1.  Among the fallout/benefits of M.'s new car is a working radio.  Full range of channels, good signal, dials and buttons that work a fare-the-well.

The downside for me, conversations that begin "So, Michael Savage was saying…"  I can't decide whether Savage is completely fucked in the head, a natural-born asshole who probably eats kittens for breakfast or a completely calculating provocateur who's just stirring shit and getting book sales.  

In a perfect world, he and Dr. Laura would be locked in a radio sanctimony competition in a soundproof booth (so the no-doubt noxious vapors of so-called thought couldn't escape).  Two go in, one comes out.

2.  I am like whatever is less than a degree of separation from the Secretary of State.  I was trying to convince someone I know to slip her a note for me.  Something maybe about war being, I dunno, not good, and um, like, international policy based on clouded, obscured truth and um, bad secrets is like really not good.  But written with clever, smart words like "malfeasance" and "power grab" and "arrogance" and "misguided," not stuff like "lying scum."

Maybe just a quick, "Could you cut it the fuck out, please?"

Or maybe, try out a whole masterminded, John Le Carre scenario where there's a lot of confusion and fake identities and elaborate layers of spycraft.  (Besides being a bitch to actually plan and do, and let's face it, I'm lazy and completely unequipped, my attempts to recruit an accomplice met with rejection.  How did they get Dianne Keaton to train in the desert, and I can't get a buddy to carry a note?)

By the way, apparently if you were to go a-visiting to the folks in power in the free world, you got to show ID, and the Secret Service are all careful and shit. 

I was reading this dude's weblog, about this dude's rampage.

Now granted, Hbee loves him some psychotic right wing talk radio, but still and all, it's impressive that the local news is about a sad, fucked up guy.  But, the national and certainly blogger flavor is a bit more spicy.

Who the fuck knows what was going on in the guys head?  Maybe he was on a mini paranoic schizophrenia-induced jihad.  I read an article once about how the actual, organized, having their actual terrorist shit scarily together, real terrorists sometimes hook the backpacks of death onto the aged and infirm, the sick and the crazy to be erzatz suicide bombers.  All very Machiavellian and all, using who and what you can for the greater glory, and the backpackers aren't so much soldiers for the cause as ready to die.

But, you know what?   Back in the day, if I was an asshole punk from Southie or Dorchester who bought a gun on account of the world treating the Irish like shit on the bottom of their shoes, I wouldn't be a warrior for the IRA.  I'd be a fucked up psycho with an ax to grind and a misguided sense of purpose.

I guess what I'm saying is, I ain't buying the terrorism angle.  Not a bit.  He's a loser from Fremont whose family was hoping marriage and manhood and maybe a dose of the old country would snap him out of his funk.  I'm willing to bet it.

Better yet, I've been in SF more than once or twice now.  It's a big, fucking, honking huge city.  It's NYC, Paris, London big.  Major, urban, diverse.  For the rumors he was heading toward some kind of Jewish Community Center or Jewish neighborhood, go to Google maps and look it up.

I've been on Bush St., California, Fillmore.  In fact, the recruiting agency (where folks had more British accents than, say, Yiddish) that led me to my employ is on Bush.  Look at the shots from the news cameras and look it up again.  It's the city, a big freaking city.

I mean, he may has well have been trying to run down Buddhists, since there are more of that temple flavor in that locality.  (Google maps are our friend.)  Probably a lot of Thai and noodle places, too, like many SF 'hoods.  Ain't no one claiming he wants to free Tibet.

Besides, didn't we win the war, hearts and minds in Afghanistan? 

Relationships are hard.  Sometimes things come up you just don't know how to handle.

What kind of a man throws day-old Krispy Kremes into the trash? 

Everyone in a 3,000 mile reading radius is encouraged to go to this here new website:

DotDwyer.com

It's new and still in its infancy, so be gentle at least until it grows up to be as big as JonBenet Ramsey.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for that conflation. 

We spent yesterday in Berkeley, spiritual home of much that is left.  When I moved out here, I thought about landing in Berkeley, sister city to the People's Republic of Cambridge.

But, the older I get the more morally bankrupt I assume everyone is.  Telegraph, the main drag near U. Cal's campus where once people struck in the streets to end war and promote love, is an absolute shithole.  it's cool and all, and if I needed a waterpipe, I'd know where to go, but flower power ain't so pretty.

There are might aggressive homeless dudes all set to lecture you on the evils of capitalism, which is clearly evident by you not wanting to slip some bills to an unemployed stoner.  I got heart for crazy, down on their luck, shit just went so wrong in my life, addicts and despairing homeless.  I can see where shit happens and whatever you do to the least of your brothers and all shows your measure.

But, if you are just a 20-something dick with a tie dye and white boy dreads who no doubt broke his suburban moms heart by panhandling in the big city, fuck you and get a fucking job.  I'm not an evil capitalist, you're a scumbag.  Besides, we couldn't tell if it was us or the nice couple walking along next to us who were the harbingers of society's downfall, when you commenced to shouting.

