Space Bridge Too Far

Watching the original "Transformers" now and again with the boys, I keep wondering: why the hell did the Autobots never build their own space bridge? How is it that the Decepticons had no problem whipping one up, but the Autobots never were able to? Are the Decepticons more intelligent? I mean, who designed their space bridge, anyway? For all the engineering acumen of Wheeljack and Ratchet, who is their equivalent among the Decepticons? I dunno. All I know is that the Decepticons sure seem sharper than their Autobot enemies.

You Don't Know Jack-O'-Lantern

I carved pumpkins with the boys tonight. Obviously, I do the carving, but B1 was great about helping scoop out the guts, and B2 was having fun hanging out and watching us and offering commentary. Here are our results, which the boys were well-pleased with...

I like to pretend that the green turban squash one is some kind of monster fish-man one.

Hello? Daylight Savings?

Man, I really wish they'd shift the Daylight Savings Time date back to what it was before GW Bush set it for; it sucks to have everything so dark in the morning. It makes it hard to get the boys up and at'em.

I had weird dreams last night, like stuff with a ventriloquist's dummy (never a good sign in a dream, right? Sheesh) I can only remember some of it, but it was like being in the basement of this place with this guy with a dummy, and somebody walked up and muttered to me "You know, the DUMMY is the one doing the thinking, here, not the GUY." And then when the guy was talking to me, I was wondering that, and was keeping an eye on the creepy dummy.

Had some other weird dream that flowed from that one, but I forget what it was, now.

Gonna pick up some pumpkins today for the boys and me to carve. They're stoked about that.

Musica

This was a good piece...

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/have_wilco_and_radiohead_become_the_new_adult_contemporary/

Birthdaze

Today's Exene's birthday. She turns the big 42 today! I'm sure she'll celebrate with her "gal pals" and assorted running chums. I have the boys for the next few days, so I'm not sure what I would do with the birthday thing, vis-a-vis them. I mean, I know that were today my birthday, and Exene had the boys, I know she'd not do anything for me (in the sense of telling the boys it was my birthday, or having them sing Happy Birthday), so I guess I won't do the equivalent. It's hard to know the route to go with that -- all too often, I would "play nice" without a hint of reciprocity. So, in the wake of that, I'll just maybe mention it in passing. I'm sure Exene will be keen to remind the boys, one way or another, anyway.

So, it looks like the police are clamping down on OWS in many places. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Maybe the authorities realize so many people are pissed that they tried to let people let off steam before taking action. Not sure. The thing is, structurally, nothing has changed -- everything that has boned the economy, has mortgaged our future, has held all the politicians captive -- all of that is still in place. While it is good that people are actually bestirred to get pissed, the changes required for our country are huge. I've said it before, but a lot of heads are going to have to come out of countless asses for real progress to be achieved in this country. Much of that involves breaking the Beltway Consensus -- the staid duopoly that keeps 99% of the country screwed for the gain of 1%. The things that need to be done aren't getting done, and won't be getting done. And what that means for the future, in a democratic society, is more protest. A lot more. OWS is really just a preview of what's in store. I mean, the economy is still crap -- the Republicans have their anti-immigration initiatives that are already causing bad effects in their states (by scaring off the immigrants who were willing to work the shit jobs for low wages that Americans won't take because they don't pay nearly enough). The Democrats are nearly as captive to Wall Street as the GOP. Really, what we have seen in the past decade is the triumph of Capital over Democracy, and you have people finally waking up to that cold reality.

What do you do in a country where 400 people are worth more than 150 million of their fellow Americans? How is that democratic? It's not. It's plutocratic. You can propagandize those 150 million so they feel like they have something in common with the 400 -- but propaganda doesn't fill an empty stomach. That might only bamboozle, what, 3 million of them. What about the rest? No, it's untenable.

Americans never like to talk about class -- we like to pretend that we're all Americans, immune from history. But a system where 400 > 150,000,000? Democratically speaking, it's not sustainable. Especially when those 400 enjoy far more political and economic voice than the 150 million. Telling those 150 million "You suck. Go get a job, Hippie!" isn't actually going to solve anything. It doesn't speak to the daily reality for those people. And in an economy driven by consumer spending (around 70% of it), it's very clear that those 400 people cannot possibly consume enough to lift the economy up. At some point, those 150 million will have to be helped, and in a meaningful way.

I saw the other day that real wages have stagnated for 50 years. And this was in a business magazine. That means that the late time people enjoyed actual, tangible buying power for their dollar was in 1961 -- that pay levels have plateaued since then. It's why food costs crush people, housing costs, car expenses, all of that. It's why people went to two-economy households to try to make ends meet. It's reflective of the declining power of the working class relative to the owning class.

And, I know, a segment of the owning class likes to say "Tough shit. You suck, Po'folks." But it's not a productive or constructive stance to take. Not when you're outnumbered 375,000 to 1. Think of that. Each of those 400 equals 375,000 other Americans, in terms of economic power and clout. It's not sustainable. The amount of police and military repression required to keep those people at bay? Too much. It'll destroy everything our society thinks it's about.

