01jan2006 to This Very Daggone Minute

Junk you may have missed and yet managed to live happily without:

29dec2006 — Appropriate year-ending phrase from an old Farmers Insurance radio ad playing as background in an exhibition at the Petersen Automotive Museum:

Death's Dread Scroll

24dec2006 — X-mess 2006

Christmas 1924
"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of Mass
We've got as far as poison gas.
—Thomas Hardy

21dec2006 — From Paul Krassner's One Hand Jerking:

At a midwestern college, one graduating student held up a FUCK COMMUNISM! poster as his class was posing for the yearbook photo. Campus officials found out and insisted that the word FUCK be air-brushed out. But then the poster would read COMMUNISM! So that was air-brushed out too, and the yearbook ended up publishing a class photo that showed this particular student holding up a blank poster. Very dada. (27)

When I originally started publishing, I was truly a lone voice, but now irreverance has become an industry. The Realist served its purpose, though—to communicate without compromise—and today other voices, in print, on cable TV and especially on the Internet, are following in that same tradition. (29)

Another New Yorker cartoonist who preferred to omit a byline presented a TV talk-show guest saying, "Frankly I didn't give a damn about it!" Then we see a family at home watching him say, "Frankly I didn't give a bleep about it!" Thought balloons show the mother thinking "Fuck?"; the father thinking "Piss?"; the grandmother thinking "Shit?"; and the little kid thinking "Crap?" That cartoon graced many kitchen refrigerators and office bulletin boards, especially at TV channels. (31)

On March 30, the new president was shot by John Hinckley in order to make a favorable impression on actress Jodie Foster. And if that seemed crazy, Hinckley later came out for gun control, and Reagan came out against it.
Although it took more than a decade after the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy for there to be a band called The Dead Kennedys, it took only a few months after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan for there to be a group called Jodie Foster's Army. (36)

"I guess what happens," Lenny [Bruce] mused, "if you get arrested in town A and then in town B, with a lot of publicity, then when you get to Town C they have to arrest you or what kind of shithouse town are they running? (117)

A documentary, Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999, but as producer Robert Weide told me, prophetically, "If there's a documentary about the Holocaust, it will win."
"You dont' think you have any chance at all?"
"The odds against my film winning are six million to one."
Lenny really would've appreciated that. (123-4)

"It's really hard writing fiction," I said. "You have to make everything up."
"Oh, come on, Paul, you've been making up stuff your whole life."
"Yeah, but that was journalism." (142)

That evening, I had dinner at a Hollywood restaurant with Steve Allen. CNN's entertainment reporter had made an appointment to meet Steve at the restaurant, and he interviewed him outside—twice—once for if Lucille Ball survived the operation, and once for if she didn't. Although I could understand the practicality of such foresight, I was somehow offended by it.
Sure enough, the next day, there was Steve Allen on CNN, standing outside the restaurant and saying, "We all hope Lucy will pull through. There have been many success stories in the history of television, and yet the affection that millions of Americans hold for Lucille Ball is unique." A week later she died, and sure enough, there was Steve Allen on CNN again, standing outside the restaurant and saying, "Lucy will be greatly missed. There have been many success stories. . . ." Then George Burns came on and said, "I had a lot of fun with Lucy," but I couldn't tell whether he had taped that before or after she was dead. (314)

Two years ago, I wrote a piece for the AARP magazine, Modern Maturity. When my subscription copy arrived—the issue that my article was supposed to be in—it wasn't in there. I checked with an editor, who asked how old I was. I told her that I was 70, but I didn't understand what difference that made. She explained that there were three editions: one for readers 50 and over, one for readers 60 and over, and one for readers 70 and older. I was too old to read my own article. (317)

See also: PaulKrassner.com

18dec2006 — Somewhere south of 404

16dec2006 — "It's a classy briefcase, 'cos yer classy and important, like a dude."

16dec2006 — 35 minutes down the drain yesterday on the phone with Belkin support. Yay, Belkin. But the guy fixed the problem, and near the end of the call, while waiting to see whether the fix was in, I asked where he was located. (I often ask this, partly because long ago I worked for an airline call center and I'm just curious, and also because often these days customer service representatives are prison inmates—not that they would reveal that.)
"We're not allowed to say," he told me, quickly adding that he was "not in India." For some reason I'd assumed he was in the U.S., but I told him I didn't think he had an Indian accent. "Oh, so now you're telling me I have a bad accent?" he said. When I said no, he wanted to know what sort of accent I thought he had. I told him he sounded Colombian. "Well . . . I am half-Colombian," he admitted. So I was half right. See how easy it would be to be a Vegas football handicapper?

14dec2006 — Genevieve in Paris writes:

Hello there,
I'm writing because I thought you might be interested to know that French conceptual artist Sophie Calle inaugurated an art phone booth in Paris today inspired by the desert phone booth. I'm sure you can read about it in the paper tomorrow. The sculpture around the phone booth was designed by Frank Gehry.

By Jove, Genevieve, you are correct. The following is from a Yahoo (France) article:

Au départ du tram, sur le pont du Garigliano (XVème), une cabine téléphonique-fleur en métal que Sophie Calle a conçue avec l'architecte et sculpteur Frank O. Gehry (auteur du musée Guggenheim à Bilbao).
Sophie Calle explique que l'idée lui est venue après avoir "lu quelque chose sur une cabine téléphonique abandonnée dans le désert qui continuait à fonctionner"."Mon idée était assez ténue, légère, et je me trouve devant une sculpture gigantesque, je trouve ça drôle", ajoute-t-elle devant la fleur géante peinte en rouge, rose et jaune, amarrée à la rambarde du pont.
L'artiste va "appeler régulièrement, cinq fois par semaine de manière aléatoire pendant trois ans. Peut-être à 04H00 du matin ou à des heures plus convenables", pour parler aux inconnus qui décrocheront le combiné. [Yahoo (France) photo]

Re: an English translation of the foregoing, please enjoy the awkwardness of my collaboration with Babelfish:

At the beginning of the tram, on the Garigliano Bridge, is a metal telephone-booth-flower that Sophie Calle conceived with the architect and sculptor Frank O. Gehry (architect of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao).
Sophie Calle explains that the idea came to her after "having read something about an abandoned phone booth in the desert that continued to function. My idea was rather thin, light, and I am in front of a gigantic sculpture, I find that funny", she added, in front of the giant flower painted in red, pink and yellow, moored to the bridge rampart.
The artist "will call regularly, five times per week, randomly, over three years. Perhaps at 4 o' clock in the morning or more suitable hours ," to speak with strangers who will [answer the phone, I guess?).

In searching for info on Calle's phone booth project, I ran across David Byrne's recounting of a dinner with Sophie Calle:

Sophie Calle recently had a huge retrospective here, and became more of a Parisian celebrity than ever. She comes with a friend to the Bataclan show and we have dinner afterwards with a group of other friends. She dominates the table with her stories and tales of projects in progress. A lot of conversation revolves around the use of tu or vous - in various combinations - using vous with a first name is a sort of combo approach. Sophie says she just broke up with her last lover and they always used vous, the understanding being that they would use tu when they didn't love one another anymore. . . . Sophie mentioned an ongoing project, which I am sure will become one of her pieces - she hopes to "get to my future faster" so she is seeing a well-known clairvoyant and whatever the clairvoyant says will happen, Sophie makes it happen (barring murder and death, she said). It will take a number of years to realize, and one wonders if this very dinner was predicted as well.

Regarding Frank Gehry, need you know more than that he appeared on The Simpsons?

13dec2006 — Maria Thayer (Strangers With Candy): hilarious.

12dec2006 —

Let's understand each other. I sang the first hymn, when the stars were born. Not that long ago, I announced to a young woman—Mary—who it was she was expecting. On the other hand, I've turned rivers into blood. Kings into cripples. Cities to salt. So, I don't think that I have to explain myself to you. — Gabriel (Christopher Walken) in The Prophecy II

You may recognize that as basically the same and only answer Job ever got out of the Whirlwind.

