Chris Willie Williams

I will be meeting Tim and Jess at their new apartment tonight, from where we will proceed to our usual haunt, Little Tree Sushi. As I could not remember how to get to their new place, Tim and I had the following e-mail exchange which explains why we are friends with each other. (Hint: no one else would be.)

Hey Tim,
I cannot remember how to get to your new apartment. That seems like it will be a vital part of meeting you there for Little Tree food journey tonight. So let's play a boring little poorly-translated text-based adventure game:

>You are Chris Willie Williams. Your are driving a car EAST on M-14 highway. A road sign approaches.
>look

>You are Chris Willie Williams. Your are driving a car EAST on M-14 highway. A road sign approaches.
>look sign

>The road sign tells you "I 275 junction. Obvious exits NORTH FLINT, SOUTH TOLEDO".
>inv

>Your inventory contents a CELL PHONE, SUPER MARIO WALLET, REGRET
>get off M-14

>You cannot get that.

Finish this sequence and save the damsels!!!
-Chris

Tim replies:

Tim's Ultimate Strategy Guide to the Little Tree Text-Based Adventure Game:

Answers:

From M-14 EAST

>Exit SOUTH TOLEDO on I-275
>Exit ANN ARBOR ROAD
>Turn LEFT onto ANN ARBOR ROAD
>Turn LEFT at BURGER KING onto TRANGLER ROAD
>Turn LEFT at FLEEP ROAD
>Turn RIGHT at the third STOP LIGHT to enter STONE RIDGE

ProTip: Once you get to BUILDING 74, call JESS or TIM, as the buzzer system does not seem to be functional.
ProTip: At Little Tree, when you receive the item YAKI UDON, enter the command "rapidly consume" to get a health bonus.

See you tonight, brave adventurer!

Replacement apartment acquired! Moving to commence tomorrow!

I won't have Internet in my apartment in Michigan, so I probably won't really be updating this journal or the review site through the end of August. I'll try my best to still respond to e-mails and keep up to date on my friends list, though. Have a great summer, both of you reading this!

Horns down. If we go quiet, it won't be permanent.

20 years ago or so, television dealt me one of many images that would completely fuck me up.

I have since forgiven television, mostly. But here's the story:

I was seven. My family stopped at an Ohio Red Roof Inn on one of our pre-Thanksgiving drives down to Louisville. After whatever shows we'd wanted to watch had finished and we'd gone to bed, Dad continued to flip through channels long after he thought everyone was asleep. Never a quick sleeper, I silently watched through half-open eyelids. At one point, he lit upon a film sequence in which a ponytailed assassin strapped on a rifle and scaled a tree for a vantage point from which to watch a young girl and her father exit their abode. The viewer then observed through the gunman's scope as he shot the girl in the throat. The girl gasped horribly and clutched her neck as my dad then changed the channel.

Though I never mentioned to my parents that I'd been traumatized by the clip, I was terrified to go outside for at least a few months, and would anxiously glance up in all nearby trees when I was forced to do so. Slowly, it migrated to the back of my brain, lying dormant along with any number of other inexplicably cruel images that comprise the baggage I carry around.

Back to present day: the other night, Bev and I watched Firestarter. Turns out the image that haunted me as a kid was Academy Award renouncer and Man Getting Hit by Football star George C. Scott shooting Drew Barrymore with a tranq dart. Drew turned out okay. In fact, she wound up killing Scott with her pyrokinetic powers. And when she did, it unshackled ages-old demons that then bolted from my mind like malnourished fireflies from a shattered mason jar.

Then Bev and I watched X-Men. I now have different baggage. The kind that comes from sitting through X-Men.

*     *     *

I no longer have a place to live when I move to Ann Arbor. Yesterday, Marianne left a voicemail telling me that her job or housing or whatever fell through, so she's going to have to remain in her apartment and not sublet it to me. She was very apologetic--she must have said, "I feel horrible" five times in her two-minute voicemail--and I can't be upset with her, really, since it sounds like her plans are lying in 10-car road wrecks too, but it's not a happy development. And I feel stupid for not predicting that something like this would happen.

I'm pretty sure Paul Erdős ruined the possibility of crashing in the Math Reviews offices for everyone, too.

CURRENT MUSIC: Diamond Hoo Ha by Supergrass.
CURRENT MOOD: Feeling sorry for myself/panic mode.
CURRENT MOST RECENT ANIMAL I'VE SEEN IN PERSON THAT I'D NEVER SEEN BEFORE: A porpoise. Saw one on an oceanside picnic with Bev and her parents yesterday. It was nice.

A few weeks ago, my friend Tracy, copy editing supervisor from Mathematical Reviews, contacted me, asking whether I'd be interested in moving back to Michigan for the summer to help my former colleagues copy edit their way through a bit of a backlog. After much thought, discussion with Bev, excited chair-dancing, and weaseling out of my Maine AIRS duties, my answer was an enthusiastic "Yes, please get me out of Maine!" So come June 23, I'll be digging out my old "Copy editors do it till your participles are no longer dangling" novelty T-shirt and reliving my glory days at my all-time favorite job for two months, with all my much-missed Math Reviews friends! And I hope to be able to get in lots of visiting with Adrienne, Tim, Jess, Steve Knowlton, whichever independent record stores still exist around there and, time permitting, my family.

My ambitious plan is to pack my car only with the essential toiletries, clothing, and my musical instruments and recording equipment. Not allowing myself the distractions of cable TV or Internet, the theory goes, will force me to direct my energy into recording, which I've unconscionably neglected since I finished The Airbag's Lipstick Kiss five years ago. I have a lot of half-songs and snippets recorded, but I'm hoping to be able to bang out a full new album over the two months in Michigan.

However, this necessitated finding a private, one-bedroom or studio apartment in Ann Arbor (i.e., not merely a room in a larger suite or house). For one thing, even if I weren't planning on becoming a studio recluse, I would not feel comfortable sharing an apartment with a stranger for any length of time, let alone being the 28-year-old weirdo in a house full of undergrads. But on top of that, a shared living space would both make me feel self-conscious about singing into my computer and be kind of inconsiderate to a roommate who may just want some peace and quiet. Not that I'm necessarily planning to fill the night air with Yamatsuka Eye-esque squealing, but my clumsy attempts at playing even a quiet guitar riff 80 times in a row until I get it right all the way through could quickly become annoying to anyone in close proximity. But mostly, I just need my own personal space to feel at ease. Not unlike Francis from Stripes.

Luckily, long after I'd resigned myself to complete failure and a summer of huddling for warmth in some dank, overlooked corner of the Borders parking deck because a couple renters hadn't acknowledged my responses to their Craigslist ads, Bev found a charming little efficiency that was up for grabs (and, more importantly, that had been posted only 15 minutes earlier, so I had a good shot at calling dibs), and encouraged me to try for it. "What the hell. E-mail's free and I won't have access to it while I'm homeless," I thought, and fired off a "please house me" e-mail. A couple hours later, I got a phone call from a friendly girl named Marianne who agreed to sublet the place to me! I think I'll make her a mix CD as a thank-you. My recall of Ann Arbor's geography has faded, so I can't quite picture the intersection where my new place is located, but Adrienne tells me, "It's right in the student district, but since there aren't any students, it will be great."

I called T-Bone to tell him, and as we spoke, we each pulled up the Google street view of the building. We giggled at some guy on the sidewalk who happened to be caught by the Google cameras in the middle of a particularly unflattering, John Cleese-esque silly walk. T-Bone told me about the street view of some Chicago locale where some kid is pulling a gat on some other kid in the picture. Then T-Bone sent me this clip of a sloshed Mike Ilitch at the Red Wings' Stanley Cup victory parade: "I don't want somebody to forget. I don't want North America, I don't want Canada, America, South America, Europe, the whole world to recognize, because there was a little bit of this and that going on, we are the Hockeytown! BLARGGH!" T-Bone is an excellent Internet resource.

(Also, while I'm on this tack, Jess sent me this great clip of some old New Testament epic, featuring an unsmiling, aloof-looking Jesus, that has been hilariously redubbed, What's Up, Tiger Lily?-style, to depict a savior who is alternately completely petty and completely exasperated with everyone He has to deal with. The best line, as Jesus is running down a list of everything His disciples have done wrong lately: "John, you drank too much wine the other night. Not way too much; just enough to make me angry.")

So yeah, actual news from here, amid a flurry of activity! I'm going to miss Bev, the birds, and Cora mightily, but I'm predicting a fun and productive couple of months, which I don't often do!

CURRENT MUSIC: Skylarking by XTC and Velocifero by Ladytron. One old favorite, one brand-new favorite.
CURRENT MOOD: Excited.
CURRENT MYSTERY ODOR: Something around here smells like a Reese's NutRageous bar.

My grandpa is getting sued for divorce by his wife's adopted son. Yes, it is more than a little silly!

I'm going to try to get through the backstory quickly, because my experience with most of it is secondhand, pieced together from what my parents tell me, and it's actually not the point of this entry: My grandma died in 1998. Not terribly long after, Grandpa started seeing Margaret, an old biddy whose moods, as far as I ever saw, range from snide to flat-out nasty. Over protests from my dad and his sisters that amounted to a sustained, months-long shriek, Grandpa wound up marrying her. Since then, Margaret has developed Parkinson's and, by last year, had reached the point of being unable to take care of herself, falling frequently, and lapsing into hallucinations and dementia.

Margaret has an adopted son named Jeffersen [sic]. If I understand correctly, he's actually her grandson, but Margaret legally adopted him as her son after her biological son--Jeffersen's father--went to prison and/or died. Jeffersen is a scuzz. After she married Grandpa and until Margaret required constant care and supervision, Jeffersen would appear only when he wanted to ask Margaret for money. As a result, they saw him pretty often. (Thankfully, Grandpa's finances are completely separate from Margaret's.)

As Margaret's condition deteriorated, Jeffersen's mooching pretty clearly--to my mind--entered the realm of elder abuse and financial exploitation. He would show up at the apartment, write sizeable checks to himself from Margaret's checkbook, and get her to sign them even though she was clearly not of sound mind. (My family attempted to report him to elder services and were told that such acts don't constitute abuse. That is not true.) However, at this point, Jeffersen was occasionally tapped to look after Margaret when Grandpa needed or wanted to get out of the house for a bit. Jeffersen wasn't so crazy about that part of his relationship with Margaret, and he'd often just not show up or leave before Grandpa got back home. Eventually, Grandpa simply told Jeffersen he wasn't welcome in the apartment anymore.

Around last Christmas, Grandpa wound up in the hospital and then a rehab facility for a period of time, and so Jeffersen was summoned to take care of Margaret for awhile. He protested quite a bit, but eventually collected her. This sparked a long drama where Jeffersen refused to let Grandpa speak with Margaret, refused to tell Grandpa where he'd stuck Margaret, kept texting my dad demanding access to Grandpa's apartment, etc.