Or, we just give up on the notion of having a democratic society entirely, or become a hollowed-out, democracy-in-name-only kind of nation. Really, we're there already; it's just that most people don't realize it. If we really move into a postdemocratic future, then all pretense toward justice, fairness, equality before the law -- that all gets tossed aside. The rich will hunker down behind their walls, with paramilitary protection, and the impoverished hordes will mill about outside said walls. The sad truth of that is that neither group is free in that situation.

No, OWS is just a preview of what's to come. A last, peaceful gasp of a dying order. Rough times ahead for the country -- and that goes for the rich few as well as the poor multitudes.

Damned Right!

I saw The Damned at Metro last night, part of their 35th Anniversary Tour. Was glad to have caught them, since they still have it! They turned out a great show, covering their debut album ("Damned Damned Damned") and their "Black Album," their fourth album. They looked good, sounded good, and seemed to be having a good time, although, sadly, no Rat Scabies on the drums. I was right near the front and center, and it was slamdance-tastic! Yes, I still call it "slamdancing" -- moshing is what Metalheads and Grunge kids do, and only after Punks first came up with slamdancing! Bahah!

They were one of THE seminal Punk bands of old...

Dave Vanian, frontman, working his mojo.

Captain Sensible and Dave Vanian.

Amusingly enough, I got caught in this cellphone clip during the show -- I called out "Love Song," which they then played; you can see Captain Sensible pointing to me when they call out the title, and you can see me in the clip!

At the end of the show, this drunk-as-a-skunk guy was lamenting loudly that they didn't play "I Just Can't Be Happy Today," and I said "Yeah, I wanted that one, too." and the guy shook my hand, said "Thash MY theme song, Man." and he introduced himself, said "Jesh wanned to say yer a real snappy dresser, Fella." Bahah! I said "Thanks!" as I was leaving. I normally would never wear a tux to a fucking show, but for the Damned, it kind of demanded it, especially with it being so near Halloween. As I left, I saw one other guy wearing a bowtie -- his girlfriend pointed to me, and he said "Hey, I thought I was the only one!" and I just whooped and pointed to my skull-and-crossbones bowtie...

Yo

Youngstown gets a nod in this SALON article (in fact, two out of three of the cities referenced are in Ohio...

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/25/occupying_the_rust_belt/

Occupation with an expiration date

Youngstown, Ohio, is an elegiac city a few hundred miles to the west of Allentown. What was once the manufacturing district  is a mausoleum of industry. A brick smokestack stands sentinel over acres of cavernous shells that once poured out streams of goods. Crumbling brick buildings sprout trees two stories up, while inside pancakes of concrete drip toward the ground, suspended precariously by a bramble of rusted rebar.

Demolition is one of the few signs of economic life. Starting in 2006, the city tripled its budget for razing abandoned buildings. In an open-air yard in the industrial quarter, heavy machines whine and billow exhaust as they pound large concrete slabs, surrounded by small mountains of rubble sorted according to size.

With more than 43 percent of the land vacant, Youngstown is slowly being erased. In some neighborhoods boarded-up houses and empty lots island the remaining inhabited homes, which shrink behind spreading foliage lest they be next.

Since 1950, the population has declined from a high of 218,000 to less than 67,000 today. The poverty rate is a stratospheric 32 percent, and the median value of owner-occupied homes is a paltry $52,900. Manufacturing dropped from 50 percent of the workforce in 1950 to 16 percent in 2007. This includes a staggering loss of 31 percent of manufacturing jobs in the region from 2000 to 2007 – and that wasbefore the economy fell off the cliff.

At the downtown crossroads, Occupy Youngstown has taken up position in the shadow of three different banks, including a Chase branch. The occupation is a latecomer, having started on Oct. 15, with a rally more than 400 strong at its peak, according to Chuck Kettering Jr., an aspiring actor who has been unemployed for a year from his previous position as an HVAC technician.

“We were once a huge steel city for America,” says the cherubic, 27-year-old Kettering. “In the 1970s they started closing up all our steel mills, taking all the jobs and shipping them down south and overseas where labor is cheaper. Youngstown’s been a city that has been going through this economic struggle for almost 40 years now, and I think we have a valid voice of addressing these issues on a national scale.”

His family is living proof of the toll of deindustrialization. In a phone interview, Chuck Kettering Sr. calls himself “the poster boy for the Rust Belt.” A Youngstown native, he went to work in 1973 at age 19 and worked at two local U.S. Steel plants that shuttered, one in 1979, the other in 1982. Next, he landed a position with Packard Electronics in 1985 making electrical components for GM cars. After GM spun off Delphi in 1999, Packard was subsumed by the auto-parts maker. The company started moving jobs overseas.

“Local operations were pressured by wages, and most operations moved south of the border” because of NAFTA, he says. Following Delphi’s bankruptcy in 2008, Kettering and some co-workers were given a one-time chance to work for GM itself and keep their wages, benefits and pensions.

“It was a no-brainer,” he says, but their seniority did not transfer to plant assignments. Despite nearly 25 years at Packard and Delphi, Kettering says, “I found myself at the age of 54 starting at the bottom, working alongside 21-year-olds trying to keep up on the line. Many of us who transferred were not spring chickens and it was hard to keep up.”

His wife, hired by Packard in 1979, worked her way into management, was forced to retire after 30 years with a monthly pension that was slashed in half to $1,600 and with expectations of further cuts. Now he’s on disability.

