Dowbrigade

Angry cereal fans are lashing out after
Harvard University cleared its dining halls this school year of brand-name
cereals, such as Fruit Loops and Cap’n Crunch, and swapped them for less
expensive, apparently healthier options like Tootie Fruities and Colossal
Crunch.

For Harvard sophomore Allison Kessler, it’s annoying to pay more than $4,000
for a meal plan that scrimps on her favorite breakfast foods. Particularly
since, Kessler, like many college students, eats cereal several times
a day.
”I used to eat Lucky Charms for lunch and dinner," she said. ”The
fake stuff gets real soggy, and I’ve just stopped eating cereal. This is
not fair."

Harvard officials say student surveys showed an interest in healthier,
organic products, and brand-name cereals have been slow to move in that
direction. At the same time, the major cereal companies are raising prices
about 8 percent to 10 percent per year, more than double the rate for natural
and lesser-known cereals, according to Jami M. Snyder, a spokeswoman for
Harvard University Dining Services. ”We have a responsibility to spend
their dollars wisely," Snyder said.

Harvard has reduced its six-figure cereal budget by 25 percent this academic
year since shelving most brand-name cereals, including Apple Jacks, Cheerios,
and Frosted Flakes.

Sure, and if they replaced their supply of homoginized
Vitamin D enriched milk with organic goat’s milk, we bet they could reduce
their milk budget by at least 75%!

from the
Boston Globe

TOKYO (Reuters) – A tussle has broken out in Japan’s tradition-bound
sumo world over the right to wear pants in the ring.

Gargantuan sumo wrestlers generally compete naked but for a "mawashi," an
arrangement of wrapped cloth that preserves a bare minimum of modesty.

Sumo’s amateur association hit upon the idea of allowing shy youngsters
to wear "sumo pants," a more substantial garment similar to
cycling shorts, to try to boost the dwindling numbers of children taking
up the
sport, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun said on Thursday.

"Pubescent kids are not going to want to take part if they don’t look cool," Yomiuri
quoted one local amateur sumo official as saying.

And all this time we thought "Sumo" was the unofficial motto of the
Harvard Law School!

from Reuters

The posturing and maneuvering around Social
Security is developing into the grandest act of tawdry government
prestidigitation in our lifetimes, and maybe in the lifetime of the nation
itself.

A lot of big words, catchy tag lines and complicated economic explanations
are flying around, but the bottom line is that someone, in the greatest
fiscal scam of all times, figured how to make 5 trillion dollars disappear.

All the speeches and excuses and accusations cannot hide the fact that
one of the greatest thefts of social capital in history has taken place,
and the powers that be are racing around trying to hide the magnitude
of the theft and divert public attention from the true nature of the
problem. We believe their efforts are doomed to failure, and within a
relatively short period of time it will be obvious to even the dimmest
American workers
that
traitorous
theft of THEIR MONEY has taken place.

Most American workers don’t understand trickle down economics, or deficit
budgeting, or the intricacies of intra-government borrowing. But they
are going to understand when it comes time for them to retire and they
are told that the tens of thousands of dollars they have contributed
into the Social Security system over the years isn’t there any more.

The Dowbrigade, for example, has been faithfully if reluctantly handing
over hundreds of dollars a month now for over 30 years.  How dare
those mealy mouthed bastards come back to us now saying "Gee, sorry,
not sure how it happened, but YOUR MONEY ISN’T THERE ANYMORE! But it
wasn’t
our fault, but if you’ll lend us ANOTHER SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS we’ll
fix it, and make sure it doesn’t happen again."

How dumb do they think we are? We know, pretty damn dumb, but NOT THAT
DUMB.

Now, our unapologetic leadership is telling us that in 2018 (coincidentally,
the year the Dowbrigade hits the magic age of 65) the system will no
longer be taking in enough new money to pay existing contributors.
Duh. But that means for the last 50 years (and the next 13) they were
taking in MUCH more than they needed to pay current retirees. We thought
the whole idea of Social Security was to SAVE that excess, building up
a reserve so that the system would remain solvent during the demographic
blip represented
by
the Baby Boom generation, and get through the 15 years or so until the
boomers die off and the current cash flow balance gets back into the
black again.