11dec2006 — Poetdog: giant OceanGoing Oobi

(Visit oobiland)

10dec2006 —

In Japan, all conflicts and disagreements are masked by a blank wall of politeness. Even a total contradiction is begun with a, "Yes, I completely agree with you, but . . . " Here, as with the "synthetic ideal", the facade is all-important. Pretence is an essential condition of life. Fail to play the game and you'll be excluded from it. All foreigners are excluded anyway, but for a Japanese, it's a fate worse than death. The Japanese has a word for this: tatemae. It means the correct public posture, the way things ought to be. The opposite is honne: the private feeling or opinion which, most of the time, remains hidden or suppressed. The art of Japanese communication lies in being able to read the honne while all the time sticking to the rigid rules of tatemae. To the Westerner, this can be intensely irritating. You never know what anyone really thinks, whether anyone really agrees with you or not—a matter complicated somewhat by the fact that Japanese will invariably say "yes" when they mean "no" and will usually say "maybe" when they mean "yes". Meanwhile, they probably find Western bluntness and inability to pick up on the delicate subtleties of their haregei—"belly language—intensely irritating too. — Dave Rimmer, Like Punk Never Happened, pp. 123-4

A pop group makes its money in a number of different ways. There are royalties on record sales, publishing royalties, money from records being played on the radio, revenue from touring and merchandizing and so forth. The New Pop never came up with any new ways of making money. It simply tried to exert an increased vigilance to ensure the largest possible slice of each of those various cakes. That, when you get to the bottom line, is what "controlling your own destiny" is all about.
But of course, it goes deeper than that.
Take merchandizing. Handled correctly, this is a source of millions. Literally. On their last American tour, The Rolling Stones made five million dollars from T-shirt sales alone. One of the first things Jon Moss does after a Culture Club show is check out the T-shirt sales. A major act like Police actually plans tours according to the ins and outs of T-shirt deals.
"If you play a 13,000-seater hall in somewhere like Tallahassee, Florida," explains Police manager Miles Copeland, "they're so glad that you're using their facility that they won't charge any commission on T-shirt sales. But if you play Madison Square Garden the hall can take up to 50 per cent commission so you can end up losing money. It becomes more profitable to play to 13,000 people in Tallahassee than 35,000 people in New York City.
"We're not in the music business anymore. We're in the commodities business." (141)

09dec2006 —

Hi, there. eBay here. Sorry you didn't win that impossibly expensive, one-of-a-kind Velvet Underground acetate. But here are some totally similar run-of-the-mill Velvet Underground items you can bid on instead.

Ah, nothing like automatica.

08dec2006 — Quotage

In Mexico "five o'clock" is another way of saying, "six-thirty." This works well if you know about it. Not everybody does, so parties get front-loaded with gringos.

My grandfather, who was an IRS auditor, often remarks that he should have gone into car sales, "because nobody likes to pay taxes, but everyone is happy when they are buying a car."

Nearly every one of Lincoln's major claims in the Gettysburg Address is not only false, but exactly the opposite of the truth. That is no doubt why his defenders, whose books always read like a defense brief in "The War Crimes Trial of Abraham Lincoln," are still trying to cloud the public's understanding of it with 300-page books about a 272-word speech. That's about 300 words of excuse making, speculation, and rationalizing for every word in the actual speech.

07dec2006 — Ruinous

If you wanted to learn about Casa Grande, the giant four-story structure built almost 700 years ago by the Hohokam people, the last place to go to learn about it would be the Casa Grande Ruins FAQ from the NPS's Casa Grande Ruins website (which I'm not even going to link to, fuck 'em).

Here we have a typical National Park Service job. Note how many questions concern the Hohokam people, their life and history, and the building they left here, and how many question do not:

What, no "Who were the Hohokam?" No "What was Hohokam culture like?" No "How did the Hohokam thrive in the harsh desert?"

No.

Well, how about the site navigation bar? Let's see. . . .

. . . nope. It's not until the kiddie section that they bother to talk about the Hohokam and the archaeological site. But first they have to push their government propaganda on the kids:

Government isn't really interested in history or good stuff like that. The NPS couldn't even peacefully co-exist with a poor, defensive phone booth in the middle of the desert.

Government is about government—and nothing else.

06dec2006 — From Hyam Maccoby's The Mythmaker: Paul And the Invention Of Christianity:

03dec2006 — I awoke early this morning thinking of El Paso. I was thinking that if I were ever forced to move to Texas and it had to be anywhere other than Houston or Austin, I'd go to El Paso. El Paso has mountains—an important consideration. And they are desert mountains—an all-important consideration. Not only that, but it also has Mountain Monograms, like, six of them, or some crazy thing. It's a university town. There's Mexico right there if you need it. And Juarez has a Mountain Message, if you need that. There's a Marty Robbins song about El Paso (two, if you count the second song). How many other towns can say that? (Correct. Thirteen.* "The City" and "Spanish Town" are too non-specific to be reasonably included.) But does any other city have two? El Paso does (if you count the second song). Plus, El Paso's in west Texas ("out in the west Texas town of El Paso"), so you could be in New Mexico in a heartbeat if the need arose, and I'm sure it would. The thrifts are still pretty good in El Paso and it almost certainly has a Taco Bell or two, which could become a factor in the event of a nuclear holocaust in which all the real food were wiped out.

On the other hand, if it were within New Mexico that I had to choose, that'd be tougher. There are lots of cool places in New Mexico. Silver City. Madrid. I like Albuquerque, even though Wagner fears the Rio Grande. But he'd have to deal with that in El Paso, too—the river's there even if you don't count the second song ("El Paso City / By the Rio Grand-eeee-eeeee"). I've always found Alamogordo, Las Cruces, and Socorro intriguing. I even like Deming, and am probably suited to cope with Lordsburg. But no place in eastern New Mexico. Not even Roswell. East New Mexico may as well be Texas, which it almost is.

Such are the thoughts I have by the dawn's early light. Yesterday a hallucination of Wagner's profile, today a profile of El Paso. All in a morning's work, for today's under-challenged mind.

Addendum: I would also be willing to live in Chicxulub, Mexico, sight unseen, solely on the basis of its almost impossibly cool name.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

* Reno, Nevada; Franklin, Tennessee; Las Vegas, Nevada; San Angelo, Texas; Laredo, Texas; Abilene, Texas; Kingston, Jamaica; Montego Bay, Jamaica; Melbourne, Australia; Guadalajara, Mexico; Bethlehem, Israel; Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco, California.

02dec2006 — I don't know why Mel Gibson keeps claiming that Apocalypto means "a new beginning."

You'd think a rich place like Malibu would outfit their drunk tanks with classical Greek lexicons, sheesh.

01dec2006 — How delightful to see that the professional thieves at the IRS have a sense of humor about their crimes

HahahaBLAM

"Their inclusion here is not an official IRS endorsement of the sentiments expressed." Well, no kidding, IRS employees. If it were, that would mean that you understood the nature of what you do to people in exchange for a paycheck.

That page puzzles me in the same way as the cartoons people post in their office cubes that point out the absurdity of a life lived in an office cube.

30nov2006 — DVD commentary track excerpts from Straight to Hell:

Dick Rude: I guess [that was] one of those "in-jokes" that people spoke about after the film was released, that they just didn't feel a part of.
Alex Cox: Somebody said something to me about the film, a punk girl from Tucson, said that watching Straight to Hell was a bit like attending a party to which she hadn't been invited. I'm very sorry if that was the case, 'cos that wasn't the intention.

Dick Rude: I think that's part of the reason that a lot of the viewers felt like they were outsiders, was that we seemed to be having so much fun doing it—
Alex Cox: BUT THEY WEREN'T HAVING ANY FUN WATCHING IT!
Dick Rude: No.

Alex Cox: Michele Winstanley's coming—talking about sexy outfits.
Dick Rude: And now I can attest to the sexual tension in this film, having wanted to cast Michele Winstanley as my girlfriend in the film so that I could win her over to be my girlfriend in real life.
Alex Cox: Did you succeed?
Dick Rude: Of course. You know that I succeeded.
Alex Cox: Dick! You mean you used this film to get a girlfriend?
Dick Rude: Well . . . I used it as my arena.

Alex Cox: Good lord! Did other people do that as well in the film, do you think?
Dick Rude: I'm not naming names, but I do believe that there was a little bit of hanky-panky going on here.
Alex Cox: No! I don't think so! Because you're talking professional actors, man. I mean, when a professional actor finishes work for the day, it's back to the room, call the agent, an hour-and-a-half conversation with Los Angeles—
Dick Rude: A little meditation.
Alex Cox: Meditation, read the script, and Bob's yer uncle. Early to bed and early to rise. In my experience.
Dick Rude: That may be the case, but we're also talking about a lot of musicians.

[Over the rolling credits]
Dick Rude: We never had our argument.
Alex Cox: Oh, no, we didn't, really. That's all right, though, I think we did a fairly anodyne chat that enthusiasts will be fascinated by.

Also: Miguel Sandoval, master ACK-tor, or DoC, mister oblivious? . . . how did I never notice that Archie the punk, George the jealous hardware store guy, and that guy who seems to be in every third film released are all the same guy? And, apparently, he wrote that horrible song sung by the record company exec on the bus ("I wanna new job / I wanna job / I wanna job that pays / One that satisfies / My artistic needs") in Sid and Nancy. No one tells me nuttin.

29nov2006 — "We're feeling good for no reason, and that's fine, too. But you wanna feel good while being stupid and wasting your time, maybe heroin is for you." —Penn Jillette, "Recycling" from (Bullshit, season 2)

(Bullshit, season 1 / Bullshit, season 3)

28nov2006 — Recently, without provocation, the Cardhouse Robot made flagrant reference to Spring Session M, the anagrammatically titled 1982 album by Missing Persons, a band fronted by ex-Penthouse Pet Dale Bozzio. Accordingly, in the spirit of brotherhood and revenge, I present:

Spring Session M and Nine Anagrammatical Missing Persons Titles Easily As Bad and Possibly Worse

27nov2006 — The Ancient Arms of Fagg

26nov2006 —

With their usual concern for human life, cops murder a groom on his wedding day.

