It was kind of a douchy day in the old Victory Gardens.  I dropped in this morning to do a little early Spring cleaning, and discovered that someone had beat me to it!  There were a couple of unused douches on the path to my garden...


They must be from last night, because we had freezing rain for a week before that.  But the thing that's impressive about this — I mean, aside from someone being very johnny-on-the-spot with the anal hygiene — is that most of the gardens — particularly the cruisy parts down by the muddy river — are still under water.  Just goes to show you how resilient the human race is. I mean, nothing but nothing will stop us once Spring Fever hits.

Unfortunately these were not the only douchebags in evidence on the garden path.  All of the brass taps that we installed in row E last year and fixed in place with gorilla glue — I mean, all of them — had been stolen over the winter.  This is impressive, too, in a way.  First of all.  It was obviously not easy cracking them loose...


I checked around, and ours seems to be the only row that was raided.  Not one nozzle was left on Row E.  Not one.  Pain in the ass.

On the bright side, my lilac's budding...


... and the crocuses are peeping up!

Fabulous, innit?  Gives you the inspiration you need to deal with the douchebags, lemme tell ya. 

I just saw this over at Slog:


As cool as it is in a novelty sort of way, all I could see were the greasy, grubby pawprints all over the screen.  That tablet is positively slathered with geek grease. 

You know, as old-fashioned as books are, you have to be pretty grubby to grease up the pages to that degree.  Even newsprint doesn't get as cheesy as your average tablet after a reading or two.  And can you imagine a public site like this, in an airport?  Those of us who remember public pay phones from back in the day know how this story ends.  Maybe someone should design latex gloves that synergize with these electronic slimeboards.

And another thing.  I fly once or twice a year, tops.  I actually hate flying. I don't know anyone who has to on a regular basis that doesn't.  So why does it seem like all new technology these days is developed for and possibly in an airport?   Do people read magazines in places other than airports nowadays?   

I guess I'm not on-the-go enough to appreciate the future of print.  Honestly, I just can't really see it through all the prints.

I was just reading over at Universal Hub that folks are getting organized to oppose the Boston Public Library Branch closings Menino's pushing for.  In addition to the website that's under construction, you can join them on facebook.

America's gun culture is entirely out of control.  And Tennessee seems to be ground zero.

Turns out, according to the AP, "the two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from... the police and court system of Memphis."

Apparently, while "many cities and states destroy guns gathered in criminal probes,... others sell or trade the weapons in order to get other guns or buy equipment such as bulletproof vests."

"In fact," the article goes on, "on the day of the Pentagon shooting, the Tennessee governor signed legislation revising state law on confiscated guns. Before, law enforcement agencies in the state had the option of destroying a gun. Under the new version, agencies can only destroy a gun if it's inoperable or unsafe."

Um, does killing someone with it make it unsafe?

Hey!  Whatever!  Hakuna matata, right?  The circle of ... uh ... death?

I went out apartment hunting yesterday.  Apparently now's the time to look in the neighborhood if you want to find a place for the fall.  My lease is up in September, and with my landlady antsy to sell, and Jake's continued shenanigans, I think I'm finally ready to return to the blissfully hermetic existence I once enjoyed abroad. 

Oh, don't worry.  I get out and do a good deal of what you could call socializing — you know: making noises and faces at others of the species — but when I come home and I close that door behind me, put my face (and my voice) in the pickle jar — I feel free, unconstrained by necessary convention, savage as Kaspar Hauser.   

I'm not saying I eat bugs and shit on the floor.  But I'm free to indulge my comfortable delusions without having to compromise them due to social necessity.  I don't know about you, but I like my most private self — that great, amorphous — not to say gaseous — thing — that mystery that fills the room, that sometimes does nothing but pass the time, breathing — and the whole room breathing along.  



When you think about it, a home is a second skin.  It shouldn't make you itch all the time, but you don't want to get too comfortable in it, either.  You don't want to become a real Kaspar Hauser.  And that's not just tricky for people who live alone.  You can't get too comfortable in this life.  Get out!  Shake it off!  You don't want the fire brigade to have to extract you with a crane and bury you in a grand piano someday, do you?

