mennonno sapiens - one giant leap for mankind

Honor Among Thieves

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:51:46 GMT

President Bush said Sunday he does not feel the need to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to state his opposition to China's human rights record. Skipping the event would be an "affront" to the Chinese people, he said.

Is it a big surprise that the Torture President, under whose regime Chinese-inspired methods were applied in Soviet-style prison camps, won't snub his fellow human rights violators for fear of offending them? I suppose you could think of it as a sort of honor among thieves. At least he knows who his friends are.

The More Things Change...

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:41:45 GMT

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Obamoids everywhere. Sure he got the nomination, but then he had that rendezvous with Hillary (at least they didn't fist-bump) and started talkin' crazy about guns and religion and death and spying and war*! All of which, it turns out, he's totally FOR!

Paul Krugman got it right in his June 30th op-ed:

Progressive activists, in particular, overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama during the Democratic primary even though his policy positions, particularly on health care, were often to the right of his rivals’. In effect, they convinced themselves that he was a transformational figure behind a centrist facade. They may have had it backward.

Were they naive? I choose to think not. Just superficial.

Amid all that caterwauling for change, they may have missed that the change Obama envisioned had to do with compromise, and when you compromise with the opposition, you sometimes put yourself in compromising positions. But rest easy, when compromise is the whole of your beliefs, it's hard to compromise them. Think about it.

Of course, everything in politics is relative. Even the fervor of Obamoids in the primary was due, at least in part, to the virulence of hatred towards his rival. I don't know if McCain will inspire enough fear and loathing to make absolute devotion to Obama make the same kind of sense to some in the general.

Perversely, that could work to Obama's benefit, since the fanaticism of his rabid fan base is about as appealing as a Waco cult to the rest of us. Truth is, he doesn't need them as much now, anyway. So they feel a little jilted as he goes after Evangelicals, deer hunters, and Nascar dads. Who else are they going to vote for? They're like a bunch of crackhoes in a one-dealer town now.

Most of them are catching on that compromising on beliefs is strategy. But what some of them still don't see is that compromising on beliefs is the change Obama had in mind all along. It's certainly a change from the pig-headedness of our current Decider-in-chief.

Will Progressives end up feeling betrayed by the compromises of the would-be next Decider-in-Chief? If you review even a few of their wild fantasies of him thus far -- Obama the pacifist, protector of civil liberties, savior of the secular state, and so on -- the answer is clear.

The information to contradict them was always there. Some of them may have been blinded by the rhetoric of hope. Others by a peculiar brand of "benevolent racism" (which is what Ralph Nader was talking about). Still others by hatred.

I like to think that they weren't simply taken in by jazzy one-word slogans and a candidate who looks different. I mean, "Change" is the oldest political trick in the book. And it's sounding a lot like politics as usual to me.
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*For a quick primer on Obama's recent ch-ch-ch-changes, click here.

Recreational Paranoia

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:22:33 GMT

Davis of The Living Dead

I guess I should be thankful the vagrants, beggars, and crazies waited to accost me en masse until my mother and my aunt left town. Because I'm convinced it's more or less just me they're after. They seem organized. Like they have a strategy for me. There are days I do everything I can to avoid them, and like a troop of zombies from a George Romero B-movie, which is about what they look like, they just. Keep. Coming.

Last wednesday was weird anyway. I went out to get a sandwich around ten a.m., and sat in Davis Square to eat it and read an article in the new New Yorker about itching. Guaranteed to make you scratch. I mean, it opens with the story of M., who could not stop scratching. She scratched her head till her hair fell out, then just kept on scratching...

One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

ZOMG! Can you BELIEVE that shit? That's something your mom would tell you to keep you from scratching. "STOP SCRATCHING! You'll scratch your BRAINS out!" That's like an urban legend. But in The New Yorker? I mean, shouldn't it be Weekly World News? Regardless, now it's all I can do to keep from scratching.

And as I was sitting, reading and scratching, I kind of was looking around and noticing that the only people sitting around in the square were old men and vagrants. And me.

My future awaits.

A particularly belligerent one I'd seen before, with a beet-red face, lurched up and sat at a table a ways away. There was another old guy there and they seemed to know each other, but the other got up and left with a third guy (probably to go hang out at Starbucks, which has become Davis Square's new Someday-Lite), leaving the belligerent one alone.

Even though I was halfway across the square I was hiding behind my magazine, knowing that if he happened to whip around in my direction he would make a beeline for me. Why? I already told you. Because they're after me. Why are they after me? I must have been scratching. Zombies eat brains.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So when the other dudes left the especially scary one alone he stood up, started waving his arms and cursing and carrying on. Of course. I mean, what else would he do at ten in the morning on a Wednesday? I'm sure it's on his Blackberry. "10 a.m.: Go to Davis Square, wave arms, curse, carry on."