So last month, Grandpa was served with divorce papers by Jeffersen. Jeffersen has Margaret's power of attorney, so this is something he just decided to do because he doesn't like Grandpa, and also to see if maybe he can squeeze some money out of Grandpa in the process. (In the divorce papers, Jeffersen alleges that Grandpa "abandoned" Margaret when Grandpa was in the hospital, but he himself seems to have abandoned this tactic.)

A week or two ago, Jeffersen, his attorney, and Grandpa, Dad, Aunt Marcy, and Grandpa's attorney all went before Judge Martha Anderson. To hear my parents tell it, the discussion between Jeffersen's Barry Zuckerkorn-level attorney and the judge went something like this:

"On what grounds are you suing for divorce?" the judge asked.

"My client has power of attorney," Jeffersen's lawyer replied.

"But on what grounds are you suing for divorce?"

"Power of attorney."

Once the judge understood that there was no basis for the divorce beyond Jeffersen stamping his foot and saying, "I wannit!" she said she'd never heard of such a case and wanted to take a few weeks to think about it or search for precedent or whatever. So everyone has to go back to court on the 18th.

To feel less antsy and helpless in the interim, Dad did some sleuthing about Judge Anderson, to see if he could get a bead on her ruling habits. He dug up the following YouTube video, in which Judge Anderson presides over a motion filed by plaintiff Karen Stephens against defendant Paul Nicoletti:



Dad thought the video was pretty funny, and it is, inasmuch as everybody's kind of a jerk. But the comments posted below that video on YouTube, apparently by an involved party who won't let double-posting etiquette stop her from futilely attempting to post a link, eventually led me to this fascinating Metro Times article about a Shelby Township family driven to financial ruin by an unscrupulous contractor. Both Stephens and Nicoletti play supporting roles in the piece, and theirs is a complicated B-story within an odyssey already millipedian with tentacles. I'll try to simplify the incidents leading up to the above clip, as I understand them:

Nicoletti, the defendant, used to be Stephens's lawyer. He also used to be the lawyer of Marie Dreilich, who is a friend of Stephens. Dreilich wound up suing Nicoletti for malpractice, and Stephens was planning to be Dreilich's key witness because of her own problems with Nicoletti's law-talkin' abilities.

However, before that suit went to trial, Nicoletti went in front of Judge Anderson and got a personal protection order against Dreilich (again, not the woman in the video), claiming she was harassing him. It sounds from the story like she probably was, actually. Strangely enough, though, the PPO that Judge Anderson signed prohibited Dreilich from coming into any contact with any of Nicoletti's former clients. Which includes Stephens.

So that meant not only that these two women could not testify on each other's behalf in lawsuits against Nicoletti (they tried it and Dreilich wound up arrested for violating the PPO), but they couldn't even legally hang out together even though they're very close friends! Like, they couldn't go to church together anymore. Nicoletti effectively took out a restraining order between two grown adults who are completely unrelated to him and who really didn't want to be prevented from seeing one another! It's kind of brilliant, if you think about it.

Now, Nicoletti did threaten to take out a PPO against Stephens as well, but never did it... because he didn't need to! He already kept these two women away from each other and thus weakened Dreilich's lawsuit against him! So even though, in the video, Stephens admits that there was technically no PPO signed by Judge Anderson against her, there kind of was. And Judge Anderson knows it, because she rejected a couple motions by Dreilich to get the PPO rescinded so she and her friend could be in contact with each other.

I'm sure Judge Anderson was sick of hearing about it by the time this video takes place, because these two women do sound like they've made quite a nuisance of themselves (and the video shows that Stephens, at least, isn't doing herself any favors by mouthing off), but it's kind of a dick move on the judge's part to fine her the $500 since she knows the whole story. I assume Judge Anderson knows she overstepped her bounds in signing that PPO in the first place and is pretty defensive about it, which I bet has something to do with her freak-out in the video.

So at any rate, I hope sanity prevails when Grandpa goes before her later this month. I thought the Metro Times story was very interesting, though, which is why I thought I'd share.

As a reward for reading all this, here's the funniest Judge Judy segment I've ever seen. Even if you typically (justifiably) scoff at my television-viewing habits, trust me when I tell you that it's worth 10 minutes out of your day to watch the entire thing. The defendant lets fly with some of the most quotable non-sequiturs daytime TV has to offer, and there's even some impressive physical comedy for you lowbrows. Enjoy!



CURRENT MUSIC: Sea Lion by Ruby Suns.
CURRENT MOOD: Detoxing. Psychiatrist's office is still closed.
CURRENT FAVORITE BLOG: The Wit and Wisdom of Jessica Porridge. Jessica Porridge is a nutbar who frequently posts nigh-illegible but hilariously fervent comments in response to articles on the Waterville Morning Sentinel's website, and this guy David has been collecting her comments in LiveJournal form. Reading all her published thoughts on topics ranging from a senior who donated $6,500 to the town of Thorndike ("the town will only use you're money for non sense you don;t need like that crumbaly ashphalt that dosen't really fix the pot-holes and makes it hurt to go out across to your mailbox with barefoot, or more stupid WALLGREENS that are as bad a dump as Right Aid with low life stockboy's!I bet it's not to late to stop paymennt on yourcheck and use it for a RESPONSABL: Chairty like Olimpya Snowe!!!") to the National Day of Prayer ("I hope no one flew off off the handle, like Pastor OBamma and started praying about thing's that aren;t there place to pray about!!") is a lot like watching Idiocracy. It's a collection of derangement so pervasive that it starts to make its own otherworldly sort of sense after awhile.

I had an appointment this afternoon with Cathy, my brain doctor, who is helping me figure out exactly what pills will best stanch the flood of blackness that threatens to overtake my mind at any moment, like those old propaganda films showing communism instantly inundating all parts of the globe in which the US does not maintain a military presence. When I arrived at the medical suite, though, a handwritten sign on the door read, "This office is CLOSED. We are having a billing inspection--unplanned. I would have called but the inspectors can't let us have access to our records. Thank you for understanding." The clinic isn't answering its phone right now either.

Can they do that? I mean, I'm sure they can (probably thanks to Reagan), and I'm admittedly not sure who "they" is in this case, but it seems inappropriate for auditors to have the power to lock down a mental health office whose scheduled patients need their meds. Just judging from the demeanor of people with whom I've shared the waiting room, I am by no means the worst off of the practice's clientele, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one responsible for their potential detachment from reality just so I could check the office's ledgers. Myself, I'm going to be doing without Cymbalta for at least the next couple days, until this gets sorted out. So this should be interesting.

Over the weekend, the old Home Depot in Bangor was having a 90% off liquidation sale. (They've moved to a new location less than one mile up the road, but for some reason didn't want to transport their existing stock, so they've been selling it at increasing discounts throughout the month. I can't imagine the cost of shipping everything a couple blocks would be greater than the losses they sustained on an emergency liquidation, but really, what do I care?) Sunday was their very last day, so Bev wanted to go and see what she could find. The answer was "not much good." Most of the shelves had been picked clean and the marrow was being efficiently sucked by shoppers like ourselves, leaving us little to choose from. I think the entire gardening section, for instance, had been reduced to a couple bags of mulch and sand. Nevertheless, Bev rummaged through the detritus while I patiently seethed that these kind of sales never happen at fun places like Guitar Center. At least not while I'm around, which is identical to "never happening" as far as I'm concerned.

While we were there, though, the management finally got tired of seeing lines stretching halfway down shopping aisles and had an "Aw, screw it" moment. The PA system clicked on and a spree was officially declared: Every single cartload of whatever crap you could stuff in there was going to be $25 flat. One especially savvy woman who'd seen more than her share of Supermarket Sweep piled at least a dozen whole-house humidifiers into her cart. A gristly old vet toting a load of ceramic tile was barking into his cell phone as he passed me, "Get your ass down here and buy some shit!" If Home Depot ever abandons their unintimidating-to-the-point-of-condescension "You can do it. We can help" brand and decides to go a more aggressive, Slim Jim-styled route, I think "Get your ass down here and buy some shit!" would be an excellent new slogan.

So Bev set about filling our cart while I guarded it from poachers. We wound up with several boxes full of implements for a fence that may eventually be built around our yard (at which time I will begin referring to it as "our compound"). Bev also bought a bucket full of adhesive house letters and numbers. It's mostly Ds and Qs, in fact, so those saps at Brazier are going to have to pay through the nose if they don't want their mailbox to read "AIRY UEEN," I tell you what.

At a yard sale, Bev also dropped 50 cents on a Clapper-esque device that is supposed to turn a lamp on and off when you command, "Lights!" We stuck it on the light that hangs over our couch.

SOUNDS THE DEVICE RECOGNIZES AS "LIGHTS": "Cora, stop that!"; Gina Torres's voice; the phrase "music of the spheres"; two plates clanking together; the word "mongoose"; my Senor Cardgage impression.

SOUNDS THE DEVICE DOES NOT RECOGNIZE AS "LIGHTS": "Lights!"

CURRENT MUSIC: Singing Bones by The Handsome Family.
CURRENT MOOD: Tenuous!
CURRENT MILESTONE: Seems I've been keeping this journal for five years as of May 3. Huh.

I'm very amused by my friends' e-mailed wittiness. I'm also a little proud of my responses; I hope they come across as funny as I'd intended them.

From T-Bone:

Hey brother,

I've been working on my resume, brother, and I was just wondering if you would take a look at it for me, brother, and see if you have any suggestions. LeAnne thought it would be a good idea to make a functional resume, so it's kind of different from my normal one, brother.
Let me know what you think, brother.

Sincerely,
Hulk

The intro paragraph of my reply:

Well, I tell you, Hulk, my great-grandmother was looking down on me tonight while I read your resume, and I just felt her presence and she gave me strength to read it all the way through, I know it. And I just know that everyone here tonight was with me tonight, WHOOOOOOOOOO, and it just goes to show you that persaverence [sic] can help you overcome any obstacles that might get thrown your way, and I just know that everyone back home at the Cooterville Diner was rooting me on, and I AM an American Gladiator and, thank you, God, for just giving me this opportunity, it's what I've always dreamed of. YEAH!

From Tim:

On Thursday when Jess and I were driving through western Michigan on the way to Chicago, one of our many pit stops was a McDonald's in Paw Paw, Michigan. Some marketing genius, obviously realizing that the local McDonald's was the only draw on the outside world, strategically erected a huge wooden sign between the exit ramp and the McDonald's parking lot. The sign had big, hand-painted block letters that said:

WELCOME TO PAW PAW
HOME OF OLD PAW PAW

In my judgment, it's a pretty successful ad campaign. I now know that Paw Paw contains a McDonald's and Old Paw Paw. I assume whoever brainstormed that sign went on to create the GEICO Cavemen.

