Time-Waster of the Gods

I’ve fallen in love with Wikipedia.

I always liked encyclopedias, the huge mass of knowledge they represented. We had a set of Britannica when I was a kid, and it’s mass dominated the lowest shelves of a bookshelf in my Dad’s study. But the size was a bit daunting, too. It didn’t lend itself to browsing. I’ve spent some good hours glancing through various Almanacs, just flipping back and forth, reading the thumbnail biographies of the American presidents, the lists of Olympians and Nobel Laureates. Often I was stoned, but that wasn’t necessary. It’s just kinda fun.

Wikipedia’s just like an Almanac, in that I can just flip through, using the random article button. Page after page can fly by, showing, at the very least, the amount of information that exists that I don’t give a rat’s ass about. Ganden Monastery. Xie Shengwu. James Budd. James Madison College. Stropping. Collectables Records. Absalom, Absalom! Okay, I’d actually like to know more about that last one, as I’ve heard good things about Faulkner. But next up come the Cleuh, who are a Berber ethnic group. And that entry says almost nothing else about them, which is fine by me.

But there are also the masses of information that I do actually want to know something about. And usually, there’s more information than I really want. And it’s all indexed, so that you can consult other, related subjects, without all that annoying page turning.

So, if I want to spend a couple of hours working my way through a list of British comedians, or the history and tenets of Scientology, there it all is. If I want, as I did a couple of days ago, read about the connections between the band KLF and Discordianism, and follow the links to read about Manichaeism, I can with ease. I can read all about the history of the X-Men, or Warren Ellis’ Planetary, the death of Yukio Mishima, quotes from the sitcom Scrubs, whatever.

The fact that it Wikipedia can be edited by just about anyone doesn’t bother me at all. Most of the people who craft entries seem to keep a pretty close eye on them, to ensure that the entry does reflect the truth, and not truthiness. It leads to some interesting oddities, too. I like the fact that the entry for Lindze Letherman, who plays Georgie Jones on General Hospital, said, at the bottom of the entry, “Lindze Letherman is cool, but complains a lot” the first time I read it, and it doesn’t now.

Why I was reading about actors and characters on General Hospital is beside the point.

Basically, I’m just saying that Wikipedia lets me spend hours reading online, instead of looking for a job or a new place to live, with slightly better odds of the information being on the up and up than most webpages, and with less searching. And I like that.

Ah, the Good Die Young...

Man.

In the space of two days, we lost James Brown AND Gerald Ford.

Good Lord.

Who's next? Yukio Mishima?

What?

Yukio Mishima died in 1970?

GOD DAMN IT!

Why was I not informed?

Too Much of a Good Thing

I love odd little bits of information. Strange little facts that you can pop out at random moments, covering a bit of esoteric knowledge. It takes the place of actually knowing anything substantial quite nicely.

For instance, did you know that the Boston’s North End was once hit by a flood of molasses? On Jan. 15th, 1919, a fifty foot tall container of blackstrap, holding about 2.5 million gallons, collapsed catastrophically. A wall of sticky sludge, estimated at between 8 and 15 feet in height, moving at about 35 MPH, spread out in all directions, smashing houses, destroying a section of elevated train track mere seconds after a train had passed, and killing 21 people. One of the deceased wasn’t found for 11 days; he was a delivery man who had been washed into the harbor, along with his truck. The container that collapsed had been built in 1915, overseen by a man who couldn’t even read the blueprints, and, upon the discovery of copious and continuous leaks, wasn’t repaired, just painted brown, so that the leaking molasses was harder to spot. They say the North End smelled of molasses for years. Far from admitting any culpability, the company that owned the defective container claimed that ‘Italian Anarchists’ had planted a bomb in it. But the judge didn’t buy it, and the company was forced to pay $600,000 in damages, which comes to just about $6.6 million in today’s dollars.

One well-armed deer

We were doing a field exercise in Basic Training. While four or five guys would run the lane to practice our spanking new Infantry skills, the other guys in the platoon would be doing what was called ‘concurrent training’. This was where you’d rehearse the more sedentary aspects of soldiering: running a radio, getting into your gas attack gear, basic medic skills and suchlike.