I peeped up over my magazine, even as that little voice inside screamed "don't do it!" (sometimes I wonder which is worse: zombies or Little Voice...) I didn't think he had seen me, but knew it was probably time to quietly make my exit. Problem was he was in the direction of home. I thought, OK, no sweat. I'll fake him out.

I got up and started walking, real leisurely-like, in the opposite direction. Clever, aren't I? I haven't survived years of Davis Square zombie attacks with my brains more or less intact for no reason. Just at the last moment I whipped around to make my dash through the square and across the street.

And THERE HE WAS. Right up in my grill. But I busted an emboite, followed by a double-jete-plie-plie and a pas de chat with a port de Bras to distract him, and then a triple-headstand-piroutte, and leapt to safety before he could sink his teeth into me.

It's not good enough to just have a strategy, as I have discovered. You have to have style.

Mastication Fantasies

After that close-call I hopped on the T. I had bought a 7-day pass for my mom's visit, and had decided to go ahead and use it to get to work, since it was threatening rain. I like using the T fairly infrequently, because when you only ride it occasionally you see things you'd tune out if you were commuting that way every day.

The T was not crowded, and there was a very tall, clean cut, handsome young man who looked like he had just fallen to earth or popped from a giant bean pod or was just released on his own recognizance from Clones-R-Us. I mean, I could see him naked and all slathered in ectoplasm like Jalil Lespert in Oedipe - [N+1].

I noticed him immediately, because he was so exotic -- tall and sleek, in shorts with legs that just. would. not. stop. The eyes of a foreigner: a little more alert to his surroundings, but above them, and a little suspicious of those around him, wary of catching something from them. Radiating nervous energy at a very low frequency. Aside from zombies, Davis Square is full of high frequency types: squeakers, bleepers, and buzzers: people with tight little auras moving very quickly and purposefully amongst each other without their auras ever touching. And if they do, that's when the bells and buzzers go off.

So this sprawl of his was especially exotic. I could feel his presence, a kind of low purr you feel as the slightest tickle in your extremities, from the top of the stairs. But most exciting of all: when he finally came into view, he was devouring a sandwich with the poised and tensed muscles of a panther ripping its prey limb from limb. I don't know what was in that sandwich, but the way his mandibles were working on it, the masseter muscles bulging and churning, you'd think it was honey-glazed gazelle on rye.

It was all I could do to move along, the action was so riveting. The train came in short order, and luckily he got in my car and sat across from me, looking even more foreign and formidable than he did on the platform. Like a panther in a subway car. Alert but detached. I had an urge to ask him a question just to hear his voice -- I was sure he'd have an exotic accent. But what if he didn't? My day would be ruined. So I kept quiet.

He placed his knapsack on the seat next to him, and started foraging in it. Remember Milla Jovovich as The Supreme Being, Leeloo, in The Fifth Element? How voracious she is right after they make her? She eats those two whole chickens? That's what this guy was like. It was the bottomless knapsack. He had about a fifteen course meal in there. He'd finish one course and dip in and pull out another. And those muscular mandibles just masticating away. I was transfixed.

Usually, as you may know, my rule is nothing goes in or comes out of one's person on the T. Nothing. We have all seen egregious violations of this rule, I'm sure. Enough of them and you don't want to make any exceptions to it, ever. But then you see this sort of thing -- a creature of such exquisite beauty and fierce intensity -- and it's riveting to watch him feed. And you have to admit -- blast it! -- there really is an exception to every rule.

Some people, even when eating in our species' designated feeding areas, are vile, their gestures furtive, greedy, mean -- something profane, if not downright pornographic in the way they stuff it all inside themselves. It is not as easy to be beautiful when eating as you might imagine. All it takes is an errant piece of lettuce stuck to a tooth to make a total fool of you. But muscular mandibles are definitely a start.

Here is a factual inventory of goods the stranger on the train devoured in the mere two stops from Davis to Harvard:

1 whole sandwich
several cherries (spitting the pips into his palm)
1 banana
1 medium-sized thigh of an emu (I'm guessing)
1 protein bar
1 nectarine
1 hog
1 ziplock baggie of granola
several seedless grapes
2 baby alligators
1 apple
1 chocolate-covered warbler

He just kept diving back into his knapsack and coming up with little treasures. He would study them momentarily, see if they twitched, and then just obliterate them with those superhuman mandibles. It was brutal, but beautiful. Is there a word: brutalful? There should be. There must be. There is now.

Two Sacks Full of Sorry

That was my only brief respite from the zombies Wednesday. I got off at Park, and they were amassed there around the Monument to The Great Pigeon Shitting Catastophe of 1744. Sometimes you can slip through without incident, especially this time of year, with all the tourists about. I got all the way to Boylston before being spotted.

This time it was two belligerents. A big fat black guy with Ginsberg glasses and a burly beard who looked like a giant beetle, and his unlikely sidekick, a beet-faced Irishman three sheets to the wind by the looks of him. They were holding each other up, staggering in my general direction, and Ginsberg was looking around for victims.

