Travel makes the days go by faster. I can't decide if that is because I'm busy seeing all kinds of neat, interesting things (statues of famous people, old churches, girls in bikinis, puddles of barf outside a Shanghai nightclub), or if it's just because I miss football.
One thing about football is that it helps you mark the time. From kickoff on Sunday afternoon, to the last whistle on Monday night, all you think about is football. You eat it in the form of chilli and cheese. You drink it in the form of Budweiser beer (unless you had a particularly hard Saturday night, in which case you drink football in the form of orange juice and aspirin). You sleep it in the fitful rest of a man who took a lousy quarterback in the fantasy draft.
The remainder of the week is nothing more than waiting for football to come back around again. You check the injury reports, the stats, the blogs. You watch SportsCenter for the 18th time, never realizing that the highlights won't change: the receiver who dropped the touchdown pass and blew the spread along with your fifty bucks will still drop the damn pass, no matter how many times you watch it.
Football is a love/hate affair. Sometimes it is as boring as a young woman, other times as torturous as a Motley Crue reunion tour. But always it is what we want it to be: a game filled with the expectation of victory, and a chance to watch someone get his clock cleaned.
That is, unless you're traveling.
Travel is a hell of a lot of fun, and you can learn a lot about many people and places. One thing you learn very quickly is that nobody watches football beyond the borders of North America. Not only that, but the sad sacks call a completely different game by the same name.
It would seem to make sense. A bunch of wimps running around on a field kicking a beach ball to each other. They use their feet a lot, so hey, the game is called football. Once in a great while, these masters of the Olympic event 'jogging' will even kick the ball towards a barn-sized net. And, once in an even greater while, the ball will go into said net. After that, the fans sing a song and beat the crap out of each other. Where do I sign up?
When there is more violence in the stands than there is on the field, the activity you are playing is a game, not a sport. And when the game you are playing is 90 minutes long but can still end in a 0-0 tie, you are playing an extremely stupid game at that.
I'm a little bit tired of hearing that sooner or later, soccer is going to be a popular sport in the United States and Canada. It isn't. It never will be. Everytime I sit down to watch a football game in a foreign country (relegated to the back of the bar with the small TV, sans volume) some European loudmouth thinks it's time for a soccer discussion. It goes something like this:
"What are you watching, mate?"
"Football," grumbles the irritable Canadian, as he picks up his tuna sandwich because the place doesn't serve wings.
"That ain't football. That's rugby for women."
"Mmm-hmm."
"Football is what you call soccer."
"Yeah."
"Soccer's big in America now. It's going to be bigger than baseball."
"Why's that?" asks the very irritable Canadian, though he already knows the answer because he's heard it five hundred and sixty-two times before.
"All the kids are playing it. When they grow up, they'll play soccer."
563.
I would wager that right now, some poor Canadian is sitting in a Norwegian bar that has satellite reception, and he is listening to the same garbage.
To the Euro-weenies, let's put something on the record: the kids who play soccer are there because their parents won't let them play a violent sport. Football and hockey are out, and fastballs scare the hell out of mothers, so baseball's out, too. Unless you're over six feet tall by the time you hit grade 11, basketball is also a no-go. That leaves soccer. Your passionate game of kick-the-ball-around is there to raise the self-esteem of children that wouldn't have amounted to a damn on the grid iron, and to keep hockey players in shape during the off-season.
People are not going to watch soccer in North America. It's made up of all the people that got cut from the other sports. Sure, there might be a few kids that played soccer as their first choice, but who the hell wants to watch a guy like that play anything? And just because we did something as kids doesn't mean we're going to keep doing it as adults. Using the old 'you show me yours, I'll show you mine' might have worked while hiding in the cushion fort, but it doesn't go over so well on the nightclub circuit.
One thing that does fascinate me about soccer and its fans are the songs they sing. Before the game and after, they trash the USA to no end and make fun of the sports they play. But during the game, virtually all of the songs the Europeans sing (yes, including the O-lay, O-lay, O-lay ditty) were written by American composers. Weird.
Euro-boobs aren't the only ones who don't watch football, yet complain about it constantly. South Africans and Australians are even worse, because they play rugby.
I dig rugby. It's a tough game to play. It was the forerunner of football. Indeed, the Canadian Football League was known as the Canadian Rugby Football Union in 1884, then the Canadian Rugby Union, then the Canadian Football Council, and finally the Canadian Football League in 1958.
The Canadian and American games were both born from rugby, and one of the first recognized football games took place between Harvard and McGill University. There isn't enough time to go into all the ways that the American and Canadian games diverged, but there is enough time to tell the bonehead from Tennessee whom I met that the CFL didn't start in the 1970's, and they didn't change the 4-down rule to 3-downs 'just to be different.' The 4th down appeared in American college ball in 1912. The Canadian game simply kept the 3-down format.
Football came from rugby, but it was a much tougher game than rugby from the start. On-field deaths were not unknown, and a closed fist punch to the face was a legitimate way to bring a man down.
Aussie Rules football might look tough, until you notice that the highlights you see are the only hits that took place in the entire game. Rugby itself is missing two critical elements: the football rule that allows you to hit a man as hard as you can, anywhere on his body, without needing to use your arms, and the ability to blindside the man even if he doesn't have the ball.
Rugby tackles hurt. Football tackles are devastating. But it is the rugby player and rugby fan who freaks out whenever the subject of which sport is 'tougher' comes up. Football fans and players pay this argument no mind for two reasons: we know football is tougher, and we don't watch rugby, anyway.
The pads argument is usually the first to come out. Rugby fans complain that football players wear pads and helmets. This argument stuns me with its idiocy. Do the rugby fans mean to tell me that a game that requires armour in order to avoid serious injury or death is less tough than the one that does not? And do they believe that football started with all of this armour in the first place? Fat chance.
The history of football is actually a history of governing councils trying to keep young men from killing each other. Americans and Canadians took rugby and turned it into the most cruel, barbaric sport imaginable. Since then, it has been a struggle to keep it as sane and safe as possible while still allowing men to beat each other's brains in.
As far as I know, rugby has not changed any of its major rules in decades. The absence of helmets and flak jackets on their players is proof positive that the game is not, on the whole, life threatening (rugby does not allow a tackle above the shoulders, nor does it allow 'hitting,' that is, tackling without using the arms to wrap up).
A quick look at football's history tells you why the game was almost banned on more than one occasion. In 1892, Harvard used a new formation against Yale called the 'flying wedge.' It was developed, oddly enough, by a chess master.
The front line of the offense would interlock their arms and plow forward, the ball carrier behind them. Defenders would have to rip this wall apart to get to the man. It must have been Dislocated Shoulder City. Any defender who fell down was trampled beneath the wedge. Add the face punch into the mix, and these college students would have been a bloody mess.
Which they were. Seven players were carted off the field in what one paper called "a dying condition." There were so many injuries to Yale that they took it personally. The two schools broke off all official contact for the next two years.
The brutality got worse. Wedge formations and the act of dragging your ball carrier forward (in effect standing him up for an especially painful hit) made the game lethal. By 1900, serious injuries and on-field deaths were a regularity.
There's no way that football could be started from scratch today. It's incredible that it lasted at all. Remember that these were college students. Pro football was still small time, and the NFL didn't yet exist. Mothers were shipping their boys off to Yale, Harvard, and Rutgers to get an education, and then watching them come home in a pine box.
1905 was a bad year. 18 college students died playing football, and the game was banned in a number of schools. President Roosevelt finally stepped in and told colleges to clean up the game, or he'd campaign to have football banned outright.
Taking heed, nineteen colleges got together and drummed up some new rules. If you've ever wondered how the NCAA got it's start, now you know (it was originally called the Intercollegiate Athletics Association of the United States; its specific purpose was to find a way to keep football, and its players, alive). The 1906 meeting invented the neutral zone, wrote up some new laws about tackling, and also codified the laws for the forward pass. With the formal entry of the forward pass, football kissed rugby good-bye.
The new rules were a good idea, but they didn't help much. In 1908, 33 more college players would die playing with the pigskin. Someone has pointed out that with a limited number of schools playing ball at the turn of the century, you had close to a 50/50 shot of buying the farm stepping on the football field. Tough odds.
If the internet, television, and SportsCenter had existed back then, football would have been as dead as the players it killed. No one would have stood for endless highlights of college kids being carried off the field, dead and broken. If it happened just once today it would be dreadful, and the second guessing of the game would be extreme. But thirty-three times in one season?
What's incredible is that our forebears stood for it, and that college students still wanted to play the game. Helmets, pads, and various rule changes throughout the years have made the game safer, but only safer in the quotation mark sense. Today, about 8 players a year get killed playing football. That's from all levels combined, making it small potatoes compared to the old days, though a staggering number of injuries flood the locker rooms each weekend.
Concussions, for one. 40 000 of them are reported annually among high school players alone, and those are only the kids that get treated. Concussions are such a certainty that NFL teams have a chart for each player. If a player gets nailed in the head, they know what questions to ask that particular man in order to find out if he's still got all his marbles. And even if he does, that's not to say that he'll have them later on. Former players report nausea and forgetfulness well after they retire, a chronic symptom of having your head kicked in. It will be with them for the rest of their lives.
But, hey, who needs helmets?
It's insane for us to love this game. Absolutely crazy. But love it we do. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that football is by far the sport with the most injuries, and also the sport with the highest television ratings and fan attendance. Perhaps.
Traveling puts me through intense football withdrawal. I love the game, brag about it, want to jam it down a Euro-weenie's throat every time they crack wise. It says something about me and my culture that I long to see a man carry a ball over a white line, even if he has to destroy himself to do it.
But then, what does it say about the player?
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Hear-Ye, Hear-Ye
Here's a short story from a while ago that you might dig. All rights reserved to the Global Coyote.
Hear-Ye, Hear-Ye
He cracked up when they told him that he couldn’t use a hand at his knee to denote a well-hung man. It was the 8th Annual Physically Challenged Conference. He was in the twentieth row. In the front were the people in wheelchairs. At the back were the blind. The blind weren’t allowed in the front anymore because the guide dogs got nervous when the palsied walked by. The deaf…well, the deaf just had to deal, didn’t they?
His name was Harry, and he could feel his mind splitting down the middle when the officious looking woman behind the podium reached down beneath her hemline and showed him the ‘well-hung’ sign. The interpreter to her left did the same, though it made more sense for the interpreter to do it, because he had the anatomy to make it mean what it meant.
The woman told the audience that the well-hung sign was offensive and was now to be stricken from the language.
Harry fumed. He had, indeed, had enough. Last year, at the 7th Annual, they’d told the deaf that they couldn’t use a limp wrist for the homosexual sign. Then the nose-thing for a Jewish person. Ditto the boob-motion for a woman. And now the well-hung sign.
It put Harry over the edge. Not only was he a proud, deaf man, he was also hung like a moose. The censorship of the deaf offended him almost as much as the censorship of the well endowed. Using the well-hung sign had let Harry feel like a human being these past 20 years. It had been that long since the snowblower accident had taken his hearing. Damned if he was going to let the powers that be take away his manhood.
When he left the convention, he knew he was crazy. Just like that. He’d felt the tear in his brain open wide. His deaf friends had said good-bye the old-fashioned way: saying it aloud for the lip readers, and signing it for the sign police.
It was the sign police that drove Harry nuts. They made him out to be a fashionable Rain Man. They wrote articles about him and how people should feel sorry for him. They shouted at him in Burger King when he ordered fries. They asked him if he needed help opening doors. They mimed icebergs when he ordered scotch straight up, and they flapped their arms like seagulls when he asked where he could take a well-hung leak.
The sign police were everywhere. The sign police were everybody. The second they saw him using sign language, they cooed as if he were a child, then asked if he needed any assistance. Being deaf, he couldn’t hear them, and so the woodpecker would land on his shoulder, tap-tap-tap. He would turn, and there they’d be: the soccer mom, the school teacher, the politician, the security guard, the theater usher, the doorman, the coat check girl. The sign cop.
The sign police knew what was good for him. They loved him as they loved a dim-witted child. They knew, deep down, that he needed them.
But not anymore.
He was quite out of his mind when he committed his first kidnapping. It was a fast food cashier. She didn’t ask him which soft drink he wanted. Instead, she went to the machine and pointed at each selection, one by one, nodding earnestly. When she got to Pepsi, he smiled. When she got off her shift later that night, he bonked her on her earnest little head and put her in the U-Haul.
The next day, the shoe store clerk got the nod. The shoe clerk blew it by holding his hands four feet apart when Harry said that he wore a size 13. Bonk-bonk, in the U-Haul.
Later that afternoon, the Helpful Passerby took a sap to the noggin. The Helpful Passerby had seen Harry signing to one of his deaf buddies on a street corner. When the traffic signal said ‘walk,’ the Helpful Passerby pulled a woodpecker and pointed Harry across the road. Harry bonked him on the head in a parking lot two blocks later. U-Haul.
The hot dog vendor at Shea ran out of luck when he waved at Harry fifteen times to tell him that his hot dog had arrived. Bonk-bonk...bonk-bonk (the vendor was tough), and into the U-Haul.
The week progressed. The U-Haul got crowded. He took three Helpful Passersby and a mime from the park. He bonked a woman after a date because she insisted on clapping along to songs and mouthing the words for him. He went to Hoboken and sapped the woman who had told him that deaf people shouldn’t use the well-hung sign anymore. He U-Hauled a stereo salesman just out of spite.
By the end of the week, the U-Haul was chock full of people. They were trussed up with duct tape and nylon rope. They weren’t going anywhere. Harry gave them sips of water through tiny holes in the tape. He didn’t bother to feed them. He found it fun to watch them try and talk beneath their gags while he pointed to his ears and shrugged his shoulders.
The drive out to the woods was peaceful. Harry followed the speed limit and used his turn signals. He tooted his horn a couple of times just for the hell of it. When he got into the forest he found a space to pull off. He waited a half-hour. Only two cars went by in all that time. Perfect.
It took him an hour to get all of the people out of the U-Haul and into the woods. Some of them fought and kicked and writhed. The ones that hadn’t eaten in a few days were easier to manage. He laid them all on the ground.
It was a nice day. Birds were out, though of course Harry couldn’t hear them. He whistled anyway, while the people watched. He found a suitable tree. He pounded metal stakes into the ground at three-foot intervals. He laid the people down in a row, and tied them to the stakes with more nylon rope, immobilizing them.
He stuck his finger in his mouth and tested the wind. Then he fired up the chain saw. It was a big Black & Decker. He guessed that it was noisy, judging by the looks on the people’s faces. Their eyes were open wide. Harry pointed to the chain saw, then his ear, then shrugged. He pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
He began cutting. Debris flew. The chain saw cut like a machete through newspaper. Harry laughed. This was fun. He was thinking about the dumb-ass riddle. If a tree falls in the forest…
He put his back into it, making more cuts, smelling the smell of gasoline and death. Vengeance from the Deaf Man. Revenge of the Poor Guy In the Corner.
When he was finished, the tree was on the verge. He’d cut a fairly neat triangle out of its side. It was on the brink of falling. The environmental people that always hung out at the Physically Challenged expos wouldn’t be happy, but that was acceptable.
Harry dug his heels into the ground while the people stared at him. He pushed. He heaved. The wood gave way. The shadow fell over the people’s faces as the timber came down to meet them. The tree fell in the forest. It crashed to the ground with an earth shaking thud.
Not a peep, Harry signed.
Hear-Ye, Hear-Ye
He cracked up when they told him that he couldn’t use a hand at his knee to denote a well-hung man. It was the 8th Annual Physically Challenged Conference. He was in the twentieth row. In the front were the people in wheelchairs. At the back were the blind. The blind weren’t allowed in the front anymore because the guide dogs got nervous when the palsied walked by. The deaf…well, the deaf just had to deal, didn’t they?
His name was Harry, and he could feel his mind splitting down the middle when the officious looking woman behind the podium reached down beneath her hemline and showed him the ‘well-hung’ sign. The interpreter to her left did the same, though it made more sense for the interpreter to do it, because he had the anatomy to make it mean what it meant.
The woman told the audience that the well-hung sign was offensive and was now to be stricken from the language.
Harry fumed. He had, indeed, had enough. Last year, at the 7th Annual, they’d told the deaf that they couldn’t use a limp wrist for the homosexual sign. Then the nose-thing for a Jewish person. Ditto the boob-motion for a woman. And now the well-hung sign.
It put Harry over the edge. Not only was he a proud, deaf man, he was also hung like a moose. The censorship of the deaf offended him almost as much as the censorship of the well endowed. Using the well-hung sign had let Harry feel like a human being these past 20 years. It had been that long since the snowblower accident had taken his hearing. Damned if he was going to let the powers that be take away his manhood.
When he left the convention, he knew he was crazy. Just like that. He’d felt the tear in his brain open wide. His deaf friends had said good-bye the old-fashioned way: saying it aloud for the lip readers, and signing it for the sign police.
It was the sign police that drove Harry nuts. They made him out to be a fashionable Rain Man. They wrote articles about him and how people should feel sorry for him. They shouted at him in Burger King when he ordered fries. They asked him if he needed help opening doors. They mimed icebergs when he ordered scotch straight up, and they flapped their arms like seagulls when he asked where he could take a well-hung leak.
The sign police were everywhere. The sign police were everybody. The second they saw him using sign language, they cooed as if he were a child, then asked if he needed any assistance. Being deaf, he couldn’t hear them, and so the woodpecker would land on his shoulder, tap-tap-tap. He would turn, and there they’d be: the soccer mom, the school teacher, the politician, the security guard, the theater usher, the doorman, the coat check girl. The sign cop.
The sign police knew what was good for him. They loved him as they loved a dim-witted child. They knew, deep down, that he needed them.
But not anymore.
