You down with V-E-Z?

I happened to pick up a paper and happened to glance at an ad where two small words caught my eye: "El Vez". Once again Elvis was with me, and he guided me to his only begotten (though illegitimate) son to receive his wisdom. I'm no Presleyterian, but I knew it had to be a sign from above.

I travelled to The Abbey at 9pm. The performance area is all painted up as stone, with evil lephrechauns and druids and other Irishy things. They also employed as many Irish people as they could- sure would be nice to have an accent that would get you gainful employment in foreign countries without concern for work visas. I don't really like Irish beer, so I had a Fosters. I ordered some curried fries from the kitchen to go with my beer. Very tasty.

The crowd: 60% Chicago Kids. This is the fastest growing population in town. Guys: Beige clothing that straddles the border between casual and business casual, with pockets in unusual places . Girls: Cat's eye glasses, shoulder-length hair tied in a pony tail, tank top.

20% Rockabillys. The ticket held two rockabilly bands, so I saw many pompadours and Betty Rubble haircuts. There's this weird subculture in Chicago that goes to rockabilly shows and dresses in the styles of the 50's and make tiki lounges out of their houses. It's odd, but they're all good people. They just wanna bop. As El Vez sez, "United we stand, divided we fall, use lots of hairspray, your hair will stand tall."

10%: Those old fat guys with goatees and long hair that seem to sort of work/hang out in every bar.

10% Misc, including a couple that looked about 80, a few punks including a little bitty four-foot one, two hispanic guys, and the mother and sister of one of the Elvettes)

I played "spot the rockstar" in the pre-show crowd. This is only fun when you don't know the band, and you try to guess who they were. It's very hard at a rock show, where everybody's trying to be one. Wait, do I see velvet pants? One of the old goateed guys gave it away by bringing them their towels and bottled water.

I, of course, wore my cowboy shirt, the one with the two royal flushes embroidered into the chest. There aren't many occasions where that shirt is appropriate, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. So I'm sittin there eating my curried fries when that long-haired towel guy asked me if I was in the band! I couldn't help it- I busted out laughing when I should have been demanding whiskey.

Angel Retentive showed up with her friend Jim. I had blabbed to the whole office earlier about El Vez, and Angel thought it sounded fun but it was her Scrabble night with Jim and so they decided to risk it. They weren't disappointed.

First up: The Blue Moon Boys. Their lead singer could have been right outta Grease except for the tattoos and wallet chain. He was very dramatic, high kicking and smoking and strutting around. He also could actually sing musical notes!


Next up, the New Duncan Imperials, shown here with a naked Mojo Nixon.. These guys were amazing. Imagine if Ted Nugent got a brass section and put on a beige tux with salmon ruffles, a steel blue bow tie, and a straw hat. It was like rockabilly and late-70's guitar were combining to bring hair to unprecedented heights. They were big goofs, spraying toilet paper into the audience with a leaf blower and envoking lots of audience participation. I can't wait to see them again at their Thanksgiving show.

Then El Vez entered the building. I can't really describe his music, except that it's like Elvis with a latin touch and everything else imaginable thrown in. It has a very universal appeal- I would recommend downloading one of his Elvis covers to start. He opened with James Brown's "Saved", with both he and the Elvettes in boxing robes and gloves.

There were many costume changes, including El Vez as an Aztec god, an angel, and an outfit with a huge picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the back. That one was for a song about Guadalupe that included a robed band member transforming a bouquet of roses into a picture of her. I wish my friend Guadalupe could have been there.

For a song about safe sex, he came out in an Elvis jumpsuit- only it was black mesh with a big leather belt studded with gold. He and the Elvettes flung silver-glitter-wrapped condoms into the crowd.

He made us honorary Mexican-Americans for the night. His message was very uplifting, about living a positive life and loving your neighbor. It's all about the U.S. as the promised land, and he even sang an ode to peace in the middle east in the form of a rock'n'roll Hava naGila.

Catch him if he comes your way- unless you can't stand Elvis's music, you'll enjoy it. He puts on quite a show. To him, though, he's just doing Elvis's work.

"Is Johnny coming to lunch with us today?" said one of my coworkers.

"I don't know. Let's check and see if he brought his balls with him." said Brooklyn.

I busted up laughing, of course. They give me shit because I eat lunch with my sweetheart every chance I get. Y'see, I'm one of those rare people in a relationship who actually enjoys the company of their partner. So while many fellas look at work as a chance to get away from their significant other, I look at it as something that takes me away.

I'm not about to ramble on about what makes people hate the people they love, because I really have no insight into it. I've let relationships go on longer than they should, but there's a difference between falling out of love and intensely despising the person you're with. That's why I've never cheated on anyone- I've never been in a situation where I disrespected the person that I had a commitment to enough to betray their trust. I understand it when I see two people who care about each other very deeply but have concrete needs that cannot be satisfied in the relationship- I know why they fight and make up all the time. But couples for whom there's never good times? I guess it's similar to the force that causes women to stick with men who abuse them. I've always told my SOs that they should leave me on the spot if I ever hit them in anger... but it's not really a problem when your sweetie can kick your ass. :)

The downside, of course, of being so close is that you can't function apart. She's gone for six days, and I'm worthless. I just mope around... getting sad over things like drinking coffee because we usually have a cup together in the morning before work. Spending hours at the gym because there's no reason to go home. Even staying late at work.

Oh, well. Only two more days. This will help me not to take her for granted so much. And appreciate that I have someone to miss.

"Make no mistake about it: This is good versus evil," President Bush said after talks at the White House with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Speaking of the terrorists who launched the Sept. 11 assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush said: "These are evildoers. They have no justification for their actions.There's no religious justification, there's no political justification. The only motivation is evil."

This is our Commander in Chief, folks.

Great issue of The Onion this week. The best I've ever seen. Great way to poke fun at the things that need poking fun at, while still being respectful of the dead. My favorite headlines:

"God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule"
"Report: Gen X Irony, Cynicism May Be Permanently Obsolete"
"Jerry Falwell: Is That Guy A Dick Or What?"