I had to think fast. Once you're in their orbit, guys like this are like black holes. You can't ignore them. They suck you right in. I could dash across the street, but I hate dashing about on other people's account. I could use another pedestrian to block, but there weren't any suitable ones around. I could take my cell phone out and pretend to be too enthralled in a conversation to pay them any mind. It's funny how even hardcore indigents still respect your space when you're on the phone.

But then I realized I already had the solution. In my very hands. All you need, as Jack Handy once put it, is two sacks. In my case, I was carrying my customary canvas pannier (please don't call it a "fag bag") and my Hello Kitty mini book-bag backpack. (It was a gift.) Hey! It ain't perfect, but it'll do!

As I approached I slipped my backpack off, so that I was holding it in my left hand and my pannier in my right. I was ready for Ginsberg when he pounced. But I have to say I was impressed with his agility as he leapt into my path. I almost wanted to give him a buck just for busting a move.

Instead, there was a moment of tension, as he breathed hard in my face from the exertion. Before he could propose whatever it was he had so urgently intercepted me to propose I decided to launch a preemptive apology.

"Sorry, dude," I said.

"Sorry???" he roared. "Sorry for WHAT???"

"Sorry, I can't help you. My hands are full."

I held up my two bags and shrugged.

"Maybe next time!" I told him, giving him one of those little apology-smiles (sad from the eyes up, happy from the mouth down, no teeth, no lips) over my shoulder as I walked away.

Works every time.

Now, that's what brains are for.

Between Storms

Mike Mennonno — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:46:19 GMT

Manny the Diva (Some Thoughts on "Not OK")

Mike Mennonno — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:46:35 GMT

Should have seen this coming. All this talk of "Manny being Manny." Manny long ago entered the rarefied realm of divas known only by first name: Babs, Madge, Celine, Cher. How long did you think it was going to be before he threw his cell phone at the help like Naomi, or proclaimed like Mariah: "The nature of my life, the nature of what I do, is divadom, it really is"?

Then you've got the Globe running headlines and teasers screaming: "Shaughnessy: Manny's actions are not OK." "Not OK?" This phrase is a fairly recent addition to our public discourse along the lines of "my bad," and at least as equivocal.

The dumbed-down reaction does seem to fit the nature of the Diva, if it doesn't quite fit the nature of the offense: shoving a 64 year-old to the floor for indicating it might be difficult to get him sixteen tickets to a game at the last minute, even if the 64 year-old could purportedly have kicked Manny's ass in a barroom brawl.

But otherwise "not OK" is not OK in my book. What's next, a "time-out"? There is something at once condescending and childish about the expression, and it reflects a lack of conviction about whatever behavior it purports to address. It's in no way adequate for anything but a four year-old's hissy-fit.

Even so, somehow it's wormed its way into the highest orders of public speaking. Think of John Edwards' speech endorsing Barack Obama:

There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day. This is not OK. ... [A] government that argues that water boarding is not torture. This is not OK. ...

Maybe -- maybe -- you'd tell your four year old that torture is "not OK," because your four year old doesn't have "heinous", "unconscionable", or "abhorrent" in her vocabulary. Most adults do.

Even a legendary orator like Obama is prone to ruining what might be a great speech with a dumbed-down word or phrase. Take his now famous Iraq speech, in which he reaches the pivotal point:

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.

Never mind, Obamoids, that he is here equating militarism with patriotism, in a positive way. I'm talking about being opposed to "dumb" wars. The language so falls short of the gravity of the sentiment that it almost makes you wonder if the speaker really understands the gravity of the sentiment. Or is he simply being condescending?

Ask someone who's had their legs blown off by a roadside bomb if this war was a "dumb" idea. Somehow "dumb" doesn't quite capture it. Diminishes the real horror of it, doesn't it, a bit?

When the press reacts to Manny's fits and tantrums with "not OK" they merely encourage the perception of Manny as an overgrown four year-old. And while he may well be, there's a sort of built-in, "awe shucks, he don't know no better" factor at work with "not OK," too.

Personally, I think he's much more than that. We should call his little outburst what it is: Divalicious!

Suck it Up

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:38:51 GMT

I was just signing into my yahoo mail account when I saw this...

I love the juxtaposition of the stories here. "Scientists say a huge new device won't suck the Earth into a black hole" and "How one guy amassed 3,494 souvenir baseballs". Could we find a way to just suck the guy and the baseballs into the black hole? Probably not. Physics isn't picky, is it? If the guy with 3,494 souvenir baseballs goes, we all go.

But then, so what? To those afraid that getting sucked into a black hole would be the end of the world, I say: chillax. Pick up a good book, get comfy, and enjoy the ride. As for the book, may I suggest William Hazlitt, who provides some tips for the trip in his essay "On the Fear of Death" (which I've quoted before):

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern – why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? …We do not consider the six thousand years of the world before we were born as so much lost time to us: we are perfectly indifferent about the matter.

