Fantasy and Voyeurism: Men and the Violence Culture

Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, worries that pornography is carving out a false image of femininity in our national consciousness. She is troubled at how the natural is being supplanted by the artificial, and by the glorification of performance sex over love making.

The negative gender stereotypes associated with pornography are no doubt worrisome, and more so for females because of the demeaning way in which they are often depicted in this genre (name one other form of lowbrow entertainment where perverted fat men get to crack jokes and rate the sexiness of females who they are simultaneously fondling, probing or getting fellated by?). But if women have good reason to be offended by their underling roles in this testosterone-driven industry, we men should at least be leery of the equally testosterone-driven entertainments that appeal to the generic aspects of our gender.

Spike TV is perhaps one of the most notorious purveyors of the notion that all men get hard-ons for cage fighting, muscle cars and bikini clad women. Shows like UFC: Ultimate Fighter Championship and Deadliest Worrier attempt to awaken our animalistic bloodlust with raw, savage depictions of guys beating the hell out of each other and scenes of ancient weapons of warfare slicing through slabs of meat as a way of demonstrating their deadly effectiveness. Entertainment such as this is troubling if one considers the sobering statistic that, in 2006, 1 in every 72 American men was incarcerated in a county, state or federal prison. By comparison, in that same year only 1 out of every 746 women was behind bars. Given our innately virile propensity to fight, murder and self-destruct, shouldn’t the modern man boycott all things which glorify senseless violence and brutality? Is the world so lacking in actual violence to necessitate the creation and consumption of fantasy violence? And just how are we contributing to human growth and progress if we give in to these natural urges which – when carried out in real life – only wreak havoc on our lives and the lives of countless others?

To get a taste of the very real and very permanent consequences of senseless acts of violence committed by men in the throes of passion, one need look no further than A&E’s First 48. This is a series which follows actual detectives around in the first forty-eight hours after a murder has been committed. The blood soaked crime scenes which the burned out and exasperated detective workers must canvass, and the trail of clues which invariably lead to a stoic, cold-blooded murderer – these things evoke a stark reminder of just how ugly a pandemic violence is in our culture. There are no heroic desperados of Hollywood proportion in real-life shootouts and slayings, just lowlife gang members and common street thugs. In light of this, pop cultural glamorization of death and killing seems, at the very least, irresponsible and jaded.

And yet shows like First 48 do more than just feed our curiosity about the procedurals of detective work. There is a voyeurism to it all, starting at the point when the detectives lift the tarpaulin to reveal the slain victim, all the way up till the end when they slap a pair of cuffs on the prime suspect and read him his rights. These police shows are a way for us to peer into the lives of people who we don’t really know or care too much about, allowing us to observe how they kill each other off. This is the real curiosity which gives programs like First 48 their momentum. Everything from the senseless motives for the killings, to the killers’ nonchalant attitudes about taking a life – given their unflinching indifference in the interrogation room you would think they were being accused of stealing a bike – causes every episode to convey an inexplicable foreignness. We know what we’re seeing, and yet we don’t understand it. We know who these people are, we have a vague idea of what they’re all about, and yet after seeing how they kill and react to killing, we understand them even less.

Other real-life shows feed our voyeurism in similar ways. Every weekend MSNBC runs back to back to back documentaries about prison life, visiting places from Alaska (like institutions which house that state’s worst murderers) to Folsom’s historic penitentiary in California to modern day chain gangs in the South. After watching just a couple of these programs, it quickly becomes evident that NBC is indirectly pillorying the weak-willed and downtrodden inmates on their cross country big house tours. The cameras take us though the prisons as if on a tour of a zoo, pausing before a cell to observe how an inmate makes contraband moonshine from fruit and shampoo as if he were a gorilla doing something strange. It is veritable Schadenfreude with a glossy shine. The result is that we feel a comforting contentedness knowing that these manimals are locked up where they are, and not walking the streets with us and our children. The shows also remind us that prison is no place we’d ever want to be, further driving home the old adage not to do the crime if we can’t do the time.

(Let’s also remember one thing: NBC may not have invented subtlety, but they have certainly perfected it in their coverage over the years. They have become psychologists; every word spoken by their anchors or pundits, and every news show, sitcom, biopic, miniseries or movie they broadcast is so saturated with multiple meanings and nuance that it is impossible to take them at face value anymore.)