Plus, Laurie Anderson in the AV Club!

An Afghan perspective I found interesting. Some deletia since I didn't wanna reprint the whole thing:

"I've been hearing a lot of talk about 'bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age'... I am from Afganistan. I speak as one who deeply hates the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. My hatred comes from first-hand experience. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think of 'the people of Afghanistan', think 'the Jews in the concentration camps'. It's not only that the Afghan people have nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators.
-Tamim Ansary in LiveJournal

I keep seeing this one graffiti tag all over the place. It isn't the good kind, the guerilla art stuff. I love that stuff. This is the bad kind of graffiti, the kind that gives the muralists a bad name, the defacing kind. The kind that's just somebody scrawling their name rather than creating a piece of work. You see this shit everywhere, I don't know who first thought it would be cool to scrawl your name on a wall or scratch it into the plexiglass windows of the train. I wish all the petty crap-graffiti would go away, and that the backs of all facades in town were covered in graffiti art. The back of a building's false front is a popular place for a tag, since the train goes by at that level plus you don't have to hang off of anything to paint it.

There is this one tag that somebody had to risk major death to paint. As you come into Chicago on the skyway, there's some sort of huge, 8-or-10 story contraption of rusted steel, I don't know what it is. My best guess would be that it's a ship lifter. At any rate, this thing is smack dab in the middle of the industrial hell that spans from southern Chicago all the way to beautiful Gary, Indiana. Somebody trekked in the middle of the night deep into this jungle, climbed those ten stories, and hung off the top to paint "The Wolf Pack". Well, the tag worked on me. I am firmly convinced that the Wolf Pack is full of baaaad motherfuckers.

But this one, this one I see everywhere, it's always in the oddest of places. Like inside an I-beam under an overpass, or on the side of a "Don't Walk" sign. It's not done very well at all, looks like little kid handwriting. It's just a name:

"Jimmy Carter"

Looks like a certain ex-president is getting a little bored with being a diplomat.

Think back. Think waay back, through the misty cataract of memory, back in time. Think back to a time of rotary phones, and soda can tabs that came off. Back when only doctors had pagers, and only baseball catchers wore their hats backwards. Back, back. Back in "the day".

Do you remember when a salad had just one kind of lettuce in it?

Oh, maybe if Ma wanted to fancify things a bit, she'd throw in some spinach greens. But very rarely did the number of types of greens in a salad exceed three, unless it was some sort of mixed greens special.

I haven't had a salad with fewer than 15 types of greens in at least a year. House salad, caesar salad, side salad, whatever you order, it's that same mix of iceberg lettuce, boston lettuce, spinach greens, turnip greens, radish greens, mustard greens, carrot stems, maple leaves, parsley, clover, romaine lettuce, and other various roughage that's guaranteed to have you making Hershey's Kisses in your drawers. And that's just the foundation for whatever they wanna put in the salad!

Obviously it's done to make it look spiffier, since the stuff comes in all shapes and colors. Make you think that the $7.95 you're paying for a house salad is a good deal. I mean, instead of a bunch of lettuce, they've got a lot less of a lot more kinds of lettuce! Tres shwanky! But there are serious flaws in the presumption that more types of greens makes a better salad.

First of all, some of that stuff is more fibrous than bark. When I wanna eat food that would require as many stomachs as a cow has to digest, generally I want to be prepared for it. I want to order the "High-Colonic Special" on purpose, not receive it when I'm expecting something that's merely to be a bed for my Babe The Blue Ox partially-cooked meat slab.

Secondly, some of those greens have a very prominent taste. Generally, I like this. If you want to throw a flavorful herb into stir fry, or into a salad to give it a specific taste, great. But ALL of them? I mean, I like every spice on my spice rack, but I don't use ALL of them at once! The salad tastes like the vegetable version of All Spice flavored chips. (For those of you who have not enjoyed Ontario as a test market for U.S. food products, you definitely should. Even better than trying something a year before it comes out is trying the things that never make it to the U.S., like a chip that contains the spices from every other flavor of chip that they make. And they made a lot of flavors- pickle, ketchup, cheeseburger, pizza, etc etc).

Thirdly, it's a salad. It's freakin' greens. You cannot, through diversity, color, and texture, make a bowl of greens that much more exciting than a single piece of lettuce. I've never gotten a rush, a quick intake of breath, upon viewing any combination of salad greens. They just don't get me all hot and bothered. If they get you all hot and bothered, seek help.

The film of the second crash with the flying mystery object is available here from Fox News. It's in "East Angle Second Plane Hits Tower" and you can't miss it- something flies behind the towers right after the crash. The government claims that the fighter jets reached the city minutes, and not seconds, after the crash. I'm interested to hear what you think it could be.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't cry. My problem is that I read the paper, or watch the news, and every day there's something that I just can't handle. Did you see that CEO of Cantor-Fitzgerald? Amazing. Not the sort of compassion you'd expect from a brokerage CEO, but then again, most of them don't face many hardships in life. This guy lost 700 employees, every one who was at work that day. He said his remaining 200 employees voted, against his wishes, to return to work- so that the company can support 700 families. Incredible.

Today, it was the story about the guy who was shot and killed in Phoenix just for being remotely Arab-looking. The worst part about a murder like that is that every non-terrorist immigrant in this country came here for a better life, because they wanted to be here, in America, instead of amid the poverty and death of their former home. To arrive only to be shot and killed because of prejudice...

And now Bush says, "Wanted: Osama bin Laden, Dead Or Alive." Well, that's just great. I mean, the guy ain't comin' in alive (if he doesn't kill himself, then I doubt the marines will be gentle), but to openly flaunt the ideas of due process, of justice, of the sanctity of human life... scary words, from a president. And I've still got a year before I'm out of the Selective Service. Last November, I thought one year would be a piece of cake.