Which is why I'm fixated on the Fenway.  Well, there are at least three reasons: location, location, location.  When I first moved in to this place, I said I'd hit the bullseye, and I meant it.  Anyone who lives in a city like this knows that every block has its own unique ecology.  I was talking today to a neighbor here on this side of the Fens who said she had always thought of the neighborhood on the other side of the Muddy River, contained by Park Drive and Boylston, as a sort of enchanted isle. 

When I think of the Fenway, I think of the heart of the heart of the Fenway (to borrow from William Gass). I tend to think of the Fenway neighborhood as the area roughly bound by Mass Ave. to the East, the Fenway on the South and West, and the Turnpike to the North.  To me, Kenmore, which the Fenway is always coupled with, is a different kettle of fish altogether.  It feels more like Brighton than Fenway to me for some reason. 

In what I consider the Fenway neighborhood, that little island bound by Park Drive and Boylston is, indeed, something special.  Surrounded on all but the Boylston side by green space, it feels oddly like a real-life neighborhood.  The fact that I have been a gardener in the Victory Gardens there for the last five years and actually know many of my new neighbors here by name, might seem like cheating — maybe it doesn't feel like one if you just drop in from God knows where without knowing a soul.  Feels like one to me, though.

Studios in the neighborhood run around $1200 a month.  I saw four on Saturday — two were hideous, in a block of what might as well be dorms for Berklee.  Those were the two I saw first, and I had a terrible sinking feeling.  The rental agent — I went with a rental agent because, honestly, I'm tired of dealing with capricious landlords — so, the rental agent asked me if I was a student or had any pets, and when I said no, he whisked me off to another building on the corner of Peterborough and Park.

And, to my utter surprise, the first studio he showed me was perfectly charming.  Spacious and bright, with lots of windows overlooking a cute little park with a fountain, it wasn't just a big room.  It had a separate foyer, two large closets, a kitchen every bit as big as the one I've got now, a dining nook, and a vintage bathroom with one of those big, deep bearclaw tubs.  You know how long it's been since I've been in a bathtub built for two?  (I'm taking reservations, btw.)

Yep, I'm going to sign the lease tomorrow.

It's not Jake.  Yes, he's been annoying, but I'm sure it's been hard for him, too, somehow.  I mean, the guilt.  I'm sure it's just been gnawing at him. 

I knew all along this was going to be a layover here.  Even as I entertained fantasies of buying the place when my landlady sold, the more I looked at the layout the more I realized it was just that big airy living room that gets the afternoon light that I was in love with.  The rest of the apartment — well, first of all, it's too big for one person, but the rooms are of such vastly uneven proportions it feels positively feudal with a roommate.  I wouldn't want any roommate of mine to be relegated to the servants' quarters, while I luxuriated in the Lord Fauntleroy Suite next door.

Obviously some people don't mind.  Different strokes. (Oh!  Speaking of — good luck ever getting your precious sock-puppet back — Oscar's been chewing on it for two days now.)

What I'd really like now — or at least before September — is to find a Murphy bed.  And not an ugly one.  A classy one.  One like the ones you used to see in old Hollywood movies.  Any tips?

We've been running low on toilet paper.  We were down to, like, five squares when I left the flat this morning. 

It's one of those things you keep forgetting to pick up.  When I got it last I bought the big economy pack, and it's seen us through nearly three-and-a-half months.  I no longer hold out any hope that Jake will pitch in and pick up household goods we share in common.  He has, in fact, taken to leaving empty boxes of dishwashing detergent on the kitchen counter as a subtle hint to me to get more. 

I have yet to add up the cost and present him with a bill for his half.  It feels too petty.  Wouldn't it be better if he just picked up the slack, kicked in and did what needed doing when he saw we were short?  There are only just the two of us.  It would even out in the end.