With their usual concern for human life, CNN invites you to Watch an injured man scream as he's taken away:

(See also)

In other thug-for-hire news:

If you have tears to shed, let them fall like rain for Lt. Ackley of the New London (Connecticut) Police Department. This noble paladin of public order was victimized during the September 22nd arrest of protester Lauren Canario, whose supposed crime was to sit placidly reading a book on the front porch of a home that had been seized by the New London Development Corporation (NLDC). . . .

According to Caleb Johnson, who called Lt. Ackley, the officer "told me he has been victimized by her, as he has been forced to carry her where they want her to be, resulting in him hurting his back.

Hey, butch it up, hero. Ditch the donuts and do some deadlifts and good mornings. If you're serious about working as a rented thug for the local affiliate of the corporatist state, chances are you'll occasionally have to do some hands-on heavy lifting – heavier, in any case, than lifting a pen to scribble an extortion note (sometimes called a "traffic ticket") when you're shaking down local motorists on behalf of the folks who slop your trough.

25nov2006 — We have met The Enemy

24nov2006 — How Wagner spent his Thanksgiving Day

[More luv]

22nov2006 —

LECTURER:

For many days before the end of our earth people will look into the night sky and notice a star, increasingly bright and increasingly near.

As this star approaches us, the weather will change. The great polar fields of the north and south will rot and divide, and the seas will turn warmer.

The last of us search the heavens and stand amazed. For the stars will still be there, moving through their ancient rhythms.

The familiar constellations that illuminate our night will seem as they have always seemed, eternal, unchanged and little moved by the shortness of time between our planet's birth and its demise.

Orion, the Hunter. Gemini, the Twins. Cancer, the Crab. Taurus, the Bull. Sagittarius and Aries—all as they have ever been.

And while the flash of our beginning has not yet traveled the light years into distance—has not yet been seen by planets deep within the other galaxies—we will disappear into the blackness of the space from which we came.

Destroyed, as we began, in a burst of gas and fire.

The heavens are still and cold once more. In all the complexity of our universe and the galaxies beyond, the Earth will not be missed.

Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of Man seem trivial and naive indeed. And Man, existing alone, seems to be an episode of little consequence.

That's all. Thank you very much.

20nov2006 — Cingular has a new commercial where guys mess up the lyrics to The Clash's "Rock the Casbah." Dude, that's sooo 2002.

Also, there's a "Beatles expert" on CNN this morning enthusing about the new Beatles remix release (for a Cirque du Soleil show, ack ack ptui) called Love. He's going on and on about how amazing it is to hear bunches of Beatles snippets mixed together into new works of art. Basically, then, what's happened is that a major label is finally catching up to Steve Dirkx, the Kleptones, and the rest of the early 21st century. Welcome to the party, kids.

Here are some comments about Love that should have been written about Dirkx and the Kleptones:

"Drawing from the Beatles' original master tapes, producers George and Giles Martin have jumbled and rearranged familiar songs and sounds into a distinct new work." (Detroit Free Press)

"The reworkings are mostly subtle: an alternate vocal here, extra strings or brass there, beefed-up bass and drums... The overall effect is to transform tracks so familiar you barely hear them anymore from historical documents into living songs, in startlingly clear, modern sound." (NME)

"The tracks run, merge and blend into each other like a concept album. Ghostly snatches of other Beatles' songs drift in and out of the mix. . . . When the Beatles' music is in danger of becoming over-familiar through constant exposure, there can be nothing better than re-discovering the awe and wonder with which it was first heard." (Liverpool Daily Post)

"They are the Beatles' songs and overdubbing them and massaging them allows other people to impose their own creative ideas on something that was so immediate and of a particular time. I thought that legacy was virtually tamper-proof, until now." (Bob Spitz, author of The Beatles: The Biography)

"The project's supporters argue that its juxtapositions and layerings, together with a digital enhancement of the original recordings at the Abbey Road studios, shed new light on the Beatles' legacy. 'We know there'll be letters,' Giles Martin said. `But sometimes we take this music for granted. I hope this will help people to hear Beatles music again.'" (The Times)

18nov2006 —

17nov2006 — [Heavy Southern accent:] Arch Chemicals, is this an emergency? Well, I don't think so. I got some of your product on my hand— Which product was that? "HTH Super Algae Stop." Oh. Well, just wash it real good with water. So I don't need to worry about its being "fatal if absorbed through the skin"? Oh, no, no, no, no. That's if ya swallow it, or somethin'. Actually, according to the label, it's "Harmful if swallowed," but "May be fatal if absorbed through the skin." No, no, no. It's a . . . concentrate. Riiiiiight . . . and? It's 60% active ingredients. Sure, sure . . . and? So you just need to wash it with water. You're sure about this? Yeah. You'll be just fiiiiine. Well . . . okay then.

(Naturally, I called a poison control center afterwards. They told me that label is total bullshit. I'm paraphrasing.)

16nov2006 — From Erle Stanley Gardner's The Desert is Yours:

Those thorns not only are needle-sharp but they have microscopic barbs which make it very painful when one tries to extract them. Extraction takes so much force the spine may break off, leaving a good-sized thorn in the wound, and because of these barbs it then becomes difficult for the body to eject the broken point by the usual process of having it fester out. Instead, after days of a painful sore, the thorn may become tolerated by the body, probably because the irritant coating (a type of natural desert creosote) will have dissolved. Then the thorn starts working its way deeper and deeper, the point will change direction because of muscular activity, and then the person may find, to his surprise, a sharp, needle-pointed, almost transparent object emerging from his body many inches from the point of entry, long after the thorn entered the body. (19-20)

In the desert there are no soft shadows and mellow sunlight such as exist where there is moisture in the air to diffuse the rays of the sun. In the true desert the shadows are so deep they appear black, and the sunlight so vivid it dazzles the eyes. Human beings who would live in the desert must make either a natural or an artificial adjustment. Dark glasses can keep the sunlight from burning the retina of the eye, can give the weary eye an opportunity to rest the muscles which would otherwise keep the pupils constantly contracted to pinpoints. The typical desert dweller has gray or light blue eyes, and the muscles that control the pupils have been so developed that the pupils can remain as pinpoints without undue fatigue. When I was new to the desert country, and before I realized what was happening physiologically, I wondered why I felt such gratifying relief on entering an adobe house where the walls were thick, the windows small, and the atmosphere one of cool tranquility. It was only after many such experiences that I began to realize that the muscles controlling the pupils of my eyes had become so completely weary in the glare of the sunlight that restful shade provided enormous relief. Apparently there is no sensation of acute pain in connection with ocular muscular fatigue of this type, and it is only when the muscles relax that one realizes how uncomfortable he has been. (66-7)

I well remember when I first came in contact with people who had become famous in the writing and motion picture world and noticed the ruthlessness with which they protected their privacy. I determined that if I ever became successful I would never change, but would always have ample time for "visiting" with people who wanted to see me. How little I realized the problem. As I became more successful, more and more people wanted to visit with me, both in person and by mail. Whenever I tried to be friendly, those casual contacts invariably led to more contacts; readers who had written me and received a cordial reply to their letters came to see me; people who had been entertained on a brief visit came back for longer visits, then told friends about it and were importuned by those friends to be permitted to meet the author. I soon realized that if a man didn't do something to protect his privacy once he got in the public eye, he would literally be trampled to death. For this reason I have of late avoided making contact with clubs, associations, and groups where such contacts bid fair to complicate my problems. (229-30)

15nov2006 — Did you know that you can download video files of Hollywood films from Amazon? Doesn't look like a great deal to me, but wait! They have a system of "Plot Keywords" to guide your viewing choices. Here are the Plot Keywords for Natural Born Killers:

Plot Keywords: Groin Kick | Scorpion | Two Killers | Surrealism | Shotgun | Merciless | Hallucination | Police | Slide Locked Back | Corruption | Sadist | Killing Spree | Sadistic | Jail Cell | Sadism | Blood Splatter | Lovers On The Lam | Shooting | Dream Sequence | Killer | Black Humor | Kill | Beating | Killing | Cruelty | Insanity | Camera | Madness | Brutality | Highway | Convertible | Serial Killers | Journalism | Part Animated | Black Comedy | Pop Culture | Escape | Drugs | Diner | Controversial | Satire | Riot | Escaped Convict | Snake Bite | Murder | Gore | Serial Killer | Strangulation | Tabloid | Desert | Rabbit | Indian | Ring | Vulgarity | Incest | Society | Media Hype | Murderer Duo | Surreal | Prison | Villainess | Road | Rattlesnake | Horse | Blood | Weapon | Pie | Television | Revenge | Experimental Film | Media Exploitation | Panties | Rape Scene | Splatter | Orff Carmina Burana | Bridge | Dancing | Jail | Prison Riot | Wedding Ring | Neo Noir | Psycho Cop | Corrupt Police | Disturbing | Sex With Minor | Corrupt Cop | Desert Eagle | Independent Film | Death | Gruesome | Police Officer Killed | Shot In The Chest | Shot In The Forehead | Shot In The Hand | Shot In The Head | Shot To Death | Stabbed In The Throat | Female Killer | Female Psychopath

Now you know what to do if you're looking to find, or avoid (according to taste) films that feature, say, "Sex With Minor," "Incest," or—shudder—Carmina Burana.