My response:

Hey Tim,

That? Is awesome. Thanks for passing it along! I did some digging, and here's the timeline I came up with regarding that sign:

December 9, 2007: At monthly Paw Paw city council meeting, Councilman Jennifer Horr draws attention to mention of Paw Paw in recent interview with actor James Avery published in Jet Sr. magazine. Avery is quoted as saying, "I was born in Paw, Paw, Michigan [sic] and my family moved away three months later. The less said about Paw, Paw [sic] the better. I'd rather discuss my guest spot on The Hogan Family as a driving instructor, if you don't mind. Ugh." Horr suggests Paw Paw apply for historic status as childhood home of Avery. Motion is approved 5-0, and Mayor Gale Thibodeau formally announces plans to form exploration committee to discuss feasibility of installing signpost on exit ramp denoting Paw Paw as an historic city. Motion approved 4-1.

74-year-old, moustachioed resident Harold Carruthers, present at meeting to hold forth on "other business" including objection to use of "non-traditional, heretical" font on street signs, desire for 6:30 p.m. curfew specific to house of his next-door neighbors whose garage-mounted basketball hoop makes "rattling" noise, and desire to increase town's proximity from "Sodom-and-Gomorrah hellhole" of Grand Rapids, impugns Avery's status as human being. Proclaiming himself "Old Paw Paw" as town's eighth-oldest resident he is aware of, Carruthers demands signpost in own honor. Motion defeated 3-2.

January 10, 2008: At monthly city council meeting, City Clerk Trevor Thibodeau announces open search for bids to install signpost in honor of James Avery, with funds to be drawn from annual town tourism budget ($1,500) and remainder, if necessary, to be drawn from "rainy day" fund ($410,000 following Michigan Supreme Court decision in town's favor in lawsuit against Tyson Foods, currently being appealed). 74-year-old resident Harold Carruthers, present at meeting to hold forth on "other business" of perceived lax police enforcement of public expectoration statues, perceived tardiness of Paw Paw daily postal deliveries, and perceived need for local homeowner's association to clarify verbiage ("homeowners" distinct from "homos"), voices objection. Carruthers is forcibly removed from meeting.

January 17, 2008: City Clerk Trevor Thibodeau rejects petition, submitted by resident Harold Carruthers, to change Michigan state constitution to explicitly forbid installation of any form of signage "over four inches" within Paw Paw city limits, on grounds that petition has apparently been signed by 123,822 citizens in a town of 870 people, all in identical purple ink.

January 20, 2008: City Clerk Trevor Thibodeau rejects petition, submitted by mysterious "Old Paw Paw," to issue "official Michigan fatwa" on the heads of City Council members, on grounds that Michigan constitution does not permit publicly-funded murder of public officials.

February 1, 2008: Low bid is accepted from Troy-based Monuments, Tombs, Etc. (NASDAQ symbol MTE) for installation of signpost. Total cost to town: $31,279.

May 2, 2008: Brass-plated signpost appears just off interstate, reading, "Welcome to Paw Paw, Michigan. Historical Childhood Home of TV's James Avery. 'Shredder' of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and 'Uncle Phil' of Fresh Prince of Belair" [sic].

May 3, 2008: Local resident Harold Carruthers is arrested on charges of loitering and vagrancy following 911 call reporting Carruthers leaning nude against James Avery signpost and making obscene gesture with one hand while holding cardboard sign in other hand proclaiming himself "Old Paw Paw."

May 8, 2008: Signpost is reported missing by local taxidermist Isaiah Gundenhaus at 3:40 a.m.

May 9, 2008: Paw Paw City Council decries theft of signpost in local periodical Paw Paw Courier. $6,500 reward is offered for information leading to arrest of thief and recovery of signpost.

May 10, 2008: Reward is clarified in Paw Paw Courier; typographical error resulted in $65.00 reward being published as vastly inflated amount.

May 14, 2008: New signpost appears in place of professional signpost. Handmade bulletin proclaims Paw Paw to be "HOME OF OLD PAW PAW."

May 14, 2008: Harold Carruthers' home and 12 acres of surrounding property are searched; missing signpost is located in abandoned moonshine still, along with shoes of numerous missing hitchhikers. Carruthers is arrested and subsequently released on own recognizance. $65.00 reward to be awarded to whistle-blower Trina Carruthers in public ceremony on July 6 (though check is not to be cashed until January 2009).

May 16, 2008: Paw Paw City Council announces search for bids to reinstall original sign. Monuments, Tombs, Etc. immediately stakes right of first refusal on low bid, submits own bid of $43,219.

CURRENT MUSIC: Waves are Universal by Rachel Goswell.
CURRENT MOOD: Bleak.
CURRENT SELF-DESTRUCTION POTENTIAL: Orange.

First off, an update on our parakeets: Turns out Goldklang is a girl. We thought they were two gay boys, but Goldklang's nostrils have turned flaky and brown, which means she's not only female, but a female who's In the Mood, and Gormley was all up in that the other night. I don't know how I thought bird eggs got fertilized, but I was naively unprepared to see actual birdie humping. (Possibly because I never rented the unrated director's cut of Winged Migration that caused such a fuss.) According to our parakeet book, it will take nine or 10 days before eggs appear, and I guess we're going to have to simply dispose of them if they do, since we don't have the space or resources to raise baby birds right now. That makes me sad, especially since Goldklang has been pulling apart her rope toy, strand by strand, to make a nest in anticipation of the big event. I really hope Gormley has been shooting blanks and I just realized that this entry is starting to take a dangerously odd turn so let's move on now.

Monday, Bev and I took a ride down to Boston to see The Cure play at Boston University's Agganis Arena. You're going to hear about it and like it.

Just south of Portland, Bev and I stopped for sandwiches at Ainsley's, a nice little filling station and snack shop. As we rode back toward the highway, we spotted a woodchuck resting in the middle of the road, pivoting in a circle on one of her front paws. I stopped the car and blocked traffic while Bev fetched a board that was lying in the grass. She tried to slide the board beneath the chuck (who we quickly named Scampers even though Bev keeps referring to her as "Shuffles"), but Scampers decided it was more comfy to recline against the board, as though Bev had arrived simply to provide her a makeshift chaise lounge. Bev and I switched roles at that point, and I used the board to prod Scampers gently under the chin. After a few seconds of this, she got annoyed and scuttled off the road, so if her leg was indeed hurt, it didn't seem to be bad enough to impede her movement. Bev thinks she may have just been stunned by a car straddling her and grazing her paw or something. I hope she's okay. And I don't know what we would've done had that board not been there (I learned not to get too close to road-bound animals after Hammond the turtle took a swipe at my leg), so the lesson is: littering is good.

We passed a Hannaford produce truck that had a picture of a perfect, ripe strawberry on the side. Bev grumbled something about it not being representative of the quality of Hannaford produce, and I commented that at least it wasn't a Shaw's truck. (Shaw's is a competing grocery chain that has the crappiest produce I've ever seen this side of Wal-Mart.) We spent the next 10 minutes or so thinking up pictures that would accurately depict Shaw's veggies. Suggestions included:
-A withered, underweight yellow squash with a brown gouge taken out of it.
-An onion leaking translucent yellow liquid, with a thermometer jammed into it and a cartoon hot water bottle on top of it.
-Desiccated portabellas the gray color of pavement, with veiny fault lines running the diameter of their caps.

Around 2:00, we checked into the Ogunquit Resort Motel, just a few miles north of the Maine border, and about 90 minutes north of Boston. We planned to stop there for the night on the way back from the concert, and it made a convenient place to dump our stuff. (My stuff was a messenger bag with a change of clothes wadded into it. Bev's stuff--for our 30-hour trip--was a backpack, a canvas Harry Potter tote bag, and a plastic Hannaford bag, all full. She's not doing much to overturn sexist stereotypes, I must say.) Bev fixed the TV, we took a quick nap, got lunch from Yum Mee, the Asian restaurant next to the hotel, and struck out for Boston.

Didn't take very long to actually get to the city, but it also didn't take very long to get hopelessly lost once we were inside it. For one thing, between the two of us, Bev and I had managed to obtain three different, conflicting sets of directions to Agganis Arena. For another thing, although Boston seems to me like it would be a very pleasant place to live if you don't own a vehicle, an overhead view of the city's streets must resemble a contour drawing of a sweater crammed through a meat grinder. Exits appear, with no warning, around blind corners. Roads disappear down trapdoors, only to pop up again in some other part of town. Some goofball actually riding on a Segway makes you cackle so hard that you miss your turn. And all the while, the damn Citgo sign flashes its hypnotic Masonic iconography down at you like some dystopian mind-control device.

Needless to say, the 45 minutes we'd allotted for travel troubles turned out to be far too conservative. Bev and I got to our seats literally one minute before opening act 65daysofstatic left the stage. (Yes, we arrived toward the end of the 64th day, har har.) From what little I heard, they sounded like a fairly good post-rock band, like Explosions in the Sky with a whiff of electronics. I wish I'd heard more of them.

People-watching then filled the time as The Cure's roadies set up. Aside from being, curiously, almost uniformly white (and not in the goth makeup way you might be thinking, but the Republican National Convention way), there was an interesting mix of people in the venue. You had the characters you'll run into at every concert, of course: Crying Girl Stumbling Around Aimlessly, Drunk Girl Passed Out on Miserable Boyfriend's Lap in the Lobby, and Thirtysomething Dicksmoke Who's Trying to Stave Off the Waning of His Youth-Culture Relevance by Shouting and Dancing in an Intentionally Obnoxious Fashion Within an Eight-Foot Radius of Where I'm Standing. But Monday night, you also had Woman in Slinky Evening Gown Who's Having Trouble Walking Down the Arena Stairs, Pockmarked Old Wiseacre Who Appeared to Have Been the Father of Both Marky Ramone and Lemmy From Motorhead, and Unspeakably Awesome 10-Year-Old Boy Wearing Gallons of Eyeliner. Apart from the Ween show Jon and I went to a few years back, The Cure boasted probably the most diverse crowd I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, I can't give you much of a concert review because Bev is the big Cure fan in this household. I do like The Cure, I own nearly all of their albums thanks to the generosity of Scott Floman, and I flat-out love Disintegration and their singles compilation, but for whatever reason, I've never really become a real fan so much as an interested observer. Maybe it's because Robert Smith doesn't really write melodies, instead whimpering along with the music in a way that's effective but nearly note-free (as opposed to my golden-throated favorites Rodney Anonymous, Jeff Magnum, and Wayne Coyne). Or maybe, as with Neil Young and Frank Zappa, I simply felt so daunted by the breadth of their pre-existing discography by the time I discovered them that I've been content to self-consciously pick and choose which albums I revisit. Thus, I recognized lots of the songs at the show but didn't know the titles, which puts a crimp in my efforts to tell you about it all. For instance, until I just now Googled the lyrics, I thought "The Walk" was entitled "Japanese Baby." 

