Karencatures

Welcome to Karencatures

2011-05-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

Moveis 2011

2011-04-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

Midnight in Paris 7 + +

Super 8 7 +

Horrible Bosses 6 + +

Source Code 6 + +

Cowboys & Aliens 6 + +

Rise of the Planet of the Apes 6 + +

Water for Elephants 6 + +

The Green Hornet 6 + +

Moneyball 6 +

Hanna 6 +

The Conspirator 6 +

Rango 6 +

Cedar Rapids 6 +

The Lincoln Lawyer 6 +

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark 6 +

The Company Men 6 ~

Rio 6 ~ ~

Jane Eyre 6 -

The Dilemma 5 +

Hall Pass 5 +

X-Men: First Class 5 +

Mr. Popper's Penguins 5 +

Fright Night 5 ~

No Strings Attached 5 ~

Drive Angry 5 ~

The Ides of March 5 -

Bridesmaids 4 + +

Tower Heist 4 +

Bad Teacher 4 +

Crazy Stupid Love 4 ~ ~

Sanctum 4 ~ ~

Conan the Barbarian 4 ~ ~

Unknown 4 ~

Captain America: The First Avenger 4 -

The Debt 4 - -

The Change-Up 3 ~ ~

Insidious 3 ~ ~

Thor 3 -

Red Riding Hood 3 -

30 Minutes or Less 3 - -

Dream House 2 - -

Requiem for the American Dream

2011-01-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

"They're coming! They're coming! The terr'ists are coming!"
Shouted Uncle Sam's Paul Revere.
"No, scratch that! I'm sorry, I spoke out of turn . . .
The terr'ists are already here!"

"So what do we do, Uncle Sam," asked the listeners
"To keep ourselves safe and free?"
"Well, since they hate us for our freedoms," he answered
You'll surrender them to me!"

"And meantime, go shopping, buy gadgets and toys,
And continue to watch your TV.
So, while I keep tabs on you to keep you safe,
You'll at least be sedated with glee."

America is as America does,
And its people did what they were told.
Their leaders then happily sat on their hands,
While their country was bought and sold.

Habeas corpus? They just let it go,
With terr'ists we're always at war.
And since bad guys are seemingly everywhere,
They gave up Amendment Four.

They watched what they said, you know, just to stay safe,
No help from Amendment One.
Some liberals squeaked noises resembling dissent,
But surrendered their right to a gun.

Trials were left up to secret tribunals,
And torture was like apple pie.
Yes, little by little, and one by one,
Americans let their rights die.

Then the powerfully rich just got richer and richer
Mostly through fraud and through stealing,
And rather than stop them, they stopped social programs,
And insurance stopped doctors from healing.

The Republican Party did aid and abet this,
While Dems offered hopin' and wishin'
And so it went on, Constitution dismantled
With We the People's permission.

Skeptical Couplets

2010-12-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

Most of what we think we know we think 'cuz someone told us,
And of those claims, the ones believed, are largely what will mold us.

The "engine of action," I've heard it described, this thing we call belief.
And if it be true, oh if it be so, the world needs some relief.

'Tis everywhere, and all the time, especially holiday seasons,
And yet how seldom this so for sensible, justified reasons.

Why are we here? And how did we get here? And where are we meant to go?
Relax, my friends, embrace the calm of saying I don't know.

And should you feel anxious, or should you feel scared, from questions or from doubt,
Remember the purpose of "I don't know": To allow you to truly find out.

Happy holidays from Karencatures. :)

The Ongoing Saga of a Master Creep

2010-10-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

"Shoo! Shoo!" yelled the neighbor clinging mightily to a leash attached to a very large dog.

"What's he shooing at?" asked my partner.

It was not an unreasonable question. Adjacent to our otherwise idyllic little house is a public walkway leading from the street of our front door to another road passed our back yard. It's used often by friendly neighbors and wandering vagrants as a short-cut from point A to point B, and, a little too often, by teenagers who apparently labor under the delusion that they have discovered a secret alley where they can do drugs without being seen. They don't really bother us, but come on, we do see them.

For some reason, however, despite our view from above, we could not see at all the object of the dog-walker's shooing. Our view of it (whatever it was) was obscured entirely by our fence. If it were another dog, or even a neighborhood cat, it would have to have been an extraordinarily tiny one.

Suddenly, the dog-walker pulled tightly on his animal's leash, and he and his dog dashed madly across the length of the walkway, disappearing out of sight altogether. During his sprint, he was continually, nervously, looking over his shoulder at . . . well . . . at nothing running after him.

My partner and I were content to let the moment pass unexplained, like many a moment we witness from our second floor view of this public path. "Whatever," we thought together, and proceeded to the kitchen to make dinner.

Actually, it was my partner's turn to cook, which meant that my job would be the clean-up afterward. So, I sat at the dining room table trying in vein to get a signal for my cell phone strong enough to allow me to look something up online. No such luck, and with our regular internet service temporarily interrupted by some sort of maintenance period, I knew the only way for me to surf the web would be take my phone outside to the front porch. I disclosed my intentions to my partner, who continued cooking, and told me when dinner would likely be ready.

As you might imagine, this is not a story about the weird way in which I finally gain access to the Internet. Oh, I got a signal all right, but I didn't care. Once on the porch, my attention immediately focused on something else: Two neighbors, both male, both angry, both yelling, and both standing directly in front of our front yard. I recognized one of them as the shooing dog-walker. The unexplained moment from the walkway was about to be explained . . . at length, and in a manner that would border on the surreal.

"Sir," said the dog-walker to the older, gray-haired man inching uncomfortably close to the dog-walker's face, "I don't understand why this is so difficult for you."

"Me? You're the one who says your dog is going to kill my animal!" shouted Mr. Gray Hair. Well, that at least explained one thing. The dog-walker was indeed running from some kind of animal.

"No, that's not what I'm saying," the dog-walker tried to explain, "I'm saying that my dog is very large. I'm an animal lover, and I really don't want your animal to get hurt. If you just let him wander around free like you do, I can't guarantee his safety. He's gotten into our yard, and he's gotten into our garage because you won't keep him locked up. My dog weighs more than 100 pounds. He's very well-trained, but if your little guy begins to nip at his heels, he's going to react like an animal, and I don't know if I can control him. I really don't want anything to happen, but I had to run really quickly and pull really hard to get my dog away from him. I'm sure your animal just wants to play, but, you can't let him wander like that."

"Oh yeah?" asked an increasingly off-kilter Mr. Gray Hair, "Well, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to have a 100-pound dog if you're too weak to control him."

"What?!" yelled the dog-walker. "I can control him as much as possible, but if you let your animal loose to wander the neighborhood, anything could happen to him. If he's nipping at my dog's feet, my dog is going to react, and I don't want that reaction to be bad. I'm trying to save your animal's life, but I need your help. Don't you understand that?"

Um, let's just say, no, Mr. Gray Hair did not understand that.

"Look, god damn it!" retorted Mr. Gray Hair, his face reddening, "I don't want my animal hurt, so you better control your damn dog!"

"Sir, this is what I'm trying to tell you. I don't want your animal hurt either! I am trying to prevent that, so I'm asking you to keep him in your home. You can't let him wander the neighborhood like you do. He has more to worry about than my dog if you let him wander freely like that, as he comes up to all the neighbors and their pets all the time, and gets into other people's property. All I'm trying to say is that I want to help protect your pet. I don't know why you don't understand this."

The dog-walker was visibly angry, but his concern seemed genuine and reasonable. I can think of myriad ways to respond to him that could have defused the whole situation. But Mr Gray Hair? Oh, Mr. Gray Hair's astounding response to please don't let your animal roam free was:

"You fucking thirty-somethings! Fuck you and your little lives! You think you can just come here and buy up your little fucking piece of shit plots with your little piece of shit homes, and say you've made it because you have a house and a yard and hundred-pound dog?! Go fuck off, and leave my animal alone! Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to fucking own a dog or a house or a yard, you fucking thirty-something!"

The dog-walker's response was surprisingly calm and mature. "Sir, the language isn't necessary. I'm not going to continue with you." The dog-walker then turned to me, and said, "Sorry about this, ma'am," and walked back inside his own home. Mr. Gray Hair disappeared into the walkway for about half a second, and then reappeared, also to address me.

"Well, you're sitting there taking notes, so what the fuck?"

What the fuck indeed.

"I'm not taking notes. I'm minding my own business. You're the one yelling in front of my house."

Just when I thought the situation could not get anymore uncomfortable for me, Mr. Gray Hair asks,

"All right then . . . have you seen my weasel?"

I suppose it is in some sense to my great fortune that Mr. Gray Hair was not speaking metaphorically. And hey, now I know why we couldn't even catch a glimpse of the animal being shooed.

"You have a weasel?" I asked?

"Yeah. Like a ferret. He's really tiny, and I'm worried about him. Especially with nuts like that who don't care if their dog eats him."

At this point, I should probably have dashed as madly as the dog-walker had earlier inside my house, and locked all the doors. Instead I said, "I haven't seen your ferret. If I do, I'll let you know. Which house are you in?"

I thought I could learn at least which house in the neighborhood whose vicinity I should avoid, but received little help from Mr. Gray Hair, who angrily pointed into the vast darkness, and yelled "That one!"

"Okay," I said, whereupon I did quickly go inside, and lock all the doors. I relayed the story to my partner as we ate dinner. She was understandably displeased that (1) a man like this lived nearby; and (2) that he was cruelly letting his domesticated ferret roam a neighborhood filled with large dogs, stray cats and other perils.

Later that night, as my partner and I were about to go run a late-night errand, the tiny ferret came wandering up to us on our driveway. Poor little thing. As we were making sure he was safe, Mr. Gray Hair appeared on our porch. Lovely.

"Hey, you found him!" he said gleefully. The change in his demeanor was both drastic and creepy, and my partner was on guard, ready to defend us. We gave him his animal back, and he, out of nowhere, offered to be our plumber. (He likes fixing things, he explained, and would gladly do so for everyone in the neighborhood . . . all of us fucking, piece of shit 30-somethings, I guess.)

I really wish that were the end of the story. And it would have been, had another neighbor not e-mailed us the other night. A married woman, she was having difficulties with Mr. Gray Hair as well, as he had apparently been trying to strike up a "friendship" with her, wink wink, nudge nudge.

It just kept getting creepier. The married neighbor forwarded some of his e-mails to her. I won't publish them here. It really wouldn't be right.

But I can't resist mentioning that amid his lurid implications were these delicious lines, clearly aimed at wooing any married woman from her husband:

"I'm very lonely."

"I have mastered nothing."

"Maybe you can help get me off my fat ass."

Oh, I don't know, Mr. Gray Hair . . . you might have mastered one thing. You're the creepiest dude I've ever met!

I doubt this is the end of the story either. Stay tuned. ;)

My Version of the Flag

2010-09-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so that's my version of the American flag.

It has 9 stripes, to represent the Ninth Amendment, in my opinion the most important (and overlooked) article in the Bill of Rights.

And it has 14 stars, to represent the Fourteenth Amendment, itself almost a second Bill of Rights.

Taken together, and understood in the greater context of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as a whole, the two amendments guarantee what I believe is the basic right of all Americans: an equal pursuit of happiness.

I thought we once declared it self evident that each of us is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Since we seem to have forgotten over the course of history, I'd like to wave this flag.

:)

2010 Movies

2010-02-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

The Secret in Their Eyes 7 + +

Mother 7 + +

Cyrus 7 + +

The Social Network 7 + +

The American 7 +

Black Swan 7 ~ ~

Unstoppable 6 + +

The Switch 6 + +

The Kids Are All Right 6 + +

Easy A 6 + +

City Island 6 + +

Green Zone 6 + +

Animal Kingdom 6 +

The Ghost Writer 6 +

Winter's Bone 6 +

Please Give 6 +

Despicable Me 6 +

Shrek Forever After 6 +

Inception 6 ~ ~

Shutter Island 6 ~ ~

Greenberg 6 ~ ~

Daybreakers 6 ~

She's Out of My League 5 +

Morning Glory 5 ~ ~

TRON: Legacy 5 ~

Alice in Wonderland 5 -

The Losers 5 -

Salt 5 - -

The Other Guys 4 +

The Fighter 4 +

The Tourist 4 +

The Crazies 4 +

Date Night 4 ~ ~

Get Him to the Greek 4 ~ ~

Love and Other Drugs 4 ~ ~

Iron Man 2 4 -

Hot Tub Time Machine 4 - -

Edge of Darkness 3 -

Case 39 3 -

Conviction 3 -

Grownups 3 - -

The Wolfman 2 - -

You Again 2 - -

When in Rome 2 - -

American Political Couplets

2010-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

We gravitate towards similars to feel less alone,
And yet we crave our privacy, a space that’s all our own.

But not all humans manifest this dissonance the same,
For liberals and conservatives in fact have different brains.

The former tend to judge a person solely on his mind,
The latter cannot overlook the looks of other kinds.

Conservatives maintain the sense that we should think the same,
While liberals think diversity’s the main rule of the game.

And so they go their separate ways, to let each other be,
For even though it may seem odd, they each want liberty.

But, sadly, since they can’t escape each other altogether,
They do conclude, and then they brood, that all their lives are tethered.

And then they talk, and talk, and talk to maximize their freedom,
But neither speaks the other’s language. Translators? They need ‘em!

Liberals think that “freedom” means one should be left alone,
To gravitate towards similars completely on one’s own.

So minds that seem to think alike can seek each other out,
Without regard for race or sex, since that’s what life’s about.

Their rivals think that liberals want perverse impunity,
That rights belong not just to persons, but communities.

When they say “freedom” they don’t think, “Oh well, to each his own,”
“The people” not “the person” is the one to leave alone.

Conservatives believe the state can only interfere,
With local customs and traditions that they hold quite dear.

Strengthening the state, they feel, will only bring them pain,
Since tradition's what they really want the freedom to maintain.

Liberals on the other hand consider a strong state,
Something freedom-loving folks should really celebrate.

Efficient states can guarantee a certain minimum,
Of access to necessities for each and every one.

By doing so, the liberals say, the state can set the stage,
For happy individuals to feel they're not caged.

But, when one side speaks of freedom, well, the other does not hear,
Instead they see a contradiction, and they learn to fear.

Eventually, each side regards the other as a threat,
And once they do, on freedom's death becomes the way to bet.

Frightened people don't maintain their liberty at all,
They panic to protect their kind, and let their freedoms fall.

For what both really crave is just to feel less alone,
In privacy among the folks they like to call their own.

I think Barack Obama sees as much as head of state,
I just hope his style of leading's not too little and too late.

Answering Glenn Greenwald

2010-01-30T04:17:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald recently threw down a gauntlet over the concept of corporate personhood. Without delving into the detailed merits and faults of the Court's decision itself, I would like to pick up that gauntlet, and answer strictly the questions Mr. Greenwald posed.

After admonishing his readers to separate the concepts of "Constitutional" and "politically desirable," a distinction I likewise implore people to absorb, Mr. Greenwald strangely suggests in his questions that if corporate entities do not themselves have Constitutional rights, the results would be politically undesirable. I'll forget the irony for the moment, and just answer the questions:

I'll ask again -- of you and anyone who claims that since corporations are not persons, they have no rights under the Constitution:

Do you believe the FBI has the right to enter and search the offices of the ACLU without probable cause or warrants, and seize whatever they want?

No, the FBI does not have the ~~right~~ power to enter and search the offices of the ACLU without probable cause or warrants, and seize whatever they want. Taking that stance does not require the fiction that the offices of the ACLU are persons with rights. It merely requires recognizing that the persons who occupy the offices have rights.

Do they have the right to do that to the offices of labor unions?

How about your local business on the corner which is incorporated?

No, they don't have the power to do that either, but again, the entities protected against such searches and seizures are the living human beings who occupy the offices, who are members of the labor unions and who own the corporation.

The only thing stopping them from doing this is the Fourth Amendment. If you believe that corporations have no constitutional rights because they're not persons, what possible objections could you voice if Congress empowered the FBI to do these things?

Can they seize the property (the buildings and cars and bank accounts) of those entities without due process or just compensation? If you believe that corporations have no Constitutional rights, what possible constitutional objections could you have to such laws and actions?

Are these serious questions? The Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The right affects the people's property, but it belongs to the people.

So, if the government searches my house without any warrant or probable cause, I object in court that the government has violated my Fourth Amendment rights. Mine. The rights of me, a person, a member of the people. I do not argue that the government has violated the rights of my house, hoping that the court will maintain the background principle that my house is, in fact, a person with Constitutional rights.

The latter argument is not only unnecessary, it is farcical.

Could Congress pass a law tomorrow providing that any corporation - including non-profit advocacy groups -- which criticize American wars shall be fined $100,000 for each criticism? What possible constitutional objection could you have to that?

Uh, the Constitutional objection is that the First Amendment requires that Congress make "no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." A law that punishes the viewpoint that America's wars are bad is a law that abridges the freedom of speech. Period. This is not difficult.

