(Stage is dark. Bright light slowly floods the stage, blinding the audience. A figure steps into the light so we see only his outline. The light fades to normal stage lights. The man is Sean Hannity. Attached to Hannity is the Statue of Liberty perched on his right shoulder, much like the cover to his book _Deliver Us from Evil_. To his left is St. Peter at a desk. The desk has a computer and is piled high with thick folders. St. Peter looks tired, worn, and resembles something of a young office temp)
PETER: Mr. Hannity. Have a seat. My name is--
HANNITY (moving to Peter): Oh, you need no introduction, sir. I'm a big fan. Big, big fan. (Shakes St. Peter's hand).
PETER: Right. Please, have a seat.
HANNITY (sitting): You look younger than I thought.
PETER: Perk of the job, makes up for the ungodly hours.
HANNITY: It's nice to have you here.
PETER: I don't follow.
HANNITY: This is my show right?
PETER: No. It's heaven.
HANNITY: That's what a lot of my viewers think of the show. I've got the E-mails to prove it.
(laughs)
PETER: Uh-huh. Mr. Hann, um Hannity, right?
HANNITY: Call me Sean.
PETER (looking at a file): That's against protocol.
HANNITY: Sure, I understand. Can I call you Pete?
PETER (doesn't look up from the file): Absolutely not. (sets the file down) It says here you were a political talk show host.
HANNITY: I like to say soldier in the Army of God/freedom fighter.
PETER: Well, let's stick with talk show host. What exactly is that.
HANNITY: You never saw it?
PETER: No. (pats the stack of files) I've got enough to do.
HANNITY: Well basically, I engaged guests in political discourse to get to the heart of political
issues that are important to the country.
PETER: And which country is this?
HANNITY: You don't know?
PETER: Frankly they're all kind of the same, and up here it makes little difference.
HANNITY: Oh, well, um, the United States of America.
PETER: Oh, yes, I know that one. We get a lot of people from there. Nice folks, but a little fat if you ask me. Um, what's that on your shoulder?
HANNITY: Lady Liberty.
PETER: A memento of your wife?
HANNITY: You don't know Lady Liberty?
PETER: The name sounds familiar. I think that was the stage name for a stripper I admitted not too long ago.
(Pause. Hannity is a little uncomfortable)
PETER: I'm not saying your wife is...
HANNITY: No, of course, I get what you mean. Now, I wanted to ask you --
PETER: Let me ask the questions. There are a number of folks I need to get to before lunch. So to start: What do you think your greatest accomplishments in life were?
HANNITY: My show.
PETER: I mean something that made for a better planet.
HANNITY: My show.
PETER: Besides that. Deeds. What did you do besides talk?
HANNITY: I did my darndest to make sure America was the Christian country it's always been; I made sure the second ammendment was protected, and I made sure hard working families kept the money they earned and that it didn't go to pork projects of the federal government.
PETER: God, guns, and gold?
HANNITY: Sure.
PETER: Sort of like Columbus.
HANNITY: Yeah! Just like that. By the way, I noticed on my way in that he wasn't with the fifteenth century crowd.
PETER: Yeah...how 'bout that.
HANNITY: He got his own suite?
PETER: Let's start with the glory of God, part. How did you work for that?
HANNITY: I lead the defense when secularists declared war on Christmas. I fought to make sure kids could pray in school.
PETER: They can I thought.
HANNITY: Well, sure, but it's not mandated everyday.
PETER: What if someone's not Christian?
HANNITY: I was trying to prevent that. I was trying to make sure God was protected in our schools, in our courts, in our homes, across this great nation.
(beat)
PETER: Let me get this straight...you were defending God?
HANNITY: Someone has to.
PETER: Someone has to...stand up for...the Almighty?
HANNITY: The liberals won't.
PETER: Do you think, God is so weak that he needs to be defended like a little brother who's getting bullied on the playground?
HANNITY: No. It's just...I saw God disappearing from America.
PETER: Isn't America a continent?
HANNITY: You know what I mean?
PETER: No I don't. I've got a Sunday tee time with God on the links every week. He's not disappearing.
HANNITY: What's his handicap?
PETER: I'm still not clear, why did you have to fight for God? Is he so weak?
HANNITY: The US is a land founded by God-fearing Christians --
PETER: No it wasn't.
HANNITY: Yes it was. And I was saving my country from falling out of favor of the Almighty. Don't you start telling me what God had intended for my country.
PETER: Didn't you read that one little part in the Bible, where Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world."
HANNITY: That's Old Testament. It doesn't count.
PETER: It's in John.
HANNITY: Oh.
PETER: Hmm.
HANNITY: What?
PETER: It says here you titled a book, _Deliver Us from Evil_.
HANNITY: It was a best seller.
PETER: It's also level two blasphemy.
HANNITY: What!
PETER: You took a piece of the Lord's prayer as a title to sell books.
HANNITY: That's not blasphemy.
PETER: You want me to show you the regs? (beat) Let's just keep moving. The second amendment, as I read it here is about arming a well regulated militia.
HANNITY: It's a little more trickier than that.
PETER: Did you serve?
HANNITY: Huh?
PETER: Were you in the Army, or militia or whatever?
HANNITY: Oh, no.
PETER: Did your country have a draft?
HANNITY: Yes, we did.
PETER: How'd you not get drafted?
(short pause)
HANNITY: The funny thing about the second ammendment is that it goes beyond that narrow interpretation, and it guarentees all Americans can have a gun to protect them and their families.
PETER: And protect God?
HANNITY: Well, sure, they're protecting the safety and lives of their fellow citizens so they can lead a wholesome life in service to God. So in a way, sure, I was making sure that God was protected.
PETER: So you wanted everyone to have a gun?
HANNITY: Law abiding citizens, yes.
PETER: How do you know?
HANNITY: Know what?
PETER: That they'll always be law abiding citizens. I mean one day, couldn't someone just break the law and use the gun illegally?
HANNITY: Sure, but that's impossible to ever know and just --
PETER: The chance you have to take? Couldn't you just not let people have guns.
HANNITY: See that's the problem. Then only the criminals would have guns.
PETER: And the police.
HANNITY: Sure, but they can't be everywhere. What if someone and their family were killed.
PETER: They'd come here.
HANNITY: Is that right?
PETER: You saying Heaven isn't a good place to be?
HANNITY: No! That's...I'm not saying Heaven is a...a...a bad place but why should we hasten
someone's return to the Father? Don't they have a right to life?
PETER: Oh God, you're one of them.
HANNITY: Well, but do you get what I'm saying? About the guns?
PETER: No.
HANNITY: We need them so people can be safe.
PETER: Don't guns kill people?
HANNITY: Exactly, that's how they keep us safe.
PETER: Sounds like doublespeak.
HANNITY: Well, we'll agree to disagree.
PETER: No, we won't. That's not an option. It's double speak.
HANNITY: People need to hunt. How 'bout that?
PETER: Fine. Let's move on.
HANNITY: I just want you to know the important facts about this issue.
PETER: Why?
HANNITY: So you understand that my intention behind fighting for the second amendment was
for the good.
PETER: Moving on. Pork projects. Explain.