I've been thinking about the draft. Obviously we're a long way from needing it. I think it's criminal, of course, to legally shanghai someone into killing others at the whim of some general with a pocket stuffed full of defense contractor kickbacks who needs to kill some brown people to justify his job, is an atrocity. Now, they could make it quite acceptable in my eyes if you were given the choice between military service and service in some sort of Americorps work-for-your-country deal. Make it mandatory at 18. It would serve our country well to make all those big-pants-wearin' brats actually do some work, if only for a year. Working in the paper mill sure as hell got my ass through college. Don't I sound like a codger? Young whippersnappers today, they don't know what it was like, back in the 90's!

I guess my point is that there are people who want to serve, and people who don't. Everybody has a duty to their country, of course, I just wish that we spent as much money helping the third-world conditions in this country as much as we did on fusing the sand into glass in some faroff land.

You know the solution, of course. If the military needs people, how about lettin' in all these women and queers who want to join up, before conscripting a bunch of straight stoner guys who will make lousy soldiers? You're telling straight men they gotta kill for Uncle Sam, and to get to them, you gotta shove aside a straight woman who would probably make a killer pilot, a big butch leatherman who's probably already got a uniform (only with the buttocks cut out), and a diesel dyke who's ready to bite the adams apple out of the next terrorist she finds. And if you think sissy boys can't fight, ask one of the increasing number of homophobes who set out to do some gay-bashing and end up getting their asses kicked by a couple of faggots. Plenty of people who want to serve, can't. Why should only future politicians be able to get out of military service? ;)

Of course, there are women in the military. But don't they still keep them out of combat? I know some women in Desert Storm got a chance to kick some ass, but I don't know the official situation. As for queers, well, I've met plenty of queers who joined up to get laid, discovered that it sucks to be someone's property, and try to get out by telling their C.O. that they're gay- only to be told, "So?". What's this country coming to, when you can't even get kicked out of the Navy for being a "Rear Admiral"? Next thing you know, we won't be able to skip jury duty just by telling the lawyers that you hate everybody ;).

---

Some guy's bitching in the paper about how we're mistreating the flag by displaying it everywhere. How it's gotta be lit, taken down in the rain, can't be worn as clothing, can only be attached to the right rear bumper of a car, etc etc. What a load. I remember all that sacred-flag hoo-ha from Boy Scouts, and it makes no sense. If you're gonna show some patriotism, put that flag everywhere! Shirts, windows, cars, trees, tattoos. Likewise, allow people to burn the flag as a political statement. When Congress starts talking about banning self-expression through flag burning, Thomas Jefferson starts spinnin' in his grave and the slave lady ends up on top.

And what a show of patriotism in my neighborhood! First off, as an aside, can I say Why? O why, has it taken me 25 years to move to a neighborhood where people actually have those "La Cucaracha" horns in their cars? I love it! That said, I'm amazed at the number of cars with a huge U.S. flag flying from it with a little Puerto Rican flag underneath. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, seeing as they are Americans, but before I met any PRs I assumed they were bitter about their lack of representation- I guess lack of taxation makes up for it in an age where people don't really feel that the voters choose anything. We sure didn't choose our current president.

There's a six-month-old Leno joke in there somewhere. "Puerto Ricans finally feel like residents of the 51st state, now that the rest of America is just as disenfranchised..."

At any rate, every PR I've ever met considers themselves to be just as American as I. I'm sure that's not how rural America feels about it*. But lower taxes and lower labor costs are luring companies to Puerto Rico, with the help of their big promotional campaing, "If it's made in Puerto Rico, it's made in the U.S.A." So I guess they can put that little American flag on the tag of any clothing made there. But then you can't throw the clothing away. ;)

---

*Until there's a crappy job to be filled, of course. I hear rural states are pushing for more relaxed immigration policies, just so we can get enough people to work all the shitty jobs that Americans won't work because unemployment is so low. What was that joke Brooklyn told me? Stand up comedian says, "Are there any Irish folks in the house?"
(applause)
"Any German folks, any folks of German descent?"
(applause)
"What about Mexicans, any Mexicans here?"
(silence)
"Of course not, because they're all WORKING!"

I've been thinking about what Terri said: "There are horrors on both sides of this conflict. Ascribing more or less evil to one or the other side is pointless"... and about the question "What matters most?"- the ultimate question that this week of horror has dumped upon all of our laps.

I think she's right, in that we cannot come up with a sum total per side, and I have been bringing up the U.S.'s terrorism only to level the scale, so that we all see that this is not the first act of terrorism on earth, only the largest upon U.S. soil.

So what does matter?

I think what matters is that we're much more appreciative of our loved ones, and our saftey.

I think that this will give us a much stronger sense of identity and community as a country.

I think that WTC911 will make us think about what our country does, for every atrocity on the planet will now be measured in its equivalent to the disaster. It's easy to permit warfare in other countries when there hasn't been any threat to your home in 189 years, but when Joe Sixpack starts losing friends and family he's going to start questioning whether whatever we're doing is worth it. It may be, it may not. Preventing a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear capacity is very worthwhile. Eliminating terrorists and then resolving the conflict that created them is worthwhile. Protecting Nike's slave-labor base is not.

I think that each of us may think about the sacrifices we make for our cell phones, SUVs, Stock portfolio, and $200 tennis shoes, and decide that maybe our family and friends are more important to us. Once the cycle of consumerism is broken (by an event that reminds us what is important), corporations will lose the consent that they've manufactured, and thus the control on our lives.

I think there will be anger for a while, but it will subside. Surviving this attack, by fixing NYC and not letting it tank our economy, will give us a sense of national pride. Those who are truly angry (and not just overwhelmed by emotion) will not be satisfied once the headlines read "bin Laden bombed to smithereens" and will always harbor a grudge against whoever they perceive to be the same as he. The rest of us will be enriched by the goodwill towards each other that has gripped this nation in the past week, and I'll be damned if I'll let it subside because I forgot what happened. That is my revenge.