Any party that can demonstrate that a law causes him personal, redressable injury has standing to challenge that law. Laws that regulate corporate behavior potentially injure the persons who own the regulated corporations -- their shareholders. There is no need to posit that corporations themselves have First Amendment rights any more than there is a need to posit that my house has Fourth Amendment ones.

Like my house, a corporation is a piece of property. It has no (or should have no) rights separate and distinct from the persons or people who own it. Likewise, denying the rights of property, in no way compels me to deny the rights of persons who own property. And laws that regulate the manners in which I might use my property can indeed violate my rights, even if those laws do not explicitly refer to me.

Frankly, I fail to see how this is difficult to understand. Maybe I'm crazy, and I'm willing to hear anyone out who thinks so, but I do not see any legal necessity for the fiction of the corporate person.

I do, however, have a question of my own. Since we're wondering about what would happen to searches and seizure in this country, I would like to ask whether Mr. Greenwald has considered a potential flip side to protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of corporations.

Consider the following: Because the Fourth Amendment does indeed protect persons, not property, whether a search or seizure actually violates the Constitution depends not on the particular instance of a search or seizure, but on whether the person challenging it has standing to do so. For example, if the police discover incriminating evidence against you while illegally searching your friend's house, you might not have standing to suppress that incriminating evidence. Because your rights were not necessarily violated by an illegal search of your friend's home.

Let's say the government does wantonly search the offices of the ACLU with neither warrant nor probable cause. And in the process, FBI agents uncover (or plant) incriminating evidence against the persons who work for the ACLU. When the prosecutor argues that while the "person" that is the ACLU itself has standing to suppress the search, since its rights were violated, the persons who just work for the ACLU do not, what then, Mr. Greenwald? What possible Constitutional objection could you have to the argument?

Two Dumb Memes

2010-01-23T15:38:00.000-08:00

In the wake of President Obama's first year in office, and the subsequent (and likely consequential) election of Know Knothing Knation's Scott Brown to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy, two dumb memes have surfaced in American political discourse that are driving me crazy enough to write about them here:

DUMB MEME #1:
Progressives and Obama voters now disappointed with the president are impatient cry-babies who unrealistically expected all the problems created by the previous administration to be magically solved in one year. Now that things aren’t perfect, they’re unfairly abandoning their president.

Oh, give me a break! There may be plenty of decent arguments for why we should continue to support President Obama, but don't ascribe these ridiculous motives to those who have chosen not to!

By and large, disillusioned progressive voters had no such unrealistic expectations. In fact, for many of us who did not support Obama during the primaries, but embraced him in the general election, our expectations were actually pretty low. At least, we thought, at the very least, we’re getting an intelligent man who wants to do right by us. After eight years of tyrannical buffoonery, not only were our expectations that low for a Democratic presidential contender, but so were our requirements. The majority of Americans were willing to work hard just to get any intelligent man who wants to do right by us elected. We said so out loud. We published it on blogs.

But this president has barely made a token effort to fulfill his promises, and he now even touts some of the very ideas he explicitly campaigned against. That’s change, I guess, just not the kind we believed in.

Not to mention that his lies about the situation are so stupid they could have been muttered by his illiterate predecessor. He never campaigned on the public option? He thought John McCain’s ideas on health care reform were good ones when he was running against him? Uh huh. And Rumsfeld never said he knew where the weapons of mass destruction were, and Bush thought Brownie did a heckuva job. (Well, okay, maybe Bush really did think that.)

Now, remember when the nation’s lobotomized recently took to the streets to scream about “death panels” and “Obama the communist, fascist, Muslim terrorist?” You know, the ones who call themselves “Teabaggers” altogether unaware of the pornographic image the term conjures? Well, to placate them, President Obama called a joint session of Congress to give one of his famous orations. Don’t believe the lies, he implored. We can work together, he declared. We can compromise so that health care reform can be done right, he said. Remember? It was the same speech wherein he was suddenly for mandating that people purchase private insurance, and punishing people who refused (even though he told Democratic primary voters that his stance against such mandates was one reason to prefer him to Senators Clinton and Edwards).

So, when progressives -- the ones who actually hired this guy as president -- voiced our concerns that it might be unwise to water down the reform for which we voted just to satisfy the insurance corporations making the mess in the first place and a gaggle of goons who barely understand the meanings of the insults they hurl, one would think we’d be afforded at least the same kind of public respect. But one would be wrong. Somehow, the best we ever heard in response to our concerns was a chorus of crickets. He wouldn't even tell us why the compromises he was making were necessary. Instead, he said he received 95% of what he wanted. What?! And when the president wasn’t ignoring us, he was actively working against us, and taking our votes for granted.

No, nobody’s upset that Barack Obama has not solved all the world’s problems by snapping his fingers or that he has failed to usher in an era of sunshine, rainbows and lollipops. We’re upset that the man we worked so hard to elect seems uninterested in even maintaining the appearance that he wants to do right by us. He seems rather comfortable telling his base to fuck off.

At least, at the very least, he could have continued to pretend that he wanted to do right by us. After all, that's what he's so good at! For all I know, that gesture alone might have halved the number of the now-disillusioned and -disappointed who stayed home instead of participating in the Brown vs. Coakley election in Massachusetts, and garnered a different result.

Say, speaking of Massachusetts . . . . .

DUMB MEME #2: Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts is a sign that Democrats must weaken their health care bill and, in general, move to the right.

Okay, first, it’s plainly stupid to consider one senatorial election in one New England state to be the ultimate measure of national sentiment, and everybody pushing this meme knows it. I mean, does anyone really think we’d be hearing the inverted version of the meme had Brown lost by a few percentage points? Does anyone think that the so called liberal media would have labeled the Massachusetts election a vindication for everything Obama has done? Please.

More importantly, though, the idiots who push this meme love to pretend the choices that Massachusetts voters had on their ballots were complete. Think of it this way, and you'll understand instantly: To the extent that Brown/Coakley was a "health care election" at all, Massachusetts had a choice between the following sentences:

I am for the health care reform bills currently making their way through the legislative process because they are good for America.

I am against the health care reform bills because they go too far, and change too much.

Yeah, kind of like how Stephen Colbert would ask his interviewees whether Bush was a great president, or the greatest president. With that false dichotomy, it's no wonder millions of other voters just didn't bother to make a choice at all. Where is the choice for, “I am against the health care bills because they do not go far enough,” or “I am against the health care bills because they will make a really bad problem even worse?”

Try explaining that to the typical media figure or the Democratic establishment, and you’ll get blank stares, angry smears or a lecture about how the 60-something percent of the country that wants the public option are out of touch with the majority of Americans. In the insulated bubble that is Washington, D.C., even mild progressive thoughts are always the sign of a kook or a chemical imbalance.

Now, Democrats could take their completely avoidable loss in Massachusetts as a sign that they should move to the left, become more aggressive, and stop taking for granted the base that gave them their jobs as super-majority caucus members. And, I would be remiss if I failed to recognize that some Democrats, including the president, are at least showing signs that they might have learned the right lesson this time.

Or, they just might have figured out that it's time to let us know that they understand the right lesson, hoping we'll incorrectly infer their desire to act on it. (Seriously, am I really supposed to believe that President Obama is suddenly going to "take on the banks?" What, is he suddenly going to fire his chief of staff and entire economic team?)

I'm sorry, but given the way the Democratic Party tends to behave, the way it always eventually buckles to the right, I think the real question is not whether they will learn the right lesson, but whether they want to learn the right lesson. Too many Evan Bayhs are just too eager to embrace the dumb memes, and they can't all be stupid enough to believe their own words.

Only time will tell, I suppose. In the mean time, I'm fed up with these really dumb memes!

Fixing United States Government

2010-01-22T01:01:00.001-08:00

Proposed Amendments to the United States Constitution

Article I: Person Defined

The word "person" in this Constitution and in the laws of the United States and the several states shall be construed to include only living human beings, not entities created by law.

The word "person" in this Constitution and in the laws of the United States and the several states shall not be construed to exclude any living human beings on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, status as prisoner of war or enemy combatant, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other arbitrary ascription.

Article II: The Pursuit of Happiness

Neither the government of any state nor of the United States shall infringe upon the equal right of each and every person to pursue his or her own happiness.

In any case or controversy in which a person challenges an infringement upon his or her pursuit of happiness, the state shall bear the burden of proof that the law either does not so infringe or that the law is necessary and proper to secure the equal pursuit of happiness for each and every person.

Article III: Health Care

Consistent with its power to tax and spend for the general welfare and to secure the equal pursuit of happiness, the government of the United States shall make available a form of public insurance that guarantees access to health care for each person who is a citizen of the United States.

Article IV: Consensual Legislative Representation

Each and every person who is both a citizen of the United States and of the age of consent shall command an equal portion of legislative power over the laws by which he or she is governed.

The right to vote for legislative representatives shall be construed as the right to transfer consensually that portion of legislative power to a representative, and each representative shall command only the legislative power directly proportionate to the number of persons who contractually delegated their portions to that representative.
For representation in the House of Representatives, the United States population shall be divided into equally populated districts. Each district shall command one vote, shared by a panel of representatives. Each Representative shall command a fraction of his or her district's one vote directly proportionate to the number of voters who consensually delegated their legislative power to that representative. Elections for the House of Representatives shall take place nationwide, every four years, but no elections for the House of Representatives shall take place in the same year as a presidential election.
For representation in the United States Senate, each state shall command one vote, shared by a panel of representatives. Each Senator shall command a fraction of his or her state's one vote directly proportionate to the number of voters who consensually delegated their legislative power to that representative. Every two years, one third of the states shall elect their respective Senate panels to six-year terms, on the schedule set for the first of their current Senators under Article I of this Constitution.

Article V: New Legislative Process

All bills must begin in the House of Representatives.

Upon passage by a majority vote in the House, the bill will move to the Senate, which shall have a veto power over the proposal (i.e. the Senate may debate, but not amend the legislation, and must vote YES or NO).
If, by majority vote, the Senate passes the bill, it is enacted into law.
If, by majority vote, the Senate vetoes the bill, the House may override the veto by a two-thirds majority vote, whereupon it is enacted into law.
The Executive Branch shall enforce all laws passed by the United States Congress, but the President of the United States shall have the power to challenge the legislation on Constitutional grounds. Upon enactment, the President shall have 10 days to determine whether and how to challenge the legislation.
If the President timely files a Constitutional challenge to a piece of legislation, that legislation shall remain enforceable law unless overturned by the United States Supreme Court, which shall have original and exclusive jurisdiction over all cases and controversies between the President and Congress.

Article VI: Presidential Appearance in Congress

Once every month, the President of the United States shall personally appear before the House of Representatives to answer any questions its members have.

Article VII: War Powers Clarified

Congress’ sole power to declare war shall be construed to include the power to end war and to order the President of the United States to cease any current military action. All provisions to end military actions must pass through the legislative process outlined in Article V of these amendments.

Article VII: Supreme Court Terms

No person shall serve as a judge on the United States Supreme Court for more than 20 years.

From the Mind of Ms. Rhee D. Kulous

2010-01-18T02:50:00.000-08:00

I knew some very liberal people who believed that children have the right to be raised free from their society's and their parents' prejudices and preconceptions. I wonder whether they took their premise to absurd extremes by releasing their own children into the wild.

Why does Superman feel compelled to maintain a secret alter ego, especially one that is a social misfit often mistreated by those he loves the most? He's Superman! Wouldn't it be better to be Superman all the time? His family knows he's Superman, so it's not like he really needs to hide the fact that he's a superhero, like Spider Man or Bat Man, who had lives before secretly finding their own Mr. Hydes. He doesn't exactly need to earn a living as an inept reporter. So, why does he do it? Does he learn something about humans from the perspective of an awkward uber-plebian he can't learn as Superman?

I don't think I can achieve Nirvana. My friend once explained to me that in order to achieve Nirvana, you must become free of all your desires. I immediately thought, "All desires? Wouldn't that necessarily include the desire to achieve Nirvana? Then what?" And then it hit me. The way to achieve Nirvana is never to think what I just thought. Because you could conceivably stun yourself into the legendary state of blissful wisdom by literally ridding yourself of all desires except the desire to achieve Nirvana without realizing that you still actually desire one last thing thereby prompting years of frustration that cause you to cry, "Fuck it! Nothing is worth this! I don't care anymore about Nirvana!" But I've already realized the secret, so I don't think I can go through that process with any sincerity. Somehow it seems like sincerity would be required for that magic to work, and besides, I never really cared about achieving Nirvana anyway.

I will consider it a sign of grave misfortunes to come if I spontaneously start peeing out my nose. My so called health insurance company would try to find every reason to avoid paying for whatever treatment peeing out one's nose requires!

The lady playing violin inside my head really needs to stop. She's not untalented, but it's more like she's practicing than performing right now.

Wherefore art thou, Public Discourse, when Pat Robertson can (1) claim with a straight face (or at least with only that apparently permanent cult-leader smile he dons) that Haitians are only reaping what they've sown by suffering the devastation of a massive earthquake since the ancestors they never knew literally made a deal with an evil immortal; and (2) be taken seriously by millions of people?

Would you give birth if a smurf of wide girth made of Nerf were to surf near your hearth on your turf wearing perfume after curfew?

If I believed nature were conscious, I would conclude it has a sense of humor. As a species, human beings have evolved into sentient creatures capable of becoming cognizant of our own evolution, and being traumatized into a state of denial about it.

If in the future human beings will be required to wear nothing but Saran Wrap from head to toe, I hope it's far, far in the future. I don't want to do that. And I sure as hell don't want to be forced to do it!

Isn't it weird that there has never been a U.S. president named Dave or Bob, but there have been presidents named Millard, Ulysses, Rutherford, Grover and Barack?

There are a lot of people who seem just too stupid to exist. After all, I.Q.s can't run lower than zero, can they? And yet, so many such people keep getting in my way! And I'm not the only one. I know plenty of people who are continually stymied by them in even the most easy and routine of tasks. Why do we require their assistance anyway? They're too stupid to exist! They must be figments of our collective imaginations. Perhaps if we think hard enough, we can make them disappear! And then we can collect the JREF million dollar prize!

All Aboard the U.S.S. America!

2009-12-22T01:38:00.001-08:00

Imagine that the United States is a large ship with a hole in its foundation bringing in enough water to sink it. On board are donkeys calling for the hole to be patched, and elephants who insist that nothing needs to be done as the U.S.S. America is the greatest ship ever built. How might different kinds of captains handle the situation?

Astonished that the animals on board would argue over whether to patch a hole, Captain Jimmy Carter would just roll up his sleeves, grab his tools, and begin to fix it himself. Sadly, however, he would lack the physical strength required to ward off the elephants, who would pull him from his efforts, and throw him overboard.

Captain Ronald Reagan would give amazing orations about how the hole in the boat is not the problem; the boat is the real problem. Because we've all become too dependent on the boat, it's time for donkeys and elephants to learn how to swim. Then, as the animals tried desperately to prepare, he'd reserve seats on the life boats for his richest elephant friends, dispense life preservers to his next richest elephant friends, and commandeer the ship for secret military missions for as long as it stayed afloat.

Lamenting that the problem could not be solved by shooting the ship's biggest guns, Captain George H. W. Bush would promise the elephants not to do anything about the hole, but would be bothered by the fact that the ship would probably sink. After a while, he'd propose some lackluster, inefficient ways to patch the hole to see what the animals thought. As the water continued to pour in, both the donkeys and the elephants would tire of his command, and throw him overboard.

Captain Bill Clinton would eagerly and enthusiastically head over to the hole to try to fix it, but would relent when the elephants roared. He'd head back to the deck to talk with the animals, and try to think of ways to keep the boat afloat even with the hole. Most of his ideas would be thwarted, though, as he would have to spend most of his time running from elephants trying to throw him overboard.

After remarking about how cool the water looked as it flowed into the boat, Captain George W. Bush would immediately hand out all the seats on the lifeboats and all the life preservers to the richest few elephants he knew. Then, he would proudly threaten to smash more holes in the boat until the perpetrator who created the first hole confessed. When no one confessed, he'd grab his hammer and bat, and begin to smash the boat apart, cackling maniacally with every bang. As terrified animals asked just what the fuck he thought he was doing, he'd smile and point them to history books from 500 years in the future, which would call his move the greatest and most heroic action of all time. Any donkey that did not agree that his actions would both fix the boat and catch the guy who made the hole would be sent to the Brig for torture.

Convinced that a compromise was possible between the donkeys and the elephants, one that would make every animal on board happy as a clam, Captain Barack Obama would engage in intense negotiations, and agree to install a screen door.

Know Knothing Knation

2009-09-20T15:23:00.001-07:00

Gotta rant, right? So, here are some thoughts on that dangerously strange 20% of the American population that follows lockstep with any lunacy its right-wing leaders can conjure.