But I've noticed that if I ask him to kick in, he apologizes (in a "my bad" kind of way) and says he'll "do better."  And then basically flips me the bird as soon as my back is turned. 

We had this conversation about taking out the trash, which he has never once done, and with not one, but two opportunities a week to do it!  I finally had to say something.  But I didn't even ask him to do it by himself.  I said I was happy to do it, but suggested that when there's more than one trip's-worth of rubbish, he might kick in and take some down himself. 

"OK, dude!  Yeah!  Sure thing!" 

And then: nothing.  Ever.  I even tried leaving it sitting there by the door for a cycle or two as bait.  needless to say: he didn't bite.   

Not to brag, but I'm a pretty quick study.  As the toilet paper supply has dwindled, I have not entertained any delusions that a new economy-pack will appear out of thin air.  But, like I said, you get busy with other things, and you forget. 

But I have to say it surprised — nay, shocked me when walking past Jake's bedroom, annoyed that he had left his window wide open and left for the day, with the crisp air howling down the hall, I saw this:


That, ladies and gentleman, is not just any roll of toilet paper.  It is the last roll of toilet paper from an economy pack that I bought and hauled home myself.  Is it possible, I asked myself as I gaped at it, that, seeing the toilet paper supply dwindling he had swiped the last roll so that he would have it for himself?

Or is he just using it to wipe up after wanking?

This morning when I got to the office I consulted my colleague Stella, who's an Italian-American mother of three boys, and she says he's using the roll as "tissue," by which she led me to understand she meant the second scenario.  She thinks he'd have to be a real "freak" — her word — to take the roll back and forth to the toilet every time he had to drop a deuce.  

But I don't know.  From my experience, there would be discarded tissues all over the floor all around his bed if he was using the roll to wipe up after he's cracked one off.  And everybody knows toilet tissue is no good for mopping up the man jam.  You learn that in Masturbation 101.  You need something way more absorbent.  He's probably got a cherished sock puppet from his childhood he uses for that. 

So he's hoarding.  That's the only logical explanation, as much as it pains me to say it.  Hoarding is such a vile habit. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sock puppet to abscond with.  Two can play at this game.

I used to be very cautious with the word "stupid", because somewhere I was taught it reflects badly on the one who says it. I mean, obviously going around calling people stupid is not very smart, since stupid people are probably more apt to beat you up for it than smart people are. 

I used to get around this conundrum, myself, by calling people crazy instead. And there are definitely certain similarities, like, for instance: crazy doesn't know it's crazy and stupid doesn't know it's stupid.  That's the beauty of it.  But it's time to face facts: people aren't merely crazy.  They're stupid, too.  And I'm not talking hot-stupid, either, like some of the guys from Jackass.  I'm talking just plain stupid-stupid.

To be clear.  I don't care how many times you crush your own nuts, just don't step on mine.  And parents — I don't want to go all eugenics on you — but when shit like this is going down, I don't think it's out of the question to ask that you pass a short IQ test before you're allowed to reproduce.  You can still have as many virtual babies as you want!  

But between the Tea Party and our latest Starve-the-Beast budget crisis, from plans to plow under half of Detroit to this mass stupicide in Kansas City, it's like stupid is the new black.  

Like there's a stupid contest and everybody's busting all the moves. 

Is there a big prize for winning it that I don't know about?

I was going to give my Worst Parents on the Planet award to the Tennessee couple whose three-year-old daughter shot and killed herself with a loaded pistol stepdaddy had left on the coffee table (the little girl mistook it for a Wii play gun), while mommy sat three feet away. 



Luckily Tennessee doesn't see this as a crime.  Authorities don't see any need to file charges. 

And more good news in the case:  the couple has one kid left!  A one-year-old.  And Tennessee gives gun nuts do-overs!  Tennessee family values.  Godda love 'em.
 
Today was a dark day, on the other hand, for Massachusetts, as the evil activist Supreme Judicial Court upheld a law requiring gun owners to use trigger locks on their weapons inside their homes. 

Bummer, huh? 