It’s not like they couldn’t see this coming. The whole purpose of government,
the motivation for its creation, the main reason human society has put
up with the sleazebags and psychopaths  attracted to "public
service" since before the time of Solomon, was to save the excess during
the fat years in order
to get
us through
the lean years. The problem
is that for the ruling class in America today there ARE no lean years.
How many of these high government officials and pontificating politicians
do you think are going to be depending on Social Security in the upcoming
years? NONE, that’s how many.

When the gig is up, and it won’t be long now, we foresee massive public
uprisings, desperate Gray Panthers in the streets, rebels of the 60′s,
now in their 60′s and
70′s,
marching down Pennsylvania avenue in their walkers and wheelchairs,
with
a lot more to be pissed off about than an unjust war. Our generation
is not going to go gently into the night, ladies and gentlemen, selling
pencils and apples
on streetcorners
and
hoping
for a handout or a job bagging groceries at Win-Dixie. The government
has no idea what kind of a shitstorm of protest and civil disobedience
they are in for.

Not only will administration after administration fall on the shoals
of this unsolved problem, we would not be surprised to see massive tax
strikes, destitute seniors setting themselves on fire on the White House
lawn, recall ballots and even retroactive impeachments and indictments
of every official
from
the last
30 years
who instigated
or
acquiesced in
the massive fraud that stole that money from honest, hard-working Americans.
We expect organized and spontaneous street protests that will make the
Vietnam war marches look like the
St. Patrick
Day parade.

This is the big one, folks.  We have all been
taken to the cleaner by a bunch of corrupt millionaires and politicians
who have mortgaged
our golden years for vacation homes in the Bahamas and Swiss bank accounts
that assure that  their progeny will not have to worry about Social
Security, or anything else, for many generations to come. And the saddest
and most scandalous part  is that the whole thing was orchestrated
by the one institution that most Americans still believe in – the US
Federal Government.  But
not for long.

Sean Bucci hates narcs, and with good reason. He was turned in on
marijuana charges by a trusted "friend". So seven months ago he started
a web site to "Out" narcs and paid informants. He is especially incensed
by folks who turn in friends in order to curry favor with law enforcement
after getting in trouble themselves. Although redacted on the North Shore,
the site is hosted on a server in India.

This story raises so many legal,
ethical and psychological questions that
an entire
law
school
course
could be
based
around them. Is the site protected by Free Speech? Would posting untrue
information constitute libel? If something bad happens to one of the
outted narcs, can the site be held responsible? Does hosting it in
India make a difference? Who’s a Rat? Judge for yourself….

”We specifically ask people not to add any information that’s related
to violent crimes, because we don’t agree with violent crimes," Capone
said. ”But as far as drug problems, and people setting people up just
to get out of their own problems, that’s a no-no in our books."

The woman who posted information about the Tewksbury man said she believes
the website performs a service by warning others away from informants.

”This punk has bragged on several occasions about doing a controlled buy
to bust a known local dealer so he could get a lesser sentence for getting
caught with shrooms, ecstasy, steroids, and funny money," she posted
on the site about the man she believes had informed on her now ex-boyfriend
to the police. ”He has admitted to being a snitch to various people."

Law enforcement officials worry that the site will impede their ability
to use undercover agents and informants, who often provide information
critical to criminal cases, especially those involving drugs. And they
worry that criminals might use the site to find out the names of informants,
which could imperil the people whose information is posted there.

The Globe is not naming the website because it is impossible to verify
whether all the people listed there are informants, and because publicizing
access to their identities could jeopardize their safety.

Nice of them to be so conscientious, especially since they printed the
web site address in an article six months ago…

BOSTON, Aug. 17, 2004 — The Internet has some interesting uses, but
one new Web site proves we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Unveiled today,
Who’s A Rat  http://www.whosarat.com) is the first site to allow users
around the country to post local, state and federal agents’ and informants’
names, pictures and related information.