14nov2006 — If you've always considered Sting to be a poser, and also what the English would call a prat, his memoir, Broken Music isn't likely to change your mind. I really can't even say why I read it, except that it was remaindered and cost only two bucks. Maybe it was because the book begins with a detailed account of a psychelicious South American drug trip. The book is much better written than most of its type, I'll say that. And Mister Sting seems to know that he's kind of a prat, which makes him seem like less of one (though he definitely does still seem like one, though I'll be willing to reassess that as soon as he apologizes to the ghost of Hasil Adkins).

[On taking ayahuasca at a religious ceremony in Brazil, 1987:] My head is spinning with questions, but I am so astounded by the clarity of these visions that I am unable to speak and unable to exit this other reality that is not my own. But there are levels of thought below these visions that observe and comment on them, and farther levels beneath those, commenting in turn to infinity. And where normal objective thought can give comfort, allowing the mind to step outside of an imagined or real danger, here the strategy only compounds the fear that there is no bedrock to reality, that so-called objective reality is only a construct, and this realization I suppose is akin to madness. (13)

I've often thought that playing a musical instrument is an obsessive-compulsive disorder or a symptom of being socially inept, but I can't decide whether playing an instrument makes you socially inept, or you're a sociopath to begin with and you play an instrument as some sort of consolation. (60)

Like my grandmother, I will never throw a book away, storing dog-eared paperbacks from school or college, year after year, stacked like hunting trophies on makeshift shelves in my rooms. For to sit in a room full of books, and remember the stories they told you, and to know precisely where each one is located and what was happening in your life at that time or where you were when you first read it is the languid and distilled pleasure of the connoisseur. (75)

With only a paltry amount of learning I have managed to become a ridiculous, intellectual snob. (78)

Perhaps it is the scarcity of vocabulary that is the root of the problem. Love seems like such a deeply inadequate word for a concept with so many complex shades and shapes and degrees of intensity. If the Inuit have twenty words for the concept of snow, then perhaps it is because they live in a realm where the differences between each type of snow are of vital importance to them, and the minutiae of their specific vocabulary reflects that central importance. (122)

[Stewart Copeland] talks in the same scattershot way as he plays the drums, telling me how he's been galvanized by the punk scene, how these unschooled musicians have thrown out finesse and technique for the sake of raw undiluted energy, that he wants to be part of it, and that it will sweep everything aside like a tidal wave. (233)

If there is something disingenuous about the two of us forming a punk band (for this is the unspoken subtext for everything that we have discussed so far), there is also something deliciously subversive about it. Flying a flag of convenience while the doors of the fortress that is the music business have been torn open would suit my purpose and method as much as it would his. (234)

So here is a conundrum for me. An amazing drummer, whose dynamism is in no way limited to his musical abilities, but with an artistic agenda that I can only half subscribe to. . . . But I don't want to sing tuneless, disaffected rants. I sing tender love songs. This is what I'm good at. But I also realize that there's an opportunity in the chaos, and that I am perfectly able to morph, adapting what I do to suit the current climate without necessarily compromising the integrity of my songs. I can establish some sort of position, some kind of defensible space, and when the dust has settled, run my true colors up the mast. (235)

It is around this time that I first meet Miles Copeland, the man who would become our manager, Svengali, mentor, and agent provocateur. Miles Axe Copeland III is the eldest of the Copeland brothers. . . . Miles senior, one of the founding fathers of the CIA, had served as an operative in the crucial terroritories of Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt for its wartime genesis, the OSS. He had by his own admission brought down governments, sanctioned political assassinations, and acted as puppeteer to various bogus and corrupt regimes all over the Middle East. . . . After the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave near Qumran in 1947, they were sent to the CIA office in Damascus. Miles senior and his fellow spies couldn't make much sense of them in the tiny dimly lit office, so they took the first of the scrolls at hand up onto the roof, to get a better look. They had just unrolled the mysterious 2,000-year-old document from end to end on the flat, scorching concrete when a strong wind picked up and blew the fragile parchment into the air and across the rooftops of Damascus, where it fractured into a million pieces, never to be seen again. Miles senior and the CIA boys retired downstairs in some disarray. The precious scrolls were then entrusted to the more circumspect and cautious hands of trained archaeologists. I often wonder what was written on that scroll. (245-6)

Miles calls his brother next day, "drooling," as Stewart describes it. Yes, the company loved the song ["Roxanne"] too, and the executives there think it can be a hit, and if that turns out to be so we'll have our album released not on the tiny Illegal label but on the mighty A&M. Our excitement and anticipation are somewhat tempered that evening at the studio when Miles tells us he is not going to negotiate a large advance for us.
"Listen, a large advance is just a bank loan. What I want to sign is a single deal on this one song. If it's a hit, then I'll be able to negotiate a much better album deal and a higher royalty. If you can manage the way you have for the last year, without an advance, you'll reap the benefit in the long run."
This, again, was a shining example of Miles's legendary shrewdness. In contrast to the feudal relationship that most bands normally fall into when seduced by large advances, this was the beginning of a genuine partnership between the Police and the record company. We would benefit from more artistic freedom, and whatever we earned would be ours. (297)

. . . I realize what a pompous little fool I was. . . . (302)

A lot of the extras [on the set of Quadrophenia] keep twitching at me. I'm not sure I like being famous, but I also recognize that our appearance on television has telescoped the band into the new and undiscovered land of other people's awareness. There is a not-so-subtle change in the way strangers react around you, a distinct temperature change in any room you walk into, which is neither friendly or necessarily hostile, just different. After a while I will come to regard this altered perception to be as much a part of me as my eyes and ears. I will view the world, and the world will view me, through this distorting gauze, and nothing will remove it. (318-19)

I wonder how much pain he is in. Perhaps he needs another shot of morphine. He seems a hundred years old now. I look from his eyes to the cross on the wall and then down at his two hands cradled in mine. It is then that I receive something like the jolt of an electric shock, because apart from the color, his hands and mine are identical. . . . Why I had never noticed this before when it was so obvious?
"We have the same hands, Dad, look." I am a child again, desperately trying to get his attention.
He looks down at the four separate slabs of flesh and bone. "Aye, son, but you used yours better than I used mine." (328)

13nov2006 — From Thomas J. DiLorenzo's Lincoln Unmasked:

Lincoln "saved" the federal union in the same sense that a man who has been abusing his wife "saves" his marital union by violently forcing his wife back into the home and threatening to shoot her if she leaves again. (26)

As president, Lincoln tried repeatedly to get a colonization plan going, which he eventually did. In 1862 he invited a group of free black men into the White House to request that they lead by example and leave the country. . . . Thus, early in his administration Lincoln commenced a plan to eventually ship all black people out of the country. This is what Lerone Bennett, Jr., called Lincoln's "white dream." . . . The president then made his sales pitch for Liberia: "The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time. In a certain sense it is a success. The old president of Liberia . . . says they have within the bounds of that colony between 300,000 and 400,000 people. . . . Something less than 12,000 have been sent thither from this country. Many of the original settlers have died, yet like people elsewhere, their offspring outnumber those deceased."
This was not an offer one would jump at. Lincoln was telling the men that if they went to Liberia, most of them would probably die within a few years. But, if they procreated in the meantime, several decades hence their descendants would likely outnumber them. Little wonder Frederick Douglas had nothing but scorn for Lincoln's colonization schemes. (48-50)

Not only did Lincoln voice support for the proposed 1861 amendment to the Constitution that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery in his first inaugural address, but the amendment was his idea. (54)

The Massachusetts abolitionist [Lysander Spooner] also ridiculed Lincoln's quite absurd statement in the Gettysburg Address that he had been waging war for the principle of "a government of consent." In reality, the "consent" Lincoln advocated was: "Everybody must consent, or be shot." (60)

Lincoln's assertion in the Gettysburg Address that "a new nation" was created in 1776 (four score and seven years prior to 1863) was wrong on all counts. The founders never created a "nation" but a confederacy of states. And the Declaration of Independence never had the legal authority of either the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution. More important, the very words of the Declaration contradict Lincoln's theory of the absence of state sovereignty. The Declaration was, first and foremost, a Declaration of Secession from the British Empire. America was founded by a War of Secession. . . . The founders could hardly have thought that secession was an illegitimate act when it was what defined them politically. They were all secessionists, to a man. (88)

There is also growing evidence that intimidation of federal judges was a common practice of the Lincoln administration. In October 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia provost marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. circuit court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason for the arrest: the judge had carried out his constitutional duty to issue a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the provost marshal, allowing the man to have due process. The judge's actions were later vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court. After the war, the Court ruled that neither the president nor Congress can legally suspend habeas corpus as long as the civil courts are operating, as they certainly were in the Northern states in 1861. (94-5) [And as they are now, in our current state of habeas corpuslessness.]