And there are worse ways than spaghettification to go, when you think about it. I find University of Richmond Assistant Physics Professor Ted Bunn's description of what happens when you fall into a black hole kinda comforting:

Let's suppose that you get into your spaceship and point it straight towards the million-solar-mass black hole in the center of our galaxy. (Actually, there's some debate about whether our galaxy contains a central black hole, but let's assume it does for the moment.) Starting from a long way away from the black hole, you just turn off your rockets and coast in. What happens?

At first, you don't feel any gravitational forces at all. Since you're in free fall, every part of your body and your spaceship is being pulled in the same way, and so you feel weightless. (This is exactly the same thing that happens to astronauts in Earth orbit: even though both astronauts and space shuttle are being pulled by the Earth's gravity, they don't feel any gravitational force because everything is being pulled in exactly the same way.) As you get closer and closer to the center of the hole, though, you start to feel "tidal" gravitational forces. Imagine that your feet are closer to the center than your head. The gravitational pull gets stronger as you get closer to the center of the hole, so your feet feel a stronger pull than your head does. As a result you feel "stretched." (This force is called a tidal force because it is exactly like the forces that cause tides on earth.) These tidal forces get more and more intense as you get closer to the center, and eventually they will rip you apart.

For a very large black hole like the one you're falling into, the tidal forces are not really noticeable until you get within about 600,000 kilometers of the center. Note that this is after you've crossed the horizon. If you were falling into a smaller black hole, say one that weighed as much as the Sun, tidal forces would start to make you quite uncomfortable when you were about 6000 kilometers away from the center, and you would have been torn apart by them long before you crossed the horizon. (That's why we decided to let you jump into a big black hole instead of a small one: we wanted you to survive at least until you got inside.)

What do you see as you are falling in? Surprisingly, you don't necessarily see anything particularly interesting. Images of faraway objects may be distorted in strange ways, since the black hole's gravity bends light, but that's about it. In particular, nothing special happens at the moment when you cross the horizon. Even after you've crossed the horizon, you can still see things on the outside: after all, the light from the things on the outside can still reach you. No one on the outside can see you, of course, since the light from you can't escape past the horizon.

How long does the whole process take? Well, of course, it depends on how far away you start from. Let's say you start at rest from a point whose distance from the singularity is ten times the black hole's radius. Then for a million-solar-mass black hole, it takes you about 8 minutes to reach the horizon. Once you've gotten that far, it takes you only another seven seconds to hit the singularity. By the way, this time scales with the size of the black hole, so if you'd jumped into a smaller black hole, your time of death would be that much sooner.

Once you've crossed the horizon, in your remaining seven seconds, you might panic and start to fire your rockets in a desperate attempt to avoid the singularity. Unfortunately, it's hopeless, since the singularity lies in your future, and there's no way to avoid your future. In fact, the harder you fire your rockets, the sooner you hit the singularity. It's best just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

"There's no way to avoid your future." Too true. That's what everybody's got their nose bent out of shape over, innit? We're all convinced there's an exception to the rule waiting for us. Singularity kind of squashes the old ego, dunnit?

But the ride sounds pretty wild. Better than Six Flags, and not as far. About eight minutes and seven seconds away. Hardly enough time for "are we there yet?" even. Suck it up.

Sunday Morning Sampler

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:40:10 GMT

I spent some time in the garden yesterday between showers. My little cactus is all abloom!...

This is the first time it's done that for me. I'm flattered.

The bee balm is making its first appearance on the scene as well...

Mine is red, but there's a big bunch of bright pink on the main path...

My dahlias are still acting a little demure...

This is one of those chocolate cosmos...

A pink allium...

A dried-out poppy seed pod...

Another incipient cone flower...

Hydrangea in that peculiar hue of delicate blue...

...and in white...

A blooming hosta down the lane...

And some honeysuckle on the fence...

Miss Casandra & Co. Get What's Coming to Them

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:26:50 GMT

Well, the sad tale of Miss Casandra (here, here, here and here) just got sadder, if you can imagine. One of her friends just got busted for writing phony checks. Can you believe it? You know, they start out, innocently enough, with telemarketing, and move on to the harder stuff. Next thing you know they're getting sent up river for mail fraud. What a world.

Weedy Wednesday

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:03:47 GMT

I wasn't able to get out in the garden much over my long weekend. And then seems we had thunderstorms the last couple of days. When I finally got back I had weeds out the wazoo.

So aside from one very interesting meeting over Pom and grapefruit juice cocktails that's what I did yesterday. I weeded. I've said before I think weeding is great therapy, and I could definitely use some about now. I am still in the midst of my parental visit PTSD.

And The Ex and I had such a nice time at dinner he's invited me for a weekend away, which I, of course, had to decline. It was Maine, not Monaco. Been there, done that. He'll catch on eventually. The first time around you can do the cabin in the woods, but the second time around your standards are different. It obviously depends which side of the dumping you were on and if you're getting any now whether they're higher or lower. We're still in negotiations.