HANNITY: I wanted people to keep the money they earned and not be taxed by an inefficient government that would spend it on silly wasteful programs.
PETER: Like war.
HANNITY: No war is necessary.
PETER: That's good.
HANNITY: What?
PETER: Well, you never served in the military so you have no ulterior purposes when war starts.
HANNITY: I can explain my lack of service --
PETER: It's okay. So if the people...wait, it says you were in favor of tax cuts for the wealthiest of your country.
HANNITY: They earned it. God's blessings fell upon them as demonstrated by their good fortune. They should keep it.
PETER: So the poor are being punished by God?
HANNITY: Yes, but they can work their way back into his favor and get rich.
PETER: You never heard, "A cammel has a better chance of getting through a needle's eye than a rich man does getting into heaven"?
HANNITY: I made it policy not to read Islamo-fascist material.
PETER: Jesus said it.
HANNITY: Look, they have a right to their money to do with it as they want. And rich people aren't all bad guys. They donate to charity. It's great for tax breaks.
PETER: So they got more tax breaks on top of the others by donating to charity?
HANNITY: Great system.
PETER: Seems disingenuous. (to himself) God, I wish for the days of render onto Caesar that which is Caesar's. (To Hannity) So what other wasteful programs did you fight against?
HANNITY: Socialized medicine.
PETER: What's that?
HANNITY: It's socialism.
PETER: And...?
HANNITY: It's bad.
PETER: Why?
HANNITY: Because it's socialism.
PETER: Why is socialized medicine bad?
HANNITY: Because it's socialist.
PETER: Can it kill people?
HANNITY: Sure. That's what socialism does. It's an incidious dogma that looks to wipe from the earth capitalism.
PETER: Capitalism is good?
HANNITY: Bestowed on us by God himself.
PETER: I don't recall the word capitalism in the Bible.
HANNITY: You look; it's in there.
PETER: So explain socialized medicine. I'm not familiar.
HANNITY: Basically, it would tax all the rich people in order to give every person healthcare. It's asinine.
PETER: How?
HANNITY: They want healthcare, they can get a job that gives them healthcare.
PETER: That's a bit of an oversimplification. I just processed a guy who died; worked eighty hours a week, at three jobs, and the companies he worked for wouldn't give him full time hours because then they'd have to pay for health insurance.
HANNITY: Of course, the companies have a bottom line and a responsibility to their stock holders to turn a profitt. That's capitalism.
PETER: It killed him.
HANNITY: Look, I'm not going to get into the economics; you obviously are unaware of how this all works, and I understand because you got bigger things to take care of. But this is the best system we have and people deserve to keep the money they make, and not be taxed to death.
PETER: Except for a war.
HANNITY: Right. We need those.
PETER (jotting down notes in the file): So let me get this right: Your entire life was spent making sure people had guns, which kill people, and also making sure people didn't have health insurance, which could have saved people.
HANNITY: Now, who's over simplifying.
PETER: Excuse me?
HANNITY: Look, I don't need to get dressed down by some office temp. There's no way you are St. Peter.
PETER: You see the name on the door? I'm the real deal, hoss.
HANNITY: Oh, God! You're a John Kerry Lover! Jesus, you Libs, just can't get it through your thick skulls about issues that are more complicated than you will ever know.
PETER: I know quite a bit.
HANNITY: You don't know about America.
PETER: Because we don't care about that here! Mr. Hannity, I'm sorry, but you don't make a strong case for entry. It seems like you spent your whole life making a name for yourself on God's coat tails, and making sure people are expedited to death.
HANNITY: Is this Heaven or Nancy Pelosi's girdle? I don't have to sit here and take this.
PETER: You're right you don't.
HANNITY: You liberal pinheads have destroyed everything. The US, Heaven, everything.
PETER: There's the door, Michael will escort you down.
(Hannity leaps across the table and grabs Peter by his shirt)
HANNITY: You listen to me. I'm Sean Hannity. That might not mean much to you but on Earth it sure as hell does. Now, I'm not going to sit here and let you tell me I'm a good or bad man. Who the hell do you think you are? You go out there, and you talk to anybody from America, who's died in the last twenty years, and I guarentee they will tell you to let me in to Heaven.
(Peter effortlessly removes Hannity's hands. He holds him by the wrists. Hannity is in pain)
PETER: The thing is Heaven is not a democracy. We don't admit by vote, and frankly, if I go out there, and ask of you, no one remembers who you are because in Heaven your deeds on Earth are like bile here. We have no interest in it, and people soon forget the petty jibes and twaddle you kicked around on the idiot box for so long.
(Peter releases Hannity)
PETER: Now get out of my office.
HANNITY: Fine, I get it. The liberals took over.
PETER: Get out!
HANNITY: I will. This isn't Heaven. This doesn't represent the God I know.
PETER: Of course not, because you invented some non-existent God to sell books and get ratings.
HANNITY: Oh, piss off you liberal pile of horse crap. I'm gone.
(Starts to exit)
PETER (Pulling a post-it note from the file): Mr. Hannity. Leave the Statue. I've got a post-it note here from up on high that says you dishonored the symbol.
HANNITY: Make me!
PETER: Do we really have to do this again?
(Peter starts chasing Hannity around the office, until Peter finally trips Hannity. With Hannity on the ground, Peter removes the statue from Hannity's shoulder and places it on the desk. Hannity gets up)
HANNITY: Fine, I didn't want it anyway. It's French. It was made by a guttless, coward Frenchman. You can have it.
(Hannity exits. From offstage we hear him shout)
HANNITY (o.s.): Heaven's full of a bunch of liberal bastards!
PETER (sitting back down behind his desk. Shakes his head. Picks up a phone): Janice, who's next? / How many are there? / Forty? / Yeah, I know. That is a lot for one day / Let's just fast track them / No, I think He'll approve. They're babies, and their moms didn't have access to prenatal care. Just have the paperwork for me to sign when I get back from lunch.
(blackout)
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Onward You Tea Baggin' Soldiers...taint what it used to be.
Editor's note: The following was written by my good friend Emmett Sheridan. It is posted here with his permission. It's appropriate for the week. Keep in mind, all the people who were enraged by the tax rate, must remember that the current tax rate is that of the Bush administration from eight years ago. Furthermore, Obama's latest budget plan will cut taxes for all Americans but the wealthiest 1%. So for all the dumb mo-mo's who were waving tea bags...ha!
Onward Sons of Liberty!!
Much press has been made about these modern day Tea Parties springing up randomly across the nation, and their call for a new, more responsible and smaller government. I say onward with the call from our modern day Sons of Liberty. Hopefully, however, we can have a more peaceful form of protest than the original Sons of Liberty who burned tax collection houses and killed tax collectors. They brought forth a group now known as the Founding Fathers, and now this new age group must try to restore the nation back to the Founding Fathers intentions, especially to the nation envisioned by Thomas Jefferson.