So here's the setlist, copied from www.cure-concerts.de (though I added quotation marks and capital letters because I'm that way): "Plainsong," "Prayers for Rain," "Alt.end," "A Night Like This," "The End of the World," "Lovesong," "Sleep When I'm Dead," "Pictures of You," "Lullaby," "The Perfect Boy," "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea," "Hot Hot Hot," "The Only One," "The Blood," "Wrong Number," "The Walk," "Signal to Noise," "Push," "Inbetween Days," "Just Like Heaven," "Primary," "Us or Them," "Never Enough," "One Hundred Years," "Disintegration." Encore one: "The Lovecats," "Freakshow," "Close to Me," "Why Can't I be You?" Encore two: "Play for Today," "A Forest." Encore three: "Boys Don't Cry," "Jumping Someone Else's Train," "Grinding Halt," "10:15 Saturday Night," "Killing an Arab."

Robert Smith looked kind of doughy, like a cross between Chucky and a freshly exhumed Tiny Tim, but was playful and in good voice throughout the evening. The show's focus was on the rockier elements of the band's discography, culminating in vicious, pissed-off renditions of "Us or Them" and the gorgeously dissonant "One Hundred Years," both of which flooded the arena with all manner of cathartic guitar noise. It was interesting to hear the bass taking "Lovesong"'s instantly recognizable keyboard hook, but I do sort of wish there'd been a fifth band member onstage taking the keys, if only to add some sort of atmospherics to songs like "Never Enough" and "Prayers for Rain." It's hardly a complaint worth complaining, though. I was prepared to credit them with a win after they opened with the disconsolate "Plainsong" against a backdrop of glittering lights and CGI stars.

Bev and I left after "Lovecats" out of exhaustion and to get out of the parking garage without becoming ensnarled in a web of impaired pedestrians and bleating car horns, but looking at the setlist, I'm kind of bummed to see that we missed a full 10 songs as a result. (I figured we'd miss three or four, including "Boys Don't Cry" and "Friday I'm in Love," neither of which we care for.) I'm really bummed to see that we missed "Killing an Arab," which I enjoy but whose title I restrained myself from shouting between songs because I thought it would be slightly gauche to do so. Still, Bev and I caught two and a half hours' worth of fine performances, and "One Hundred Years" was the song I was most hoping they'd play, so I was pleased.

We crashed at the hotel and drove back home the following morning. On Route 1, I got stuck behind an off-brand model of car called an Esteem, which I followed very closely because its driver was not driving fast enough for my liking and I am kind of an impatient jackass behind the wheel. This went on for miles, and at one point, we came upon a plodding line-painting truck with a sign on its back reading, "WET YELLOW PAINT PLEASE KEEP OFF," as well as a big electronic directional arrow. Now, Bev maintains the arrow was pointing to the right, as in "Go around me on my right side," but I could have sworn I saw the arrow pointing to both the left and the right, Wizard of Oz scarecrow-style. I grudgingly admit that a double-headed arrow wouldn't make much sense unless the intended message was, "This truck is a solid mass; do not attempt to pass through it as you would a fine mist or ghost." At any rate, I obliviously kept on the Esteem's tail as she passed the truck on the left, allowing us both to smear the freshly-painted yellow lines all over the road and our tires as the truck driver blew an angry, disbelieving horn blast at us.

Cora was reluctantly collected from Bev's parents' place (she gets lots of treats there) and we drove home. Another band off my concert checklist. It's kind of depressing how short that checklist has become as I push 30. The Handsome Family has a star next to it, but they're the only one I think I'd drive down to Boston for at this point. Because I'm old and I also live in a crappy state where no one wants to come. When I worked in Ann Arbor, I could walk from Math Reviews' offices to Luna's last ever Michigan show, by the way. Sharon and I drove, of course, but the point remains...

CURRENT MUSIC: Your Bloated Corpse Has Washed Ashore by Puerto Muerto.
CURRENT MOOD: Bleak.
CURRENT LEAST FAVORITE PHRASE I'VE EVER HAD TO TRANSCRIBE AT MY JOB: "Mexicans are great, don't get me wrong..."

I happened to glance in the clearance box at Hannaford this afternoon, where they usually dump post-holiday merchandise and cereal boxes bearing long-expired movie/NASCAR tie-ins ("Emerson Fittipaldi says, '*batteries not included is the feel-good hit of 1987!'"), and saw that they were selling individual bottles of off-brand beer for 75 cents each. I impulsively bought the four that I thought looked most interesting and/or tasty so I could review them here. Yes, it would've been far more entertaining for me to buy, like, eight beers and write reviews that are increasingly drunk and unintelligible, but I only had four dollars on me and Bev is never thrilled to come home from work to find her husband blotto from an all-day bender. Furthermore, part of me thinks that the notion of a crappy, four-beer clearance taste test is hilarious in its useless jankiness, so here's Willie's Remaindered Beer Corner!

Entry one: Stone Mill organic pale ale. "A classic taste that is the perfect balance of maltiness and hop bouquet," according to the label. Brewed and bottled by Green Valley Brewing, Merrimack, New Hampshire.
Verdict: Yummy. Could stand to be a little more tart and less watery, but I tend to favor extremes in that regard, which many people don't. (The first pale ale I ever tried was at the Mathematical Reviews employee picnic and I couldn't stand the taste. Since, I've come to favor, savor, and sign waivers for that flavor, but I can vividly remember barely being able to choke down my initial bottle. So I understand why Stone Mill might not want to make it stronger.) At any rate, it goes down as easy as a Killian's.

Entry two: Peak Organic nut brown ale. The Jones Soda-inspired label features a picture of a wedding party with the caption, "'Our wedding by the cape. The ceremony wasn't complete without jazz hands on the beach.' -Sean K., Brooklyn, NY." Sorry, Sean, but those aren't jazz hands. The men appear to be performing some sort of Vaudevillian gesture, while the women are patiently clasping their bouquets and waiting for the men to finish. Peak Organic is brewed and bottled by Peak Organic Brewing Co. LLC in Portland, Maine.
Verdict: Ugh! Sweet! Whatever weird spices they're putting in this, they need to stop. I mean, I'll drink it, but I won't be happy about it.

Entry three: #9 Not-Quite-Pale Ale by Magic Hat Brewing Company, South Burlington, Vermont. Psychedelic graphics on the label are presumably a tip of the hat to the scene that erupted around Burlington's own Phish.
Verdict: The label hides its claim "brewed with the essence of apricot" near its (October 2007) expiration date. I wish I'd noticed that before I purchased it, because I hate apricots and nearly gagged on this. Still, I like Phish a lot and this is a far more palatable Phishy consumable than Ben & Jerry's cloying, marshmallow-based Phish Food.

ETRNY F4ur; I'm sad :(( that alla video store's are clos;ign becuse of NTFLIX?!It 's pathetic (or 'pqhtetique to quote Taikovsky) to see posterres for movies like Ocreans 13 and There May Be BLood and Anvil and the Chipmonks all bleached BY THE SUn and hanging n the windows and all the brwn colors aer purple and oranges too!

Just kidding.

Entry four: Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale, "ale aged on bourbon barrel oak and vanilla beans," by Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Misery. There's a snowman holding a pint glass on the label. Makes me not feel so bad about purchasing a tub of margarine that said, "Great for holiday recipes!" on its lid in the middle of April.
Verdict: You can really taste those vanilla beans, alright. Tastes kind of like melted French vanilla ice cream stirred into a bowl with a bottle of Bud (i.e., like any given Sandra Lee recipe). Evokes gas station refreshments, for some reason. Maybe less healthy. I wish I drank this first, because it's tough to get down as a finale.

CURRENT MUSIC: Hotel Morgen by To Rococo Rot.
CURRENT MOOD: Homesick for Michigan.
CURRENT FAVORITE WORD I'VE LEARNED IN MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION CLASS: Bilirubin.

I continue to fall back into my bad habit of social isolationism. I haven't been returning phone calls or answering e-mails or communicating with people I love, let alone strangers. Human interaction is getting scary again.

To offer an ongoing example, way back on Valentine's Day, Bev was out of town and I went out to see the excellent local band Feel It Robot by myself. Unbeknownst to me, Bev had prepaid for the band to give me a T-shirt and an adorable Feel It Robot felt doll, but I missed them calling my name during the show because the sound was so poor. (It was in a bowling alley.) Ever since, I've made a few aborted attempts to connect with the 'Bots and collect my goodies, but have yet to meet them because I am cowardly. I've gotten as far as their front door, but they were in their studio and apparently couldn't hear me knocking. The woman who lives downstairs encouraged me to really pound on the door, but I blanched at the thought of making myself so noticeable and slunk back down to the street. The band has courteously held off on cashing Bev's check until I pick up my stuff, and I've just been too much of a hermit to make everyone's life easier by actually making an effort to coordinate with them and go downtown and say hi.

What I'm getting at is that I really need to be proactive about socializing again because I fear I'm losing what few skills I have, and I do not want to relive my days as a teen so self-conscious and introverted that I couldn't even bear the thought of making small talk with a cashier who was ringing up my purchase.

So the interest of proactivity, I auditioned for season ten of Big Brother.

On Saturday, Linnehan's car dealership in Bangor hosted a Big Brother casting crew from noon to 4:00. I had no pressing engagements on Saturday, so I decided to go further blur my personal distinction between TV and reality.

Not that I thought I had a chance of being selected. The Linnehan's event is one of 26 casting calls currently listed on CBS's site--and none of the 26 are in L.A. or New York, so I can't think it's an exhaustive list--and from what I can gather, most contestants who ultimately get cast do so on the strength of homemade audition tapes rather than open calls. Those aren't great odds. Furthermore, I am well aware that I am so untelegenic that my appearance on a single Big Brother episode would cause CBS's overall Q Score to plunge to a level below even Brazil's widely reviled Shitting Clowns Network. Needless to say, a big part of the audition's appeal to me was simply to see how such things work, and my expectations for success were low. ("Wow, free balloons for everyone who enters!")

That said, I really did try my best. I didn't go in with a plan to punk the show or anything, like Aaron Song was rumored to have done with Hell's Kitchen. I have no idea whether I'd actually do well on a reality show, but I watch enough of them that I think I'd have a fighting chance as a Rob Cesternino-style schemer. So I made the decision to sincerely go for it. Before leaving the house, in fact, I spent a couple of minutes in honest-to-goodness contemplation of how I should present myself in public, which I haven't done for years. "Unshaven, clean-shaven, or goatee?" Goatee. It's a timeless crowd-pleaser. "Hat or no hat?" No hat. Top Chef's Spike has ruined hats for the season.