***

When we give up thinking for the day and cast our burdens upon the TV, there are multiple choices from which to get our violence fix. If we want to vicariously experience fantasy violence there are car chases, endless murder mysteries, or sci-fi movies where we can insert ourselves into the role of a hero who saves the world from an outer space bug invasion just so he can win the girl he loves. If we want entertainment that blurs the line between fantasy violence and actual violence, there are shows like UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship where the kicks and punches might be truncated so as not to deliver the full force of the blow, but they still draw blood sometimes. Finally, if we want the real, raw stuff without all the dressing up and glamour, there are shows like First 48 and MSNBC’s prison marathon weekends.

As a modern man, which form of televised violence should we turn to when our peaceful boredom becomes too much to bear? As the physically stronger sex, we need outlets for all that extra energy. Viewing violence, reading about it, dreaming of it or partaking in it in some minimal (or big) way almost feels like a necessity – violence always has been and probably always will be one of our many hungers. Perhaps the goal of the modern man therefore shouldn’t be to eradicate violent tendencies from our DNA, but rather our goal should be to learn how to control these tendencies. When violence is in your grasp, you feel powerful, mighty and invincible. But as we’ve witnessed far too often, this power always becomes too great too quickly and invariably leads to people being physically or emotionally hurt, and the imminent imploding (or exploding) of the violence bearer. Riding high on violent power is like riding a huge serpent, you cling to its scaly back for as long as possible before you are eventually thrown off and tossed about in its wake.

Perhaps violence is sacred, something to use only in rare instances when there is no other alternative. They endlessly try to teach us in anger management classes about the realistic allocation of negative feelings – feeling murderous rage towards the guy who killed your daughter is normal, feeling that same type of rage towards the lady that cut you off in traffic is not – but the lessons take a while to sink in. If we can’t control our hormonal tendencies, perhaps it is best to banish them to a faraway place within us.

Violence serves an inverse evolutionary purpose. The longer we are alive, the more it becomes prevalent that the cool kids – the desperados, the slackers, the gang bangers and all the other guys who lived by the seat of their hormones – didn’t get themselves or us anywhere. The phrase “only the strong survive” – coined by Jerry Butler in his titular song and later immortalized by Elvis – may not be such a truism after all. As evidenced by the aforementioned A&E and MSNBC shows, men who fight to defend their personal territory, virility and respect against frivolous threats often end up in prisons or morgues. They finish each other off in street brawls, wars and drag races gone awry. By living in the moment, these men lack the planning and foresight necessary to effectively pass on their genes.

Peacefulness is becoming the new golden rule. There is no place in the future for combative rogues and hot tempered territorial nitwits. The conquerors of history, the ones who will make most proud the thousands of generations of our ancestors who suffered and fought and foraged so that we could exist today, will be the men who were capable of being the better man by walking away from a fight. These males are the humble and happy men who value book smarts over street smarts. They are the teenagers who sacrifice their youths so that they can have a rich future which doesn’t involve a lot of tattoos, gas-pumping and frequent trips to Wal-Mart. They are the future. We are the future. The immature naysayers and trash talkers are shouting into a wind which blows louder and more fiercely with each passing season.

That wind is the Modern Man.

4 know-it-all renters discussing the subprime mortgage fiasco

Sam: California created the subprime lending fiasco in my opinion. Nothing but a bunch of greedy assessors, home sellers and real estate agents running a scheme which caused the entire nation’s real estate market to collapse.

Here is how it happened:

When people’s homes have a lot of sentimental value to them they naturally want to get as much as possible from selling it, even if it is just a piece of shit house with a lawn that’s gone to pot. They hope that by making a profit on their home they can retire to Vegas or Florida.

Secondly, assessors and real estate agents who have an inflated sense of importance when it comes to their “exclusive” suburbs drive up prices with their delusions of being the next best thing behind Beverly Hills. “Pish, we have a swim and tennis club in our community and some of the nicest Brady Bunch houses this side of the Rockies, pish,” they say. They get a sense of satisfaction sitting around Starbucks bragging about selling a $900,000 bungalow. And all the people in town get a good feeling knowing that their neighborhoods are increasingly becoming richie rich towns. Just think how much your own importance would get a boost knowing that the house next door to you just sold for a million dollars. And also consider how rich you would feel if you were able to casually say, “We just bought our first home for $1.2 million. Yeah, the market’s kind of high these days, isn’t it?”

Nope.