A Perfect Getaway

2009-08-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

Ranking: 4 ~

Few movies can both parody and participate in a genre.¹ A Perfect Getaway tries, but it doesn't quite succeed. The film is a Who's-the-Killer?-thriller that seeks to rise above its own clichés by mocking them as they unfold instead of rewriting them. Characters in the movie note what would happen to their characters in a movie, a technique that has almost a become horror/thriller cliché itself, what with the successful Scream trilogy having spawned lackluster imitations since the mid-1990s. While A Pefect Getaway is not altogether unenjoyable, and its acting is actually quite decent, it fails to achieve its basic goals – to thrill by disorientating viewers, and to surprise by revealing a foreshadowed secret. To have done so would have required a subtlety that eludes writer/director David Twohy, and the self parody only gets in the way. Experienced moviegoers will hardly get the creeps when they are supposed to, and once the killer is unmasked, they are more likely to have their expectations confirmed than rattled.

SPOILER WARNING: The above paragraph encapsulates my view of the movie as a whole. Major spoilers follow from here on out.

I suppose it's possible for someone with no prior knowledge of A Perfect Getaway's plot to be caught off guard by what transpires. It starts innocently enough, almost as if we're watching a completely different kind of movie. We're treated to lengthy video clips of Cliff and Cydney's wedding, and follow them on their honeymoon to Hawaii. Only after getting to know them and watching them hike and helicopter around beautiful landscapes do we learn that another couple has been hacked to death on one of the islands.

That revelation is designed to prompt every viewer to wonder, “So, who's the killer, and when will we meet him?” This is the movie's first mistake. The information is not only offered to the audience in a silly manner that suddenly breaks the film's tone ― the pages of a dropped newspaper eerily (and conveniently) turn in the wind of the newlyweds' moving car ― but the knowledge is withheld from Cliff and Cydney's characters. Clearly, we're supposed to see the events from their perspective as the innocent vacationers, but when they later learn of the murders themselves, we do not share their dread. We have already been speculating about an array of suspects the movie introduces as Cliff and Cydney explore Hawaii's less traveled paths.

The suspects travel those paths as two other couples, Kale & Cleo and Nick & Gina, and we are very obviously supposed to suspect them. When we first meet Kale, his face is curiously obscured by the camerawork, as if the film feels the need to shout “Scary Bad Guy Here!” Kale and Cleo's behavior is ominously inappropriate as they try to bum a ride off of Cliff and Cydney, but they are afraid of them not because they know of the murderer at large, but because they're innocents from the mainland, unaccustomed to roughneck hitchhikers. Later we learn that at least one of Kale and Cleo are on parole, both are angry at not having received the ride, and Kale's chest is tattooed with the words, “Do Not Revive.”

In contrast, Nick is friendly, and appears just in time to grab Cydney before she slips off a mountain trail to what would have been certain death. But it isn't long before Nick's affability becomes ominous as well. Something is not quite right about him. When he learns that Cliff is a Hollywood screenwriter, he regales his new friends with tales of his covert operations for the government, hoping that Cliff might immortalize him in a film entitled “American Jedi.” When he learns that one of Cliff's scripts is currently being rewritten by a third party, his sympathy and advice carry the implication that something sinister could happen to this editor if Cliff so desired.

It is at this point that Nick and Cliff begin to discuss Hollywood storytelling. The characters themselves do not outrightly deride Hollywood, but Nick heavily emphasizes the terms "red snapper" (he means red herring) and “second act twist.” The three hikers then encounter young girls who inform them of the murders. They also inform them that the police suspect a male/female couple hiking on the islands. Cliff and Cydney, having just poked a little fun at Hollywood clichés, decide to be one, and follow the increasingly off-kilter Nick to a secluded swimming hole to meet his girlfriend.

Waiting at the swimming hole is Gina, who brags that her covert, military boyfriend is “hard to kill.” From this point until the big revelation, Kale and Cleo lurk visibly in the background, while Nick and Gina act like psychotic dinner hosts unaware that they are frightening their guests. Nick continues to mention “second act twists,” taunts Cliff for his innocent and girly nature, and takes him goat hunting. Gina skins and guts the goat for food, provokes Cydney by expressing disbelief that she and her husband are really the suburban innocents they pretend to be, and offers her drugs.

Okay, I have two questions:

(1) Wouldn't it have more effectively and steadily built the desired disorientation and suspense by allowing us to learn about the murders at the same time as Cliff and Cydney, forcing us to double back on our own memories of ambiguously ominous characters?; and

(2) When a Who's the Killer?-thriller flatly states that a male/female couple is suspected of murder, introduces two who are obviously weird and frightening, another that is obviously fatally naïve, and then repeatedly references “second act twists,” is it possible not to suspect the seemingly innocent duo?

Yes, Cliff and Cydney were the killers all along. In fact, there are so many in-your-face clues and allusions to the movie's secret, I would have been surprised if it had ended any other way. The reason they murder other couples might not be obvious, but their guilt is.

Actually, Cliff and Cydney were the murdered couple; the people we've been following are psychopaths who enjoy assuming the identities and lives of their victims. Sadly, even the pleasure of discovering this demented motive is undermined by the manner in which it is revealed. The explanatory flashback is so long that some of its scenes are redundant and others are superfluous. In fact, I'm not sure the flashback is necessary at all. It is executed with the same lack of subtlety that mars the entire film. It spells out far too much, as if the movie does not trust its viewers to reflect upon the many clues it had already supplied.

I wonder what happened during A Perfect Getaway's production. Its characters' quirks are interesting enough to hold our attention, and many scenes generate the right kind of atmosphere. It even contains some very clever writing. When one considers Cliff and Cydney's dialogue in retrospect, it is so well crafted that each of their conversations actually has the double meaning needed for the movie not to cheat. Their concerns about the other couples, for instance, turn out not to be about whether they are dangerous killers, but whether they suspect the truth or are too dangerous to make good victims. That would have been much more exciting to figure out if the film had not already poked fun at itself and prompted us to analyze its every word in the process.

I think the movie wants us to laugh and recoil in fear, but its approach feels wrongly dichotomous instead of seamlessly integrated. It's almost as if the filmmakers had a certain grasp of how to convey its characters and scenarios, but every time the writing veered in a faulty direction, they thought, “Oh, hell with it – we'll just let the audience know we know it's faulty.” That approach might make for a pleasing movie to catch on cable television, but it does not work if the overriding goal is to make a truly effective thriller.

Perhaps a third party did read the script, and recommended that Twohy revise it. Only, instead of taking this person's advice, Twohy just had one of his characters insult him. It's too bad, really. Lose the self parody, rearrange a few scenes, and a well-made thriller could have emerged from one more draft.

¹ James Berardinelli described The Princess Bride as one of the few movies that “simultaneously parodies a genre while also celebrating and participating in it.” I not only concur, but can't really improve on the phrasing of "parodying and participating." :)

Movie Rankings from 2008

2009-08-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

1. Rachel Getting Married +

2. Milk + +
3. The Reader +
4. Tropic Thunder + +
5. Iron Man + +

6. Doubt + +
7. Appaloosa + +
8. Slumdog Millionaire +
9. Married Life +
10. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day +
11. Burn After Reading +
12. Frost/Nixon +
13. Changeling +
14. Revolutionary Road +
15. Defiance +
16. Transsiberian +
17. Choke +
18. Elegy +
19. In Bruges +
20. Vicki Cristina Barcelona +
21. The Bank Job +
22. The Ruins +
23. Get Smart +
24. Traitor +
25. The Fall ~~
26. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ~~
27. Pineapple Express +
28. Zack and Miri Make a Porno +
29. Sex and the City +
30. Baby Mama +
31. Body of Lies +
32. The Strangers +

33. Quarantine +
34. Religulous +
35. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay +
36. Max Payne ~

37. Nothing But the Truth ~~
38. Sleuth ~~
39. Redbelt ~~
40. The X-Files: I Want to Believe +
41. The Dark Knight -
42. Forgetting Sarah Marshall -
43. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -
44. Quantum of Solace -
45. Horton Hears a Who! -
46. The Incredible Hulk -
47. Lakeview Terrace -
48. Sex Drive +
49. Hancock -
50. The Midnight Meat Train -
51. Smother ~

52. Four Christmases ~~
53. 27 Dresses -
54. You Don't Mess with the Zohan - -
55. War, Inc. -
56. Mirrors +
56. My Best Friend's Girl - -

58. Table for Three -
59. Vantage Point - -

60. Wanted - -

Movies I intend on seeing, but have not yet: Cloverfield; Flash of Genius; The Visitor; W; WALL-E; The Wrestler.

Arrogance

2009-05-24T20:52:00.001-07:00

Click image for larger version.

Looking to the Future

2009-05-24T06:55:00.001-07:00

From Here to There with Non and Pop

2009-05-23T19:51:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from a travel journal I kept in 1998. Consider it a tribute to my beloved Nonny and Poppy, who are no longer with us.

January 2, 1998

I anticipated this day with mixed emotions. I was overly excited at going back to Spain, but my joy was tempered by the knowledge that I would spend January 2^nd mostly listening to Nonny accuse Poppy of causing everything she believed, for one strange reason or another, to be wrong with the airplane. Ah, well. I was determined to enjoy my trip, even if my grandparents would inevitably drive me nuts.

Actually, my concoction of emotions was hardly that simple. After all, how many people get to take a trip like this with their beloved and very special grandparents at the age of 25? (Okay, 24 to be technical, but I'd be 25 at the month's end.)

First things first, though, and there were indeed things I needed to do first.

First and foremost, I needed to wake up. And I had to do so without indicating that I was tired from staying up late the night before. Mom, of course, had admonished me to consider happy travels a priority over extended New Year's partying, and I, of course, ignored the advice. Thankfully, what excitement did exist in the complicated mix of emotions that day was strong enough to make me hop up out of bed at the first bleep of the alarm. I jumped into the shower with time to actually enjoy it, and packed my toiletries and various miscellaneous items I purposely left unpacked until the minute before walking out the door.

Ziggy, the family dog, had figured out by this time what the suitcases meant, and, I believe, had begun to deduce that it was I who was leaving. In many ways, it is more difficult to hug a pet goodbye than a person. I would miss little Ziggy, but there was no way to explain to him that it wouldn't be long before I would return to play with him. I said so to him in English anyway.

I was ready to leave, but before I could, I had to try Manhattan's LGBT Center one more time. I was job hunting, and had applied for one at the Center for which I would have been perfect. However, despite their purportedly desperate need for applicants, they seemed less than eager to return the inquiring telephone calls they solicited.

Someone answered the phone. I tried to read the awful handwriting the lady had given me earlier in the week. Who was it I was supposed to contact? Figra? Figora? Figueroa?

“Hi. May I please speak to . . .” I stumbled, “Michael Figora?”

“Figueroa, yes, that's me.” Figures. I should have said Figueroa, and Mr. Figueroa angrily stressed the extra 'o' I had omitted. Now, it appeared to this potential employer that I could not pronounce Spanish surnames. This was not the impression I wanted to give to a Center for minority rights (as I headed of to, of all places, Spain).

“Hi, I've applied for the job that's open and . . .” Figueroa interrupted me.

“Which job?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that there was more than one. It's the one advertised in the Village Voice to assist . . .”

“What was the title?”

“Political Assistant, I think.”

“Okay,” he said. After a brief pause, it occurred to me that I had had better luck with the Center's answering machine.

“Yes, well, the reason I'm calling . . .”

“You'll be hearing from us soon,” The interruptions were apparently Figueroa's standard operating procedure, “We're holding interviews this month with the resumes that have been submitted.”

Yes, Mr. Jerk, I realize that, and I already know that mine was chosen, and I was told to call your impatient little self because I'd be leaving the country for a couple weeks, so kindly let me spit out a sentence, okay?!?!

“Yes, Mr. Figueroa, I realize that, and I'm calling to inform you that I will be out of the country until the 16^th, and I wanted to make sure that the interviews would continue throughout the month. Will you be hiring someone before then, or will you be interviewing everyone whose resume was selected from the applicants?”

Now, there are many acceptable ways to answer my polite query, but Mike Figueroa (for whom I now hoped I would not work), instead said,

“How the hell am I supposed to know that? I can't tell the future? I don't know if I'll have hired someone by then.”

Smile. Just smile.

When I finally could, I said, “Okay, then. I'll just hope that I will be able to interview with you. Thank you for your time.” You stupid mother fucker.

But what did it matter? Sure, the new year was not exactly off to a rocking good start, but the call was over. There was nothing left to do but say goodbye, and head downstairs.

The goodbye wasn't terribly sentimental. Just simple hugs. Although it would be a while before I would see my mom again. My brother, Kevin, I'd see in two weeks, but mom would be in California by the time I returned. I wouldn't see her for a month. She has been a tremendous support throughout my recent difficult times, and I was actually going to miss her. Hmm. I suppose I should have told her that.

In any case, there was enough excitement in me to make me rush downstairs. That, and there were only a couple of minutes before the car service would arrive. I was using a different service, Express, instead of our usual Carmel, as the latter had proven unreliable and rude. What else is new?

After a short chat with Tony the doorman in the lobby, I noticed a car with “Express” written on its door pull up right on time. The driver was perfunctorily helpful with my bags, but largely quiet. In fact, with the exception of, “Which airline?” he was silent for the entire ride.

We arrived at Newark Airport's United Terminals without any problem. The timing was perfect, and as the driver helped carry my bags to the sidewalk, I handed him $40 cash.

“It's $41,” he told me, seeming either to repress or summon a smile as his cheeks moved slightly upward.

“Oh. I thought they told me $34 on the phone.”

“Tax and toll,” he responded.

“Yes, the total was supposed to include tax and toll.”

His stoic expression remained fixed on his face. Rather than belabor the matter, I said, “You know what? Never mind. Here you go.” I handed him another five.

I had never been to Newark Airport, and I realize that January 2^nd is not likely a big travel day, but to whatever extent the time and place exemplified routine business here, I liked it. Everything was checked in easily, and the gate was easy to find. Right on time, we started boarding the plane.

Well, this is going along rather smoothly. Immediately after the thought entered my brain, another followed: Oh, why did I just think that? An eternal pessimist and eager to blame myself for things gone wrong, my otherwise rational mind acquiesced to the belief that I had just jinxed everything.

And for the moment, I was right.

Just before handing me my boarding pass, the lady at the United desk asked me if I would like a window or an aisle seat. I preferred the window. She then asked if I would be willing to help the crew in case of an emergency. It struck me as appallingly irresponsible to answer in the negative, so I said, “Of course!” with a chipper smile. In so doing, I landed the window seat right next to the emergency exit. When I saw my assigned seat, I learned why someone more knowledgeable than I about the construction of airplanes would have responded, “Not even if my refusal guarantees our horrific deaths.”

My seat was small, uncomfortable, and located behind an empty space where one would expect to see another chair. The layout required me to place my carry-on items under a seat two rows ahead of me, and any time I wanted something out of my bag, I had to crawl on my knees like an idiot passed the people who sat comfortably adjacent to the empty space. It also meant that my tray table was a teeny tiny piece of plastic folded into an armrest.

Okay, so I jinxed it, but as jinxes go, this isn't so bad. I sat down with a smile that masked the concern that my most recent thought had just upped the ante.

Actually, this was one of the easiest flights I've ever taken. It was pleasant, the view was cool, and the landing barely pressured my normally very sensitive ears. The only other inconvenience was that Nonny and Poppy's travel agent, despite having been repeatedly reminded by them and having to do it for Sarah Douglas at the very same time, forgot to request that my meal be vegetarian. The meal was pepperoni pizza, though, and while this pepperoni was placed under the cheese, it did not require an inordinate amount of energy to remove it.

After the easy landing, we emptied out into what I recognized as the United section of Chicago's O'Hare airport. I'd been here so many times, including just over a month ago, when my brother and I visited for Thanksgiving, so despite its maze-like construction, I located my bags without any problem.

Now, I had a mission. I had to get to the international section of O'Hare, to which I had never been. I asked the first uniformed person I saw for directions. Surprisingly, they were easy to follow. More surprisingly, they were correct.

The shuttle around O'Hare is space-age in appearance, with huge windows that allow passengers to view the entire airport along the way, including the tracks on which it travels. I made it to the international section, and found Sabena, the only airline, mysteriously, with which Nonny was comfortable.

I checked in, and headed toward the gate. Before I had traveled 15 feet, I heard a familiar voice say, “Going somewhere?” I tuned to my left to find Poppy walking beside me. Characteristically, they were not content to meet me at the gate at the time of departure. Upon hugging him hello, I saw Nonny waiting not far away. Upon hugging her, she asked whether the small bag draped over my shoulder comprised all the luggage I was taking.

“Nope,” I said, “I'm all checked in, and my suitcase is headed for the plane.” I considered for a brief, but tortuous, moment whether I was being too optimistic.