The parking lot was full when I arrived at 11:30, so the dealership had arranged for a limo to shuttle applicants from a furniture store's more ample parking lot a quarter-mile up the road. The front of the lot held a miniature revival tent in which Mr. Linnehan had hired a gospel rock band to perform and preach. (Mr. Linnehan has never seen Big Brother, so he can be forgiven for not realizing that it's kind of a godless show.) There were also free donuts and hourly cash giveaways. Around back of the shop, you were given a queue number. I was 85th in line to audition. 150 people ultimately showed up, which I think is far fewer than Linnehan's was expecting. I felt kind of bad that they'd put in so much effort for such a crummy turnout, but 150 was nevertheless about all the casting folks were equipped to handle, since it was nearly 4:00 by the time I finally got to audition.

After being assigned a number, we were made to sit at cafeteria tables set over a drainage grate in a chilly garage and fill out a 12-page application that took me 45 minutes to complete. ("Do you have a temper? How often do you lose your temper? What provokes you?" "What are you most ashamed of, either now or in your past?" "Have you ever been to a nude beach? If so, what was it like?") I think it might have gone quicker had I been less wordy, but I had plenty of time and enjoy filling out surveys, so I wrote a lot.

For instance, one of the final questions was, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself and why you think you'd make a great Big Brother participant and housemate?" I wrote, "Reality show contestants always say they expect to be underestimated for one reason or another, so I plan to be the first Big Brother winner to be consistently overestimated throughout the game. My opponents will throw themselves into fits of confusion and fear, worrying about what this Williams boy will do next, while I'll be hobbling hopelessly around with each foot stuck in a wastepaper basket... across the finish line!!!"

I'd brought along my medical transcription textbook, figuring I'd get some studying done as I waited. Instead, though, I made myself be social and spent most of the wait hanging out with a very funny girl named Erin, who looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal and who works as an "equine collection specialist" at Bangor's racetrack. "That means I catch horse piss," she said. She collects urine samples from racehorses and sends them to be analyzed, I guess for evidence of performance-enhancing substances? She told me that the secret to getting a horse to pee is to whistle. I hope to be able to employ this knowledge for practical joke use in the future. Erin was the very first person who got to audition at noon because she'd won a radio contest bumping her to the head of the line. She hung around as moral support for her friend Kim, who was 99th in line. Kim had never watched Big Brother and asked Erin and me, "What's the point of the show?" We weren't sure what to tell her.

Also met a guy who looked so much like Donnie Wahlberg that Erin asked if there was any relation. The guy said there isn't, but he gets it a lot. He was once on a subway and a girl refused to believe that he wasn't Mark Wahlberg, so he signed Mark's name on a napkin to get her to go away.

A woman from a local paper interviewed us about the process and asked if I'd like to make a faux "audition tape" for the paper's video blog, so I'd have a chance to practice selling myself to the camera. I'm thankful for the opportunity, because it gave me a chance to get a thoroughly lame response out of my system. However, I hope she does not use my tape on the website, because I came across like a complete tool. I'd planned on using a poorly-thought-out gag about how guys who look like me generally don't get to be on television unless Judd Apatow or the word "makeover" are involved, har har. It's a dud line, and I botched it on top of that, so my stammering final product made it sound like I wanted to go on the show specifically so I could say snide things about the pretty contestants, like the above-it-all alterna-kids who populate The Amazing Race and whose heads I always want to clonk together.

The weather was cloudy and cold and my nose was drippy, and I did feel typically out-of-place waiting in a garage full of style-conscious pop tarts, so I'm proud of myself for sticking out the four hours and not just saying, "Okay, lark's over," and heading back to my comfy, familiar house. 

The audition numbers were called in batches of 20, and those called were then made to sit in a green room disguised as a smaller garage. As I waited there, a young woman approached me and said, "I just have to tell you: do you know who you reminded me of when I was squinting just now?"

"Weird Al?" I sighed.

"No, the guy from Numb3rs!" (Presumably David Krumholtz, also of Serenity, Addams Family Values, and Slums of Beverly Hills.)

I graciously accepted that.

When my number was finally called, some guy wrote my name on a whiteboard and handed it to me. I was then led into a teensy office in the back of Linnehan's in which chairs and furniture had been pushed aside to make room for a camera and a lighting rig. There was a guy behind the camera whose face I never saw, and a bald dude in his late thirties who was acting as facilitator. He took my paperwork, warmly shook my hand, and told me to hold the whiteboard up to my chest while he took a couple digital pictures, mugshot-style. I let the obvious Mike Boogie jokes drift through the room unspoken.

The facilitator then told me to look right in the camera and say my name, why I want to be on the show, and why I think I'd be a good Big Brother houseguest. After a brief introduction, I said, "I've just been told that I look like the mathematical savant from the CBS program Numb3rs if you kind of squint, so there may be some crossover potential there for viewers who squint." The cameraman and director both laughed. So even if nothing else comes of the experience, I'm glad I got to momentarily brighten their day. Judging from the wordless shrieking I heard from the audition room a few minutes before my turn, by a woman who evidently hypothesized a correlation between decibel level and favorable memorability, I suspect their day needed a little brightening.

Upon leaving the audition space, I wandered back into the holding pen to say goodbye to Erin and Kim. I was immediately mobbed by waiting 21-year-olds who wanted to know all about what happened in there. With terror in his voice, one guy asked, "Were they old and mean?" I don't know who gave this kid the idea that he'd be judged on the spot by, like, Don Rickles and Andy Rooney, but I had to reassure him a couple times that the whole thing was very much the opposite of intimidating.

Strangely, that same kid had been sitting across from me as I filled out my application, and was boasting to his friend about the cocky, fey comments he'd written. In the blank asking for your swimsuit size, for example, he wrote, "Perfect." I was nonplussed to see this mussily-coiffed guy who clearly intended his "hook" to be pseudo-Christian Siriano confidence and cattiness consumed with stage fright in what I considered to be a very casual setting. In fact, there was a tangible feeling among this little cluster of applicants that this--this reality-TV audition being held in a Bangor garage--was their one shot at fame and they daren't blow it. It made me feel a little sorry for them. Maine is a land with so few entertainment choices that cops amuse themselves by tasering each other at parties, so I well understand why these folks want out, but without dumping on their starry-eyed, fluff-brained dreams, it's flat-out delusional to pin all your hopes on a two-minute introductory audition. I realized, as I rode in the limo shuttle back to my car, next to an adrenaline-fueled young man in flip-flops who was chattering breathlessly on his cell about his audition accomplishment, that I do not understand the thirst for fame of the reality contestant hopeful.

We've all seen footage of the fauxhawked throngs that camp out in urban centers for a chance at an American Idol slot. (Oh, you have too.) Given how listless I became waiting a mere four hours, I think a person would have to want that slot desperately to brave crowds that size. Especially for a show like Idol, where you know that your best, most heartfelt effort could wind up as William Hung-lite comic relief on one of their nasty "talent"-search episodes. It's an odd contradiction: on the one hand, you'd have to believe wholeheartedly in your own talent or appeal to expect to stand out among uncountable thousands of applicants. On the other hand, you'd also have to harbor the far sadder belief that appearing on a reality show is your only possible way of showcasing that talent or appeal before the world, or else why wouldn't you strike out on your own path that doesn't require you to eat bugs or submit to the capricious whims of editors or listen to Tyra Banks nattering about Lord knows what? You have to simultaneously think the world of yourself and think very little of yourself, it seems to me.

To put it another way, I saw firsthand this weekend that even the most arrogant, judgmental people I see on reality shows have so little faith in themselves that they live in fear of being judged unworthy to be on reality shows. So I think I'm ready to talk to people again, free from worry about being judged myself.

CURRENT MUSIC: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater. I've become somewhat addicted to this album.
CURRENT MOOD: Famewhorey.
CORA'S CURRENT FAVORITE SONG: "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" by The Flaming Lips. It makes her want to hump her blanket. Thankfully, I do not like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" so will not feel deprived when I never play it ever again.

The following are excerpts from the children's book Future Communication by Harriette S. Abels, copyright 1980 (part of Crestwood House's Our Future World series). In the future, grammatical scientists will be able to pinpoint the precise sentence in which this text transitions from being amusingly, sweetly naive to being completely heart-shredding in its overestimation of humanity.

Tomorrow's Newspapers

"Communication is going to get better, faster, and cheaper as we get into the twenty-first century. The biggest change in communication will probably be in the newspaper business. One futurist (person who studies the future) thinks the newspaper of tomorrow will be delivered to your home on a twelve-inch video disk. You will put this disk into a slot in your television set. The stories that you read will have not only the printed words, but full-color photographs, moving pictures, and stereo sound effects. When your favorite baseball pitcher pitches a no-hit game and you read about it in your morning newspaper, you will also be able to see that final pitch and the wild excitement of his teammates that follow it."

People and the Media

"Some futurists working in the field of sociology, the study of human society, see us living in a future worldwide 'global village.' They see the electronic media giving us a feeling of friendship for all the people of the world. When it is possible through that medium for a person in New York to meet electronically with a doctor in Africa or a farmer in China, today's problems between people will almost disappear.

"In the field of government, all futurists agree that someday we will be one world with a one-world government. Electronic communication is a big step in that direction. Third-world and emerging nations will be on a more equal footing with our Western countries. National boundaries between countries won't mean as much.

"Town meetings used to be an important part of small community life. In the future the hope is to have electronic town meetings, but with people from around the earth. This will encourage more people to take part in their government, at the local or national level, or even worldwide.

"Cable television and satellites, along with computers and home terminals, will give us an electronic network that can greatly add to everyone's interest and sharing in government."

People to People

"Today we use the telephone as one way of communicating with other parts of the world, relying on operators to put through our calls. In the future, a mother who lives in California will be able to talk to her daughter in Bangkok, Thailand over her ham radio set without having to go through the telephone operator. For closer calls, citizens' band and mobile radios will be even better than they are now.

"It will be possible for a wife in the suburbs to call her husband anywhere in the city to find out what time he will be home for dinner. While his wife is waiting the husband will call traffic control, and when he hears how the traffic is on the highway, or if the electric busses are running on time, he will tell her what time he will be at their front door."

Bees

"Because bees have such a highly developed language, it is possible for them to use it in governing themselves. When a hive decides to move to a new location, they start an operation called 'swarming.' Scout bees are sent out to look for a new site in a hollow tree, a hole in the ground, or perhaps a box. They then hold what might be called a nominating convention inside the old hive. Each of the scouts describes her favorite spot. She does this by a special dance, and tells how strongly she feels about the new location by the number of times she repeats the dance. Once the choice is narrowed down to two or three places, the scouts go out again for a final look. Next they meet in a 'high court' session where, by conversation and great discussion, they reach an almost unanimous agreement, and the hive flies to the new home.

"How the study of communication between these creatures will help the human race is not yet clear."

Television and Education

"The big new use of television in the future will be in the field of education. ...

"The TV Screen itself will not be the small twenty-one or twenty-seven inch box that we have today. It will be common to have screens permanently fixed in one or more of the walls in your home. They will cover an area perhaps as big as six feet by six feet. The effects of a TV screen of this size on our minds will be enormous. ...