The Dowbrigade has no such compunction. In our book informants, especially
those who turn in friends, family members or people who have helped them
in the past are the scum of the earth. Squeezing sleazebags who have
fallen into their clutches is a time-honored practice in law enforcement
circles, and although we would never advocate agression or retaliation,
open distribution of publically available information about these worms
seems only fair. Buster beware. So here’s a link to the website.

yesterday’s article from the
Boston Globe

Who’s A Rat web site

The
swamp presses close to Alligator Alley out near the midriff of the State
of Florida, overgrown sawgrass creeping close to the highway, and science-fiction
pneumatophores thrusting from the red mangroves above the guardrail,
but when the rain ramped up we could barely see the white line marking
the
shoulder,
let
alone
the
dense
vegetation
that lurked beyond. With visibility periodically down to about 10 feet,
it was essential that we keep our eyes on the only piece of asphalt visible
– that directly
in front of our speeding Jeep Cherokee.

Nervously, we stole nervous glances at the white line,
on the right which
we MUST NOT GO OVER, for any reason whatsoever. It’s not called Alligator
Alley
for nothing. When the rain lightens up, we can see long, narrow channels
in the vegetation, fading into the mist in a parallax of prehistoric
perspective.

Word is, if you stop for photos, it’s OK to get close
to the fence, but don’t wander too far from the designated areas.  And
if you break down after dark, stay in your car, and keep the doors locked.  The
gators are hungry at this time of year, and none too pleased with the
anti-alligator flack they have been catching in the mainstream press
lately. Luckily, the Big Blue Brute lunged effortlessly down the highway,
sluicing
through
the rain which was falling in irregular fits and spurts like a celestial
water massage showerhead swinging madly through its several modes and
spray
patterns.

As we drove, we ruminated on the preseason game we had
witnessed the day before between the World Champion Boston Red Sox and
their Series
nemesis, the St. Louis Cardinals. It had been a memorable and enjoyable
game, our first live baseball since a steamy August night last year and
our first glimpse of a diamond in any way since the last out of the World
Series in October. Not to mention, our first pre-season experience in
a long history as a baseball fanatic. It had been unforgettable.

Except that we could remember almost nothing about the
game itself except that the Sox won, 9-3, behind 5 home runs. Embarrassingly,
we missed
the two most dramatic and titanic boomers, hopefully the first of many
back-to-back
homers by Boston’s Bash Brothers, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, our
impeccable sense of timing having inspired us to head to the sausage
line for a pair of franks at the crucial moment in the 5th inning.

What we DO remember is the scene in the stands, and
on the field after the game. In many respects, the crowd resembled a
typical Fenway gathering
in high summer. We couldn’t keep our eyes off of the accumulated collection
of human flesh, exposed to the elements and on display, refreshingly
shocking after a weather-challenged winter watching bodies swathed and
girded in multiple layers of cotton, wool, nylon, gortex, insugard
and down, making it impossible to determine age, sex, weight, body modifications
and shapeliness of form. Winterwear as the great equalizer, works better
than saltpeter.

Down in Ft. Myers it was all on display. Lots of ugly,
overweight legs, twisted and bowed from decades of hauling around
too
much weight.
A few gorgeous gams, sun-toasted to a range from alabaster to mahogany
according to length of exposure to the local sunshine. Lots of bulging
bellies supporting hideous shorts of every stripe; bermudas, khakis,
cargos,denims corduroys and seersuckers.

The particular slice of Red Sox fandom surrounding us
in the bleachers (although the game was sold out, we picked up a $15
bleacher seat from
a scalper for $20 just before the first pitch was thrown) was what we
call the rich working class. Even at Fenway Park, you don’t get the real
working class anymore, let alone the poor. With ticket prices averaging
in the 30′s, plus parking and five-dollar hot dogs, taking even the demographically
average American family, with its 2.3 kids, to a game costs over a couple
of hundred bucks. For the same price you could by a 25-inch color TV,
a bucket of chicken wings and a case of Bud. With most of the authentic
working class mired in dead end jobs with few benefits and no job security,
and millions living from check to check and hand to mouth, we have to
consider these fortunate fans lolling in the Florida sun the working
rich. The idle rich were down in the boxes and up in the luxury suites.

However, as the game progressed, we couldn’t help but
notice that the crowd seemed a little, well, peculiar. There
were really no married couples in evidence, or family units; rather there
were numerous
groups or gangs of rowdy boys and girls joking and flirting, drinking
beer and rolling their eyes. There seemed to be a lot of same-sex ass
grabbing going on. The men were better groomed and more stylishly dressed
than the women. It definitely seemed to be a very gay crowd, and we aren’t
just referring to the light-hearted celebratory atmosphere in the stands.
It could have been a home game for the Provincetown Pirates.