The United States of Thomas Jefferson sounds like a little slice of heaven to scores of Americans today. He was a guy so opposed to a strong central government that he was not invited to help write the Constitution! Jefferson was in favor of a great nation with large agrarian landowners with the average, hardworking Americans working their own small plot of land given to them from their caring, godlike landlords. Slavery, obviously, would be a necessary evil in this situation because of the backbreaking demands of these landed estates. The fine outstanding landed aristocracy would be so pure that they would have the power of the country resting in their hands, and they would not have to worry about taxes because that would burden their daily routines. If the United States was forced into war then each landowner would conscript their local populations to fight in a loose confederation led by knights in cockade hats. What a noble idea for a country?!? It worked well in Europe for 900 years, so it definitely would have settled in nicely in the United States of fiefdoms.
Unfortunately for the United States, Jefferson and his vision succumbed to the calls from James Madison’s Constitution, and joined in this federal union that suppressed the natural feudal rights of man. Jefferson did this in a noble effort to make the U.S. a stronger nation. However, Jefferson was so blinded by this golden calf of a document that he expanded the power and took liberties with the Constitution, even became of defender of it as President! He did all of this under the guise of “helping the country”. In fact, he betrayed the true callings of our Founding Fathers and sent the country down a path of ruin that we are forced to fight against now, two hundred years later.
These new Tea Parties are finally bringing to light this path of ruin, it is a shame it has taken two hundred years to readdress these problems. The United States is such a horrendous place to call home in this modern age with repressive taxes, no freedom or security from enemies (foreign and domestic), and a brutal, democratically elected representative government that cannot supply its people with basic necessities. I have a hard time living in a place where I can drive down paved roads, access to medical services, and drink water without the fear of dying.
The Tea Parties have shown how repressive a democratic federal government, with relatively low taxes, can ruin a nation. In fact, why can’t our nation be more like Somalia, where there are no public schools, taxes, or any other burden placed on its people by a federal government. In Somalia, there exists a true capitalistic system, which is, apparently, what our country was founded on before being blinded by the Constitution and the subsequent freedoms allowed by it.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Message to Glenn Beck.
I sent this to him. I don't expect a reply. But, hey...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/07/richard_poplowski/
Sieg heil, Glenn. Bravo.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/07/richard_poplowski/
Sieg heil, Glenn. Bravo.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
I am thrilled to see Rush “el Duce” Limbaugh do his best imitation of a House of Pain song and “jump around” as an adoring CPAC crowd chanted his name. It was a perfect sign of the times. The de facto leader of the Republican party who makes elected congressmen tremble if they cross his path, stood proud. Rush was an apropos symbol for the Republican party at this time: a corpulent, old, rich white man, bedecked in the black shirt, reflective of 1920s Italy, in love with the chant of his own name, tells America “Welcome back to fascist Spain/Italy- you don‘t have money? Do us a favor and die.” And he says this as he sits in his Florida plantation.
Rush’s message, no opposition other than “no”. Says Rush, “Do we have another plan? No we don’t need to. This is socialism! Capitalism is perfect.” Yes it’s perfect and we see it in failed banks that can’t seem to keep their fly up while raping American home owners who lost their jobs while the banks go off on luxury junkets or remodel their offices. Capitalism is perfect because GM is failing, a reward for deregulation and antagonism towards making the auto industry look towards the future of green cars. Let’s not forget that conservatives in public opinion polls, can’t score above the failing median they’ve established for public schools in No Child Left Behind; and that would make them a failing institution.
Keep licking Rush’s boots Michael Steele. He can’t afford to tip or pay for the polish. All Rush ever did was recite ideology. He never really labored like some poor schmuck at GM because we all know the schmuck at GM joined a union and that’s un-American. Which leads to the private sector. I keep hearing the private sector will save us. Really? The private sector can’t muster enough money on the street for a New York City hotdog. Citi stock is worth more than my life…a dollar a share. Who else is going to infuse this country with capital? Rush? Good luck. Strip a dime from him and he’ll call you an unwed mother who wants to abort babies….even if you’re a guy he’ll accuse you thus.
Then there is Tommy Franks and the Military Channel. This is why I will cancel cable. Tommy Franks, the general who toppled Saddam Hussein, goes on and on and on about leadership in the military: it’s because of integrity that he feels great leadership in the military is so solid and will last fore eons, and he sleeps well because of said leadership…then some loudmouth voiceover tells me to checkout Golden Coral’s touring seafood or some such trope. Really? I was this close to buying into our leadership, and some idiot stamps it with corporate sponsorship. Hey Tommy, donate the money you took for that ad to the four thousand dead soldiers’ families who fought to find WMD’s and instead are now your launching pad to shill for Golden Coral. You’re already disregarded as an egotistical vessel for policy within the military. Don’t make it so easy, you MacArthur wannabe. If I'm wrong and he did not receive a dime from Golden Coral, I'll eat an NYC hotdog. Ah, but what does it matter? Tomorrow, I'll wake up and at my alma mater, the basketball coach makes more than I, and I hear we won't make the tournament.
Love,
Luke
Rush’s message, no opposition other than “no”. Says Rush, “Do we have another plan? No we don’t need to. This is socialism! Capitalism is perfect.” Yes it’s perfect and we see it in failed banks that can’t seem to keep their fly up while raping American home owners who lost their jobs while the banks go off on luxury junkets or remodel their offices. Capitalism is perfect because GM is failing, a reward for deregulation and antagonism towards making the auto industry look towards the future of green cars. Let’s not forget that conservatives in public opinion polls, can’t score above the failing median they’ve established for public schools in No Child Left Behind; and that would make them a failing institution.
Keep licking Rush’s boots Michael Steele. He can’t afford to tip or pay for the polish. All Rush ever did was recite ideology. He never really labored like some poor schmuck at GM because we all know the schmuck at GM joined a union and that’s un-American. Which leads to the private sector. I keep hearing the private sector will save us. Really? The private sector can’t muster enough money on the street for a New York City hotdog. Citi stock is worth more than my life…a dollar a share. Who else is going to infuse this country with capital? Rush? Good luck. Strip a dime from him and he’ll call you an unwed mother who wants to abort babies….even if you’re a guy he’ll accuse you thus.
Then there is Tommy Franks and the Military Channel. This is why I will cancel cable. Tommy Franks, the general who toppled Saddam Hussein, goes on and on and on about leadership in the military: it’s because of integrity that he feels great leadership in the military is so solid and will last fore eons, and he sleeps well because of said leadership…then some loudmouth voiceover tells me to checkout Golden Coral’s touring seafood or some such trope. Really? I was this close to buying into our leadership, and some idiot stamps it with corporate sponsorship. Hey Tommy, donate the money you took for that ad to the four thousand dead soldiers’ families who fought to find WMD’s and instead are now your launching pad to shill for Golden Coral. You’re already disregarded as an egotistical vessel for policy within the military. Don’t make it so easy, you MacArthur wannabe. If I'm wrong and he did not receive a dime from Golden Coral, I'll eat an NYC hotdog. Ah, but what does it matter? Tomorrow, I'll wake up and at my alma mater, the basketball coach makes more than I, and I hear we won't make the tournament.
Love,
Luke
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Break
“He trapped a squirrel.” This was Paula’s answer to my unasked question. “You looked surprised that I was here,” she said.
“I was expecting the police escort,” I replied.
Paula handed me a copy of the Altoona Mirror. “That’s what you get for flying into Blair County Airport. It saves me a drive to Pittsburg, but it also means the only paper I can get last second is the Mirror.”