“Sorry about the vegetarian thing,” Poppy said. The mistake must have been documented on the itinerary. Before I could tell him not to worry about it, he announced that we all needed to get something to eat in case the airline had nothing for me on the long ride to Brussels. Knowing how pointless it is to argue with my grandparents when they want to feed me, I smiled, and told him to lead the way.

We located a deli that served sandwiches, salads and minestrone soup. This should have been the easy part of the trip. At the very least, it should have been easier than finding my way around O'Hare.

It took three requests for one of the deli's many employees behind the counter to approach us, and she did so in a huff that communicated her frustration at having been inconvenienced. With each item we ordered, she rushed to the cash register, and we had to interrupt her calculations to inform her that we wanted to order more. The look on her face was fit for a production of Oliver Twist. More?!

Poppy then committed the sin of requesting a tuna sandwich. The unpleasant employee responded, “Do you want a tuna sandwich, a tuna salad or a tuna salad sandwich?” Oh, no. The puzzled look that overwhelmed Poppy's face conveyed that he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Tuna,” he said, “I want tuna.”

“Tuna salad, sir?”

“What? Yeah, tuna.” We might never leave.

Clearly frustrated, the unpleasant employee then made matters worse by attempting to clarify the misunderstanding. “Salad, sandwich, or salad sandwich?”

Poppy's predictable response: “I'm sorry, but did you just give me a choice between a salad sandwich and a salad sandwich?”

I jumped in. “Poppy, you can have plain tuna or tuna salad. And you can get either one plain or in a sandwich.”

Apparently, my explanation did not satisfy our increasingly annoyed (and annoying) “server,” who added, “Look, we got tuna salad, or you can have a bun or something, or if you want you don't need a bun if you just want salad or tuna.”

Much better.

“I want it in a bun,” Poppy said, whereupon a means of expediting this arduous process struck me.

“He'll have a tuna salad sandwich,” I said, and after a while, they made one for him.

As the “server” rang up our order, I asked a nearby employee if we could get a set of silverware. He went to the other side of the counter, and returned with a fork. I asked if we could also get a spoon. He went back to the other side of the counter, and returned with another fork. I said that we wanted a whole set of silverware, not just forks, so he fetched a spoon.

“How do these people get hired?” Poppy asked. I smiled as we walked to the table where Nonny was sitting.

“Here,” Poppy said as he handed half of his hard-won tuna salad sandwich to Nonny.

“Oh, Stanley! I don't want to eat a whole sandwich!” she screeched.

“We're sharing it. I gave you half.”

“Well, I'm not sure I can finish this!”

“Then eat what you can. You wanted to share it, right? So I gave you half.”

“Oh, Stanley, why do you do these things? Didn't you know how big it was going to be?”

Lovely. We weren't even on the plane yet. I wondered briefly whether Poppy were forced to tolerate such complaints on the way to the airport, and then remembered that I could easily diffuse the tension.

“Look!” I said, as I fished through my bag. “Look what I found yesterday.” I took out my book on Spain, which was actually on Spain, Portugal and Morocco, and included a section on Málaga, where we were landing. Thankfully, the book captured their interest, and managed to make for enough conversation material to last until it was time to board.

On the way to the gate, we were dismayed at the huge line that had formed to pass through the metal detectors. Poppy and I stood in line while Nonny went to the bathroom. We hadn't moved much by the time she returned, but sooner than we thought we would, we made it to the detectors.

I say to the detectors, not through the detectors, as it took both me and Poppy many attempts not to beep. I had emptied everything in my coat and pants pockets, but still beeped. The attendant told me to take off my coat so that they could run it through the X-ray machine. Why removing a wool coat with nothing in its pockets would allow me pass through a metal detector without beeping remains a mystery to me, but it worked. Someone knows something I don't.

It didn't take long before it was time to board, and it didn't take long before I was puzzled yet again. I will never understand why everyone at a given gate relinquishes his seat to stand in a line explicitly reserved for a description like “rows 40 and back” when obviously not everyone is being allowed to board. Some passengers even push their way to the front of the line, only to be told repeatedly that their row has not yet been called. When our row was called, we happily paraded passed a collection of standing fools who could have remained comfortably seated.

Boarding the plane, Nonny admonished us to wear our seat belts, for she had recently learned that turbulence is lethal if it throws passengers from their chairs. Poppy ignored her in order to thumb through various tickets. With both his and Nonny's for this and the connecting flight to Málaga in his hands, he became flustered.

“Why do I have so many?” he asked me.

“It's for two different flights, Poppy. Just give Nonny her two.”

He tried, but Nonny refused to take hers for the second flight. Instead, she gave it back to him, saying, “I don't want this one, Stanley, geez. Just give me the one I need. And you be sure to keep it in a safe place. Don't you lose it!”

With that, Poppy put the other tickets back in one of his bags, and we boarded the plane. We took off a little late, but not so much that it affected our schedule. Once we were in the air, I removed my CDs, CD player and headphones, and managed to fall asleep for a short while listening to hard rock music that should hardly have been soporific.

Unlike on many American domestic flights, the movie offered was free of charge, but I opted to listen to music instead. It probably didn't matter, since the free movie was an action flick starring three actors I did not recognize in a plot possibly written by Forrest Gump. Two guys would tie a girl to a tree, and search for something. She would escape, and they'd tie her up again to resume their search. The process repeated itself several times, each time creating for the unfortunate girl a more difficult trap and the need to devise a more clever means of escaping. In the end, she not only escaped one last time, but killed her captors, and went home. Nifty. For the sake of the passengers who elected to listen to the movie's audio track, I am glad the headphones provided were free.

After a while, food was served. Nonny and Poppy were given a choice of chicken or pasta, and opted for the former. Nonny kept whining to Poppy that I would have nothing to eat. (I could hear her over the blare of my music.)

“Stanley, what's Karen going to do?”

“She's fine. That's why we ate at the airport, remember?”

“Well, I know, Stanley, but she might want more. You should have made sure she'd have enough food. I told you that.”

“We've had this conversation many times, Shirlee. She'll be fine.”

Nonny repeated her complaints until the food arrived. The pasta dish was cheese ravioli with ham strips on the top. I removed the ham, and ate the pasta. It actually wasn't bad.

“It's okay, Nonny,” I assured her, “I can eat the pasta.”

“Oh? Is it vegetarian?”

Rather than explain to her what I knew she would not understand, I just said yes.

After having fallen asleep a short while before, I was not tired enough to do so again, and my ears were tiring of the sounds coming through the headphones. Even my favorite CDs became intolerable after four or five hours. I managed to read my book on Spain, and get up to go to the bathroom, but eventually, around hour eight, I grew a little stir crazy. To top it off, we encountered severe turbulence, and were forbidden even to stand to stretch. I soon grew anxious to land.

The television screen, no longer playing the movie, now showed a graphic map that charted our flight. Poppy and I watched the miles-to-go as they steadily decreased, and we both wondered whether the descent should have started sooner than it did. We would have been content to shrug off our concern, but it was suddenly reinforced .

We began to fly downward so incredibly fast that it caused excruciating discomfort to almost everyone on the plane. The scene resembled a horror film in which passengers had just been informed that they were about to crash into a mountain. Babies on board began to cry out loud, people held their ears expressing silently and verbally that they were in pain, and Poppy's nose stared to bleed.

But the one person on whom everyone's eyes were fixed, the one they all thought was quite possibly about to die, was me.

My ears were in far more pain than usual, and when experiencing the end of a flight, they're usually in a lot of pain. But this time, I wasn't concentrating on my ears. Just before the babies began to cry, I felt a small pinch above my right eyebrow. I dismissed it as freak pain, like the short pinpointed headaches caused by hastily scarfing to much iced cream. All of a sudden, though, the pain returned with a vengeance. My sinuses all filled with pressure, and I was in more pain than I could remember. It felt as though portions of my skull were being inflated beyond their capacity, and would shortly explode.

I yelped a couple of times, and put my hands to my right eye, which hurt the most. The worst part of the pain was that holding the affected parts did nothing to alleviate it. In fact, holding my head to tightly only made the pressure worse, and the explosions seemingly more imminent.

I was doing everything I could, including sweating and rolling around in order to keep from crying out. The last thing I wanted was for Nonny to start blaming Poppy, especially when Poppy had his own hands full of blood pouring from his nose.

Whatever I did, I attracted a lot of attention, and I actually managed to mutter to my grandparents (and everyone else on board), “I'm sorry. I've just never felt descent pressure like this before. I'm sure I”ll be fine upon exiting the plane.”

Finally, we landed, and the pain began to subside, though it would be some two and a half hours before it was gone completely, when, of course, we would have to board another plane. Once on the ground, and allowed to stand, many passengers asked if I were okay, and while doing so, mentioned that that they felt unusually uncomfortable as well. Poppy said that it felt like someone was driving a nail through his left ear.

As everyone was standing and removing his bags from the overhead bins, an announcement roared over the P.A. System. A woman's voice said, “Meeshter and Meeshuz Veenter? Pazhing Meeshter and Meeshuz Veenter.” I couldn't place her foreign accent, but I knew she was paging my grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Winter. She continued, “Meeshter and Meeshuz Veenter, your vilshur ish ready. Pleazh shee the atchendent for your vilshur.”

Vilshur? Vilshur . . . vilshur . . . What the hell is a vilshur?

“What's a will churr?” Poppy asked me, and when I heard his translation, it hit me.

“Oh!” I said, “A wheelchair!” Then, as soon as I smiled upon solving one mystery, another arose. “Did you guys order a wheelchair?” It seemed very much unlike my Nonny and Poppy, who take pride in fending for themselves.

Now, if I were to do the math, I could probably pinpoint the moment January 2, 1998 came to an end for those of us soaring across the meridians. However, seeing no point in doing so, I'm happy to say that it ended right then, as our plane touched down in Brussels.

January 3, 1998

“Did you guys order a wheelchair?”

“Well,” Poppy answered, “The travel agent said she might have one arranged for us.”

We were still in our seats, waiting for everyone else to get off the plane first. Neither Poppy nor I felt like pushing through the crowds to keep up with the line of exiting passengers. The landing wore both of us out. I surmise that we were expected up front sooner, given that our seats were so close to the front. The flight attendant came to find us, and asked Nonny if we were the Winters. She explained that there were two workers waiting to take them in wheelchairs to our connecting flight.

Sure enough, as we exited, there were two attendants smiling behind two wheelchairs. Nonny and Poppy sat down, and we all began to walk (and ride) to the next gate. We all thought it was a bit silly at first, but the airport was not only complicated to navigate, but huge. It was actually quite a good thing Nonny and Poppy did not have to walk all that way, and even better that we had two workers familiar with the layout of the airport leading the way.

The attendants were very pleasant, and spoke all of the official languages of Belgium: English, French, German and Flemish. Poppy tipped them as we got to the gate.

Most of the walk, I was trying not to laugh. Early in her ride, Nonny asked me if I wanted her to get up and walk so that I could ride in the chair. I told her not to be silly.

The whole time we were on the way, Poppy had been thumbing through his bag. Just after the attendants left us, he revealed what he was looking for, a revelation that sent Nonny into a frenzy. He could not locate the tickets to Málaga.

“Stanley! What did you do with them?”

“I thought I had them. I don't know.”

My head hurt enough without this. I was perfectly calm, as I remembered quite clearly Nonny refusing to take her connecting ticket as we boarded the plane in Chicago. In fact, I remember her telling Poppy not to lose them, and his subsequently putting them in his bag. It was only a matter of time before he found them hiding among whatever other garbage he was carrying in what were undoubtedly very messy pockets.

“Oh, Stanley! I knew this would happen! I knew you shouldn't be the one in charge of the tickets!”

Nonny's curious exclamation so easily flowed from lips that had hours ago insisted Poppy be the one in charge. Nonny then walked over to me and said,

“Oh, that Stanley! He loses everything. I knew he would. You wanna know what? It's because he insists on being in charge. He won't let me do anything,. I tell him all the time to let me handle everything so he won't mess it up, but he refuses to let me do anything.” Quite possibly the most deluded she had ever been, she continued, “That's just the way it is, though. Men won't let women be in charge. That's just how women end up getting treated in our world.”

I had little patience for Nonny's sudden feminist diatribe, but managed to tell her, “It's okay. Relax. I know they're in his bag somewhere, so we'll find them. And even if we don't, we'll just talk to the people at the gate. They'll have us in the computers. All we lost are the boarding passes. We're already checked in.”

I'm not sure if she understood what I had just explained, but it had the desired effect. She calmed down, and headed off to the bathroom. By the time she returned, Poppy had located the tickets, along with several napkins he had stashed away from the deli with the obnoxious counter clerks.

While we were waiting, we purchased three cans of Sprite, one for each of us. Each one cost two American dollars, expensive for miniature cans not even 12 ounces in volume. At least, though, the change we received was in Belgian currency, thus adding to the collection of foreign coins that has been sitting in one of my travel bags for two years.

I was beginning to feel really tired. It was 9:30 am in Belgium, 3:30 am in New York City, and I had been awake and on the go since 8:00 am. Eventually, the line formed to board the plane, and an announcement played over the P.A. System.

“Stanley!” Nonny yelled, “I don't know what they're saying!” Poppy explained that this was to be expected, since the announcement was in French.

An English couple stood just behind us with an adorable little dog, reminding me how much I already missed Ziggy, the world's most adorable dog.

I had mixed feelings about boarding another plane. I really wanted to get in the chair and fall asleep, but I wasn't looking forward to another painful landing.

Eventually, we boarded, and Poppy was rid of the tickets, and thankful that he would never have to search for them again. As we boarded, I noticed our seats were located in row one. Terrific. Nonny was already complaining that the airplane was just too tiny for safety, and that she wanted us not to board at all. She had also complained that all the people in line seemed like far too many for such a minuscule aircraft. (Actually, it did seem that way.) Discovering that we were as close to the front as we could possibly be would likely exacerbate her worry.

When we reached our seats, though, Nonny stopped complaining, and I started. Row one, of course, had no seats in front of it. Which meant that, once again, I did not have a seat in front of me under which to put my carry-on luggage. In fact, there was nothing in front of me but a wall, meaning my carry-on bag, and thus my CDs, had to be stored in a closet to which, I was told, I would not have access during the flight. In order to stop complaining, I rationalized that the inconvenience did not matter, since I only wanted to sleep anyway.

For some reason, I was not sitting next to Nonny and Poppy. I had a window seat next to a French couple, and Poppy had the window seat on the other side. Nonny was next to him. So, I just sat back singing Weird Al songs to myself, closed the window shades, and zonked out.

I was awakened all too soon by a flight attendant who asked me if I would like something to drink. I tried to fall right back a sleep after telling her no, but it took a while, as I had become aware of the awkward position in which I was sitting. After what seemed like only a few minutes, the flight attendant woke me again.

“J'nis glab vezhenshindal?” she asked.

“Oh, sorry, I only speak English.”

“Oh. Did you order a vegetarian meal?”

“Oh, actually, yes. I did.” I was under the impression that my vegetarian meal requests had not been communicated to any of the flights. Somehow, these folks got the message. And when the flight attendant brought this special food to me, I wished that they had not.

Their idea of a vegetarian meal was a plate of string beans, plain rice and two black blobs I could not identify. The dish was served cold, and topped with a heaping mound of mayonnaise. I swallowed a scoop of rice and beans, and daringly bit into the black lumps. Nauseated, I turned my head to the right, and noticed that the meal came with a plain roll. I munched on it for a second or two, and then pushed the seat back as far as it would go (a grand total of three inches), and closed my eyes.

“What would you like to drink?” asked the flight attendant upon seeing my eyes shut.

“A big cup of sleep,” I responded.

I managed to sleep until the landing, and only awoke upon feeling my sinuses inflating again. The pain was not nearly as bad as the previous flight, but it hurt. At least this time, I was prepared for it.

Actually, I was getting excited. We were in Spain! I would get to practice my Spanish! It was going to be so much fun! Even the most routine acts – going to dinner, going shopping, driving around – would all be turned into adventures as we did them in another language.

As it turns out, I needed to use my Spanish immediately. Again, we encountered two more attendants smiling behind wheelchairs, waiting for Nonny and Poppy.

“Siéntate, Señor,” said one of them to Poppy, who stared at him as though he had just muttered something confoundedly stupid. “Siéntate,” he repeated.

“No entienden Español,” I explained,

Poppy eventually figured out that the wheelchair was for him. The attendants spoke no English, which did not bother (or even occur to) Nonny, who chatted happily with the gentleman pushing her through the airport, telling stories about her home in Chicago. To his credit, he smiled and nodded his head in a manner that credibly feigned interest.

I chatted with Poppy's attendant. I understood most of what he was saying. Poppy had me ask him to take him to the bathroom. They dropped us off, and mentioned that they would return in a few minutes.