Someone, who attended UC Berkeley, told me she once saw one of the panhandling stoners of Telegraph Hill, not to be confused with the parrots of Telegraph Hill, getting picked up by his mom in the family Volvo after a long day of hustling people for change.  Knock yourself out embracing street culture and taking a dump in People's Park, if that's what gets your mojo working, but spare me the lecture on the evils of my life. 

Of course, most things in life are relative.  So, to the stoner dude we were the evil consumerists, including M.'s college instructor buddy who lives on the cheap and is proud of how little he has.  In fact, he's pitching a class on living simply, the movement du jour that I cynically think hinges on being just as much of a consumer, but in a hemp-y, self help kind of way.  As soon as you can teach a course or buy a magazine, you ain't exactly walking the Bhuddist path.  He, I'm sure, thinks we are wild consumers, driven by money and the new car smell.  

At the end of the day, though, I gotta take a bit of what M. says from living simply for reals in the good old third world.  Why shouldn't he get some creature comforts now that he can afford them?

The other thing that cracks me the fuck up about the living simply dude, simple as his hippie embracing of the reuse and mooch from others vibe, is overall he's had fewer jobs and more access to cash from his albeit weirdly splintered familiy.  M. and I worked to get stuff we wanted, and we had that single mom thing simplifying our economic lifestyles growing up.  It wasn't a movement.

Better yet, and sadly so, his 11-year-old, as she explained to me "tween" daughter, was the most money conscious kid I have ever met bar none.  I found out from her that dad's pay the worst for chores, mom's second, but step dad's are the best, because they pay like double.

Chatting with a kid who wanted her dad to sell his car so she could go on a trip, because he could take the bus anyway, well it had me thinking about me and M. and our childless existence.  Yup, a day with tween joy effectively shriveled my ovaries and jammed them so far into the pit of my internal organs, that I couldn't even lift a doll.   I'm doubling up on the birth control pill, stocking up on the morning after and wearing the female condom 24/7.

Ain't nothing penetrating our happy, childless, double-income no kids lifestyle. 

Been awhile since I knowcked back greater than 2 beer.  Tonight I did the whole after work beer thing.  When I get over two separate existensial crisis — the onw ehere I compartmentalize my life and drink no beer with co-workers and the other one where I compartmentalize my life and have no significant other, it was pretty cool.

I actually like some of the folks with whom I work.  How fucked up is that?

By the way, Jonbenet is dead, what of Natalie Holloway?  Seriously, her mother never even had cancer, so she must have loved her more.

Here's a sentence I thought I might never write (only I would never have actually thought it up in my imaginary inside my head world):

Today, I left work with a bag of raw meat in my hand.

It was leftovers from lunch.  (At lunch they barbecued the meat, it wasn't like us worker drones were chucked raw beef into their cubicles.)

I had a sleepless morning before dawn today after waking up from one of those kind of dreams that is so friggen mundane and dull that it seems absolutely real.  Essentially, and the reason I woke up, I went off on one of my siblings for some perceived wrong.

In retrospect upon waking, I had the feeling that maybe the recent death of a mom in my extended family had me thinking about the mom in my family.  For the most part, because I'm comfortable with my own relationship with Pat when she went, I'm all right with the sibs.  Not like hating and fighting is bringing up a resurrection.

Still and all, there's shit I wish was never said in the wake of Pat's wake.  It kind of goes back to being the baby kid sister I think.  In a lot of fights. pathetic victim kid sister that I was, I heard more than a bit of being "fat" and "stupid."  I never believed the "stupid," 'cuz frankly my tormentors had their own weaknesses, but the "fat" always sunk in.  I believed it until I moved out, started living my life and realized maybe I was robust or zaftig, but I was healthy.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty conflict adverse, hating fights and being far too fucking sensitive about name-callling.  Childhood, childish rules take over and all I fucking want is "taking it back."  All's fare, if you just take it back.

(Pretty much if you were to be a guy whose name begins with M. and you were to live with me, alls you got to do after a fight is take it back.)

I woke up this morning wishing some shit under the bridge, some words said, some accusations made could just be taken back. 

Yesterday's nature stroll produced only a handful of essentially crappy pictures.

These damn deer were all frolicking in the light and shadow of underbrush dappled by sunlight through a covering of trees.  Deer would be easier to photograph if they would stay out in the open, instead being all shy and coy and other bullshit emotions that they don't actually possess.  Bottomine, the shadows kept fucking up my ability to focus.

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I also saw some kind of hawk or kite or falcon.  A killing bird.  I likes the sweet little birdies that can kill.[newline] [image:4273:l][newline] [image:4277:l] 

That was fun.  I might even say so far this year that's the funnest I have had at the motion picture show.

Samuel L. Jackson deserves one of them acting awards for playing any number of characters he's played before rolled together with a heavy serving of not taking himself too seriously.  And, the writers who tossed around from plot (there was one), action (more important than plot to the concept of SNAKES ON A PLANE ), cliche, making fun of cliche, jokes, visual gags, and all sorts of other movie goofiness deserve something.  Some kind of prize or handshake or something.

I dunno, maybe it's just that it makes the whole leaving the house and sitting in a darkroom full of strangers way more better when everyone is into it and participating.  I haven't heard that much clapping at the screen, cheering, good talking and all, and I've been to Rocky Horror and film festivals.