This nation is the best place on the planet to be, but it was slipping away. This tragedy may be the slap in the face that wakes it up. It certainly won't cause us to lose what we have, and it may even cause us to improve on it. I'm going to start by eliminating every petty squabble I have in my life. Then I'm going to let those I care about know that I do. Then I'm going to let some strangers know, too.

Whattaya Know, It's All My Fault

They say that war makes one religious. Indeed, this being a national day of prayer, and a god being invoked in every statement by every politician on TV, you're really reminded of how this country's freedom of religion is only de jure- when the shit comes down, you better be worshipping our god, or you're in trouble. Faith as a result of tragedy is a counter-intuitive phenomenon, because one would think that praying to a kind and loving god, and then having that god allow tens of thousands of innocent civilians be horribly murdered in front of your eyes would might make you think that nobody's listening. Then again, if you believe in a god, you usually believe in a devil of some sort, and your spiritual conception of this event is that it is a strike by the devil against the god. This is an assumption, of course, I haven't really read many spiritual interpretations of this disaster. The irony is that, as in many mythological tales of gods and devils, each deity's followers believe that they are worshipping the god, and the enemy is worshipping the devil.

Unfortunately, one of the greatest flaws of an organized religion is the slippery slope of the us vs. them mentality. The false assumption is that if you act in the way your god wants you to act, you are given the right to judge, or even to kill, as a sort of holy proxy. We've seen it happen with the murder of abortion doctors, in the delusions of serial killers, and quite possibly with Tuesday's tragedy. If the hijackers were fundamentalist Islams (and I'm not going to state for sure that they were until the truth is known) then they believed with all their faith that this strike against evil would buy them a ticket into heaven. This, of course, is an abomination against Islam as well as all religions.

I am not criticising organized religion, of course, just the corruption of it. I myself see the need for spirituality, and I am not close-minded enough to withhold friendship from someone because our spiritual beliefs differed. It's been my life's experience that with any faith, a very small number of fanatics can give a bad name to a very large group of good people.

And here's one of em! His words aren't really that harmful, they're obviously the words of a person with a very twisted view of things. But boy was I surprised to learn that I am to blame for the terrorist attack! A lot of people have been going overboard of late, but this guy is so far gone I had to chuckle:

Falwell apologizes to gays, feminists, lesbians

September 14, 2001 Posted: 2:55 AM EDT (0655 GMT)

LYNCHBURG, Virginia (CNN) -- The Rev. Jerry Falwell said late Thursday he did not mean to blame feminists, gays or lesbians for bringing on the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington this week, in remarks on a television program earlier in the day.

On the broadcast of the Christian television program "The 700 Club," Falwell made the following statement:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Falwell, pastor of the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, viewed the attacks as God's judgment on America for "throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked."

But in a phone call to CNN, Falwell said that only the hijackers and terrorists were responsible for the deadly attacks.

"I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says 'living by God's principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame,'" he said.

Falwell said he believes the ACLU and other organizations "which have attempted to secularize America, have removed our nation from its relationship with Christ on which it was founded."

"I therefore believe that that created an environment which possibly has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812," he said.

[this is the really rich part, the idea that our nation is exalted in the eyes of God above all others, and that in a hundred years, the thing which finally caused God to punish us was feminism! LOL!]

Pat Robertson, host of the 700 Club program, seemed to agree with Falwell's earlier statements in a prayer during the program.

"We have sinned against Almighty God, at the highest level of our government...

[At least he's pointing the blame in the right place]

...we've stuck our finger in your eye," said Robertson. "The Supreme Court has insulted you over and over again, Lord. They've taken your Bible away from the schools. They've forbidden little children to pray. They've taken the knowledge of God as best they can, and organizations have come into court to take the knowledge of God out of the public square of America."

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Lorri L. Jean bristled at the idea that gays and lesbians had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that may have left thousands dead, and demanded an apology from Falwell.

"The terrible tragedy that has befallen our nation, and indeed the entire global community, is the sad byproduct of fanaticism. It has its roots in the same fanaticism that enables people like Jerry Falwell to preach hate against those who do not think, live, or love in the exact same way he does," she said.

"The tragedies that have occurred this week did not occur because someone made God mad, as Mr. Falwell asserts. They occurred because of hate, pure and simple. It is time to move beyond a place of hate and to a place of healing. We hope that Mr. Falwell will apologize to the U.S. and world communities."

Falwell told CNN: "I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize."

Nothing like this has ever happened to the United States before. Other countries have suffered losses this great in a single day, but the largest catastrophe for us in recent memory was the Oklahoma City Federal Building. One hundred and eight-seven dead. Remember how horrible it seemed? Wouldn't you give anything for that to be the death toll from Tuesday?

We all suffer, the whole world suffers. The consequences of this attack will fall upon people here and all over the world. Even if we are lucky, and there are no more attacks, we no longer get to live in a magical fairyland and must give up certain luxuries for our safety. We have to answer some very difficult questions about why this happened, questions so disturbing that the mere mention of this being anything but death for death's sake has garnered me several "fuck off"s and a "die". Perhaps it wasn't the time for those questions, but I have been feeling a lot of fear these days. Fear of, and for, my countryfolk, my government, and the rest of the world.

However, one thing that this event will definitely do is bring the world together. The United States is no longer invulnerable, and so we will appreciate more the fact that we are a member of a world community. Everyone will definitely take their loved ones a little less for granted, at least for a little while. I can imagine reconsiliations of old fueds due to the fact that human drama has been placed soundly into perspective. Plus, there's the fact that we have all lived through this together. We've all been crying for the last couple of days. There's a good chance that we all know someone who was lost, at least that we know someone who lost a friend or family member. I, for one, know that of the tens of people I do business with whose offices were in those towers, there will be some losses. Even without personal loss, we have all suffered through watching, one Tuesday morning, tens of thousands of our countrymen and women die.