But there is a silver lining for Massachusetts parents who are responsible for their children's death by firearms.  Remember Christopher Bizilj, the eight-year-old who died at a gun show after an accidental self-inflicted submachine gun wound to the head, with his father a foot away?  Well, his dad (who was not charged with negligence or wrongdoing) is filing a a civil lawsuit...against  the 15-year-old instructor who he says "failed to provide proper guidance" to the 8-year-old on the use of the gun.

So there's hope.

What's impressive, first of all, about the public meeting about the proposed branch library closings is that it took place during office hours and by the Globe's estimate, four hundred people turned out to give 'em hell anyway. 



What strikes you immediately is the passionate intensity of those who oppose closings, and the utter lack of it in those running the show.  What they've got is cool certainty.  It's a budget crisis after all, and you can't argue with the bottom line, right?

But there's plenty of reason to believe that there's politics at play.  When board members can't even be bothered to articulate a coherent vision of the oldest branch system in America, and instead whine about how they don't have enough computers and there's no one to read books to kids at Story Hour, I think it's reasonable to ask if they're competent to sit on the board at all.

There's absolutely no reason why, under committed and competent management, with a collective vision that precludes the failure of any of its branches, the system should be experiencing a budget shortfall at all.  There is no reason there should be outdated technology and no volunteers to teach computer skills on-site or read to kids at Story Hour.  Aggressive outreach, fundraising, and creative partnerships are a basic part of any competently-run nonprofit.

The crisis is not primarily a budget crisis.  And it's not about libraries being made redundant by the internet, no matter how the city and BPL spin it to justify planned closures.  That it has come to this is the real crisis.  And it's a crisis of leadership.  The current leadership of this library system aligned with the leadership of the Mayor. 

I mean, it's no secret that the board of BPL is made up almost entirely of Menino appointees (granted, that's what happens when you're elected Mayor For Life).  You'll recall back in 2007, there was quite a kerfuffle when Menino's gang ousted then-President Bernard Margolis, who "accused the mayor of starving the city's 27 branch libraries of adequate funding and interfering with library operations."

So they do seem to have a vision, of sorts.

And this latest move seems the logical next step in Menino's vision for the Boston Public Library system.  Don't expect old Mumbles to articulate that vision clearly, but don't say you weren't warned. 

And let's not pretend it's merely the current budget crisis that's at fault. 

I spent several blissful hours in the garden over the last few days. It's been sunny and mild — the perfect weather for a little spring cleaning, especially since I didn't do much any in the fall.  I know the picture above doesn't look like I did much over the weekend, either, but you should've seen it when I got there Saturday morning.

No rush.  Slow and steady wins the race. 

It was nice to be out and gettin' a little down and dirty, anyway.  And I was not alone.  All the die-hards were out as well, and there was a lot of catching up to do. 

I have to say, there is nothing like the feeling I get in the garden.  It's a complex bouquet of emotions, you could say, some happy, some sad.  But it feels more like what life's supposed to feel like.

And to tell you the truth, I got a little overwhelmed with it all yesterday.  I've got a lot of work ahead of me, and this is going to be a busy next couple of months for me work-workwise, too. 


It's probably a good thing the garden next to mine has been taken.  I'd speculated recently about a little land-grab — an idea that my garden Svengali, Michael, planted in my head and I was helpless but to follow through on.  But I can't say I was looking forward to the extra workload. There's evidence our ornery squatter is back, and I'm not sure I have the energy to stage an intervention.  Luckily, it looks like I won't won't have to. 

Turns out the plot will go to a veteran gardener (and former member of the board, natch), who, if the rumors are true — and I hope they are — has a cadre of scantily-clad Latins who do his every bidding.  So the view should be much improved, too.

Spring can never come too soon.

I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for Na'vi porn [NSFW] to start circulating in cyberspace (and just so you know: naviporn.com is still up for grabs). 

I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little disappointed.  I find it highly unlikely the Na'vi would be circumcised.  But that's a minor point (so to speak). 