"This huge TV screen and the speed with which it will bring news and information into our lives should also affect us in other ways. When we see such tragedies as an apartment house fire with its victims, or a terrible automobile accident, perhaps it will teach us to be more careful in all areas of our everyday life. There is a big difference between reading about such things in your daily newspaper, or seeing them on your tiny TV screen of today, and seeing them in life-size images in your living room.

"If there is ever another major war and it is seen on this giant screen in front of our eyes, maybe for the first time in history of man we will all stand up and shout, 'No! No more! Man has grown beyond this type of animal behavior!'

"The TV system of the future can be used for good or for evil. A shouting political leader, with a fascinating way of wrapping his silky words around us, could use this future TV system to rule the whole world. It will be up to all of us to see that this wonderful new tool is used for good, and not for evil, in the centuries ahead."

CURRENT MUSIC: Just a random mix.
CURRENT MOOD: Discouraged.
CURRENT FAVORITE EXCHANGE FROM PARADISE HOTEL: Contestant one: "It's self-explanatory." Contestant two, agreeing: "It's very explanatory."

Monday, Netflix finally delivered the original, Austrian version of Funny Games, Michael Haneke's mean-spirited home-invasion snuff film that adds insult to injury by explicitly blaming the audience for watching it. The ostensible point of the film is that movie violence--American movie violence--is so whimsical that it undercuts the painful ugliness of violence in reality, and it makes this point via lots of painful ugliness. Violence is bad, you see. Haneke's new shot-for-shot English-language remake of Funny Games, and his attempt to scar a whole new demographic, has been the topic of a lot of debate in the past month or so, even among the personal blogs I read. (Ben wrote a typically thoughtful journal entry on why he won't be seeing Funny Games that Haneke would congratulate himself for prompting. Tasha Robinson came up with the ingenious technique of beating Haneke at his own game by watching the DVD at double speed, reading the subtitles and absorbing the story, but neatly sidestepping the emotional manipulation of the film.) So I watched the old version out of curiosity.

You can go to Rotten Tomatoes and read any number of more competent plot summaries than mine, so I'll just give you an oversimplification of the story: An upper-middle-class couple shows up at their isolated vacation home with their preteen kid and their dog. Two mannerly sociopaths talk their way into the house under the pretext of borrowing eggs and then spend the rest of the film violently torturing the family. Ta-da.

It may be "torture porn," but not in the way you're thinking. The focus is on the emotional torture of violence, so the camera tends to linger on other characters' reactions to seeing hurtful acts that we, the viewers, do not see in progress. We just see their grim aftermath. The "games" of the title are simply the villains' gimmick: they present the pain they inflict as the consequence of the victims losing a series of unwinnable "bets." (It's not a new gimmick, nor is it meant to be, I don't think. Sticking with the "film violence" theme, we can assume the characters themselves stole the idea from, say, Jeremy Irons's riddle-spouting terrorist in Die Hard with a Vengeance.) And the element of the film that's become the most controversial is the way one of the villians keeps turning to the camera and glibly chastising the viewer for his complicity in these "games." Haneke has repeatedly said in interviews that the only people who will make it to the end of Funny Games--and, in the process, be abused, sickened, and scolded into submission--are those who really need his perverse version of tough love in the first place. The correct response is to be horrified and walk out somewhere along the way. That attitude itself is why Funny Games doesn't work at all.

To be fair, I watched Funny Games more than a decade after its original 1997 release. I was in high school when it came out, so I don't have much of a frame of reference for the larger state of cinema at that time. Furthermore, in the years since its debut, dozens of films have been released that will color how newcomers view Funny Games. It's difficult to keep in mind that the original was released in a world that hadn't seen Panic Room or Saw or In the Bedroom or Adaptation or any number of other popular movies that cover similar narrative or thematic ground. Maybe it was a better film back then.

However, given that the new Tim Roth/Naomi Watts Funny Games is evidently so identical to the German version that it could almost be classified as a rerelease, we can assume that Haneke thinks his original vision is timelier than ever. More importantly, he thinks we still desperately need his foul medicine, so I guess I'm not supposed to question whether its relevance to the entertainment landscape has changed. Okay, fine. So I watched, prepared to be taught a lesson.

And you know what? Upon the film's completion, I didn't feel gutted, outraged, or manipulated. It may be that I'm even more reprehensibly nihilistic than Haneke anticipated--beyond his "help," as it were--but I think it's because from the first moment the villain winked into the camera, I wasn't buying. Part of it is my own stuffiness, I suppose, since the "breaking the fourth wall" technique is one of those tricks that I simply can't see as innovative anymore, or even for 1997. It was cute for the title characters on The Monkees and It's Garry Shandling's Show to break the action and comment on the silliness of our collective participation in what we were seeing. Will Smith's constant nattering at the camera in the first couple seasons of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, on the other hand, most likely marks the point at which the technique moved from cheeky to tiresome. By the time Haneke got to the notion of using these asides as a means of directing the viewer's reactions, it mostly comes off as condescending, no different from Spike Lee opening Bamboozled by having Damon Wayans preachily define the word "satire," lest we none-too-savvy viewers miss the boat.

Furthermore--and from here forward, I'm potentially spoiling whatever there is to be spoiled--Funny Games' climax hinges on action that barges in randomly from outside the film's diegetic world, on which I call shenanigans. I don't want to sound like I expect directors to hew to some Dogme 95-style list of creative rules, but if you keep pointing out to me that I'm watching a narrative fiction and that your characters are little more than Sims who can't do anything except go where you tell them to go, it's hard for me to get invested in their fate no matter how powerful the actors' performances may be. Worse still, if you're trying to castigate your audience for their tacit approval of violence by confronting them with its terrible realities, it makes no sense whatsoever to completely divorce your film from its own reality at a crucial point.

At any rate, at Funny Games' conclusion, I just felt like I'd watched another black-hearted "satire" in which a filmmaker wanted to get away with horking a wad of unspeakable cruelty up at the screen without taking any responsibility for what he'd created. Like the lunkheads who think that by saying, "I'm just keeping it real," they are immunizing themselves against any repercussions for whatever antisocial thing they are about to blurt, Haneke says, "I'm just going to swing my arms like this, and if you get hit, it's your own fault." It's a splattery mess, and when it was over, I just sort of rolled my eyes.

What really offended me, though, was the interview with Haneke on the DVD, because he maintains his self-righteous tone of knowing more than his audience while giving completely nonsensical explanations as to his motives on this film. I haven't seen his other films yet, and I hear some of them are magnificent, so I'm not entirely dismissing him as a hack, but in the DVD interview (and those I subsequently read), he seems to be extemporaneously bluffing his way through questions of why he made Funny Games in the first place. For example, he claims that the villains aren't characters as such, but are merely sketched "artifacts." But then he goes on to praise his own insistence upon making all his characters as fully developed and intelligent as they can be (before backpedaling and explaining that this somehow applies to "artifacts" too underdeveloped to qualify as characters.). And he also claims that he'd wanted to explore real-life middle-class psychos he'd read about, who kill just because it makes them feel something, and what happens when social contracts are violated. It's a lot to take on in a film that he also claims is a deconstruction of Hollywood violence.

Another example: In that interview, he claims to be worried that the original DVD's success in America was an indictation that his message was being misunderstood (because, of course, it's so subtle), but in an equally contradictory interview with Entertainment Weekly, he justifies the remake by claiming "the German-language version did not find the English-language audience for which the film was originally meant." So I think he's full of crap from the get-go on this one, but what's really bothersome is his mantra that Funny Games is supposed to act as aversion therapy for the violence addicts who finish it, and will be of no use to anyone else.

It strikes me as very odd to claim that anyone who sticks with Funny Games long enough to be manhandled by its ever-increasing sadism is clearly in it for the sole purpose of enjoying a little of the old vicarious ultraviolence. I can't understand that notion at all. The closest I can come to a sensible translation of Haneke's point would be for him to say, "Once it becomes clear to the viewer that this film is nothing but a celebration of harming helpless people, it's irresponsible for that viewer to continue watching." But I don't think that's something that is clear to the viewer along the way. Funny Games is not a predictable film; in fact, Haneke delights in cruel plot twists. So for all its faults, it's not a film during which a viewer can make the informed decision, "I see where it's going and that's not something I want to be a part of."

To put it another way, if I were to make a film that began with an address to the audience in which I told them I would be spending the next 90 minutes stomping on babies, and then methodically did exactly that, there clearly would be something wrong with anyone who sat all the way through it. (Unless they work in a law enforcement capacity and are watching it as part of an investigation as to how I managed to secure funding to make this film in the first place.) Although Haneke admittedly gives us ample clues as to what's to come, even directly addressing us, he takes such glee in confounding moviegoers' expectations that it's not unreasonable to suspect that this, too, might be a "game." I think viewers who stick around are likely do so out of a desire to hear the end of the story and the humane hope that the family will escape their captors' clutches; not in some sophomoric expectation of action-movie blood and guts that Haneke can then undercut with real inhumanity.

Ultimately, all Haneke makes clear through his evasive, arrogant defensiveness is that his film has nothing useful to say. Ironically, Funny Games isn't nearly as effective at making a point about our desensitization to film violence as last year's Shoot 'Em Up was; in addition to being genuinely witty and enjoyable, that film contains such a surfeit of mayhem and gunplay that it provokes a ho-hum response even as characters are shooting one another while freefalling from a plane. That's a reaction that you can think about if you so choose, and come to whatever conclusion you wish without a guy like Haneke insisting that his is the only right viewpoint.

I certainly hope that people who know me would say I am a peaceful sort. The closest I've ever come to physical violence was taking an ill-advised swing at Scott MacDonald in fifth grade. (I missed, Scott courteously didn't deck me, and all was forgiven in a matter of minutes.) I admit that sometimes, I enjoy movies that are violent. I also sometimes enjoy movies that are not violent. I enjoy movies. Sometimes films are gratuitously violent. Sometimes nonviolent films are gratuitously stupid. Some movies suck. Within the context of a well-made film, though, there is very little subject matter that I refuse to sit through, and even then, I recognize that my personal reactions and sensitivities do not dictate what is appropriate for an artist to put on celluloid in the first place. Moreover, I recognize that there is a big, big difference between the acceptability of depicting something in a work of fiction and its acceptability in real life. Thus, I'm sorry to say that I don't feel guilty and I don't feel that society has been damaged just because I enjoyed, say, No Country for Old Men.

So basically, I sat all the way through Funny Games and yet all I learned about myself is that I think Michael Haneke's kind of a creep for making it.

CURRENT MUSIC: Say No to Being Cool, Say Yes to Being Happy by The Softlightes. (The latest incarnation of The Incredible Moses Leroy. Lightweight, upbeat indie-synth-pop that, as the album title suggests, would rather be friendly than memorable. Might make for good hangover music, to help alleviate the accompanying remorse.)
CURRENT MOOD: Headachey.
CURRENT SITTING POSITION: Slouched and cross-legged.