Oddly, the section of the airport in which we now found ourselves had two ladies' rooms, but only one men's, and the men's room was being cleaned by a nasty little woman who refused to let Poppy in. She pointed to the small women's rooms, and when Poppy asked whether she was sure that was okay, she began to yell at him in rapid-fire Spanish, the way Ricky yelled at Lucy on her eponymous sitcom. Naturally, I understood none of her blathering. After she calmed down (or at least stopped talking), I told her politely that we didn't understand her if she talked too fast. Aggravated, she led us to a one-room bathroom reserved for disabled people. When she returned to her cleaning post, she also opened one of the women's rooms, and directed any passing male to enter it.

As we were waiting for Poppy, Nonny decided to strike up a conversation with this grouch, who, understandably, stared at Nonny as though she were crazy.

Thankfully, she was not the typical Spaniard. I remembered the Barcelonans as a very patient, helpful and friendly people, and I was pleased to discover later in our trip that, bathroom troll notwithstanding, the Andalucians were pretty much same. Including the attendants, who had just come back from wherever they had gone.

Originally, we stood at the wrong baggage claim. It was somewhat unnerving, what with watching an entire airplane's worth of luggage stream out not including ours, but it did not take much for the attendants to figure out what had happened. Apparently, all bags from outside Europe were to be claimed in an entirely separate section. We found all of our bags but one, a small blue bag of Poppy's that didn't seem to make it. Oh, man! Why is this happening? Only ONE bag didn't make it? I found the information desk, and was explaining what had happened when, all of a sudden, the blue bag, the very last one off the plane, popped out.

Poppy then tipped the very helpful attendant in the only currency he had, American. Although they accepted it with a smile, Nonny shrieked, “Stanley! Why didn't you give him Spanish money?!”

“How would I have Spanish money before getting into the country to make an exchange?”

“Oh, Stanley, you should have had it ready.” I was thankful to have fallen asleep on the plane. She continued, “Do you even know where to go to rent the car? Oh, Stanley, how do you do these things?”

“Karen knows, so quiet down!”

Indeed, I did know. Not only had I asked the attendant, but there was a huge sign, in English, above Nonny's head that pointed toward Avis car rentals. We made it there, and Poppy and I rented the car. Our travel agent had already written out the directions we needed to take to get to the place we'd be staying. The guy behind the Avis desk spoke perfect English, and went over the route with us. It all seemed very simple to me, so we marched off to the car.

Nonny had insisted that the car be very, very big. I understood why when I saw their luggage appear at the baggage claim. They had brought so much with them, one might think they were moving to Spain. It took us a few different tries to solve the jigsaw puzzle the bags and the car presented for us, but we managed to get everything into the trunk except one bag, which sat with Nonny in the back seat. We all got in the car.

Here it is! We're in Spain! We're ready! We're off! (You can see this coming, right?)

And the stupid car wouldn't start. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was going on, but the stupid car just wouldn't start. The engine just wouldn't turn over.

“Stanley! The battery's dead!” Nonny, of course, had no idea what she was talking about. And Poppy told her so. “Then what's the problem, Stanley?” Poppy explained that we didn't know, but that the connection to start the car wasn't staying. “Well, Stanley, I think you should get out and change the battery.” Poppy looked at me, and told me to ignore her.

We walked back to the Avis desk – a rather long walk – and discovered that the worker who had helped us had left.

“What was the guy's name?” Poppy asked me, “We should ask for him. He was very helpful.”

“Javier,” I answered.

“Javier with an X?” Poppy asked.

What? But I didn't have time to ponder why Poppy cared how his name was spelled, as we had reached the desk by that time.

“Hi,” I said, “We can't seem to start our car.”

Unfortunately, the man to whom I spoke was not Javier with an X. He laughed at us, with a look on his face that let us know foreigners like us typically couldn't start the car. “It's because you opened it wrong,” he said.

“Okay. So, what do I need to do?”

“Did you open it with the remote control?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you open anything with the key?”

“Just the trunk.”

“Just? Well, there you go. Now you can't get the car started.” He laughed again.

“Okay, I opened the trunk with the key. Now what?”

“Now, you can't start the car.”

I was beginning to lose my patience. “Are you telling me that there is no way this car will ever start again? That it's out of commission for your business because I ruined it by using its key?”

“Heh heh” he laughed sarcastically, “No. You just shouldn't have used that key for the trunk is all,” How many times was he going to explain what I did wrong before he explained what to do next?

“What do I need to do to start the car now?” I asked, my impatience beginning to show.

“You need to open it right,” he said, explaining nothing.

“Okay, look,” I quipped, “Tell this to me like I'm a three-year-old. What steps do I need to take in order to get the car started?”

Finally, he said, “First, lock every door. Then lock the trunk. Then hit the unlock button on the remote control. Don't touch anything, and then the car will start. We have it this way so that it's difficult to steal.”

“Well,” I said, “It would have been nice if someone had bothered to tell us this when we first got here.”

Though he didn't deserve it, I thanked him. On the way back to the garage, Nonny asked Poppy whether they were going to get us a new battery.

Having returned to the car, Poppy helped Nonny into the back seat not taken by a bag. Upon doing so, he noticed a small scratch on the door. He wanted to walk all the way back to tell the jerk who laughed at us so that we wouldn't be charged for the damage. I tried to convince him that it wouldn't matter, but he was unpersuaded. So, he reopened Nonny's door.

“We need to get out again, Shirlee.”

“I can't get out, Stanley!” Nonny yelled.

“Why not?”

“I'm stuck. The seatbelt won't unhook.”

Good grief, can't ONE thing in Spain go smoothly?

Somehow, rather than clicking the seatbelt into the big hole designed to accept it, Nonny managed to jam it into into the tiny slot behind it. And now, it was stuck.

It took us a while to unhook her, but our struggle serendipitously caught the attention of a nearby Avis attendant, who wandered over to us. Poppy was able to point out the damage to him, and he officially told us not to worry about it.

Finally, we were in the car, buckled in correctly, and we were off. Poppy rode shotgun, and held the directions in his hand. He was to be the navigator. The directions were rather simple. We had to get on a freeway, and head towards Cadiz. All that was necessary was to watch the signs to stay on the same freeway, pass three towns, and find the signs for our exit. Along the way, there were some landmarks to reassure us we had not merged onto an incorrect road.

Now, if you know my grandparents, you can imagine what this ride was like. I told Poppy that all I needed him to do was to list off each direction one-by-one as we came to the proper points and landmarks. Naturally, this did not transpire ideally.

We found the freeway, and merged into traffic. Not two minutes into the ride, Poppy was asleep in the front seat. The scenery was beautiful, filled with hills and mountains, and we were right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. All well and good, but I did need my navigator. I suppose I should have taken the directions from his hand, and completed the ride without his help. It would have been much easier. I know, though, that Poppy would insist on helping, so I woke him up.

And the rest of the ride was spent like this:

Me: Pops? You there?

Poppy: Huh?

Nonny: Stanley! What are you doing? You're supposed to be telling Karen!

Me: It's okay, I just need to know the next town we're supposed to pass.

Nonny: What? I can't hear you, Stanley!

Poppy: I didn't say anything. Karen needs the name of a town.

Nonny: We don't know which town we're going to?

Poppy: Shirlee, you quiet down!

Me: Heh, everything's fine. Nobody's lost. Just tell me the name of the first town we're supposed to pass.

Nonny: We passed it?

Me: No, Nonny, everything's fine. What's the first town, Poppy?

Poppy: The first . . . uh . . . let me see . . . it's . . . oh, here it is . . . Finger.

Me: Finger?

Poppy: Finger.

Me: Finger-town?

Poppy: I think so.

Me: Could you spell it?

Nonny: Stanley, what are you doing? You're going to get us lost!

Poppy: F-U-E-N . . . I'm trying to tell Karen the direction!

Nonny: Well, why don't you?

Poppy: I would if you'd stop interrupting me!

Nonny: Oh, Stanley!

Poppy: F-U-E-N-G-I-R-O-L-A.

Me: Okay.

Nonny: What? Are we there?

Me: No, no. We have a long while to go.

Nonny: Did you hear that, Stanely? We have a long while! Stanley?!?!?!

Poppy had fallen asleep again.

Poppy: What? Um, after the arch, turn . . .

Me: That's okay, Poppy, the arch is the very last landmark we need. We're fine for now.

Nonny: Stanley, you're not watching the beautiful scenery! Why aren't you watching? Isn't it beautiful?

It was beautiful. Actually, it was reminiscent of California's Pacific Coast Highway. Mountains and sea. To make it perfect, the weather was beautiful as well. It was in the high seventies, and the sun was shining. It truly was La Costa del Sol.

And Poppy was missing it. He had fallen asleep again.

Me: Poppy? Pops?

Poppy: Huh? Oh, sorry. After the arch, go through . . .

Me: Not quite at the arch, Pops. What comes after Fuengirola?

Nonny: Stanley! What is that?!?!

Poppy: What's what?

Nonny: That thing by the water.

Poppy: What? I don't know. How should I know? I have to navigate, Shirlee.

Nonny: Well, then why aren't you, Stanley?

Poppy: What?

Me: Heh, I just need to know the next town so I can follow the signs.

Poppy: It says to get off after the arch.

Nonny: We don't know when we are supposed to get off?

Me: Everything's fine. The arch is the last thing we see before we exit. Poppy, what town comes after Finger?

Poppy: Oh, after Finger? Looks like Andriol or something.

Me: Okeedoke. We're moving along fine. We're on the right freeway.

Nonny: You see, Stanley, everything is fine.

There was a long strip of road on which I could finally relax and just drive. I knew what I was looking for, it wasn't for a while, and I could enjoy the scenery. My enjoyment was short-lived, however, as Poppy had fallen asleep again, and I needed to get the sun out of my eyes. As I took the shade off its hook, it made a snapping sound. The snap alerted Nonny to an imaginary danger.

Nonny: [GASP!] Oh, no! Oh, no! Stanley!!!

Poppy: What? Huh? Get off at the arch . . .

Me: It's okay, I don't need directions. That sound was just the sun blocker, Nonny. We're doing fine.

Nonny: Oh, okay. You see, Stanley. I'm perfectly calm with Karen driving.

Poppy: That's what you call calm, huh?

Nonny: Well at least I'm not asleep. I've never seen such a thing, Stanley.

Poppy: Shirlee, why don't you just keep quiet and just let Karen drive the car. You think she's bad now, Karen? If I were driving, we'd never hear the end of it.

In her old age, Nonny had grown quite whiny. She refuses to do anything for herself, and is always unsatisfied with the way someone does it for her. As a car passenger, she assumes that each car ride she takes will be her last. To be fair, that's not an entirely unreasonable assumption when Poppy takes the wheel, but for the sake of mental stability, it's probably best for passengers not to concentrate too hard on their impending doom. Whatever, though. Good old Nonny. She loved me, and Poppy. And we loved her too.

Poppy had fallen back asleep, and we made it to the much ballyhooed arch.

Me: Pops? Poppy?

Nonny: Oh, Stanley! For crying out loud!

Poppy: What? Shirlee, you keep quiet!

In his old age, Popy seems to have lost his patience with Nonny. He openly picked on her throughout this trip, action I was not accustomed to seeing. He tells her straight out to “keep quiet” or even “shut up” when that's what he wants. Whatever, though. Naturally. My loving grandparents. Fit for a comic strip.

Me: Well, we're at the arch. What next?

Poppy: What arch?

Nonny: You don't see the arch?

Poppy: I see it. Oh. Oh yeah. The arch.

Nonny: Oh, Stanley!

Me: So? What next?

The next direction was rather puzzling for us ugly Americans. We were to find the nearest “slip road” after a particular sign. Freeways in Spain have two types of exits – Cambio de Sentidos (roundabouts used to turn around, and head on the same freeway in the opposite direction) and slip roads, which not only exited onto surface streets, but which actually led you right back to the freeway if you stayed on them too long. I wasn't sure what a slip road was, so I exited at what I hoped was the proper point.

We ended up at a closed store. Nonny almost flipped when I mentioned that we weren't entirely sure where we were. I said that I thought we had gone too far, and that we needed to turn around.

“Is that because you weren't obeying the speed limit?” Nonny asked. I had mentioned earlier that I didn't know what the speed limit signs looked like, but after a short while, I figured out that the numbers on the signs written in black with a red circle around it were speed limit signs. They ranged from 80 to 120 kilometers per hour. I was following them just fine, but I still had no idea what Nonny meant. I think she just wanted to feel like she was putting in her two cents, even if her two cents amounted to gobbledygook.

“We just need to find out how to turn around,” I said, hoping it wouldn't prove too difficult a task.

Luckily, we didn't have to at all. Upon driving just a few meters further, we located our resort. I had taken the correct slip road after all.

Poppy and I went to the front desk. The pleasant woman with the British accent recognized the name Winter.

The trip was over. The vacation was about to begin.

Videos

2009-05-23T02:01:00.001-07:00

The Shwinman Show

The FuckIt List

Movie Reviews

2009-05-23T02:00:00.002-07:00

Full Reviews

The Haunting in Connecticut 0 - -
A Perfect Getaway 4 ~

Rankings by Year

My Movie Ranking System

Musings

2009-05-23T02:00:00.001-07:00

Two Dumb Memes

Fixing the United States Government

Arrogance

Hello, We're Morons

From the Mind of Ms. Rhee D. Kulous

Looking to the Future

Top Ten Differences Between Progressives and Conservatives

Stupid Things Seemingly Believed by . . .

True Stories

2009-05-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

From Here to There with Non & Pop

A Horse Is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

Showdown with a Bureaucrat

The Sunniest Cocaine Ring

Those Aren't Vicoden!

Hello, We're Morons

2009-05-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

I distinctly remember kids in my high school who, when my history teacher launched a forlorn attempt at serious discussion of current events, insisted that they had the answers to all the world's problems. Everything was just so simple. Problems in the Middle East? Just nuke the place. Parents having problems controlling their kids? Just beat the hell out of them. (It probably did not occur to these oafs that they would likely be on the receiving end of such beatings.) Government spending too much on welfare? Just stop spending it, and let the leaches die. They weren't kidding. And now, they seem to control the media.

Yes, talk radio and talk video (I just can't bring myself to call it television news) are replete with moronic hosts whose reasoning is so breathtakingly simplistic my calling it "reasoning" should be a felony. Their blather rarely amuses me, but when I saw this Media Matters' report, I just had to embed the video.

Here. Watch a couple of class acts arguing that carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the environment because [brace yourselves] we breathe it. This is on par with arguing that fecal matter must be a nutritious food source, since it starts off inside our digestive tracts, but they say it. They say it seriously. They say it mocking all those silly scientists who think otherwise.

Hey, Glen! I have a suggestion: Find a see-through plastic bag, place it over your head, tape the edges securely around your neck, and then explain - for as long as you can - how carbon dioxide cannot harm you.

For anyone seriously interested in learning about climate change (and many other scientific issues), please do check out potholer54's most excellent series on YouTube. Here's a good example debunking one persistent climate change myth.

Stupid Things Seemingly Believed by . . .

2009-05-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Modern Progressives

1. Free speech is so important that all opinions should be protected unless they are really offensively racist.

2. The "free exercise of religion" and "no religious test" clauses proscribe all questions about a candidate's religious faith, even if acting on the tenets of that faith while in office could endanger the citizens of our country.

3. The fact that the founders might not have been able to foresee modern circumstances, such as nuclear terrorism, does not excuse ignoring the Bill of Rights, except in the case of the Second Amendment, since the founders could not have foreseen the kinds of automatic weapons now on our streets.

Modern Conservatives

1. Torturing our enemies like a banana republic protects America. Prosecuting government officials who commit torture, however, would turn America into a banana republic.

2. Empirical reality should be determined by plebiscite unless a majority of voters do not favor conservative facts, in which case everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.

3. As long as a politician professes to believe that a deity has deemed certain sexual activities to be immoral, and thus punishable by law, that politician may engage in those activities with impunity.

4. Escalating war throughout the Middle East is a glorious sign of stability's approach; two men kissing is an apocalyptic omen of western civilization's demise.

5. The Constitution must be interpreted strictly as written, except for the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, which should be considered meaningless dead letter.

Modern Libertarians

1. Government is the sole threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

2. Maintaining individual liberty means maintaining the sovereignty of local jurisdictions, even if local jurisdictions violate individual liberty.

3. The impoverished worker and the corporate executive who employs him but denies him a living wage and health benefits are equally free as long as the government leaves them both alone.

Movies I've Seen in 2009

2009-05-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here are the movies I've seen so far this year, along with the rankings I give them. I'll add full reviews when I have time. :)

Click here for an explanation of my ranking system.