I was helping to set up the concurrent training spot with the other guys who weren’t going to be running the practice lane for a few hours. I’d leaned my rifle up against a tree to help one of the guys, and, of course, as soon as I was out of arms reach, one of the Drill Sergeants appeared. I seem to recall that he appeared in a puff of smoke and a corresponding stench of sulfur, but that might just be my memory playing tricks. In any case, I heard my name called, and turned to find the Drill standing next to my rifle. He looked me in the eye, looked at my rifle, then back at me.

“Private Lee, is your weapon supposed to be leaning against this tree?”

“No, Drill Sergeant.”

“What is the maximum distance you should be from your weapon, Private Lee?”

“No more than arm’s length at any time, Drill Sergeant.”

“Why is that, do you think, Private Lee? Why should you never get more than arm’s length away from you weapon?”

“Because that’s how Private's lose their weapons, Drill Sergeant.” I was at attention, just waiting to be ordered into some sweat-causing physical activity as punishment for my transgression. This was known as ‘getting smoked’, and it was never a favorite activity of mine.

“That’s right, Private Lee. That is how Private's lose their weapons. They lose their weapons by leaning them against trees, and forgetting them." He was still looking me in the eye, with his hands behind his back and eyes shaded from the Smokey-the-Bear hat he was wearing. Then, I swear to god, his eyes twinkled, just a little. "Or, sometimes they lose their weapons by being surprised by a deer in the woods, throwing the weapon at the deer, and having the deer run off with the weapon.”

And the Drill proceeded to tell us about how, two or three training cycles before ours, Delta Company had spent three days in the wood looking for a weapon lost in just those circumstances. Seems a Private had been startled by a buck while taking a dump, and had indeed just hucked his M-16 at the beast. The weapon’s sling had become entangled in the buck’s antlers, and Bambi’s Dad had gone running off into the underbrush, taking the no doubt aghast Private’s weapon along with it. By the time the Drill was done. The other guys and I were in tears.

“Drill Sergeant, did the guy’s weapon at least have a bayonet on it?” I asked when I could breathe again. “I mean, did he at least think he was gonna spear it to death?”

“No, he didn’t have a bayonet. And they never did find the weapon.” The Drill picked up my M-16 and handed it to me. “Be a little more careful than he was, Private Lee.”

It's just so goddamn weird...

Ya know what movie I love? Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It’s just such a balls out freaky movie. If you’ve never seen it, well, in a way I envy you. At some point in the future, you might be blessed to sit down and watch this unholy mess of a movie, this steaming pile of greatlessness, the ne plus ultra of misguided genius. Directed by the singular Russ Meyer, scripted by Roger ‘I never would have guessed he was such a freak’ Ebert, BVD is a movie that starts out immersed in out-of-control bizarreness, and rides the crazy train far past the point where the wheels come off.

If this were a movie review, instead of a misguided paean, I’d be forced at this point to try and describe the plot, or ‘plot’, to you. Thankfully, this isn’t and I don’t. Actually, I’ll give it a try: All-girl band goes to L.A., and hijinks ensue. Want more? Ok, there’s a lot of lip-synching, a chick with no rhythm pounding spastically on drums, wild parties, references to a wading pool full of mayonnaise, inferences that L.A. can be likened to a jungle, a plethora of large-breasted women, a freaky looking old lady in an orange wig, sex in a Bentley, Martin Bormann, eye-bleedingly bright set design and costumes, horny movie stars, a nefarious lawyer, a heavyweight boxing champ who never wears a shirt, lots of drug use, blood that looks like Sherwin-Williams paint, a beheading, and a guy with tits. My god, just thinking about it fills me with emotions I can’t adequately describe.

Don’t ask question. Don’t think about it. Just buy it, rent it, stab your sainted aunt in the leg to get it. Whatever. Just see it. Or don’t. I don’t actually care.

We have lost

We’ve lost Iraq.

We lost the minute we walked into the country. We lost, because there was no way to ‘win’. It’ll take 2 to 5 years for anyone in a position of power to admit this, because we don’t lose, in America. It’s not in our interest, as the last Superpower, to lose, so it’ll be later, rather than sooner, before we can admit that we’ve lost. And then we’ll face the long task of trying to find meaning in the deaths of our sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers. There will be claims by some that if we’d just followed this course, or that one, that we’d have somehow succeeded, but the dead soldiers, and their families, and the damaged survivors, will know the truth.