The baseball chatter was a little weird as well. Behind me was a group
of four or five that could have been junior partners at a Boston corporate
law firm, immaculately attired in Polo playwear and tailored shorts,
who seemed to be cheering at inappropriate times, like whenever a player
bent over to pick a ball off the ground. Yet they really seemed to be
appreciating the game.

"Hey, will you look at the basket on that center fielder."

"He’s cute, but the third baseman has a MUCH better basket than that!"

Fools! What kind of fan doesn’t know that there’s no baskets in baseball?

After the game was over, and we were contemplating dinner options on
the drive back to the Bates Motel, we noticed that not everyone was leaving
the stadium. Sizable groups, including the five guys behind me, were
filtering down to the front rows and the grassy viewing area along the
first base line. They were obviously waiting for something to happen,
so your intrepid reporter followed them down for a closer look.

After about five minutes a new group of stylishly dressed and coifed
men strolled out of the Red Sox dugout and made their way to the pitching
mound.  Was there a second game we didn’t know about? A charity
thing, perhaps, Red Sox against some pickup team of local disk jockeys
or cancer survivors?

Wait! Wasn’t that a famous face jumping around out on the mound? Where
had we seen that face before? It couldn’t be – but it was! Carson Kressley,
America’s most famous Queer Guy. And, in fact, the entire Fab Five, who
have brought a warm and cuddly homosexual agenda into the living rooms
of middle America. Of course, we had been reading for weeks that Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy was going to be making over Johnny Damon for
the premier of their new season on Bravo Network. But that wasn’t scheduled
until June!

As it turned out, they were filming the triumphant coming out scenes
for that very broadcast.  And not only JC Superstar Damon. As we
watched in stunned amazement, one by one Jason Varitek, Kevin Millar,
Tim Wakefield and Doug Mirabelli. emerged from the bullpen area and trotted
to the mound. Each one was more fabulously dressed and styled than the
last.  What
sartorial splendor!

Varitek had on a cream-colored jacket over a ruffled rose shirt and
tight pegged pants riding low on his hips. Wake was in some sort of smoking
jacket and suede gaucho boots! Kevin Millar looked like a Las Vegas pimp
on Easter! Johnny Damon was the last one out, and we must admit, looked
absolutely spectacular, despite the fact that, contrary to intense media
speculation, he still had his beard, albeit meticulously trimmed.

Carson was so excited he couldn’t keep his hands off of his unmatched
set of Eliza Dolittles.  He kept running his fingers through Kevin
Millar’s hair, and trying to jump into the muscular arms of Doug Mirabelli,
who seemed to be doing his best to help Carson fall on his ass.

Of the five Sox, Kevin Millar was the one who most seemed
to be getting into the spirit of things.  He was primping and posing,
flopping limp wrists into the faces of anyone who got near him, pinching
cheeks
high
and low, and mugging for the cameras. Jason Varitek looked like he was
in one of those airline "Want to get out of here?" commercials and his
body language created a buffer zone around him as he stood cautiously,
arms folded, a few yards to one side.

They goofed around for about 10 minutes, while the Bravo camera crew
filmed all of it. Everyone recited a few obviously scripted lines,
but there was a lot of ad libbing and physical slapstick.  The only
line we remember was Carson’s: "How can I not love a team named after
a fashion
accessory?"

When they finished the filming, athletes and esthetes alike signed autographs
for the fans. We declined to join the scrum, and felt vaguely disturbed
by all that we had witnessed. A bit of latent homophobia perhaps? We
hope not, as we have always considered ourself not only tolerant, but
a real fan of the gay aesthetic.

Although we are stubbornly hard-wired straight, our basic position on
male homosexuality is that it is a good thing as it reduces the competition
for the available supply of nubile females. As far as lesbians go (and
who knows how far that is), like most red-blooded males we secretly believe
that most of them are in reality bi, and have just been turned off by
the incredibly boorish and messed up mind set of the majority of American
male pigs. Given the right stimuli, they can surely be turned back on
again.

On a scientific level, we are in the camp of those who
believe that almost all homosexuality is conditioned rather than genetic,
for the
simple reason that if it were purely genetic it seems logical that it
should have petered out millennia ago. All of this was fermenting in
our mind as
the rain
pounded
on the roof of the beast and the miles slipped by on Alligator Alley.