In his first inaugural address Lincoln shockingly threw down the gauntlet of war over the tariff issue, literally threatening the invasion of any state that filed to collect the newly doubled tariff. On the issue of slavery he was 100 percent accommodating, going so far as to pledge his support for a constitutional amendment that would forever ban the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. But on tariff collection he was uncompromising and dictatorial. "[T]here needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it is forced upon the national authority."
What was he talking about? What might ignite bloodshed and violence? Failure to collect the tariff, that's what. After making the obligatory statement that it was his obligation to "possess the property and places belonging to the Government" he further stated that it was his duty "to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere." In other words, Pay Up or Die. Fail to collect the tariff, as the South Carolinians did in 1828, and there will be a military invasion, Lincoln announced. He would not back off when it came to tax collection, as President Andrew Jackson had done some three decades earlier. (127)

One of the major issues of contention during the great banking debate was whether or not currency should be redeemable in gold or silver. The Jeffersonians said yes, it should be, as a means of limiting the ability of banks to create inflation and to artificially boost the economy from time to time, creating boom-and-bust cycles in the economy. Money that was not redeemable in specie, asserted the Jeffersonians, was essentially counterfeit and would invariably lead to economic hardship.
The Whigs, and later the Republicans, were obsessed with solidifying their political power through patronage financed precisely by the printing of paper money that was not redeemable in gold or silver. They made nonsensical arguments that inflationary finance was somehow good for the nation's economy, but such arguments were vacuous even to economists at the time. (132-3)

Lincoln intimidated the Supreme Court by ignoring its rulings, placing federal judges under house arrest, illegally suspending habeas corpus, and even issuing an arrest warrant for the chief justice. He also intimidated Congress by deporting the most outspoken member of the loyal opposition. It wasn't until after the war [and after Lincoln's death] that the Supreme Court regained the courage and integrity to state the obvious and declare, in Ex Parte Milligan (1866), that: "The constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and it covers with its shield of protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of men that any of its great provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."
In other words, the Supreme Court said that it is precisely in times of national emergencies, such as war, that civil liberties must be defended and protected. If not, then governments will be given an incentive to constantly create crises, or perceptions of crises, as a means of grabbing more and more power. And more, governmental power always means less freedom for ordinary citizens. (168-9)

Cut to: "The Last Temptation of Blank," shot 1:

CHUCK NOBLET [staring at a bust of Abraham Lincoln]: Abraham Lincoln. [Pushes bust to the floor; it smashes]

Cardhouse Robot points out: You forgot Lincoln's Broads Address. Mhar. Mhar.

12nov2006 — Salacious comments from Sarah Jane on the Behind the Screens DVD; sprinkle randomly into your next sexual encounter. Or pornographic film shoot.

10nov2006 — Edward Kleiner: Jughead

The Jughead Zone Web Page He Calls His Own

The Jughead 4 Old Talk City Pages

The Jughead Zone Ebay Page

My favorite: Jughead Meets Stars at April 2003 Chiller Expo

Here is a photo of me and Liz Sheridan from Alf or the Glady Kravitz of Alf. . . . After that I met Virgina Hey for the second time and she did remember me. Then afterward I met an actress whos about to do a movie called Is This Seat Taken and she is Alanna Currie and here is a photo of me and her. . . . After that came Denise Mattingley and she is mostly a model and she was very friendly to me and here is a photo of me and her. . . . and her name is Kathleen Kinmont and she was super happy to meet me and here is a photo of me and her. . . . Next I met Pamela Sue Martin who played Nancy Drew from the old Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries and she signed my autograph book both Pamela Sue Martin and Nancy Drew and here is a photo of me and her. . . . After that I ran across Caroline Munro for the third time coming to Chiller that is the person I know from Noxema Commercials and she remembered me again and gave me a big hug in rememberance of seeing me the last two times and here is a photo of me and Caroline Munro third time seeing her. . . . After that I met up with Pamelyn Ferdin who played Lucy Winters that is a guest role on the Brady Bunch and that was the episode where Jan Brady bought the wig and she signed my autograph book both Pamelyn Ferdin and Lucy Winters. Next I got to see the Lost in Space Crew again briefly of Bill Mumy and Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen for the third time and after that Pamela Hazelton who works at Chiller also remembered me. After that I met up with another new actress of horror films who was super glad to meet me known as Debbie Rochon. Here is a photo of me and Debbie Rochon. . . . I was happy with many of the Chiller Models meeting them and here is a photo of me and my favorite one of all.

Or maybe this is my favorite: Jughead and His Big Day with the Celebrities

On April 15th of the Year 2000 a new Millenium and Century and Decade was one of the greatest times of my life as well as the day of my big cruise on the Carnival Triumph. . . . First person I went to was Karen Lynn Gorney who played Stephanie in the movie Saturday Night Fever. First I greeted her with a big handshake then I told her about my Webpages and how happy I was to come to the Chiller Expo and I told her "You were great as Stephanie in Saturday Night Fever" She then told me after I handed her a website flyer how proud she was of me in the way I took pride in my website. She then signed my autograph book that I bought at a Dollar Store in New Haven CT. She put in my autograph book, To Ed love Karen Lynn Gorney or Stephanie and with three hearts beside it wrote you are a sweet person" Then she posed with me in two very close poses with her arm around me. . . . After I was done with Karen Lynn Gorney or Saturday Night Fever Stephanie, I then went over to the table of the original Dennis The Menace actor Jay North. . . . I told him how I enjoyed everything he did on the Dennis The Menace Show. I even did some imitations of Hello Miss Cathcart or Hello Mr. Wilson that he did on the show. . . . After I was done with Dennis The Menace or Jay North I then went to the table of Paris Themmen. He played the part of Mike Tee Vee from the movie Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. He was amazed and fascinated that I remembered many of his lines from that movie since I told him that I owned the movie on video and seen it at least 100 times since it first came out. . . . I was getting a little impatient because I have watched all the Lost In Space Episodes all my life and I have waited all my life to meet them and talk to them and at this Chiller Expo I finally did. When my turn finally I finally told Bill how much I enjoyed watching Lost In Space and I got very excited finally meeting the Will Robinson of Lost In Space. I even told him I signed his guestbook with alot of my thoughts to him and when I told him my name he said he remembered that I did sign his guestbook. . . . I then went over to Penny Robinson or Angela Cartwright and first had a photo taken with her. She posed with her arm around me same as Karen Lynn Gorney did. After that I told how she did great as Penny Robinson and I gave her my website flyer as well. She told me she remembered my signing her guestbook with all the thoughts.

I thought I'd take a look around Angela Cartwright's guestbook to see what Jughead wrote, but I got scarededed & runned aways:

09nov2006 — Hymn haws

From "Righteous God Whose Vengeful Phials":

Righteous God! Whose vengeful phials
All our fears and thoughts exceed,
Big with woes and fiery trials,
Hanging, bursting o'er our head;

You think that's not a real hymn, don't you? In fact, it's from a collection of hymns by the brothers Wesley, entitled Hymns Occasioned by the Earthquake. If you liked that, you'll love this uber-confident quatrain from the hymn "Praise for the Gospel" by Isaac Watts (originally published in Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children) :

Lord, I ascribe it to Thy Grace,
And not to chance, as others do,
That I was born of Christian Race
And not a Heathen or a Jew.

08nov2006 — Belated Guy Fawkes Day greetings from a much-improved pup

07nov2006 — Continued Q & A

Q: At what point does one cast Jack Nicholson as Lenin?
A: At what point does one not?

Q: Is a BMW vanity license plate YAY ME as ridiculous as a pickup truck with the vanity license plate US FLAG?
A: No.

Q: How much does Beck's "Clap Hands" owe to Andy Prieboy and Wall of Voodoo's "Room With A View"?
A: Only Beck knows the A: to this one.

Q: Is the Free State Project kaput?
A: No (see How to Stage a Coup, American-Style)

Q: Does the voice of Middle America on Wonder Showzen have anything to do with the band Jon Wayne ("TEXas!")?
A: No, really—does it?

05nov2006 — Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Since government buildings don't appear to be exploding, let's find another way to celebrate. How about a nice pop quiz?

Q: How many of the bands who appeared in URGH! A Music War have been at it non-stop since then?
A: Only one*—The Cramps, and last night they were at it non-stop at the Marquee in Tempe. I went as much for the openers, The Demolition Doll Rods, as for the Cramps. I just about lost it to Margaret Doll Rod, bringing rock & roll to the jungle tribes. Hot. Preach it, Margaret. That Detroit sure knows how.

I was so happy after the DDRods set that I almost didn't care what the Cramps did. Until they did it, and then I did. And how.

First thought upon seeing them: Lux & Ivy hardly look like people any more. For most acts, that would be a handicap, but for The Cramps it's an asset that will continue to appreciate. Lux & Ivy have been at it for over three decades. Strangely, it's Lux who now resembles an old lady; Ivy is still Ivy, scowling, scorching, and careful to give you that look up her miniskirt whenever she bends over to pick up her guitar. If they're bored by now, they're hiding that shit. Ivy's aloof-er-than-thou-er than ever. And they still do a wild show, Lux drinking bottles of wine, spilling & spitting as much as he drinks. I'll bet their concert rider includes a case of club soda.

"Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love"—o my yes please and thank you.

And after the show, there was Margaret Doll Rod, big as candy, yum yum, and me with no Wagner. (The stupid Marquee Theater is a no-bringee bag-ee, pat-you-down-like-it's-prison, tack on service and parking charges kind of venue. 'tever, fuckers. I keep saying I won't go back there & then they go and book The Cramps and the Demolition Doll Rods.) And the drummer, Tia Doll Rod, was hanging around post-show, too, though she left without giving me her business card. So, what, you come to my town, play your rock & roll, and then just . . . leave? Cold. Very cold. It would've all been different if I'd actually met Tia Doll Rod. That no Wagner havin' sucks.