He was quite out of his mind when he committed his first kidnapping. It was a fast food cashier. She didn’t ask him which soft drink he wanted. Instead, she went to the machine and pointed at each selection, one by one, nodding earnestly. When she got to Pepsi, he smiled. When she got off her shift later that night, he bonked her on her earnest little head and put her in the U-Haul.
The next day, the shoe store clerk got the nod. The shoe clerk blew it by holding his hands four feet apart when Harry said that he wore a size 13. Bonk-bonk, in the U-Haul.
Later that afternoon, the Helpful Passerby took a sap to the noggin. The Helpful Passerby had seen Harry signing to one of his deaf buddies on a street corner. When the traffic signal said ‘walk,’ the Helpful Passerby pulled a woodpecker and pointed Harry across the road. Harry bonked him on the head in a parking lot two blocks later. U-Haul.
The hot dog vendor at Shea ran out of luck when he waved at Harry fifteen times to tell him that his hot dog had arrived. Bonk-bonk...bonk-bonk (the vendor was tough), and into the U-Haul.
The week progressed. The U-Haul got crowded. He took three Helpful Passersby and a mime from the park. He bonked a woman after a date because she insisted on clapping along to songs and mouthing the words for him. He went to Hoboken and sapped the woman who had told him that deaf people shouldn’t use the well-hung sign anymore. He U-Hauled a stereo salesman just out of spite.
By the end of the week, the U-Haul was chock full of people. They were trussed up with duct tape and nylon rope. They weren’t going anywhere. Harry gave them sips of water through tiny holes in the tape. He didn’t bother to feed them. He found it fun to watch them try and talk beneath their gags while he pointed to his ears and shrugged his shoulders.
The drive out to the woods was peaceful. Harry followed the speed limit and used his turn signals. He tooted his horn a couple of times just for the hell of it. When he got into the forest he found a space to pull off. He waited a half-hour. Only two cars went by in all that time. Perfect.
It took him an hour to get all of the people out of the U-Haul and into the woods. Some of them fought and kicked and writhed. The ones that hadn’t eaten in a few days were easier to manage. He laid them all on the ground.
It was a nice day. Birds were out, though of course Harry couldn’t hear them. He whistled anyway, while the people watched. He found a suitable tree. He pounded metal stakes into the ground at three-foot intervals. He laid the people down in a row, and tied them to the stakes with more nylon rope, immobilizing them.
He stuck his finger in his mouth and tested the wind. Then he fired up the chain saw. It was a big Black & Decker. He guessed that it was noisy, judging by the looks on the people’s faces. Their eyes were open wide. Harry pointed to the chain saw, then his ear, then shrugged. He pulled the goggles down over his eyes.
He began cutting. Debris flew. The chain saw cut like a machete through newspaper. Harry laughed. This was fun. He was thinking about the dumb-ass riddle. If a tree falls in the forest…
He put his back into it, making more cuts, smelling the smell of gasoline and death. Vengeance from the Deaf Man. Revenge of the Poor Guy In the Corner.
When he was finished, the tree was on the verge. He’d cut a fairly neat triangle out of its side. It was on the brink of falling. The environmental people that always hung out at the Physically Challenged expos wouldn’t be happy, but that was acceptable.
Harry dug his heels into the ground while the people stared at him. He pushed. He heaved. The wood gave way. The shadow fell over the people’s faces as the timber came down to meet them. The tree fell in the forest. It crashed to the ground with an earth shaking thud.
Not a peep, Harry signed.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
You Can Be Serious
Most of the people I know are of the multi-culti ilk, the types that sit around and give a little Bush-bashing over supper, talk about how wonderful it is to live in multi-ethnic Canada, and mutter uncomfortably when someone mentions Jesus (unless they're swearing; people that have decided Christianity is for the birds still use it when they spill their coffee. "Christ, that's hot!")
I know so many multi-culti left wing weirdos (and those are the majority of my friends) that I sometimes wonder how Bush, Howard, and Harper managed to get into power. The answer is that the people who voted for them are serious, while the people who bash them all the live long day are not. Serious people don't harp on about things, they get on with their lives and do what needs doing, and then they vote. Unserious people eventually turn into blowhards, railing against their enemies without doing anything about it.
Back in 2004, a girlfriend of mine asked me who was going to win the US Presidential election. I said Bush. She thought I was nuts. She worked in a health spa and saw 14 clients a day. Every one of them told her that they hated Bush and that he was going to get ousted from power. They gave her the usual Alec Baldwin insight into why Bush would blow it: he's dumb. I repeated that he would win.
After he won, she asked me how I could have been so certain. I told her that I hadn't been too sure, but once she'd told me that every gym rat and fat lady in need of a deep cleansing facial massage hated Bush, I knew he was a shoo-in. Serious people go to work, feed their kids, don't want to be blown up by terrorists, and only freak out about their skin if they're caught in a grease fire. Serious people think about serious things. Fat ladies with bad skin read People magazine under the hair dryer and regurgitate whatever the New York limousine liberal writes in the op-ed.
It is ironic that the left wingers who pretend to champion multi-culturalism and a kinder, gentler hand are more unaccepting than the people they despise.
Take the evening news. If Bush comes on the screen, it is normal for the left winger to say, "Look at this moron." Just like that. They don't care who in the room might disagree with them. They take it as self-evident that Bush is a moron, and that you'll agree with them.
The same people that say, "Never talk about religion and politics," are the people that talk about religion and politics all the time. If the Pope gets a write-up in the paper saying that abortion is bad, the person reading the paper will tell the room that the Pope's an ass without any second thoughts whatsoever.
I knew a guy who once showed me a cartoon map of the United States. Instead of being called 'the United States,' the cartoonist had written, 'Jesusland.' When the guy showed it to me, he was chuckling. When I didn't laugh, he smirked and said, "Oh, you're one of those."
One of what? If he meant that I was one of those people that don't laugh at lame gags, he was spot on the money. If he meant I was one of those people that take pity on losers like him, he was right again.
Because none of the above examples are serious. They're not arguments, they're opinions put together using the Frankenstein technique: a little David Letterman, a little CNN, a little CBC, and voila: Bush is a dummy, the Pope hates women, and the United States is a collection of Bible thumping imbeciles.
I am always nervous whenever too many people believe the same thing, and I am extremely nervous when their views on a subject can be wrapped up in one statement. "Bush is a dummy." Okay, but he beat your hero Al Gore in all of his college grades, so does that mean I don't have to believe in global warming anymore? Because Al Gore, by your definition, is a dummy?
Serious people look for answers. They seek them out. If they see a word in the paper that they don't understand, they don't complain that the egghead who wrote the piece uses too many 'big words.' They look it up.
Unserious people believe anything that is repeated often enough, and feel it is their duty to repeat it, too. And when they run up against someone who doesn't know the mantra, they feel confused and frightened. And, as these bleating sheep are so fond of telling us, we fear what we don't understand. Unserious people cannot face their own pathetic irony.
Unserious people are afraid of issues that can only be discussed, never acted upon. Global cooling in the '70s becomes global warming in the '80s, which becomes climate change in the '90s. That's three major shifts in the argument in as many decades. How are we supposed to act on it if we can't even make up our minds what it is we're acting upon? The unserious people aren't concerned with that. They're concerned with the idea that they're concerned. They merely want to talk. It makes them feel good. Action takes guts. Unserious people don't have them.
But what about the congressional elections, you ask? Yes, what about them. They're being trumpeted as a victory for the left, and a backlash against Bush. Or, more specifically, as a backlash against Bush's ideals. (Never make the mistake in thinking that someone dislikes another person because they know the person. I don't know Bush personally, and probably neither do you. It's his ideals you like or dislike, not the man himself; put Clinton's words in Bush's mouth and, with the exception of Monica Lewinsky, people would change political parties overnight).
I'm not so sure about a leftist victory in the election, per se. The Democrats gained the House and the Senate, but not by very much. The country is still coming up 50/50. If Bush had fired Rumsfeld before the election instead of after (the biggest gaffe of his presidency), the Republicans would have taken it in a walk.
But they lost, and it would be easy to assume that the Party of the Unserious (that would be the Democrats) are proven correct: that the country should pull out of Iraq. Really? Is that what the election said? I don't think so. I think the election results showed that people are just a hair more ambivalent about the war, not about being there in the first place, but with how it is being fought.
I was at an interview a few weeks ago, where someone was asked what they thought of the Hiroshima bomb site. The answer was, "If we did stuff like that more often to people that screwed with us, we wouldn't be having this problem in Iraq right now." The whole room got uncomfortable, and people cleared their throats, and somebody changed the subject.
But what about that? You don't hear too much of that stuff in the man-on-street interviews produced by CNN. But the opinion must be out there. Dig deeper. Do your homework. Look around.
The Iraq question has a magnifying effect on people, showing them to be serious on the one hand, or unserious on the other. Anyone who thinks Iraq is not intrinsically tied into the war on Islamic fascism is either incredibly ignorant, or pro-fascist. This is the supreme war of our generation. This is bigger than the Cold War, and bigger than Nazi Germany.
In the Cold War, some relatively sane guys had their hands on the button, and they were prepared to use it only if the other guy did first. With Nazi Germany, at least we knew where these guys were, and we were pretty sure that if we knocked over Berlin, they'd surrender.
It's interesting to note that back during the Cold War, there were marches against nuclear weapons, movies made about the world going up in smoke, and pop stars making anti-nuclear statements between bong hits.
Today, with Iran saying they're going to wipe Israel off the map, and the North Koreans test firing rockets into the Sea of Japan, nobody gives a damn about nukes. Why? Because the people who yawn at the idea of Israel being obliterated aren't serious Western citizens. They are, in fact, pro-fascist, and anti-West. There can be no other explanation. All of Israel's enemies are racist, totalitarian regimes, bent on her destruction. To not care what these regimes plan on doing, to not march against them for the first time in history, shows that you implicitly support what they stand for.
Can there be any question of this? Imagine sitting in your office in Iran. You watch as hundreds of thousands protest against Bush sending troops to Iraq. You watch every news agency from CNN to Al-Jazeera rake the Americans over the coals for tying a leash to a prisoner's neck. The outrage and condemnation are far louder than when an insurgent's prisoner has his head sawed off. In Italy, the rainbow flags drip from the windows, with Pace ('Peace') written across them. From New York to Sydney to London to Tokyo, the unserious march shoulder to shoulder, decrying their own governments.
You tip back your chair, shoot your aide for some insult or other, and flip the channel. It only gets better. Your enemy's newspapers expose classified information. The UN, based in the city where two buildings were knocked down by people you call martyrs and heroes, invites Hugo Chavez to attendance. There, he calls the President of the country he is visiting 'Satan,' then hops the next plane home without fuss.
You yourself step in front of the cameras and declare that Israel must be destroyed, that Jews should move back to Europe, and that the Holocaust never happened. And you mention in passing that you want to develop nuclear technology to bring the electric bill down.
In France an average of 80 cars a day are burned by Muslim 'youths,' who just never seem to get old. In Madrid, boom, in London, pow.
Death and mayhem, and blood running through the streets. Then, perhaps to test the waters one last time, to see just how hypocritical and ignorant the Unserious of the West are, you pull out the big guns. While the lesbian Rosie O'Donnell on the View tells the American housewife that Christianity is as bad as Islamic fundamentalism, hundreds gather outside in Kermanshah, Iran to watch a homosexual man hang for the crime of sodomy.
And after all of this, the world and Rosie say...nothing. At least, not to each other. But to you, the racist, fascist, immoral dictator, the silence is deafening approval for the words you say and the acts you commit. How could it be taken otherwise?
His name was Shahab Darvishi, by the way, the homosexual man who came up against Islamic justice. Sodomy, like rape, murder, adultery, blasphemy and espionage, are capital offences in Iran. And before the ladies get too happy with the death-for-rape deal, you might want to know that you need four eyewitnesses to prove rape. And even then, as happened recently to a gang rape victim, the woman might receive 96 lashes for reporting said rape, because it means admitting she was alone with a man not her husband.
It should be plain that this is a battle of ideologies. This is Freedom vs. Fascism, and Good vs. Evil. Serious people know this. The Unserious should too, because it is summed up in one little line that even their feeble minds could grasp, were it not for their blind hatred of the man in the White House.
No matter how many clitorises are clipped from the crotches of young girls, no matter how many heads are cut off, no matter how many cars burn in France, no matter how many Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims themselves are gunned down in the street. The Unserious have tuned out this information. They receive their orders from the fascists, and they march accordingly.
Until, perhaps, it's their cousin or sister that gets blown to smithereens on a downtown bus. Which is exactly why the Americans and others (we Canadians chickened out) are in Iraq right now. It's the oldest lesson in the book. Fight in someone else's backyard. I don't care if the Americans are there for two hundred years, I just hope they have the willpower to stay there. Better that volunteer soldiers slug it out in Iraq, than scores of women and children are decimated at a shopping mall in Philadelphia.
If the Americans were to pull out of Iraq, it would be the singular greatest defeat in the history of the world. Do the Unserious really believe that 3000 dead soldiers requires a Super Power running away from bands of murderers and thugs bent on knocking down our buildings, hacking off our heads, and mutilating our children? Nevermind what they would do to the Iraqi civilians immediately after an American withdrawal. Can they be serious?
This is a battle of wills. A car bomb here, a car bomb there, and sooner or later the Yankees and the Brits will run away. But how far do you run? If you aren't there to keep an eye on your enemy, exactly how long is it until they have their eye on that shopping mall in Philly? Tell me where you run to then.
Seriously.
I know so many multi-culti left wing weirdos (and those are the majority of my friends) that I sometimes wonder how Bush, Howard, and Harper managed to get into power. The answer is that the people who voted for them are serious, while the people who bash them all the live long day are not. Serious people don't harp on about things, they get on with their lives and do what needs doing, and then they vote. Unserious people eventually turn into blowhards, railing against their enemies without doing anything about it.
Back in 2004, a girlfriend of mine asked me who was going to win the US Presidential election. I said Bush. She thought I was nuts. She worked in a health spa and saw 14 clients a day. Every one of them told her that they hated Bush and that he was going to get ousted from power. They gave her the usual Alec Baldwin insight into why Bush would blow it: he's dumb. I repeated that he would win.
After he won, she asked me how I could have been so certain. I told her that I hadn't been too sure, but once she'd told me that every gym rat and fat lady in need of a deep cleansing facial massage hated Bush, I knew he was a shoo-in. Serious people go to work, feed their kids, don't want to be blown up by terrorists, and only freak out about their skin if they're caught in a grease fire. Serious people think about serious things. Fat ladies with bad skin read People magazine under the hair dryer and regurgitate whatever the New York limousine liberal writes in the op-ed.
It is ironic that the left wingers who pretend to champion multi-culturalism and a kinder, gentler hand are more unaccepting than the people they despise.
Take the evening news. If Bush comes on the screen, it is normal for the left winger to say, "Look at this moron." Just like that. They don't care who in the room might disagree with them. They take it as self-evident that Bush is a moron, and that you'll agree with them.
The same people that say, "Never talk about religion and politics," are the people that talk about religion and politics all the time. If the Pope gets a write-up in the paper saying that abortion is bad, the person reading the paper will tell the room that the Pope's an ass without any second thoughts whatsoever.
I knew a guy who once showed me a cartoon map of the United States. Instead of being called 'the United States,' the cartoonist had written, 'Jesusland.' When the guy showed it to me, he was chuckling. When I didn't laugh, he smirked and said, "Oh, you're one of those."
One of what? If he meant that I was one of those people that don't laugh at lame gags, he was spot on the money. If he meant I was one of those people that take pity on losers like him, he was right again.
Because none of the above examples are serious. They're not arguments, they're opinions put together using the Frankenstein technique: a little David Letterman, a little CNN, a little CBC, and voila: Bush is a dummy, the Pope hates women, and the United States is a collection of Bible thumping imbeciles.
I am always nervous whenever too many people believe the same thing, and I am extremely nervous when their views on a subject can be wrapped up in one statement. "Bush is a dummy." Okay, but he beat your hero Al Gore in all of his college grades, so does that mean I don't have to believe in global warming anymore? Because Al Gore, by your definition, is a dummy?
Serious people look for answers. They seek them out. If they see a word in the paper that they don't understand, they don't complain that the egghead who wrote the piece uses too many 'big words.' They look it up.
Unserious people believe anything that is repeated often enough, and feel it is their duty to repeat it, too. And when they run up against someone who doesn't know the mantra, they feel confused and frightened. And, as these bleating sheep are so fond of telling us, we fear what we don't understand. Unserious people cannot face their own pathetic irony.
Unserious people are afraid of issues that can only be discussed, never acted upon. Global cooling in the '70s becomes global warming in the '80s, which becomes climate change in the '90s. That's three major shifts in the argument in as many decades. How are we supposed to act on it if we can't even make up our minds what it is we're acting upon? The unserious people aren't concerned with that. They're concerned with the idea that they're concerned. They merely want to talk. It makes them feel good. Action takes guts. Unserious people don't have them.
But what about the congressional elections, you ask? Yes, what about them. They're being trumpeted as a victory for the left, and a backlash against Bush. Or, more specifically, as a backlash against Bush's ideals. (Never make the mistake in thinking that someone dislikes another person because they know the person. I don't know Bush personally, and probably neither do you. It's his ideals you like or dislike, not the man himself; put Clinton's words in Bush's mouth and, with the exception of Monica Lewinsky, people would change political parties overnight).
I'm not so sure about a leftist victory in the election, per se. The Democrats gained the House and the Senate, but not by very much. The country is still coming up 50/50. If Bush had fired Rumsfeld before the election instead of after (the biggest gaffe of his presidency), the Republicans would have taken it in a walk.
But they lost, and it would be easy to assume that the Party of the Unserious (that would be the Democrats) are proven correct: that the country should pull out of Iraq. Really? Is that what the election said? I don't think so. I think the election results showed that people are just a hair more ambivalent about the war, not about being there in the first place, but with how it is being fought.