We were lied to by our leaders. And it would be nice to say that it was entirely their fault, but we, the people, listened to their lies through a haze of fear. We, the people, listened with the small, evil places inside us, and we said nothing. And some had the courage to look with clear eyes and see that we were headed down a dangerous path, and we, the people, didn’t care. We, the people, decided it didn’t matter if their weren’t Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq, that it was actually better that there were none, because Hussein was an evil man, and if the WMD’s didn’t actually exist, that just made it easier for our boys to take him and his whole damn country. And we marched for 21 day, and watched the little man, in front of his huge ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, chatter about how well we’d done, and we found Hussein in his little hole.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.

And we condoned ‘torture-lite’. And we let the little man’s Secretary of War make his cold, soulless little speeches. And we watched as a little more of the promise of our fine country was destroyed, as more of our national soul was corrupted, as the next generation of those who despise and will work to damage us was created.

We watch, as the reports of battles, and the rising death toll, move farther and farther away from the headlines. We accept it as this small nasty war becomes part of the status quo. And still, those who putatively control the situation lead us deeper into the quicksand.

We brought this on ourselves. We were frightened, it’s true. We were angry, and wanted nothing more than to seek revenge for thousands of the dead, for the horror that came from a clear blue sky. But fear and anger mean nothing to the dead, be they American or Iraqi. The tin-eared rhetoric of the small man in the Oval Office means even less. And it’s the dead that we’ll have to answer to. It’s the names that will go on the inevitable monument to this nasty little war that will shame us. It’s the memories of the surviving enemy that will bring the true price home to us. And it will be brought home to us, to we, the people, not the little man in the shadow of his father. The little man will look back in pride. After all, he finally got to play soldier, and no one can say he ran away, this time.

We’ve lost Iraq.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.

One Fine Morning

It’s odd, what you find when coming down from an acid trip.

I’d taken the acid one night at the Big Apple Circus. It was during the Lincoln Center run, and I had taken both acid and some ecstasy with my current girlfriend. She’d passed out, but I was still running pretty strong when the sun came up. New York has a great feel in the morning, when the city’s just starting to get rolling. I’d had an odd, unexpected conversation with the show’s general manager, Guillaume, about starting pay for workers on the House and Concession crews. It was unexpected because I had no idea Guillaume knew who I was, and odd because he seemed to actually be listening. Once that was done, I headed out into the street.

Lincoln Center, where the show was set up, is on the West Side, between 62nd and 65th street, and a couple of blocks away from Central Park. I headed south on a whim, wandering through the crowds of people just starting their day.

At the south-western corner of Central Park, at Columbus Circle, there’s a huge monument to the USS Maine, the sinking of which started the Spanish-American War. It’s 44 feet tall, and has, on the top, a woman in a chariot, pulled by three horses, with a shield on one arm and the other raised. The whole ensemble, woman, chariot, and horses, are a bright, almost golden bronze, apparently made from the recovered guns of the Maine itself. I knew none of this at the time.

That morning, the sun was obscured by lingering clouds, or the monument wouldn’t have been nearly as beautiful. As it was, the hidden sun lit up the gold statuary at the top of the monument, making it seem as though the golden lady was lit up from the inside. Combined, the still bright green foliage of the south end of the park, the lovely, triumphant lady, and the bright but hidden sun made for a heart-stopping combination. I stood, looking east down 59th Street for almost ten minutes, trying to burn the image into my memory. Then, feeling incredibly lucky to be alive, I headed further downtown.

I drifted down Fifth Avenue, probably thinking of seeing the statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center, hoping it would be similarly ennobled by the magic of the early morning. I actually ended up finding something that moved me even more.