“I’m really proud of our local guys,” he says. “The police and the firefighters really support the occupy movement. Our mayor supports it. We have a united front here in Ohio.”

Unlike the seven other occupations I have visited, Occupy Youngstown embraces electoral issues. Kettering and other occupiers wave signs and wear buttons opposing Issue 2, which would strip some 350,000 public sector workers of collective bargaining rights.

Karen Joseph, a soft-spoken 59-year-old mother of two whose family spends one-third of its household income on health insurance, is by no means the only one who is against Issue 3, which would exempt Ohio from the incoming national healthcare law.

Everyone is against privatizing the Ohio Turnpike, which is being pushed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. All the occupiers we talk to express dismay at the prospect of hydrofracking in Mill Creek Park, which Kettering describes as “the jewel of the area with waterfalls, streams and lots of wildlife.”

This occupation comes with an expiration date. The city asked the occupiers to “take down the tents before business hours on Monday, Oct. 17, when the banks were opening,” according to Chuck Kettering Jr. He says they complied, but Occupy Youngstown still maintains a 24-hour presence and has pledged to do so until Nov. 8, Election Day.

Tired

I saw "Rubber" (2010) this evening, which was billed as a horror comedy, but it annoyed me. It's basically about a killer tire. A tire comes to life and kills and kills and kills again. Now, I'm willing to go with that, sure, but the way the director (who also wrote it -- always a potential danger sign: too much creative power concentrated in one pair of hands) ran with it, it was just pretentious, unfunny, and un-horrific. It seems ridiculous to complain about a movie about a killer tire failing to meet one's expectations, but I think that's what the moviemaker was taking refuge in, that the concept was so "original" and "ridiculous" that he would be given the latitude to make a bulletproof movie.

I mean, there were some good shots, good use of visuals, and even some decent enough characterization (I know, I know) of the tire. But there was so much absurdist bullshit the writer-director threw into the mix that it scuttled what was good about the movie.

First, it wasn't remotely scary. Gory, certainly, but not scary. The tire makes various things explode with this psychokinetic powers (yes). Again and again. Mmmkay.

Second (and more damning), there was this ridiculous "fourth wall" bullshit going on, with the director talking through some of the characters directly to the audience -- and some of the audience were themselves spectators within the movie, who were busy watching and commenting on what was going on, Beavis & Butthead-style. That was just beyond pretentious bullshit, in my view. Like the writer-director wasn't confident enough in his work to let it stand on its own merits, he had to create a Greek Choir of "Spectators" commenting on the movie-within-the-movie (until they are nearly all poisoned midway through). These Spectators act as mediators of sorts, trying to either shape audience reaction to the movie, or else lampoon the audience, the equivalent of the writer-director flipping the audience off.

Third, for a horror-comedy, it wasn't nearly funny enough. So, in addition to being un-scary, it was unfunny, to boot. Like an asshole onstage trying to juggle and not being able to do it, and saying "Wait, I'll get it this time" and dropping plate after plate. It wasn't funny. It was weird, might even had pretensions toward zaniness (always what people opt for when they can't find the funny -- just as people opt for gore when they can't find horror or terror).

Fourth, the movie forced the viewer to swallow far too many conceits -- it's why you don't see alien zombie movies, or racing movie family dramas where somebody dies of a lingering illness. Aliens, sure. Zombies, sure. But don't put alien zombies in one movie, because it's asking the audience to suspend too much disbelief. This movie had:

1) a sentient, ambulatory, killer tire
2) which developed psychokinetic powers
3) and characters that addressed the audience directly, breaking the Fourth Wall
4) and another group of characters as Spectators who were stand-ins for the audience

That's just too much to put in one movie. Too many concepts stacked atop one another. There's a reason why they call it "High Concept" and not "High Concepts."

Bullshit movie. It didn't have to be -- even with such a ridiculous premise -- but the writer-director made it so. I knew, even without seeing the credits, that it was a French director. I actually love French moviemaking, but I can tell a French aesthetic in a movie when I run across it, especially a French Absurdist aesthetic. But, as crazy as it sounds, there is Absurdism and there is absurdity, and it's like the difference between good wine and grape juice. This movie was grape juice that thought it was fine wine.

It wasn't as smart, funny, silly, or scary as it thought it was. Flat tire. It's that pretentious. Not completely bereft of merit, but only in terms of technique, not in terms of story or good moviemaking in general. The moment the writer-director had a character addressing the viewer, directly (and, the audience's proxies in the form of these Spectators), I was like "Oh. No." Complete bullshit.

Ridin' the storm out

They opened the lake shore bike/jogging path in the wake of that gale we had (for lack of a better term). Pretty amazing damage was done all along the length of it, so those waves had to be something to see. At least 30 to 40 feet away from the shore, there was profound damage. A length of fence was crushed, too, all from the force of the waves (and, again, we're talking about 40 feet away at that juncture). Impressive and awe-inspiring amounts of force. There were big slabs of asphalt on the path, having been ripped out by the wave action. The city's been dealing with that pummeling for a long, long time, and the civic engineers know what to do about it, but it's still amazing to see the damage done. There's also an effective sand trap in place at Oak Street Beach, where copious sand had piled up along the path, making it particularly dicey riding.