I just finished watching The Corner, the six-episode miniseries that David Simon and Ed Burns conceived before assembling that miracle of TV drama, The Wire. (Roc Live himself, Charles S. Dutton, directed all six episodes.) The show follows strung-out Khandi Alexander (Catherine from NewsRadio), her estranged junkie ex-husband, and their sometimes-slinger son as they each deal with a life that's flanked by a drug culture that won't give them a moment's peace.

In retrospect, it's a lot of fun to see members of the Simon/Burns Repertory Company (i.e., Wire cast members) popping up in The Corner's supporting roles: Freamon! Snydor! Wilson! There's Jay as a shady scrap metal dealer! There's that... wheelchair guy... Denkins, maybe? At any rate, there he is! I did a happy couch dance when Daniels showed up in episode five. Bev's out of town, so Cora had to appreciate my bons mots that depended on knowledge of the actors' subsequent filmographies. Cora snorted in the same dismissive way that Bev would've, honestly.

I haven't seen a lot of press about The Corner, even after The Wire deservedly ensnared the mind of every TV critic in America. Admittedly, The Corner is methadone to The Wire's heroin because it's more of a character study, without The Wire's multitentacled narrative thread. Cops don't much get involved and kingpins don't much get involved; it's like a series focusing on The Wire's Bubbs. Characters are simply on drugs or off drugs, but either status will likely change once or twice by the end of the episode. That's sort of the point: no one's job, addiction, or recovery counts as long-term, and we watch people fall in and out of their roles due to a type of inertia that has nothing to do with free will and everything to do with the daily pressures that these inner-city citizens have never been without. In the Baltimore of The Corner, there's no incentive for anyone to stay in school or to get a straight job--not when there's a perfectly lucrative alternative available to anyone who's seen too many kinds of personal destruction to differentiate between the risks of continued addiction and the humiliation of minimum-wage bullshit.

Given that the Wire staff recently wrote a grand editorial in Time against imprisoning people for nonviolent drug offenses, and given that our nation recently surpassed a despicable one percent incarceration rate, I'm kind of surprised that The Corner hasn't popped up in more topical sidebars lately. It's no competition for the hijinks of Kima and McNulty, but don't let The Corner's mainstream absence convince you to overlook its humane power.

CURRENT MUSIC: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater.
CURRENT MOOD: Cowed by two naughty puppies.
CURRENT FAVORITE BIT FROM JIMMY KIMMEL'S "UNNECESSARY CENSORSHIP" SEGMENT: The Sesame Street clip that shows up 50 seconds into this one cracks me up.

I just watched Street Fight, which is Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated documentary about Newark's 2002 mayoral election (recommended a few times in Television Without Pity's recaps of The Wire's fourth season). Relevantly enough, it follows fresh-faced "candidate for change" Cory Booker through his campaign to unseat awesomely-named incumbent Sharpe James, and the many dirty retaliatory tactics Booker faces in that campaign. It's claimed that Sharpe James intentionally spreads disinformation, steals Booker's campaign signs, uses the local police to coerce business owners to fall in line, and essentially engages in racial warfare against Booker (both men are black Democrats in a largely black city, but James apparently refers to the light-skinned Booker as "a white Republican").

It covers some interesting ground, but it's ultimately a poorly-made film, because the anti-James sentiment relies almost entirely on innuendo, hearsay, and--most frustratingly--Curry's first-person narration, detailing personal threats Curry received/perceived, examples of James's poor behavior that Curry claims to have witnessed, and other events that were not captured on camera. Meanwhile, to hear the film tell it, Booker's worst vice is that a word as offensive as shit might occasionally pass his lips. Though Booker does seem sincere and I don't necessarily doubt the many accusations that are leveled against James in Street Fight, the most damning thing we actually see is the mayor's security team palming Curry's camera lens and trying to illegally keep him from filming. It's annoying, of course, but in the absence of other documented shadiness, James doesn't come across as any more dangerously corrupt than the average bedding salesman featured on your local news's "Hall of Shame Problem Solvers" segment.

The thing that Curry and other post-Michael Moore documentarians and reporters need to learn is that the audience is not automatically on your side. Michael Moore can get away with completely one-sided narration for a few reasons: he's funny, he shows enough firsthand footage to effectively lend credence to his secondhand claims, and everyone knows he's got an agenda. Moore's strength (as well as his failing) is that he fights propaganda with propaganda and builds his cases to bait people to come after him for it. Depending on the result, it can be an ingenious or maddening technique, but it's his and he's earned it through sheer ballsiness. Other documentarians cannot simply piggyback on it by making a nuisance of themselves and then acting victimized when people tell them to cut it out. We, the viewers, do tacitly agree to take the director's perspective as a guide when we sit down to view a documentary he's assembled, but without "the camera doesn't lie" footage to buttress whatever thesis he's laying out, we're also savvy enough to know we need more proof before ruling, and that's something Street Fight does not provide. I'll give it a C+.

Random memory:

In Miss Hackett's ninth grade language arts class, we would occasionally play a fun game to kill time: Everyone would take out a sheet of paper and write the alphabet, one letter at a time, down each line of the sheet. Then, next to it, we would write, one letter at a time, the first 26 letters of some specific cliche, like "An apple a day keeps the doctor a." The two columns would form 26 pairs of initials which we then had to use to name famous people, real or fictional. (Using the above phrase, for instance, the initials would read AA, BN, CA, DP, EP, and so on. So you could name Alan Arkin, Bill Nye, Carol Alt, Dennis Polonich, and Emo Phillips. Get it?) You got a point for each name you came up with that no one else in the class came up with. During one game, Kelly Duffy and I were amused to find that we'd both named Hans Moleman. I had a brief crush on Kelly Duffy after that. Anyway, Miss Hackett gave me a warning for going too obscure when I named Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher for "VK," and I was ultimately disqualified for naming Murphy Brown actor Joe Regalbuto.

CURRENT MUSIC: Frenching the Bully by The Gits.
CURRENT MOOD: Eh, fine.
CURRENT DISTANCE TO COMPLETING MY REVIEW OF TWIN CINEMA BY THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Roughly 3/4 to go.

For the third time this week, I took Cora (left, in spider costume) and Bubba (visiting dog, right) out for a walk and a manure truck immediately plopped down the road past our house, making the rest of the walk rather unpleasant for me.

I can't quite put my finger on the metaphor for the state of Maine, but I know it's in there.

CURRENT MUSIC: Hounds of Love by Kate Bush.
CURRENT MOOD: A little nauseated.
CURRENT PRODUCT ANTI-ENDORSEMENT: Right Guard Sport Stick deodorant is for shit. Don't ask how I know or what I smell like.

Hannaford, one of our local grocery chains, announced earlier this week that a security breach has potentially compromised 4.2 million credit card numbers in the past few months. This morning on Maine AIRS, I read an article about how Hannaford's response to this problem has left a lot to be desired. Specifically, their efforts to pacify and genuflect before their worried, incensed consumers have consisted of little more than a "whoops" note from CEO Ron Hodge posted on their website. I started cackling on the air as I read the following paragraph (italics mine):

"Hodge's letter also is posted at the entrance to Hannaford's flagship store at Back Cove in Portland. It doesn't stand out among other visual clutter, however, and because it's taped to an automatic door, a customer has to make an effort to actually read it."

CURRENT MUSIC: Cymatic Scan by Bill Laswell and Tetsu Inoue.
CURRENT MOOD: Bashful.
CURRENT CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Bangor Daily News suggests that the Bush administration targeted Eliot Spitzer for a Valerie Plame-style takedown because of his vocal accusations that the administration was complicit in the subprime mortgage collapse. Interesting.

I've had better months than the one that has transpired since last I wrote. I think. Well, I'm sure I've had 30 better days, even if they were non-consecutive, because I know I don't always feel like I'm about to turn into Kevin Borseth. Anyway, allow me to catch you up: The Tuesday after Valentine's Day, Bev called and woke me up just after she left for work, telling me that her car suddenly had no brakes and that she'd need me to drive her in, since she was already running late. I quickly threw some clothes on and made it out the front door just as Bev maneuvered back into our driveway. We hopped into my leprous old Tempo and it begrudgingly hauled us to Bev's office.

That's when the Tempo's transmission died, though I did manage to get it to sputter and roll about a half-mile, onto a side road leading to the airport. I attempted to add transmission fluid on my own but succeeded only in staining the road a gory maroon. So I bothered Bev at work and she suggested getting AAA to tow me and the car down to her parents' place, an hour away, so I could swap for one of her dad's all-purpose loaners. Bev had to call AAA for me because my membership card was in the wallet that I'd left at home in the rush to get dressed and out the door. Then I waited about an hour, because AAA sent the tow truck driver to our house instead of where I was stranded. I became quite good at playing Snake on my burner phone, even with transmission fluid smeared all over the buttons.

The tow truck driver was perfectly nice, but conversation was in short and awkward supply as I rode in his cab down to Deer Isle. I know nothing about the inner workings of cars, and he didn't seem to care much about the Pet Shop Boys, so the only moment of easy back-and-forth we had was when we came to an accord that Maine is the worst state. ("I've lived in more than half the states," he said more than once. "I have no idea why I came back here.") He tried to explain to me why the cab responded to every minor bump in the road with lumbar-granulating mechanical-bull action--something about "struts" or "stilts," maybe?--but I didn't follow it. It was a relief to both of us, I expect, when he unloaded me and the Tempo at Bev's parents' place.

On the drive home, in a Buick borrowed from Bev's very patient and gracious parents, I thought about my attitude toward everything. Ben is always going on about the positive results of positive thinking--not in a pseudo-mystical The Secret way, but in a very pragmatic way--and I remembered having a conversation with Jess a few years back about how we must have been putting something odd out into the world to attract negative situations so reliably when we hung out. So as I drove, I tried reminding myself that the world really isn't out to get me and that the only reason it seems like things go wrong so often is because that's what I focus on and how I choose to perceive things in my life. I have been feeling myself becoming ever more misanthropic and cynical in recent months, cursing more often, thinking uncharitable thoughts toward perfectly nice people, and that's really not the person I want to be. Honest. So, I reasoned, if I am to put the brakes on this alarming trend, the first step is to stop expecting the worst and seeing every event as a confirmation of that. It would go against every crinkle my brain has developed since eighth grade (when my history teacher memorably admonished me, "Your cynicism behooves you," apparently thinking "behoove" meant the opposite of what it means), but it was time to start conditioning myself to look for the good.