“I’d rather not see or hear any news for the next week.”
Paula pitched the paper.
I only had one small carryon so we cruised through the tiny municipal airport and made our way to her Accord. She opened the door for me. I hesitated.
“Don’t be weird,” she said. I got in.
I had been to Pennsylvania before, but never in the fall. It’s a simple landscape that Winslow Homer or Fredrick Remington would never capture. It would take an impressionist (and this is from a guy who actively lobbies against the National Endowment for the Arts). Driving up 99, the Pennsylvania mountains were awash in dots of autumn colors that seemed ready to spill over. But then they hit the road, a reminder that nature does have it’s limits. Impressionism could make the demise of those limits possible.
“Yeah, he trapped the squirrel right before you were due to arrive. Like, right when you called the house, he screamed, ‘I got one of the little fuckers!’”
I nodded.
“I know I don’t have to explain, but you’re so quiet over there. Are you weirded out?”
“No,” I answered. This was true. But not because of the obvious moral quandaries. The latest campaign taught me to care little for those; my silence was due to immaturity. Paula and I had hooked up a few times in college before she and George started up. Secretly, behind her back George and I called her Sloppy Seconds.
“Look,” she cleared her throat, “I know what you and George called me.”
Well, shit.
“He told me last night.” I must have looked horrified. “No, it’s cool. It was funny. I mean, I expect nothing less from guys in college. I mean, I’m sure that like back then I would’ve been like horrified, but now, it’s funny. It’s kind of endearing.”
Our past always bothered me. It was supposed to be no strings attached, and for her part she had managed to remain free of any strings.
“You still with your girl?”
“We broke up during the campaign. She wasn‘t happy I was defending the senator.”
“That’s what you get for dating a Republican.” She looked over at me. “There’s that smile.”
“I’m not a Republican,” I answered.
For the rest of the drive she caught me up on the lives of the people from our dorm: Nate and Chrisy were married and expecting their first kid; James was down in New Orleans denying people’s claims for State Farm; Arturo was back in Venezuela working for Hugo Chavez; Jude was gay - everyone but him knew that, so that wasn’t news; and so on. Uncomfortability is best cured by rehashing the past. It makes the present less cumbersome because the people talking never get to it.
Altoona is San Francisco without the Pacific, or the culture…in fact, Altoona is what San Francisco would be if the Pacific dried up and Dan White ruled Harvey Milk’s old district. The streets of the city are lined with three and four story homes sandwiched up and down steep hills. The homes are abandoned though. The great in-town homes of those people who enjoyed lavish excess in the days of railroad booms were now barely shells of themselves. Shards of peeling paint amassed at the base of many homes.
George’s house was just outside of the city limits, an old farmhouse with a mother-in-law home attached to the original structure. A mother-in-law’s home was a brilliantly polite up-your’s and appealed to my political sense of sticking it to people diplomatically. If the mother-in-law wished to move in she got her own house. I could just imagine the son or daughter-in-law guilting the mother-in-law, “We built you your own place. Why are you always hanging around here? Get the hell outta here, you hag!”
We pulled up to the house. Paula shut off the car, opened her door, and said as she exited, “I got into law school,” and then rushed to the field behind the house.
George was in back. Pilgrim his springer spaniel aimlessly wandered the sprawling backyard that once was a field for harvest. George stood next to a ten gallon drum that was filled with water. Behind the can, an animal screeched. George reached down to the screeching and pulled up a live trap that held a squirrel. The squirrel shook the cage, and gnawed at George’s fingers, which were encased in heavy leather gloves.
George looked over at Pilgrim who kept walking into the large tool shed roughly thirty feet from George. “Get over, here,” he called to the dog. Then George noticed us. “’Bout time. Traffic’s not that bad from Blair County.” George put down the cage. “Come here you son of a bitch,” George said as he walked up and hugged me. I was still fixated on Pilgrim, gingerly finding his way over to George.
“Cataract took Pilgrim’s good eye,” he said and lead me over to the can and the squirrel. “Just let me do this really quick and then we’ll go in and get a beer. I’ve caught two of these little bastards today.”
Pilgrim found his way to George and sat quietly at his feet, head bowed, softly sniffing the terrified squirrel in the cage. In one, unflinching move George lifted the live-trap and shoved it into the water within the ten-gallon drum. He was dressed in heavy flannel, but it was easy to see that George’s muscles tensed as he fought to keep the cage underwater. “They have small lungs, so this part doesn’t last long,” he said. He was indifferent and empirical.
Dr. Stern was George’s favorite professor in college for no other reason than that Stern hated squirrels. On the first day of class, George walked into the classroom to find Stern looking out the window, and experiencing one of his frequent acid flashbacks. This time, Stern kept his pants on, but he did not acknowledge that a student was in the room. George sauntered up to him to see that Stern was entranced by squirrels on the quad digging up nuts. After a few minutes, Stern noticed George was beside him. Stern lowered his head and muttered, “Fucking squirrels.” Then he turned to George, “They’re always fucking up my roof!” Stern walked back to the podium, poured a cup of herbal tea from a thermos, sat and sipped. He continued to stare out the window pretending to shoot at the rodents playing on the quad. That’s how George got an art history minor with his criminal justice degree.
Like any hunter, George had a deep respect for nature and the animals that inhabit it. But squirrels are a different classification. His hatred for squirrels began with his father, also a hunter. The rodents destroyed the family’s yard, and if there’s one thing a man from our hometown prided himself on, it was a good lawn. George and his dad’s favorite weekend activity was to spend hours on their stomachs, perched on the roof with a BB gun, taking pot shots at squirrels. Initially, they didn’t fire with the force that would kill the animals. “I want the little fuckers to tell their friends not to come in my damn yard,” his dad would say.
But word of mouth is not something to be trusted among squirrels apparently. George and his dad became frustrated, and pumped up the power on their pellet gun. In doing so, they indirectly killed one of the great icons of our town, an albino squirrel. This rare animal had never been seen on their property, but when George saw it gnawing at some of his mom’s flower bulbs, he took careful aim, and fired…right as Pilgrim ran at the white squirrel to chase it away. He took the pellet meant for the albino. That’s how Pilgrim lost his first eye. From that point on, George made it his mission to kill the squirrel that had cost his beloved dog its eye.
However, the actual demise of the albino squirrel is hardly worthy of Melville. A couple days later, George’s dad backed the car out of the garage, and as he clicked the remote to close the garage door, he noticed a pancaked white pelt: The squirrel. His dad, tanned the hide, and tacked it up on a piece of a varnished tree trunk.
The pelt was hung over George’s fireplace. He recounted the vendetta while we sipped a single malt scotch. Paula cleared the table from dinner, a sloppy session of sushi and soy sauce.
“Any word on law school?”
George paused, “I’m supposed to hear tomorrow.”
“What time’s the party tomorrow?” I asked.
“Three. I figured we’d go hunting before then.”
The phone rang. George picked it up quickly. “Hey, bebe.” He looked at Paula and mouthed the word, Janice. Paula smiled and responded by mouthing, Tell her I say, hi. George waved her off, and smacked her on the ass, grinning wildly.