[SIDEBAR: I completely failed to recognize The Cramps' new bass player as Sean Yseult (formerly of White Zombie). Resemblance, resemblance, who's got the resemblance? Don't know, but how about a remembrance instead? [Cue dissolve] In April of 2005 I was at The Columns, a New Orleans bar/restaurant/hotel, sitting on the patio with Dr. Cliff the Evil Dentist and Tex Who's Never Been to Texas Though She Has Been Since. In walks Sean Yseult and her band, for a photo shoot. One of the band members was the complete Dave Navarro lookalike/stylealike and Dr. Cliff mentioned that the previous evening he'd been next to the guy at his local bar after work. Cliff had come straight from the clinic and was still wearing his medical scrubs. Without provocation, other than the musician's goatee, maybe, Cliff had turned to him and remarked, "Hey, look at this—I'm dressed like a doctor, and you're dressed like a rock star." The guy smiled, until Cliff finished: "...but I really am a doctor." "Owwwww," said the musician. Makes me happy, having friends like Dr. Cliff.]

[* Robb L. disputes my "only one," pointing to XTC, Joan Jett, Pere Ubu, X, and Gary Numan. So, in the words of the disgraced Ted Haggard, "I am a deceiver and a liar." How about if I say that while I'd be happy to time-travel to a 1980 concert by any of those bands, The Cramps are the only one I am happy to see in 2006? Take THAT, accuracy! (But let me just say that what I meant was that The Cramps are doing exactly what they were doing in 1980. In 1975, for that matter. They haven't "grown," or "matured," or "progressed" or had any other such horrible thing befall them.)]

03nov2006 — COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- The Rev. Ted Haggard, who resigned as one of the nation's top evangelical leaders, admitted Friday he had contacted a male prostitute for a massage and bought drugs from him.

Below is the first item from a list called "What he believes"on Haggard's not-yet-taken-down website:

The Holy Bible, and only the Bible, is the authoritative Word of God. It alone is the final authority for determining all doctrinal truths. In its original writing, the Bible is inspired, infallible and inerrant.

Well, fair enough. Let's move on to today's scripture reading, from Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapter 13:

1: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2: Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3: For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

You may recognize that as the passage that contributed to the dismal record of Xtian compliance under Hitler. But I think the question in the Haggard case is:

Q: If Pastor Ted Haggard really believes what is written in "the Holy Bible, and only the Bible," will he not certainly turn himself in and demand to be prosecuted for violating the drug laws of his "rulers," who are, according to the Bible, "minister[s] of God"?
A: Sure he will. Suuuuuuure he will. (See: Rush Limbaugh)

Haggard seems pretty proud of his previous media mentions:

Q: Will he at any point in the future include even one of his current media mentions?
A: If he is an honest man, yes. So, no.

03nov2006 — Cops, ever the same:

"I found I was in the hands of those who are not the most intelligent of mankind." — Pat Lyon, falsely accused of bank robbery, in 1798 Philadelphia, on Philadelphia's constable and his minions, in This Here's a Stick-up: The Big Bad Book of American Bank Robbery (p. 5)

Further bank robberyism:

On a cold January day, [Marshal Bill] Tilghman approached a ranch owen by a man named Will Dunn, who had been sympathetic to the Doolin Gang. He entered a dark room unarmed, and called out, "Hello?"
There was a fire in the middle of the room, and he stopped to warm his hands. When his eye adjusted to the darkness, Tilghman noticed that the room was full of bunk beds. And out of the edge of every bed, the barrel of a rifle was aimed at him.
Tilghman had accidentally entered the Doolin hideout. Eight men who apparently had no problem with killing a U.S. Marshal all had their weapons trained on him.
"Will," Tilghman asked the ranch owner as calmly as he could, "how does one get out of here?"
"The same damn way he got in," came the reply.
Tilghman turned around and walked out of the hideout, unharmed. Later, it was revealed that the gang had spotted the U.S. Marshal on his way in, but Doolin talked his men out of killing him. "Tilghman's too good a man to be shot in the back," he said. (36)

"My time is three-fourths done," [Butch Cassidy] said. "A few more months won't make much difference. I've got some property in Colorado that needs looking after, and I'd like to get a pardon."
"If it's your intention to go straight after you get out," said Governor Richards, "perhaps it could be arranged. Will you give me your word that you will quit rustling?"
"Can't do that, governor," Cassidy said, cutting right through the cow manure. "If I gave you my word, I'd only have to break it. I'm in too deep now to quit the game. But I'll promise you one thing: Give me a pardon, and I won't commit any more crimes in Wyoming."
Amazingly, it worked. . . . Cassidy was definitely a man of his word. As promised, Cassidy steered clear of Wyoming. (42, 43)

The FBI found [noted sociopathic bank robber Wilbur] Underhill inside, shot all to hell, but somehow still alive. In fact, Underhill survived a two-hour operation, and even joked about the shoot-out with reporters two days later. "Actually, I only got hit five times, but them shots made eleven holes in me," laughed Underhill. "I counted each one as they hit me. When I set sail, they sure poured it to me." . . . Underhill died 12 hours later. (82)

They had followed the Lamm Technique to the letter, with Dillinger and Hamilton "jugmarking" the bank ahead of time and taking detailed notes of the layout. The only snag: an elderly Asian woman who refused to stay put during the robbery. "I go to Penney's and you go to hell," she pronounced. Pierpont let her go. (100)

Gillis worked for a while busting heads for Al Capone's mob, but soon his brutality made even the racketeers wince, and they let him go. (Even mobsters have their standards. Years later, when Gillis, then known nationally as "Baby Face" Nelson, needed a place to hide, the Las Vegas mob gave him the cold shoulder. "Do us a favor," they said. "Die.") (123)

Years later, deep into a life sentence at Alcatraz, [Machine Gun] Kelly wasn't slinging the tough-guy talk around any more. He remorsefully said that five words were burned on the wall of his cell: "Nothing can be worth this." He died there, of a heart attack, on July 17, 1954. (131)

The job was a stunning success . . . [Alvin "Creepy"] Karpis's only complaint? "Courtney was doing a lot of gabbing with the pretty switchboard operator." That, and the fact that a bank employee pulled a mini-caper of his own, stuffing $10,000 in cash into his own pockets during the stick-up. (138)

Dock and Freddie Barker would do no more robbing. Dock was caught by FBI star agent [and future suicide] Melvin Purvis on the streets of Chicago. "Where's your gun?" asked Purvis.
"Home," replied Dock. "Ain't that a hell of a place for it?" (141)

Karpis swears that other agents pounced on him first, took his rifle away, then shouted for the FBI Director to come out of his hiding spot to do the honors. Either way, there's no denying that [noted sociopathic bureaucrat J. Edgar] Hoover's career soared after the capture of Karpis. "I made that son of a bitch," wrote Karpis. (141)

Willie the Actor [a.k.a. Willie Sutton] . . . used a variety of ruses and disguises—postal worker, cop, window cleaner with sponge—on at least a dozen more banks. It became fun to spot some of the code signals bank guards and managers used to warn each other in case of trouble. For instance, window blinds might be pulled halfway up until the bank guard pulled them up all the way, giving the signal that all was clear. Once, Sutton told a bank guard to turn the calendar in the front window up. "I thought he was going to fall right through the floor," recalled Sutton. (145-6)

On February 10, 1947, Willie Sutton and four other prisoners stole a set of guard uniforms and marched across the yard with two huge ladders. Spotlights swung in their direction. Sutton cried out, "It's okay!"
The bluff was lame, but it bought Sutton and his friends enough time to scale the wall, hijack an early morning milk truck, and race toward downtown Philadelphia. (147-8)

Open a medical textbook, and there's a good chance you'll find "Sutton's Law," which was inspired by the bank robber. In short, it means that it's never a bad idea to look at the simplest answer when diagnosing a patient. The term originated with a doctor from Yale who used the alleged Sutton quip—"Because that's where the money is"—with medical interns who were overlooking the obvious. (151)

But the Valley National job was definitely the Boys' greatest hit. Valley National wasn't your usual bank; it was basically a money warehouse, where stacks of unmarked bills sat waiting to be transported to various branches. Amazingly, there appeared to be very little security. Grandstaff had stumbled onto it one day, writes Weyermann in The Gang They Couldn't Catch, and after casing the building for three months, Grandstaff decided that it was time to strike. (175)

Grandstaff's case didn't go to trial until 1998, and when it did, the jury came back with a verdict of "not guilty." (The jury thought the FBI cut corners in pressing its case, hated Fennimore the snitch, and even considered the bankers from Valley National "unlikable.") (177)

$3,300,000
This much cash, when piled into a tower, is 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, 5 feet long, and weighs about 350 pounds. That's what David Grandstaff and his two partners stared at after they robbed the Valley National Bank in Tucson, Arizona, in 1981—at the time, the largest cash heist in history. (251)

Grandstaff never admitted his role in the Valley National job to anyone, including author Weyermann, even though the two had become close friends during the writing of her book. (It was her assertion, however, that Grandstaff was responsible.) When the book was published in 1994, Weyermann caught flack for romanticizing Grandstaff and his crimes. "I'm telling a story as it happened, and if people think he's romantic, well the, maybe he is," Weyermann told a reporter from the Arizona Republic. "We do have a history in this country of liking outlaws when they seem to be doing it for reasons other than murder and mayhem." (177)

Mitchell's so-called "Stopwatch Gang" was grade-A Hollywood caper movie material: They were cool, polite professionals who prided themselves on being in and out of a bank in less than two minutes. Not even the waitstaff at Applebee's works that fast. They also were fond of wearing masks of ex-presidents, and they never fired a single shot during any caper. "I've never even had a bullet in the chamber," said Mitchell, who in his prime bore a resemblance to actor Tom Selleck. Even his dogged pursuers fell for his charm. "There is a rare quality to him," said U.S. Marshal David Crews. "He has a certain kind of old-style integrity, a criminal ethic you don't see much these days." America hadn't seen such a gentleman robber since Willie Sutton. In fact, Mitchell's only crime against innocent civilians was inspiring the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze stinker, Point Break. (182)

02nov2006 — Greetings, flower lovers! Might one of you send me the name this flower (gathered in southern California, along the Pacific Coast highway)?