But, in the wake of that big storm that blasted through here, it's a pretty nice day -- great light, and an imminent late autumn/early winter chill in the mix.

Today is B2's 6th birthday! Little man is becoming a big boy! B1 and I sang "Happy Birthday" to him this morning, which he clearly enjoyed (B1 was especially cute, hugging his baby brother -- B1's such an affectionate and loving big brother; B2 is so lucky to have him). The boys are with Exene tonight, so she'll likely do whatever birthday stuff she had lined up. I'm doing something for B2 over the weekend, including baking him a lemon cake, since he loves lemon cake. Also, I'm getting him a Lego set he's been wanting for, I dunno, six months. Perfecto!

Tomorrow'll be a busy day, as I'm doing a big grocery run, and, as I said, a birthday run for B2. Plus, I have some miscellaneous workaday errands to run, just stuff to take care of, that kind of deal.

Some of Chicago's homeless sell "Streetwise" -- it's a newspaper they sell in an attempt to make a bit of money. "Streetwise" vendors are ubiquitous in the city. Anyway, there's one who's a regular in my neighborhood, and he's clearly a guy who has had a tough life; you can just tell. Maybe a Vietnam War-era vet, that kind of thing. I usually give him a spare buck when I see him (that's the price of a copy of "Streetwise") but I always tell him to keep the issue. He recognizes me, usually says "Thanks, my big brother." One time, when I had the boys with me, and B2 was wearing his leather jacket and had his shades on, he called B2 "Hollywood," which amused me. Even now, B2 has that vibe. The kid has IT. He's got that presence. I would never, ever want him to be a child star, wouldn't be that kind of a parent, but I'll encourage him to do theatrical stuff while in school, and when he's 18, he's welcome to go do acting, if he wants. He'd be good. I still remember him role-playing a statue -- gosh, how old was he? Three? He let his face go blank, held himself perfectly still. It was so cute.

The other day, he was doing a voice for a character, and I said "Wow, that's great, [B2!] So actorly." and then he tried a few other things, and said "How about that, Daddy? Is THAT actorly?" Cracks me up to hear a kid asking that. Next I'll have him asking me what his motivation is for a scene. I can actually help him with that stuff, in my way, since I did some improv stuff in the 90s, have at least the rudiments of constructing a scene and what-not.

Really, B2 is too smart to be an actor. I mean, he might do it because he's good at it, but I can see him doing far more than that, down the road, because he's so sharp. His facility with language is amazing, and his understanding of people and situations is preternatural. And he knows it, the lil' stinker.

Anyway, this is his day, Birthday Boy. Same birthdate as Carrie Fisher. God help me. The Force is strong in this one! Bahah!

Another Ghost Walks These Halls

The traumatic thing I alluded to the other day (10/17), well, the person who had triggered that died. I found out late yesterday. So, she died two days after I saw her. Out of respect for the person's privacy, I won't go into details, but I definitely can say that having been in the same room with that person two days ago, death was very clearly in the room. And a bad death it was. My stepdad would always say that death was either the fulfillment of your dreams (assuming paradise and afterlife) or, if nothing else, the cessation of pain and suffering. In the case of this person, I can only assume the latter, but it sucks, because that person was suffering pain for months before her end, and the collective failure of her significant other and her family to take care of her in that time hangs like a shadow over her last days. She was semi-friends with Exene, and had called Exene for help the other day, and Exene had done so, but had needed my help, too, because she wasn't strong enough to move the dying woman, so I helped. I ran into her significant other the day before yesterday, and he'd thanked me for helping out in an "Aw, shucks" kind of way, and I just choked out "Yes, it's a terrible scene." I wanted to ask him why he wasn't there, but didn't. The whole situation was bad, and I can't talk about it without going into a lot of context and back story, but I couldn't help but feel like the building had gotten itself another ghost with the passing of this woman. I don't believe in ghosts, but the pain and suffering of that woman haunts the hallways, all the same. I walk by their apartment and I grimace, because I can feel that. And since they have a child who is a year older than B1, who used to be a playmate of his, it compounds the suffering -- I can only imagine what that kid is feeling, how much emotional damage she's suffered from her father's criminal neglect (or, at best grotesque bungling) of the welfare of her mother, and how that all shakes out. The woman is dead, and I imagine they'll move out of there; I can't imagine them staying in that tiny apartment, now, in the wake of this.

I'm a compassionate soul, and my heart bleeds. I freely admit that. I feel every emotion keenly; I think it's part of my own artistic temperament. It informs my work, the ability to feel things keenly. But in matters of suffering and anguish, it's a double-edged blade, because I feel agony as much as the rest of the emotional palette. And to see what I saw the other day, to know that a person was in such dire straits, and with only so much I could do, it's haunting. Like I said, a ghost. Ghosts haunt that way.

Howling

I think we're going to get hammered, winterwise, this year.

At least here in Chicago. It's been nasty all day, big-time howling winds, rain. A late fall monsoon, practically. Fierce. Seems like it's a herald of imminent winter! I was walking downtown and the wind gusts were nearly strong enough to stop me, which usually means the gust are at least 60 mph. People's umbrellas were pulsating, hyperextending and snapping back into shape, and then back again. Raincoats are a must in Chicago; umbrellas are always dicey.