I was at an interview a few weeks ago, where someone was asked what they thought of the Hiroshima bomb site. The answer was, "If we did stuff like that more often to people that screwed with us, we wouldn't be having this problem in Iraq right now." The whole room got uncomfortable, and people cleared their throats, and somebody changed the subject.
But what about that? You don't hear too much of that stuff in the man-on-street interviews produced by CNN. But the opinion must be out there. Dig deeper. Do your homework. Look around.
The Iraq question has a magnifying effect on people, showing them to be serious on the one hand, or unserious on the other. Anyone who thinks Iraq is not intrinsically tied into the war on Islamic fascism is either incredibly ignorant, or pro-fascist. This is the supreme war of our generation. This is bigger than the Cold War, and bigger than Nazi Germany.
In the Cold War, some relatively sane guys had their hands on the button, and they were prepared to use it only if the other guy did first. With Nazi Germany, at least we knew where these guys were, and we were pretty sure that if we knocked over Berlin, they'd surrender.
It's interesting to note that back during the Cold War, there were marches against nuclear weapons, movies made about the world going up in smoke, and pop stars making anti-nuclear statements between bong hits.
Today, with Iran saying they're going to wipe Israel off the map, and the North Koreans test firing rockets into the Sea of Japan, nobody gives a damn about nukes. Why? Because the people who yawn at the idea of Israel being obliterated aren't serious Western citizens. They are, in fact, pro-fascist, and anti-West. There can be no other explanation. All of Israel's enemies are racist, totalitarian regimes, bent on her destruction. To not care what these regimes plan on doing, to not march against them for the first time in history, shows that you implicitly support what they stand for.
Can there be any question of this? Imagine sitting in your office in Iran. You watch as hundreds of thousands protest against Bush sending troops to Iraq. You watch every news agency from CNN to Al-Jazeera rake the Americans over the coals for tying a leash to a prisoner's neck. The outrage and condemnation are far louder than when an insurgent's prisoner has his head sawed off. In Italy, the rainbow flags drip from the windows, with Pace ('Peace') written across them. From New York to Sydney to London to Tokyo, the unserious march shoulder to shoulder, decrying their own governments.
You tip back your chair, shoot your aide for some insult or other, and flip the channel. It only gets better. Your enemy's newspapers expose classified information. The UN, based in the city where two buildings were knocked down by people you call martyrs and heroes, invites Hugo Chavez to attendance. There, he calls the President of the country he is visiting 'Satan,' then hops the next plane home without fuss.
You yourself step in front of the cameras and declare that Israel must be destroyed, that Jews should move back to Europe, and that the Holocaust never happened. And you mention in passing that you want to develop nuclear technology to bring the electric bill down.
In France an average of 80 cars a day are burned by Muslim 'youths,' who just never seem to get old. In Madrid, boom, in London, pow.
Death and mayhem, and blood running through the streets. Then, perhaps to test the waters one last time, to see just how hypocritical and ignorant the Unserious of the West are, you pull out the big guns. While the lesbian Rosie O'Donnell on the View tells the American housewife that Christianity is as bad as Islamic fundamentalism, hundreds gather outside in Kermanshah, Iran to watch a homosexual man hang for the crime of sodomy.
And after all of this, the world and Rosie say...nothing. At least, not to each other. But to you, the racist, fascist, immoral dictator, the silence is deafening approval for the words you say and the acts you commit. How could it be taken otherwise?
His name was Shahab Darvishi, by the way, the homosexual man who came up against Islamic justice. Sodomy, like rape, murder, adultery, blasphemy and espionage, are capital offences in Iran. And before the ladies get too happy with the death-for-rape deal, you might want to know that you need four eyewitnesses to prove rape. And even then, as happened recently to a gang rape victim, the woman might receive 96 lashes for reporting said rape, because it means admitting she was alone with a man not her husband.
It should be plain that this is a battle of ideologies. This is Freedom vs. Fascism, and Good vs. Evil. Serious people know this. The Unserious should too, because it is summed up in one little line that even their feeble minds could grasp, were it not for their blind hatred of the man in the White House.
No matter how many clitorises are clipped from the crotches of young girls, no matter how many heads are cut off, no matter how many cars burn in France, no matter how many Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims themselves are gunned down in the street. The Unserious have tuned out this information. They receive their orders from the fascists, and they march accordingly.
Until, perhaps, it's their cousin or sister that gets blown to smithereens on a downtown bus. Which is exactly why the Americans and others (we Canadians chickened out) are in Iraq right now. It's the oldest lesson in the book. Fight in someone else's backyard. I don't care if the Americans are there for two hundred years, I just hope they have the willpower to stay there. Better that volunteer soldiers slug it out in Iraq, than scores of women and children are decimated at a shopping mall in Philadelphia.
If the Americans were to pull out of Iraq, it would be the singular greatest defeat in the history of the world. Do the Unserious really believe that 3000 dead soldiers requires a Super Power running away from bands of murderers and thugs bent on knocking down our buildings, hacking off our heads, and mutilating our children? Nevermind what they would do to the Iraqi civilians immediately after an American withdrawal. Can they be serious?
This is a battle of wills. A car bomb here, a car bomb there, and sooner or later the Yankees and the Brits will run away. But how far do you run? If you aren't there to keep an eye on your enemy, exactly how long is it until they have their eye on that shopping mall in Philly? Tell me where you run to then.
Seriously.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Thanks for the Refresher, Mr. Donne
So here I am at 33, and there's lots of things I should be thinking about. When am I going to settle down? When am I going to raise a family? When am I going to get some responsibilty? There's probably a lot of good answers to those questions, but I've only got one: "Screw you." Everyone might want the UN to run the world, but they don't run me. I'm a Canadian man. I have a God given, red-and-white right to live the way I want to live.
Can somebody tell me what the hell I was thinking with that last article? And not one of you wrote to stop me.
Here's what went down. I was feeling high and mighty when I wrote that. Top of the world, ma, and all the rest of it. I posted the article, then went down and cracked a beer. I ended up playing an all night game of Texas Hold 'Em poker. Yes sir, just me and boys on my birthday. Beer, poker, and rock 'n roll on the box. Absolute perfection for an independent tough guy like me, huh?
Well, the fates love that kind of of talk. They wait in the wings and cackle and laugh, and they fall all over themselves while we tempt them ever closer to the stage, until they say, "This must be our cue. I mean, how long can we let the fool go on?"
The poker game broke up, and I ended evens. I hit the sack and went to sleep feeling like a man's man. I got up and went to the computer to check the mails. And wouldn't you know it, an email from the first love of my life. University sweetheart. I hadn't heard from her in a long, long time. When I think of her, I still get a smile on my face.
So I open the mail and there it is in the first couple of lines. It's a happy birthday note. Yup, the ladies still like to write me on my birthday. Damn, I'm good.
Then she gives me some news. She's had a baby. A little girl. And I'm happy as hell for her...and then it turns bitter-sweet...and then I start thinking about life. You know, like all of the family and responsibility stuff I said "Screw you" to about eight hours before.
So I saunter down the hall, mulling it over. I'm thinking to myself, "I must be right. I couldn't have written all that unless I was right. Right?"
I bump into my buddy Chris. He was at the poker game the night before. He's another man's man. Complains when there are no hot girls around, doesn't let anyone get too close, enjoys telling a dirty joke over a double shot on the rocks, has shoulders like a linebacker.
We go get a cup of coffee. I lay out my story for him, how the fates have done me in just as I was thinking what a cool cat I was. I thought Chris would be the perfect pick-me-up. He'd set me straight. He'd tell me another one of his awful jokes, and then he'd say, "Chicks suck," and punch me in the arm and I'd feel all better.
"Me and my buddy promised that neither one of us would get married till we were 32," he says. "Then my friend went and got married at 28. I'm 31. I've been thinking for three years, 'Did he outgrow me? And when am going to grow up? And what's this all for, anyway?'"
So we sat there for a half-hour, two men's men, and talked like sissies.
Thanks for cheering me up, Chris. Way to go.
I know what happened. I dropped too many names in that article. Nietchze, Hemingway, MacDonald. You'll think I'm crazy, but one of them heard me. They were up there in one of the exclusive literary pubs, the kind of place where Dan Brown would get his ass kicked if he walked in.
They were all sitting around a table and MacDonald says, "Hey, get this. There's a guy down there who thinks he's got it all figured out."
"Idiot," Nietchze says. "I figured it out, but I went insane to do it."
"Well," MacDonald says, "he thinks he's got it licked. And get this, he calls himself 'independent.' Wears it like a badge right on his sleeve. And he quotes us to prove it."
That draws a bunch of laughs from the whole pub. Shakespeare sighs, and Twain spits.
"Huh," goes Hemingway. And he leans his chair back and calls out, "Hey, Donne. Guess this guy didn't read your piece on no man being an island. You know, 'in and of himself,' and all that crap."
And John Donne wanders over, looks way down at me holding my pair of jacks, and says, "Oh, he's read it. Shall I send him a reminder?"
I got it, Johnnie, I got it.
Can somebody tell me what the hell I was thinking with that last article? And not one of you wrote to stop me.
Here's what went down. I was feeling high and mighty when I wrote that. Top of the world, ma, and all the rest of it. I posted the article, then went down and cracked a beer. I ended up playing an all night game of Texas Hold 'Em poker. Yes sir, just me and boys on my birthday. Beer, poker, and rock 'n roll on the box. Absolute perfection for an independent tough guy like me, huh?
Well, the fates love that kind of of talk. They wait in the wings and cackle and laugh, and they fall all over themselves while we tempt them ever closer to the stage, until they say, "This must be our cue. I mean, how long can we let the fool go on?"
The poker game broke up, and I ended evens. I hit the sack and went to sleep feeling like a man's man. I got up and went to the computer to check the mails. And wouldn't you know it, an email from the first love of my life. University sweetheart. I hadn't heard from her in a long, long time. When I think of her, I still get a smile on my face.
So I open the mail and there it is in the first couple of lines. It's a happy birthday note. Yup, the ladies still like to write me on my birthday. Damn, I'm good.
Then she gives me some news. She's had a baby. A little girl. And I'm happy as hell for her...and then it turns bitter-sweet...and then I start thinking about life. You know, like all of the family and responsibility stuff I said "Screw you" to about eight hours before.
So I saunter down the hall, mulling it over. I'm thinking to myself, "I must be right. I couldn't have written all that unless I was right. Right?"
I bump into my buddy Chris. He was at the poker game the night before. He's another man's man. Complains when there are no hot girls around, doesn't let anyone get too close, enjoys telling a dirty joke over a double shot on the rocks, has shoulders like a linebacker.
We go get a cup of coffee. I lay out my story for him, how the fates have done me in just as I was thinking what a cool cat I was. I thought Chris would be the perfect pick-me-up. He'd set me straight. He'd tell me another one of his awful jokes, and then he'd say, "Chicks suck," and punch me in the arm and I'd feel all better.
"Me and my buddy promised that neither one of us would get married till we were 32," he says. "Then my friend went and got married at 28. I'm 31. I've been thinking for three years, 'Did he outgrow me? And when am going to grow up? And what's this all for, anyway?'"
So we sat there for a half-hour, two men's men, and talked like sissies.
Thanks for cheering me up, Chris. Way to go.
I know what happened. I dropped too many names in that article. Nietchze, Hemingway, MacDonald. You'll think I'm crazy, but one of them heard me. They were up there in one of the exclusive literary pubs, the kind of place where Dan Brown would get his ass kicked if he walked in.
They were all sitting around a table and MacDonald says, "Hey, get this. There's a guy down there who thinks he's got it all figured out."
"Idiot," Nietchze says. "I figured it out, but I went insane to do it."
"Well," MacDonald says, "he thinks he's got it licked. And get this, he calls himself 'independent.' Wears it like a badge right on his sleeve. And he quotes us to prove it."
That draws a bunch of laughs from the whole pub. Shakespeare sighs, and Twain spits.
"Huh," goes Hemingway. And he leans his chair back and calls out, "Hey, Donne. Guess this guy didn't read your piece on no man being an island. You know, 'in and of himself,' and all that crap."
And John Donne wanders over, looks way down at me holding my pair of jacks, and says, "Oh, he's read it. Shall I send him a reminder?"
I got it, Johnnie, I got it.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
A Coyote Looks at 33
So this is what it looks like, the view from floor 33. When I was 13, I remember being pissed at my parents for something or other. I remember telling my brother (who's five years older than me), "You're lucky. You can move out anytime you want."
Eighteen seemed like a lifetime back then. When I was 17, I thought 30-year-old women were as ancient as Ghandi. When I was 22, I thought I knew what Hemingway was talking about, and I was pretty sure that I had the world by the ass.
Nietchze was no dummy. He had a line that went something like this: "When you're thirty, you look back at your youth and laugh at how young you were. Then you're sixty, and realize that 30 was youth."
That's well put. A friend of mine was mad at his girlfriend the other day, and I asked him how old she was. He told me she was twenty-five, and I said, "Well, she's young."
But when exactly does "young" stop? When I was twenty-five and in love with an outright bitch from LA, it sure felt like love to me. I didn't feel that young. Indeed, after going through a few months of hell with her, I felt plenty old. Then I got to 27 and fell for a dancer with long-long legs. When I jerked her around, nobody asked how old she was (22), they simply told me I was a goof. Youth is the excuse of idiots. Age is the excuse of idiots who haven't learned any better.
John D. MacDonald probably said it best. "The heart stays young." I have no doubt that a 70-year-old man still looks at a young lady's ass with the same eyes he had on five decades ago. I know I will. Hell, with what the teenage girls are wearing these days, the cops would lock me up if they could read my mind.
My great-gandmother lived until she was 106. She saw the first automobile, the first airplane, the first lunar landing, the first compact disc. But I'll bet she didn't feel that old when she cashed it in. I'll bet she looked back on her life and, when her heart started to fail and her feet turned black, she thought exactly what John D. did following the "heart stays young" stuff: "Please, not yet. Oh, please. Not yet."
I've been accused of being a fairly independent person, and I guess I'll stand by that. Sentimentality feels good when I've had enough vodka, but it bothers me during family holidays. It shouldn't. My family never fights, and in fact my entire extended family is probably the poster child for how people should act over Thanksgiving. I guess I just never really liked holidays this past decade because (with the exception of my immediate family; and doesn't that say something?) everyone asks me questions about when I'm going to get a real life.
That's a good question. I'm 33 as of tonight, and I still have no clue. Gordon Lightfoot's songs are probably a fair description of how I look at life, and I make no apologies for that. I have more money than the guys in Gord's songs, but like them, I can easily answer some asshole over turkey dinner, "You don't know me. Son of the sea am I. If you find me feeding daisies, please turn my face up to the sky. Whatever I was, you know it was all because, I've been on the town, washing the bullshit down."
I harken back to Travis McGee (and in case you haven't guessed, my father and the writers he gave me are the biggest influences on my life), where he scolded himself for something stupid, then shrugged and said, "Well, you chose to live on the underbelly of life. Get used to it."
That's healthy. I think that's a lot more healthy than going with the flow and toeing the party line that modern days have handed us. I really don't give a damn who clubs a seal in the head, and I enjoy veal more than you'll ever know. When a ship spills oil and the SUV-driving soccer mom sings the blues, I yawn and have another beer. Sue me. I've done a lot of yawning and drinking in my time, and loved every minute of it. Most of my memories involve the nighttime, and my education of life has come at the hands of a taxi driver around 3 AM. And I'm all right with that. In fact, though I can get down on myself, I'm probably the luckiest sonofabitch alive.
I'm 33, but I've seen more than most men will in their lifetimes. It wasn't on purpose. Nobody gets lucky on purpose, ask your average movie star. Good luck, like everything good, is unpredictable. Nobody walks into a bar thinking they'll land the nicest blonde in the joint, but when it happens we don't say we're sorry.
Here's to me and mine. I don't feel old. In fact, I don't feel young. But I do feel. And I know a lot of people who don't, from people in their teens, to people with one foot in the grave.
Me and my father stopped by a graveyard a few months ago. There was row upon row of graves dated in the early 1920's. It was obvious evidence of the Spanish Flu. Kids aged six months were dropped into the ground and buried over. They never got to taste whiskey. They never made love. None of them got the chance to see how beautiful Venice is, or how bad it smells.
The dude in prison who screwed it up at 21 by robbing a liquor store, the guy who knocked up a girl at 16 and worked the rest of his days in the mill to raise the child, the woman who married at 18 and regretted it for the rest of her life. Those are the people I live for, drink for, see for, love for.
And man, have I loved. Truly loved. And been loved back. Sometimes it hurt, but mostly it was wonderful. I've dropped a lot of names, so I won't stop now by ripping off Kurt Vonnegut's epitaph from Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." We all know that's a lie, but those of us who have lived a decent life know that it feels true.
I have an uncle who likes to hop on his high horse now and then. He heard my tales of adventure and fun, and he replied with a stern, "Well, when is the point of no return?"
I got his drift. He's a lawyer, a politician, so forth. What he wanted to know was, "When are you going to knock off this crap and get a real job?" My immediate answer is that the point of no return is between a Swedish girl's legs, but I doubt he'll find the humour. My diplomatic response is that I try to be as kind as I can while I live the life I want to lead, for as long as I want to lead it.
The reason I love America is that they invented the phrase, "It's a free country." You can do whatever the hell you want, as far as they're concerned. That's right up my alley. Canadians more or less live by it, but they feel guilty for it, which is completely beyond me. It's probably because they don't want to be Americans. I often feel sorry for my country. We try so damn hard not to be the people we are most alike. I have been to every Commonwealth country there is, and I will tell you now that we don't drive like them, speak like them, think like them. We are so akin to our southern neighbours that it's a joke. Our national guilt would be laughable, were it not so disapointing. Still, we try. We do.