A Serious Man 7 + +

The Informant! 7 + +

Adventureland 7 + +

Sugar 7 +

Up in the Air 7 +

Up 7 + +

Avatar 7 ~ ~

Inglourious Basterds 7 ~ ~

The Hangover 6 + +

Duplicity 6 + +

Next Day Air 6 + +

District 9 6 +

World's Greatest Dad 6 +

The Men Who Stare at Goats 6 +

State of Play 6 +

(500) Days of Summer 6 ~

The Fantastic Mr. Fox 6 +

Paranormal Activity 6 +

Coraline 6 ~ ~

Management 6 ~ ~

Sunshine Cleaning 6 ~ ~

Whatever Works 6 -

Star Trek 6 -

Easy Virtue 5 +

Public Enemies 5 +

The International 5 ~

The Uninvited 5 ~

X-Men Origins: Wolverine 5 ~

17 Again 5 -

Couples Retreat 5 -

Extract 4 +

A Perfect Getaway 4 ~

An Education 4 ~ ~

Funny People 4 ~ ~

Bruno 4 -

The Twilight Saga: New Moon 4 -

Armored 4 -

Passengers 4 -

Surrogates 3 ~ ~

Whiteout 3 -

Taken 3 -

2012 3 -

The Box 3 - -

Angels and Demons 3 -

Law Abiding Citizen 2 - -

The Proposal 2 - -

Did You Hear about the Morgans? 2 -

Orphan 1 - -

The Haunting in Connecticut 0 - -

The Sunniest Cocaine Ring, Part 3

2009-05-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

None of the many and varied people who lived on our floor was at all enthused at the prospect of Sunny's return. But one of our floormates, our very good friend Simon, smiled with delight upon hearing the news. A less familiar person might have mistaken Simons's facial expression for genuine affection for Sunny, but we had come to know Simon as a rather sinister social opportunist. We knew that his grin was betraying some devious idea he had yet to share with us.

Simon was actually a really decent guy when he wanted to be. If he liked you, you had a devoted friend for life, who would help you in whatever way he could. But if you crossed him, you were doomed to suffer whatever torments his diabolically clever brain could imagine, and Simon never hesitated to cross that boundary line most people would instinctively recognize as "too far."

Of course, with Sunny "MOVING BACK IN TOMORROW" there wasn't much time for Simon to plan any truly elaborate mischief. Ever resourceful, though, he somehow recruited most of the floormates that night, and set up shop in our room the next morning.

Between breakfast and Sunny's return, Simon stole from the mess hall a carton of plastic baggies, each of which he began filling with the contents of stolen packets of salt and granulated sugar. He sat at Other Karen's desk, on which he placed rolls of dollar bills and my hand-held mirror. He emptied several sugar packets onto my mirror, and proceded to scrape the sugar into lines with his school identification card.

Naturally, none of this would have appeared authentic to anyone who knew anything about the appearance of actual cocaine and the behavior of its users. More than one of our floormates expressed that very concern.

"Don't worry," Simon admonished, "It'll work. This girl is the most naive and sheltered little thing I've ever met in my life. It will frighten her, and it will be hilarious."

Not everyone was convinced. Some people just didn't think that anyone who had lived for 18 years in the vicinity of Berkeley, California would buy this rouse for a minute. Some people thought the opposite, that Sunny might actually be so naive that she wouldn't have any idea what was supposed to be transpiring, and wouldn't know enough to be frightened at all. Others worried that the pesky moralist might immediately call the cops, while still others feared that we had mistaken naivete for outright pathology and predicted that Sunny would murder us in a psychotic blood bath.

Most of us, though, were just plain confused as to what Simon thought he was doing anyway. What exactly was pretending to do drugs supposed to do beyond inspire some very temporary fear or anger? And what was the point of that?

But there are a couple things you should know about Simon. First, he had a talent for improvisational acting, which he had honed not through any formal training, but by talking his way out of most of the trouble into which he routinely cornered himself. Second, while he had never used any controlled substance besides alcohol in his entire life (and still has not to this very day), in our freshman year of college he very much looked like a junkie. With his then-long hair, a penchant for sleeping late, and an aversion to shaving, Simon's look smacked of Judd Nelson's character John Bender in the classic 80's movie, The Breakfast Club.

When Sunny entered her room, only to find a strung-out weirdo lining cocaine on a mirror with a nearby, hovering group of eager onlookers, a look of sheer terror paled her already pasty-white face. As if on cue, she lost her grip on her suitcase, which fell to the ground with a resounding thud, and the heads of Simon and his cohorts turned simultaneously to gaze at the intruder.

Sunny stood in the doorway, frozen like the proverbial deer in headlights, and Other Karen and I surprised ourselves by rather instinctively taking advantage of her position.

"Close the fucking door!!!!! Are you fucking crazy!!! Close the fucking door!!!" we whisper-yelled in an apparently obvious state of panic. We ran toward Sunny, nudged her out of the way, and slammed the door loudly. "Damn," Other Karen told Sunny, "What are you trying to do, get us all killed?"

Sunny remained in frozen silence, appearing to have forgotten how to breathe. Her eyes fixated on Simon, who was staring back at her with an eerie and horrifying calmness. Just then a loud bang on the door jolted Sunny out of her pose, and Simon emerged from behind the desk. He continued to stare at her silently as he approached the door with a plastic baggie filled with sugar and salt. When he opened it, floormate Jen handed him a few dollars in exchange for the baggie, and thanked Simon before he closed the door again.

As Simon walked back to Other Karen's desk, one of the onlookers said, "Jeez, Simon, how many flyers did you hand out already?"

"Hey," Simon responded, "Not in mixed company. You know better." Simon sat back down and resumed staring at Sunny, who by now was sitting on her bed and unsuccessfully attempting to hide her obvious and profound discomfort.

"I'll guard the door," said one of the large, buff male floormates, who then walked in front of the closed door signaling that no one was going in or out without his permission. Over the next several minutes, one by one, all sorts of floormates knocked on the door to exchange cash for white powder bags, a couple of them muttering something about distribution problems and clients who needed to be "taught the hard way" how to honor the "code of silence."

"All right. That's enough for today," Simon ordered. "Everyone but the Karens and Sunny get out now." As commanded, the onlookers made their exits. Simon turned to us, asking, "Well, you girls live with her, what do you recommend?" We had no idea what to say. Nobody had written a script. Other Karen and I just stood there. Frankly, we were simply trying not to laugh. Having elicited no response, Simon walked over to Sunny's bed, sat down beside her, and put his arm around her. She reacted like a skiddish kitten, and tried to squirm from his grasp. She was sweating, and trying to say something, but couldn't quite spit out the words.

"It doesn't look good for you, does it now?" Simon asked Sunny. She was clearly terrified beyond anything we could have imagined. Simon perceived that Other Karen and I were beginning to feel guilty - we were approaching that "too far" boundary line - so he quickly lightened the mood.

"Heh, I'm just messin' with ya girl," he told Sunny with a smile, and she emitted a relieved, but nervous laugh. "It's all good! Join in!" Simon said gleefully, and he took Sunny by the hand and led her over to the desk. "I was just joshin', we'd never leave you out of the fun. Got any questions?"

Amazingly, Sunny regained a modicum of composure, and actually did have a question or two. She tried to keep her cool, but was markedly trepid, likely wondering just how crazy this junkie-dealer in her room really was.

"Um.....um.....heh.....um....what does that stuff do for you anyway?" Sunny asked.

"Oh, it's great," Simon said, "It just gets ya going! Picks ya up, starts your engine. Way better than your morning cup of coffee!"

"How....um....how....much does a...um...pound...I mean...um....bag of that cost?"

"Oh, man! You want a whole bag?? I mean, that's gonna cost you like a whole $20!"

With that, Other Karen and I could no longer hold it in. It was a ludicrous answer for the quantity of coke that was filling that baggie to its breaking point, and we had to turn around and cover our mouths to keep from laughing uncontrollably.

Sunny raised her hand, signaling Simon that he had misunderstood, and said, "Oh, no no no no no no no no! I wasn't asking to buy. I....uh....heh heh heh....I was just...you know....asking...wondering......curious, I mean....heh heh heh"

"Really?!?!" Simon appeared astonished. "I mean, it's great fuckin' stuff!!!"

I started to wonder how long this would go on, but upon saying that line, Simon, to the astonishment of even himself, took the act to the next level. He lowered his head toward the mirror, and proceded in earnest --- I swear that I could attest to this in a court of law with no fear of perjury --- to actually snort three long lines of granulated sugar!! I cannot even begin to imagine what thoughts were going through his head and Sunny's.

I heard a gasp of genuine surprise in Simon's voice. I turned around only to see blood dripping from his nose. Simon had snorted three lines of granulated sugar! And though it had to hurt, and though Sunny was probably on the brink of fainting, Other Karen and I ran out the door laughing like we'd never laughed before.

I'm not sure exactly how long afterwards Sunny and Simon remained in the room. Other Karen and I had planned to tell Sunny that it was all a big joke the very next day, and even to express more remorse than we actually felt.

But there would be no time.

I came home from class the next day, only to find Other Karen and Simon on one side of the room, staring at Sunny and Yoda-mom on the other. No one was speaking, and I couldn't figure out what was happening.

"We're gonna tell her, right?" I whispered.

Other Karen and Simon just smiled, shook their heads, and pointed. My eyes followed their fingers. Now this was a sight to see!

Suitcases were packed up and resting near Sunny's bed. The bed itself was stripped of its sheets, and the walls were stripped of all of Sunny's decor and Post-its. No one was speaking because Sunny and Yoda-mom were concentrating on their final scan of the room to ensure they weren't forgetting anything. I couldn't believe it - Sunny was moving out for good.

She moved out that very night. We never saw or heard from her again.

The Sunniest Cocaine Ring, Part 2

2009-05-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

If nothing else, I at least became confident that whatever arguments arose among me, Other Karen and Sunny, they would not involve a team of Other Karen and Sunny against me. However, I don't think that I could have predicted with any modicum of accuracy whatsoever what was to transpire over the course of the semester, even after having witnessed the spectacle of Sunny and Yoda-mom planting their makeshift territory-claiming flags.

Other Karen and I actually got along very well. We were both aspiring Political Science majors, enjoyed discussing politics even when we disagreed with each other, had similar tastes in rock music, reveled in the freedom of college life, and quickly made friends with all of our neighbors who lived on the third floor of Building #7. Sunny, in stark contrast, listened to nothing but violin concertos, readily expressed moral condemnation for any music not of the classical genre, paraded the hall every night in - I kid you not - feety-pajamas carrying a cup of= hot cocoa with marshmallows, and continually reminded our neighbors that she considered them heathens and huns.

One day, without notifying either of her roommates, Sunny rearranged all the furniture in our room in a design more to her liking. She dismantled the bunk beds, and moved all the dressers, end tables and desks, and placed them in truly bizarre spots all over the room's floor. Her motives for this action remain a mystery, but the end result was clear: what had once seemed like a wide veranda fit for housing up to five people now seemed more like a counterintuitive labyrinth designed to test the cognitive capacities of laboratory mice. It became largely impossible to leave objects like book bags or shoes anywhere on the floor, not even in corners, and when anything fell on the floor, it was next to impossible to navigate the maze of furniture to retrieve it. Sunny countered each and every one of our diplomatic requests to move the furniture into a more satisfying arrangement for everyone with some strange proverb or phrase she had learned to parrot during what must have been a very warped and twisted childhood.

Now, I realize that phrases such as, "College is serious business, Buckos" are basically benign, even when stated by authority figures. Please understand, however, that when spoken by this lunatic with unrelenting repetition and Mary Poppins cheer, they take on a quality nothing short of maddening. I mention this only to plea in advance that I not be judged too harshly for displaying what I am about to reveal: a distinct and improper lack of sympathy on my part for a fellow human being.

About one month into the semester, I returned home from class to find Sunny lying on her bed, writhing in agony. When I asked her what was wrong and whether I could help, she told me a story at which I admit I should not have laughed. But I laughed anyway. Sunny had been taking a martial arts class at the campus recreational sports facilities. At a session earlier that day, the instructor asked her to take part in a demonstration of a new move that he wanted to teach his students. Sunny would soon regret obliging, as the demonstration apparently involved the instructor's lifting her off the ground, and hurling her back down, causing her to fracture the very same bone over which Yoda-mom had flown into a fit of hysteria upon seeing her daughter
perched atop the bunk beds. (See? It's funny, isn't it?)

Even though I giggled a bit, I did still ask if I could do anything for her, but she told me it wasn't necessary. Yoda-mom was coming to take her back home to San Francisco from where she would commute to class. Yoda-mom wanted to tend to her daughter's wounds while she recuperated from the injury. (I imagine that Yoda-mom also wanted to subject Sunny to repeated verbal Chinese translations of, "I knew this would happen," and "I told you so.") Personally, I didn't see the logic in thinking that it would be easier to commute across the bay every day with a broken leg than it would to simply remain in the dorms, but I certainly wasn't about to argue with her. She was leaving - indefinitely - thereby removing one of our dorm's biggest impediments to a continual, good time.

Sunny's long absence was indeed met with near-universal jubilee. Music was blasted, alcohol consumed, and decadence indulged in - not with increased regularity (it was always ongoing), but with newfound confidence that the resident mood-spoiler wouldn't be interrupting to express her moral disdain. For our part, Other Karen and I celebrated by relaxing our standards of cleanliness, allowing the floor to clutter and simply shoving any furniture that got in our way.

We were finally free to party, have friends and boyfriends sleep over, rent R-rated movies, and everything else associated with the American post-adolescent's conception of ideal freedom - all for the first time since Sunny had ruined our original hopes. It was fantastic. Alas, it was not to last very long.

Despite indulging ourselves, we actually were quite respectful to the property Sunny had left behind. We took out no sort of revenge on any of her stuff, and protected it all from damage when we held parties in our room. Our benevolence only made it all the more frustrating when Sunny would make an occasional appearance to collect a text book, because she always saw fit to complain about the most inconsequential of indiscretions.

Sunny complained, for instance, that we had committed the mortal sin of removing one of her pencils from its proper place - her monogrammed cocoa mug - and laid it upon her desk. That it had been used to take a telephone message for her only made her upset that that message had been written upon one of her sacred Post-it notes, property we apparently had no right to use.

She complained that we owned a doorstop, which we must have been using for, in her words, "the altogether immoral purpose" of holding our door open so that people could walk in and out to talk to us while we were inside. When she would stop by the room to collect something and we weren't there, she would complain by sticking Post-it notes all over the walls with such classic messages, as, "A clean room is a happy room, girls!" and "I refuse to pay for the chipped paint beside the arrow on this Post-it note ----->"

About a month after she had broken her leg, our worst fears were realized. Sunny had left another Post-it note, on which was written, "I AM MOVING BACK IN TOMORROW. CLEAN UP!" It is disappointing, to say the least, when a college kid's dreams of freedom are crushed before she even gets a taste. But anyone who seeks to extinguish that freedom after it has spread like the Chicago fire had better have tremendous resolve. And tremendous resolve was a spirit with which Sunny was most certainly not possessed.

Click for Part 3

The Sunniest Cocaine Ring

2009-05-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

From my first semester of college. Names have been changed to protect the "innocent." ;)

The end of every summer is marked by hordes of dreamy-eyed 18-year-olds eagerly and enthusiastically leaping without looking into the next chapter of their lives as college freshmen. Newly emancipated from my parents' home, I was certainly no exception, though my excitement was tempered slightly by a notice I had received from UC Berkeley's Housing Office a few weeks before. It informed me that I had been assigned to one of Clark Kerr Dormitory's "Triples" - rooms that housed three roommates, as opposed to the far-more-common "Doubles," which housed only two. Not only had I heard that an increase in dorm room tenants was hardly ever accompanied by a proportionate increase in dorm room size, but I couldn't help obsess about the troublesome nature of human relations and the number 3.

If my prior experience with human beings in general, and roommates in particular, were telling, inevitable lifestyle clashes led to irreconcilable differences, which in turn led to irresolvable fights. Throw in the number 3, and those fights were almost always two against one. And as I stared out the car windows as we approached the Clark Kerr campus, I couldn't help but worry that somehow, I would end up as the "one."

"Excited?" my mom asked, looking back at me from the shotgun seat. Her facial expression revealed her mixed emotions of pride, joy and anguish that I would not be returning home with the rest of the family at the day's end.

"What?" I blurted, somewhat startled from my day dream back into reality. "Oh, yeah! Of course!"

After ranting and swearing, as though he were genuinely surprised, about how scarce parking spaces appeared to be, my father located a spot, and my parents, brother and I all emerged, and began unloading the luggage. We followed the maps to Building #7, up three flights of stairs, and down a long hallway to the Triple that awaited me. A sign posted on the door listed all the roommates' names.

"Hah, you're kidding!" My father had just noticed that one of my roommates was apparently also named Karen.

"Wow!" I said upon opening the door. I was certainly wrong about one thing: these rooms were enormous, with enough space for probably four or five roommates. In addition, neither the other Karen nor the other roommate had arrived yet, giving me (at least in my Finders-Keepers, First-Come-First-Serve moral code) dibs on the choice of beds. Naturally, the beds numbered three - one a large single bed on one side; the remaining two, across the room, stacked one on top of the other bunk-style. I chose the lone bed, and my family began to help me unpack and set up the area around it.