I’d passed Rockefeller Center any number of times, hurried through it a few more than that, but this was the first time I’d noticed the stone in front of the sunken skating rink. It’s no doubt old hat to most people who have even a passing knowledge of the city, but I’d never heard of it, or seen it mentioned anywhere. But I swear to god, I’m going to teach my children from this stone. It has carved into it:

I Believe

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character -- not wealth or power or position -- is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. spoke those words in 1941, on behalf of the USO and the National War Fund. And in 1962, during the last peaceful time in that turbulent decade, they were set in stone. And I found them in late 1999, wandering in the hazy end of a drug trip, while working at the circus.

Each time I read them, I’m struck by their beauty, and their honesty. I don’t know much about John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and I’m sure that there are any number of people who could tell me stories that would make his statement of principles seem, at the very least, disingenuous, but I don’t particularly care. These ten statements contain singular truth, and that is all that matters. It is a Decalogue that is worth believing in, and following.

It’s odd, what you find when coming down from an acid trip.

Chip off the old block

The lady followed the kid around the curtain, and smacked him on the side of the head, right behind the ear.

This is at the Big Apple Circus, during the New York run. For three months of the year, from October to right after New Year’s, the show would set up in Lincoln Center, in the section where the hold outdoor concerts in nice weather. That’s a pretty sweet three months, being paid to live right in the middle of Manhattan, no heavy lifting, and good city drugs readily available.

It helped that I’d met a nice Chinese girl who was temping for the show. She was, and is, one of the sweetest people I know, and we got on like a house afire. Then, when we were traveling again, I lost my fucking mind and broke up with her. But that’s another story.

Unlike the usual lot set-up, in New York the concession area was under a tent, which connected to the big top through two short tunnels, one for each side of the grandstand. The tunnels were kind of cool; the acoustics were such that I could shout ‘Don’t Run!’ at unruly kids and have the sound waves hit them right in the back of the head.

And New York was the world capitol of unruly kids. We threw out more families in the first two weeks in Manhattan than we had to for the rest of the tour combined. Loud kids, kids who wanted to run around the aisles at breakneck speed, kids who wanted to throw handfuls of popcorn around with the abandon of a demented Johnny Appleseed. Little Johnny Popcornseed’s, joyfully ruining the show, and life in general, for everyone around them. And, of course, their slack-jawed, bewildered parents, who always said the same thing. “What’s the problem? What do you want me to do about it?” We should have been allowed to poison them.

So the kid comes around the curtain at the base of my ramp, which had been pulled closed in preparation for the start of the second half of the show. The woman, his mother I assume, followed close behind him and gave him a nice, solid smack. Her hand hit with a meaty thud, knocking his head forward and putting him off balance for a step or two.

“You’re just like your goddamn father!” she said, just before the lights went down.

Jesus, lady, if he’s not just like his dad now, he will be pretty soon.

Pay me more than I'm worth, please

I don’t do well at job interviews, especially those that involve a job with some kind responsibility. I don’t have the right clothes. I rarely want the job itself, just the good paycheck. I sweat a lot. And I seem to give off the vibe that I could care less about getting the job. This is invariably true.

I’ve been out of a job for a couple of months, enjoying the splendor of unemployment insurance. I’m actually getting bored with just hanging out. I think a lot of it has to do with not having enough money to do what I want. If I won the lottery, I’d loaf around ‘til my heart exploded from the massive amount of sitting around and eating to my heart’s content I’d do. As it is, I have just enough to get by, which isn’t bad, but doesn’t bode well for my future, specifically the part of the future where I’m too old to work and survive by eating cat food. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some cat food, but as a regular diet it makes me a bit gassy.

So I really do want to get a decent gig this time. I’ve spent far too long working the dead end, ‘What, me take responsibility?’ jobs. I’m thinking something with health insurance, maybe a 401(k) I can invest in. I had that at my last job, but there was a little too much getting shot at for me to want to make a permanent thing out of it.

34’s probably a little late to start shopping around for a career, but that’s where I am. I don’t see them offering any passes to go back and start over again, so I might as well stop procrastinating. I’ve come to grips with my lack of inspiration, the absence of a driving passion within me, so it isn’t a good idea for me to keep running under the assumption that the hand of God’s gonna come down and gift me with it.

It’s a tangential thought, but it’s a good idea to sometimes state your beliefs out loud. Often, you’ll suddenly be brought up against the raw stupidity of something you’ve held as true for too long. The idea that I’d receive inspiration via a Newtonesque smack upon the head by an apple was something I’d never said to anyone, just something I believed implicitly. Once I said it aloud, I felt like an idiot, with some justification, I think.

