Marilyn Bayman's Final Solution

INTRODUCTION

The following essay is about cursive, letter writing, and evangelism.

The following essay is not about stencils, the Mayan calendar, polygamy, Jean-Paul Belmondo, or glass blowing. If you are interested in stencils, the Mayan calendar, polygamy, Jean-Paul Belmondo, or glass blowing, please visit your local public library by walking, by driving, or by another preferred means of transportation. Your local municipality, depending upon its size and the demand, may provide public transportation to its residents, and also of course to its guests, at a reasonable cost. Please consult your local chamber of commerce or visitor's bureau for further information about public transportation in your area.

After having arrived at your local public library, via one or more of the means previously proscribed, please locate a librarian or other library employee. Library employees are often easily identifiable (1.) by a name tag or smock or insignia or (2.) by their presence behind rather than in front of library desks and counters.

After having located a librarian or other library employee, please approach her or him and say something. Suggestions of things to say include: "Excuse me, sir or madam" or "Pardon me; may I trouble you for a moment?" Please do not approach library staff members either abruptly or aggressively. The librarian is the custodian of knowledge and, as such, deserves not only kindness but respect.

After having secured the librarian's (or other library employee's) attention, please ask your question: "Might you have any books or periodicals on the topic(s) of stencils and/or the Mayan calendar and/or polygamy and/or Jean-Paul Belmondo and/or glass blowing?"

If the answer is yes, please request that the librarian direct you to these books and/or periodicals or, if you are sufficiently knowledgeable of the classification system at your local library, attempt to locate these books and/or periodicals yourself. Remember that other library patrons require the assistance of library staff members also, so please do not monopolize their valuable time with numerous silly questions.

If the answer is no, that the library's holdings do not currently include books and/or periodicals relating to stencils and/or the Mayan calendar and/or polygamy and/or Jean-Paul Belmondo and/or glass blowing, then please shut your fucking yap, sit the fuck down, and read this thing instead.

This is an essay about cursive, letter writing, and evangelism.

1. CURSIVE

A few days ago, I trudged through the snow to my plastic, collision-proof mailbox. I expected nothing more nor less than the usual potpourri of catalogs, coupons, and bills. Imagine my surprise, won't you please, when I discovered there, obstructing the face of the age-progressed missing child on the weekly coupon mailer, a handwritten envelope.

Now, I wasn't born yesterday. Far from it, my friends. I was all too aware that occasionally commercial firms, such as financing and credit cards companies, employ fonts on their mailings which resemble cursive writing. Thus, I inspected the envelope more closely. Was this another ill-fated attempt to get my hard-earned cash into the pocket of some corporate fat cat? If so, then count me out, brother.

But no. This handwriting was authentic. One could discern, upon close inspection, some gapping and blotting in the ink. Of course, I quickly reconsidered. Technology, such as it is, would surely allow a savvy ne'er-do-well to simulate the gapping and blotting of a standard ink pen.

But no. This handwriting was authentic. One could discern irregularity in the cursive. For instance, the bloated--and, one might say, obese--loop in the d at the end of David was not identical to the more svelte, angular loop of the d in Indiana. This was in fact a real, honest-to-goodness handwritten envelope.

Now that I had determined that the envelope was addressed by hand, in ink, and to me, I examined the writing for some clue as to the identity of the sender.

In no time at all, I concluded the addresser of this envelope was very likely elderly. The cursive was very precise and traditional, in the manner of someone well-schooled in the art of penmanship. Now, no offense to the modern educational system, but penmanship has fallen by the wayside in terms of the attention it receives in school. For example, most youngsters are unaware that the stem of the lower-case p should rise a good quarter-length beyond the uppermost limit of its sphere and that an upper-case Q, when rendered correctly, resembles the number 2. They say that drugs and gangs may be partly responsible for the apathy toward traditional penmanship, but the fault is more aptly directed at parents, who fail to set a positive example in their haphazardly jotted notes.

In the good old days, those glorious Eisenhower years, penmanship was deemed more than a frivolous preoccupation; it was, rather, an artform and the foundation upon which written expression was based. Many colleges, universities, and technical schools offered degree programs in penmanship, wherein advanced topics, such as the the uppercase I and the thorny transition from lower-case o to lower-case s, were discussed.

I knew, therefore, that the addresser of the envelope was the product of a sound training in the bygone art of penmanship. Reinforcing my estimate of this person's age were the fine, scarcely decipherable quivers in the larger stems of some cursive letters--perhaps signaling the advent of tremors. (Tremors, you must understand, are common among the elderly.)

2. LETTER WRITING

Who writes letters anymore? Only a very old person, surely. Picture it with me, won't you please? Some spotty-skinned octogenarian (drool and spittle, no doubt, escaping from his mouth) is sitting in front of a blank computer monitor; he or she wishes to be a part of this oft-discussed "Information Age" but can't tell a USB port from his own inflamed anus. He's so worried by the prospect of some hypertechnological dystopia that he (poor dear) soils his underthings. He hasn't bathed properly in three weeks because he's afraid he'll slip in the tub; plus, he can't remember where the bathroom is. He thinks it's somewhere over there, but his arthritic joints refuse to investigate. From time to time, he calls to his wife Edna to bring him some ointment. What kind of ointment? No one knows, and anyway Edna's been dead since the Carter administration. And her name was Ellen, besides.

Who writes letters anymore? I mean, good old-fashioned letters on parchment stationery and sealed with those quaint wax seals? Well, for starters, old people do. Experiments have shown they don't take well to change. Some people say--and I can't say I entirely agree with them--that old people should be rounded up onto several large ships. We--meaning these people--would tell them they were going on a long vacation to Gumdrop Land. "Where's Gumdrop Land?" they'd ask, if they were sentient. We'd smile and say, "Why, it's over there." And they'd say, "Good. I always wanted to go over there." So we would put them on these big ships--you know, stack up these old people like firewood--and send them off to sea. Only we wouldn't tell them there was no crew and no one guiding the ships at all. They would just drift peacefully across the majestic oceans, until they died of starvation or ran into some treacherous rock formation and capsized. This is really what some people think we should do, but I think they go a little too far. Who is going to pay for the big ships? I don't know what you think, but my taxes are high enough.