Says Kim S.: I'm no expert and that flower looks to have seen better days but put me down for the Asclepias speciosa, commonly known as the Showy Milkweed.

But does the showy milkweed have a strong scent -- almost skunk-like, but in a pleasant sort of way?

Says Kim S.: I can't find any reference to the scent of the Showy Milkweed but it makes sense for it to have a offensive odor since Milkweeds can be toxic. So don't eat it no matter how badly it smells good.

01nov2006 — Michael Feldman (of PRI's comedy quiz radio show "Whad'Ya Know?") explains a bit he used to do when he drove a cab for Union Cab of Madison, Wisconsin.

Feldman: Oh, you know what we've got, we've got this special because of the Union Cab reunion—25 years of Union Cab. I promised something for you, here. Uh, the only thing I really achieved while being a cab driver—I ate all my tips (all eight dollars)—was, we would do these things called "The Dispatcher." Perry Benson would sit in his little dispatching booth there in the office, and while he was actually dispatching, he would stop all traffic so the cab drivers would have to sit there and listen to this for a minute and a half or two minutes each time. And he would be dispatching cabs and I would ask him some absurd question or some question that only he could answer, in his own way. And that became "The Dispatcher," and we played that on an earlier radio show that I had. . . . But "The Dispatcher" was for real, while he was dispatching cabs.

[Cut to audio:]

The Dispatcher: Twenty-one, did you pick up a crankshaft along with that crankcase assembly at Denny's?

Feldman: Thirty-three.

The Dispatcher: I'm tryin' to hear Twenty-one and Twenty-one only. Twenty-one, you'll have to go back and get the shaft. . . . Twenty-three, what's your progress? Not your life story, Twenty-three. Just your progress. . . . Thirty-four, try it again, you're breaking up.

Feldman: Thirty-three.

The Dispatcher: Thirty-three, you're strong but wrong. Save the question. I wanna hear from Thirty-four only. Thirty-four, you're coming in extremely garbled; did you say "pork bellies" or "near [unintelligible; sounds like fellies]"? I'm just getting the carrier wave, Thirty-four. Try moving the cab and get back to me. Try it, Thirty-three.

Feldman: What determines longevity?

The Dispatcher: Longevity seems to be an accident of birth and geography which has shown wide fluctuations throughout history. The Bible indicates that before the Flood, man lived to an average age of nine hundred and twelve; nine hundred and ten, if he smoked. After the Flood, his stock dropped to three hundred seventeen, suggesting the degree to which God had tired of his creation. Secular investigation reveals that prehistoric man lived to age eighteen and died of a blow to the head. Thanks largely to improved nutrition, an eighteen-year-old today is merely stunned by a blow to the head. Lifespan has crept up slowly over the years. Vikings, for example, retired at twenty-three. Surprisingly, during the Middle Ages, no one was, since thirty was pushing it. The average longevity in New England in 1789 was thirty-five point five years, which is why the Founding Fathers set the minimum age to the presidency at thirty-five. Statistically, Scandanavians live longer than anyone except French women. Americans live longest in states where there are the fewest reasons for doing so: South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and the winner, Nebraska, where a woman inevitably lives to be seventy-four. Conversely, a man in Arkansas is as good as dead. Clergymen outlive athletes but college graduates die at the same rate as everybody. The average married man lives two thousand and five days longer than a single man, at which time his wife will bury him. According to Metropolitan Life, policy holders live two-and-one-half years longer than the uninsured--or, approximately the time required to earn the premiums.

Feldman: 10-4.

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

(Show of 11sep2004; further (though unrelated) cab dispatcher humor from The Blank Top Chronicles)

31oct2006 — Against all odds, the sick puppy begins to improve. Keep those cards & vibes coming.

29oct2006 — Please send out good vibes to a very sick puppy.

28oct2006 — The always entertaining Emi Guner on language and boob warts:

Dear Marc, be happy you're American. I'm Swedish. Sweden's a small country filled with Swedes, speaking an archaic language understood by roughly 9 million people and (perhaps) a handful of Danes.

Your language is beautiful and varied, enrichened by the creative, violent and strange history behind it.

You have words like nipple. A wonderful, fun, pert little word. Know what nipple is called in Swedish? Bröstvårta. Breast wart. All tingly now? It's like a word made up by a dull viking, intending to kill all sensuality by use of language alone.

You have areolas. We have vårtgård. A wart yard. Touch it. Would you? Why would anyone ever want to?

27oct2006 — Mises.org's Mark Brandly on the government-controlled theft that is inflation:

According to the Consumer Price Index, the 2005 price level was 6.7 times higher than it was in 1959. However, in the absence of an expanding money supply, the price level would have been one–fifth as high as it was in 1959. Due to economic growth, the price level in this period would have fallen by 80 percent. Therefore, the expanding money supply over the last 46 years has resulted in a current price level over 34 times higher than it otherwise would have been.

Let's put this in everyday terms. Suppose these estimates represent the changes in the prices of goods such as hamburgers, cars, and housing. According to these numbers, a hamburger that cost 60¢ in 1959 would have cost $4 in 2005. If the money supply had been fixed, however, that hamburger would only cost 12¢ today. Similarly, a $20,000 car in 2005 would have cost slightly less than $3,000 in 1959. Again, without the monetary effect on prices, that car would only cost $600 today. The price of a $45,000 house in 1959 would have increased to $300,000 in 2005. With a fixed money supply, that house would cost $9,000 today.

Meanwhile, some good news:

Assimilated Press: "Authors Of Left Behind Books Become Pagans"

Sedona, Arizona - In a development that is sure to shock their mighty legions of fans, authors of the very popular Left Behind books, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, have renounced their conservative fundamentalist beliefs and have switched to Paganism. In a statement released today, they said that Paganism best suits their new philosophy that all of God's creatures are precious and deserving of protection.

Both LaHaye and Jenkins spoke to Assimilated Press while on a spiritual retreat in the desert resort community of Sedona. In this free ranging discussion they expressed sorrow for the hatred and intolerance that results from extreme interpretations of religious doctrine and apologized to people of all faiths for any offenses they may have committed through their Left Behind series of novels. Said LaHaye, "We were filled with hate when we wrote those books and now we are filled with love."

And speaking of reality tunnels:

I decided to call the basic unit of perception 1 Rashomon, after the famous movie which told the same story from four points of view. Seeing one point of view would correspond with 0.25 Rashomons. Seeing "both sides" of a question would yield 0.5R, and exploring four viewpoints or models would give 1 R. Seeing eight contradictory viewpoints would yield 2 R, or RR, which I named "the Rabinowitz Factor" after my friend, the composer Robert Rabinowitz, leader of the Nine Unknown Men. As an exercise, whenever I see an RR (on a railroad crossing sign for instance), I try to look at whatever challenges I have in my life from eight viewpoints or models. Eric Wagner, An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, p. 98

25oct2006 — From the memoirs of Ed Schieffelin, founder of Tombstone, Arizona:

After he had gone, George says to me, "That fellow won't do any prospecting." "Why?" I says. "Oh, he is no prospector. He ain't shaped right." (26)

If you want to get real badly scared, just get caught in a box canyon once during one of those thunderstorms or cloud bursts, as they are usually called in Nevada and Arizona. Once will do you, and you always afterward will take good care to be out of them whenever there is one of those storms coming up.
For to be riding down one of those box canyons so thick along the Colorado River in some places and no immediate place in which to get out, the walls on either side hundreds of feet high and hear that roar that you ever afterwards recollect and won't mistake it either, coming along getting nearer and nearer and you have no idea how much further you will have to go before there is a break in the walls so that you can get out and wait for it to pass, which only takes a few minutes. It don't seem to travel fast but you undertake to get away from one once, and you will think that it travels with the speed of lightning. And after they say that under very dangerous circumstances all the mean things a man ever done in his life, in fact his whole life comes up before him. But I don't think you would have time to think much about your meanness when going down a canyon on the run with your pack mule with her head up and two or three jumps ahead of you, and you every jump digging the spurs in to the flanks of your horse trying to make him increase his jumps. And looking back over your shoulder, see that roll of water, mud, logs, sticks and rocks making a wall six or eight geet high, tumbling and rolling, sweeping all before it, and knowing that at least half a mile had to be made over the rocks, cactus, brush and such things without any road before you would have a chance to escape, you would think of anything but that desired place. And until you was out on the side looking at it sweep by, that you would know that you ever lived before. (37-8)