So they essentially created a bubble which their sorry upper middle class asses couldn’t sustain. The only ones who benefitted from this were the people who were able to sell and make a huge profit on their homes while the prices were the most inflated. But, unless they moved to an area where the cost of living was far less than where they previously lived, they probably ended up putting all that extra money into their new home (which wasn’t much of an upgrade in the first place). Now with the economy tanking and retail stores folding, people aren’t going to be able to afford those mortgages which made them feel so rich and important in the first place. With no job (not even a Starbucks barrista job to temporarily hold them over) they are going to all be living in their cars pretty soon.

Dougan: The assessors and real estate agents also got rich from this too. But now most of them are either out of a job or they’re selling foreclosed homes for less than market value. Not a lot of commission to be had doing that, is there? And as they were profitting from their scheme they all probably bought BMW’s and giant mansions which are only half paid off now. Oops!

Gregg: It’s kind of like the idiots who sell used automobiles via the classified ads. Some bumpkin wants to get as much as he can for his truck because he needs the money, so do all the other bumpkins selling their cars and trucks. Pretty soon the common assumption is that a 2001 Ford pickup with 100,000 miles on it is worth at least $11,000. There is probably a mathematical way to come up with a price for a used automobile, but everybody ignores that method and just goes with their gut on how much they think a vehicle should cost. Even the guy who knows that his car or truck is only worth $1,500 doesn’t want to be the one in the classified section with the lowest advertised price. Doing so would make him look like a schmuck or an unsavvy business man with no common sense.

Apply this to the inflated prices of homes in CA and all across the country and you can also see how we got to this point.

Brian: Sad thing is that the prices are going to come down, but not to the level they were before this all began. As a result the average price of a home in America will be slightly (and in some cases significantly) higher than before the subprime crisis. Young people should consider this when they think about going into a profession. Do they want to be business professionals and realize the dream of owning a home, or do they want to be social workers or teachers and possibly rent for their entire lives?

Dougan: Like us.

Everybody: Yeah, like us!

My Mirage

Whether it’s due to my idealism, optimism or lack of common sense, I often buy into big ideas and big concepts. To give one instance of this tendency to think big I need to highlight the last two years of my post-collegiate experience. Nothing better sums up the anti-climactic feeling I had after earning my BA degree than this essay which I wrote last year for my Alma mater’s newspaper (warning: this is an example of my former long-winded style of writing). The main relevance of the essay is the fact that it is a one year assessment of what had happened in my life in the year since I had left the college atmosphere. Now that it is coming up on my two-year college graduation anniversary, the essay stands out again as a reminder of everything I mostly haven’t – and the few things I have – accomplished.

Many of the things I thought would have been realized by now – what I call “the benchmarks of success” – haven’t materialized for me yet. The $30,000 per year salaried job with benefits, the comfortable rented condominium, the 2009 Honda Civic sedan to get me around, all of it is waiting just around the corner. If I could only get there.

A college degree does not automatically get you there. At best it is only a vehicle for helping you get there. Rather than being a skeleton key which can unlock any door on the road of life, a college degree is more like a key which only gets you into the vestibule of the house of success. A master’s degree might be the highly prized golden key to success it is frequently painted as, but a college degree is sometimes analogous to the Old Testament in Christianity: it is only half of the piece of the pie (and the less crucial half at that).

Which brings me back to Big Ideas and Big Concepts (and I’m not talking Donny Deutsch’s kind of air-headed big ideas). As a Big Institution, higher education is attractive to people who find comfort in the herd mentality. It’s also probably one of the most respected big institutions left because it doesn’t use manipulation, obfuscation or other forms of mind control to rope in followers. A liberal arts education turns one into a free-thinker and – by extension – a free spirit. What is better than having the ability to sophisticatedly comprehend life in all of its complexity?

But like all Big Institutions, higher education if full of idealism and feel-good concepts (even if these concepts, like post-modernism, are sometimes depressing). It makes grand and radical promises, comforts and appeases and has a limitless outlook. That is why a liberal arts education is often painted as the golden compass we need to guide us through life. It is often referred to as a “key” alongside words such as “doorway,” “golden,” “path” and “life.” Institutions of higher learning must have purchased real estate in the land of Oz.

But what does the data say? Can the U.S. economy guarantee a well paying job for every single recent college graduate? Or does retail work and unemployment await half of all people after they accept their diploma and walk off stage? If a college senior thinks he will hereafter be able to afford condominium rent or a home mortgage, why are half of all my friends with college degrees still living with their parents? And if a person makes several sacrafices to put herself through school so she won’t ever have to stand behind a till again, what should she think if she’s 34 and stuck working at Kohl’s?