3. EVANGELISM

When I at long last opened the envelope, I was shocked to discover that the letter had been composed on a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. I recognized the font very quickly. It was that tired-ass Times New Roman (Size 12) again. I might have been impressed by this old person, having ventured out of her comfort zone into the "Information Age" if she hadn't used the fonts Times New Roman or Arial. Those fonts are usually application defaults, and only stupid, hateful people use them.

The letter was as follows (verbatim, my friends):

My husband & I live in your neighborhood. We have not been able to speak with you personally, but we have some important information that we want to share with you. A sample of it is contained on the enclosed tract. It is our privledge [sic] to share in a work that is being done by volunters [sic] in upward of 200 lands. In all these lands, people are being invited to benefit from a program that helps people to learn the Bible's answers to such important questions as; [sic] Why do we grow old & die? What is the purpose of life? How can you find real happiness? We engage in this activity because we are genuinely interested in our neighbors. Our work is not commercial. It is our hope that someday soon we will be able to talk to you personally. Please feel free to get in touch with us by phone to set up an appointed time to discuss these subjects. Sincerly [sic], Marilyn Bayman.

See? Now this causes me to want to include evangelicals (of any age) on the Ship of Old People, if I were hypothetically to think that the Ship of Old People was a good idea. But instead of Gumdrop Land, we would tell them they're on the way to smite the fork-tongued Jew. "Sort of like a safari" is what the brochures would say.

If you happened to guess that the enclosed "tract" was the handiwork of the Jehovah's Witnesses, you are in fact smarter than you seem. I am looking at the evidence as I write this. The cover depicts an Alpine-looking land during the autumn. In the foreground an Asian woman wearing what looks like a stewardess outfit is petting a bear--yes, a flesh-eating, skull-crushing bear--along with her daughter, who is holding an empty basket. It is useful to point out that, in the subconcious imagery of Freud, a basket might refer to a vagina. (Take this as you will.) In the background, we see a black couple: the wife is wearing a matching African robe and head wrap, while the mustachioed husband apparently has on a bowling shirt. Both are bearing baskets (or should I say vaginas?) filled with vegetables and are grinning wildly, as if they just got done fucking hard behind the Matterhorn. In the far background, an Indian family (as in Bollywood, not Tonto) is petting--and I shit you not--an adult lion. In fact, the Indian father is lifting the Indian daughter up close to the lion's face, as if she were an appetizer. No member of this family is carrying or adjacent to a vagina. Last but never least, the inevitable Caucasian boy, honkeas erectus in the Latin, is carrying a large vagina filled with red apples. He is laughing heartily, although he is off by himself, and looks to me like a habitual masturbator. With all of these vaginas littering the countryside, it's easy to see why.

AFTERWORD

The preceding essay was about cursive, letter writing, and evangelism.

Marilyn Bayman wrote me a letter, which was enclosed in an envelope which was addressed by hand in cursive. In the enclosed letter, which was composed in Times New Roman on a word processing program, without the use of spell check, she endeavored to share her work with me and to encourage me to find in the Bible the answers to many depressing questions. I decided that Marilyn Bayman was old, incontinent, and a likely candidate for the Ship of Old People and Evangelists, should there be one. I hate Marilyn Bayman and vow to crush her for encouraging small Indian girls to be eaten by lions in Austria.

I do not believe, as most Christians do, that small Indian girls should be eaten by lions in Austria. Where do you stand on this important issue? I mean, where should they be eaten?

62 Royalty-Free Excuses for Whatever You Do

1. Because Ted Kennedy was driving.
2. Because of whirl-jack.
3. Because the cat bit my scrotum (alt: labia).
4. Because I took an ipecac.
5. Because I was on Greenwich Mean Time.
6. Because it interferes with my rebirthing.
7. Because it’s secreting a viscous fluid.
8. Because he ran into a kettle drum.
9. Because of the South Africa.
10. Because of Lizzie Grubman.
11. Because Oprah said not to.
12. Because Sri Lanka is below India.
13. Because it’s too small.
14. Because your fedora is in the way.
15. Because I’m committed to your sanity.
16. Because she vomited in my mouth.
17. Because it’s wrinkled and hairy.
18. Because they’re easily distracted.
19. Because she’s a mezzo-soprano.
20. Because his knee popped out.
21. Because we’re moving to the Golan Heights.
22. Because it’s not notarized.
23. Because Tony Danza ate mine.
24. Because these were under your dickey.
25. Because love is an illusion--a pathetic, damnable illusion.
26. Because there’s feces on it.
27. Because Kiki Dee never gets any credit.
28. Because both base angles are equal.
29. Because he gets 40% of the take.
30. Because she was watching Mr. Belvedere.
31. Because all fees are non-refundable.
32. Because it’s a good source of riboflavin.
33. Because we’ve scotch’d the snake, not killed it.
34. Because it could spread.
35. Because I was practicing my didgeridoo.
36. Because rock crushes scissors.
37. Because of my colonoscopy.
38. Because there was no one watching.
39. Because the tip is perforated.
40. Because Clarence Thomas is black.
41. Because it’s ringed in fat.
42. Because we’re halfway there.
43. Because I forgot my headdress.
44. Because I ordered the gumbo.
45. Because it used to be called Rangoon.
46. Because your card has been declined.
47. Because a vagina resembles a shut eye.
48. Because it should be palpated.
49. Because choosy mothers choose Jif.
50. Because the real title was “Orinoco Flow.”
51. Because we hate you and wish you dead.
52. Because silk is summer weight.
53. Because I want it that way.
54. Because Golda Meir looked like a dude.
55. Because obesity has been linked to a gene.
56. Because pi is an irrational number.
57. Because old men smell like turpentine.
58. Because of the Suez Crisis.
59. Because she was the people’s princess.
60. Because less isn’t really more.
61. Because they only have it in green.
62. Because of nuclear Armageddon and other related misfortunes.