Before either of my roommates had shown up, we had my choice of beds made, its adjacent dresser filled with my clothes, my computer on the nearest desk, and a bunch of posters on the closest walls. It was a beautiful end-of-summer day, the city of Berkeley appeared unlike anything I had experienced, passers-by in the hallways seemed friendly, and the little section of room I had staked out already started to feel like home. That eager and anxious enthusiasm for leaping into the next chapter of my life was resuming with pronounced intensity. This was just too awesome!

And then.........she walked in.

Sunny - roommate number 1 - whose excruciatingly annoying name perfectly captured her
cheerful disposition that both illuminated and masked her evil, and with which she
spoke every word.

Sunny opened the door, saw me and my family, raised her right hand like she was about to take an oath, and said, "Hi there! I'm Sunny!! Who are you?"

Before I could answer, her head had turned, and her gleeful smile and squinting eyes had morphed into wide circles, and she gasped as though she had just struck gold.

"Bunk beds!!!!" she exclaimed, whereupon she skipped (yes, skipped!) over to the bunk beds, climbed to the top, and sat peering upon the room below, with her feet dangling off the edge. "This is really neat," she said, "Don't you think bunk beds are neat?"

"Oh my god, you're rooming with Pollyanna," muttered my brother under his breath, but just loudly enough for me to hear him.

As if this weren't enough to shatter my surging euphoria, into the room walked a tiny, Yoda-like woman, cackling maniacally and yelling at Sunny in Chinese. From her height, it probably appeared as though Sunny had dangerously perched herself atop Mt. Everest, and her yelling increased by the nanosecond in both volume and pitch until it was nothing but a series of indecipherable shrieks and screeches. Just when it appeared as though those shrieks would continue interminably, the Yoda-like creature turned, pointed at me, and said - in a voice altogether transformed into something more akin to that of the actual Yoda - "YOU!"

"Me?" I asked, looking around the room with the forlorn hope that perhaps she was speaking to an imaginary friend standing on my shoulder.

"Yes, you. You. Right now. You! You switch beds with Sunny."

"Excuse me?" I said incredulously.

"I say switch beds with Sunny. You! You right now! Right now! Do it! My daughter is in no condition to be climbing up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down. She broke her leg last year, and she is in no condition to be climbing up and down and up and down and up......"

I had to interrupt her. "Yes, um, I understand."

I didn't really, since I clearly recalled the ease with which Sunny had moments ago skipped over to, and ascended, the bunk bed structure, but I couldn't think of anything else to say to get this overly cautious and insane little woman to stop babbling.

"Um, I'm sorry, but, well, we did kind of get here first, and we already have the room set up, and....well....." I gulped, hesitating to make what seemed to me to be an obvious suggestion, "....couldn't Sunny just take the bottom bunk? I mean, the other roommate hasn't arrived yet."

Sunny's mom glared at me, aiming her eyes as though they could shoot laser beams, and grunted. She turned back to Sunny to resume shrieking in Chinese. Sunny responded in kind, and my family and I watched, glancing intermittently at one another just to make sure we were all, in fact, experiencing the same strange thing.

The dorm room was shrouded in an utterly surreal ambiance as Sunny and her mom argued in a language none of us understood. After a few minutes, Sunny had climbed back down to the floor, and she and her mother went into the hallway. They reentered the room with two suitcases, one filled with clothing, and the other filled with what appeared to be a collection of newspaper clippings.

"What the hell?" my brother asked quietly.

Sunny's mom then wielded a thick, blue, permanent marker, and wrote "SUNNY" in giant, unmistakable letters on various pieces of newspaper. Apparently irked by my having claimed certain parts of the room, Sunny's mom proceeded to tape an individual, labled clipping to every single thing in the room she felt rightfully belonged to her daughter. (To this day, I still wonder whether she had packed the clippings and the marker in anticipation of this very moment.)

She stuck these makeshift signs in truly preposterous places, including the bottom bunk bed's frame, mattress and pillow, a desk, the inside of each of that desk's drawers, one of the closet doors, each of the walls inside that closet, various spots on one of the room's walls, and finally (and most inexplicably), a section of the floor. After completing her quest to claim property in her daughter's name, Yoda-mom left the room with Sunny following behind. Just before Sunny made her own exit, she turned back to me and my family, grinning sincerely, and said, "It was neat meeting you!! College life is going to be neat too! Well, bye bye!"

The door closed behind her, and my family and I sat quietly for a few moments, collectively stunned, and looking at one another as if tacitly asking, so when is it ok to start giggling? It wasn't long after that we all erupted in laughter. And it wasn't too long after the laughter had died down that the other Karen entered the room.

Unaccompanied by any family herself, she carried in her suitcase, set it on the ground, and looked around the room, understandably puzzled about its condition. One third of it was decorated as if someone already lived there. One third was barren. The other third was covered in shredded newspapers all marked "SUNNY".

"Hi," I said to her after walking toward her and extending my hand, "Confused?"

"Sort of, yes," she said, "Are you Sunny?"

"Heh, no, I'm Karen," I responded.

"Ahh. Thank god," she said, and the laughter continued.

Click here for Part 2

Those Aren't Vicoden!

2009-05-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, a while back, I had managed to crack a tooth, causing such intense pain that my partner had to bring me to the emergency room. At that time, they had given me prescriptions for narcotic painkillers. I had requested Vicoden, which I do pretty well on, especially to help me sleep when I'm in pain. It relaxes me.

Now, since I was in pain, and waiting for the Novocain injection to kick in, my partner was the one to head off to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions. Unbeknownst to me, the hospital doctors had also included a prescription for a couple of Percocet pills -- which are much, much stronger -- in case the Vicoden wasn't enough. Well, they probably did tell me that that's what they were doing, but I really didn't hear them.

It didn't matter anyway, since after a couple days, the pain went away, and I stopped taking any narcotics. I did manage to have a dentist appointment arranged, but it wouldn't be for a while, so we kept the narcotics on hand, in case any pain started returning before the appointment rolled around.

Not realizing that I never knew about the Percocet included in the prescription, my partner put all the narcotics we had left into one bottle. She figured I'd be able to tell which was which just by looking at them. Unfortunately -- or, well, hey, maybe it's kinda fortunate in a way -- they were both white pills, just in different shapes. (You can see this coming, right?)

Flash forward a couple weeks. My partner and I have to go grocery shopping, but as I was eating dinner, the tooth that was bothering me really started to hurt again. my partner asked whether we should postpone going to the store, but I figured, I'd just take one of the Vicoden we had left. I wandered into the bathroom, found the narcotics bottle, and poured out what I thought was a broken Vicoden. Instead, of course, it was actually two percocets! I promptly downed them both, and we headed off in my partner's car.

On the drive, my partner began to notice that I was acting a little weird. Slurring my words; smiling at things that really should not have brought a smile to my face, such as the "pretty, happy road signs," as I described them. She asked how many Vicoden I had taken.

"Just one, why?"

"I don't know, you're just acting really loopy. Are you just being silly on purpose?" A reasonable question, knowing me. I have stronger proclivities for silliness than most people.

"What do you mean?"

She gave up. As we exited the car in the parking lot, I was meandering all over, smiling, and saying hello to people I didn't know. My partner began to worry, but at first, just convinced herself I was putting on an act. We headed into the store, and each got our own grocery cart. Usually, we only get one for the both of us, but for reasons my partner did not understand, and which I could not explain, I insisted that I should have my own.

"Isn't that how it works?" I asked, continuing, "With having these types of wheels?"

Somewhat grateful now, my partner figured that having separate carts, meant that she didn't have to put up with my nonsense, which showed no signs of stopping. And she headed off on her own.

I then proceeded to happily wander through the store, staring at all the pretty colors. I noticed that people were looking at me, some smiling, some just trying to get out of my way. I remember thinking they were all just being friendly, and sharing in the moment with me. After all, this grocery store was looking really cool. They must see it too.

I wandered up and down every aisle, singing out loud a version of Weird Al's Melanie. I say, "a version," because I got caught in a loop, and was just repeating four lines over and over again:

Melanie, what can the problem be?
Melanie, why won't you go out with me?
I just don't understand it, why won't you return my phone calls?
Are you still mad I gave a mohawk to your cat?

At this point, people were just letting me pass them by, most of them smiling, realizing I must be under the influence of something pretty strong. Since I wasn't violent or really causing any sort of disturbance, I was never approached by any store employees.

Eventually, I met back up with my partner at the checkout aisle. Her jaw dropped, and she shot me a strange, frustrated look.

"Karen, is that really what you want to buy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Karen, that's what you want for all your groceries for this week?"

"Why not?"

"Okay, I won't argue with you."

The contents of my cart were as follows:

One enormous jug of applesauce.

Six packets of chocolate pudding.

Three packets of tapioca pudding.

Seven packets of yogurt of various flavors.

One can of some truly disgusting concoction of macaroni noodles and beef chili.

All in all, it cost about $22. I was stunned at how inexpensive it was, and said to the clerk, "Wow! Do you know that in San Francisco, this would cost several hundred dollars?" She smiled, and mentioned that she probably wouldn't be moving there any time soon, then.

Back in the car, my partner asked, "Okay, Karen, come on! What's wrong with you? I thought you were just screwing around, but seriously, I'm getting really worried."

"What do you mean?"

"We were supposed to go grocery shopping to have stuff in the house. What the hell did you buy all that for?"

"For my teeth."

"For your teeth?"

"Yeah. You know, because my teeth hurt, so I wanted stuff that would be soft to chew."

"Soft to chew? Are you expecting all of your teeth to fall out tomorrow?"

"What do you mean?"

"Okay, how many Vicoden did you take? You have to look at me and be serious. Tell me. How many?"

"Just one, I swear."

"Just one wouldn't make you act like this, sweety. You have to tell me how many."

"Hey, why are you doing this? I don't understand. Just one! It was broken, and looked like it was in a different shape or something, but I didn't take more than one pill!"

"A different shape? What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it looked more oval than usual, so I just swallowed the broken pieces. I didn't fit them together to see if they really made one perfectly sized piece."

"More oval?" She figured it out. "Sweetie! You took the Percocets!"

"Percocets? I don't like Percocets. We don't have Percocets."

"They gave you a few Percocet pills in case the Vicoden wasn't enough, don't you remember that? They told you that."

"They did?"

"Oh, geez, okay, now I get it. Let's just go home."

She got me home, and into bed, making sure I was okay. She took Quasi out for me, and I just drifted off to sleep.

And the rest is history, I guess. It was a fun experience being that high and wandering through the store singing. I was feeling euphoric. Of course, I did have to eat a lot of pudding and yogurt over the next week, but hey. That wasn't so bad. That mac'n'chili stuff, on the other hand, was awful.

Movie Ranking System

2009-05-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Beside each movie reviewed, I'll list a number (0 through 8) and a symbol (+, -, or ~). The number is supposed to represent an objective analysis of the film, while the symbol represents, subjectively, whether I liked or disliked it.

I realize that no movie review is actually objective. Naturally, whether I think a film is well done will depend on my subjective experience. Nevertheless, I think it's worthwhile to distinguish between a film's quality and my own particular preferences. After all, I can recognize the artistic merit or skill of certain movies I don't particularly enjoy. I also have a list of movies that are largely guilty pleasures, those that are not very well made, but which I enjoy nevertheless. Thus, I use a ranking system I hope conveys to readers a nuanced snapshot of my opinion even without their reading full reviews.

I approach each movie as though it has a goal, and ask whether it reached that goal, as well as how well it achieved it (or how poorly it failed). My ranking system can be understood as follows:

Pseudo-Objective Rankings

8 - Near perfect execution of a poignant piece of art.

7 - A very well done, worthwhile movie that achieved what it set out to achieve in an artistic, exceptional or innovative manner.

6 - A well done movie that achieved what it set out to achieve.

5 - A competent production, which, despite arguably achieving what it set out to, never rises above mediocrity, routine or triteness.

4 - While not incompetently produced, a movie that did not achieve what it set out to achieve because of sloppiness, miscalculations, or occasional bad writing or acting.

3 - A movie whose sloppiness, miscalculations or ubiquitous bad writing, directing or acting push it to the edge of incompetence.

2 - Marked by overall incompetence or general miscalculation.

1 - Marked by cringe-inducing incompetence or colossal miscalculation.

0 - An utterly irredeemable steaming piece of shit.

Subjective Rankings

+ + Loved it!

+ Liked it.

~ ~ Mixed Feelings

~ Neutral

- Disliked it.

- - Hated it!

The Haunting in Connecticut

2009-05-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

Ranking: 0 - -

Well, here it is: A horror movie so inept at storytelling, so incompetent at creating ambiance and atmosphere, that it must rely for its scares altogether on a seemingly interminable series of BOO! moments. Split-second, less-than-ghastly apparitions pop up with dizzying frequency on windows, in mirrors, in pictures, in the car, in the house, outside of the house, you name it. That the filmmakers would expect any but the most innocent of children to be frightened by such monotony is insulting enough, but The Haunting in Connecticut has an even more shameful agenda. It proselytizes to audience members in the apparent hope that they will not simply be scared, but scared into believing that the events depicted actually happened. In the process it begs for sympathy, offers up disturbing life lessons, and earns its rank among those select few movies that are not just awful, but irredeemable.

SPOILER WARNING: The above paragraph encapsulates my view of the movie as a whole. Major spoilers follow from here on out.

Of course, I knew walking into the theater that The Haunting had been advertised as a “true story.” Whatever. Movies with improbable plots often exploit that marketing gimmick, and experienced moviegoers know that filmmakers operate from a definition of the word “true” that can charitably be described as slippery. Besides, when the true story is a ghost story, I am not going to believe any of it anyway. For the sake of the movie, however, I am prepared to suspend disbelief for the hours its reel unspools if, at the very least, it has the decency to be entertaining. Alas, The Haunting in Connecticut has no decency at all.

Sara and Peter Campbell live the kind of unhappy life typically led by characters in syrupy, made-for-TV melodramas. Peter is a well-meaning, but abusive, sometimes sober alcoholic musician who earns a modest living at a soul crushing job he wishes he could quit. He can't, however, because his salary barely covers the expenses of feeding his family of six and the radical, experimental treatments for his eldest son Matt, the wise, brave, upbeat kid who is dying of cancer. Actually, his family of six should be a family of five, but Sara's niece, Wendy, has elected to live with her aunt, alcoholic uncle and cancer-stricken cousin because her own home life is somehow worse. Wendy's background is superfluous, though, as her job is simply to babysit her two younger cousins, Billy and Mary, who spend the movie lacking imagination as they repeatedly play hide-and-seek in places they shouldn't.

Wendy's presence allows Sara to take Matt on the long and agonizing trips back and forth to Connecticut, where he receives his therapy. On the way, she makes frequent stops to pray to god while Matt vomits. Eventually, the drives prove too much for the devoted mom and her dying-but-cheerful son, so, without consulting her husband, she rents a house near Matt's hospital. The asking price is mysteriously cheap because the house, of course, is haunted. It has a sad history as a funeral parlor about which we learn through cliché, sepia-toned flashbacks in which a demented lunatic embalms living people and snips off their eyelids. His actions anger their spirits, who seek revenge on a little boy the lunatic forced to help him, because of his ability to channel the dead and spew ectoplasm.

For reasons I didn't quite understand, Matt decides he wants to live in the creepy basement. Not long after moving in, the seemingly interminable BOO! moments begin to assault Matt and the audience. Sadly, Matt's predicament represents a missed opportunity to create a truly compelling, if not compellingly true, ghost story. If a person undergoing experimental cancer treatment begins to see dead people, how might he struggle with whether he is hallucinating? Assuming the ghosts are real, what evidence would convince an otherwise mature, grounded person of that astounding fact? How might he learn to cope even without sufficient proof?

The Haunting in Connecticut, though, peddles easy, bad answers. First, Matt and his mom choose not to tell the doctors about his visions, since they might terminate his treatment, and doctors don't really know what's best anyway. Although the doctors are upset when they learn about Matt's condition, the supposed wisdom of the decision to keep them in the dark is reinforced when Matt meets Reverend Popescu, a fellow cancer patient who, since he has religious expertise, explains why Matt should never tell his doctors what he sees. They're just blind scientists who will never understand that Matt now resides in a zone between life and death, which allows him to commingle with spirits on the other side. Or something like that.

If any of this were written well, I would gladly overlook that the movie's paradigm conflicts with everything I actually believe. After all, and despite its advertising, it's just a movie. But The Haunting in Connecticut glosses over Matt's conversion from skeptic to believer in a matter of minutes in order to barrage the audience with cheesy images, bad special effects, woeful dialogue and less-than-gentle tugs at the heartstrings. We are forced to watch the Campbell's marriage unravel as Peter falls off the wagon, and are automatically expected to sympathize with Sara when she turns to Reverend Popescu, a stranger, for help. (To whom else would she turn? Friends? Those silly doctors?)