As we reached the East Coast of the Florida Peninsula,
the rain started to lighten up. We had out-raced the storm, at least
temporarily.  Behind
us the sky was a dark and threatening wall of gloomy gray adobe, shot
through with lightning flashes and occasional shafts of late afternoon
sunlight. We were out-racing the storm, but just barely. As we turned
north on
95
our thoughts turned to drink, smoke and dinner with Harold the Mad Chip
Dealer.

Once again, surreal weirdness had found us, and forever flavored our
memories of America’s pastime. It was not unpleasing – in the Dowbrigade’s
book, weirdness is a good thing. Meanwhile, we can scratch one more thing
off our list of "Things we’ve got to do before we die." Now, if only
we can find a set of mulatto gymnast twins.

The season premier of "Queer Eye on the Straight Guy", starring the
Boston Red Sox, is scheduled to air the first week of June.

Once again, rushing around with last minute preparations for the International
segment of the Spring Training Tour. At five a.m. we need to be at the
Miami Dade Airport, returning the big blue beast to Dollar and lugging
our two overweight suitcases to the terminal to catch the 7 am flight to
Guayaquil.

Why carry so much weight for a two week whirwind tour? What happened
to traveling light? Alas, being married to a conscientious Ecuadorian with
a needy mother and 9 sisters and brothers, plus myriad cousins, neices
and nephews, carries heavy responsibilities. The super-sized of the two
overweight bags is stuffed with gifts gleaned from fancy American stores
like Target and K-Mart, special requests for sneakers in a certain color
and a certian size, replacement parts for American appliances (there are
still a few in service, especially outside of the United States), shoes
that pinch, shoes that rub, shoes that slide and a complete wardrobe
that no longer fits (Norma Yvonne has raised the ante a couple of dress
sizes, all the more to love).

We need to stop at Curcuit City for a travel charger for our Motorola
Phone.  When Norma and the Dowbrigade bought our matching phones
last year they came with twin chargers.  We lost one on or last
trip to Peru.  The other one got sucked into the vacuum cleaner last
December.  We bought a single replacement, but Norma refuses to give
it up.  Even though the phone won’t work in Ecuador or Peru, we rely
on it as out repository of numbers.

First, though we need to do a last load of laundry to hit the continent
with completely clean clothes. Luckily Harold has a washer-dryer in the
first floor garage below his condo. Maybe we can run out to the Circuit
City for the charger while the clothes are in the dryer.  If we
can even find the damn phone.  No good calling it, because
since we got down to one bar we started turning it off except when talking.

When was the last time we saw it? Last night, when we closed down Starbucks
at 1 am. Where did we put it? In the pocket of our black shirt.  Where
is our black shirt? In the washer, of course! Irreparably saturated.  Drenched
to the core. Sunk in sudsy hot water. Fritzed. Fried. Frelled. Oh, well.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.  Until we figure it out, don’t
expect any calls from the Dowbrigade. But stay tuned…..

We
love posting the latest shots from the world of High Fashion, especially
those that come from France, our cultural cradle and the gold standard
of all things stylish, sophisticated and chic.

Portugal’s version of Paris
Fashion Week is ModaLisboa, a biannual event introduced
in 1991. Unlike events in Milan and Paris,
where fashion designers rent chic locations throughout the city, each
immersing guests in an ambience that reflects a particular label, for
three days ModaLisboa offers 16 designers a communal stage. Shows take
place in a former fruit-auction hall on the Alc?ntara Dock, overlooking
the Tagus River. Twice a year this warehouse dons the trappings of
a fashion theatre, including entrance hall, lounge, VIP area and, of
course,
catwalk.

In the accompanying photo, we see a model presenting an outfit by Portuguese
designer Dino Alves in Lisbon during ModaLisboa. In addition to being haute
coture, this outfit protects wearers from atmospheric contamination and
projectile vomit.

picture from Frame
Magazine

It
was nearly midnight and the Dowbrigade was roaring up the Tamiana Highway,
about five miles south of Punta Gorda, looking for a Florida version
of the Bates Motel.