Anyway, weeding was just what the doctor ordered. Nothing quite like cleaning the clutter out of your bed.

This lone cleome is about the extent of the color in my garden at the moment...

One or two cone flowers have burst onto the scene, too...

Tony's Hydrangea just over the fence is coming along...

(I actually like the white ones when they're still a little green.)

The honeysuckle's in bloom on Iory and Leo's garden gate...

Mmm. A little aromatherapy can't hurt either, eh?

...And a Good Time Was Had By All

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:37:09 GMT

Reading over that last post, I realize I may have dwelt a bit on the minor annoyances a visit to tourist attractions often occasions at the expense of recounting the exotic pleasures of visiting with my mother and my aunt. I want to assure you that a good time was had by all. Hopefully no one holds a grudge.

Of course, there's nothing like family. No one knows you like they do. Especially those in your family who remember you better as a child than you do yourself. You always suspect there's something they've neglected to tell you. Or something they're holding back. The key to it all. That missing puzzle piece as to why you are the way you are.

But that's also what makes family visits difficult. People change. Sometimes in unexpected ways. We're sometimes reluctant to abandon what we know of them and explore what we don't. But I'm enjoying getting to know my mother as her own woman, and interested in where she's going, and I have to say she seems pretty open to where I'm at, too.

I had not been back to Indiana since Thanksgiving 2004. Of course I talk to my mother and my aunt regularly. But seeing them after all that time was nice. And spending time with them is always an adventure. Sometimes it's Indiana Jones, others it's Ice Age. But always an adventure.

I found myself wishing I was in a more settled housing situation so that I could host them, though. Staying at the Omni Parker House downtown seemed to call for tourist activities. Plus the fact that my mother had never been to Boston. But the more memorable moments for me were walks on the Common after dinner, just mom and me, or along the Esplanade with my aunt, a dog lover, watching her dote over other people's pets.

So now we've done the touristy thing. Next time we'll steer clear of the crowds, rent a car, and drive up the coast. Something a little more ordinary might be extraordinarily relaxing.

Survivor: Boston

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:37:41 GMT

An island of calm in the eye of Hurricane Melinda.

Well, I survived. We all did. With all our fingers and toes intact, despite the fact that by Day Two nails and knuckles were being gnawed, lips chewed and tongues bitten, and Day Three brought with it the very real possibility of blood sacrifice and cannibalism.

My mother and my Aunt Mindy -- aka The Hurricane -- arrived Friday morning from Indiana. By the time they left Monday afternoon, I'd racked up at least ten more years of therapy. Well, maybe not ten. I can probably get out of it in six if I do distance therapy and go nights and weekends.

Our long weekend had its moments, that's for sure. I had not visited the brutal touristic underbelly of Boston for awhile. I'll tell you this much: It ain't pretty. I tried to balance out the goofier touristy stuff with glimpses of the more intimate and idiosyncratic Boston I know and love, with decidedly mixed results.

I had some slightly off the beaten path ideas for Day One, for example. We took a water taxi from Logan, so my peeps could see Boston the way the original Viking conquerors did. Or whatever. And later we took a stroll from Park Street through the Common to the Public Garden and on down Newbury Street, and had lunch at the Top of the Hub. All of which were touristy, but with a dash of adventure, I thought.

Unfortunately, what was just a hop, skip and jump for me was a veritable slog for them. My aunt, especially, who, God love her, sometimes comes off a little like Chicken Lady from the old Kids in the Hall sketch, started in on me before we'd even cleared the Common.

I'd anticipated this to some degree, and had picked up a couple of Charlie Cards and loaded them up for them. The green line isn't too scary, as long as you avoid the feckshow leaving Park Street Station. After a long lunch on the 52nd Floor of the Pru we didn't even have to leave the building to catch the T back to the Omni Parker House, where they were staying.

But by Day Two my aunt didn't want to walk more than a block or two or take the T, despite the fact that the T was irritatingly efficient all weekend, and the other passengers on it were vexingly polite, striking up conversations and offering up their seats. By Sunday my aunt all but refused to leave the hotel. We had brunch there, and an early dinner in the bar, popping out in between for a quick duck tour.

Of course, in a city like Boston, the journey is the destination. Strolling through Boston's neighborhoods is really the essence of enjoying the city itself. Aside from a couple of dinner dates, we had nowhere in particular to take a cab to. They had already nixed any and all museums, we didn't have tickets to a Sox game, and you can only hang out in the food court at Fanueil Hall for so long. I'd been toying with the idea of taking the ferry to P-Town Sunday, but they were predicting afternoon thunderstorms. A duck tour was just what the doctor ordered.