And I quickly found that my fortunes had changed! When I finally made it back home, there was a big ol' package waiting on my front porch! I was particularly excited because earlier in the month, Amanda had told me that she and Sean were generously going to mail me a box of 40 CDs and 15 DVDs that they no longer needed or wanted, for me to donate to my local library. Here's an excerpt from the e-mail she sent me: "Keep them, donate them, sell them, I don't care. We just didn't want them in our house anymore! It turned out to be kind of an adventure, too. Because I am a very special kind of idiot, I got off the bus three stops too early, so I got to carry a 20-pound box (I told you it was giant) four blocks through very slippery snow. That was unpleasant. By the time I got to the post office, my arms had basically turned into spaghetti and I had trouble gripping the pen, so the customs form looks like it was filled in by a first grader." She told me there'd be good, canonical CDs by people like the Ramones and Kinks that the library could certainly use! Beach Boys too, but still, Ramones and Kinks!

I bounded up the front steps and was surprised by my own strength as I effortlessly hoisted the package and confirmed that Amanda's return address was on there. Hooray!

After a second, it became clear that I'm still a weakling and the package was just remarkably light. "Amanda must have been exaggerating when she said it was 20 pounds," I thought.

And then I noticed that there was a purple stamp on the top of the box that read, "Received Without Contents At SMP & DC."

Yep, empty box. It's not damaged at all; someone just slit it open, helped himself to its contents, and resealed it somewhere along the journey between Toronto and Bangor. My favorite college professor used to refer to people who steal things from libraries as "perverts," so that's how I'm going to think of the thief in this case, since that's what he unknowingly did. Perv. I e-mailed Amanda with the news, and she was furious about it too. Luckily, she insured the package for $100 (Canadian), so although it doesn't come close to covering the actual value of the box's contents, at least she'll be reimbursed something.

Incidentally, Meineke repaired the brakes on Bev's Lumina. The following day, Bev called me at work to let me know that the Lumina's alternator had died, so it was off to Meineke again. The alternator was replaced at no small expense, car was retrieved... and its battery died the next day. Bev replaced that one herself. Then I got the flu.

Watched Rashomon. Lots of continuity problems. No good.

(Kidding.)

Last week, I took Bev to a local sleep clinic so she could undergo a sleep study, and while I was gone, Cora overturned the living room garbage and feasted on the orange peels, birdseed, and Puffs brand Kleenex within. By the time Bev returned the next morning, her head coated hilariously with parrafin wax where they'd stuck the electrodes, Cora could barely move at all. Cora had been whining the entire night next to me, but I figured she just missed Bev, because she is kind of a clingy pup, or had simply given herself a stomachache from eating trash. But by morning, she was pathetically dragging herself along the floor with her front paws rather than walking, so clearly, something was really wrong. After a daylong stay at the vet during which time I cried and guzzled beer and drunk-dialed my parents because that's how I deal with stress, Cora was diagnosed with a maelstrom of ailments (ailstrom? maelments?) including pancreatitis, whipworms, and hip dysplasia, the latter of which is a particularly unusual problem for such a little dog to have. By way of treatment for it, we're not supposed to let the puppy jump all over the place anymore, so we removed the ottoman that Cora used to use as a vaulting horse to get herself up onto our bed, and built this ramp:



Cora hates the ramp and will not willingly go near it. At first, we thought she was scared or that the incline was too steep, but it now appears that she's just a stubborn dog, because we have seen her use it in a controlled fashion to get down from the bed; she just prefers to whimper until we pick her up.

She doing fine otherwise, though. She takes her meds as long as I hide them in cheese, and is getting around fine. We went walking in the backyard earlier, and she became completely enamored of some sort of conifer branch that was lying on the ground. (I'm not sure what kind of trees we have back there: Spruce? Fir? Larch? I fear I'm an arboreal racist like Ronald Reagan, in that many trees look the same to me.) Within seconds of sniffing it, she was rubbing her face all over it like it was a perfume sample. So she's back to being an inscrutable little weirdo, for which I am thankful.

Remember how I mentioned that my credit union was keeping 6% of all Canadian checks I deposited, as a "Canadian discount"? Well, I closed that account and moved my money to a new credit union... who is doing the same thing to me despite assurances that they wouldn't withhold anything beyond what the exchange rate dictates. And I'm sure that the U.S. dollar has not regained that much ground against the Canadian one recently; I'm no Alan Greenspan, but when every damn editorial I read uses the twee euphemism "the R word" to refer to our current economic status, things clearly aren't looking rosy. So where did this policy come from? Is it common practice for financial institutions to do this? I could see charging a dollar or two, maybe, and calling it a "foreign transaction fee," but 6% is a big chunk to take. I wonder if Bangor has any shady check-cashing depots like Detroit does, who might ultimately charge me less.

Basically, this whole month has had the lingering effect of making me very resentful of money itself, and very unflatteringly jealous of rich people. Bev and I are hardly destitute, of course. We've got a house, cable TV, reasonably good health insurance, speedy-if-unreliable Internet connection, etc., and I do feel very blessed and grateful for that. I whine a lot, CLEARLY, but I am conscious that things are a lot worse for a lot of people, and since there is absolutely no logical reason why misfortune should befall anyone rather than me, I feel guilty for even idly fantasizing about having more than I have. But at the same time, I don't think Bev and I live an extravagant lifestyle by any means, and I've lately allowed myself to become inappropriately frustrated by the amount of money and effort that's required to simply exist at what I think is a reasonable level with comparatively modest luxuries, especially when car repairs and vet bills and hidden 6% fees all coalesce into a seemingly insurmountable wad of impending financial doom that's not going to be staved off by some ill-considered "economic stimulus" check.

I honestly don't begrudge anyone the privileges they enjoy any more than I feel entitled to comforts that others go without. But recently, I've been disappointed to find myself watching some urban-money-parade reality show on Bravo and realizing my mind has been selfishly seething, "Grumble grumble conspicuous consumption, Lipstick Jungle grumble grumble Harry Winston, $600 bottle-service clubs grumble grumble." I don't want to think like that. I'm not even jealous of their money or their things; I'm just jealous of the way I imagine they don't have to constantly think about money. It's the intrusive, non-stop thinking that really gets to me: "Can I afford to buy the new Jim White album this week? Should I wait until Friday? Should I just forgo it indefinitely like I've done with the new Cat Power and Liam Finn discs?" It's always there, simmering my insides, and I can't envision a future in which it'll stop. I don't know what to do, but this situation is gnawing my brain into a new, ugly shape that I am extremely unhappy about.

And also, at least three Amazon sellers in the past two months have failed to deliver the DVD of A Night to Dismember that I've ordered from them. Life is unbearably tragic.

CURRENT MUSIC: Golden Delicious by Mike Doughty. It's not very good!
CURRENT MOOD: Bitter Betty.
MOST INTERESTING ARTICLE I'VE READ IN A WHILE: This one, about how brand names for new pharmaceuticals are chosen. Using their criteria, the ideal name for a new drug would be Klazix. If any pharmaceutical company wants to name its new drug "Klazix," please send me as much money or as much free Klazix as possible and I won't raise a stink about how I got there first.

The above picture is from the back of a towel I impulsively bought off the clearance rack at my local hardware store. (49 cents!) I purchased it solely for the packaging and so I haven't opened it, but I think it's basically a ShamWow. So I could be saving lots of money on paper towels if it weren't for my enduring fondness for Engrish. Below is all the product information printed in English on the plastic sleeve. (Despite its all-caps claim that it's "MADE IN CHINA," the hardware store worker confirmed for me that the Asian characters on the bag are Japanese. That's hardly the only contradiction, as you will see.)

"100% RAYON. Import Wood Fibre of Natural quality. Non-pollution & environmental protection articles.

"Pliancy,drink water & endure the washing, & dry easily.

"Be hard for concealing the dirty and growing the germs.

"Be used for the Tour & Sanitation Towel.

"Be suitable to all kinds of washes such as the Hair, China Bricks, Gas Cooking Appliance, Family Electric Things,oil & dirt of machine.

"MADE IN CHINA.

"Series Production:Washing and cleaning Towel, German-styled Omnipotent Cloth,100% Cotton Dishcloth."

Finally, the package is sealed with "China Good Brand Haoling Tape."

I have nothing to add.

CURRENT MUSIC: Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts by M83.
CURRENT MOOD: Buzzed.
CURRENT RANDOM ACCESSORY I THINK IS VERY CUTE: Barrettes.

This has been percolating in me for a long time, and it seems like as appropriate a time as any to let it out, since I'm irate about the vindictive Republican response to the Berkeley City Council's approval of a measure encouraging military recruiters to leave the city. (Republican senators have introduced a spiteful bill that would withhold more than $2 million in federal funds from Berkeley and its University of California campus. The money would instead go to the Marine Corps, so they won't have to hold that bake sale to buy a bomber.) I also feel a need to ensure that I will forever be unelectable to any public office, so with that in mind, I have a confession to make: I don't think I'm supporting our troops.

Well, that's a bit of a glib overgeneralization. I just dislike the phrase "support our troops," because it's become such a meaningless rah-rah slogan during this war. In early 2003, when it became clear that war was inevitable, conscientious peaceniks were determined that our current soldiers should not receive the same unjustly hateful reception that Vietnam vets received upon returning home, when some Americans transferred their fury about Robert McNamara's policies onto young men who often hadn't wanted to go overseas in the first place. So this time around, extra effort was put into emphasizing and vocalizing the distinction between an amoral administration that barged into Iraq with no regard for human life (to say nothing of facts, laws, or world opinion) and the individual soldiers assigned to carry out these bloody plans. And since no one wants to completely girdle her car with a bumper sticker reading, "It's not the troops' fault that they're being misused on a violent errand designed to make six rich guys richer still," "Support the troops" quickly became the bite-size mantra, while the official rationale for invasion mutated from a 9/11 link to WMDs to Iraqi liberation. However, the Bushies even more quickly co-opted the phrase, obliterated the line between "supporting the troops" and "supporting the war," and began accusing their detractors of having a deleterious effect on soldier morale, thus not supporting the troops. In so doing, they robbed the slogan of any meaning whatsoever--a fate that often befalls slogans, of course--and so I've held a special disdain for those words ever since.

Long story short, I'm being a smartass when I say I don't support the troops, because I still hold to the saying's original intent. Obviously, I don't want anyone to die or get injured in the war, be they U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians. Furthermore, I think it's only fair that if such dangerous military jobs are being (disingenuously, in my opinion) sold to recruited kids as their duty or their chance to do something meaningful/courageous/whatever for this country, then the government needs to back up its sales pitch with proper equipment, care, and benefits. So in that regard, I think I support them more than the Bush administration does.

But I don't think any attitude I hold beyond wanting troops to remain alive and whole would count as "support," simply because I don't buy into the notion that there's anything inherently glorious or heroic about joining the military. I think violence is cowardly and ignominious, so I don't think much of an organization that's largely devoted to the use of force. Again, I reserve my enmity for the military as a whole and not the individuals who populate its bottom rungs, but I still don't think enlisting automatically imparts any type of honor upon a person.

I'm not saying I automatically deduct 50 points from someone's personal score if I discover a military service background. (Yes, I keep a mental scoresheet for each person in my life, and I add or--more frequently--