We are then forced to watch the good reverend, an American Protestant version of the archetypal Roman Catholic, exorcism-performing priest, soothe the spirits haunting the house in Connecticut. In perhaps the most anticlimactic moment of any ghost story ever told, all Reverend Popescu must do to end the Campbell's nightmare is to take some dirt and ashes from inside the house, and bring them outside. Voila!

But that's not the real ending; the filmmakers have one last surprise, and it's so stupid it deserves to be spoiled in a movie review. No, the ghosts did not want Reverend Popescu to move a pile of dirt. They wanted Matt to burn the house down, and to remain inside with them as it is engulfed in flames. He does, but does not perish in the fire. Instead, his actions miraculously cure his cancer. Uh huh.

The Haunting in Connecticut is not just bad. It is so bad, I am hard pressed to think of any way to make it worse. I concede that, as parents struggling with alcoholism and the impending tragedy of losing a child, Virginia Madsen and Martin Donovan do admirable jobs as actors, as does Kyle Gallner as the dying Matt, but this is not to the movie's credit. Had their acting degraded, the movie would have at least lapsed into an enjoyable self-parody or camp. As it is, The Haunting expects its audience to take it as seriously as it takes itself.

None of its nonsense is believable, even as a movie. (In fact, even the eager-to-believe stenographer of the real-life Campbells is on record doubting their claims.) Desperate for our gullibility, however, the director plummets to new depths of shame by employing a transparently preachy framing device. The movie opens with Sara Campbell being interviewed for a documentary about her family's experience. It closes in the very same interview, wherein Sara looks at the audience as if she expects our incredulity, and implores that if we do not believe god works in these mysterious ways, well, we've “been warned.” Such is not the mark of an honest woman who has been traumatized, but is secure in her beliefs. It is the mark of a professional con artist who is not very good at her job. If her earlier appeal to a religious stranger is disturbing, her appeal to our fear is disgusting.

I like horror movies. I even like bad horror movies. I have even enjoyed PG-13 horror movies whose diluted intensity belittles the genre. But nothing redeems a poorly written ghost story that employs bad special effects, preaches even worse messages, and demands I believe it lest I suffer similar horrors myself. While, I cannot imagine a way to make this movie worse, I can imagine one quick way to make it better: Do the same thing to the celluloid on which it is printed that Matt did to the haunted house.

The Shwinman Show

2009-05-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Ah, my beloved pets. Ashwin the Catwin welcomes the Mayor of Meow, Noni Bones; prominent doggie on the town, Quasi; and Carbonaria the turtle.

The FuckIt List

2009-05-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

I admit that I have not seen this piece of Rob Reiner schlock, but its trailer just beckoned for a parody.

Top Ten Differences Between Progressives and Conservatives

2009-05-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

Words are slippery things. The terms "Progressive" and "Conservative" have gone through considerable semantic metamorphoses through the course of history. And so, it is necessary to capture succinctly, and in popular format, the basic concepts those labels currently embody. To wit, I give you.................

The Top 10 Modern Differences Between Progressives and Conservatives

Number 10

• Progressives want to improve America for everyone.

• Conservatives believe America is #1; improvement is impossible by definition.

Number 9

• Progressives believe in facts.

• Conservatives believe that anything that does not explicitly favor them is biased against them.

Number 8

• Conservatives would rather die than have gay soldiers help win the wars they start.

• Progressives would let any qualified citizen serve in the military, but would rather not start wars.

Number 7

• Progressives manipulate language to elucidate their own opinions.

• Conservatives manipulate language to distort progressives' opinions.

Number 6

• Progressives dislike hypocrisy.

• Conservatives dislike Progressives' hypocrisy.

Number 5

• Progressives believe that protecting life means protecting people who are alive.

• Conservatives believe that protecting life means protecting people who are in hopeless vegetative states, microscopic cells, flags, virginity and ignorance.

Number 4

• Progressives criticize the media because they don't like how it behaves.

• Conservatives criticize the media because they don't like that it exists.

Number 3

• Progressives believe that everyone is entitled to the pursuit of happiness.

• Conservatives believe that everyone is entitled to the pursuit of happiness except women, minorities, gays, atheists, Muslims, pot smokers, immigrants, foreigners, the impoverished and the Clintons.

Number 2

• Conservatives believe that 9/11 "changed everything," so we must do anything not let the terrorists win.

• Progressives believe that convincing ourselves that 9/11 changed anything lets the terrorists win.

And, the Number 1 Modern Difference Between Progressives and Conservatives

• Progressives believe that "we are all in it together."

• Conservatives believe that "you are on your own."

Hat tips to Paul Waldman for numbers 4 and 1. ;)

A Horse Is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

2009-05-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

The following conversation took place among myself and two other women. All of us were newly admitted law students, mingling and trying to get to know our classmates before our studies officially began. I sat down with these two women to chat over coffee, and one of them, to my chagrin, began talking about a television show - The Pet Psychic on Animal Planet. I admit two things: 1) I've never actually seen the show, and hope I never have the displeasure, even if it means I can't verify whether the episode described in the conversation was related accurately; 2) my diplomatic instincts were bested by my disappointment at what I was hearing. Nevertheless, I found the conversation funny, and immediately transcribed it into the same notebook in which I was listing names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of new law school acquaintances. Enjoy!

Me:
The Pet Psychic? No, I don't watch it. I imagine it might be good for a laugh.

Woman1:
No, no. Actually, it was really freaky. The woman did some things that at least made you think.

Me:
Made you think what?

W1:
Just that, you know, like, wow, that is pretty amazing.

Woman2:
What did she do?

Me:
Yeah, I can't wait to hear this.

W1:
Seriously, Karen, like, ok, there was this one lady who owned a horse. And she was worried about her horse's health. I guess the vets couldn't find anything really wrong, but the owner was worried, because the horse seemed down. Emotionally.

Me:
Ok.

W1:
So, the Pet Psychic says she was talking to the horse and figured out what was bothering it.

Me:
She was talking to the horse?

W1:
Well, you know, mentally. The horse wasn't actually saying words.

Me:
Right, because that would be ridiculous.

W2:
Hey, be nice, and give her a chance.

W1:
See, she said she was talking to the horse psychically. And she said the horse told her why it was sad, because the owner wasn't riding around in the right part of the pasture where the horse really liked to go, and that the horse missed her old friends from the stable that it used to live in. And here's where it got freaky. The lady who owned the horse said that she did buy it from another farm, but that she never really knew much about the horse's background. Things like what might have been the horse's old habits or even its name. So the psychic says that the horse told her what its real name was, and where the old stable was. And then later in the program, when they went back to the old stable, they actually had records, like medical records and something like a birth certificate, and the people at the stable confirmed that, yes, in fact, the horse's name was what it said it was!! And then, later, the lady who hired the psychic started calling the horse by its real name, and riding it in the areas that it liked, and said that the horse was acting much happier after that.

Me:
That's it?

W1:
Well, yeah. I mean, it was interesting. It just made me think, that's all.

Me:
Made you think what?

W1:
You know, just that there might be more to the world that we really know, you know?

Me:
Ok, I'm sorry, but, are you serious?

W1:
Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean there are a lot of things we can't explain, you know?

Me:
Do I know that there area a lot of things we can't explain? Yes. I do know that. I also have no problem admitting that there might be more to the world than we know. In fact, I'm pretty sure there is far more to life and the universe than we know. But, did you really need the horse psychic story to gain that philosophical insight?

W1:
Well, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying it was freaky.

Me:
Why was it freaky?

W1:
Just, well....

W2:
What do you want her to say, Karen?

Me:
Well, I don't want to be rude, but I really am curious as to why she found that anecdote so interesting or freaky that she's seriously considering that the Pet Psychic is genuine.

W1:
Don't you think it's possible?

Me:
Possible? Of course. In the strictest definition of the word, sure. Likely is another story. I'd dare say I find it so remotely unlikely as to be worthy of, well, ridicule.

W1:
Hey, come on. I'm just saying that it made me think. You know, consider it, that's all. Doesn't it at least make you wonder?

Me:
Well, frankly, no. And again, I don't mean to be rude, but, if you say it made you think and wonder, haven't you wondered whether there's another explanation for what they showed you?

W1:
Well, I suppose, but how would you explain it?

Me:
How would I explain what? That she found out the horse's name? Well, you said they had records of the horse's name at the horse's old stable. Well, clearly, the information was available at the horse's old stable. It wouldn't have been hard to find that information, either just by chatting with the owner in conversations they didn't put on the air, or just by making some phone calls. Perhaps the Pet Psychic went to that stable before taping the show, looked up the horse's name and then pretended to divine the information in another way.

W1:
So, you're saying she just lied?

Me:
The Psychic? Yes. That's what I'm saying. She lied. In fact, maybe the whole story is a lie. Maybe none of it ever happened. Maybe the horse's feeling more playful or happy was just the owner picking up on cues that weren't really there. Or maybe it wasn't really sad to begin with. Or maybe she took it to a better vet after the program was over, or maybe the whole story is a hoax, and everyone involved in the documentary-like presentation is actually an actor. Yes. Lying. Lying or self deception or some combination of both. That's probably what happened.

W2:
That's awfully cynical, Karen.

Me:
Cynical? Even if it is cynical, that doesn't make it wrong. My guess would be that she lied. Or that something other than what was reported was actually what happened. It may be cynical, but it's reasonable.

W1:
Why would she lie?

Me:
The Psychic? Why would the Pet Psychic lie? How about, say, to get her own TV show called "The Pet Psychic," where a whole production team will pay her to lie, and where everyone else in the world can watch her and be driven to wonder about the nature of the world and think about how there are things we can't explain, who might then hire her and pay her more money to lie.

W1:
And you really think she'd to that?

Me:
You really think she wouldn't? Let me understand this. Tell me where I'm going wrong here. Seriously, if I'm misunderstanding you, stop me any time. We have ample evidence that humans lie. We have ample evidence that humans lie especially when they think they can get paid to lie. We see it all the time. We don't trust our politicians, we don't trust used car salesmen, we don't trust anybody out there who wants money because we know that there's a good chance they're going to cheat us. Now, given all that, you're actually telling me, and stop me whenever you think I've misinterpreted you, you believe that given the evidence we actually have about human nature and the fact that humans lie all the time, it is still more likely, more probable, more reasonable, that this woman had a meaningful, therapeutic, telepathic conversation with a horse?

W1:
Well, when you put it that way, you make me sound stupid.

Needless to say, I wasn't the most popular person in law school. :)

Showdown with a Bureaucrat

2009-05-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

The following is lifted from an old journal entry and e-mail I had sent to my family detailing the final ridiculous hoops I jumped to receive my financial aid, after having labored extensively with university officials to correct a mistake.

Well, the financial showdown between me and the university is finally over. Naturally, the university was determined to end it in style.

I checked my e-mail, wherein I found a note from the university explaining that I had a check waiting for me. I was expecting the note eventually, having talked with the financial aid folks about the $7,000 bill they sent me only to find out that the university actually owed me money. The note explained that I should travel to Billing and Payment Services, where I would pick up the check.

Now, Billing and Payment Services purports to be open continuously from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm every day Monday through Friday. So I went there around 11:30 am. Upon arriving there I saw four windows, three of which had closed mini-blinds covering them. The one open window was unoccupied, so I stood there for a while, hoping, wrongly, that someone would eventually walk up to it. After the while, I just started banging on the window. Finally, this lady walks up and asks what I want.

"Hi," I said, "I just got an e-mail telling me I had a check waiting for me, and that I should pick it up here."

"Sure," she responded, "Can I have your ID?"

I handed her my ID, and she disappeared for a few minutes, after which she returned to say, "No, we don't have anything for you."

"Um, well, "I did get an e-mail telling me to come here."

"You did?" she asked. "What did it say?"

What did it say? "Well, it said that I had a check waiting for me and to come to Billing and Payment services to pick it up."

"Really?"

"Well, I'm not making it up."

"When did you get the letter?"

"This morning."

"Are you sure it wasn't last night?"

I was getting confused. I really couldn't figure out what the answer to that question would help her with, but I answered anyway. "Well, I checked my e-mail this morning, and that was the first time I saw the letter. I suppose it's entirely possible that it was sent to my e-mail box last night. Does that matter?"

Her response, "Well, did it have the dollar amount of the check listed?"

"Um, no. Not that I remember."

"Really, what did it say?"

"It said that I had a check waiting for me, and that I should pick it up here." Hadn't I told her this?

"All right," she said, "I'll be back." With that, she disappeared again for several minutes, only to return with the now familiar, "No, we don't have anything for you."

"Ok," I said, "Well, I did get the e-mail. And this is Billing and Payment Services. And this is where people pick up checks from the university. What do I
do now?"

She said, "Well, maybe you read the e-mail wrong."

I highly doubted that. It was a very simple letter. But then, perhaps she knew something I didn't, so I had an idea. I glanced over at the computer she was using at the window, and said,

"Do you get internet access on that computer?"

She responded, "Sure, you can check the internet and file a protest online."

Interesting. Not what I was asking her, but, interesting. And annoying. I tied again, "No, no, I'm asking if you can get internet access on the computer that you are using right now."

"Yeah," she said.

"Ok," I explained, "Well, if you could go to the campus e-mail website, I can show you the e-mail that I got. Maybe you can see something on it I missed."

"Oh, no," she blurted, "I can't do that."

"Um...why, exactly?"

"It would be too time consuming."

Huh? "It would? I just want to show you the e-mail I got so you can actually read it. You just have to go to a website, and I'll type in my password."

"No, no. That would be way too time consuming."

"Time consuming? It would take roughly two seconds."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that for you. We need to make sure all the customers are seen, so I can't just do this for you."

"All the customers? I'm the only one in line here."

"I know, but still, it would take too much time."

"I don't mean to be rude, but, it would take you roughly one-third the amount of time you've already taken telling me that it would take too much time. All I'm asking is that you call up a website."

"I'm really sorry, but that isn't what we do here. Perhaps you can check this out with the university, and come back some other time."

I couldn't believe this. I had just spend the last week and a half checking this out with the university. We had it solved. The only remaining obstacle was this moron in front of me. And besides, I really needed this money. So I said, "All right, I'll come back."

With that, I walked out of the building, and several blocks down the street to a copy store, paid 50 cents to get on the internet and print up the e-mail I had been sent. I then walked back to the window and banged on it again. The same lady returned.

"Here," I said, "Here is the e-mail I received. Could you look at it now?"

She looked at it, and said, "See, you were wrong. It does have the dollar amount."

First of all, I can't figure out how that information even remotely helps her search for the check. Secondly, it certainly didn't seem to have dollar amount on it to me. When I asked her where the amount was listed she pointed to a set of codes that followed 40 blank lines under the body of the letter. Amidst the codes were several numbers, some of which, apparently, represented the dollar amount of the check. Whatever.

"Um, ok," I said, "So, do you think you'll be able to locate it now?"

She said, "Well, I'll go check." She vanished. She returned.

"Nope," she said, "We don't have anything for you."

"Ma'am," I said, "What's happening? I have been working on this matter with the university for a while now. The check should be here."

She said, "Are you sure you didn't pick it up and deposit already?"

Was she kidding? "Well," I said, "The e-mail, as you can clearly see, is dated 9:30 pm last night. I'm pretty sure I wasn't here between 9:30 pm last night and now."

"I wasn't suggesting that you were," she said.

"Oh? What exactly were you suggesting?"

"Well," she said, "This check seems like it might have been dated a couple weeks ago, so I though maybe you picked it up a couple weeks ago and forgot."

"Let me get this straight," I snapped sarcastically, "This is what you're telling me. It's not that the check is back there somewhere and you can't find it. What's actually happening, in your opinion, is that I psychically divined that the check was here several weeks ago, came here, picked it up, and deposited it in my account, and then forgot that I had done that. Then, coincidentally, the university also forgot that I had come here, picked up the check and deposited it, and sent me an e-mail last night, telling me to pick it up again. This, according to you, is the more likely of scenarios."

At this point, two other people had gotten in line behind me, and that last little rant got them to laugh. It felt good, but then I feared I might never actually get the check at all.

The moron behind the desk looked at me and said, "Well, ma'am, the only thing I can think to do is keep looking."

"Yes, well, why don't you do that, then."

She vanished again, for several minutes, and then came back with the fucking check in her hand!!

I was stunned. And relieved. And once I finally had the check in my physical possession, I turned back to her and said, "So, where was it hiding?"

She said, "Oh, it was in our regular files."

HAHAHAHA!!!!! The regular files!!!!! She actually tells me this!

Somewhat overconfidant now, and with an audience, I said, "Ah, yeah, that would have been the last place I would have looked too. See, when I'm on a search for something, I like to start in the more obscure places. You know, behind the shelves, under the light fixtures, anywhere where my chances of finding what I'm looking for are at an absolute minimum. That way, my chances of finding it in the NEXT place I look are constantly improving. Is that the method you were using?"

The others in line were laughing. I hope I didn't blow their chances of locating their own checks.

The lady said, "I don't really appreciate that."

"Huh." I said, "Now that is interesting."

Check in hand, I left.