But even Friday and Saturday were a bit of a trial at times. Particularly whenever we left one spot for another. I had to give my aunt an estimate of blocks we would have to walk to get wherever we were going. I would always underestimate a wee bit to motivate them, knowing that we'd have opportunities for plenty of pit stops along the way. But as it turned out, the chief activity of the weekend was betting on how many blocks my estimates would be off by.

Of course I realized about an hour into their visit that I had a much grander vision for their stay than was practicable. I was more than willing to adjust my expectations, but by the time we got to the Pru a couple of hours into it the damage was done. After the hue and cry over the approximately ten block slog from Park Street, which I had kept saying was "just a couple more blocks," I could never be trusted to guide them again.

In fact, nothing I told them about Boston could be trusted after that, and my aunt made sure to fact-check me on everything. If I said, "I think the next street is Milk" and it turned out to be Water, it'd be, "I thought you said it was Milk." And all the rest of the day, to shop clerks and strangers on the street, the doorman and the concierge, it would be: "he told us it was Milk when it was Water!"

The next time I said, "Oh, I think that's Summer Street up on the left there!" I'd hear: "well, that's what you said yesterday, with Milk, and it turned out to be Water!" God help me if I got Summer Street, which runs East of Washington, confused with Winter, to the West.

When most of what I'd said on our little walkabouts, give or take a name or a date here and there, was confirmed by our delightful duck tour guide on Sunday, I could tell my aunt was a little chagrined. Luckily she didn't see me slip him a fiver and a crib sheet of all the historical inaccuracies I'd been peddling. Among them: the original Puritans were steam-driven robots, the original natives were Sleestaks, Ben Franklin invented the Prius, and Boston was named after Boris Godunov, which, obviously, is "boston" spelled backwards.

Fortunately my aunt, whom we refer to affectionately as Sarge, had been to Boston once, about ten years ago, and was ready to take over when it was clear I was an ill-informed and unreliable guide. So with the exception of the dinner dates I'd arranged, I basically let Sarge lead the way. I felt a bit like a brow-beaten Sherpa by Monday. But we had fun. Of a funny sort. I suppose.

Dinner with the Ex was one highlight, I have to say. The truth is, he made a much better showing than I could have imagined. We're still a handsome couple. Mom provided the entertainment. She's a bit shy at first, but after she gets a couple of cosmos in her she starts telling tales. Some of the ones she got to telling Friday night even I hadn't heard. That's what happens, innit? Your mother doesn't have any reason to tell you about all the times you wet the bed. She waits until your boyfriend -- or worse: your ex-boyfriend -- is around.

Lucky for me I was the perfect baby, except for the little issue of gender. I had often suspected that my mother wanted a girl -- it must have been all those frilly laces and bows she used to dress me in -- but had never heard it from the horse's mouth. Until last Friday night after cosmo number three, that is. I must have known I was on shaky ground with her from the day they induced labor, ten months on, because apparently I kept my mouth shut and didn't make any waves once I was forcibly ejected from her womb.

I never cried in the night. Went about my business with a minimum of fuss. She assured the ex I was extraordinarily quick and easy to potty train. A potty prodigy, in fact. Even as a toddler I knew life doesn't really begin until you have bowel control. That's the key.

Another highlight for me was dinner at Casa Romero in Back Bay, at the invitation of Iory and Leo Romero, the owner and chef. A kind and generous gesture I was deeply appreciative of, as it gave us all something to really look forward to. And the meal itself was, of course, superb. Iory joined us for cocktails and Leo dropped by for a short chat before manning the door, as he does.

But someone flipped mom's Jesus switch about midway through the enchiladas poblanas and she was witnessing to the terrace to beat the band. I can't remember how it all started, but my aunt egged her on by arguing that the Bible was the work of men, not the word of God. That's all it took. My aunt knows how to wind her up good, and once she got going, bless her little tequila-soaked heart, all we'd have needed was a tent and a few "amens!" from the crowd on the terrace and we'd have had an old time revival.

You know, I'm all for people speaking their minds -- even speaking in tongues -- just not while I'm eating. I'm of the school where you don't talk politics at the dinner table. Unless you can be absolutely assured everyone at the table agrees over them. There's no situation I can think of where whatever you're fighting over could be more important than the meal itself. Arguing over politics or religion neither makes the food taste any better nor aids in digestion. It is particularly odious to declaim in a way that upstages the meal or disturbs the meals of others.

I guess I should be grateful that this was the first my mother had gotten worked into such a state, and we were almost two full days in. But the next morning I met them for brunch and we had to rehash it. I still have little, if any, interest in either argument, which is basically what I'd told them the night before. I did suggest a book to my mother about the history of the New Testament and how it ended up the way it did, in the hope that we could defer further discussion until she'd read it. Later, back at the hotel, my aunt told her that that just proved I was on my aunt's side.

Actually, it was an exercise in etiquette. You should never talk about what you think over an evening meal. You talk about what other people think over dinner. Preferably people who aren't at dinner. That way there's no one to throw food at, which is how you avoid food fights. And we did manage to finish dinner without flinging enchiladas and mole sauce at one another. But for the next two days my aunt kept declaring I was an "avoider". I like to call it "choosing your battles," but I'm certainly not ashamed to say some things should be avoided.