Splashy

Wow, it's getting kinda yucky tonight. I saw this weather bulletin, too...

Lakeshore Flood Warning issued October 18 at 1:58PM CDT expiring October 18 at 10:00PM CDT by NWS Chicago ...LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY. * WAVES...WAVES WILL BUILD TO 12 TO 16 FEET WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON...BUILDING FURTHER TO 17 TO 22 FEET WEDNESDAY NIGHT. WAVES WILL GRADUALLY SUBSIDE TO LESS THAN 15 FEET BY LATE THURSDAY AFTERNOON. * IMPACTS...LARGE AND BATTERING WAVES WILL RESULT IN FLOODING OF AREAS NEAR THE LAKE...LIKELY WORSE THAN WHAT WAS SEEN WITH THE LATE SEPTEMBER STORM A FEW WEEKS AGO. WAVES COULD RESULT IN FLOODING ALONG THE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE PORTIONS OF LAKE SHORE DRIVE IN CHICAGO.

For sure, after getting creamed by those waves the other week, I'm going to stay the hell off the lakeshore path. Those waves in September were bad, so if this is worse, NFW am I going there. I mean, 17 to 22 foot waves?? Whoa!

I'm making a hodge-podge soup tonight -- using up various components I had around, like a big onion, some oyster mushrooms, fresh baby spinach, spices, and so forth. It's making my place smell so good right now. Must be patient, let it simmer. I love soup in the fall, and I love not wasting food, so soup is win-win!

Wakeup Call

Some drunken Chad woke me up. Thump thump thump on door across the hall. I went to the peephole to check. The guy was drunkenly trying to key into neighbor's apartment. When his key wouldn't work, he tried to get into my place, threw a shoulder on the door. I opened the door and the guy stepped back, startled, muttered "Oh, shit." I said "Wrong floor. What floor are you looking for?" and he said "MY floor." The guy's pants were half-off, and he'd pissed himself, clearly. I said "Well, it's not this floor." Then he tried my neighbor's door a couple more times before he lurched down the hallway.

Laundryman

Doing laundry this morning. Woo hoo! I put it off long enough. I don't honestly mind laundry; but I do tend to put it off, just because it's always a joust over getting to the machines at the right time and not having to contend with other tenants. Fortunately, as an early riser, I'm able to get down there in the morning, when it is (usually) clear.

Yesterday was traumatizing. I'm tempted to write about it, but shouldn't. Just end-of-life issues stuff, a dying person, and how one deals with that, or doesn't, and the boundaries of one's moral responsibility. I can't really write about it, it's far too fresh in my mind, too haunting. But I was definitely traumatized. I looked at the abyss, and the abyss looked right back at me. I'm not even being dramatic; I am calling it exactly as I saw it.

(taking a deliberate emotional step back)

B2's birthday is this week. Little man slowly becoming big boy. I'm going to have to punt his birthday present until the weekend, though, because of schedules and what-not. That'll be okay; he'll get extra birthday.

Fridave

I have the boys tonight. They are very happy to have a Daddy Night for Friday. They're watching "Wall*E" at the moment, all snuggled in with blankets and what-not, keeping warm.

Autumn chill is definitely here. I'm in a sweater and some flannel jammies, keeping warm. Brrr!

I may catch "The Thing" prequel tomorrow at a matinee. Will let you know how it is.

Fall always gets me in Writing Mode in earnest. I get antsy if I don't work on something. So, obviously, I will!

B2 likes to mix and match Lego Minifigures. Love to see what he comes up with.

Left Out

It's ironic that the Republican most-hated by the right-wingdings among the GOP's Brimstone Base, Mitt Romney, is easily the biggest threat to Obama. Because a mere conservative like Romney can stand just a whisker to Obama's right, which might confuse enough voters to thinking that there's little difference between them. In truth, yeah, there really is little to separate Romney from Obama, and that's largely Obama's fault, by his absolute refusal to tack anywhere near the left. What's worse is that HR Clinton was even more conservative than Obama, so the Democratic voters had a choice between somewhat conservative (Obama) and conservative (HR Clinton). And, if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the "choice" again will be between somewhat conservative and conservative. Lovely. Bringing yesterday's solutions to today's problems. What a mess.

Cannot believe B2's 6th birthday is next week. Oh, man. Little man will be SIX. Good lord. Am amazed that Halloween is right around the bend, too. That all feels so unreal to me.

Pezidential

Next year's presidential election is going to be a debacle. What our country actually needs is a New Deal-style massive, Keynesian spending spree to get the millions of unemployed Americans working, get our demand-driven economy surging again (keep in mind: 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending). This is what it needs. Those folks need jobs. Tax rates on the top 1% must go up. This is what will get our economy rolling again.

However, this is not going to happen. Instead, both parties will offer non-solutions to real problems. The Democrats will ape Republican economic thinking, leashed to supposed deficit hawks (which really translates into folks who don't like social spending -- since deficit hawks never balk at Pentagon spending and bank bailouts). And the Republicans will continue their "more of the same" stuff -- lowering taxes on the top 1%, eliminating regulation of industry, and outright subversion and suppression of non-Republican voters through intimidation and actual disenfranchisement.