There isn't yet a good name for what has become a raging cliche over the past several years — men who make their living as so-called "family values" conservatives, who speak out against gay rights while having sex on the down-low with other men.  The most recent pathetic example being California GOP state Senator Roy Ashburn, who was arrested for driving drunk after leaving a gay nightclub with a trick in tow.



Inevitably, Ashburn, like Larry Craig before him, will deny being gay.  Gay activists will shriek outrage and howl with laughter.  But the truth is, as I have argued elsewhere, Craig isn't gay if he doesn't identify as gay, which thankfully he doesn't.  Gay is a category of social identity, not a sexual orientation, and it's high time we mainstreamed the distinction.  Because I, for one, am getting sick of Brand Gay being associated with people like Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, and Roy Ashburn instead of men like Dan Choi, Neil Patrick Harris, and, well, me. 

Clinicians in the field already use the clunky term "men who have sex with men" or "MSMs", a value-neutral, very literally descriptive label consciously emptied of cultural subtext that acknowledges the vital difference. This may seem nitpicky but the fact is you either have sex with men or you don't, whatever you call yourself —"gay", "bi", "curious", "queer", "evangelical", "Republican", whatever.

There are obviously many, many men who have gay sex who are vehemently anti-gay. What they object to is obviously not the sex, but the gay. They don't want to have to identify as gay — which means identifying with a class and a cause with a rich history and a culture — to partake in gay sex.  And the truth is, they don't have to.  No one's going to ask if you identify as gay when you're on your knees in the public toilet or ass-up in the Fens. 

Personally, I'm proud to be gay, and have actively sought out that rich history and culture. But these guys — the Craigs, the Haggards, the Ashburns — aren't gay. They're sexual opportunists, users, cheats, liars, hypocrites, and men who have sex with men.  That's not what gay means to me.  That's not what gay history and culture is about.    

It's true, gays have always had a self-love/self-hate relationship.  But that vital tension is the beginning of self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-worth, not the end.  Some gays are afraid to acknowledge that embracing a social identity is a choice, for fear that choice of any sort undermines our argument for civil rights, which is said to hinge on our lack of choice.  But orientation and identity are distinct, and we are seeing this in the kinds of unsavory characters who may share our orientation but not our history, culture, or values.

If, as one outraged blogger demands, "whenever someone speaks out against gays, the first question they should be asked is, 'Are you gay?'" we should not be surprised when the answer is "no."   Maybe we should ask, "Are you gop?"

This repressed minority clearly needs its own name.  Neologists: get to work!

Free agency begins at midnight tonight, and the Globe took a look today at the players on the top of the manheap, and asked readers to pick the one they most want to play for the Pats.

The winner by a wide margin was Julius Peppers.  And no wonder.  Look at this gorgeous hunk-o-man:


Pats, please remember: we only want the hotties.

“We’re broke,” Jeffrey B. Rudman, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Boston Public Library, told the Globe last week, in what has become a familiar refrain. A $3.6 million budget gap may force the closure of as many as ten branch libraries in the coming year. The only other alternative, according to BPL President Amy E. Ryan, is to slash the budget across the board, crippling the whole system.


It’s an awful lot of hysteria for what is essentially a pittance in the private sector, where companies like Genzyme, which receives generous tax breaks from the state, post profits in the billions and individual bonuses in even failing companies still easily exceed the entire annual budget of a typical branch library.

In a climate of growing income disparity, where “starve the beast” is still the order of the day, closing 10 badly-needed branches in vulnerable neighborhoods would be a failure of both morals and imagination. Is the public sector in crisis? Yes. Is it ever not? It’s a cliché that every crisis is an opportunity. What’s called for is strategy and chutzpah.

In recent comments on the current budget crisis Mayor Menino said “closing branches should be our last resort. But I think the library also has to have a transformation in how they serve the public.” While I disagree that closing branches that serve already underserved communities in which they are most needed should be on the table at all, the Mayor is right that branch libraries can’t be left to languish in outdated technologies and outmoded resources, either.