Again, bowel control's the key.

Still, we did reasonably well for three of the most unreasonably willful people I know. Survival is nothing to scoff at.

iHoes and Their iPhones

Mike Mennonno — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:11:11 GMT

Life's rough.

Mass-backwards

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:53:03 GMT

There were a bunch of letters to the editor of the Times in today's paper about a recent editorial praising aspects of Massachusetts' universal health coverage legislation. The letters were skeptical of the "Massachusetts experiment" at best, outright hostile at worst.

(It should be noted that none of the letter writers -- a founding member of Physicians for a National Health Program; the Executive Director of Mass-Care: The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care; the President and Chief Executive of the New York State Health Foundation; the President of the American College of Physicians; and the Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank -- are exactly disinterested onlookers.)

The skepticism, I think, is still very much justified. The legislation was pushed through by a governor looking to salvage a lackluster administration so that he could pursue higher office, and by a legislature so heady on its hubris, as one letter-writer notes, it forgot key aspects of universal coverage, like the, um, coverage part. I know: details, details.

My own saga continues. I recently re-enrolled, and have been wrangling with Commonwealth Care on the terms of my coverage. I'm fairly used to it by now, so I can't complain, really. It's going pretty smoothly, all things considered.

About a month ago, I received my new card, and yesterday I got a letter informing me that my "Evidence of Coverage" was online with details of my plan. I thought: hey, now that's service! If I wanted to check it all I had to do was log on to their website. Easy enough!

Well, not quite. It was a bit of an ordeal, as these things sometimes are. I had to register -- which you fully expect to do -- but once I had, I still could not log in.

Instead, I got the following email:

Within 10 business days, your password will be mailed to your home address. If you have recently moved or changed your address, please call our Member Services Call Center to update your address. You also need to contact the Commonwealth Care Connector to report your address change.

They'd also be happy to mail a paper copy of my "Evidence of Coverage," which would likely arrive about a week ahead of my password.

I mean, really. Can you say "Mass-backwards"?

The Spoils of The Terror War

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:20:31 GMT

Did we need any more proof of what the Iraq War was really for?

Recent investigations show that the Bush Administration knowingly misled Americans in the run-up to war, and now, before the American regime change takes place, no-bid contracts to manage Iraq's oil fields are being doled out to four Western oil companies.

The Times reports:

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India....

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The deal just gets fishier as it goes along...

The Iraqi Oil Ministry... said the companies had been chosen because they had been advising the ministry without charge for two years before being awarded the contracts...

The contracts, two oil company officials said, are a continuation of work the companies had been conducting here to assist the Oil Ministry under two-year-old memorandums of understanding. The companies provided free advice and training to the Iraqis. This relationship with the ministry, said company officials and an American diplomat, was a reason the contracts were not opened to competitive bidding.

A total of 46 companies, including the leading oil companies of China, India and Russia, had memorandums of understanding with the Oil Ministry, yet were not awarded contracts.

The no-bid deals are structured as service contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. The legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue sharing and other conditions.

The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

“These are not actually service contracts,” [an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates] said. “They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate” and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law.

A clause in the draft contracts would allow the companies to match bids from competing companies to retain the work once it is opened to bidding, according to the Iraq country manager for a major oil company who did not consent to be cited publicly discussing the terms.

Thoughts on Dump The Pump Day

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:49:34 GMT

Now, don't me wrong, here: I think APTA's National Dump the Pump Day (which is today, by the way) is a good idea. But ever since the 2006 MBTA fare hike, which became a campaign issue briefly in the gubernatorial race that year, I have thought a better approach to demonstrating the real impact of the automobile on the economy and urban life in general would be the exact opposite of a Dump the Pump Day.

I remember then-Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey dismissing the issue of spiraling fares by characterizing investment in public transportation as a "subsidy" and arguing that taxpayers should not have to bear the burden of this frivolous service.

I thought then that the best way to show skeptics the connection between Boston's economy and its system of public transportation would be to have a day when buses, trains and trams didn't run, and everyone who had a car had to drive in (one person to a car, needless to say).

The city would be at a standstill. The impact would be immediately clear.

Our system of public transportation is not a luxury. Of course, anyone who's ever used it knows that much. But all joking aside, this city could not survive without it. Commuting into Boston by car is already a misery. Can you imagine adding almost a million and a half car commuters per weekday?

Car commuters are obvious beneficiaries of public transit, but don't seem to have a clue. Maybe a "Flee the T Day" would teach them a lesson.

The Golden Stache Desktop Film Festival Continues!

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:53:50 GMT

You'll have to forgive me. As a religious practitioner of RBST* -- someone who sleeps an average of 20 hours a day -- it takes me a while to squeeze in a movie, what with gardening and work and Merchant Marines all to do in the couple of hours I have to accomplish my evil deeds.