Anyway, neither party actually will offer a way out of this mess. Our country absolutely needs new thinking. You know we're in trouble when actual moderate/centrist thinking qualifies as "left-wing radicalism" in DC. That's how skewed our country's become. Here's a little graphic:

[Left]=======================[Center]=====["Left"]=====["Center"]=====[Right]

Our system has an ideological ratchet in place -- we are allowed to hew ever rightward, but when anybody tries to tack left, the ratchet locks. It's impermissible. Anyway, the false centrists are really conservatives, the false leftists are really right-moderates. And everybody to the left of those right-moderates (Obama's one of those, btw -- and he gets called a "socialist"), anybody to the left of Obama (and that's a lot of people) is completely left out of the political system.

That's a reality not lost on those Occupy Wall Street (OWS) folks. They get it. They understand that they've been left behind. It's not like the astroturf, reactionary billionaire-financed false populism of the Tea Party (who are really just the shock troops for the GOP). Rather, OWS is something very different. It is a movement that actually doesn't have a place within the "Beltway Consensus" diagrammed above.

Sure, the Democrats will pay lip service to them. Hell, they have to, in order to feign some kind of credibility with these folks. But today's Democratic Party is completely captive to Wall Street and the banking industry; they will have exactly nothing to offer OWS except empty words of support.

And the Republicans can't even pretend to have anything to say to them, because it's so clear that they are hostile to actual, practicing democracy. They are marching along with "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." as their political maxims, not even understanding just how Orwellian they are. Maybe some of their elite opinion leaders get it, but they have their own rank-and-file completely snowed.

So, going into 2012, we have a country on cruise control while driving toward a cliff. Barring a sweeping voting out of the Republicans and a massive change of heart on the part of the Democrats, neither party will offer a thing to improve things for the majority of Americans. And that is going to create armies of pissed-off, desolate, desperate people. Each election after 2012 is going to get messier and messier, until there is a proper political sea change and new thinking is brought in (or old thinking that has been disregarded because it challenges economic wrongthink).

Mulling

Now, I'd already complained about the random and hard-to-believe Dualla suicide, and about the shitty ending to "Galactica." But then I realized that what they should've done to end the series would be to do a fade-out with Dualla killing herself.

That would've ended the series on a perfect note. It would've completely outraged their fans, but it would've been so worth it. "Earth" is a disappointment, everybody's sad, Dualla shoots herself, fade to black. Break for commercial. And the commercial with the above is pretty unintentionally funny. The end.

I concur

Worst Ending in SF TV, Ever.

I agree with this, too...

Renowned fantasy author George R.R. Martin expressed his extreme disgust with the series' writers for producing this ending, saying on his livejournal: "Battlestar Galactica ends with 'God Did It.' Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story...Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward. I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG...but damn it, doesn't anybody know how to write an ending any more? Writing 101, kids. Adam and Eve, God Did It, It Was All a Dream? I've seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings."

I think the "Danger, Will Robinson" moment to the show really came with some mix of the Final Five and, worst of all, when Ellen Tigh was revealed at the Final Fifth. Ellen "What the Fuck?" Tigh? She's the Fifth Cylon? Who could possibly give a shit about that? When that happened, I was like "Oh, no...." and it spoke volumes of what was coming down the pike. And really, the whole Final Five (hate that term for them, btw -- makes them sound like a playoff in basketball) plotline was a whole lot of nothing -- none of those Final Fivers really did a hell of a lot to justify the buildup surrounding them. Especially since all but two of them basically continue on being what they already were beforehand, more or less. Weak. The story got hijacked by the God(tm) shit and it gutted and filleted the story. And what's Starbuck? Is she a goddamned ghost? Or another of those fucking "angels" that get touted? Whatever. Lame. Weak. Bad.

Nothing worse than a bad case of Writer's Hand intruding on a story. I always avoid this in my stories, because it's annoying to have something happen because the Writer wants it to, or is at wit's end and cops out with "Because I said so." Lame. Some serious writer's fatigue must have set in on some level, or else the writers wrote themselves into a corner and decided to pull the ripcord and hope the cop-out wasn't caught by the majority of viewers/fans.

Seeing that ending made me very glad I didn't watch the show real-time, or I'd have been hugely pissed and would've felt cheated. Even when they were pimping out God(tm) in the story, I kept hoping that we'd see the  robot God(tm) as some grand AI (and, let's be honest, the closest we'd ever come to a god in this world is an AI -- the combination of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that equals "God" would be a singular quality of a powerful AI).

But, instead, it's kept all mystical and behind the curtain, subsuming the entire storyline and all of the characters, scuttling "Galactica." Whatever. Big disappointment. The first two seasons are solid. Third season is entertaining, before Hell's Bells being sounding and drowning everything out.

Galactica

So, I'm nearly at the end of the remake of "Battlestar Galactica," and have mostly enjoyed the series, even when the heavy hand of the writers intrudes here and there. In fact, when the characters talk about this great force manipulating lives and events, I half expect one of them to invoke this concept of "The Writer" -- this unseen entity who can make anything happen in their universe.