So here I am at 33, and there's lots of things I should be thinking about. When am I going to settle down? When am I going to raise a family? When am I going to get some responsibilty?
There's probably a lot of good answers to those questions, but I've only got one: "Screw you." Everyone might want the UN to run the world, but they don't run me. I'm a Canadian man. I have a God given, red-and-white right to live the way I want to live. If you aren't happy with that, then you aren't Canadian or American, in which case I don't give a damn what you have to say. With the exception of the Aussies, the rest of you sold out on your heritage and your beliefs. Leave me and my friends alone. Or we'll tell you to. Firmly.
So here I am, guys (and yeah, this is probably for guys; you morons who got married kept telling me that you live vicariously through me so often that I finally went and looked up what 'vicariously' meant), and I wish you were with me. We're getting old, but for me, it gets more fun all the time. Of all the lessons I've learned about aging, I think Hank Williams Jr. taught me the only thing that can't be denied: "Hangovers hurt more than they used to."
Gotta go. Working on one now.
Eighteen seemed like a lifetime back then. When I was 17, I thought 30-year-old women were as ancient as Ghandi. When I was 22, I thought I knew what Hemingway was talking about, and I was pretty sure that I had the world by the ass.
Nietchze was no dummy. He had a line that went something like this: "When you're thirty, you look back at your youth and laugh at how young you were. Then you're sixty, and realize that 30 was youth."
That's well put. A friend of mine was mad at his girlfriend the other day, and I asked him how old she was. He told me she was twenty-five, and I said, "Well, she's young."
But when exactly does "young" stop? When I was twenty-five and in love with an outright bitch from LA, it sure felt like love to me. I didn't feel that young. Indeed, after going through a few months of hell with her, I felt plenty old. Then I got to 27 and fell for a dancer with long-long legs. When I jerked her around, nobody asked how old she was (22), they simply told me I was a goof. Youth is the excuse of idiots. Age is the excuse of idiots who haven't learned any better.
John D. MacDonald probably said it best. "The heart stays young." I have no doubt that a 70-year-old man still looks at a young lady's ass with the same eyes he had on five decades ago. I know I will. Hell, with what the teenage girls are wearing these days, the cops would lock me up if they could read my mind.
My great-gandmother lived until she was 106. She saw the first automobile, the first airplane, the first lunar landing, the first compact disc. But I'll bet she didn't feel that old when she cashed it in. I'll bet she looked back on her life and, when her heart started to fail and her feet turned black, she thought exactly what John D. did following the "heart stays young" stuff: "Please, not yet. Oh, please. Not yet."
I've been accused of being a fairly independent person, and I guess I'll stand by that. Sentimentality feels good when I've had enough vodka, but it bothers me during family holidays. It shouldn't. My family never fights, and in fact my entire extended family is probably the poster child for how people should act over Thanksgiving. I guess I just never really liked holidays this past decade because (with the exception of my immediate family; and doesn't that say something?) everyone asks me questions about when I'm going to get a real life.
That's a good question. I'm 33 as of tonight, and I still have no clue. Gordon Lightfoot's songs are probably a fair description of how I look at life, and I make no apologies for that. I have more money than the guys in Gord's songs, but like them, I can easily answer some asshole over turkey dinner, "You don't know me. Son of the sea am I. If you find me feeding daisies, please turn my face up to the sky. Whatever I was, you know it was all because, I've been on the town, washing the bullshit down."
I harken back to Travis McGee (and in case you haven't guessed, my father and the writers he gave me are the biggest influences on my life), where he scolded himself for something stupid, then shrugged and said, "Well, you chose to live on the underbelly of life. Get used to it."
That's healthy. I think that's a lot more healthy than going with the flow and toeing the party line that modern days have handed us. I really don't give a damn who clubs a seal in the head, and I enjoy veal more than you'll ever know. When a ship spills oil and the SUV-driving soccer mom sings the blues, I yawn and have another beer. Sue me. I've done a lot of yawning and drinking in my time, and loved every minute of it. Most of my memories involve the nighttime, and my education of life has come at the hands of a taxi driver around 3 AM. And I'm all right with that. In fact, though I can get down on myself, I'm probably the luckiest sonofabitch alive.
I'm 33, but I've seen more than most men will in their lifetimes. It wasn't on purpose. Nobody gets lucky on purpose, ask your average movie star. Good luck, like everything good, is unpredictable. Nobody walks into a bar thinking they'll land the nicest blonde in the joint, but when it happens we don't say we're sorry.
Here's to me and mine. I don't feel old. In fact, I don't feel young. But I do feel. And I know a lot of people who don't, from people in their teens, to people with one foot in the grave.
Me and my father stopped by a graveyard a few months ago. There was row upon row of graves dated in the early 1920's. It was obvious evidence of the Spanish Flu. Kids aged six months were dropped into the ground and buried over. They never got to taste whiskey. They never made love. None of them got the chance to see how beautiful Venice is, or how bad it smells.
The dude in prison who screwed it up at 21 by robbing a liquor store, the guy who knocked up a girl at 16 and worked the rest of his days in the mill to raise the child, the woman who married at 18 and regretted it for the rest of her life. Those are the people I live for, drink for, see for, love for.
And man, have I loved. Truly loved. And been loved back. Sometimes it hurt, but mostly it was wonderful. I've dropped a lot of names, so I won't stop now by ripping off Kurt Vonnegut's epitaph from Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." We all know that's a lie, but those of us who have lived a decent life know that it feels true.
I have an uncle who likes to hop on his high horse now and then. He heard my tales of adventure and fun, and he replied with a stern, "Well, when is the point of no return?"
I got his drift. He's a lawyer, a politician, so forth. What he wanted to know was, "When are you going to knock off this crap and get a real job?" My immediate answer is that the point of no return is between a Swedish girl's legs, but I doubt he'll find the humour. My diplomatic response is that I try to be as kind as I can while I live the life I want to lead, for as long as I want to lead it.
The reason I love America is that they invented the phrase, "It's a free country." You can do whatever the hell you want, as far as they're concerned. That's right up my alley. Canadians more or less live by it, but they feel guilty for it, which is completely beyond me. It's probably because they don't want to be Americans. I often feel sorry for my country. We try so damn hard not to be the people we are most alike. I have been to every Commonwealth country there is, and I will tell you now that we don't drive like them, speak like them, think like them. We are so akin to our southern neighbours that it's a joke. Our national guilt would be laughable, were it not so disapointing. Still, we try. We do.
So here I am at 33, and there's lots of things I should be thinking about. When am I going to settle down? When am I going to raise a family? When am I going to get some responsibilty?
There's probably a lot of good answers to those questions, but I've only got one: "Screw you." Everyone might want the UN to run the world, but they don't run me. I'm a Canadian man. I have a God given, red-and-white right to live the way I want to live. If you aren't happy with that, then you aren't Canadian or American, in which case I don't give a damn what you have to say. With the exception of the Aussies, the rest of you sold out on your heritage and your beliefs. Leave me and my friends alone. Or we'll tell you to. Firmly.
So here I am, guys (and yeah, this is probably for guys; you morons who got married kept telling me that you live vicariously through me so often that I finally went and looked up what 'vicariously' meant), and I wish you were with me. We're getting old, but for me, it gets more fun all the time. Of all the lessons I've learned about aging, I think Hank Williams Jr. taught me the only thing that can't be denied: "Hangovers hurt more than they used to."
Gotta go. Working on one now.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Lest Neil Forgets
I don't have much time tonight, as I'm kicking back with some rum and listening to music. I was enjoying the reverie for a bit, when an old song came up on the shuffle. It was Neil Young's Keep on Rockin' in the Free World.
The lyrics he sings are pretty good, if you hate yourself for using toilet paper and styrofoam. In Neil's book, mentioning these things count as social commentary, as if I am supposed to feel guilty for wiping my ass with anything but a handful of pine needles.
Anyway, the Rockin line that struck me the most was:
I Don't feel like Satan,
But I am to them,
So I'll try to forget it anyway I can.
That is a perfect summation of the West today, isn't it? And Neil wrote it back when he was supposedly 'cutting edge.'
I watched a documentary today that showed me all kinds of ways that Islamic facists think I am Satan, and want to kill me and you. And I thought, "These guys are nuts." But the thought crossed my mind that we'd stand up to them, or at least hold them off. I thought, "Sooner or later, your oil wells are going to give one big burp, we'll move on to sunflower oil or some damn thing, and you can go back to being....well, whatever you were before you made the headlines in 2001. Hopefully by then you'll let a doctor look at your wife's flesh before she dies of some common ailment."
But that's not going to happen. This documentary showed me how exactly like Nazi Germany the Islamic fascists are, with the added bonus of religion to back them up. Jihad, like life, is cheap. So they're here to stay.
Especially when one of our brave social commentators says, "I'll try to forget it anyway I can," when someone calls him Satan.
"Anyway he can." Meaning what? Getting drunk? Can't do that, they'll chop your head off for throwing back a Budweiser. Getting laid? Prostitutes are buried up to their necks and stoned to death for practicing the oldest profession. Praying to God? Which God, my friend? Because unless it's the dude that told Mohammed he was descended from Abraham (talk about 'hijacking' a religion a thousand years later), you're going to be sent to the mass grave with the other infidels.
Listen: if someone calls me or mine Satan, I'll kick their ass. If they step on my flag, I'll give them a knee that will bother them for the rest of their life. But who's going to speak for me?
Not our popular front. Not Neil. He's too busy forgetting it when someone calls him Satan.
Not me. Not ever.
The lyrics he sings are pretty good, if you hate yourself for using toilet paper and styrofoam. In Neil's book, mentioning these things count as social commentary, as if I am supposed to feel guilty for wiping my ass with anything but a handful of pine needles.
Anyway, the Rockin line that struck me the most was:
I Don't feel like Satan,
But I am to them,
So I'll try to forget it anyway I can.
That is a perfect summation of the West today, isn't it? And Neil wrote it back when he was supposedly 'cutting edge.'
I watched a documentary today that showed me all kinds of ways that Islamic facists think I am Satan, and want to kill me and you. And I thought, "These guys are nuts." But the thought crossed my mind that we'd stand up to them, or at least hold them off. I thought, "Sooner or later, your oil wells are going to give one big burp, we'll move on to sunflower oil or some damn thing, and you can go back to being....well, whatever you were before you made the headlines in 2001. Hopefully by then you'll let a doctor look at your wife's flesh before she dies of some common ailment."
But that's not going to happen. This documentary showed me how exactly like Nazi Germany the Islamic fascists are, with the added bonus of religion to back them up. Jihad, like life, is cheap. So they're here to stay.
Especially when one of our brave social commentators says, "I'll try to forget it anyway I can," when someone calls him Satan.
"Anyway he can." Meaning what? Getting drunk? Can't do that, they'll chop your head off for throwing back a Budweiser. Getting laid? Prostitutes are buried up to their necks and stoned to death for practicing the oldest profession. Praying to God? Which God, my friend? Because unless it's the dude that told Mohammed he was descended from Abraham (talk about 'hijacking' a religion a thousand years later), you're going to be sent to the mass grave with the other infidels.
Listen: if someone calls me or mine Satan, I'll kick their ass. If they step on my flag, I'll give them a knee that will bother them for the rest of their life. But who's going to speak for me?
Not our popular front. Not Neil. He's too busy forgetting it when someone calls him Satan.
Not me. Not ever.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
See You Later, Alligator
P.W. Botha died last night, on All Hallow's Eve, at age 90. If the South Africans were the sort to observe Hallowe'en, they might find that ironic: one more demon coming out to bow before disappearing into the night.Botha was the South African leader during Apartheid's heyday, and helped to sing the first few bars of its swan song, though not by choice. He came from an Afrikaner background, and had the peculiar Afrikaans accent: not quite English, not quite Dutch, not quite anything. When a person with a heavy Afrikaans accent speaks English, it is impossible to tell if it isn't some warped form of German.
He entered politics at age 20, going on to become defence minister in 1966, and finally Prime Minister in 1978. His run for election that year is notable in that he made promises to alleviate Apartheid, even going so far as to tell whites that they would have to "adapt or die."
It sounded pretty good, but it never amounted to much. Reading about him today, you'll find a lot of blame placed on his cabinet and his National Party, that they wouldn't let him accomplish his anti-Apartheid goals. It's a historical axiom that blame and evil fades with time, until they are more or less painted over with the expression, "Those were the times." Caesar, Khan, Attila, Napoleon, they have great publicists today, but in their "time" they were ruthless men. Stalin's getting better press every day. Hitler may take a while. Botha, for his part, should have a pretty rosy portrait in a few years.
Described as pragmatic nowadays, one looks back and shivers at his major accomplishments. In 1983, Botha pushed through a new constitution (voted on, as always, by whites-only) that turned him from Prime Minister to President. As a sop to the coloreds and Indians, he gave them a House of Representatives, and a House of Delegates, respectively. The whites got the House of Assembly. Matters of "national responsibility" (whatever that might mean) and racial issues were left solely in the hands of the President and his cabinet.
He formed a special forces unit to conduct covert operations against anti-Apartheid groups. He passed anti-freedom of speech legislation to suppress criticism of the government. Under his watch, two thousand people would die, and around twenty-five thousand people would be detained without trial. Many of them were tortured on infamous Robben Island, just off the coast of Cape Town.
During his tenure, Botha came to be known as Die Groot Crocodile (Afrikaans for the Great Crocodile), and had a penchant for finger-wagging when he talked. Depending on which articles you read (again, history beginning to cloud over), the Croc nickname is a tribute to his stubbornness, or an allusion to his ferocity.
It is a laugh to hear of him described as a man who would have done more if only he could, or as any sort of people's man. When it comes to freedom, there is really only one factor that matters: the vote. The fact that he wasn't prepared to give it blacks is really all one needs to know about the man. He took that belief with him to the grave.
If you aren't reading this in South Africa, or have never visited the place, you may be confused about what black means. Black is not black in the North American sense. It is more tribal than racial in meaning. In South Africa, black is considered African. Colored is a mix of anything, whether it be black/white, white/Indian, and so forth (it can even be quite specific: Cape Colored means you're a person of mixed race that comes from the Cape). Indian is, of course, Indian, descendents of people from the sub-continent who came over for jobs in agriculture. In South Africa, the entire population uses terms that would get you punched in the jaw in Canada.
In any event, nobody of any hue beyond white had it good under Botha. I remember talking to a South African who told me that it floored him the first time he sat down next to an Indian man in a movie theater. This was after Apartheid ended. He was shocked not because he didn't like Indians, but rather because he had never seen anyone but white people in a movie theater. He was 60 years old. It was 1994.
Hubris eventually caught up with Botha. The US, the UK, and the Commonwealth passed sanctions against South Africa, and the economic punishment was telling. In the late 80's the rand went through the roof, riots were becoming the norm, the world recoiled at scenes of violence, Artists Against Apartheid made South Africa a rock 'n roll whipping boy.
In 1989 Botha suffered a stroke which would give him a limp for the rest of his life. Then his political side turned against him. He made a statement saying that since his cabinet no longer agreed with him, he would step down as President.
He was succeeded by F.W. de Klerk, the man that would free Mandela and oversee the first real democratic election in South African history. The National Party took a beating at the polls, leaving the African National Congress (ANC) in charge of virtually everything. Overnight, the political landscape of South Africa went from white to black. Botha must have struggled not to have another stroke.He faded into obscurity after that, bobbing up only a few times in the press. He was called before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. People were to come forward, confess to crimes, give witness to others, and generally expose the truth behind Apartheid. Botha declined the invitation. As President, he had been head of the State Security Council until his resignation. His confession probably would have been a long one.
He never showed up to testify and was cited for contempt. He didn't pay the fine, and the conviction was overturned on appeal, the courts perhaps playing Ford to Botha's Nixon.
It didn't matter much. The Crocodile moved to a town called Wilderness, and lived out the rest of his days in seclusion. The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission blamed him for a ton of human rights violations, but he was unapologetic. His last public statement about the Commission was that they merely wanted him to be a symbol of "his people," and that they wanted to humiliate him as that symbol.
Perhaps it never entered his head how lucky he was. The Truth Commission was set up so there would be no punishment. That was Mandela's deal: get the truth out, and move on. New constitution, new flag, new national anthem. They could have hanged Botha, but they let him walk without a fuss. Was that more of a disgrace for him? That he wasn't an enemy worth hanging? That he and his ideals could just be forgotten? He never said.
Married twice, he had two sons and three daughters. When asked for a statement about Botha's death, the ANC decided to think of them: "The ANC wishes his family strength and comfort at this difficult time."
A short statement, but enough.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Happy Hallowe'en, Devil Worshipper
From AOL News:
BOISE, Idaho (Oct. 28) - A black cat won't cross your path this Halloween, not if a northern Idaho animal shelter can help it. Like many shelters around the country, the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d'Alene is prohibiting black cat adoptions from now to Nov. 2, fearing the animals could be mistreated in Halloween pranks - or worse, sacrificed in some satanic ritual.
This is what we worry about these days, is it?
Last night I was out in Thailand, where they're cat crazy. Cats are everywhere. I stopped in at a joint for a cold beer, and a black cat was on the bar, flat on his back, getting some zzz's. He was probably the coolest cat I'd seen in my life. Jet black, just lying there with all four paws up, lounging to the rock music coming over the box.
For a laugh, I asked the Thai lady behind the bar how much she wanted for him. She told me 1000 baht, or around thirty bucks. Another guy came in and I pointed at the cat. I told him how much the cat cost.
"1000 baht?" the guy said. "For what, the BBQ?"
I swear on all the books that the cat jerked its head up, looked at me and the other guy, and then took off like a bat out of hell.
That's a smart cat. Earlier that night I happened by a hotdog stand and looked at their wares. From left to right, the selection was thus: cockroach, grub, cricket, scorpion, and something I couldn't recognize. In a place like that, cats beware.
But in northern Idaho?