So now I want a real job, and find myself woefully unprepared to get one. Hi, my name’s Carter Lee. Will you hire me in spite of all the obvious reasons not to?

Idiots and Defecation

One of the worst things about the post on which I was stationed in Iraq was that there really were no basic amenities. For the first three months, we had to truck in fresh water in huge rubber containers, and there was nothing so advanced as a flush toilet. Everyday, some poor bastard in one of the platoons that wasn’t working in the city had to pull out the steel tubs that were filled with shit, and burn the stuff until it was a fine ash. Since my platoon was running convoys every day, I got to miss out on that neat little aspect of camp life. ‘Course, I still got to experience the thrill of crapping through a hole into a steel tub, which smelled delightful in the 90-115 degree heat.

Being in my platoon was a blessing, lemme tell you. We got to head to posts with more advanced latrines, and showers, and mess halls, and PX’s, pretty much every day. And there was a certain amount of hatred focused on us by the guys who hadn’t had showers in three weeks, and had run out of cigarettes last week.

Sometimes, you’d just have to crap on our post, though, which exposed me to one of the weirder aspects of Army life. In a situation like that, where you’re doing your business in an outside latrine, with other crappers on both sides and separated by a relatively thin slice of plywood, there was always some cat who’d take the next stall and want to chat. It never failed. You’d get settled, and through the wall would come some idiot’s voice, “Hey, who is that? Lee? What’s up man? How you doing?” What the hell kind of idiot question is that? I’m sitting in an outhouse in a foreign country, trying to lose a little weight, and being pestered by some moron.

So, all in all, I could have been doing better.

Calling Uncle Crazy

I’ve been looking for a new place to live, as the house I’m renting is being sold sometime soon. Given my druthers, I’d do without the roommates. Not because I don’t like living with people. It’s just easier living alone. I can walk around naked without hearing people say, “Eww!” for instance.

So I’m looking for a cheap studio or one bedroom place. It’s not going as well as I’d like. I saw a place today that brought back memories, though, because the place was Brooklyn sketchy. Locked gate in front of the door, two doors down from the ‘Jesus Saves’ homeless mission, made me think I was back on Atlantic and Flatbush. Nice guys inside, and a cool funky layout, but I might be a little old to be hanging in a spot like that.

I thought I had a good lead this evening, and called to set up a time to check it out, and had an odd conversation with a cat I’m always gonna think of as Uncle Crazy. I called at about 7 pm, and the fella started out by asking what the hell I was doing calling him so early in the morning, then spent the rest of the call snorting back what sounded to me like heavy post-cocaine binge nasal drip. ‘Course, if that was the case, he wouldn’t have been sleeping, but that is what it sounded like. At a certain point, after feigning sanity for almost two solid minutes, Uncle Crazy suddenly burst out with, “THIS ISN’T THE PLACE TO BE BRINGING A GIRL! THIS ISN’T A PLACE THAT WILL IMPRESS THEM! If you want that, YOU’LL HAVE TO RENT A HOTEL ROOM! OKAY?” It was impressive, in a freaky way. Zero to bat-shit crazy without breaking stride.

It took a couple of minutes to calm him down. I’d just about succeeded, when he got all riled up again, this time over my calling him ‘sir’. That’s a habit I picked up at the circus; namely always act like psychos deserve your respect. There’s less of a chance of some nutbar getting physical if you sound like you’re talking to a senator. I don’t usually use that tactic on the phone, as the distance gives me a chance to be as rude as I think the person deserves, but Uncle Crazy sounded like he was gonna come right through the phone. If he had, I think I could have taken him, but his shouting was coming close to blowing out the speaker on my phone.

I considered just hanging up, but it occurred to me that Uncle Crazy might just take it into his head to *69 me. Then I’d have to wade through 187 voicemails about how rude I was, and how the Gummint was putting worms in his head to poison his vital essence. So I waded on, and actually made an appointment to see the place tomorrow. Just before I hung up, Uncle Crazy told me he’d be swearing out a warrant if I didn’t show up.