After booking our flights and rental car on-line, we had searched for
a hotel room in the Ft. Myers area, Between Orbitz, Cheaprooms.com and
Roomsaver, the best
we could do was a Best Western at $139. Quite frankly, after having frequented
establishments in over 20 countries on five continents, we have never
paid $139 for a single hotel room. Not that we haven’t STAYED in a few,
but we never paid for them.

Still, it was only for two nights, and it was our only vacation for
over a year, and most of the rest of the trip we would be staying with
friends, so we decided to go ahead and book. We entered the dates and
hit return, only to get the bane of online shopping; "Not available for
the dates requested". Screw them, we thought, we’ll get down there and
take our chances.

We knew that Ft. Myers, like all American cities, must have a fringe
of scuzzy motels lying below the surface of searchable data, dumps and
dives which live on the edges of illicit markets in sex and controlled
substances, cater to anonymous travelers unwilling or incapable of making
reservations in advance and give out credit card information over the
internet. These stand-alone American institutions, never part of a chain,
changing owners and names more frequently than they change the sheets,
have been a refuge for fringe players, roustabouts and borderline derelicts
since the rise of our mobile society almost a century ago.

Unlike the next higher category, the cheapo chains like Motel 6 and
Econolodge which dot the Interstate highway system, these sleaze-boxes
are found on secondary highways and depressed urban neighborhoods, squeezed
between Check Cashing storefronts,  24-hour bail bondsmen and tattoo
emporiums. Which was why we were flying up the Tamiani Trail, which was
the main North-South highway down the spine of Florida before the inauguration
of Interstate 75 during the Eisenhower administration.

Our vehicle for the trip was a brand new Jeep Cherokee 4×4, a big blue
brute of a car which had us thinking about forgetting the highway altogether
and cutting our straight across the Everglades toward our next designation
in Rat Mouth, on the other side of the state. Actually, we had reserved
a mid-sized sedan; we had been awarded The Blue Beast by Dollar Rent-a-Car
either due to a clerical error or the
fact
that
when
we arrived
late
Tuesday
night
it was the last vehicle in the lot.

It
was cherry, with less than 1900 miles on the odometer, the manual still
wrapped in cellophane in the GP and the new-car smell still wafting
through the vehicle’s circulatory system. The interior was pristine,
at least until we dropped a Chinese barbequed spare rib from the Pu Pu
Platter we picked up on our way out of town, on the front seat upholstery.

It was getting late, and it was getting harder and harder to focus on
the white stripe snaking down the highway. We decided that we would press
on to Punta Gorda, and if we still hadn’t found anything we would turn
around and go back to the Wal-Mart parking lot we had seen half an hour
earlier, and camp out in the back seat of the Jeep until dawn.

Then we saw it, lying low and white in the moonlight, surrounded by
apparently abandoned cars, discarded tires, a disintegrating jungle
gym and overgrown weed fields. Next door was Big Al’s Gun and Pawn Shop,
shut down for the night. Jerked out of our reverie, we swerved to the
left of the empty highway and fishtailed
into
the gravel-packed
driveway of the motel.

The sign on the side said "Cadillac Hotel" but one over the office door
said "American Motel". A recent change of name is a good sign, when looking
for a comfortable dive with a lot of leeway and very little memory.

The office small, well-lit and empty. Sheets and towels, pamphlets and
magazines, door latches and locks, bags and boxes were scattered on the
floor and piled on the unmatched collection of cheap folding chairs.
There was a service window to the right of the door, which was locked.
We rang, and were buzzed in.

We were attended by a young woman in a blue sari, with her hair swept
under a matching silk scarf who informed us that there was a single room
left, at $80 bucks a night. We asked to see it and said that if it was
decent we’d take it.

Turns out the hotel was currently owned by
a family of Hindus. During the fifteen minutes it took us to register
we met three sisters of the girl who was waiting on us, her parents (who
seemed to speak no English not know how to smile) an ancient grandmother
who walked with difficulty and a cane, and two young nephews who darted
out periodically to check the Coke machine for uncollected change.  They
all seemed to live in a small room behind the office.

The room itself was surprisingly adequate. A big Queen-sized covered
by a polyester spread. A no-brand TV against the wall with the remote
on the bedside table. A small refrigerator and microwave in the corner.
A cracked and creaking A/C unit under the uncovered window. No obvious
vermin or bodily fluids in sight. We took it on the spot

The place was perfect. The last room was around back. facing an overgrown
yard backing up on a trailer park and some cheap clapboard houses that
looked as if they had been abandoned in mid-construction. There were
two molded white plastic chairs set up outside or room. It was the kind
of place one could feel comfortable sitting in your underwear, smoking
a joint and drinking a beer. Just what we’d been looking for.