Is It Ironic to Write About Not Being Able to Write?

I hate writing. Except that I love it and can’t live without it. Ergo, it had better not leave me—never ever ever!!!—do you hear me?—not, that is, if it knows what’s good for it. It’s like Joey Buttafuoco to my Amy Fisher, but just around the edges and only if you squint really hard and from a very great distance.

Whenever I settle my ass down in order to whip me up some kick-ass literature--I’m talking some real Dostoevsky-grade shit—my mind travels a circuit of distractions, large and small, ranging from the philosophical, as in: What does It, whatever It is, all mean?, to the pragmatic, as in: When was the last time I cleaned out the litter box? Then my mind, after a while, gets all muddy so there’s really no point any more. I inevitably start describing the weather for a paragraph or two—the shifting purpled clouds, antsy winds, a raw and keening chill. And nothing but nothing, as we all know, cranks a prospective reader’s knob like a full-on meteorological report. I think Shakespeare sort of closed the book on climate-as-omen in Macbeth and King Lear, leaving a better writer than I the challenge of somehow eking portent and doom out of, perhaps, dew point and barometric pressure.

I have never wanted to do anything but write, except for a brief, ill-fated flirtation with acrylic paints. (Don’t ask. All evidence has been destroyed.) Consequently, when I am unable to write—or, more importantly, to write well—my net value, as openly traded on my internal stock exchange, plummets, and then foreign markets are affected as I tumble into full-blown grumphood. Which is understandable, I guess. You try misplacing your raison d’etre and see how you feel. It’s as if you’re a plastic Aunt Jemima-shaped bottle with all the syrup gone out. An opaque husk of a once-jolly stereotype.

Writing about writing (or about not-writing, as the case may be) is even worse than just-plain-writing because it reflectively, in that very hip, very now, very postmodern way, calls attention back to the writing itself, to the writing-as-product. The process becomes naked and welcomes any and all attention that its curdled tuches receives. If you read Proust, for instance, you can get all swept up in his reveries about high-calorie biscuits and what-have-you, but if I mention that I must write, as a Categorical Imperative, a number of you peanut gallery types will needle me, as you are wont, to keep my day job. Which I have and will. But my day job just isn’t my syrup; this is my syrup, this strange, difficult, nauseating writing thing.

Do you see what I’ve done here? By assuming that my writing, vis a vis writing-on-writing, will make you hate me, I’ve made you love me, haven’t I? Or if not love, then not want to kick me and call me names. Or if not not-want to kick me and call me names, then not want to aggravate my depression because my surviving family members might find a good lawyer and sue your naysaying bloomers off.

In other words, if I’m off moping in the corner, eating Paxil like Skittles and chugging Dark Eyes vodka by the triple-swig, then what does it say about you, and, transitively, about the meanie-pants of your ilk, that you can’t fucking lift up your snarky-ass hand, set it on my shoulder, and say, in a voice of damp intimacy, “There, there.” And then pause for effect before admitting that, ere my writing, impenetrable darkness reigned and the human imagination was snuffed beneath a thick, funereal pall. (I mean, would it hurt you to toss out one mere ort of nourishing praise every now and again?)

I had celebrated the advent of the quote-unquote Postmodern Age because I had hoped that, within this new paradigm, where form takes precedence over substance, I would finally be liberated. I could be a writer without actually needing to write a damn thing. I could be the image of a writer, wedged tightly, and forever without resolution, between the seminal moments of inspiration and the humdrum drudgery of pecking at a keyboard in the fluorescent LCD-haze of early morning, vibrating doubly, from the caffeine and from the fear of being a writer who isn’t one. (A writer, I mean.)

But if not writing then what? I suppose I could go to the zoo. I like to look at the animals, although (1) I’m afraid the llamas will spit at me (either instinctively or as a matter of taste), and (2) I have an emotionally hazardous tendency to anthropomorphize, which lends itself to visions of liberating the petting zoo, Che-style. Or I could masturbate for a while. That always burns through a fair-sized block of time, but too many consecutive rounds at the maypole, as the frequent flier knows, whittles the poor thing down to little more than a throbbing nerve within a rime of slough like an onion skin. Or I suppose when all else is lost, there’s television… although it gives me the icky, contractive feeling that my brain is drying out like a rotten fruit. Ever since, as a child, I was accosted by the syndicated sitcom Small Wonder, about a ‘tween girl named Vicki who was actually a robot and always wore a frou-frou red-and-white Baby Jane dress, I have largely distrusted the medium. It’s something like finding out your wife of thirty years has been sleeping with Abe Vigoda on the sly.
Speaking of the halcyon days of youth, I remember my first foray as a writer--an inauguration which intersects the theme of crappy television very nicely. I was inspired to write my first aimless, suitably idiotic story after watching a television movie starring Gary Coleman as an angel sent back to earth to redirect the spiritually wayward. As most of you will recall, Mr. Coleman played the poor black boy, with the depressed pituitary, who was adopted by the wealthy, white Upper East Sider Mr. Drummond (Conrad Bain) in NBC’s Diff’rent Strokes. If your fond Proustian recollection requires another go with a cattle prod, you may remember him as the sayer of the oft-repeated query: “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” If you are too young to remember any of this, then just go to hell. You’ve missed out on all the finer things in life anyway.

This sublime Gary Coleman angel flick, along with an admixture of equal parts Catholic education, Star Wars, and Clash of the Titans (Ray Harryhausen), coalesced into a serial narrative under the title Herald’s Wings, authored by yours truly circa the age of twelve. The plot, insofar as there was one, involved a band of vigilante angels called Herald’s Wings who, in hyper-Miltonian bombast, attempt to keep a band of devils and auxiliary no-goodniks from invading Heaven proper. We all, with a keen eye for resale, know what happens to property values when a demon or other postmortal malcontent moves into the neighborhood and puts his Monte Carlo up on blocks in the front yard.