Once the typical palaver between husband and wife was done, he signed off, “See you tomorrow, bebe. Jeff says hi. Yup, love you too babe. Buhbye.” He slugged back the scotch.
I stayed in the mother-in-law house that night. George warned me that others who stayed there said they heard ghosts. I only heard the muffled sounds of Paula and George making love; ghosts of a sort I suppose communing with me in a séance through the ventilation duct. I listened for a while, before turning on ESPN. But sports news did little. So I turned on CNN and my senator was the featured story. The moral indignation helped me sleep on the first night of vacation. And it drowned out the spanking resonating through the vent.
Out of habit, I left my cell phone on. At 2:00, it rang. It was Patty.
“I can’t do it anymore, Jeff. I’m sick of this. Did you see the story on CNN? Did you?”
“Patty-”
“Don’t Patty me. I’m done. I’m divorcing him. They said he fathered her child.”
“That’s speculation. There’s not proof.”
“Well, I want proof.”
“What will that accomplish? Look, this will all -”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m ruining your vacation.”
“No. No. That’s what I’m here for.” I sat up and felt self-conscious for not being clean shaven and business ready. The feature on my senator was being rerun on CNN.
“Well, I’m done with him. The campaign’s over. He won. He’s got six years to rebuild his reputation. I played - do you know the asshole didn’t even take me with the kids - I played the good wife.” Before I could respond, she hung up.
A few minutes later, the senator’s intern called. I let it ring. The other woman left a message.
I panicked for a second, but the week after an election, the senator would be in Tahiti with his kids, and he left instructions that we were not to call unless al-Qaeda struck again within the US. The last thing he said to me before he left was, No CNN, consigliere.
When we got back from hunting George’s sheriff’s department buddies stood underneath a banner that read Happy 3-0! They serenaded him with “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.” Janice took the two groundhogs we had shot that day, put them in the fridge. Paula had picked her up at the airport that morning while we were shooting two distant cousins of Pauxatauny Phil.
One of the deputies gave George a beer. “You hear about Deifendorf?”
Ben shook his head, tensing, while Paula discreetly passed him an envelope with his LSAT scores. He put it in his hunting vest without opening it.
“Deifendorf, was out last night, and he tazed some poor dumbass at the bar.” The deputies roared at the visual image of some drunk getting a jolt of electricity. “But Deifendorf, it looks like he’s getting fired.”
George opened his beer, “Well, cheers to abuse of power.”
“What do you care?” said another deputy. “You’re going to law school, Poindexter. You’ll get to be a G-man!”
Deifendorf was the break George needed. He’d bounced from department to department in part-time roles. George always proved to be a by-the-book officer, but in college he had been linked to a deal that gave athletes at the University of Wisconsin free shoes at a sporting goods store. It always came up in a job interview, and he had to admit that yes, he accepted free merchandise in violation of NCAA rules. After that, the interview usually ended. Deifendorf would no doubt be suspended, which meant one of the part-timers, like George, would get on fulltime until Deifendorf had his day in front a disciplinary board. And when Deifendorf had been fired, George, as the ranking part-timer, would be the logical choice, regardless of the fact that while a freshman running cross country at UW, he got a free pair of shoes.
Janice came over to where George and I were. She gave me a hug, asked about the end of the campaign and if I liked the mother-in-law house. “I’m sorry you and Paula have to share it. It’s not weird is it?”
“No. Fine. I’m on the couch downstairs. It’s pretty comfortable, really.”
“Any ghosts?” I chuckled.
Janice put her arms around George’s neck, while he chatted with a deputy. She continued talking to me. “I got to be back for a sale tomorrow. Can you believe the bastards wanted to fire me because I wanted be home for my husband’s thirtieth birthday?”
“Fuckers,” Paula said as she laid out the last bags of chips for the shindig. It had been cloudy all day, but it was just now beginning to sprinkle a bit. Janice pulled George towards the house, where they would abscond to the bedroom for fifteen minutes or so.
“Should probably get the grill going,” Paula said, implying that since George was indisposed, I was now the ranking man of the house. Paula took a seat on a lawn chair. Her hair was braided, in pig tails; it was for George. Pilgrim wandered aimlessly, sniffing, until he found Paula, and he laid down at her feet.
“You think he’ll go to law school?” I said while dumping the charcoal into the grill.
“Janice wants him to because she’s seen what you’ve done. But it‘s not a serious, like, gambit, you know. He wants to be a cop.”
I lit the coals. “You think he’ll get the deputy position?”
“Maybe. Probably not. And I think he likes being able to say he didn’t get the job because some so-and-so was the nephew of a councilman.”
“Then when they use a taser at a bar he can say, see I told you they shouldn’t have done that.”
“I overheard Janice,” Paula said. “I’m heading out tonight. After cake. So you‘ll have the house to yourself.” The rain was picking up.
“Is it because of Janice?”
“No. I miss my boyfriend, and he’s not too happy about the time I spend with George. George wasn’t happy I when I told him.”
The rain picked up. There would be no grilling. Paula jogged to the house, Pilgrim following in her footsteps. The deputies grabbed the food and beer on the table, and raced towards the house.
That night, after cake, Paula left, and the rain had stopped. The deputies were comfortably drunk and watching CSI. George was glaring at the ceiling because the patter of little rodent feet sounded above. “Fucking squirrels. Little bastards didn’t wanna get wet so they go in my attic?” He stormed into the basement.
My phone, on silent, began to blink. It was a text message from the senator’s chief of staff: Patty’s off the reservation. She’s going public and writing a book. I need a legal opinion/plan of action by Monday. I massaged my temples and closed my eyes. They opened when I heard the report of a shotgun.
Everyone jumped. George, very drunk, was shooting at the ceiling. He swore profusely and fired until he was out of shells. Janice sitting in a chair in the corner, uncovered her ears. The brief silence ended as the deputies, George, and I laughed hysterically. Janice joined in, gingerly coaxing George to put down the gun, which he did.
Pilgrim had not moved the entire time, but was now up and sniffing for squirrels. None had been hit. My phone blinked again. This time it was the senator. “There hasn’t been a terrorist attack?” I asked. Everyone assured me there had not, otherwise CSI would be preempted by news reports. I let the call go to voicemail.
“I’m going to take Pilgrim outside,” I said. The blind dog understood the word outside. He stood and followed the path to the yard by rote.
“I was expecting the police escort,” I replied.
Paula handed me a copy of the Altoona Mirror. “That’s what you get for flying into Blair County Airport. It saves me a drive to Pittsburg, but it also means the only paper I can get last second is the Mirror.”
“I’d rather not see or hear any news for the next week.”
Paula pitched the paper.
I only had one small carryon so we cruised through the tiny municipal airport and made our way to her Accord. She opened the door for me. I hesitated.
“Don’t be weird,” she said. I got in.
I had been to Pennsylvania before, but never in the fall. It’s a simple landscape that Winslow Homer or Fredrick Remington would never capture. It would take an impressionist (and this is from a guy who actively lobbies against the National Endowment for the Arts). Driving up 99, the Pennsylvania mountains were awash in dots of autumn colors that seemed ready to spill over. But then they hit the road, a reminder that nature does have it’s limits. Impressionism could make the demise of those limits possible.