I really don’t have the answers to these questions. But it’s obvious that the vision of the Institution of higher learning is bigger than the buildings and people who make up all the colleges and universities across the country. Its vision is too big in some cases and could stand to benefit from an adjustment. People attend college because they crave the American Dream. But there is nothing more demoralizing than doing what you think you have to do to earn that Dream and then getting let down. It weakens people’s faith in the comforting predictability of life and makes them bitter. For those who haven’t benefitedfrom a college degree, Easy Street only becomes more unattainablele.

Earning my bachelors degree was an enjoyable challenge. But each time I make an annual assessment of my post-collegiate progress, I realize the real work has yet to begin.

Parenthood

Another balmy day here. 70 degrees. The wives of rich and powerful men were out jogging, pushing strollers through Central Park or just getting an early start on their Christmas shopping. My cousin gave birth to her second child on Sunday and I will soon have to make the obligatory visit to see her and her new baby. And I don’t even know where she lives. I’m guessing her apartment is in the upper eighties somewhere, but I’m not sure. My brother is sort of the liaison between me and my cousins. Since I’m the baby of the family I mostly get kept in the dark when it comes to relative issues. They all assume I can’t be trusted with even a skein of yarn.

But being the youngest has its perks in terms of being spoiled. I was the first one in my family to have a CD player, a TV with cable in my bedroom and – get this – my parents even let me smoke while I was still in high school (this was actually a trade-off: let him smoke so he won’t have to sneak around to get his cigarettes and get into worse trouble). Another sweet trade-off: my parents let me to have the Playboy channel while I was still in high school to prevent me from bringing the slutty girls home like I used to do when I was 13 and 14. I guess they didn’t want to have an unwanted pregnancy on their hands or – this was the 90s – maybe they were afraid I’d get AIDS. Could you imagine a couple of professional, upper middle class parents trying to persuade the single mother of some girl who lives in an apartment to force her daughter to have an abortion?

My dad: Tim and Katie are both too young for this so I think it would be in everybody’s best interest to terminate the pregnancy.

Katie’s Mom: (looks at Katie) What do you think, Katie?

Katie: I want ma baby. She ma baby.

Katie’s Mom: (looks back at my dad) She want her baby.

My dad: (shaking head) I really think the long-term fallout from this will be something that Tim and Katie won’t be prepared to deal with–

Katie’s Mom: Katie said she want her baby.

My dad: But–

Katie: (becoming excited) I want my baby!!! Nobody’s killing ma baby!!!

My dad: (turns to me) Tim, what do you want?

Me: I don’t know.

There you have it. Let your children look at porn. Some of the male actors now use condoms so they are setting a good example in addition to providing escapist, fantasy entertainment for millions of young single guys with raging hormones. If parents have a religious objection to porn they can always drop their teenager off at a local senior center for three hours every Sunday. True Lies starring Jamie Lee Curtis can also substitute as porn (soft core) as well. A parent can leave a copy of this DVD is plain sight and then tell their teenager that they are going to a PTA meeting and won’t be back for at least two hours.

OK, mom. Bye.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire!!!

Time For Chow

A couple of weeks ago we had our first taste of fall here and it was wonderful. But ever since then it’s like it keeps trying to get cold again with little or no success. Anyway, every year when it begins to get cooler I instantly start craving warm creamy (and preferably chunky) foods like soups and New England clam chowder. Last year I had a thing for Healthy Choice Italian Wedding soup (mmmmmmm) but this winter is looking like it might turn out to be a clam chowder one. I purchased some Snow’s ready to serve clam chowder after our first spell of crisp autumn weather but it just sat on my shelf after that.

While mother nature still seems to be barely winning the battle against the aliens and their terraform factories (The Arrival is an awesome movie) I figured my clam chowder could end up sitting on the shelf indefinitely and I may never get to eat it. I picked up the can and considered murdering an alien with it when I realized that there was a recipe on the side of the label for Linguini with clam sauce. It is simple. All you have to do is cook Linguini (which only takes 5 minutes), drain it and mix in a tablespoon of olive oil. For the sauce all you do is heat the can of Snow’s New England clam chowder, add an eighth of a teaspoon of black pepper, a teaspoon of parsley, a quarter teaspoon of basil and one finely chopped clove of garlic. Voila!