More from AOL News:
The shelter's executive director, Phil Morgan, said that while the risk may be remote, the policy will remain just in case.
"It's kind of an urban legend. But in the humane industry it's pretty typical that shelters don't do adoptions of black cats or white bunnies because of the whole satanic sacrificial thing," Morgan said. "If we prevent one animal from getting hurt, then it serves its purpose."
"The whole satantic sacrificial thing." That's almost as dubious as "kind of an urban legend." Well, which is it? An urban legend, or not?
I'm willing to bet that Morgan has no firsthand evidence of a sacrificial rite being performed on a cat, black or otherwise. If he did, he wouldn't have to tell us that it was "kind of an urban legend." He'd be able to say, "Last year ten cats were slaughtered and I won't allow that to happen again."
But he can't. Because it's a crock.
Morgan isn't entirely to blame. The latest laws and rules being passed are for our own protection. Protection from living the life we want, that is. Morgan's just going with the flow. Kids can't play tag in school. You can't ride a bicycle without a helmet. People in Omaha are being told to call 911 if they see someone light a cigarette in public. All massive concerns.
I watched a news conference the other day, where four people were being held as 'people of interest' in the murder of a Florida family. The man behind the podium read off each individual's name and, without a hint of embarrassment, told us their criminal histories. More than a dozen felonies between them, and a slew of misdemeanors. Not one of them had a clean rap sheet. Two of them had been arrested and charged with other crimes as recently as a few months ago.
That a lawman can stand there without shame and tell the nation that a family is dead because they didn't lock up these scumbags when they had the chance(s) is amazing. The press should have been all over him for that. They let it slide, because we're used to it. Letting lowlifes off the hook is our stock in trade.
Imagine standing in front of your boss and saying the following: "As you know, the company's going under because I was late to work three times. Then I didn't bother to call John to make sure something was being done. Then I goofed off for a weekend so I could go fishing. Then I went to Vegas and got some hookers on the company's dime. Well, you're not going to like this, but I cheated on the tax forms and now we're going bankrupt."
Would your boss let it get to the 'bankrupt' stage, or would you be canned after the fishing trip? Should we allow the cops and judges to let it get to the 'family murdered in Florida' stage?
The real concern is when we stop looking at evidence, and start basing our rules on feelings. "I once heard an urban legend that cats are sacrificed to Satan. I like cats. Therefore I will ban anyone from adopting a black cat over Halloween."
The implied argument here is that you're the Satan worshipping criminal. Morgan went on to say the shelter "is happy to adopt out animals. Would-be black-cat owners will simply have to wait a few days." Just like that, you practice black magic and you're on a waiting list that would make the anti-gun crowd applaud. Try explaining that to your kid. "I'm sorry, sweetie, we can't pick up Muffy till after the weekend because the nice man is afraid you'll disembowel her in Lucifer's name."
We'd better start worrying more about the people that want to kill Florida families, and less about the urban legends. After meeting that cat in Thailand, I can tell you that the cats can take care of themselves.
Time we did the same.
BOISE, Idaho (Oct. 28) - A black cat won't cross your path this Halloween, not if a northern Idaho animal shelter can help it. Like many shelters around the country, the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d'Alene is prohibiting black cat adoptions from now to Nov. 2, fearing the animals could be mistreated in Halloween pranks - or worse, sacrificed in some satanic ritual.
This is what we worry about these days, is it?
Last night I was out in Thailand, where they're cat crazy. Cats are everywhere. I stopped in at a joint for a cold beer, and a black cat was on the bar, flat on his back, getting some zzz's. He was probably the coolest cat I'd seen in my life. Jet black, just lying there with all four paws up, lounging to the rock music coming over the box.
For a laugh, I asked the Thai lady behind the bar how much she wanted for him. She told me 1000 baht, or around thirty bucks. Another guy came in and I pointed at the cat. I told him how much the cat cost.
"1000 baht?" the guy said. "For what, the BBQ?"
I swear on all the books that the cat jerked its head up, looked at me and the other guy, and then took off like a bat out of hell.
That's a smart cat. Earlier that night I happened by a hotdog stand and looked at their wares. From left to right, the selection was thus: cockroach, grub, cricket, scorpion, and something I couldn't recognize. In a place like that, cats beware.
But in northern Idaho?
More from AOL News:
The shelter's executive director, Phil Morgan, said that while the risk may be remote, the policy will remain just in case.
"It's kind of an urban legend. But in the humane industry it's pretty typical that shelters don't do adoptions of black cats or white bunnies because of the whole satanic sacrificial thing," Morgan said. "If we prevent one animal from getting hurt, then it serves its purpose."
"The whole satantic sacrificial thing." That's almost as dubious as "kind of an urban legend." Well, which is it? An urban legend, or not?
I'm willing to bet that Morgan has no firsthand evidence of a sacrificial rite being performed on a cat, black or otherwise. If he did, he wouldn't have to tell us that it was "kind of an urban legend." He'd be able to say, "Last year ten cats were slaughtered and I won't allow that to happen again."
But he can't. Because it's a crock.
Morgan isn't entirely to blame. The latest laws and rules being passed are for our own protection. Protection from living the life we want, that is. Morgan's just going with the flow. Kids can't play tag in school. You can't ride a bicycle without a helmet. People in Omaha are being told to call 911 if they see someone light a cigarette in public. All massive concerns.
I watched a news conference the other day, where four people were being held as 'people of interest' in the murder of a Florida family. The man behind the podium read off each individual's name and, without a hint of embarrassment, told us their criminal histories. More than a dozen felonies between them, and a slew of misdemeanors. Not one of them had a clean rap sheet. Two of them had been arrested and charged with other crimes as recently as a few months ago.
That a lawman can stand there without shame and tell the nation that a family is dead because they didn't lock up these scumbags when they had the chance(s) is amazing. The press should have been all over him for that. They let it slide, because we're used to it. Letting lowlifes off the hook is our stock in trade.
Imagine standing in front of your boss and saying the following: "As you know, the company's going under because I was late to work three times. Then I didn't bother to call John to make sure something was being done. Then I goofed off for a weekend so I could go fishing. Then I went to Vegas and got some hookers on the company's dime. Well, you're not going to like this, but I cheated on the tax forms and now we're going bankrupt."
Would your boss let it get to the 'bankrupt' stage, or would you be canned after the fishing trip? Should we allow the cops and judges to let it get to the 'family murdered in Florida' stage?
The real concern is when we stop looking at evidence, and start basing our rules on feelings. "I once heard an urban legend that cats are sacrificed to Satan. I like cats. Therefore I will ban anyone from adopting a black cat over Halloween."
The implied argument here is that you're the Satan worshipping criminal. Morgan went on to say the shelter "is happy to adopt out animals. Would-be black-cat owners will simply have to wait a few days." Just like that, you practice black magic and you're on a waiting list that would make the anti-gun crowd applaud. Try explaining that to your kid. "I'm sorry, sweetie, we can't pick up Muffy till after the weekend because the nice man is afraid you'll disembowel her in Lucifer's name."
We'd better start worrying more about the people that want to kill Florida families, and less about the urban legends. After meeting that cat in Thailand, I can tell you that the cats can take care of themselves.
Time we did the same.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Tunnel Rat
Saigon is another in a line of 'communist' cities that I've visited lately, none of them resembling anything close to communist. Tianjin was certainly a communist city. You could tell by the rundown buildings, the filth, and the poverty. But then, even Tianjin served Budweiser.
Before heading into Saigon for the night, I decided to check out the Cu Chi tunnels. They're leftovers from the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese lived in them, cooked in them, sometimes fought in them. After crawling around in the tunnels myself, I have come to the firm conclusion that war is a dirty business. It's also muggy. When fourteen people are crawling around in a tunnel fifteen feet underground, filling it with carbon dioxide and who knows what else, it can get steamy. And we were only tourists.
The tour started out with the Obligatory Video. It's the one where you sit and listen to the latest propaganda from the company that is selling you the tour. Nine times out of ten, tours have an environmental axe to grind: the Grand Canyon you're visiting will only remain a pristine wilderness if people stop visiting it. Or, Niagara Falls was a much better place before human beings existed. Or, Hawaii's volcanoes knock over houses in a symbolic gesture of taking back the island.
The gist of the Cu Chi video was this: during the war, Americans killed women and children with impunity, and they bombed the greenery because Americans are mean people who don't respect the earth. That's pretty telling. This last part told me that someone in the Cu Chi region has a firm grasp of modern propaganda: nobody gives a damn about women and children (Darfur), but tell them a tree might die and they will freak out (Alaskan pipeline).
The video was black and white. I wasn't sure if it was old, grainy film stock, or if it was just bad videography. In any event, it had a lot of scenes of Vietnamese people blowing away Americans and winning the day. Except there were no Americans on the screen. The shots were always of smiling Vietnamese women holding rifles incorrectly, or a man making a homemade bomb. Then the video would cut to an explosion of dirt flying in the air, and the narrator would say that the Americans had run away.
Whatever. Propaganda videos don't bother me much these days. Virtually every news channel on TV is an anti-American propaganda piece. Anchormen at the CBC have made entire careers out of it. But for the record, I'm pretty sure the Yanks never lost a pitched battle in Vietnam (yes, even the beloved Tet Offensive, where the Americans creamed them), and not many GIs were pot smoking losers that hated their own country. Most of those people were in Canada, trying to get a job at the CBC.
I didn't catch the end of the Cu Chi video. Me and a couple of Americans left the room, not out of protest, but because we needed a smoke.
Our guide took us on a trip through the jungle. He pointed out a couple of hidden trapdoors. One led to a tunnel. Another led to a pit full of spikes. One thing about the Vietnamese, they sure knew how to make a booby trap. There was the 'fish trap,' where your foot would fall through and your calf would be embedded with spikes. There was the 'rolling trap,' where your leg would be mashed like a sausage. There was the 'chest impaler,' where a board of spikes would fall down from a tree and clobber you in the breadbox.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, however. For a dollar a bullet, you can fire off any old weapon you want. They have a collection of them beside the beer counter: machine guns, shotguns, AK-47s. After downing a quick brew, a few people from our tour decided to let fly. I didn't bother to enlist in our little army; I'd fired weapons before.
I wandered down to watch the action. It was interesting to see how many males thought they knew how rifles worked, and it was comical to see them all line up right where the ejected cartridge casing was going to hit them in the face. The Vietnamese guy holding the rifle told them to get out of the way. Then he told a young lady to come up and give it a shot.
The guide was careful. He didn't take his hands off the weapon until the girl had it pointing down the range. Then he stayed very, very, very close to her, making sure she didn't do something stupid like say, "Quick, take a picture," and point the thing at us.
She prepared to fire. She squinted. She tensed. She actually looked pretty cute. I don't know what it is about a woman in hot pants holding an assault rifle, but it isn't the worst thing you'll ever see.
She pulled the trigger.
Click.
The guide was indeed being careful. He'd forgotten to cock the thing for her. He pulled the slide back.
She tensed again. BANG.
A word about firearms. If you've never fired one, they're amazingly loud. The movies don't do them justice. I had a good laugh when I heard Spielberg going on about how real he wanted Saving Private Ryan to sound. If he had tried that, he would have deafened the entire audience within the first five seconds of the film.
Standing near a powerful assault rifle when it goes off is painfully loud. They're an ugly weapon, not built for pretty. When they go off, your ears ring and you wonder what hit you. You also wonder how the hell people fight a war when a hundred of those things are going off all around them.
When the young lady on our tour pulled that trigger, everyone winced and the women jumped a foot in the air. One of them screamed. As I said, weapons are loud. They also stink. One rifle will cover an entire group with the unmistakable stench of cordite.
A few people took a turn each. Bam, bam, bam, firing down the range. The change that came over them was evident: before coming down to the range from the beer counter, they'd been all smiles and laughs. Now they were plugging their ears and frowning. Others walked away without firing a shot. Seeing and hearing deadly things close up is not as fun as people think it is. It doesn't make you a braver, tougher person. It makes you a cautious person.
Thinking of that AK-47 firing a bullet into an American GI was an image that probably came up for a few of them. It isn't a nice image. The guide himself was all chuckles. While the people frowned and plugged their ears, he entertained himself by catching the ejected casings in mid-air as they came out of the rifle.
We made it to the tunnels after sampling some rice wine. I didn't bother to ask why there was a rice wine hut on the tour. At first I thought it was because the VC drank a lot of rice wine before going into battle, much like the Japanese had done during WWII. I was wrong. The reason there was a rice wine hut on the tour was because they were selling rice wine. Five bucks for a great big bottle. It tasted like gasoline, it burned your stomach, and it instantly made me want to shoot somebody. Powerful stuff.
The tunnels were our last stop. During the Vietnam War, there were miles and miles of them, some of them going more than thirty feet into the ground. Throughout the maze, there were living spaces, storage areas, hospitals, you name it. Americans who went into them would be greeted by booby traps, spiders, rats, and enemy soldiers waiting to stab you to death in the dark. I read once that some of the tunnel rats, as the American interloper was known, would go nuts from the stress of going down those holes.
I don't know if I could have done it. Who can know that, except for a diagnosed claustrophobic? All is know is, tunnels are very tiring to crawl through, they're hot, and they stink.
Our tourist tunnel had been smoothed out since the war. The guide told us they were quite safe. We were only going to go fifteen feet underground. The tunnel was about three feet high. It would be shoulder-width. There were no rats or snakes, but there might be spiders. That raised eyebrows.
Two people bailed out immediately. As we descended a set of dirt steps into the ground, two young ladies came walking back past me. One said, "No way." The other said, "Fuck that."
When I got the bottom of the steps, I was greeted by a trapdoor, minus the door. I dropped down into darkness. A small red light was set into the wall, but it didn't do anything for my vision. There was an immediate left turn in front of me. The guide had told us to expect a sharp turn after every trapdoor. They'd been built to muffle a grenade being dropped down the hole.
I was on my hands and knees, the ceiling of the tunnel brushing my back. The tunnel smelled of dirt and sweat. I felt my way along the wall and made the turn. I could hear my group up ahead, but I couldn't see them. Once in a while there was a flash of light as the guide turned his flashlight back towards us, and I could make out the silhouette of someone's butt up ahead of me.
The air got muggy. We went down at an angle. Someone in our group had the worst B.O. of all time, and it threatened to gag me once or twice. I could not imagine making this crawl knowing that there might be an enemy soldier up ahead with a bamboo spike in his hand, dying to drive it home.
Turn, turn, turn. And quite a few of them, too. Whoever had constructed these tunnels was not a fool. For a tourist like me, they were a simple pain in the ass. For an invader, every turn would be considered a deathtrap. There would be no way to know what was around every corner.
I bonked my head against the wall. I hadn't seen it coming. I felt around with my hands. No way out. Trapped. I reached up, and discovered there was a hole in the ceiling. I stood up, and bonked my head against the ceiling of the next level. Between AK-47s and tunnels, the tour should come with a free bottle of Excedrin.
I crawled through the hole. I could hear people up ahead. I heard the guide say, "It's okay." I knew he was at least ten people and two corners ahead of me, but he sounded five feet away. Noise in the tunnel carried far, and I suddenly regretted saying, "That guy stinks," a little while ago.
It brought up another thought of the American invader. There's no way they snuck up on their enemy in the tunnels. It must have been primal warfare. Wits, and knives, and fists, and the gun as a last resort, deafening you and alerting the entire tunnel system to your presence. And once you did that, how to escape? How do you run when you can't even walk?
We reached a bottle neck. My friend Matt was jammed up. His voice was shaking a bit in the dark. He said he was stuck, that he had to take his knapsack off his chest. Claustrophobia was closing in on him. Only later did he tell me that he'd done the tour to face his fear of tight places. Tight, dark places were another matter.
"You're all right," I said. "You've got plenty of room," I lied.
He pushed his way through. I crawled forward and heard him disappear around another corner. Then I felt what he'd been afraid of. I say felt, because I hadn't seen it. It was a good bottleneck, and it had me by the shoulders. My knees were hurting more, and my shirt was soaked through. Sweat was dripping off my face like a salt shower.
I pushed forward and slipped through. I shuddered to think of a fat person getting jammed in there, yelling for help, and not being able to see help coming.
Light.
I'd reached an exit, steep steps leading ten feet up to the surface. I saw two people climbing the steps, breathing hard, congratulating themselves. I yelled ahead into the darkness. I got a yell in response. So push on. If you're going to crawl through an old war tunnel, you might as well crawl through the whole thing.
More dirt, more heavy breathing, more sweat. The tunnel past the first exit was narrower. That first exit must have been for the people who felt the rest of the tunnel getting a bit too tight. These tunnels had been made to fight American soliders and scare the crap out of American tourists.
And the Vietnamese lived like this for years. Crawling around in the dark, dragging rifles and ammunition, food and water, perhaps wounded Marines. It was Iwo Jima flattened to pancake proportions, the tunnels spreading out around the country. They would lie in wait. And wait. And wait. And when the time came, up they'd come, out of the ground, looking to kill somebody in a green uniform.
They may never have won a pitched battle, but they certainly inflicted enough pain and misery upon their invaders. The Americans got their digs in too, but leaving Vietnam was probably a wise decision no matter how you felt about communism. People who dig tunnels underground and fight a smash-and-grab guerilla war are not going to surrender, it's just that simple. I only had to crawl through the tunnels; the willpower to dig them and make house must have been extraordinary.
The answer to the tunnels, of course, would have been to cut off their head. We can't go into all the reasons the Americans didn't nail North Vietnam to the wall, but the fact is, they didn't. Hence the tunnels lived on throughout the war and lasted to be the pain in the ass they were for the Americans.
And for me. I finally got out the other end after twenty-five more meters of darkness. A shaft of daylight looks blue when it's coming down into the tunnels. It is deceiving, too, because it looks closer than it is.