“Yeah, he trapped the squirrel right before you were due to arrive. Like, right when you called the house, he screamed, ‘I got one of the little fuckers!’”
I nodded.
“I know I don’t have to explain, but you’re so quiet over there. Are you weirded out?”
“No,” I answered. This was true. But not because of the obvious moral quandaries. The latest campaign taught me to care little for those; my silence was due to immaturity. Paula and I had hooked up a few times in college before she and George started up. Secretly, behind her back George and I called her Sloppy Seconds.
“Look,” she cleared her throat, “I know what you and George called me.”
Well, shit.
“He told me last night.” I must have looked horrified. “No, it’s cool. It was funny. I mean, I expect nothing less from guys in college. I mean, I’m sure that like back then I would’ve been like horrified, but now, it’s funny. It’s kind of endearing.”
Our past always bothered me. It was supposed to be no strings attached, and for her part she had managed to remain free of any strings.
“You still with your girl?”
“We broke up during the campaign. She wasn‘t happy I was defending the senator.”
“That’s what you get for dating a Republican.” She looked over at me. “There’s that smile.”
“I’m not a Republican,” I answered.
For the rest of the drive she caught me up on the lives of the people from our dorm: Nate and Chrisy were married and expecting their first kid; James was down in New Orleans denying people’s claims for State Farm; Arturo was back in Venezuela working for Hugo Chavez; Jude was gay - everyone but him knew that, so that wasn’t news; and so on. Uncomfortability is best cured by rehashing the past. It makes the present less cumbersome because the people talking never get to it.
Altoona is San Francisco without the Pacific, or the culture…in fact, Altoona is what San Francisco would be if the Pacific dried up and Dan White ruled Harvey Milk’s old district. The streets of the city are lined with three and four story homes sandwiched up and down steep hills. The homes are abandoned though. The great in-town homes of those people who enjoyed lavish excess in the days of railroad booms were now barely shells of themselves. Shards of peeling paint amassed at the base of many homes.
George’s house was just outside of the city limits, an old farmhouse with a mother-in-law home attached to the original structure. A mother-in-law’s home was a brilliantly polite up-your’s and appealed to my political sense of sticking it to people diplomatically. If the mother-in-law wished to move in she got her own house. I could just imagine the son or daughter-in-law guilting the mother-in-law, “We built you your own place. Why are you always hanging around here? Get the hell outta here, you hag!”
We pulled up to the house. Paula shut off the car, opened her door, and said as she exited, “I got into law school,” and then rushed to the field behind the house.
George was in back. Pilgrim his springer spaniel aimlessly wandered the sprawling backyard that once was a field for harvest. George stood next to a ten gallon drum that was filled with water. Behind the can, an animal screeched. George reached down to the screeching and pulled up a live trap that held a squirrel. The squirrel shook the cage, and gnawed at George’s fingers, which were encased in heavy leather gloves.
George looked over at Pilgrim who kept walking into the large tool shed roughly thirty feet from George. “Get over, here,” he called to the dog. Then George noticed us. “’Bout time. Traffic’s not that bad from Blair County.” George put down the cage. “Come here you son of a bitch,” George said as he walked up and hugged me. I was still fixated on Pilgrim, gingerly finding his way over to George.
“Cataract took Pilgrim’s good eye,” he said and lead me over to the can and the squirrel. “Just let me do this really quick and then we’ll go in and get a beer. I’ve caught two of these little bastards today.”
Pilgrim found his way to George and sat quietly at his feet, head bowed, softly sniffing the terrified squirrel in the cage. In one, unflinching move George lifted the live-trap and shoved it into the water within the ten-gallon drum. He was dressed in heavy flannel, but it was easy to see that George’s muscles tensed as he fought to keep the cage underwater. “They have small lungs, so this part doesn’t last long,” he said. He was indifferent and empirical.
Dr. Stern was George’s favorite professor in college for no other reason than that Stern hated squirrels. On the first day of class, George walked into the classroom to find Stern looking out the window, and experiencing one of his frequent acid flashbacks. This time, Stern kept his pants on, but he did not acknowledge that a student was in the room. George sauntered up to him to see that Stern was entranced by squirrels on the quad digging up nuts. After a few minutes, Stern noticed George was beside him. Stern lowered his head and muttered, “Fucking squirrels.” Then he turned to George, “They’re always fucking up my roof!” Stern walked back to the podium, poured a cup of herbal tea from a thermos, sat and sipped. He continued to stare out the window pretending to shoot at the rodents playing on the quad. That’s how George got an art history minor with his criminal justice degree.
Like any hunter, George had a deep respect for nature and the animals that inhabit it. But squirrels are a different classification. His hatred for squirrels began with his father, also a hunter. The rodents destroyed the family’s yard, and if there’s one thing a man from our hometown prided himself on, it was a good lawn. George and his dad’s favorite weekend activity was to spend hours on their stomachs, perched on the roof with a BB gun, taking pot shots at squirrels. Initially, they didn’t fire with the force that would kill the animals. “I want the little fuckers to tell their friends not to come in my damn yard,” his dad would say.
But word of mouth is not something to be trusted among squirrels apparently. George and his dad became frustrated, and pumped up the power on their pellet gun. In doing so, they indirectly killed one of the great icons of our town, an albino squirrel. This rare animal had never been seen on their property, but when George saw it gnawing at some of his mom’s flower bulbs, he took careful aim, and fired…right as Pilgrim ran at the white squirrel to chase it away. He took the pellet meant for the albino. That’s how Pilgrim lost his first eye. From that point on, George made it his mission to kill the squirrel that had cost his beloved dog its eye.
However, the actual demise of the albino squirrel is hardly worthy of Melville. A couple days later, George’s dad backed the car out of the garage, and as he clicked the remote to close the garage door, he noticed a pancaked white pelt: The squirrel. His dad, tanned the hide, and tacked it up on a piece of a varnished tree trunk.
The pelt was hung over George’s fireplace. He recounted the vendetta while we sipped a single malt scotch. Paula cleared the table from dinner, a sloppy session of sushi and soy sauce.
“Any word on law school?”
George paused, “I’m supposed to hear tomorrow.”
“What time’s the party tomorrow?” I asked.
“Three. I figured we’d go hunting before then.”
The phone rang. George picked it up quickly. “Hey, bebe.” He looked at Paula and mouthed the word, Janice. Paula smiled and responded by mouthing, Tell her I say, hi. George waved her off, and smacked her on the ass, grinning wildly.
Once the typical palaver between husband and wife was done, he signed off, “See you tomorrow, bebe. Jeff says hi. Yup, love you too babe. Buhbye.” He slugged back the scotch.
I stayed in the mother-in-law house that night. George warned me that others who stayed there said they heard ghosts. I only heard the muffled sounds of Paula and George making love; ghosts of a sort I suppose communing with me in a séance through the ventilation duct. I listened for a while, before turning on ESPN. But sports news did little. So I turned on CNN and my senator was the featured story. The moral indignation helped me sleep on the first night of vacation. And it drowned out the spanking resonating through the vent.
Out of habit, I left my cell phone on. At 2:00, it rang. It was Patty.