I am inspired by the resolve I see around me. Cops on the street won't let people get out of hand. Investors won't let the market tank out of pure fear. Businesses are working, in some cases just to ensure that they will be able to take care of the families of employees who have been lost. The terrorists did not succeed in shattering our society, or in destroying our economy. The only way they will succeed is if anger and hatred are allowed to perpetuate in Americans' hearts, especially if they entice us to go to war.

It frightens me that I hear so much desire to kill whoever we suspect as the designers of this attack. No trial, just death by bombing. Like in many cases of murder, people care only that someone pays, without concern that the actual murderer may get away if we focus our attention on a scapegoat. Sure, I think bin Laden is behind this, but what if he isn't, and we kill him and dust off our hands as having served justice? The perpetrator would still be out there to plot another attack.

Plus, why is it that since Americans were killed, we can just toss the universally-agreed-upon world justice process in the trash and lob explosives in the perpetrator's direction? Only 32% of men polled in a Chicago poll advocated a trial before the death of the terrorist puppeteer. That's insane. You don't get justice if you don't serve justice.

In reality, though, we're very unlikely to take the perps alive. Obviously the ones directly responsible were prepared to die, presumably their leaders will be too. Will that satisfy the nation, a "presumed dead" among the rubble of whereever they are when we find them? Murder by missile will not only martyr these people in the eyes of their supporters, it will not atone for what has happened. The only way that we can do justice to the victims is to make their loss the event which leads to worldwide, lasting peace.

Here's some news from before the attack:

U.S. Won't Invoke Law Against Israel- "The administration ought to be worried about Arab opinion," said Edward Walker, the State Department's top Middle East specialist at the end of the Clinton administration and the start of the Bush administration. "What the Israelis are doing is making us complicit in their activities.

"I don't want to say they are doing it on purpose, but this is exactly the way the Arab world sees it," said Walker, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. "No matter how much we protest, as long as the arms control act sits there and we do nothing, they will hold us partially responsible."

Bush Retreats From U.S. Role as Peace Broker- "Though Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited Israel and the West Bank during his Middle East tour two weeks ago, he indicated that those
stops were secondary to his main goal—pursuing a new policy to contain Iraq. After meeting the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Powell made clear the Bush administration would not be as ambitious as its predecessor in pressing the two sides to close a deal."

Freedom Is the Best Insurance Against Terrorism- "The unconditional support the United States has given Israel — as well as America's direct military or covert intervention in Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere — has prompted victims of those actions to extend their hostility to the United States. The results have included the Pan Am 103 and the World Trade Center bombings. In contrast, other nations seem untouched by terrorism — Switzerland, for example, a traditionally neutral country."

"The issue is whether the national government will use terrorism as a pretext for amassing power that is repugnant to the American tradition of individual liberty and limited state power. It might be easy for people to get caught up in the fear and anxiety associated with terrorism and to acquiesce in the administration's demand for more power. But that would be a betrayal of all that America once stood for and could stand for again. The terrorists would be the winners."

From today's news: "At a midday briefing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the administration would mount a "broad and sustained campaign'' in retaliation for the attacks. ``It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism,'' he said." [my emphasis]

And Noam Chomsky's opinion: "The events reveal, dramatically, the foolishness of the project of "missile defense." As has been obvious all along, and pointed out repeatedly by strategic analysts, if anyone wants to cause immense damage in the US, including weapons of mass destruction, they are highly unlikely to launch a missile attack, thus guaranteeing their immediate destruction. There are innumerable easier ways that are basically unstoppable. But today's events will, very likely, be exploited to increase the pressure to develop these systems and put them into place. "Defense" is a thin cover for plans for militarization of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public.

In short, the crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains. That is even putting aside the likely US actions, and what they will trigger -- possibly more attacks like this one, or worse. The prospects ahead are even more ominous than they appeared to be before the latest atrocities."

The most terrifying part about the destruction of the World Trade Center is that the people in that building were just bumbling through their work day. Banging on the copy machine, gathering around the coffee pot and griping about how the budget analysis is due. Maybe they heard the jet and thought it was odd, but the people caught in the explosion may have died without ever knowing anything was up. We can all imagine ourselves in their place, and the fact that there was nothing at all they could have done to stop the tragedy is frightening. The terrorists could have chosen any of our workplaces.

We're all afraid of crashing when we fly. We can't blame the passengers of those four planes for allowing this to happen, because they had probably been told that if they cooperated, they would be set free. Hijackers have always wanted to be taken somewhere, or to make demands. Noone had turned a jet into a weapon before.

The firefighters and policemen all knew that they risked their lives in their jobs. That fact does not ease the pain of their loss.

No citizen should pay the price for their government's actions. The Holocaust taught us that a nation of good people can, if given a problem and a scapegoat for the problem, allow terrible things to happen. Then there was the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII. This is what I fear now- and I certainly see it happening in the voices of my fellow Americans. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by the immediate cause of this attack, we will never cast an investigative eye towards its radical cause.

For those of you abhorred by the celebration of human death you see in video of Palestinian streets, wait until bin Laden is dead and see how we behave.

As I watched the events unfold, I was shown by the big three networks the same images over and over, images you have all seen. They were all very iconic- plane crashes into building, plane crashes into other building, buildings collapse, and then some street views of the dusty darkness. The sound was usually off, so you didn't hear the screams of agony, the wailing, the terror in people's voices. Then, we switched to the spanish-language channels, and all of the video was different- most of it was of the pandemonium on the street, and then they showed the rain of people.

As the buildings burned, many people were trapped, and they began to hang out of windows in order to breathe. Then, whether they slipped, jumped, or were forced out by the heat, they began to fall off. Ninety-some floors. By the dozens. That moment, when I saw people rather than property being destroyed, is when it all slammed home. I watched the major networks for nine hours straight, and saw only one falling person, and one body. I wonder why they chose to sheild us from the full effect of the terror. It's not like they could portray this as any less horrifying.