Rather than closing branches we should be encouraging individual donors and big corporations to step up and be good citizens of the communities they are a part of by not only stewarding public libraries through crisis times but contributing to their ongoing upkeep and relevance. While the Boston Public Library Foundation has explored a variety of funding sources, the time is ripe for a much more aggressive approach that embraces not only stakeholders in the library system but in the community they vitally serve. At the same time, public-private partnerships should be explored.

Boston is not alone in having to make difficult choices about budgeting priorities. When Jackson County, Oregon, faced a budget shortfall in 2007, the public was unwilling to support another tax levy on a system it had paid nearly $40 million to renovate only five years before. The entire library system was shut down. After half a year, in a desperate bid to keep libraries open, Jackson County handed over operations to a privately held library management company with a proven track record of providing services while lowering operating costs. Today, County Administrator Danny Jordan boasts, library attendance is up 200 percent, costs are down. In fact, the current five-year contract is projected to net more than $20 million in savings. And all 15 branches remain open. “What is more important in a library than anything else,” poet and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish once said, “is the fact that it exists.”

Our branch libraries are too important, and the populations they serve already too vulnerable to abandon them when the going gets tough. And despite what many who can afford home access to the internet and for whom a trip to the local bookstore has replaced dropping by the library believe, the role of libraries will become more, not less vital in a future where much of the knowledge we have access to in them now is sequestered behind pay walls. The digital divide aligns with the income divide. The folks who most need access to what public libraries can provide are obviously those who are most vulnerable to branch closure.

Andrew Carnegie, that great entrepreneur and philanthropist, once said, “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library.” Libraries are not luxuries, and their closure wherever they still serve a population that needs them, is not an option.

It is easy enough to lament the crisis as a sign of the times, and to forget that the Boston public library system has survived a storied history to flourish to this day. The City of Boston established the first publicly supported, free municipal library, and the first branch library in America. Rather than wallow in a culture of perpetual budget crisis with no end in sight, we must find the opportunities in new strategies and services, funding and development, to meet today’s challenges and move the library system – from Copley to Eastie, Lower Mills to Orient Heights – into the 21st century.
________________________________________________
*From an op-ed piece I submitted to the Globe last week.

I know — that was short-lived, huh? 

Well, here's what happened. 

I took this first-time homebuyer's class with the City of Boston, which was cool.  But I realized immediately, as I'm sure I mentioned, that it'd be a couple of years before I could move ahead with any plans to buy.  Several friends who have no reason to know anything about my personal finances urged me to go ahead, but trust me, it's not feasible for me right now.

Still I dove right into the real estate porn sites online, but the more I saw, the more effed-up the market here started to look.  To an even greater degree than elsewhere, it's driven by investment here.  This is what was meant by the mantra of the City of Boston course: "home ownership is the first step to wealth accumulation."  Unfortunately, opportunities for people like me, who want to actually buy a place to live in, seem pretty scant in a market like this.  

And everybody's on about the $8,000 tax credit, which will expire next month, but there's plenty of reason to believe that the tax credit may actually have contributed to recent bump in real estate prices in Boston. Whatever the cause, according to the Globe, the median condo price in Boston increased almost 17 percent over this time last year.  It's still down around 12% from '08, apparently, but then prices were through the roof in '08.

All of this is good news for investors, who really have no right to complain, given their gains over the last decade, right?  I mean, take the place I'm renting now, which my landlady is looking to offload.  I don't blame her.  She paid $110,000 for it back in '96.  That's a ridiculous $100 per square foot in a neighborhood where condos are going for a median $565 per square foot today.  I don't need to tell you that's more than a five-fold increase — again, great for investors! — over a period of fourteen years.  The same period in which median wages — earned wealth, you might call it — stagnated (median income increased just 10% between 1996 and 2007, and has not been stellar since — wages eked out 1.5% growth in '09, the weakest year on record). 

Yeah, get out your tiny violins.  I know.  Whatever.  It is what it is.  But I have to say it did get me to thinking about how I really want to live, what I wanna shoot for, and what I'm willing to settle for.  And that's a good thing, right?