Many of the villains came in the form, as dictated by my developing young naughty bits, of succubus—a demon in an expressly womanly receptacle, preferably in a black rubber bodice and patent leather jackboots. (One of Herald’s Wings antagonists was named Kristie but was physically derivative—however shameful it seems in retrospect—of Kirstie Alley as Lt. Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But that was back when the cocaine, in lieu of Jenny Craig, was keeping Kirstie thin.)

To single out Kristie as one derivative element in this ragout of a thousand purloined ideas is a bit like eating only one potato chip or accusing only one priest of tossing a boy’s salad. Herald’s Wings was essentially a run-of-the-mill good versus evil adventure dressed up with hokey celestial art direction, i.e., billowy clouds and white satin robes. But the point of this digression is that, back then, before my own fall from Eden, it didn’t matter that the story was steaming horse shit, coiled high like a fecal ziggurat. I wrote it for myself and only for myself and, although I never reread any of the episodes, I enjoyed creating them, enthusiastically and unironically, without regard for future readers, future critics, or the future me, who is now hurling figurative rotten tomatoes.
Why can’t I recapture that writing innocence? That inhibited pleasure derived from telling stories that only I wanted to hear? I guess part of the problem is that it’s lonely speaking only to oneself especially when oneself never shuts the hell up.

But we—the greater community of accomplished writers, so-called writers, and even Nicholas Sparks—can take some small comfort in the realization that no matter how derivative, uninteresting, and/or all-out stupid our writing may be, we will likely never conceive of a prose so clumsy and stilted as V.C. Andrews’s. (Here, I am speaking of the stuff she wrote before she died.) The comparative value of her fiction is always the consolation prize at the game show of literary life.

They Don't Call It the Seminary for Nothing

Catholic priests love them some serious schoolboy bootie. (There. I've said it.) It would appear obvious that the greater part of the Catholic establishment got into the biz because it was advertised--strictly word of mouth, mind you--as a veritable smorgasbord of prepubescent ass. The confessional booth, that painfully literal Catholic vessel of reconciliation, affords the priest a dark, intimate, and--dare I say--romantic encounter with impressionable fondlees, who are only too eager to avoid the eternal, tendril-like fires of hell through whatever oral or anal means possible. (It's exceedingly strange the things a benevolent God asks children to put in their mouths, but God's will, too, is impenetrably mysterious and shouldn't be prodded at, as if with a stick.)

It's almost like a double-team operation. The nuns, in their function as administrators of some vague genre of religious education, create unique and terrifying visions of hell and damnation, like budding modern-day Dantes in pilgrim shoes. There is--if one backs away from the crime scene and analyzes the situation methodically--an almost sensual attachment to the morbid and the punitive on the part of these storytelling sisters.

When I was but a young lump of clay, malleable to the manipulations of these habited she-wolves, Fatima was a favorite theme of apocalyptic-grade fervor. Fatima, for those unfortunates who aren't in the know, is a small town in Portugal where, allegedly, the Virgin Mary appeared to three peasant children circa the First World War. In addition to just popping in for a visit, Mary reportedly supplied a lot of pyrotechnics and bombast to Catholic folklore, the likes of which Hollywood itself might have thought too over-the-top. At one point, according to the nuns of my youth, Mary opens up a doorway to hell in the earth to show the little kiddies what's in store for all the folks who aren't on board with Catholicism.

(Back then, I always pictured a sort of whooshing, perfectly square pocket door opening onto a scene of about, say, thirty or forty aspiring actor-types--you know, the kind of bland people you find mugging and emoting in the backgrounds of music videos. These actors, stripped to rags and grease-painted with faux burns and gashes, clamber when the door is opened; they try to extract themselves from this sweaty mosh pit, but to no avail. Today, when I imagine the scene, I am tempted to round out the image with Mary stomping on one of their imploring hands and chiding, "You had your chance, bitches!" I know this isn't in keeping with Mary's character, but I can't fight the screenwriter in me. If you get too preachy and earnest with a religious scenario, especially if you don't have Julia Roberts playing Mary, then you're going to have a hard time luring a wide audience. You need to throw in a little ironic anachronism, like Robin Williams' genie in Aladdin, pointing out hell's uncanny resemblance to a giant trash compactor or, better yet, Scandal's "The Warrior" video.)

Nowadays Fatima has been supplanted as a first-tier apparition site by Medugorje, Bosnia, where (allegedly) Mary began appearing in 1981 to six teenagers and continues appearing to this day. (It's kind of like when a really, really popular rock band books a venue for seven consecutive SRO nights of head bangin' artistry.) At my Catholic high school, there was a religion teacher who was obsessed with the apparitions at Medugorje--so much so that he neglected to teach anything at all. He simply told us stories about his "pilgrimages" to Medugorje, where he had seen the sun spin in the sky and then seem to careen toward the earth. He told each and every story with the intense nostalgic enthusiasm of one who'd witnessed the apocalypse (or a facsimile thereof) but lived to talk about it. Meanwhile, I was doodling pictures of Fat Man swallowing Little Man in my Mead three-subject notebook. Even the hardcore militant Catholics in the class half-suspected that Mr. Medugorje had suffered some incidental blunt trauma to the head somewhere along the way.

My point--and I insist that I have one--is that with all of this special effects-laden doomsaying about secrets, damnation, and unimaginable suffering, it is, ergo, pretty easy for a random wolf-eyed priest to convince your average clip-on tied schoolboy to join him under his tented robe--or else God might send him down into that New York apartment-sized hell with all of those bad actors shrieking, "Help me!" and twisting their faces into unspeakable shapes. Truth be told, the Catholic Church has done an awful lot for the child molestation industry. It has not only supplied a mechanism of persuasion (i.e., supernatural retaliation), but also a complex and secretive bureaucracy to shuffle priests around when the heat gets wind of the game. One hears tell that there are ultra-private California [e]rectories where black-thong-wearing priests, bishops, and tap dance instructors lounge around a pool whilst being served tropical drinks out of chalices by altar boys. Priests are moved to these locations when they've tapped out their parish's stock of youthful tail.