“I can’t do it anymore, Jeff. I’m sick of this. Did you see the story on CNN? Did you?”
“Patty-”
“Don’t Patty me. I’m done. I’m divorcing him. They said he fathered her child.”
“That’s speculation. There’s not proof.”
“Well, I want proof.”
“What will that accomplish? Look, this will all -”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m ruining your vacation.”
“No. No. That’s what I’m here for.” I sat up and felt self-conscious for not being clean shaven and business ready. The feature on my senator was being rerun on CNN.
“Well, I’m done with him. The campaign’s over. He won. He’s got six years to rebuild his reputation. I played - do you know the asshole didn’t even take me with the kids - I played the good wife.” Before I could respond, she hung up.
A few minutes later, the senator’s intern called. I let it ring. The other woman left a message.
I panicked for a second, but the week after an election, the senator would be in Tahiti with his kids, and he left instructions that we were not to call unless al-Qaeda struck again within the US. The last thing he said to me before he left was, No CNN, consigliere.
When we got back from hunting George’s sheriff’s department buddies stood underneath a banner that read Happy 3-0! They serenaded him with “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.” Janice took the two groundhogs we had shot that day, put them in the fridge. Paula had picked her up at the airport that morning while we were shooting two distant cousins of Pauxatauny Phil.
One of the deputies gave George a beer. “You hear about Deifendorf?”
Ben shook his head, tensing, while Paula discreetly passed him an envelope with his LSAT scores. He put it in his hunting vest without opening it.
“Deifendorf, was out last night, and he tazed some poor dumbass at the bar.” The deputies roared at the visual image of some drunk getting a jolt of electricity. “But Deifendorf, it looks like he’s getting fired.”
George opened his beer, “Well, cheers to abuse of power.”
“What do you care?” said another deputy. “You’re going to law school, Poindexter. You’ll get to be a G-man!”
Deifendorf was the break George needed. He’d bounced from department to department in part-time roles. George always proved to be a by-the-book officer, but in college he had been linked to a deal that gave athletes at the University of Wisconsin free shoes at a sporting goods store. It always came up in a job interview, and he had to admit that yes, he accepted free merchandise in violation of NCAA rules. After that, the interview usually ended. Deifendorf would no doubt be suspended, which meant one of the part-timers, like George, would get on fulltime until Deifendorf had his day in front a disciplinary board. And when Deifendorf had been fired, George, as the ranking part-timer, would be the logical choice, regardless of the fact that while a freshman running cross country at UW, he got a free pair of shoes.
Janice came over to where George and I were. She gave me a hug, asked about the end of the campaign and if I liked the mother-in-law house. “I’m sorry you and Paula have to share it. It’s not weird is it?”
“No. Fine. I’m on the couch downstairs. It’s pretty comfortable, really.”
“Any ghosts?” I chuckled.
Janice put her arms around George’s neck, while he chatted with a deputy. She continued talking to me. “I got to be back for a sale tomorrow. Can you believe the bastards wanted to fire me because I wanted be home for my husband’s thirtieth birthday?”
“Fuckers,” Paula said as she laid out the last bags of chips for the shindig. It had been cloudy all day, but it was just now beginning to sprinkle a bit. Janice pulled George towards the house, where they would abscond to the bedroom for fifteen minutes or so.
“Should probably get the grill going,” Paula said, implying that since George was indisposed, I was now the ranking man of the house. Paula took a seat on a lawn chair. Her hair was braided, in pig tails; it was for George. Pilgrim wandered aimlessly, sniffing, until he found Paula, and he laid down at her feet.
“You think he’ll go to law school?” I said while dumping the charcoal into the grill.
“Janice wants him to because she’s seen what you’ve done. But it‘s not a serious, like, gambit, you know. He wants to be a cop.”
I lit the coals. “You think he’ll get the deputy position?”
“Maybe. Probably not. And I think he likes being able to say he didn’t get the job because some so-and-so was the nephew of a councilman.”
“Then when they use a taser at a bar he can say, see I told you they shouldn’t have done that.”
“I overheard Janice,” Paula said. “I’m heading out tonight. After cake. So you‘ll have the house to yourself.” The rain was picking up.
“Is it because of Janice?”
“No. I miss my boyfriend, and he’s not too happy about the time I spend with George. George wasn’t happy I when I told him.”
The rain picked up. There would be no grilling. Paula jogged to the house, Pilgrim following in her footsteps. The deputies grabbed the food and beer on the table, and raced towards the house.
That night, after cake, Paula left, and the rain had stopped. The deputies were comfortably drunk and watching CSI. George was glaring at the ceiling because the patter of little rodent feet sounded above. “Fucking squirrels. Little bastards didn’t wanna get wet so they go in my attic?” He stormed into the basement.
My phone, on silent, began to blink. It was a text message from the senator’s chief of staff: Patty’s off the reservation. She’s going public and writing a book. I need a legal opinion/plan of action by Monday. I massaged my temples and closed my eyes. They opened when I heard the report of a shotgun.
Everyone jumped. George, very drunk, was shooting at the ceiling. He swore profusely and fired until he was out of shells. Janice sitting in a chair in the corner, uncovered her ears. The brief silence ended as the deputies, George, and I laughed hysterically. Janice joined in, gingerly coaxing George to put down the gun, which he did.
Pilgrim had not moved the entire time, but was now up and sniffing for squirrels. None had been hit. My phone blinked again. This time it was the senator. “There hasn’t been a terrorist attack?” I asked. Everyone assured me there had not, otherwise CSI would be preempted by news reports. I let the call go to voicemail.
“I’m going to take Pilgrim outside,” I said. The blind dog understood the word outside. He stood and followed the path to the yard by rote.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
RoboCop predicts the future
A lot of people think 1984 is the epitome of big government, tyranny literature. Yet, with all due respect to Eric Blair (Orwell), nothing is more prophetic than RoboCop. I know, if, you've seen the movie, it seems like campy sci-fi. But here we are in 2009. The movie came out in 1987. Watch the movie again. Twenty years later it will scare the hell out of you: corporate contracts for security, health savings plans...the death of humanity for duty. Shit, one of of RoboCop's first readings on his LCD readout says, "command.com" This is '87 folks. About three people knew about .com's and those three people remained virgins until the porn industry realized there was money to be made on the Internet. They even had the Lee Iacoca School featured in the movie - totally beautiful sarcastic irony. There's a game called "Nuke'em" where a family goes to MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) over Pakistan's threat.
The first time I encountered RoboCop was when I was eleven, and I saw the book on the library's shelf. My parents would not let me see RoboCop. And why the hell should they? They were smart. Nonetheless, I read the book and was awed and scared. The sense of emotionless duty was kind of cool, but bothersome. I didn't see the movie until I was over 17, in accordance with with MPAA ratings guidelines. Actually, I didn't give a shit about the MPAA. The movie just faded into oblivion and became a denigrated shell of itself due to exploitation through sequels and a children's Saturday morning cartoon, which stressed duty, loyalty, and obedience to the state. Now that I've seen this movie a dozen times since I turned seventeen, I can say that Saturday morning cartoon was the biggest slap in the face to the intention of the movie, and would frost Peter Weller's hair more than it already was. Just watch the first ten minutes. The first five minutes are a news show that looks very much like our cable news networks of today: Pretty talking heads, who have no clue what they are saying. Then there's a commercial that has a doctor enticing viewers to come to his heart center where they have the full line of Jarvic hearts. The heart center even accepts health savings plans' financing, which at the heart (no pun intended) of a health savings plan, is that you can make a down payment on a procedure - if you put in enough to the plan over the years. This is what every Republican candidate is proposing by the way as health care relief.