Like, for instance: I love the Fenway, but I'd love it more if it were a little less of a student ghetto.  The ratio of gown to town is pretty skewed in these parts.  There's almost nowhere you can run in the city limits (and beyond) to get away from them.  If I'm going to buy I want to buy where there are other owner-occupants around me. 

On the other hand, I don't really know if I want to deal with a condo association.  I don't know anyone who has to that does.  And do I really want to live in a tiny little flat for the next umpteen years?  I was on tumblr the other day, and tumbled onto a site called "unhappy hipsters".  The hipsters didn't interested me as much as the beautiful, mostly modular homes in which they languished in ennui. 

Prefab is just plan fab these days.  But then it only really works if you've got a spectacular view.  And, boy, that'll cost ya.


There's always Detroit.

Digby, you might recall, was the cute BBC presenter who had absolutely everything going for him who died last week at the age of 32.  Police ruled out suicide, telling the Daily Mail they believe Digby died of stupicide, during "a solo sex game which went tragically wrong."

You know, how can you get masturbation wrong? 

I guess it's true what they told us in boys' school: yeah, OK, masturbation can be fun, but it can also be deadly.  Occasionally we need these tragic reminders.

The Party of No is at it again.

The GOP has already condemned as biased any findings on gays in the military that might come out of a planned nine-month Pentagon study on DADT that many expect will lead to its repeal.

I don't know.  On the one hand I'm impressed — a little awed, even — by the level of single-minded conviction ignorance and bigotry inspires.  Reason seems like passivity in its wake. 

I mean, I can see why I might be a little obsessed with gays.  I'm gay. What's their excuse? 

Hmm.  Could it be that "no" means "yes"?

I'm usually up and down all day at the office, running in and out and up and down flights of stairs like a hamster in a habitrail, but I knew when I read those reports a couple of weeks ago that sitting at your desk all day can be deadly, that someone would come up with some fantastic solution, and here it is.


Gee, thanks.

According to the article, if she stops, her whole work station powers down, an alarm sounds, and she has to drop and give 'em fifty right then and there. 

One problem I can see with this set-up is: it looks like you have to wear pants.  I generally like to work "native", I call it, from the waist down.  No one seems to mind as long as I'm sitting behind my desk.  Here, at the very least, I'd have to wear a jock. 

Speaking of which.  Another problem: casual Fridays.  I'm seeing a lot of spandex in our future.

Well, whatever.  Work is work, right?  You've got to sacrifice something, why not comfort and sanity?  Just as long as I've got my chatroulette and can still sneak in a little youtube, I'm good.  These talking cats are totally addictive...

I flunked the written test for my Massachusetts driver's license this morning.

This was my second trip to the RMV in Chinatown in as many weeks.  Last week, after a not unreasonable wait, I was told cheerily that I did not have all the required documentation for a conversion — since I had an Indiana license, even though it expired in '08, I would need a certified copy of my Indiana driving record in order to "convert" to a Mass. license.



OK, no biggie.  I expected there'd be a glitch or two  And it's not like I waited in line for three hours and then found out.  I was struck by how happy the clerk was to tell me she would be unable to help me, but you know what?  I was glad to have made someone smile.  It's such a rare thing in these troubled times.

So I came back this time with all the necessary documents and my paperwork in order.  The wait was longer, but I had some reading to do, so I didn't really mind.  When they finally called my number, I greeted the clerk with a moderately friendly, "hi, how are you today?" 

There is a woman at work who is so aggressively friendly a simple hello often feels like one of those subway gropings — not a full-on rape, but like you've just been finger-fucked by an unemployed machinist from Quincy or something.  This woman is always screaming "SMILE!" in your face, as you instinctively recoil.  I mean, like she's given you anything to smile about.  I sometimes wonder: do people like this ever stop and think maybe people aren't smiling around them because... they're around them?

But making eye contact and giving a little non-threatening smile, and saying "hello" in a friendly, but not weird way, seems OK.  I mean, business is business but we can still be human about it, right?  Otherwise, bring on the robots.  They're pleasanter on the whole, and often have more personality than your average RMV clerk. 