One thing I didn't like was the suicide of Dualla. I didn't particularly like that character -- she was just sort of there, didn't really do that much, but was part of the character scenery, for the most part. All the same, her suicide just came out of nowhere, which, on the face of things, was, of course, shocking. As intended. Like somebody lobbing a firecracker at you for no good reason. But that was part of the problem with that -- no good reason. Dualla had always been a stoic character, had always done her duty by the group, through thick and thin. And, of course, when the grand disappointment hits the fleet near the end, everybody is hit strongly by it. Just the same, her reaction to it felt contrived and I didn't buy the motivation for it. Was she really THAT disappointed that she'd take her own life? We don't get to see it in her characterization. No hint of the disappointment. In fact, she goes on a date with her estranged husband, Apollo, just 45 minutes before she commits suicide. And, at least there, she gives no indication of her intentions. She seems to be happy and at peace.

So, in light of the plot vacuum that claimed Dualla (maybe the actress had another gig coming up, and asked to be written out of the story?) I'm going to believe that her date with Apollo shattered her faith in humanity, and in a just universe. It wasn't the disappointment of Earth that hit her; no, it was Apollo's staggering lameness that made her realize that her life was no longer worth living. Of course, this is a darkly comic counter-read of what actually happened, but it at least offers some satisfying cause-and-effect for me.

I mean, everything Apollo touches, he destroys:

1. Blackbird stealth Viper prototype
2. Battlestar Pegasus
3. Lieutenant Dualla
4. The Quorum (just because his machinations with them ultimately led to their liquidation by Tom Zarek -- who, ironically enough, is played by Richard Hatch, the ORIGINAL Apollo)

I'm sure I can add to this list on a second viewing, watching for it.

Running, Man

I had funky dreams last night, but fortunately for you, Gentle Reader, I've forgotten them (since there's nothing less meaningful than recounting one's dreams to a stranger). But at the time, it was at least entertaining, and I'd remembered them when I first woke up, but have since forgotten them, naturally.

This is Chicago Marathon weekend, so Exene is focused on that, of course. She asked if I could cover with the boys, and I was only too happy to oblige with that, since I love any time with the boys, and they were stoked, too, psyched about "Daddy Weekend." I just told Exene that I wanted to be sure to get equivalent weekend day swappage at some point. Have to keep a keen eye on that, because she's more inclined to take than give, and if I don't keep tabs on that, I end up getting screwed over. But she's been reasonably good about reciprocity on that stuff, and she knows I'm doing her a big favor by minding the boys so she can indulge her hobby heedlessly, so there you have it. Hopefully the weather'll be good this weekend, so I can get the boys out and about.

Found a dollar coin yesterday on my bike ride to work. Woo hoo!

Up and At'em

My brain likes to get me up nice and early. Always has. Doesn't matter how little sleep I might've had the night before (and really, I had about 7 hours of sleep, so I can't complain). But I just always wake up early.

I'm out of sorts lately. Bleah. Hard to put words to it, exactly. Just a bit off the mark of late, not in the sweet spot. Might need to whip out the dreaded List(tm) and start doing that, just to tick things off my list and get'em done. I hate doing that, but feel like I might need to, just in order to get the stuff done, to know it's done, all of that. I'm already in the "My Lord, it's almost Christmas" frame of mind, and we're in early October. Argh! This year was surreal. Not as dire as past years, but still a trippy kind of year. I got a lot of stuff done, but it's still kind of wild to think of that.

I've been craving biscotti lately, may make some in the next few weeks. I used to have some great recipes for them, but have lost them to the sands of time. So, I grabbed three other recipes I found online that looked good, may make those.

Had this weird, unsettled feeling about the country, too -- like is this how the country felt decades before the Civil War? Like irreconcilable differences of national opinion? Thankfully, Americans are likely far, far too lazy to actually engage in another civil war -- can you imagine that? I keep getting my brain around the notion of evil as "militant ignorance." That just feels so spot-on to me. Militant ignorance -- "Don't know, don't wanna know. And I'll shoot anybody for asking. Love it or leave it. Zero tolerance." And so on. Ugly, empty sentiments. That's what we're up against as a society. America's seen itself toppled from the pinnacle of power -- our generation (Gen X) is entering middle age in the age of America's decline. I read the other day that 40 million Americans are illiterate, and something like 50 million more are functionally illiterate -- ~90 million Americans are illiterate? Holy fucking SHIT. This is a national disgrace, a cultural failure of staggering magnitude. We have over 40 million uninsured, 14 million unemployed (and another 8-10 million marginally employed). And the political class is completely captive to the status quo. Those Occupy Wall Street folks are at least drawing attention to this reality. Our nation is in dire need of forward progress, but is being held hostage by hidebound dullards who keep us spinning in circles because they refuse to actually face reality. I saw that the average American who can read reads at the 7th grade level. That conjures up images of people moving their lips as they read. Our political class is representing people who read at the 7th grade level? That is who they are appealing to? It makes it very clear why things like evolution aren't well-understood by Americans. Or the need for energy policy. Or why we can't cut taxes and fight three wars and have a social safety net and raise revenue at the same time. And so on. Lordy. We dumb. I mean, really, it was only Sputnik scaring the shit out of the American political class that spurred the teaching of science in this country. Look at where we were before Sputnik, and you'll see that ignorance is really the steady state in American culture. The push for high-tech in the latter 20th Century may, in retrospect, have been just a hiccup. Just like the middle class (which was made possible by the GI Bill, that swelling of soldiers coming back from wars and taking advantage of that to educate themselves). The American middle class is gone. Whether people realize it or not, it's true. It eroded over the past 30 years, and it's gone today. That's the economic reality of it. The political reality of it is only now sinking in, I think. A lot of people with 7th grade reading comprehension are gonna be pissed off. Pitchforks and torches. Meanwhile, I try to equip my boys with knowledge and the emotional tools they need to thrive -- to help them face challenges without fear, to feel hope and promise in the future -- even as I think at some point they'll leave this country one day, because the opportunities will be elsewhere. In a globalized economy, allegiance to nation-state is a quaint relic -- so very 20th century.