The first night I made Linguini with clam sauce I didn’t use the garlic but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. It also called for half a teaspoon of salt but I passed on that too. A can of Snow’s clam chowder has two servings and each one contains 38% of recommended daily sodium value. So I figured there was already enough salt making it unneccesarry to go all Emeril on the recipe.

When I made the dish a second time, however, and didn’t use garlic again, I knew I was committing a culinary sin. The meal tasted a bit bland and the curious African American kid who is always hanging around my place thought so too. You see, this kid likes hot and spicy foods. He is always pouring tabasco sauce on everything from scrambled eggs (yes, he eats breakfast at my house sometimes) to ice cream (he also eats dessert at my house too).

And that’s when it hit me: all the complaining he does about how cold it is when it’s only 75 degrees, the snooping through my research, his precocious intelligence! When I ushered him out and he got as far as the driveway I surprised him when I said, “You go. And you tell them. There will be others. Others will know.”

His knees inverted themselves and his legs suddenly became grasshopper legs and he hopped off into the sunset chirping in his alien language. And to think, I shared my Linguini with clam sauce with him.

For those of you who have never seen The Arrival, if you click on this link and skip to the end of this scene this post will make a lot more sense.

Duped by craigslist again

A posting on craigslist which I recently responded to was asking for written contributions for a book the poster claimed to be working on. The poster was seeking short essays (500 words max) about what techniques we use to alleviate stress. The book in progress supposedly focused on ways of incorporating an organic spirituality into our technologically charged lives. It seemed to be a guide for getting in touch with our natural selves not by going on technological fasts but rather by learning to interact with technology in a more spiritual way.

Anyway, in hindsight I realize I was probably helping some high school student write her college essay. I knew better than to entirely trust craigslist, but now I feel like a total schmuck who has been taken advantage of.

I’m happy helping other people succeed but not when it involves helping them cheat. I wonder when colleges and universities will start requiring application essays to be submitted via turnitin.com?

Here is what I wrote:

I enjoy writing essays, poetry and short fiction. Using this medium I find I am able to channel a lot of my vague feelings and convert them into visceral metaphors and anecdotes. The process involves a lot of sifting and is extremely cathartic. Limited body language and social skills often make me incapable of completely conveying my thoughts and feelings the first time. As a result I am left with a sense of imperfection, and writing for me is a way of trying to restore life’s perfection. While the act of writing is organic, it is still largely dependent on technology since I require a laptop to write. This doesn’t lend the process an air of artificiality, however, but is proof of how deeply rooted it is in the modern world we all live in. Because of this it can be considered an inestimable contribution to humanity. Being engaged in something so noble is renewing to the spirit and leaves me with a clean slate sort of feeling after I complete a good piece.

 

Clerihews

Whenever the ability to channel that creative wellspring of…of…indignation, optimism, analytical clairvoyance–whatever–escapes a writer, he or she can always fall back on the generic pitch to relate what is otherwise lacking due to their brain dead lexicon for that day. I am going to employ such a tactic now because I am literally running on fumes and can’t think in a straight line. I am forgoeing the extemporaneous essay style in exchange for the simple and sweet fulfillment of the pithy.

Clerihews are short, four line poems about a famous person either living or dead. The only rule when writing a clerihew is that the name of the famous person who the clerihew is about must appear in the first line of the poem. The rhyme scheme generally follows an aabb pattern but this can always be played around with. Sometimes clerihews sound better with an abab rhyme scheme. Clerihews are fun to write and read and require so little intellectual muscle that they quickly become addictive. The Reader’s Digest website has a forum where people can write and post clerihews and the magazine even publishes a clerihew each month (although they haven’t published one of mine yet).

Click on this link to begin writing and publsihing your clerihews now.

Phantom Phone Calls

A representative from my Alma mater called the other night to solicit donations from me. Before making a pledge I learned that alumni donations were allocated to fund scholarships, defray the costs of ongoing construction and also helped the college in its quest to recruit top faculty. I was pleased with these uses of resources and, furthermore, I have a fondness for my college experience and what I reaped from it. The caller, a charismatic female sophomore, was more than happy to answer some questions I had about the geographical location of other alumni. “Basically, there are people all over the country and even the world,” she said.