In Middle Americans We Distrust

The citizens of the state of Indiana ("Hoosiers" as we're inexplicably called) trust in God--or so I am led to believe on my daily commutes by the increasing numbers of "In God We Trust" license plates worn proudly on the rusty derrieres of many a GM vehicle. In my latest ACLU-Indiana newsletter, I learned there was a lawsuit pending against the state, citing "unequal treatment," because these plates are available at no extra charge over the standard state flag plate whereas other non-standard plates incur a fee. Although I couldn't be more vehemently opposed to these license plates, the case doesn't appear viable because "In God We Trust" remains in fact (and against all better judgment) a national motto. There would certainly be no cause for a court case if, for instance, another, more neutral motto/catch-phrase were used, such as "America the Beautiful" (gag), "Sweet Land of Liberty" (double-gag), or "E Pluribus Unum" (Middle Americans loves them the shit out of some Latin). But, unfortunately, if the "In God We Trust" plates were to be (legitimately) challenged, it would only be in a higher arena. Yes, I'm talking about the Supreme Fuckin' Court, baby, and it wouldn't be on the basis of "unequal treatment" but the contentious issue of separation of church and state.

Legality aside, the issue of these license plates intrigues me because it is a striking provocation against liberalism. Now, I've never been a fan of tepid American liberalism, preferring a more radical standpoint instead, but it certainly beats the shit out of conservatism or the so-called "moderate" position. [It strikes me that "moderate" is the word conservatives use to describe themselves so as not to appear extremist or unreasonable. The tactic doesn't succeed on either of these counts.] Any number of patriotic images and/or banner-waving slogans could have been chosen for the plate design, but tellingly "In God We Trust" was selected--and it reminds one of a petulant child doing something antagonistic just because he can.

It further reminds me of the liberal "War on Christmas" fabricated by the conservative pundits. There is a neat simplicity of logic that these cultural hawks seem eager to ignore... Saying "happy holidays" is not only more efficient because it includes both holidays, but more importantly it is an authentic display of the so-called Christian spirit that Christmas purports to celebrate. It is an inclusive statement rather than all of this exclusive, arrogant "taking back Christmas" baloney. It comes down to this: By wishing others well who do not share our beliefs, we do not thereby diminish our own beliefs. This would seem apparent and yet isn't.

Similarly, people claim that if the government is not allowed to mention God, then this favors or is partial to the beliefs of atheists. This is a clear logical fallacy. The opposite of the government's reference to God would be an explicit statement of some kind that there is no God. The government's silence regarding religion and spiritual matters, on the other hand, is not an affirmation of atheism, but an expression of its respect for and non-interference in the personal beliefs of citizens.

I cannot speak for all nations or all peoples, but I have always intuited a strong fascistic vibe among Americans; perhaps this is true for all human beings in general, but I have not lived, for any significant time, in another nation in order to be able to extrapolate this claim. I do contend that Americans, by and large, immensely enjoy the pageantry and fanfare surrounding our country's claims to freedom and equality, but underneath all of that lip service there resides a strong, unnamed impulse to marginalize and to outlaw those persons and beliefs who do not fall within a relatively narrow spectrum of "moderate" ideology that is deemed acceptable by our banal median culture.

Of course, since I am a cynic, I would guess this impulse is inherent to humanity itself, but the level of the intellectual development of a nation determines how much free reign this impulse is given. America, by these standards, is very much a middle-of-the-road country, having not outlawed dissent, per se, but having limited the boundaries of ideology by means, for example, of the media and social conditioning. We are hardly in the dire straits of Iran, Taliban-era Afghanistan, or Sudan with respect to the legal prohibitions of expression, but we dangerously imagine our freedoms to be greater and more all-encompassing than they are. Rather, the rules of the game have only changed, adapted, been optimized. Citizens are controlled not through the explicit force of law, but through subtle means, which often remain unrecognized.

As a postscript, I'd like to clarify the concept of "intellectual development" to which I alluded in the previous paragraph. I am not therein speaking of "book learning" or the regurgitation of data, nor am I speaking about acquiring practical abilities for a wage-earning career. I am talking about the rarely taught skill of learning to think critically and independently--or as independently as is possible in our message-saturated culture.

Masturbation: The Hobby That Stains Most Fabrics

When last I masturbated--an occurrence nearer in proximity than I feel comfortable admitting--I happened to consider the question concerning the (moral) prohibition of said practice. Well, truth be told, this meditation was only momentarily touched upon (no pun intended) at the time because, as you may but daren't imagine, my energies, mental and otherwise, were directed toward more pressing avenues of exploration during the formal act itself.

Of course, all of this propriety, euphemism, and beating around my proverbial bush is just the cowardly way of saying that, when I'm whacking off, earthquakes and Olympian thunder may shake the earth into some sort of titanic seizure, whole cities may be engulfed in spontaneous fire, and fierce, Tourettic lights from alien spacecrafts may sift through my miniblinds, but I remain immune to distraction, and certainly to philosophical considerations.