Koffin'

Bummer about Steve Jobs dying. Obviously, he was on a downward spiral with cancer, but it's still surprising.

I'm still wrestling with the cold, which was lounged comfortably in my chest.

Too sleepy for a proper blog entry; think it might be an early-to-bed kinda night for me. I had insomnia last night, thanks to the cold.

So long, Tevatron

The Tevatron is closing. The end of an era. I was explaining to B1 what the Tevatron did...

Hail and Farewell, Grand Colliders

He loves tech stuff like that, loves that it was in the Chicagoland area.

Click!

Good light day again, so I had my camera handy, got some great shots of the boys. Their grandparents are going to be overjoyed at that. Other than that, pretty low-key Sunday for me, just fighting the frickin' cold. I'm worn out today. I was due for a cold -- it's been quite awhile since I last had one, so, I'm not really complaining. It's not in my nature to complain, anyway.

B1 has such a head for math. I can see it already, how effortlessly he processes numbers. He's got a keen insight into strategy as well -- like in games we play, I can see him thinking through things and assessing things. He's got a sharply analytic mind. I'm going to do what I can to help him with that -- both encouraging him to grow in that area (with stuff like chess and music) and also to help him emotionally, so he's able to effectively make use of his talents while remaining balanced, as well. He's going to love physics; I can tell already. I think I've mentioned that before, but as he's getting older, it's in sharper focus. That's good -- mathematics is a vital aptitude to have. It'll serve him well.

My folks saw "The Ides of March" in Santa Barbara, at some special screening, and Paul Giamatti was supposed to turn up and speak afterward, but the director had said that Giamatti couldn't make it, so they had somebody else to come speak (and the audience was like "Awwww" in disappointment), and the alternate speaker was none other than George Clooney! Can you believe it? The attendees were floored. My mom just about died. She was gushing about having seen him, said she was just a few rows back in the theater, said he actually looked younger in person than onscreen. Anyway, I'm sure that made her day.

Laundry

Doing laundry this morning. Somebody left a bunch of celebrity tabloid mags in the laundry room, which leads me to ponder this question: do you think Jennifer Aniston is supremely annoyed with the whole "Poor Jen" storyline they always run with her? She's a famous celebrity, likely makes a lot of money from residuals from "Friends" and what-not she gets from whatever movies she's in. She's at least conventionally good-looking (not my type, but I get it). But the tabloids always run the "Poor Jen" storyline when covering her. She's got to be thinking "Oh, shit, let me not have another breakup and/or something happen to me, so those pricks won't run another 'Poor Jen' story." Sandra Bullock is in that place, too. Poor Sandra. It's just weird, and has to be annoying for somebody who wanted to be famous, and was lucky enough to have found a measure of success in that respect. Poor Jen. Bahah!

Plague Ship

B1 had a cold earlier this week, but B2 is wrestling with one. One of them gave me their cold, as I'm fighting it off, myself. So, it's all orange juice, Mucinex, and Vaporub hereabouts at the moment. *koff koff wheeze-n-sneeze* B2 seems to be hit a bit harder than his brother was.

I'm just tired. If I can get B2 to sleep comfortably, all propped up, then I'll manage to sneak some sleep, myself. We'll see how that goes. Ran errands this morning, got cold medicines and what-not for B2 and me.

The quality of light today was beautiful -- it had that autumn crisp air, like cool but sunny, with big puffy white clouds and vivid blue skies.

Hard to believe B2 will be 6 this month, and before I know it, there'll be snow on the ground!

Unbalanced

I have to laugh at this writeup of Catherine Deneuve in SALON, in the "Underacting Hall of Fame" section today...

While rewatching Catherine Denueve’s breakthrough performance in 1965′s “Repulsion,” in which she plays a transplanted Frenchwoman losing her mind in London, I was struck by the magnificent paradoxes of her lead performance. She’s at once numb and alert, opaque and transparent. She’s lost in her own thoughts, her own manias, and yet even though neither she nor the dialogue give you many specific clues as to what, exactly, is happening to her, you still feel it, and get it. It’s a performance that ought to seem boringly general but that instead seems achingly specific. It’s not “insanity” that’s being portrayed, but one particular character’s insanity. All this comes through because Deneuve has turned herself into a blank slate onto which the film’s environment can inscribe itself.

To me, this reads as textbook Libra. ;)