prove he was right. No matter what people said he always had to disagree. He scoffed at me to impress a girl he liked.

I hate that guy.

I continued, "The traditional tactic of war is to take out the enemy's water, hospitals, roads and communication. America is too decentralized of a country, no enemy could accomplish that. The one thing that is centralized are the financial districts. If the stock markets go down the country is screwed," I said. "They should put some kind of anti-missile-radar thing on the World Trade towers, and on the Sears tower. You know what's up there now? Tv antennas. Commercial tv is more important than National Security."

One of the younger co-workers said, "Well the financial districts and the Pentagon. The Pentagon would be a prime target for missiles too."

"That would never happen though," I said. "You have to think the Government has that fortified."

"Yeah."

Esquire:Feature Story:The Falling Man

Esquire:Feature Story:The Falling Man

Esquire has finally released this article online. This is probably the most important and healing article written about the 9/11 attacks and the American public's relationship with the images of that day.

You Don't Know Jack

"...where the kisses are hers and hers and his..."

It was the Regan Era and Stanley Roper's main preoccupation was with money; how much he had, how much people owed him, and how to get more. He once even conned his tenants into buying a car with no motor, a car that he would later buy back only because he thought he had found another buyer willing to pay a higher price.

The cheapskate Mr. Roper was married to Helen Roper who found herself in a loveless marriage, her sexual advances constantly shunned by her husband. The affable Mrs. Roper often came across as horny and desperate because of this, but she was in the end well liked by 3 of her tenants: Janet Wood, Chrissy Snow and Jack Tripper.

The Ropers, you see were landlords of an apartment building that was owned by Stanley Roper's brother Bart.

The 3 tenants had came to live together when one morning Jack was discovered asleep in the bathtub of Janet and Chrissy. There had been a raucous party the night before when the 2 girls found out their roomate Eleanor would have to unexpectedly leave the city.

Being a roomate short left the 2 in a predicament and with no choice but to have Jack move in, they asked him. Jack had been a struggling gourmet chef himself and by chance needed an apartment, one that his budget could afford and so he agreed.

The only problem had been the uptight Mr. Roper. He would never go for a single guy living with 2 single women, not under his watch, not while he was landlord. This would have made for too many sexual escapades. With the help of Helen, the 3 roomates had cooked up a scheme to convince Stanley that Jack way gay. Stanley then saw this situation as lucrative if not acceptable, and being that his main goal had always been money, made the exception.

Jack of course was not gay and once when Stanley's niece visited he was allowed by Stanley to take her out for a night on the town, a night that lead to tragic consequence when Stanley Roper almost found out about the supposed gay tenant's hetrosexual advances on said niece.

Years would come to pass and Jack's presence was one of assurance for the 2 girls and their friends. Once when Janet was trying to change her good-girl image Helen had convinced her they should go to a nude protest only to have to flee without their clothes when they were about to get arrested. It was Jack that rescued them from nakedness.

When the Rama, a shyster guru recruiting for his commune, tricked the naive Chrissy into joining his cult, it was Jack that thwarted the Rama's plan and returned Chrissy home.

When Chrissy had to leave to be with her father the Reverend Snow, it was Jack that was supportive and also took her cousin Cindy Snow in and gave her a place to stay.

Jack was the one to straighten things out when his best friend Larry Dallas thought he came on to the girl Larry was in love with.

Helen would often confide in Jack about her ailing sexlife and Jack would listen and allow Helen to vicariously live through his life and sexual exploits. Later when the Ropers moved away, it was Jack who foiled the new landlord Ralph Furley's attempts to throw out the roomates' couch that had money hiding in it.

And when Cindy Snow left and her co-worker, flight attendant Terri Alden needed a place to stay, Jack protected the 3 of them from the would be jewel thief/murderer next door who was really just a ventriloquist working on his act.

Those people who knew Jack have a lot to thank him for.

My Glass Box

There is an inadequacy built in to the nature of blogging that can be hazardous to writers who choose to opine on current issues. The technology too readily allows the spontaneous impulse to leave a post or comment that is sometimes not entirely thought thru or backed by research.

Of course it is ultimately our own responsibility to do the work before hand, but some topics can evoke an emotional, knee-jerk thought that needs to be defended immediately so one can move on to making dinner and washing the dishes. At this intersection is where misinformation propagates and breeds misunderstanding.

There is a disscussion on Beatniksalad right now about the validity of illusionist David Blaine's detractors regarding his current performance. Where I was once a fan of Blaine's showmanship I have since grown wary of it for some reason, and I now can be counted as one of those detractors.

I had left a comment stating that without the hecklers Blaine would just be "an idiot in a box." This was counterpoint to a couple of other people that felt there is already too much cynicism in contemporary culture and that the intolerance blocked people from knowledge.

If the tone of my intial opinion seemed harsh it was only to reflect the attitude of the people throwing stuff at Blaine's box, and was meant to be facetious. I had assumed that the seriousness of the opinions by the Blaine supporters, although well meaning, were to some degree in jest as I find the topic of people throwing eggs at a man hanging in a glass box above a river and cooking hamburgers in front of him while he is trying to fast somewhat comical. I'm dark that way.

I appologize to the poster that is trying to turn a new leaf by supporting a more communal atmosphere amongst bloggers. I understand his frustrations with asshole remarks like mine. If I ever post on MacSlash its always anonymously because of some of the idiot comments I've had to endure, and so I am empathetic.