We stripped off our travel-saturated clothes and let the hot shower
water sluice over our tired body. Our faith in the rancid underbelly
of modern American life was reaffirmed. As we leaned back in the
white
plastic chair and let our mind wander, we were reminded of innumerable
other memorable dives from our past.  The University Motel in East
LA, where we holed up for an entire 5-day academic conference, skipping
every session except those where we were expected to present.  The
Yenny, an ersatz whore house on the waterfront in Guayaqul, where for
years we were a regular guest and where we even took our pregnant first
wife when she developed some gynecological health problems and we had
no access to conventional medical resources.  But those were different
times, and stories for a different posting.

Our challenge for tomorrow: getting tickets to a sold-out preseason
rematch of last October’s World Series – Red Sox vs. Cardinals.  Stay
tuned for the report.

Around
48 hours before leaving on a major trip, the On the Road Mode kicks in.
The On the Road Mode is an altered, heightened
state of consciousness, typified by a slew of altered perceptions and
awareness designed to both take advantage of the opportunities to see
and experience new stuff, and to protect against the myriad dangers and
potential disasters that confront the traveler. These dangers are exponentially
increased when one travels outside of the United States.

We are there now. Our mind is a series of lists and mental memory tags.
Things to do before we leave.  Stuff to buy. Things to remember
to pack, and in some cases how to pack. A certain low grade
creative paranoia reigns, a constant sense of self and possessions (kind
of a drag, that),  a
self-contained focus which cannot be dropped, even for a moment, even
when blind drunk, stoned or stunned by consecutive hours of cramped travel.

The reason this state of consciousness is so refreshingly different
and addictive (at least for us) is that the longer we stay in one place
and settle into a comfortable routine, the more minor details about our
situation
and
surroundings
we filter out, block as uninteresting or unworthy of attention, in order
to free up our higher brain to ponder such important affairs as the NCAA
basketball brackets, the comparative advantages of various bit torrent
clients, or that weird sound coming from our right front wheel well.
Hitting the road is like waking up from a long, dreamy semi-sleep, and
it clears
out the mental crud that accumulates like the lint and cat hairs in our
keyboard.

*******

We should be able to blog throughout our trip, first in Florida where
we hope to find wi-fi hotspots, then in Ecuador and Peru, where we will
have to rely on cyber cafes and probably eschew graphics for a couple
of weeks.

*******

I expect to be contributing to, and commenting on, the Blogging 101
WIKI, which is in the process of whipping up a series of super-simple
Getting Your First Posting Up video tutorials up for various blogging
platforms.

*******

Why is it that some days the morning paper has 8 or
10 bloggable stories, and other days there’s nary a one? Is it in the
nature of the news, or our state of mind, or a combination of the two?

*******

Maybe this trip will be a chance to finish up some of the dozen or so
longer postings we have in various states of gestation. If we were more
organized we would preposition some graphics on the server so we can
just plop them into postings from the road.

Stay tuned for further developments….

"What started as a depraved idea has apparently become a sickening
reality"

The above sentence could have been written by Hunter Thompson. It
is a testimony to his lasting affect on journalism that it in fact appeared
on a South African news site in reference to the legal introduction
of remote control hunting of imported exotic species, in Texas, logically
enough.

The story is back
in the news because the first actual kill, of
a creature called a feral hog, took place last week. Apparently, a
lot of people
are quite upset. What’s the big deal? Get over it, we say! What
could be more American than remote control killing? Our entire military
strategy
and
tactics
over the past 50 years have been based on that principle above all else.
It is any wonder ordinary citizens are dying to get in on the action?

San
Antonio – Hunting wild animals is nothing new in Texas. But a new company
called Live-Shot.com has added a modern, controversial twist to the primal
desire to kill: Internet hunting.

Now anyone with a computer and a modem can log on and fire real weapons.
Howard Giles did it a few weeks ago, becoming the first known Internet
hunter to bag
a wild hog by remote control.

Giles was sitting behind his computer in San Antonio. The pig was munching
on corn about 100km away in the Texas Hill country.