Finally up and out, fresh air tasting as good as a dry martini. I looked down into that black mouth, then looked at the faces of my group. They were all sweating, laughing, and taking pictures. They couldn't wait to get out of that hole. We drank Tiger beer and said that it had been interesting, hot, and stank like hell, and we were better off outside than inside.
That the Vietnamese couldn't wait to get back into that hole during the war speaks volumes. To them, that hole was home.
Before heading into Saigon for the night, I decided to check out the Cu Chi tunnels. They're leftovers from the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese lived in them, cooked in them, sometimes fought in them. After crawling around in the tunnels myself, I have come to the firm conclusion that war is a dirty business. It's also muggy. When fourteen people are crawling around in a tunnel fifteen feet underground, filling it with carbon dioxide and who knows what else, it can get steamy. And we were only tourists.
The tour started out with the Obligatory Video. It's the one where you sit and listen to the latest propaganda from the company that is selling you the tour. Nine times out of ten, tours have an environmental axe to grind: the Grand Canyon you're visiting will only remain a pristine wilderness if people stop visiting it. Or, Niagara Falls was a much better place before human beings existed. Or, Hawaii's volcanoes knock over houses in a symbolic gesture of taking back the island.
The gist of the Cu Chi video was this: during the war, Americans killed women and children with impunity, and they bombed the greenery because Americans are mean people who don't respect the earth. That's pretty telling. This last part told me that someone in the Cu Chi region has a firm grasp of modern propaganda: nobody gives a damn about women and children (Darfur), but tell them a tree might die and they will freak out (Alaskan pipeline).
The video was black and white. I wasn't sure if it was old, grainy film stock, or if it was just bad videography. In any event, it had a lot of scenes of Vietnamese people blowing away Americans and winning the day. Except there were no Americans on the screen. The shots were always of smiling Vietnamese women holding rifles incorrectly, or a man making a homemade bomb. Then the video would cut to an explosion of dirt flying in the air, and the narrator would say that the Americans had run away.
Whatever. Propaganda videos don't bother me much these days. Virtually every news channel on TV is an anti-American propaganda piece. Anchormen at the CBC have made entire careers out of it. But for the record, I'm pretty sure the Yanks never lost a pitched battle in Vietnam (yes, even the beloved Tet Offensive, where the Americans creamed them), and not many GIs were pot smoking losers that hated their own country. Most of those people were in Canada, trying to get a job at the CBC.
I didn't catch the end of the Cu Chi video. Me and a couple of Americans left the room, not out of protest, but because we needed a smoke.
Our guide took us on a trip through the jungle. He pointed out a couple of hidden trapdoors. One led to a tunnel. Another led to a pit full of spikes. One thing about the Vietnamese, they sure knew how to make a booby trap. There was the 'fish trap,' where your foot would fall through and your calf would be embedded with spikes. There was the 'rolling trap,' where your leg would be mashed like a sausage. There was the 'chest impaler,' where a board of spikes would fall down from a tree and clobber you in the breadbox.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, however. For a dollar a bullet, you can fire off any old weapon you want. They have a collection of them beside the beer counter: machine guns, shotguns, AK-47s. After downing a quick brew, a few people from our tour decided to let fly. I didn't bother to enlist in our little army; I'd fired weapons before.
I wandered down to watch the action. It was interesting to see how many males thought they knew how rifles worked, and it was comical to see them all line up right where the ejected cartridge casing was going to hit them in the face. The Vietnamese guy holding the rifle told them to get out of the way. Then he told a young lady to come up and give it a shot.
The guide was careful. He didn't take his hands off the weapon until the girl had it pointing down the range. Then he stayed very, very, very close to her, making sure she didn't do something stupid like say, "Quick, take a picture," and point the thing at us.
She prepared to fire. She squinted. She tensed. She actually looked pretty cute. I don't know what it is about a woman in hot pants holding an assault rifle, but it isn't the worst thing you'll ever see.
She pulled the trigger.
Click.
The guide was indeed being careful. He'd forgotten to cock the thing for her. He pulled the slide back.
She tensed again. BANG.
A word about firearms. If you've never fired one, they're amazingly loud. The movies don't do them justice. I had a good laugh when I heard Spielberg going on about how real he wanted Saving Private Ryan to sound. If he had tried that, he would have deafened the entire audience within the first five seconds of the film.
Standing near a powerful assault rifle when it goes off is painfully loud. They're an ugly weapon, not built for pretty. When they go off, your ears ring and you wonder what hit you. You also wonder how the hell people fight a war when a hundred of those things are going off all around them.
When the young lady on our tour pulled that trigger, everyone winced and the women jumped a foot in the air. One of them screamed. As I said, weapons are loud. They also stink. One rifle will cover an entire group with the unmistakable stench of cordite.
A few people took a turn each. Bam, bam, bam, firing down the range. The change that came over them was evident: before coming down to the range from the beer counter, they'd been all smiles and laughs. Now they were plugging their ears and frowning. Others walked away without firing a shot. Seeing and hearing deadly things close up is not as fun as people think it is. It doesn't make you a braver, tougher person. It makes you a cautious person.
Thinking of that AK-47 firing a bullet into an American GI was an image that probably came up for a few of them. It isn't a nice image. The guide himself was all chuckles. While the people frowned and plugged their ears, he entertained himself by catching the ejected casings in mid-air as they came out of the rifle.
We made it to the tunnels after sampling some rice wine. I didn't bother to ask why there was a rice wine hut on the tour. At first I thought it was because the VC drank a lot of rice wine before going into battle, much like the Japanese had done during WWII. I was wrong. The reason there was a rice wine hut on the tour was because they were selling rice wine. Five bucks for a great big bottle. It tasted like gasoline, it burned your stomach, and it instantly made me want to shoot somebody. Powerful stuff.
The tunnels were our last stop. During the Vietnam War, there were miles and miles of them, some of them going more than thirty feet into the ground. Throughout the maze, there were living spaces, storage areas, hospitals, you name it. Americans who went into them would be greeted by booby traps, spiders, rats, and enemy soldiers waiting to stab you to death in the dark. I read once that some of the tunnel rats, as the American interloper was known, would go nuts from the stress of going down those holes.
I don't know if I could have done it. Who can know that, except for a diagnosed claustrophobic? All is know is, tunnels are very tiring to crawl through, they're hot, and they stink.
Our tourist tunnel had been smoothed out since the war. The guide told us they were quite safe. We were only going to go fifteen feet underground. The tunnel was about three feet high. It would be shoulder-width. There were no rats or snakes, but there might be spiders. That raised eyebrows.
Two people bailed out immediately. As we descended a set of dirt steps into the ground, two young ladies came walking back past me. One said, "No way." The other said, "Fuck that."
When I got the bottom of the steps, I was greeted by a trapdoor, minus the door. I dropped down into darkness. A small red light was set into the wall, but it didn't do anything for my vision. There was an immediate left turn in front of me. The guide had told us to expect a sharp turn after every trapdoor. They'd been built to muffle a grenade being dropped down the hole.
I was on my hands and knees, the ceiling of the tunnel brushing my back. The tunnel smelled of dirt and sweat. I felt my way along the wall and made the turn. I could hear my group up ahead, but I couldn't see them. Once in a while there was a flash of light as the guide turned his flashlight back towards us, and I could make out the silhouette of someone's butt up ahead of me.
The air got muggy. We went down at an angle. Someone in our group had the worst B.O. of all time, and it threatened to gag me once or twice. I could not imagine making this crawl knowing that there might be an enemy soldier up ahead with a bamboo spike in his hand, dying to drive it home.
Turn, turn, turn. And quite a few of them, too. Whoever had constructed these tunnels was not a fool. For a tourist like me, they were a simple pain in the ass. For an invader, every turn would be considered a deathtrap. There would be no way to know what was around every corner.
I bonked my head against the wall. I hadn't seen it coming. I felt around with my hands. No way out. Trapped. I reached up, and discovered there was a hole in the ceiling. I stood up, and bonked my head against the ceiling of the next level. Between AK-47s and tunnels, the tour should come with a free bottle of Excedrin.
I crawled through the hole. I could hear people up ahead. I heard the guide say, "It's okay." I knew he was at least ten people and two corners ahead of me, but he sounded five feet away. Noise in the tunnel carried far, and I suddenly regretted saying, "That guy stinks," a little while ago.
It brought up another thought of the American invader. There's no way they snuck up on their enemy in the tunnels. It must have been primal warfare. Wits, and knives, and fists, and the gun as a last resort, deafening you and alerting the entire tunnel system to your presence. And once you did that, how to escape? How do you run when you can't even walk?
We reached a bottle neck. My friend Matt was jammed up. His voice was shaking a bit in the dark. He said he was stuck, that he had to take his knapsack off his chest. Claustrophobia was closing in on him. Only later did he tell me that he'd done the tour to face his fear of tight places. Tight, dark places were another matter.
"You're all right," I said. "You've got plenty of room," I lied.
He pushed his way through. I crawled forward and heard him disappear around another corner. Then I felt what he'd been afraid of. I say felt, because I hadn't seen it. It was a good bottleneck, and it had me by the shoulders. My knees were hurting more, and my shirt was soaked through. Sweat was dripping off my face like a salt shower.
I pushed forward and slipped through. I shuddered to think of a fat person getting jammed in there, yelling for help, and not being able to see help coming.
Light.
I'd reached an exit, steep steps leading ten feet up to the surface. I saw two people climbing the steps, breathing hard, congratulating themselves. I yelled ahead into the darkness. I got a yell in response. So push on. If you're going to crawl through an old war tunnel, you might as well crawl through the whole thing.
More dirt, more heavy breathing, more sweat. The tunnel past the first exit was narrower. That first exit must have been for the people who felt the rest of the tunnel getting a bit too tight. These tunnels had been made to fight American soliders and scare the crap out of American tourists.
And the Vietnamese lived like this for years. Crawling around in the dark, dragging rifles and ammunition, food and water, perhaps wounded Marines. It was Iwo Jima flattened to pancake proportions, the tunnels spreading out around the country. They would lie in wait. And wait. And wait. And when the time came, up they'd come, out of the ground, looking to kill somebody in a green uniform.
They may never have won a pitched battle, but they certainly inflicted enough pain and misery upon their invaders. The Americans got their digs in too, but leaving Vietnam was probably a wise decision no matter how you felt about communism. People who dig tunnels underground and fight a smash-and-grab guerilla war are not going to surrender, it's just that simple. I only had to crawl through the tunnels; the willpower to dig them and make house must have been extraordinary.
The answer to the tunnels, of course, would have been to cut off their head. We can't go into all the reasons the Americans didn't nail North Vietnam to the wall, but the fact is, they didn't. Hence the tunnels lived on throughout the war and lasted to be the pain in the ass they were for the Americans.
And for me. I finally got out the other end after twenty-five more meters of darkness. A shaft of daylight looks blue when it's coming down into the tunnels. It is deceiving, too, because it looks closer than it is.
Finally up and out, fresh air tasting as good as a dry martini. I looked down into that black mouth, then looked at the faces of my group. They were all sweating, laughing, and taking pictures. They couldn't wait to get out of that hole. We drank Tiger beer and said that it had been interesting, hot, and stank like hell, and we were better off outside than inside.
That the Vietnamese couldn't wait to get back into that hole during the war speaks volumes. To them, that hole was home.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Talking Dirty
Swearing can be a hell of a lot of fun.
I was reading an article by Rick Riley the other day. He said we had a problem, that we "swear too goddamn much." Rick's right. We do swear too goddamn much. Sometimes it is called for, other times not. Asking your mom to pass the "fucking potatoes" is not cool. However, telling a man he's a "no good sonofabitch" after he sleeps with your girlfriend is completely reasonable. Swearing, like most things, needs to come in context.
My first memory of swearing comes in the seventh grade. I walked into Mrs. Foster's geography class and a friend told me that we had a quiz in five minutes. I wasn't a study bug back then, and I remember saying, "Oh, shit, I forgot." I looked up, and there was Mrs. Foster looking me dead in the eye. She had a grin on her face. Foster was one of those good and rare teachers: honest and fair. She gave me a ten minute detention, not necessarily because I'd cursed, but because I'd been dumb enough to do it in front of her.
My next fond memory comes from the father of a girlfriend, who told me that if it "floats, flies, or fucks, rent it." This turned out to be some of the soundest advice I have ever heard. I haven't always followed it, much to my chagrin. It didn't occur to me for a long time that a girlfriend's father probably shouldn't be telling me to frequent the local cathouse, but what the hell.
My dad swore a lot. He was handy with a "this asshole can't pitch" during the baseball game, and a "have you ever heard such shit in your life?" during the evening news. My mom didn't swear in front of me until I was well into my teens, and her swearing was of the type that can't be impeached: "Men always get in trouble because of sex. How can they be so fucking stupid?" You can't argue with that.
Next to the British (who break out the C-word with astonishing regularity) no one can touch North Americans for swearing. We'll swear at anything. No one is safe. If a guy cuts us off in the fast lane, we'll say whatever comes to mind, most of it starting with the letter 'F.' When I was a kid, I think about 12-years-old, I once walked across a guy's lawn. He was an old dude, maybe sixty, and he lived around the corner from our place. I was with my good friend Sandra. I said, "Hello." He said, "Get off my lawn, faggot." When you can call a kid a faggot, you know you're from a self-assured culture.
Swearing can make for defining moments. There's not a chance I would remember that old guy if he hadn't called me a nasty name. I wonder where he is now. I wonder if the old bastard's gone and fucked himself.
Another defining moment happened at a Mr. Submarine. I was in high school. Me and a friend ate a sandwich, and my friend talked to the guy behind the counter while we ate. As we left, the guy said good-bye, and my friend said, matter-of-factly, "Eat shit." I'll always love him for that. I pissed myself laughing the whole way home, and in fact, I am laughing right now.
Swearing can be trivial, or called for, or outright embarrassing. I was dating a South African girl once, and I went to visit her in Durban. They have a nasty name for every race under the sun in that country, but leave it to me to step over the line during dinner theater. There was a live band at this place where you bring your own food and eat on picnic tables. No waiters, you even had to get your own drinks at the bar. We're there with her mom, stepfather, aunt, uncle, sister that hated me as sisters do, more friends of the family, on and on, a regular clan affair. So the band is playing, and after an hour of them blaring out the tunes and me getting drunk, they strike up "Mony Mony."
I did not know that the Billy Idol cover hadn't made it to South Africa. So there we are, all dancing away, and during the little chorus part, I scream, "Hey motherfucker, get laid, get fucked." And a few of them look at me strangely, and I don't catch on, and my girlfriend is giving me an embarrassed grin which I interpret as a smile of, "Look how well my boyfriend's fitting in," and I go on to do the less well-known chorus of, "Hey motherfucker, she's fat but I'm drunk."
Not knowing the Billy Idol version, her entire family basically thought I made that stuff up on the spot and had decided to announce that I was drunk and willing to screw a fat girl.
That was a long night. Her stepfather told me later that he would never forget it and it was the best thing he'd seen in years.
Nobody beats Canadians and Americans for swearing. Let's face it, we're pricks and we love it. I knew a girl from Tennessee who got mad whenever we said "goddamn." She wasn't our friend for long.
Another time in South Africa I broke out the granddaddy of them all. Not the C-word you're thinking of, because it isn't a swear word at all, really. As far as I'm concerned, if it can't be used as a verb and a noun, it isn't a swear word. Shit is a good example. "You're a piece of shit," is right up the middle, and, "He was shitting me," gets right to the point.
No, cocksucker really has to take the cake. The imagery in that word leaves no doubt in anyone's mind what you really think. And, by switching the words around, you find the verb: you suck same.
So in South Africa I used it without thinking. Being from North America, sporting events involve a lot of good swearing, and I thought the rest of the world agreed. I was wrong. I've heard namby-pamby English guys say, "Well, this is good for football," when their lame soccer team gets beaten by some Third World country. And I've heard South Africans say that there has to be a sense of decorum in the stands.
Who knew? I hardly understood the rules of rugby, but even I could see that the ref blew the call. While the rest of the wimps in the stadium shook their heads and muttered, I jumped to my feet and told the ref, "You're a cocksucker." All right, perhaps I screamed it.
I don't think he heard me. But my ex-girlfriend's stepfather did. I think his words were, "disgrace" and "embarrassing." Behind me, I heard a guy say, "Bloody Americans."
That damn word cost me a bunch of money, too, because Norm was a season ticket holder and I stopped going to games with him. I knew he didn't want me around that seating area in case I got out of hand. But it was all right. I joined the guys in the nosebleeds and actually found some common ilk.
Swearing is our national pastime. It's not the best thing to be known for, but at least we're known for something. And let's face it, it does make us cooler than the rest. You can take chivalry, and politeness, and nicety any day. But when an Englishman tells you, "We send our warriors into battle. On the field, we're sportmen," you're suddenly proud of where you're from.
When a man with an accent who has never heard a shot fired in anger in his life hands you stuff like that, the first thought in your head, unfortunate or not, has got to be:
"Are you shitting me, cocksucker?"
I was reading an article by Rick Riley the other day. He said we had a problem, that we "swear too goddamn much." Rick's right. We do swear too goddamn much. Sometimes it is called for, other times not. Asking your mom to pass the "fucking potatoes" is not cool. However, telling a man he's a "no good sonofabitch" after he sleeps with your girlfriend is completely reasonable. Swearing, like most things, needs to come in context.
My first memory of swearing comes in the seventh grade. I walked into Mrs. Foster's geography class and a friend told me that we had a quiz in five minutes. I wasn't a study bug back then, and I remember saying, "Oh, shit, I forgot." I looked up, and there was Mrs. Foster looking me dead in the eye. She had a grin on her face. Foster was one of those good and rare teachers: honest and fair. She gave me a ten minute detention, not necessarily because I'd cursed, but because I'd been dumb enough to do it in front of her.