Anyway, after those several minutes of masturbation and the subsequent clean-up and reordering phase, I revisited the theme of the supposed immorality of self pleasure and where this notion originated. As is the case with much of our prevailing morality, the masturbation prohibition (not to be confused with the substantively similar Emancipation Proclamation) likely arose from a practical concern. Perhaps, if in early civilization, for example, masturbation were promoted as enthusiastically as, say, discus-throwing or etching limestone facades dorically, little would have ever been accomplished, such as expanding the infrastructure, improving chariot technology, and so forth... The (social) world would have devolved, metaphorically speaking, into a collection of dark, dank basements with pale, pimply-faced jack-off artisans churning their fists like antic pistons under a crusty afghan. In this interpretation, masturbating must be frowned up or civilization will atrophy. No one will be left on the streets, and a haunting arrhythmic thumping--countless hands in unison--will be o'erheard, rising from the underworld and causing, with its vibrations, entire tectonic plates to be forcibly shifted. The economy, too, must survive. Can you even imagine if the general anti-jerk ethos were overturned today how many people would call in sick, from shops, offices, government agencies, the military...? Spurt after fabric-bleaching spurt would erupt across America, like the fountains at the Bellagio, while Islamic fundamentalists lie in wait to crush the paper tiger. We can only hope that sexual frustration gets the better of them, although Osama bin Laden has the sleepless, sunken-eyed look of a chronic masturbator. (What else is he going to do? There isn't much in the way of canasta or light reading in a remote cave.)

Okay, so the previous few remarks may have earned me a fatwa or two... Perhaps I should move on to another hypothesis. Maybe masturbation was thought to weaken family or tribal ties because it seemed to preclude marriage and procreation. True, we now know this is nonsense because married men masturbate up to 61 to 73% more than single men on average, according to the latest issue of Reader's Digest. More disturbingly, 12% of these married masturbators have admitted to quote-unquote uncurling a wad into the concavity of a plastic Starbucks to-go lid.

I guess the reason that the no-jack ethos is so perplexing is that chicken choking appears [to me -- Ed.] to be one of the super most best, gosh-golly funnest hobbies ever invented. You certainly don't need a high-fallutin' ad agency to work up a major campaign to promote it. Masturbation sells itself: (1) Another person is not involved, so there are no hurt feelings or emotional hang-ups; (2) There is no interpersonal transmission; ergo, no v.d.; (3) Shaking one off doesn't require two people to be in the mood (a definite odds reducer) but only one (I repeat: one) throbbing id; (4) During self love, the self lover is free to get full-on fuck-ugly without inhibition because there is no other Other to dis/approve; (5) The soloist is not faced with the proposition of getting emotionally close to other human beings, who are all stupid, cruel, smelly, psychically draining, and unfathomably unwilling to cede their entire being to your will as they rightly should if they knew what was good for them. Did I just write that out loud? I guess all of that intensive psychotherapy didn't work. It's back to the pills and booze regimen pour moi.

Now all of this hubbub about masturbation may lead a more presumptuous reader to assume that I do it all the time, or at least when I'm not sleeping, eating, or sanding the floors. Let me assure you that there isn't a quota or a schedule, and I don't neglect to visit people on their death beds, for instance, because I haven't shot a wad in a day or two. There is a time and a place for everything, my friends. The time and the place just happen to be now and here.

The Axis of Good, the Axis of Bad, and the Axis of Ugly

Americans enjoy nothing better than simplicity. This isn't a value judgment, per se, but a mere observation. Given the choice of digesting either a multi-tiered flowchart of oddly-weighted and incomparable variables or a cute little binary opposition, your garden-variety, middle-of-the-bell-curve American will opt for the latter, no matter the inherent distortion in most either/or scenarios. This is why your average heartlander lapped up, with almost canine enthusiasm, the clunky, juvenile propositions of both the War on Terror and the Axis of Evil.

The Axis of Evil, which was or is comprised of North Korea, Iran, and (Evil Emeritus) Iraq, calls to mind not only the perfunctory images of "commie chinks" and "sand niggers" (not my epithets, friends), but more intuitively perhaps a monolithic Snidely Whiplash-style nemesis, twirling his handlebar mustache, and securing some buxom damsel to railway tracks. That buxom damsel, if we stretch the metaphor beyond all conceivable recognition, is the freedom-lovin' Western world. (It's sissy to round out your g's at the ends of gerunds and participles, by the way.) And that oncoming train...? Well, that would be Armageddon. And if you are unable to wrap your mind around the obvious moral clarity of the situation, then your perception is either defective or, worse, contaminated by the enemy. Indeed, the situation we've arrived at is rather cold war revisited, with all of the major (and minor) players lined up on either side of the ethical line of demarcation.

Meanwhile, the idea of a War on Terror is so muddled and nonsensical that, if it were at all possible, we might likewise declare war on other nebulous, abstract concepts like Sheepishness, Ennui, and Depression. (Never mind the fact that America and its allies themselves have engaged and continue to engage in various activities that would easily align with most prevalent definitions of terror-inducement. Bombing innocent civilians in order to battle "Terror," for example, is the sort of irony to which most dunderheaded Americans are immune. The Evil People occasionally call their version of Terror "liberation," and we call our version "collateral damage." After all, as the trite bumper stickers reminds us, freedom isn't free, and a few kids might have to have their heads blown off in order to remove this abstract noun from our consciousness altogether.) I wonder if, in the future, we will branch out and declare war on other parts of speech, like maybe adverbs.

This discussion of evil and moral absolutes in general reminds me of the film Halloween, in which the psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (played with grim seriousness by the late Donald Pleasance) often refers to his patient Michael Myers as "evil"--which, aside from being a wee unprofessional, strikes me as closing off any avenue of recovery. Evil is easy to understand, irredeemable, and promises a lifetime of long, expensive, unsuccessful psychotherapy. Of course, Halloween was just a 1970's horror film, not carrying with it the burden of international relations. To label an entire country evil is itself a short-sighted linguistic flourish which reduces complex international situations to the proportions and bright primary colors of a comic book.

The Formerly Headbanded Humanoid Cracks Up

While searching for the image appearing above, by entering various permutations of the words Clinton, Hillary, cry, tear, tears, New Hampshire, and weep into a Google Image search, I encountered the (expected) pictorial disparagements of Ms. Clinton, such as but by no means limited to Hillary with superimposed red airbrushed horns, Hillary with adjacent thought bubbles referring to purported lesbianism of same, various caricaturized Hillaries "cuckolded" by wolf-eyed and salivating Bills (with and without splattered Monicas in the margins), and even a cut-out of Hillary's beaming, senatorial face pasted sloppily, with little respect for the niceties of sound graphic design, over an image of Darth Vader's helmet, cape, and red-buttoned candy-box chest piece.