I get angrier the more I watch the news. They keep saying that this was an attack against freedom, or democracy. Bin Laden has accused the U.S. of being permissive, yet there are many countries much more permissive than us. Why were we chosen? Was it that we have an extensive media? I doubt it. Look at the targets. They took out the symbol of American military power, and the symbol of American economic power. Neither had anything to do with American hedonism. A very distinct message. Why were those targets chosen? You know my opinion. I ask only that you consider the question for yourself, rather than viewing this as a black and white good versus evil problem.

The world is as grey as the streets of NYC. If we close our eyes, it will only get darker.

Over the past couple of months, I've been following for my job a trend in airport security. Basically, this job pays so low that they're having difficulty filling it. The ones who run the X-Rays start at $5.75 an hour. Plus, when you can't get people to work, you get understaffed security checkpoints, and tired, overworked overtime workers.

I talked, as part of my job, to the top HR executive at the company that provides airport security to the majority of U.S. airports. He told me that the number one employer that they lose airport security personnel to... is McDonalds. They pay more.

So in short, the people checking for weapons in the airports are the ones who are not qualified to work at McDonalds.

Now, there is a possibility that this was all done from the inside. Nevertheless, that security weakness still existed. I was waiting for it to be exploited, fearfully, but I had no idea that it would be exploited so effectively.

I cried and cried today. Because of the tragedy. Because of the deaths we are responsible for that were retaliated against. Because of the fact that this will prevent peace in the world, and may mean the end of us all. Because of the bloodthirst in the hearts of the people that I know. Because a terrible, self-righteous person was mean to me in another discussion forum. Because my workplace expects me to be back to business as usual even though I feel shellshocked. Because it's not all a bad dream. Because I don't know who I know that is dead. Because it could have been me. Because America is only outraged when Americans are killed. Because the next presidential election will be won on the basis of the candidate's military platform, with all human rights issues disregarded.

Because this is neither the beginning, nor the end, of the killing.

A little bit of humor (hey, you gotta have a defense mechanism):

Go to Guadalupe's blog and look at her final post before the tragedy (which was Friday's). She's talking about her escape from the island of dysfunction, of course. But it looks awful suspicous. I hope the FBI doesn't find out.

A hundred times I have thought:
New York is a catastrophe,
and fifty times:
It is a beautiful catastrophe.
- Le Courbusier


(Incised in the pavement of Battery Park City's esplanade which was built atop landfill from the World Trade Center's excavation.)



By the time I got to work, both planes had crashed. We knew it wasn't an accident. My first reaction came before the towers fell, before I began to fully empathize with the people killed, the people trapped, the families destroyed. At first, my intellectual mind began to think of the political consequences of the terrorist attack, before my emotions began to deal with the consequences upon human life.

This is it, I thought, this is the beginning of the end. This is the event that will provide the excuse for the military buildup, that will lead to the wars, that will end the world. I knew, and I continue to know, that the United States will not take this as a chance to reexamine our assumption that we are the police of the world, that we are invincible, and that none dare oppose us as we impose our will on the rest of the planet. Our very country gained independance through the use of guerrilla tactics against an imperialist military superpower, and we're supposed to be surprised when we become what we fought against and the same thing happens to us?

I was not suprised at all, for reasons I will explain later. I thought it would happen on Dec 31st, 1999, but I knew it would happen in New York City. Simply the fact that it is such a concentration of people makes it the most obvious target. I thought it would be a nuke, smuggled out of the Ukraine by the Russian Mafia and smuggled into New York harbor on a ship to be detonated. In a way, we are lucky that our false sense of invulnerabilty was shattered in such a minor way- minor in that the deaths could have easily been in the millions with a nuke or a virus.

I'm sure I'll be viewed as callous for taking a macro view, but it's the way my mind works. I am no poet, and I could not possibly do justice to the pain, the shock, the terror of the incident better than anyone else in this country. Maybe it's too early for me to start thinking about consequences, because we don't know who's to blame for this. I think we will, though, because obviously they had a message they wanted to get across- unless this was the act of some sort of doomsday cult or militia whose members wanted only to take lives.

I hope it was. If it was a random act of terrorism, and not an act of war, then maybe people will think about how ready they were to go to war without even anyone to go to war against. Our country has committed crimes, many crimes, and we know it, because we pointed the finger right away at those with a reason to get revenge on us. If it turns out that they had nothing to do with it, then maybe we'll wonder why we pointed that finger so quickly, and think about what we have to answer for. The cynic in me says "no chance."

I want peace. I am a pacifist. I do not want retaliation, I want PEACE. I want the killing to STOP. Even if this has nothing to do with its proximity to the anniversary of the Camp David Accord, we're still bombing, and killing, all over the world in order to secure economic interests for the very same people in our country who are responsible for the poverty here. Yet I don't hear cries that we focus on running our own country before we go out and try to run others. Instead, I hear cries for blood. For revenge. From people who are normally rational. From people who claim to be Christian. Most of all, from the military spokespeople, whose eyes gleam when they speak in anticipation of glorious war. It's frightening to watch.

The real tragedy of yesterday's catastrophe is that it won't be taken as a message to stop the murders we're committing, but rather as an excuse to commit more. I don't want a military buildup, as if, as IF the military could have protected us from such an attack. Intelligence, maybe. But I don't think it's acceptable to say that with a strong military we could have occupied the entire third world and prevented this- no amount of military might could have stopped this- only a reduction in worldwide economic disparity could have and will prevent things like this. I don't want the U.S. to rule the world with an iron fist simply to enable us to exploit the third world's natural resources and the lack of laws protecting human rights so we can have cheap tennis shoes, cheap coffee and bananas, and more goddam fucking S.U.Vs. And after what happened yesterday, I don't want the people of the United States to demand that we up our existing practice of murdering civilians in retaliation for the murder of some of our own- for if there is world peace tomorrow, and all of yesterday's deaths added up, there would still be more blood on our hands than theirs.

Laurie Anderson's doing two shows in town this week. I think they're both sold out. I would give anything to see her, so I'm thinking of going down there with a tub of ice and offering my kidney to people as they enter the venue. She's picking up her violin again, and playing some old stuff! Man oh man, I'm probably going to end up paying a lot of money for that ticket. But I don't care, dammit!