My next fond memory comes from the father of a girlfriend, who told me that if it "floats, flies, or fucks, rent it." This turned out to be some of the soundest advice I have ever heard. I haven't always followed it, much to my chagrin. It didn't occur to me for a long time that a girlfriend's father probably shouldn't be telling me to frequent the local cathouse, but what the hell.
My dad swore a lot. He was handy with a "this asshole can't pitch" during the baseball game, and a "have you ever heard such shit in your life?" during the evening news. My mom didn't swear in front of me until I was well into my teens, and her swearing was of the type that can't be impeached: "Men always get in trouble because of sex. How can they be so fucking stupid?" You can't argue with that.
Next to the British (who break out the C-word with astonishing regularity) no one can touch North Americans for swearing. We'll swear at anything. No one is safe. If a guy cuts us off in the fast lane, we'll say whatever comes to mind, most of it starting with the letter 'F.' When I was a kid, I think about 12-years-old, I once walked across a guy's lawn. He was an old dude, maybe sixty, and he lived around the corner from our place. I was with my good friend Sandra. I said, "Hello." He said, "Get off my lawn, faggot." When you can call a kid a faggot, you know you're from a self-assured culture.
Swearing can make for defining moments. There's not a chance I would remember that old guy if he hadn't called me a nasty name. I wonder where he is now. I wonder if the old bastard's gone and fucked himself.
Another defining moment happened at a Mr. Submarine. I was in high school. Me and a friend ate a sandwich, and my friend talked to the guy behind the counter while we ate. As we left, the guy said good-bye, and my friend said, matter-of-factly, "Eat shit." I'll always love him for that. I pissed myself laughing the whole way home, and in fact, I am laughing right now.
Swearing can be trivial, or called for, or outright embarrassing. I was dating a South African girl once, and I went to visit her in Durban. They have a nasty name for every race under the sun in that country, but leave it to me to step over the line during dinner theater. There was a live band at this place where you bring your own food and eat on picnic tables. No waiters, you even had to get your own drinks at the bar. We're there with her mom, stepfather, aunt, uncle, sister that hated me as sisters do, more friends of the family, on and on, a regular clan affair. So the band is playing, and after an hour of them blaring out the tunes and me getting drunk, they strike up "Mony Mony."
I did not know that the Billy Idol cover hadn't made it to South Africa. So there we are, all dancing away, and during the little chorus part, I scream, "Hey motherfucker, get laid, get fucked." And a few of them look at me strangely, and I don't catch on, and my girlfriend is giving me an embarrassed grin which I interpret as a smile of, "Look how well my boyfriend's fitting in," and I go on to do the less well-known chorus of, "Hey motherfucker, she's fat but I'm drunk."
Not knowing the Billy Idol version, her entire family basically thought I made that stuff up on the spot and had decided to announce that I was drunk and willing to screw a fat girl.
That was a long night. Her stepfather told me later that he would never forget it and it was the best thing he'd seen in years.
Nobody beats Canadians and Americans for swearing. Let's face it, we're pricks and we love it. I knew a girl from Tennessee who got mad whenever we said "goddamn." She wasn't our friend for long.
Another time in South Africa I broke out the granddaddy of them all. Not the C-word you're thinking of, because it isn't a swear word at all, really. As far as I'm concerned, if it can't be used as a verb and a noun, it isn't a swear word. Shit is a good example. "You're a piece of shit," is right up the middle, and, "He was shitting me," gets right to the point.
No, cocksucker really has to take the cake. The imagery in that word leaves no doubt in anyone's mind what you really think. And, by switching the words around, you find the verb: you suck same.
So in South Africa I used it without thinking. Being from North America, sporting events involve a lot of good swearing, and I thought the rest of the world agreed. I was wrong. I've heard namby-pamby English guys say, "Well, this is good for football," when their lame soccer team gets beaten by some Third World country. And I've heard South Africans say that there has to be a sense of decorum in the stands.
Who knew? I hardly understood the rules of rugby, but even I could see that the ref blew the call. While the rest of the wimps in the stadium shook their heads and muttered, I jumped to my feet and told the ref, "You're a cocksucker." All right, perhaps I screamed it.
I don't think he heard me. But my ex-girlfriend's stepfather did. I think his words were, "disgrace" and "embarrassing." Behind me, I heard a guy say, "Bloody Americans."
That damn word cost me a bunch of money, too, because Norm was a season ticket holder and I stopped going to games with him. I knew he didn't want me around that seating area in case I got out of hand. But it was all right. I joined the guys in the nosebleeds and actually found some common ilk.
Swearing is our national pastime. It's not the best thing to be known for, but at least we're known for something. And let's face it, it does make us cooler than the rest. You can take chivalry, and politeness, and nicety any day. But when an Englishman tells you, "We send our warriors into battle. On the field, we're sportmen," you're suddenly proud of where you're from.
When a man with an accent who has never heard a shot fired in anger in his life hands you stuff like that, the first thought in your head, unfortunate or not, has got to be:
"Are you shitting me, cocksucker?"
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Tianjin by Taxi
How well do you know the person you're sleeping with? How well do you know your friends? I'll bet I know a lot about my friends, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I know everything. Sooner or later, that friend might surprise me. Once in a while, people you thought you knew like the back of your hand will blow you away with a dark secret. Maybe we'll end up like the neighbour on TV: "Ted? Well, he was really a nice guy. Very friendly. I don't know why he cut off their heads and put them in the freezer."
I ask these questions only because the news out of North Korea has got me thinking. Not about nuclear weapons. When North Korea tested that kinda-sorta-maybe-working bomb last week, the media and the world's capitals responded with, you guessed it, condemnation and outrage. My immediate reaction was, "Who cares?" They were going to build one eventually, and there wasn't a chance that someone was going to use force to stop them. North Korea was more or less getting on with the show.
My concern with the news out of North Korea is that we are taking North Korea seriously at all. Not the nuke part. That's serious business. I don't want Tokyo to glow in the dark, and I would rather Seoul not evaporate in a cloud of dust. But why are we listening to anything Kim Jong Il has to say about any subject whatsoever?
Let me go off on a tangent here. I think it ties in. I went touring in Tianjin, China the other day. I thought I knew all about China, and I'm willing to guess that you do, too. Our shoes are made in China. Our coffee cups are made in China. The Chinese have a lot of people, and they have a really big economy. And...what else?
In Tianjin you find a lot of things, or at least you try to, if you can work your way through the smog. China is the smoggiest place I have ever seen. They burn coal like mad, and a drive from Tianjin on the coast, to Beijing a hundred miles distant, is hell on a still day.
Los Angeles is nothing compared to Tianjin. In fact, it is laughable to see LA movie stars buying hybrid automobiles in order to 'do their part.' In Tianjin, the regular folk ride a lot of bicycles (not to do their part, but because Communism has made them dirt poor, something else the movie star might care to think about) than cars, and still the air is a deadly cocktail. When the visibility is literally a few hundred yards, sightseeing trips seem pretty pointless.
Tianjin is a very good example of Coyote's Law #1: if you want to know how well a country is doing, take a taxi ride or visit a construction site.
That easy. If you really want to know a people, nevermind the museums and the art galleries. They're boring and, being museums, they're full of old stuff that hasn't been relevant in at least a hundred years. Don't bother visiting the monuments, either. Sure, they're big and worth a visit if you have the time, but they're not nearly as good as a cab at exposing culture. In Tianjin, I went to the Great Wall of China to look at the Great Wall, not the China. I almost didn't get to see either, because of the smog.
Taxi drivers will show you how corrupt a country is. First clue: get in a taxi and notice that the meter is broken, or has never been used. Second clue: ask the driver how much a trip is going to cost. Then haggle with him. Third clue: when being dropped off, try not to punch your friend in the jaw when he laughs and says he got the same ride for five bucks less.
Construction crews tell you if the place gives a damn about its own people. First clue: the guys on the makeshift scaffolding are not wearing boots or hardhats. Second clue: the guy with the jackhammer rattling in his hands and asphalt flying past his face is not wearing goggles (though if he has a jackhammer, the country might be 'developing.' Some places still use pick and shovel to tear up the road. In barefeet). Third clue: though they're only being built, the buildings already look old and you know that it will take ten years to finish the project. In Tianjin, you run out of fingers pretty quickly when trying to count the number of unfinished buildings that have been left to fall down.
Anyway, by following Coyote's Law #1, I can report to you that China is pretty much flunking the test of prosperity. If so many American jobs are being done in China, it must be news to most of the Chinese. All I see beyond the smog is begging, rubble, and the economic rot of Communism at its best.
Modern China started out with Mao and the usual pitch of a worker's paradise. Lenin, Marx, Mao, Castro, the rest, they all sold people a bill of goods that said men were equal. Just as it easier to destroy than to create, their respective countries all sank into the abyss that comes from bringing people down to the lowest level.
Mao perfected this, though it would be hard to find anyone in the West who is even aware of the fact.
Traveling through Tianjin, I wondered how much people really know about China. I don't mean what they know in knee jerk fashion. What I'm talking about is real knowledge. Knowledge that you can only see with your own two eyes. We take it for granted that when various countries come to the table at the UN, they're like us. Why we take it for granted is, of course, the media. But the only way you are going to see the inside of a country is if they run a story that will somehow make us feel bad. There's two reasons for that.
One, the media pretty much hate themselves, and us, for being who we are and having what we have. Two, hating ourselves sells newspapers. Honestly, besides a documentary on cheetahs or a commercial featuring starving children with 1-800 numbers written beneath their faces, how much to you really know about Africa?
Same goes for China. I will bet you that people do not know that the majority of live bands in Chinese bars are made up of Filipino expats. Or that Budweiser beer is served ice cold. Or that the average price for a knick knack is, "One dallah!" Or that every bar plays American music, and many of them have posters of Elvis Presley on the wall. Or that the Chinese are just plain poor, poor, poor. CNN, Fox, Bloomberg, none of them have my respect anymore when they talk about 'the Chinese answer' to North Korea, because they are not talking about China at all. I even heard one commentator on Fox congratulate China for "...what the Chinese people have done."
There are no Chinese "people," not in the political sense. There is a small group of rich guys headed by a dictator, and then there are the construction workers wearing sandals.
When our Tianjin taxi got lost on the way to a club one night, the driver took us up a dark alley and stopped in front of a glass door. We were pretty sure we were going to get mugged. Turns out, he just wanted to visit his friend because she spoke some English and would help him with directions. We got out of the car, and instantly a frail woman with a bundle in her hands asked us for money. The bundle was a baby (this is the problem with traveling and wanting to see people; sometimes you see them, and it can rip you apart). The driver motioned us inside. On the floor of the shop were knock-off Louis Vuitton bags. On the walls were pirated season series of Lost, 24, and Law & Order. An entire season for only fifteen bucks, the lady said.
The Chinese might be a threat to the US economy, and they might seem like a bigshot when it comes to yelling at North Korea, but it sure doesn't look like it to me. Coyote's Law #2 kicks into effect here: when the apartment buildings have air conditioning units hanging out of every window, you know the place is in trouble. In China, the units are there, and they rust, leaving brown streaks down the walls. I was reminded of St. Petersburg in thinking that communist buildings just need a bath in order to get some dignity back.
Mao would roll over in his dungarees if he saw the China of today. They are losing the culture war in a hurry, if they haven't lost it already. When a state security guard stands overlooking the dance floor as the men swill beer and the girls gyrate to Metallica, something's up. Because the kicker is, all of the men are Westerners just in town on leave from a ship, an oil rig, a cruise liner, a mining expedition. They can afford the drinks. Meanwhile, the women are - surprise! - hookers. They're Chinese, and they're looking for money. Not being idiots, they go to the watering holes to find it. I doubt Mao thought his security force would end up guarding a pick-up bar for Americans.
China will not save us from the North Korea problem. They're too busy trying to sell the idea of a booming China to foreign investors that don't know enough to open their eyes and look around. Russia? Same thing. Don't believe me? Go check it out. I did.
After getting a taste of China up close and personal, I flicked on the TV news and watched as they quoted Kim Jong Il, and told us his demands, and paraded the experts through the studio to tell us what old Kim wants, and what the Six Party Talks will have to do, and blah, blah, blah.
We are listening to Kim Jong Il as if he is on the same level as us. He isn't. He starves his own people. He won't let them use something as evil as the Internet. If you are born in North Korea, the chances of you ever seeing the Eiffel Tower in person are exactly zero. Your life is worthless. The man is a tyrant and a scumbag. This we know.
When are we going to do something about it? Probably never. But at least let's stop deluding ourselves over and over again. Historians love to poke fun at poor Neville "Peace in Our Time" Chamberlain. He bought Hitler's line, and was run around so badly in the diplomatic talks that he might as well have been a dog.
Meet Kim Jong Il. Start barking.
I ask these questions only because the news out of North Korea has got me thinking. Not about nuclear weapons. When North Korea tested that kinda-sorta-maybe-working bomb last week, the media and the world's capitals responded with, you guessed it, condemnation and outrage. My immediate reaction was, "Who cares?" They were going to build one eventually, and there wasn't a chance that someone was going to use force to stop them. North Korea was more or less getting on with the show.
My concern with the news out of North Korea is that we are taking North Korea seriously at all. Not the nuke part. That's serious business. I don't want Tokyo to glow in the dark, and I would rather Seoul not evaporate in a cloud of dust. But why are we listening to anything Kim Jong Il has to say about any subject whatsoever?
Let me go off on a tangent here. I think it ties in. I went touring in Tianjin, China the other day. I thought I knew all about China, and I'm willing to guess that you do, too. Our shoes are made in China. Our coffee cups are made in China. The Chinese have a lot of people, and they have a really big economy. And...what else?
In Tianjin you find a lot of things, or at least you try to, if you can work your way through the smog. China is the smoggiest place I have ever seen. They burn coal like mad, and a drive from Tianjin on the coast, to Beijing a hundred miles distant, is hell on a still day.
Los Angeles is nothing compared to Tianjin. In fact, it is laughable to see LA movie stars buying hybrid automobiles in order to 'do their part.' In Tianjin, the regular folk ride a lot of bicycles (not to do their part, but because Communism has made them dirt poor, something else the movie star might care to think about) than cars, and still the air is a deadly cocktail. When the visibility is literally a few hundred yards, sightseeing trips seem pretty pointless.
Tianjin is a very good example of Coyote's Law #1: if you want to know how well a country is doing, take a taxi ride or visit a construction site.
That easy. If you really want to know a people, nevermind the museums and the art galleries. They're boring and, being museums, they're full of old stuff that hasn't been relevant in at least a hundred years. Don't bother visiting the monuments, either. Sure, they're big and worth a visit if you have the time, but they're not nearly as good as a cab at exposing culture. In Tianjin, I went to the Great Wall of China to look at the Great Wall, not the China. I almost didn't get to see either, because of the smog.
Taxi drivers will show you how corrupt a country is. First clue: get in a taxi and notice that the meter is broken, or has never been used. Second clue: ask the driver how much a trip is going to cost. Then haggle with him. Third clue: when being dropped off, try not to punch your friend in the jaw when he laughs and says he got the same ride for five bucks less.
Construction crews tell you if the place gives a damn about its own people. First clue: the guys on the makeshift scaffolding are not wearing boots or hardhats. Second clue: the guy with the jackhammer rattling in his hands and asphalt flying past his face is not wearing goggles (though if he has a jackhammer, the country might be 'developing.' Some places still use pick and shovel to tear up the road. In barefeet). Third clue: though they're only being built, the buildings already look old and you know that it will take ten years to finish the project. In Tianjin, you run out of fingers pretty quickly when trying to count the number of unfinished buildings that have been left to fall down.
Anyway, by following Coyote's Law #1, I can report to you that China is pretty much flunking the test of prosperity. If so many American jobs are being done in China, it must be news to most of the Chinese. All I see beyond the smog is begging, rubble, and the economic rot of Communism at its best.
Modern China started out with Mao and the usual pitch of a worker's paradise. Lenin, Marx, Mao, Castro, the rest, they all sold people a bill of goods that said men were equal. Just as it easier to destroy than to create, their respective countries all sank into the abyss that comes from bringing people down to the lowest level.
Mao perfected this, though it would be hard to find anyone in the West who is even aware of the fact.
Traveling through Tianjin, I wondered how much people really know about China. I don't mean what they know in knee jerk fashion. What I'm talking about is real knowledge. Knowledge that you can only see with your own two eyes. We take it for granted that when various countries come to the table at the UN, they're like us. Why we take it for granted is, of course, the media. But the only way you are going to see the inside of a country is if they run a story that will somehow make us feel bad. There's two reasons for that.
One, the media pretty much hate themselves, and us, for being who we are and having what we have. Two, hating ourselves sells newspapers. Honestly, besides a documentary on cheetahs or a commercial featuring starving children with 1-800 numbers written beneath their faces, how much to you really know about Africa?
Same goes for China. I will bet you that people do not know that the majority of live bands in Chinese bars are made up of Filipino expats. Or that Budweiser beer is served ice cold. Or that the average price for a knick knack is, "One dallah!" Or that every bar plays American music, and many of them have posters of Elvis Presley on the wall. Or that the Chinese are just plain poor, poor, poor. CNN, Fox, Bloomberg, none of them have my respect anymore when they talk about 'the Chinese answer' to North Korea, because they are not talking about China at all. I even heard one commentator on Fox congratulate China for "...what the Chinese people have done."
There are no Chinese "people," not in the political sense. There is a small group of rich guys headed by a dictator, and then there are the construction workers wearing sandals.
When our Tianjin taxi got lost on the way to a club one night, the driver took us up a dark alley and stopped in front of a glass door. We were pretty sure we were going to get mugged. Turns out, he just wanted to visit his friend because she spoke some English and would help him with directions. We got out of the car, and instantly a frail woman with a bundle in her hands asked us for money. The bundle was a baby (this is the problem with traveling and wanting to see people; sometimes you see them, and it can rip you apart). The driver motioned us inside. On the floor of the shop were knock-off Louis Vuitton bags. On the walls were pirated season series of Lost, 24, and Law & Order. An entire season for only fifteen bucks, the lady said.