This blog entry is a subset neither of disparagement (a.k.a. hatin') nor of endorsement but is concerned more properly what it means to be the first viable female American presidential candidate. (I had to add "viable" to weed out the pesky and, one would suspect, long-suffering Elizabeth Dole, whom fate has consigned the thankless task of being mounted--however occasionally--by her pharmaceutically-refortified octogenarian husband. But I digress, precipitously toward the macabre.)

People who are apt to hate Hillary do not deign to go about it in any kind of wishy-washy, half-assed, or midgrade way; they really, really, really, really hate Hillary with a passion resembling only that directed toward Jar-Jar Binks and Milli Vanilla, post-LipSyncGate. With only slight embellishment, I might (and do) claim that Stalin is more beloved, if only because he slaughtered more communists--more efficiently--than any American president could ever dream of.

While recently in the presence (unwillingly) of adamant Hillary detractors, I dared to pose the most simplistic of questions: "What is it about this particular person that is so loathsome to a particular demographic, i.e., you and your ilk?" In response, I received some of the typical anti-Hill rejoinders: She's a calculating shrew, a ball-breaker, a socialist, a liar, a back-pedaler, a dyke, a terrorist-lover, an opportunist, a power-tripper, and a good old-fashioned cunt. To these epithets, I must reply that, if you excise the specifically liberal-baiting appositives, you've described nearly any major politician. (Are you, for instance, trying to tell me that Dick Cheney isn't a cunt? Methinks, Gentle Reader, he invented cuntness.)

What we have here is what I like to call, for lack of a more clinical-sounding name, the Kathy Lee Syndrome--in which case we have (1) a female (2) who is not considered sexually desirable, in the prevailing median opinions thereof and (3) who is considered aggressive and/or assertive. Kathy Lee Gifford, yes, I will grant you, could in fact be irritating in her incessant ramblings about Cody and Dippy (or whatever her kids' names were) on that Regis TV show thing she co-hosted, but to single out Kathy Lee for such intense and vitriolic animosity as was often directed at her is to ignore what a barking, tedious, buffoon Regis himself is. More pointedly, having somewhat recently been ill in bed and thereby catching a fragment of vapid banter between Regis and Kathy Lee's replacement, Kelly, I can assure all and everyone concerned that, via the transitive axiom of equality, Kelly is in fact Kathy Lee, only younger and more sexually desirable. So if we factor in all the controls of our experiment, the variables, the margin of error, etc., the brute, stubborn equation remains that a "good woman" is best seen (preferably with her top off and her jugs oiled up) and not heard, and especially not heard talking about foreign policy or economic recovery.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Hillary... Well, earlier this week, as everyone knows, Hillary got choked up or dewy-eyed or something at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, and by Wednesday morning the media was atitter with the probability that this display of humanity (subtext: stereotypical femininity) may have won her the primary because, in the past, she had generally been perceived as a tightly-coiffed humanoid bent on cold, calculated world domination (i.e., a man). Now I must ask you... Would a candidate such as a McCain or an Obama or--dare I say?--a Rudy have (seemed to have) benefited from a display of desperate emotion? (That's rhetorical, but if anyone were dumb enought to answer yes, I think I might be subject to an imminent display of desperate emotion.)

Each Is Borne on His/Her Own Gurney

While I was engaged in my early morning prep work--including but not limited to the application of various hypoallergenic salves and ointments, epidermal sandblasting, consumption of own urine and/or uncooked bacon, and (continued) scheming to unmask Bono as alien ambulatory reptile (cross reference: V and V: The Final Battle)--I overheard the peroxided ding-a-ling on the local "news" saying something about the much-anticipated wheeling of Britney Spears out and away from her spawn on some sort of gurney. Of course, sharing the misplaced priorities of much of the world, I whiplashed my neck to get a gander at a snippet of helicopter footage of a kind of medical van (paddy wagon?) at some nondescript Californian locale. Ms. Spears, I heard-tell, was allegedly under the influence of The Junk, as they say in blaxploitation films. In other words, she was hopped-up and low-down, nearing the terminus of a career trajectory which reminded me of that Mountain Climber game on The Price Is Right--wherein a yodeling Alpine-type ascends to the summit and then, if the contestant lacks price-guessing acumen vis-a-vis Extra Strength Tide or Excedrin PM, said climber drops off a cliff to his presumably bloody demise. (Although the implicit gore was long soft-pedaled by Mr. Barker.)

I know: "Britney, Shmitney," you say. And you are correct to be pooh-poohing, Mr. and Ms. Cynic-Pants, but what interests me more than Britney the human being is Britney the phenomenon. What is it about this low-class, KFC-lovin' dame from down south, who comes into some dough by way of a few Nabokovian pop ditties and, by the way, doesn't wear panties, that collectivizes America (and the western world?) in a community of "full-on haters," as the pesky Kids might say? What, in other words, brings about this Schadenfreude? We can't agree on whether toilet paper should hang over or under the roll, but consensus has been reached regarding Britney (that weird Parker Posey-looking dude on youtube notwithstanding): She is spoiled, insane, fat, white trashy, dumb, smelly (okay, I added that one), and a short-list contender for the Worst Young Mother of All Time.

In case you skipped German class for a smoke in the art supply room (cross reference: Pump Up The Volume), Schadenfreude is defined by Wiktionary, in its first citation, as the "malicious glee experienced from someone else's misfortune."