Do I need to say that there’s no way in hell I’m keeping that appointment? Hell, I’m considering changing my phone number. The only thing that could have made this five minute exchange any freakier was if he’d said that he’d meet me at the spot, and I’d know him by the fact that he’d be the 62 year old naked guy on the porch.

A Squirrel...that is a Zombie...uhh...

From zombiesquirrels.blogspot:
1.Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.


Information
Tourist Offices
The Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC; 800-223-6530, 787-721-2400, http://www.prtourism.com/) Is the official mechanism for distributing information to island visitors and has a number of easy-to-find locations in San Juan.

Bad Good Friday

I used to love smoking weed. One of the best things about living in New York, to my young and dopey mind, was the relative ease with which buds could be secured. For a while, right after I moved to the city, I’d usually pick up from ‘street vendors’ around Washington Square Park and in Greenwich Village. Then I got arrested on Good Friday.

I’d just done the handshake with a guy who’d kindly offered to sate my jones. As I walked away, I heard a loud voice tell me to turn around. Lo and behold, there was one of New York’s finest holding a gun on the pharmacist I’d just handed money to. And, y’know, the mere sight of the firearm convinced me to do whatever my friend the cop wanted, and to do it in a timely and non-threatening a manner possible.

I got loaded into a police van with about a half-dozen other people, all black, except for one dude. None of the others seemed concerned over being in custody, especially not the cat who gave his name as Donald Duck when the presiding officer requested it. It was actually a pretty boisterous ride over to the precinct house.

Once we hit the cop shop, I got split off from the others, along with another guy. Maybe we got separated because we were buyers and not dealers. ‘Course, it could have just as easily been because we were white. Either way, I wasn’t complaining. I got issued a summons for a court date about a month later, and was sent off with a stern admonition against buying smoke on the street. Not against smoking it, just against buying on the public thoroughfares.

All in all, I thought I was having a pretty bad night. Twenty bucks down, with no weed to show for it, and arrested to boot. Not a happy trifecta, that. Then, the cop who’d arrested me came over, and started talking to the other white dude, saying that he, the cop, was gonna have to call the guy’s father. The guy pleaded with the cop not to, promising that never again would he be brought into this cop’s precinct house. After a couple of tense moments, the cop agreed, and headed back to his coply duties.

The guy caught my questioning look, and said, “Yeah, my dad was a cop, used to work with these guys.”

Damned if I didn’t feel a little better.

Ah, senseless ramblings, how I love thee...

It gives me no end of pleasure to announce that I have been hired to write my own comic book. It’s the culmination of a life long dream, and I know you all wish me well in my new endeavor.

My creative genius was recognized by the fine people at Smogtrouser Comics. My magnum opus will center on the heroic doings of The Spork, and his trusty sidekick Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other. I plan on having a large supporting cast, to include other heroes, such as the Polydactyl Cat, Mr. Macramé, and Eddie December, Somnambulist Detective, as well as normal people, like Nancy Blastula, Utembe Fischbein, and Old Glad-Handin’ Jebus, respectively the girlfriend, co-worker, and personal savior of The Spork’s secret identity, Hobart K. Sporcman, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Much like Superman’s identity being disguised by a simple pair of glasses, no one believes that His Archbishopness and The Spork are the same person because Sporcman spells his name with a c, and The Spork with a k. Look for the first issue, ‘Ferris Wheel of Baffling Ennui’, in which The Spork and Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other* face off with The Spork’s arch-nemesis, Crab-Meat-Salad Man, and his gang, The Condiments of Lyle MacIntyre, to hit the stands sometime around 10:30 tomorrow morning. Art rendered by former Vice-President of the United States Dan Quayle, lettering by a Norwegian Bandy-Legged Macaque named Simon.

Buy a dozen copies for everyone you’ve ever met, won’t you? As we say here at Smogtrouser, “Onward To Lunch, Preferably Something Light, That Won’t Interfere With The Taste Of My Pint Of Gin!” You heard it here first, true believers!
















*Tragically, Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other will choke to death on a corn-dog bone at whatever point it becomes necessary to raise sales by killing a main character. Probably sometime around issue #3. So don’t get too, y’know, attached. I’m just saying, is all.