If you don't know who she is, it's because she's 20 years ahead of her time. I first heard "O Superman" in college, played on 97X (one of last radio stations where they play many songs instead of five repeatedly, and where the DJ ACTUALLY WORKS AT THE RADIO STATION instead of prerecording his shows for broadcast on 200 stations across the US) and I thought, "This music is the next step! I mean, it's really out there!" I called up the DJ, who happened to be a guy I went to high school with, and the song happened to be 15 years old. I was struck dumb. Laurie Anderson is Lou Reed's sweetie, although it's more accurate to say he is hers. She was Andy Kaufman's straight man back in his standup days, before he got that Comic Relief guy. What Stephen Hawking is to physics, what Noam Chomsky is to linguistics, what Mother Theresa is to charity, Laurie Anderson is to music. If you listen to her stuff, you probably won't understand most of it- I sure don't. Such is mediocrity attempting to comprehend genius. John Lennon? Jerry Garcia? Brian Eno? Chumps. Amateurs. Worms beneath her feet. Relatively speaking, of course.

I sound like a dedicated fan, but I don't even deserve to be called such. My favorite band is They Might Be Giants. They write songs that I like to listen to. Comparing what Laurie Anderson does to sound to what a rock band does is like comparing the way my computer works to the way that organic systems develop from a chaos of amino acids. The mind of the average person cannot conceive of such a thing developing without the intervention of a higher power. With luck, I will be in the presence of genius on Tuesday night.

In October, all of my spending cash will be spent on concert tickets. Orbital on the 17th- who I'd love to see but I dont NEED to see. On the 19th, They Might Be Giants. Must go. (Check out their website, it's neat and fun). On the 20th, the 12 Rods, who I try to catch whenever they're in town because they're based out of Minneapolis and only make it every three months or so. Then, on All Hallow's Eve, which for me is the biggest holiday of the year, I'll be seeing Stereolab... I can't decide what costume I should wear... I'm thinking of getting a huge wig and stuffing my tights and going with Singular Girl as Sarah and Jared from Labyrinth. Of course, there's the dearth of parties leading up to the big night, as well as the fact that my neighborhood will go crazy for Dio de los Muertos the next day. Ya gotta have holy days, and since Xmas is just another Tuesday for me (except that nothing's open, damn it, I already lost a piece of my penis because of that religion and now I can't drive through McDonald's every 12/25? ;), the big one is All Hallow's Eve.

Speaking of rock'n'roll and my neighborhood, one of my downstairs neighbors got booted. I don't know how to feel about it- it was one of the punk rockers, one who couldn't pay rent, apparently, because of her love of a certain Boy. On one hand, it sucks that someone so nice and outgoing is having those sorts of troubles. But on the other hand, I'm glad my remaining neighbors are the type who would take action in the face of such a major problem, and not just let it get so bad that I get crap stolen off my back porch.

I guess that explains why she hocked her Smiths album to the Brooklyn Mick for $6. As Brooklyn put it, "That was before we knew what was going on, and even then, her hardcore haggling over the price of a used CD gave me major KYFD signals- Keep Your Fucking Distance."

You can't make this shit up

You've probably heard about how Microsoft is suing a children's charity because they distribute old donated computers and can't afford the $A600-per-PC individual license for the Microsoft software on them- but did you know that the software in question is Windows 3.11?!?!?! Bwaaaa haaa haaa!!! They're suing a children's charity, which gives used PCs to underpriveledged kids for free, because the PCs have WINDOWS FREAKIN' 3.11 on them!!!!!!! There is no depth to this company's chutzpah. That's like... oh, let me think of a similarly ridiculous situation... how about a movie production studio suing over a public viewing of Manos... the Hands of Fate (just about the worst movie I can think of) where they don't charge any money for admission but they do let poor kids see it... there's a technical, legal right, but the product is so crappy and old that it has effectively zero value. When I first moved here, I was tempin' for a few weeks, and I worked at this office that was running 3.11. I had to teach myself to use it again. It was as if I had enjoyed wearing lipstick for many years and was all of the sudden forced to go back to smearing raw human placenta on my face. Like with Windows 2000, the nasty shit's still in the lipstick but at least it's processed a bit.

So anyway, poor poor Bill must be struggling (he had to add a bedroom to his house you know) so be sure to donate your dollar to Bill.

---

In a related degree of ballsyness, the Hooterhumper is all huffy this week because he wants to take off for much longer than he has vacation time for. Y'see, he's an actor (he was the whiteboy receiver in Remember The Titans) and he just got this gig doing a commercial for a Nintendo game, "Ultimate Evil" or "Evil Incarnate" or "I Can't Believe It's Not Evil" or some similarly uncreative video game name. The commercial itself sounds like it will be pretty funny so I'll give you the link when it goes up online. However, Hooterhumper's gotta fly to L.A. for a week to film it, but boo hoo hoo! His job won't pay him to take off work to go work another job for a week and then come back to this job! So he threatened to quit but since he's that guy in the office who totally scams up false results but there's never any followup since the boss is only concerned about the numbers on her report to her boss so he gets away with it until somebody catches him (which would involve a complicated audit of his job which ain't happenin') I think the boss is going to cave and let him have the time off. He's very convincing, you know, the type who always construes himself as the victim who you've just got to help. Once he was actually pitching soy nuts, second-grade-bully-like, across the cubeway at the-guy-who-you're-afraid-is-going-to-snap-any-minute when the guy came over and told him to stop. Hooterhumper had it all worked out about how HE was the victim because HE was forced to throw things at coworkers because their personal habits bugged him. Oh, and then there was the one where he didn't want his half day to count because he had to pick up his girlfriend at the airport- shouldn't that excuse his absence and allow him to get paid for being here? His argument was that if he had lied and said he was sick, it would have counted as a sick day, so he shouldn't be punished for telling the truth. Oh, and the time that he wanted an advance on his sick days, which accrue at a certain rate, so that he could take time off for some sort of planned illness despite the fact that he'd already been "sick" as much as the company allowed. But the big mean nasty company wouldn't give him an advance, and now they won't pay him to go work another job for a week. There just ain't no justice in this world!