As usual I was alone and the nearest white man to me was in St. George that I had left the day before. And if they had have known what I was, would have been glad had I met the fate that at first seemed there was no escape from. And afterwards, look more miraculous to me than at the time. Before I got to St. George, on my road, a young Mormon overtook me, and we traveled together for three or four days. And he warned me to do no prospecting in that country at that time. For he said, "You no doubt have heard," which I had, "Of parties coming down here into the Buckskin Mountains and never being heard of. The Mormons could tell what had become of them if they was a mind to. So you go on about your business. Nobody here would suspect you of being a prospector, but would take you for some cattle dealer from some of the mining camps up in Nevada down here looking for beef. And if you keep your mouth shut they won't know the difference, and there are lots of those Mountain Meadows massacre fellows in here one place and another. (41-2)

Before any of my party had a chance to speak, I turned loose. I says, "Don't let us turn back, boys, without giving it a trial. We have gone to a great deal of expense in outfitting and have got four months' provisions and what can we do with it. There is no place to sell it. Besides the boat, it will be a dead loss, for we can't eat it, nor do anything but leave it. Besides there is a large party here; take us all horsemen and all. And we don't know what they might have found. Nor but what they might have had some object in sending such word under the circumstances. Their grub must have been pretty short by this time, if not altogether, and had to come in to get more, and had found good prospects but couldn't stay to work them. And on coming in and finding that there was such a crowd going, had sent that word to discourage us to turn us back. And I am 'not' going back." (54)

I says, "There must be something wrong with the Shamrock, and we had better land, go down and see." Which we did, and all this the fellow with the hat was coming up towards us just a sailing and as soon as he got in hearing distanced, he helloed to Oliver, who was ahead. "Oliver, the Shamrock is sunk, and all is going to hell. And if yee's will set us across the river so that we can go back, we will be much obleedged to yee's."
We walked along down with him, and he was giving the trip fits and anybody connected with it, in his Irish brogue, which was somewhat amusing. Although for them, very unfortunate, and when we got to the rock, sure enough the Shamrock, in trying to get around that rock, had upset and everything that they had that would float was going, dancing over the waves, down the river. Blankets, clothes, all such things was strung along down the river as far as the eye could see. They had saved nothing, only their lives and the boat. And one poor fellow had taken off his clothes, down to an undershirt and drawers, which was all he had. (55-6)

So we had to come away and leave Dulin in the river. We coud go up on the top of the cliff and look down at the place where Oliver thought he sank but we could see nothing. The river is always muddy and very much so in the spring. There seemed to be an eddy where he sank so no doubt he is there yet. For they say the Colorado River never gives up its dead. But it seemed so hard to have come away and leave him there in the river without trying to get him out, but what could we do? We couldn't get our boat up there, and without a boat it was impossible to get to where he had sunk. And to lose a comrade in that out of the way place, wild, terrible, dismal place was too horrible to think about. And I imagined I could hear him calling not to leave him. Friends may die surrounded with comfort of Brothers or Sisters where they can see the flowers and trees or at least fields of level country and causes us a great deal of grief. But to die in that dark and life forsaken place and be left there was more appalling I believe than it is possible for it to occur in any other way or place.
But it had to be done and the next morning we got into our boat. . . . (60)

And I reported Dulin's death by a sworn statement before a notary, who happened to be there at the time and who said would have it published in a Pioche paper as soon as he got there. Then we rented a wagon out and brought in the other two boys and that ended that trip. Lost a man and never made a single quarter. (61)

I don't believe that a centipede's feet are poison, at least to have one crawl over you won't hurt you, for I had it tried on me once. I don't know what might have happened had I hurt it so that it had have stuck its feet into my flesh as they say it does when either frightened or hurt. And then I doubt it, for they have fangs and that is where I think their poison comes from. (63)

It was at Tucson in the summer of '77. . . . But it was no go. With very few exceptions they wouldn't look at it and those that did pronounced it very low grade. And a man that at that time would have put up $150 or $200 would have owned half of Tombstone, for with that much money then I could have found any mine there was in Tombstone of any account, because there was no prospectors in the country and before anybody had have found them out, I would have had them all. (63-4)

I had found that Tucson was no place for a prospector. At least not for me. (64)

So taking his gun, mine always being in my hands, and when eating, across my lap, we slipped cautiously along the bank through the tall grass and low willows that grew along the sides, keeping our eyes open, and out of sight, but always so that we could see the place in the willows where the smoke was slowly raising in a small spiral column. The very embodiment of a novelist's Indian fire. (68)

In August, being out of provisions, no clothes and only five dollars in money, which in those days was none at all, I took some ore and went to Tucson to see what I could do, and I very soon found out. For they would neither look at me or the ore and said that they didn't want any mines. Government contracts and Posts was good enough for them and that a man was foolish to be spending his time looking for imaginary fortunes. He ought to be at work somewhere. Go take up a ranch and be somebody. . . . So I had to go back, as I came, only a little mad and more determined. (80)

[Reporter:] "Do you intend to settle down now?"
[Schieffelin:] "No, I detest city life. I am now on my way to Nevada, where I shall prospect again. If the country is what I think it is, I shall stay a few months; otherwise I shall not." (91)

And I went in and holy Moses, what a dinner, a pot pie, or stew, nice fresh bread, milk and butter. What a spread for a lean, lanky, hungry man like me to set down to, who had been living on venison and who for two years had not sat down to such a table where there was plenty of fresh milk and butter. And didn't it taste good. Wasn't I the happiest man in Arizona, and didn't I eat. And she kept piling it on. I made no apologies for they wasn't necessary. She expected me to eat, and I fully realized her expectations. God bless her. I never saw her afterwards. (94-5)

That night we taxed the keg of whiskey and got a little merry but not drunk because we didn't have it there for that purpose. (104)

[The San Francisco Chronicle on Schieffelin:] He may be recognized on the streets of San Francisco by his ample growth of dark hair, his frontier bearing and border costume. There is not a drinking man in the expedition. In fact, the entire supply of liquor for the three years' campaign consists of ten gallons of whisky and five gallons of brandy, and yet the party of five take along 7,000 pounds of flour and 500 pounds of coffee. (110)

Then I saw what I thought my eyes had deceived me in, and that he had drawn the foreskin over the head of his penis and tied a string around it. The only semblance of clothing, if that might be called, such that he had on. I asked Ned what the devil was that string there for. "Why," he says, "they don't consider they are naked when that is on. Don't you see, it hides the head of it. And that according to their custom is what they call naked. When one of those others over there that is naked gets up, if he hasn't got the string on, he will cover it with his hand or something." Which was true. For a few minutes before I had noticed one of them walking across the floor and holding his hand over it. And that with the indifference in which those other three was walking around, together with Ned being well acquainted with their habits, having, until a year or two previously, lived within a few miles of that village for a few years, and was conversant with their habits. At least that was his explanation, and from what I saw I believe it. It is a little, the lightest evening dress that I ever saw. A piece of string about the size of an ordinary shoe string and about a foot long. But it shows what custom does. (121-2)

24oct2006 — From The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins:

Here's another weird example of the privileging of religion. On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.8 Faithful members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet the Supreme Court ruled, in 2005, that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they 'believe' they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman. (22)

The fact that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation was early stated in the terms of a treaty with Tripoli, drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (40)

The following statement of Jefferson is indistinguishable from what we would now call agnosticism:

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise . . . without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

Christopher Hitchens, in his biography Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, thinks it likely that Jefferson was an atheist, even in his own time when it was much harder:

As to whether he was an atheist, we must reserve judgment if only because of the prudence he was compelled to observe during his political life.But as he had written to his nephew, Peter Carr, as early as 1787, one must not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. "If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in this exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you." (42)

In my interview with [James] Watson as Clare, I conscientiously put it to him that, unlike him and Crick, some people see no conflict between science and religion, because they claim science is about how things work and religion is about what it is all for. Watson retorted: "Well I don't think we're for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, `Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose.' But I'm anticipating having a good lunch." We did have a good lunch, too. (100)

I was irresistibly reminded of Peter Medawar's comment on Father Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, in the course of what is possibly the greatest negative book review of all time: "its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself." (154)

The political power of America's Ten Commandment table-toters is especially regrettable in that great republic whose constitution, after all, was drawn up by men of the Enlightenment in explicity secular terms. If we took the Ten Commandments seriously, we would rank the worship of the wrong gods, and the making of graven images, as first and second among sins. Rather than condemn the unspeakable vandalism of the Taliban, who dynamited the 150-foot-high Bamiyan Buddhas in the mountains of Afghanistan, we would praise them for their righteous piety. What we think of