For some unexplainable reason this prompted me to delve into what I generally liked about my college in relation to the city it was situated in (since–let’s be honest–I loathed that city in the most unhealthy way). The caller was quick to trade her own likes with me about the college and after that, as if a scrim had enveloped each of us, we started chatting like old friends. We talked in a very sharing and open way for the better part of an hour until my growling stomach prompted me to end the call. I added her as a friend on facebook and the first thing I did was leave her a message appologizing for my longwindedness. She wrote back informing me that the little digression I caused was perfectly OK. She apparently had to talk to a lot of rude people who slammed the phone down once they realized their old college wanted money.

I remember doing calling for an alumni association way back when I attended community college some ten years ago. I remember the rudeness my new friend described, the hang ups or people lying and giving false information so they wouldn’t have to be contacted by their school ever again. A lot of the alumni I talked with basically saw the institution I was representing as some kind of business or charity. “Where did you say you were calling from again? I’m just sitting down to eat. No I don’t want to give money to the starving children in Bangladesh?” Click!

Maybe these cold responses are part of a pervasive anti-intellectualism in our culture. Since many people view college as an obligatory hurdle, perhaps they don’t want to be associated with learning in their post-collegiate lives any more than they have to be. A degree to them is merely a means to affording a big screen TV so football can be watched in high def. Books, on the other hand, are good for balancing uneven tables.

I could have easily been one of those rude alumni. “I don’t have any money right now,” I could have said before cutting the caller off in mid-sentence. “I gave money to the democrats this year and that’s all I’m going to do,” is another excuse I could have used for not having to help pay for a new crime lab (with eyeball scanning security) at my college. Instead I borrowed a person for an hour and made her a receptacle of my fond memories, my present regrets and my idealistic dreams for higher education. “I received a world class liberal arts education,” I said. “My only regret is that I’m not doing enough with it, you know.” This is the basic theme the conversation kept returning to which prevented it from spinning off into the black nether regions of the evening.

I kept thinking as I was talking that the caller (who had now mostly become a listener) could care less about what I was saying. But as the conversation wore on it appeared she was in fact interested in the things I said. She even injected non sequiturs in a seemingly subversive attempt to keep me talking. It occurs to me now that what I was doing that evening was mentally returning to college, travelling down memory lane in a sort of way. And I think this fascinated the alumni association representative more than anything else. Why wasn’t I rude? Why didn’t I curtly say I couldn’t give this year? Why, why, why?

I don’t know. Who wants to watch some football?

WTF?

It has been raining on-again off-again all day today and I only went outside briefly to pick up a few things. My trip included a short walk up the street to Whole Foods to purchase a fried haddock and french fries dinner and a half gallon of cookie dough ice cream for dessert (not all of it, of course). After dropping the food off at my apartment I hopped on a bus and rode down to the library to check out a couple of movies for tonight. I rented Owning Mahowny which stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Angels in America which includes an all-star cast and is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name. I rented the former film because my brothers and I have an inside joke running regarding Phillip Seymour Hoffman. We like to have an arsenal of his funny quotes ready at our disposal so we can imitate him at the most opportune moments. I rented the latter two disc opus in the hopes that it might retroactively fill in some of the gaps from my teenage years during the early and mid nineties.

During 1993 and 1994 my parents would make the hour and half drive to San Francisco eight times a year to see a play performed by the American Conservatory Theater. This, I think, was partly an effort to maintain the illusion that they were pro arts and also an attempt to remain loyal patrons of the theater company which my brother performed in during his senior year in high school. I would tag along with my parents on these trips not so much to see the plays but to glimpse the bohemians and hippies walking around, and maybe score some pot while they weren’t looking (which I never did). Sometimes after seeing a play we would stop and visit with my cousin and her boyfriend briefly, but most of the time we just got back in our car and made a beeline back to our boring suburb. Circa 1994 we saw the play Angels in America in two parts. I remember it being tediously long on both occasions and I remember hallucinating during parts of it (mental vibrations from a recent LSD trip) and I also remember a scene where a guy felt another guy up touching his cock at one point and saying chlorine. Other than that I don’t remember much else about the play. That is why I checked out the video.

Anyway, the title of this post refers to my frustration at going out today. I said that it has been raining intermittently today, but somehow I timed my trip at a bad time. Whenever I would be walking down the street or waiting at a bus stop it would be raining. Then, as soon as I went in the store, got on the bus or walked through the threshold of the library, the rain would suddenly stop. Then, just as quickly as it had stopped upon my seeking shelter, it would start up again as soon as I was exposed to the elements again.

There’s only one thing I have to say (or write) about that: “Goddamn-piss-shit-cocksucka-muthafucka.”