"
He was a beast," said Giles. "I felt like I was there."

Though Texans wear their love of guns and hunting proudly, the idea of Internet
hunting has generated plenty of criticism. A Republican representative in the
Texas Legislature, Todd Smith, himself an occasional hunter, has offered a
bill to ban the practice.

"I don’t think we should be able to kill God’s creatures with the click
of a mouse," Smith said.

Why the hell not? We kill insects with aerosol spray. We kill
mice with poison and traps. and everyday we kill millions of cows and
chickens in mechanized death camps where highly regimented, short, hormone-enhanced
lives are likewise ended with the click of a mouse button.

And what about hunting deer, duck, or boar with guns, or shooting
gophers, woodchucks and other varmints, just for fun? What’s the difference
between
pulling a trigger and clicking on a mouse, other
than
a few generations
of technological
development?

Obviously, killing via computer would be less viscerally satisfying,
and in the long run it remains to be seen whether virtual killing, however
good the screen resolution and surround sound, will quell the blood lust
buried deep in our genes without the smell of gunpowder and animal shit.

But the real world is a dangerous place these days,
even for armed and aggressive pastimes like hunting. People
get gored, even killed, by wild
animals every year. Not to mention rabies, anthrax and lyme disease.
Plus, tramping around in the woods with a bunch of other intoxicated
and heavily
armed
paranoid
schizophrenics can be dangerous in and of itself. Remember the
case of the Hmong immigrant who holed up in a tree blind and wiped out six fellow
(but non Hmong) hunters before he was shot down like the rabid hyena
he was?

So we think its a great idea to allow patriotic Americans who pass
stringent security and solvency checks to participate in a great American
tradition
like hunting, from the privacy of their homes. Think of it.  Without hunting, the entire middle of
the United States would be covered with buffalos and Indians!

Killing
by remote control is only one of the many talents and skills which our armed
forces and global peacekeepers will need in the coming decades, as military
methodology becomes more high-tech. Why risk our most precious
resource, our sons and daughters, if we can accomplish the same thing
by remote-control, running our weapons of war and engines of destruction
from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

In the future, all of our battles will be fought this way. Top gamers
and proven remote control killers will be highly recruited agents of
the New Armed Forces. Right now the military is working on remote-control
killing machines which can be directed by operators anywhere on the
planet. Warfare will become a cottage industry: individual fighting
machines could
be remote-controled
from
battle
stations in suburban
duplexes across America, run in shifts 24-7 by the most capable and vicious
American virtual killers, regardless of age, sex, religion or geekiness
quotient. And when our fighting men and women get off their shifts at
the VR weapons consoles installed in their studies, they will have their
loving families and all of their creature comforts around them to lessen
the culture shock of killing for a living.

from iol

Once again, The
Washington Post has published the winning
submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply
alternate meanings for
common words.

The winners are:

1. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

2. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run
over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignifie! d bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when
you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish
men.

from the
Washington Post

"Who in the White House knew that Jeff Gannon was
an assumed name, was not a legitimate journalist and was merely a shill
for the Administration, for more than two years, nearly three years?"
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)

A very interesting article in today’s Financial Tiimes, titled "Blogs
in the machine" concerning the topic of the week – the intersection between
blogging and mainstream media. It covers the ground well, but doesn’t
really go anywhere.

One of the main persecutors of John Kerry was a blog called Talonnews.com,
whose editor also happens to run GOPUSA, described as a "conservative
news, information and design company, dedicated to promoting conservative
ideals".

The Washington correspondent for Talon was a man named Jeff Gannon, who
made himself conspicuous during White House press conferences for deflecting
difficult questions from other reporters by asking the softest of questions.
Gannon was a welcome guest on such conservative MSM outlets as Fox News,
and he “reported” on his website that John Kerry might be gay. It took
another blogger, Dailykos.com, to expose Gannon as a homosexual "escort"
named James Guckert, who had no journalistic credentials and advertised
his services on websites such as Militarystud.com. He had been refused
a press pass for Congress, but had no problem getting into the White
House.

We remember seeing this story the first time it washed through the news
cycle, but it wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen until Markos Moulitsas
(dailykos.com) caught the significance
of the story and held it up to the light of day.

from the Financial Times

original New Yorker article