Second Time Go Boom

The second time I got hit by an IED in Iraq was exactly one week after the first time, and one of my first thoughts was ‘GODDAMN IT!’ But not for the obvious reason.

Standard procedure, after a close call with things that go boom, was for everyone who was in the truck to get checked out at the aid station, just in case someone had a wound that hadn’t been noticed in the confusion. Believe it or not, this happens a lot. All hell breaks loose and everybody’s adrenalin gets flowing, and its ten minutes later before a guy wonders why his side hurts, only to find a wound or bit of shrapnel. When things go bad, you get a bit of tunnel vision.

So, at the aid station, both my gunner, Pettit, and I get the once over from the medics, and they find that both of us have slight damage to the eardrums. They also notice that my blood pressure is elevated, which gets written off as a side effect of just-almost-got-blow’d-upness, though it turns out later that it’s actually because of the hundred doughnuts I’m carrying around as subcutaneous fat. But that’s neither here nor there. At the medic’s suggestion, both Pettit and I are pulled off of driving duty for a week, and end up doing approximately 350 hours of guard duty. Six days of six hours on/six hours off shifts, sitting in little towers, watching a lot of nothing, bored out of our freakin’ minds. One guy, a particularly useless cook named Lang, had gotten pulled off of guard duty permanently for shooting cats, which struck me as quite stupid, until I was on guard myself. Granted, in a war zone, boredom is preferable to excitement, but by the end of the week, it had gotten to be a little much. Both Pettit and I were happy to be going back to running the road again.

So part of my mind was dreading a return to guard duty. Granted, it was a small part of my mind, the rest being occupied with ‘Am I dead? I don’t feel dead. That’s good right? If I’m feeling stuff, I’m probably not dead, and that’s good…’ type thoughts.

This time, instead of stopping and taking a jog, as I had the after the last explosion, I did the right thing. I jammed the pedal to the floor, and we got the hell out of there. I remember Sgt. Simmons yelling up to Pettit, the gunner, and asking him if something was wrong with the radio antenna, because he couldn’t get any response on the air, and Pettit yelling back that the antenna was gone.

What none of us realized until we got onto the post we were headed for was that most of the back of the truck on the driver’s side was gone. The IED had gone off just after we had passed it, and spent most of it’s fury on the rear of the truck. The trunk lid was gone, and the guys in the truck behind us later said it had gone about a hundred feet into the air, higher that the dust cloud from the explosion. The rear driver’s side door had been bent in spite of the armor on it, and the door’s window, made of double-paned, inch-thick safety glass, had come close to being blown into the truck. The entire driver’s side behind the rear seat was just as gone, exposing the wheel to the air, and everything in the trunk had been forcibly ejected, including a box of Kellogg’s cereal cups we had for snacks. There had been a brief storm of Frosted Flakes and Coco Puffs for the following truck to drive through, apparently.

That was the part that hurt the most. We really liked them cereal cups.

So Pettit and I got checked out again, and again, there was a bit of damage to both of our eardrums. A small pain in the ass there, as the ringing from the last IED had faded away just the day before, and now both of us could expect at least another week of trying to sleep with a constant hum that no one else could hear.

Sgt. Simmons consulted with the medics, and then came out to talk to me and Pettit.

“Well, the doc recommends…” He started, only to be cut off by Pettit.

“I’m not doing any more goddamn guard duty, Sergeant. No fucking way!”

Sgt. Simmons looked at me.

“I’m with Pettit, Sgt. Fuck that.”

Thank god Sgt. Simmons agreed. Apparently, our replacements the previous week had rubbed him the wrong way.

Then the mechanics took out truck away, as it was too damaged for safe driving, and Sgt. Simmons, Pettit, and I had to cadge open seats in other trucks for the ride back to our post. We also spent a lot of the day sitting around the staging area, waiting for the other trucks to finish whatever they had to do, so we could get under some cover.

Getting under cover was important, as that particular day was the only on during my entire year in Iraq when it was 40 degrees outside, with mixed rain and hail.

Good times.

An Honest Sex Story

I've read some crazy letters in Penthouse and online. I never thought anything like that would happen to me...