And yet Britney is an every[wo]man. (Did I just write that?) I don't mean to imply that every person is an umbrella samurai or that we all enjoy flashing our downtown goodies (and their cleanshaven suburbs) to the paparazzi. What I am saying is that--perhaps more than power--money corrupts our rationality. Or perhaps more to the point, money is power, and power is transformative. We have no right to say, "What a stupid fucking fat cow she is. Why don't they lock her up somewhere?" Why not? Because we are all stupid fucking fat cows in our own stupid fucking ways. Let's get down to proverbial brass tacks here: If I were born in the south to Nascar-lovin' yokels who bleached my hair, put me in lip gloss, and sent me off to Disney to whore myself out to that ubiquitous mouse, and then later I had a hit song and video targeting the pedophile demographic, then I'd probably be listless and chubby in my VMA performance, too.

Elect This, Bitches!: A Survey of Democracy

Obnoxious & Despicable: The List. As promised, he said--while his voice reverberated around a cold and empty room, not unlike an unrented banquet hall--I will begin my list of the obnoxious and/or despicable things located on this, our particular plane of reality. Disclaimer No. 1: This list does not pretend to be either comprehensive or definitive and reflects only whatever happens to traipse (daisies-in-hair) through my mind at any given moment that I happen (a.) to be situated at an internet-accessible computer and (b.) not to be masturbating. Disclaimer No. 2: I was only kidding about the masturbating. Disclaimer No. 3: The disclaimant (i.e., moi) reserves the right to disclaim other things not heretofore disclaimed by nos. 1 and/or 2 with or without prior notice and may do so at his/her/its sole discretion and without additional signatories or & etc.

1. IOWA.

Nein, meine Freunde. I have nothing against the state itself, that stout (dare I say chubby?) little geographic entity located somewhere over yonder, in what I am told is the "heartland" of America. (I reckon that puts Texas smack-dab in the middle of the "entrailsland" of the same bumbling nation. It makes metaphoric sense, no?) No, I am frothing, spitting, and otherwise bothered by what Iowa is emblematic of--especially now.

For some elusive reason, it is deemed fair by unseen powers that Iowa (and New Hampshire and other early primary/caucus states) get to determine the presidential election candidates for the rest of the nation. I don't know about you, and with all due respect to Iowans, I don't give one flying, leaping, bounding fuck who Iowa wants to be president. No person has yet provided that rarely cited "reasonable reason" why all states shouldn't have their primaries and caucuses on the same day. Perhaps it's too reasonable and meddles not only with the idea of tradition that Americans so blindly hold dear, but also with game-playing structure of presidential politics itself, which more and more resembles a big-bucks-no-whammies style game show rather than liberal democracy. (And by the way, I don't care if Iowa and/or New Hampshire happen to be good representatives of greater American public. One might suspect that the greater American public might be an even better representative of the greater American public. Plus, a single-day primary would inoculate dimmer-witted American-types against the "old Jedi mind trick" of liking to pick, firstly, their noses and, secondly, a winner. If Huckabee, for instance, gets 50% in the early states, and Romney gets 20%, Joe Sixpack, who had been previously been wooed by Romney's starchy conservatism, will second guess himself and sniff around to see which way the herd is headed.) In short, the median American is slow and is often distracted by bright lights and/or stock car racing, so it's best to simplify the process so we can if not eliminate, then minimize the stupidity. If one were forced, at gunpoint, to reduce it to a proverb, one might--and, I stress, might--say, "No detours for the short bus." (Disclaimer No. 4: Don't be snookered into thinking by my employment of Romney and Huckabee in a for-instance scenario above that I favor either of these candidates. It was only by reference to these bastards that I made my bid at folksy impartiality.)

And don't even get me started on the electoral college...

Happy Beginning of Fictitious Increment

Recently, as I half-listened to Valerie Bertinelli's dewy-eyed television endorsement for NutriSystem, or Jenny Craig, or Fat-Be-Gone, or whatever it is she's hawking, I reflected upon the (in)significance of the new year. In the spatial-temporal paradigm which we, as humans, necessarily inhabit, there is an implicit hour glass marking our short time on this wretched planet. At times, the motion of the sand through the bottleneck becomes deafening, but of what relevance is the particular passing of one "year"?

True, the annum seems to acquire some scientific legitimacy via the revolution of the earth around the sun--although what relevance this astronomical phenomenon has to my receding hairline and existential dread I have no clue. Don't let the Man, in the guise of many individuated babbling men and women, fool you, my friend. Years are nothing but one big metaphor (a year, i.e., is like a cute little mini-life with spring/youth and winter/death), and I have no doubt that the holiday surrounding this non-event was originally created to lure some ancient Greek Heather-type into flashing her hoo-has at some ancient Greek frat kegger. (Whoomp, there it, as they say, is.) As if people required an excuse to get wasted and shame their parents.

The non-event in question also affords the individual a metaphorical opportunity to start anew by swearing off naughty foods (like deep fried gristle, for instance) and by getting in shape. Mental mind games aside, if you--and, yes, I'm talking to you, Fattie McFatso--don't have the discipline to slim down on an anonymous uncelebrated Thursday in early April, then a new "year" probably won't make much of a difference. Sometime around, maybe, the ides of March, you'll wake up in the trench your hemispheric ass has made in your sage green microsuede sofa and gaze wistfully at your NordicFlex or BoTrac or TaiGym equipment, jutting there--with arachnid-like poles, rods, and bands--through a beam of sleepy sunshine. It will be covered with a skin of thick dust, interrupted only occasionally by a hand print, from that time you set your pork rinds on the seat while you located the remote. New year or no new year, you will be inevitably revealed as the weak, self-pitying loser that you are, and you will have been indicted simultaneously by your gelatinous gut and the unopened cellophane around the exercise equipment instruction manual. You have been exposed, my friend, as the vermin that collects on the underside of other, larger vermin.

In short, everyone always tries to make this beginning of the year non-event a time for hope, optimism, and opportunity. As for myself, I rather prefer to see the ridiculousness of life freshly and with a renewed, refortified disparagement. That is why it shall be my "resolution" this year to compose a list--a jaunty, fun-loving list--of the most despicable, obnoxious things in this world. It shall neither be in order of obnoxiousness nor comprehensive in its scope. I only want to take a small, wafer-thin moment to give just a little back...