I went under the knife last Tuesday. It was scary- I'd been under for an appendectomy in high school, but that was such a rush job that I didn't have a week to fret about it. When I woke up I asked the surgeon if I was as handsome on the inside as I am on the outside, but I was so loopy from the gas that I just got a pat on the head. Since I woke up I'm discovering all kinds of holes in me- a band-aid on my right shoulder, a shaved spot on my left thigh, the IV-hole on the back of my left hand... and of course the scar. I have twice as many piercings now! Five staples.

I spent a week off of work, walking only with the help of painkillers, a damn shunt in my wound seeping nastiness into my bandages. Fortunately, the week allowed me to pack up the apartment I share with Singular Girl, but unfortunately I couldn't lift anything the whole move. Had about eight folks to help me in the end, but I'm such a gung-ho mover that I felt silly carrying couch cushions when I could be helping giving my friends a break and shlepping that desk up the stairs. Three months as a mover taught me a lot about leverage so I don't mind moving at all- though it would be nice to live in the same place for longer than a year's lease. You know, a place where you can paint the walls. I guess my first purchase will be a condo, anything to keep from tossing half of my income in the garbage each month.

The new place is the entire second floor of an 1890's Victorian house overlooking Kedzie Boulevard in Logan Square. Logan Square is this neighborhood around 3200 west, 2500 north. In the 1890's they built the boulevard and a bunch of shwanky mansions along it for rich Poles to live in. One of the houses a vew doors down has a ballroom for a second floor. The neighborhood remained shwanky until the 1960's, when it plunged straight into hell. Until about 5 years ago, noone in their right mind would be caught there at night. Now, it's coming back, and in a nice way. The local homeowners are trying to give the place a small-town feel, and there isn't as much of an effort to kick out the ethnic types as there is when a neighborhood usually "transitions". Most everybody who lives there is a P-R, so the neighborhood is overwhelmingly American. Just with a little latin flava'.

We have a three-bedroom, though the previous tenants converted the study into a bedroom. Living room, parlor, dining room (for us, a bar, of course), kitchen, nice big porch. Even a stoop, set back in the yard as it is. The landlord's pretty neurotic, but that's good because the place is his baby. He's always trying to scam us on what we owe and the repairs he owes us, but I'm glad to finally be renting from a landlord. At least you can look him in the eye. Fuck all property management corporations, especially ICM, whose Office Manager told me "That's why it's called 'renting', if you have any complaints you can 'rent' somewhere else." They left us without heat for a few days last winter, and when we complained, the bitter old maintenance guy cranked the steam radiators up to full for three days. Just an example of how your landlord can make you miserable.

Poor old Victor, the landlord, has this place all gussied up like old ladies are gonna be living there, with brass chandeliers and such, but he's always so nervous that it'll be vacant for even a day that he ends up cutting a deal with the first person to express the slightest interest. We got him to knock $200 off his asking price, that about compensates for the problems we didn't notice on our viewing. He even got some shills to come with him and express "interest" in the place while we viewed it- but they were so bored you could tell they were about as interested in that place as a politician is interested in his wife. If you're gonna hire shills, get people who can act.

So the first floor is punk rockers. The basement apartment is PR stoners. The guy with the window across from our porch is old and fat and sleeps in his grape-smugglers with his curtains open. The PR Baptist church across the boulevard has huge concerts every Sunday, where it seems the mic is open which means you get everything from steel-drum bands to boy-band wannabes lip-syncing. There are no bums because nobody's rich enough to panhandle from. The El' goes underground around there, so we can't hear it even though the stop is on our block. The only negatives are that we have to haul our laundry to the end of the block for the laundromat (though Victor has promised to install a laundry room if J.J., one of the downstairs neighbors, does all the work), plus the fact that things get real scary west and south of here. But no gunplay in the streets, this neighborhood is not gang controlled, mainly because the neighborhood association has somehow gotten the place to be swarmed by cops at all times. Oh well, good for me, I only ever break the law in my own home.

Got a new roomie! The Brooklyn Mick. So now I live with he and Singular Girl, and we are to be joined by Guadalupe as soon as she Escapes from her Island. Brooklyn Mick is a funny guy, 100% different from me, and sometimes his rules of the hood cause unneccessary conflict because he's frettin' over things that don't matter to me. But he realizes the principle of "big wedges have little edges" so we're all working hard to make this the best year ever. Plus, Singular Girl and I have our own bedrooms, allowing for some much-needed decoration freedom. She goes for the zen-like clean lines of Corbusier, I go for the gaudy chintz of velvet-Elvis. All I need is one room to fulfill my destiny as collector of velvet in garish colors! Let it only be interrupted by my giant Unix penguin ad that I stole from the train.

I'm back at work today. Sixty nine emails, only ten voicemails. Not too bad! Then a bit of tidying up after the consultant who has been bumbling around in my stead, I sure wish I got $120 an hour to do what I do now only completely fuck it up and take six weeks to do a few hours work. Catch up on my personal emails, and take advantage of the phone.

O Dialtone, never will I take you for granted again! The local phone monopoly, Amerifuckers, wants 30 days to do a hookup, but you can't call them too far before you move because you don't get to pick the day they come and turn your phone on. Anybody know what's so complicated about turning the phone on that they can disconnect instantly yet it takes a month to turn it on? I'll have a phone on September 10th, they say, not guaranteed but please be there between 7 AM and 10 PM. Sure, that doesn't inconvenience me in the slightest. I didn't tell them that as soon as physically possible, I would be switching to one of the alternative phone companies that charge half as much but can't do hookups. Ditka says call Z-tel at 1-800-IRON-MIKE. I was going to go with another, but Ditka says Z-tel. Ditka is wise. Praise Ditka.