So far, I've been right.

A Few Thoughts...

Let me start this by saying I believe in God. It’s probably not the same God you believe in, as I’ve never run into a religion that saw god the same way I do. And I think the reason for that is that most Gods are too small for me.

I’ve never read about, or heard of, a God that seems capable of encompassing the size, brilliance, and wonder of the world I know. I’ve never read about, or heard of, a religion that even tried to take existence at face value. There is no religion, from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic triad to Buddhism to Scientology and Zermatism, or even my beloved Church of the Subgenius, that is more concerned with What Is, rather than What Should Be.

The God represented by most religions asks a man to ignore what he sees, and what he has learned, in favor of the reality presented by whatever tract is currently being referred to as ‘The Word of God’. It ask that man only push his intellect so far and no further, lest man commit heresy by questioning The Word, and thereby be cast out and damned. It tells you that your senses cannot be trusted, as they might see evidence that disproves The Word.

This is what confuses me. If you believe that man was designed by God, that every feature and aspect was placed within man for a reason, what possible reason could there be for not exercising each gift to the fullest possible extent? Why would man be designed with the capacity to build machines and structures of thought that allowed him to divine reality, from the smallest particle to the structure of the universe that contains us, if he weren’t meant to do so? What about our continued search for provable truth could frighten God, to the point where a line must be drawn, a point past which we aren’t allowed to go?

The answer is, of course, nothing. God, the creator of all, has nothing to fear from us, no need to shackle our marginal brilliance. Each new discovery, each instance of his creation’s ability to explore and discover more about the wonderfully complex and magnificent structure of which we are a part, has to please him, her, it. After all, doesn’t each new step, whether it takes us further out or farther down into the jewel of existence prove how much greater and more amazing the creator must be? Doesn’t each new wonder display the mind-boggling creativity of the maker to better effect? How can the demonstration of the endless complexity of the watch not reflect the greatness of the watchmaker?

To me, the obvious answer lies not in the mind of God, but in the hearts of man. God doesn’t fear our creativity, but men do. In some cases this is justified, for all too often the creativity of man is turned to perverse and destructive ends. But this misuse isn’t the basis of concern for those among us who would fetter the mind of man. The use of any creativity, of any non-sanctioned thought, is their bedrock worry. The mind that wanders into uncharted territory, to ponder a new idea, has begun to move itself past the point where it can accept lessons by rote. The mind that thinks, thinks about everything, and that is dangerous.

The men who run the religions of the world are threatened by the progress of mankind’s thought. It isn’t God, but ‘God’s Men on Earth’ who are afraid of what we might find if we continue to move intellectually. As the leaders of world religion, they are proponents of a view that is static, that not only doesn’t change, but cannot. God created the World, and laid down these Laws, and you shall follow them forever and ever, amen. God doesn’t want you to think, he wants you to toe the line and secure your place in the afterlife, where you will sing his praises eternally, or burn eternally. No middle ground, no ‘what-ifs’, no exceptions. And the deepest circles of hell are reserved for those who, having The Word given to them, chose to deny it.

The problem with all of this, for me, is that we have nothing but man’s word that this is God’s Word. There is nothing, other than tradition and the belief of millions, to lend credence to the teachings of the Bible, the Qu’ran, and the Torah. It is asked that you to take it on faith. But what are you asked to put you faith into? A single, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, transcendent God. A god who has planned out the existence of the universe in every degree, but who can somehow be driven into a rage by a man kissing another man, or having it’s name taken in vain. A God who loves you, and will unhesitatingly condemn you to hell for the smallest transgression. A God who, while omnipotent, becomes incensed when his earthly minions are questioned, and responds with widespread destruction of the believing and unbelieving alike in New York and New Orleans. It would be just as logical to think that he doesn’t like places with the word ‘new’ in their title. Look out, New South Wales.

Using my God-given powers of reason, I am unable to place my faith in such paradoxical demiurges. I derive more comfort from my picture of a God who isn’t watching every sparrow fall. A God that seems capable of creating the world I live in, and is too great to be concerned with each and every one of us. A God who is hugely beyond my limited ability to comprehend, and who is concerned about the whole lawn, but not each individual stalk.