The Chinese might be a threat to the US economy, and they might seem like a bigshot when it comes to yelling at North Korea, but it sure doesn't look like it to me. Coyote's Law #2 kicks into effect here: when the apartment buildings have air conditioning units hanging out of every window, you know the place is in trouble. In China, the units are there, and they rust, leaving brown streaks down the walls. I was reminded of St. Petersburg in thinking that communist buildings just need a bath in order to get some dignity back.
Mao would roll over in his dungarees if he saw the China of today. They are losing the culture war in a hurry, if they haven't lost it already. When a state security guard stands overlooking the dance floor as the men swill beer and the girls gyrate to Metallica, something's up. Because the kicker is, all of the men are Westerners just in town on leave from a ship, an oil rig, a cruise liner, a mining expedition. They can afford the drinks. Meanwhile, the women are - surprise! - hookers. They're Chinese, and they're looking for money. Not being idiots, they go to the watering holes to find it. I doubt Mao thought his security force would end up guarding a pick-up bar for Americans.
China will not save us from the North Korea problem. They're too busy trying to sell the idea of a booming China to foreign investors that don't know enough to open their eyes and look around. Russia? Same thing. Don't believe me? Go check it out. I did.
After getting a taste of China up close and personal, I flicked on the TV news and watched as they quoted Kim Jong Il, and told us his demands, and paraded the experts through the studio to tell us what old Kim wants, and what the Six Party Talks will have to do, and blah, blah, blah.
We are listening to Kim Jong Il as if he is on the same level as us. He isn't. He starves his own people. He won't let them use something as evil as the Internet. If you are born in North Korea, the chances of you ever seeing the Eiffel Tower in person are exactly zero. Your life is worthless. The man is a tyrant and a scumbag. This we know.
When are we going to do something about it? Probably never. But at least let's stop deluding ourselves over and over again. Historians love to poke fun at poor Neville "Peace in Our Time" Chamberlain. He bought Hitler's line, and was run around so badly in the diplomatic talks that he might as well have been a dog.
Meet Kim Jong Il. Start barking.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Hiroshima
Visiting Hiroshima today is a sobering experience on three different levels. One, you get chills thinking that 61 years ago, a bomb named Little Boy exploded 500 meters above the spot where you're now standing, obliterating the city and killing about 80, 000 people. Roughly 60, 000 more would follow, succumbing to their injuries and dying of radiation poisoning. Estimating the dead is a tricky business, but it doesn't matter: one look at a photograph taken a few days after the Little Boy airburst says more than any numbers could. A building's skeleton here, a building's skeleton there, and the rest....just gone.
Two, the Japanese don't sweep their history under the carpet. The Atomic Bomb Dome stands high, and the Peace Memorial stretches for hundreds of yards along a river. There are Peace Bells, Peace Clocks, eternal flames, and plaques of every size and description, etched in Japanese with the English translation printed directly beneath. It is surprising how soon the monuments went up, one of them being dated in 1951. New York City had better stop arguing and get to monumenting. Hiroshima was wiped out like no city had been wiped out before, and yet they managed to come to grips with it and put up a memorial to their dead in relatively no time at all.
The third and perhaps most sobering thing about visiting Hiroshima is how absolutely naive and foolish the people are who visit it. I'm not talking about the Japanese. If you want an exercise in how to face your own past and perhaps a few inner demons, I invite you to visit the children's memorial. It's about three hundred yards away from ground zero. It stands thirty feet high. It is fairly nondescript: a cone of concrete, a couple of statues at the top, one of them a woman with arms spread, vaguely reminiscent of the cross. In the center of the cone, a bell. People are invited to ring the bell, and say a prayer for the children who were killed in the bombing, as well as pray that children will be safe from such acts again.
While the tourists gawk and the cameras click, the Japanese say their prayers. They handle the tourists with the panache of an old Hollywood star: they ignore them completely. There's nothing particularly solemn here. The Japanese don't rope the area off, give the evil eye to a tourist that chews gum, or tell anyone to keep quiet.
I watched as an old man approached the bell. He had two children with him, a boy and a girl, both under the age of five. The man who designed the children's monument must have had a sense of humor, because the rope for the bell ends four feet above the ground, well out of the reach of small kids. The old man dutifully picked the little boy up, and the boy rang the bell. He put the boy down and they said a five second prayer. Or rather, the old man did; the kid seemed to be complaining that he wanted to ring the bell again because he's a kid, and ringing a bell is fun, if you'll recall.
Next, the little girl. Heartbreak time for everyone watching. It's a touching sight, seeing a very old Asian man stoop over at the waist, pick up a beautiful little girl, and hold her against his chest. He turned her around to face the ropes, her tiny blue dress riding up and showing off her diapers. The girl reached out her little arms and grabbed the ropes. The old man said something in her ear. The little girl grasped the ropes tightly. The old man rocked his body back and forth, helping her. There was a solemn gong. The kid loved it. Smiled, laughed. The old man put her down. No, no, no, and back up again, the old man holding her out to the ropes and gong, one more time. Then they stood side by side and the man prayed for a few moments. The little girl looked up at him and clapped her hands together beneath her chin, mimicking him. Then they walked away.
The dignity in that act was astounding, and it was repeated over and over throughout the morning, men and women hauling boys and girls up to face the ropes and ring the bell. The dignity lay not in their faces or their prayers, but in their very concept of the site. If this had been Canada, the US, Egypt, or any other country besides Japan, there would have been velvet ropes, and a guide to keep order, and sanctimonious worshipers whose only purpose for being there was to be there: to be seen worshiping, and to revel in that worship. The Japanese don't mind the cameras, the tourists, and the noise that comes with them because those things just don't matter. They are irrelevant.
For the Japanese, this worshiping of the dead and the past does not seem to have the rest of the world's affectation of 'look at us mourn, look at us pray.' The memorials in Hiroshima are not a Wailing Wall, a Mecca, or a tomb of an unknown soldier. Not much happens here beyond prayer. Nobody's protesting anything. It is, to those of us used to watching violence mixed with remembrance on the TV news, boring.
It took me a while to figure out why the Japanese are better at remembrance than we are. It didn't take long. Listening to the Westerners around me, I learned that most of us are pretty dimwitted when it comes to matters of history and death.
There was the woman who told her friend that they bombed Hiroshima because the Enola Gay was flying around and it was a clear day over the city. Not too much planning went into it. There was the man who said that if more people came to a place like this, there would be peace on Earth. There was the European who told his American friend "This is all your fault, you know." There was the American man who said, "Isn't it amazing how forgiving the Japanese are?"
No, not really. I don't think the Japanese even look at it as a matter of forgiveness. The very fact that they have so many monuments here tells you that they teach to truth in school: Pearl Harbor was a bad idea. Perhaps when they pray to the dead, they ask forgiveness for themselves.
And they look at WWII for what it is: history. They've erected their monuments, and they pray for their dead, but I get the impression from the way they pray that they know two things: they got themselves into a conflict a long time ago, and it was an act which led to massive death and destruction on the homefront. The second thing I know is that they harbor no grudge, they want no re-match of any kind, and never have. They live with their history, they hold their children up to ring its bells. They don't hide from it, and they don't use it as pretext for hate.
It is refreshing to see a people that can get on with their lives. It is alarming to see us visiting their monuments and blaming our own peoples for acts which the Japanese no longer look at as political. Someday, maybe, we will let ourselves off the hook for being right once in a while, and for doing the right thing. The Japanese today are a beautiful, gracious people, but the atomic bomb wasn't dropped on them. It was dropped on people that cut off the heads of innocent civilians and downed pilots, that used brutal slave labor, that bayoneted POWs in the stomach for the dishonor of surrendering, that made the Bataan Death March three of the most vile words in the language.
"This was a tragedy," a man said to me as I was ready to leave the memorial.
"No, it wasn't," I said. "It was a victory."
And it's in the past.
Two, the Japanese don't sweep their history under the carpet. The Atomic Bomb Dome stands high, and the Peace Memorial stretches for hundreds of yards along a river. There are Peace Bells, Peace Clocks, eternal flames, and plaques of every size and description, etched in Japanese with the English translation printed directly beneath. It is surprising how soon the monuments went up, one of them being dated in 1951. New York City had better stop arguing and get to monumenting. Hiroshima was wiped out like no city had been wiped out before, and yet they managed to come to grips with it and put up a memorial to their dead in relatively no time at all.
The third and perhaps most sobering thing about visiting Hiroshima is how absolutely naive and foolish the people are who visit it. I'm not talking about the Japanese. If you want an exercise in how to face your own past and perhaps a few inner demons, I invite you to visit the children's memorial. It's about three hundred yards away from ground zero. It stands thirty feet high. It is fairly nondescript: a cone of concrete, a couple of statues at the top, one of them a woman with arms spread, vaguely reminiscent of the cross. In the center of the cone, a bell. People are invited to ring the bell, and say a prayer for the children who were killed in the bombing, as well as pray that children will be safe from such acts again.
While the tourists gawk and the cameras click, the Japanese say their prayers. They handle the tourists with the panache of an old Hollywood star: they ignore them completely. There's nothing particularly solemn here. The Japanese don't rope the area off, give the evil eye to a tourist that chews gum, or tell anyone to keep quiet.
I watched as an old man approached the bell. He had two children with him, a boy and a girl, both under the age of five. The man who designed the children's monument must have had a sense of humor, because the rope for the bell ends four feet above the ground, well out of the reach of small kids. The old man dutifully picked the little boy up, and the boy rang the bell. He put the boy down and they said a five second prayer. Or rather, the old man did; the kid seemed to be complaining that he wanted to ring the bell again because he's a kid, and ringing a bell is fun, if you'll recall.
Next, the little girl. Heartbreak time for everyone watching. It's a touching sight, seeing a very old Asian man stoop over at the waist, pick up a beautiful little girl, and hold her against his chest. He turned her around to face the ropes, her tiny blue dress riding up and showing off her diapers. The girl reached out her little arms and grabbed the ropes. The old man said something in her ear. The little girl grasped the ropes tightly. The old man rocked his body back and forth, helping her. There was a solemn gong. The kid loved it. Smiled, laughed. The old man put her down. No, no, no, and back up again, the old man holding her out to the ropes and gong, one more time. Then they stood side by side and the man prayed for a few moments. The little girl looked up at him and clapped her hands together beneath her chin, mimicking him. Then they walked away.
The dignity in that act was astounding, and it was repeated over and over throughout the morning, men and women hauling boys and girls up to face the ropes and ring the bell. The dignity lay not in their faces or their prayers, but in their very concept of the site. If this had been Canada, the US, Egypt, or any other country besides Japan, there would have been velvet ropes, and a guide to keep order, and sanctimonious worshipers whose only purpose for being there was to be there: to be seen worshiping, and to revel in that worship. The Japanese don't mind the cameras, the tourists, and the noise that comes with them because those things just don't matter. They are irrelevant.
For the Japanese, this worshiping of the dead and the past does not seem to have the rest of the world's affectation of 'look at us mourn, look at us pray.' The memorials in Hiroshima are not a Wailing Wall, a Mecca, or a tomb of an unknown soldier. Not much happens here beyond prayer. Nobody's protesting anything. It is, to those of us used to watching violence mixed with remembrance on the TV news, boring.
It took me a while to figure out why the Japanese are better at remembrance than we are. It didn't take long. Listening to the Westerners around me, I learned that most of us are pretty dimwitted when it comes to matters of history and death.
There was the woman who told her friend that they bombed Hiroshima because the Enola Gay was flying around and it was a clear day over the city. Not too much planning went into it. There was the man who said that if more people came to a place like this, there would be peace on Earth. There was the European who told his American friend "This is all your fault, you know." There was the American man who said, "Isn't it amazing how forgiving the Japanese are?"
No, not really. I don't think the Japanese even look at it as a matter of forgiveness. The very fact that they have so many monuments here tells you that they teach to truth in school: Pearl Harbor was a bad idea. Perhaps when they pray to the dead, they ask forgiveness for themselves.
And they look at WWII for what it is: history. They've erected their monuments, and they pray for their dead, but I get the impression from the way they pray that they know two things: they got themselves into a conflict a long time ago, and it was an act which led to massive death and destruction on the homefront. The second thing I know is that they harbor no grudge, they want no re-match of any kind, and never have. They live with their history, they hold their children up to ring its bells. They don't hide from it, and they don't use it as pretext for hate.
It is refreshing to see a people that can get on with their lives. It is alarming to see us visiting their monuments and blaming our own peoples for acts which the Japanese no longer look at as political. Someday, maybe, we will let ourselves off the hook for being right once in a while, and for doing the right thing. The Japanese today are a beautiful, gracious people, but the atomic bomb wasn't dropped on them. It was dropped on people that cut off the heads of innocent civilians and downed pilots, that used brutal slave labor, that bayoneted POWs in the stomach for the dishonor of surrendering, that made the Bataan Death March three of the most vile words in the language.
"This was a tragedy," a man said to me as I was ready to leave the memorial.
"No, it wasn't," I said. "It was a victory."
And it's in the past.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Flyboys - Review
Director: Tony BillWriters: Phil Sears/Blake Evans/D. Ward
Starring: James Franco/Jean Reno
Runtime: 140 minutes
A friend of mine said something interesting at the movies the other day: we've reached the age where a movie can be good simply because it's a "time waster."
He has a point. If you've seen enough movies, read enough scripts, and even dabbled in the making of a few films, you pretty much know what is coming down the pike as soon as the previews are over and the lion roars.
Take Flyboys. Utterly predictable, at times embarrassingly cliche, and yet...an okay time waster. A movie where you can pick and choose the good moments, and instantly forget the bad ones, then convince yourself that the movie was "all right."
Flyboys is about America's first fighter pilots. It takes place during WWI, prior to US involvement. It follows the trail of a half-dozen or so American boys who join the Lafayette Escadrille and fly bi-planes for the French. It's an interesting premise, one that could have made an excellent film. Instead, as with most things Hollywood these days, we get a pretty shameless retread of everything that has come before.
See if you can recognize these:
1) The broke rebel who joins up because he has nowhere else to go and because his family are all dead.
2) The cocky guy who freaks out and loses his nerve....but gets it back just in time.
3) The black man who is slighted in a bar, punches the guy out, then proves himself in the air.
4) The pudgy dude that has something to prove to his father, because his father thinks he's a wimp. In a time-saving move, this guy is also the southern racist who overcomes his bigotry so he can respect the guy in #3.
5) The veteran warrior. His friends are all dead, and he is staying in the war to kill his arch enemy: a German bad guy who flies a black plane and has no honor.
Most of the above takes place in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Following the screenwriter handbook, Messers. Sears, Evans, and Ward check their courage at the door and make sure they introduce all of the main characters as fast as they can. That done, they move onto the 'training montage,' where we watch the boys learn to fly in about five minutes. Then we meet the love interest.
And here's where you're slapping your head. Because James Franco as the rebel Rawlings is not a bad actor, and Jennifer Decker as Lucienne the French Maiden is absolutely superb. George Roy Hill once said that to make a great movie, all you have to do is cast it perfectly, and make the screenplay as good as it can be. After that, the movie films itself.
The scenes with Franco and Decker and very good. Sure, another cliche smacks you in the face as Lucienne is afraid to fall for Rawlings because he's going to die in the war. But after that, their relationship is pretty poignant. Director Tony Bill has the guts to let the actors act: Lucienne can't speak English, Rawlings can't speak French, and the director keeps it like that. And it's not hackneyed, parlez-vous giggle acting, either. It is so good compared to the rest of the dialogue and acting in the film that Bill either let them improvise, or one of the three writers was brought in specifically to write those scenes. (It's an old movie axiom that if you see two writers in the credits, get nervous; if you see three, leave the theater, because something was fundamentally wrong with the story and they started platooning writers to try and save it).The scenes with Lucienne and Rawlings made me wish they had called the movie Flyboy, singular, and simply followed the story of this young pilot and this interesting girl. Similarly, Jean Reno turns in some good work (when doesn't he?) as the straight-laced commander of the unit. It would have been interesting to see more of him in the film, rather than watch him push the plot along.
But it's a 21st century action movie, where you can't go deep. I dig that, and by now, I've learned to accept it. And the action scenes are fairly good. I wouldn't be surprised if Tony Bill admitted that he'd heard the story of how George Lucas, short of time and cash, had used old war footage in the rough cut of Star Wars, just so he could show the pace of the film. The footage might have looked a lot like Bill's: fast, loose, close-ups of bad guys and good guys gritting their teeth, a giant Zeppelin as a Death Star, a black airplane for the Germanic Darth Vader.
Many of the explosions and special effects are a bit lame. Maybe the budget was tight. Don't expect Black Hawk Down's booms and plumes. The airplanes are mostly digital, which is a sad state of affairs in movies these days. No matter how good the computers get, it is very, very hard to fool the human eye, so you feel a bit silly watching movies like Flyboys because you might as well be watching a flight simulator video game. Still, the work is passable, and the actors do a good job of being scared (the bad guy's on my tail), angry (I can't believe he shot down my friend), morose (what's this all for, anyway?), sad (I can't believe he shot down my other friend), vengeful (I'm going to kill him for shooting down my friends).
Leaving the theater, I went with my friend's take: an okay time waster. It gave me a chance to look forward to Jennifer Decker's next film, because I think she's got something, and it gave me a new appreciation of James Franco, whom I believe can separate himself from the other young, good-looking types once he gets some more seasoning.
And no, I'm not a heartless movie snob: it gave me an appreciation for the men who fought and died before their country even asked them to go. It wouldn't matter if you made a soap opera about them, because it wouldn't change a thing. They gave all, and they deserve the glory.
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