I just wanted to start off on the right foot.  But the clerk I got this time around looked like her dog had just died after eating her cat, who had eaten her bird.  I said "hello, how are you?" Nothing.  She didn't look at me or greet me back, and didn't even prompt me to tell her my business.  When I handed her my form, she took out a pink highlighter, dashed off six or seven marks, and slid it back over the counter. 

"Fill these out," she said flatly, still without looking at me, and started humming.  I could hear she was listening to gospel music at a very low volume.

I did as instructed.  But I had left two of the spots blank because I had questions.  When I asked — interrupting what was obviously a very private reverie — she was somewhat less than helpful.  Surprising, I know.  I was shocked, too. 

But we managed to get through it somehow, and she instructed me to stand against the blue screen for my photo.  It turned out pretty hideous, but she did not offer to give me another go as I had seen other clerks doing.  I wasn't going to ask.  It's a drivers license, not the cover of Vogue.

She then typed some more into her computer.  It seemed to be taking her an inordinate amount of time, until I realized she only had one finger on her right hand.  In case you're wondering, it was her middle finger — which is obviously how she got the job at the RMV, where that middle finger is essential.  It's really the ONLY one you need.  And here's your proof. 

I felt a quiver of, not sympathy really — but apprehension, let's call it, when I finally got it.  It didn't look like a birth defect either — and yes, I stared at it unabashedly, since she was being such a bitch — it looked like it had been mangled in an industrial accident.  Which gave me something to fantasize about as I waited.

Good person to have on the front lines is all I can say.

"You gotta take the exam," she finally burped, jotting down a number, and mumbling something about going somewhere I didn't quite get but knew not to ask.  I was pretty sure I could figure it out.

I didn't bother to take the practice exam.  The questions, I assumed, would be random, and it wouldn't do me any good — I'd just be taking it twice.  I had had a look at the manual in preparation for the exam the week before, and had focused most of my efforts on the Rules of the Road, skipping portions of the nearly 150-page document that didn't seem relevant, or that I reasoned would not be covered in depth on the exam. 

Boy was I wrong. 

There are only 25 questions, and you only have to get 18 right.  But all of the ones I missed (except one) had to do with fees and fines, and four of the seven I missed had to do with fees and fines for junior operators.  I gave it my best guess, but penalties and fines are pretty specific. I just tried to find the least reasonable answer and pick that one. 

True , there were also a few questions like "how many fatal accidents involve a pedestrian", with answers like "one in three" or "one in four" but most were about junior operators and drunk driving.

The only question I found 100% relevant for an adult operator not under the influence of alcohol or prescription drugs was "what color is a stop sign?"  Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

So I flunked it.

You know, you walk out of the little exam room and look around the waiting room — and it's like a scene out of Brueghel, and you're thinking to yourself — somehow all of these people managed to pass.  How scary is that?

I went back to the po-faced clerk to ask her what my options were now, but she had moved on.  It was like I didn't even exist.  I stood there with my dick in my hand until I caught sight of the woman in charge — who had time a half an hour earlier to make a ten-minute speech about stealing pens (apparently they go through about one hundred pens a day — some people, she conjectured, take them unconsciously, but others do so willfully) — and who of course refused to acknowledge me as I waved and "yoo-hooed" from three feet away.  

"Excuse me!" I implored.  "I beg your pardon!  I'm so sorry, but I have a question!"

I could see she was struggling to ignore me, so although she was obviously fuming at my breech of protocol and still refused to look at me, I knew I had her.

"Yeah," I shouted over the noise of the place.  "I just flunked my drivers test."

Now everybody was looking at me but her.

"What do I do now?"

"Come back another day," she grumbled.

"Can I get my paperwork back?" I asked her.

"Come back another day," she snapped, turning her back to me.

So I guess it's back to the old drawing board.  Does anyone know any junior operators I can trade some booze and oxy for driver's test-tutoring?