Then you've got the really scary plot point that concerns public safety. OCP, the big industry name in Detroit takes over the police force. Keep in mind, every time a politician says, "We need to privatize X" their advocating exactly what OCP did. That is, a city says, we can't pay for X. A company says, we'll do it, if you pay us a contract that is less than what it will take for the city to actually fix the problem. In Chicago, I'm seeing this with the toll ways. Many cities are handing over control of the toll ways to the highest bidder. However, let's not forget Blackwater. Our army can't carry out its mission to secure Iraq, so we hire private security, whose main mission is securing profits for stock holder, like OCP. As an aside, NPR reported that Blackwater is taking security contracts in New Orleans AND knowing that Iraq will not always be a cash cow, Blackwater is refocusing its business plan to include domestic contracts that include replacing police departments in US cities. Or as they say supplementing.
Now, OCP is your typical big business evil entity. They place Murphy, a top cop, in the highest risk precinct of Detroit. That way, he will get shot and become RoboCop. Such duplicitous actions echo the claims of those who believe Pat Tillman was a political toy. Furthermore, when RoboCop tries to arrest Dick Jones, #2 man at OCP, RoboCop's classified #4 directive does not allow him to do so because OCP won't let their product (RoboCop) turn against them. RoboCop's flaw is that he is the product of two competing execs. No one at OCP really gives a damn about security. The corporate world is built on competition and some perverted conception of Darwin's theory of the strongest surviving. Each exec doesn't care about the safety of the citizenry; they care about securing longtime defense contracts. If I was a halucinagenic conspiracy theorist, I'd even latch onto the fact that the biggest bad guy is the 2nd man, the top VP, in the de facto government (OCP) and his name is "Dick". Ultimately, there is nothing redeeming about the movie. The biggest bottomline assholes get it in the end, but that's kind of like throwing out a guy at the bar and then saying, "Dude, you're just too drunk." Everyone's drunk; he just happened to get caught pissing in the trashcan. The really bad guys get dropped; the bad guys keep running things. Look beyond the bad 80s sci-fi effects; I got to say, if you're freaking out about Blade Runner because of some android twist, watch RoboCop and it'll freak you the fuck out, if for nothing else than watching the cops drive the bad, ancient Ford Taurus model, which just smacks of disrespect. Oh, and as for the title, you got to love the part when Clarence Boddicker comes in to kill Bob Morton (one of the execs concerned about dividend dick size), who is snorting coke off prostitutes, and Boddicker says, "Bitches leave."
I'll leave you with these words from RoboCop that are in every way dripping with irony. He says it to his partner, Louis, who gets shot up, and RoboCop says to her, "They'll fix you. They fix everything."
The first time I encountered RoboCop was when I was eleven, and I saw the book on the library's shelf. My parents would not let me see RoboCop. And why the hell should they? They were smart. Nonetheless, I read the book and was awed and scared. The sense of emotionless duty was kind of cool, but bothersome. I didn't see the movie until I was over 17, in accordance with with MPAA ratings guidelines. Actually, I didn't give a shit about the MPAA. The movie just faded into oblivion and became a denigrated shell of itself due to exploitation through sequels and a children's Saturday morning cartoon, which stressed duty, loyalty, and obedience to the state. Now that I've seen this movie a dozen times since I turned seventeen, I can say that Saturday morning cartoon was the biggest slap in the face to the intention of the movie, and would frost Peter Weller's hair more than it already was. Just watch the first ten minutes. The first five minutes are a news show that looks very much like our cable news networks of today: Pretty talking heads, who have no clue what they are saying. Then there's a commercial that has a doctor enticing viewers to come to his heart center where they have the full line of Jarvic hearts. The heart center even accepts health savings plans' financing, which at the heart (no pun intended) of a health savings plan, is that you can make a down payment on a procedure - if you put in enough to the plan over the years. This is what every Republican candidate is proposing by the way as health care relief.
Then you've got the really scary plot point that concerns public safety. OCP, the big industry name in Detroit takes over the police force. Keep in mind, every time a politician says, "We need to privatize X" their advocating exactly what OCP did. That is, a city says, we can't pay for X. A company says, we'll do it, if you pay us a contract that is less than what it will take for the city to actually fix the problem. In Chicago, I'm seeing this with the toll ways. Many cities are handing over control of the toll ways to the highest bidder. However, let's not forget Blackwater. Our army can't carry out its mission to secure Iraq, so we hire private security, whose main mission is securing profits for stock holder, like OCP. As an aside, NPR reported that Blackwater is taking security contracts in New Orleans AND knowing that Iraq will not always be a cash cow, Blackwater is refocusing its business plan to include domestic contracts that include replacing police departments in US cities. Or as they say supplementing.
Now, OCP is your typical big business evil entity. They place Murphy, a top cop, in the highest risk precinct of Detroit. That way, he will get shot and become RoboCop. Such duplicitous actions echo the claims of those who believe Pat Tillman was a political toy. Furthermore, when RoboCop tries to arrest Dick Jones, #2 man at OCP, RoboCop's classified #4 directive does not allow him to do so because OCP won't let their product (RoboCop) turn against them. RoboCop's flaw is that he is the product of two competing execs. No one at OCP really gives a damn about security. The corporate world is built on competition and some perverted conception of Darwin's theory of the strongest surviving. Each exec doesn't care about the safety of the citizenry; they care about securing longtime defense contracts. If I was a halucinagenic conspiracy theorist, I'd even latch onto the fact that the biggest bad guy is the 2nd man, the top VP, in the de facto government (OCP) and his name is "Dick". Ultimately, there is nothing redeeming about the movie. The biggest bottomline assholes get it in the end, but that's kind of like throwing out a guy at the bar and then saying, "Dude, you're just too drunk." Everyone's drunk; he just happened to get caught pissing in the trashcan. The really bad guys get dropped; the bad guys keep running things. Look beyond the bad 80s sci-fi effects; I got to say, if you're freaking out about Blade Runner because of some android twist, watch RoboCop and it'll freak you the fuck out, if for nothing else than watching the cops drive the bad, ancient Ford Taurus model, which just smacks of disrespect. Oh, and as for the title, you got to love the part when Clarence Boddicker comes in to kill Bob Morton (one of the execs concerned about dividend dick size), who is snorting coke off prostitutes, and Boddicker says, "Bitches leave."
I'll leave you with these words from RoboCop that are in every way dripping with irony. He says it to his partner, Louis, who gets shot up, and RoboCop says to her, "They'll fix you. They fix everything."
Monday, March 23, 2009
At the Dollar Store
The homemade tattoo read
Goofy; ascribed upon the wrist of her right
hand that held a home pregnancy test.
Goofy; ascribed upon the wrist of her right
hand that held a home pregnancy test.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