So far the film fare has been varied. It all started way back in April with Gay Sex In The Seventies, with more staches than you could shake a, um, rhymes with "stick" at...

From action to activism: the whole sordid story.

The meat of the movie is the interviews with key players of the period -- artists, writers and activists -- reflecting fondly on the sex-filled days of their youth, and part of what's interesting is the Then-and-Now comparisons. Photos from the times show mostly ordinary men as various and sundry as in our own time. Memories of them as the most beautiful people in the world hold out hope that my old lovers, too, will someday all be young gods. No one asks "were the times innocent, or was it just us?" I guess I should ask myself: are the times cynical, or is it just me?

While the credits roll, representatives of the next generation -- the one that grew up in the shadow of the one that invented sex -- reflect on their perceptions of that golden age of debauch. "The seventies represent to me: polyester,disco," says one. "Big lapels," another chimes in. "I know that facial hair was much more 'in' back then," offers a third. Finally a kid with a mohawk says: "They were just free about everything, and now everybody's so uptight!" (What he doesn't realize is that, as is so often the case, the former and latter parties are one and the same.)

I was a kid in the seventies. I'm actually not tempted to wonder what I might have gotten up to had I been born ten years before I was, which would have put me right about on the bottom of the pig pile at the Crisco Disco in 1976. As it happened, I managed to get my share of gay sex anyway. And lived to tell the tale. And you can't beat that.

On my last trip to the STD clinic, a couple of years ago now when that last wave of killer clap was making the rounds, my gritty middle-aged female nurse was telling me: "you know, if there were no STDs to worry about, everybody would be fucking everybody." As anyone who's tried knows, and many a young man has, the logistics of that get complicated. But you get the feeling from Gay Sex in the Seventies that that's what the seventies were really like, at least in New York City and San Francisco.

AIDS, of course, casts its shadow back in time, over the golden age of gay sex, and adds to nostalgia for a brief time when sex seemed poised to be just another form of social intercourse, but way, way more fun than a coffee at Starbucks. Sure, the blowjob was the handshake of the nineties, but it's a far cry from the the ultimate greeting back in the day. Yeah, we've got our friends with benefits, but even strangers had them back then.

Ultimately, it's the expulsion from the gay Eden, the garden of earthly delights, that gives the story of Sex in the Seventies its mythic grandeur. AIDS is what lends an air of heroism to what was, after all, ordinary hedonism in the end. But as one of the interviewees in the movie observes, these things come in waves. Sex isn't going away. And sexual ethics are only a part of the spread of STDs.

Commerce, urbanization, and warfare (all three inextricably linked) have always been bringers of disease. Jared Diamond, in his Guns, Germs and Steel, describes Europe's introduction to syphilis, which some say Columbus brought back from the New World (touché, Columbus!): "when syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall from people's faces, and led to death within a few months." Sound familiar?

Once the "war" -- as those who experienced the first wave of AIDS call it -- began, the heroism was real, and the soldiers fought the good fight with such fierce intensity they transformed a lifestyle into a movement. And while we owe things like marriage equality to that movement, politicizing the lifestyle has its downsides. I don't think it's a big secret that sex is more fun than social activism. But it's to our credit that we've managed to keep the sex in social activism, somehow.

By far the most poignant thing about the movie were the reveries and resignation of survivors, with their shoe boxes full of snapshots and memories. One of them sums up what he misses most about the seventies: how easy it was to make friends back then. But personal memory is a funny thing. The interviewees, fixated on a golden moment in time, sometimes seem to see it suspended in amber. They seem to think that if the times hadn't changed they wouldn't have either.

This is a little like the ongoing quandary I face with bad service. I wonder if the service is objectively any worse nowadays than it ever was, or if my patience has just run out. Or maybe I'm getting worse service for a reason. I suspect the older you get the worse people tend to treat you unless you're obviously someone they have to toady up to.

I'm trying not to fall into that same trap with sex. It's not easy. It's natural to generalize from our own experience, but when I hear people my age or older holding forth on how much better sex was in the days of their youth than it is now, you want to remind them that there are still young people out there, and they're still having sex, and probably quite a lot of it, just not with us (or at least not with you).

Well, obviously, it's their loss.

After Gay Sex In The Seventies I took my movie critic landlord Jay Carr's advice and rented La Moustache, a movie that's actually more about shaving one off...

...which hunky Vincent Lindon's Marc does basically to the opening credits. The mustache here is what we in film theory circles call "an absent presence". Never mind, the movie is a superbly paced existential thriller based on an audacious premise, with moments of sheer brilliance sprinkled throughout. The ones that I found transcendent were possibly the most banal of the movie -- when Marc, who has fled to Hong Kong, is riding the ferry back and forth, in a kind of purgatory.

"What does it all mean?" asks Andrew Sarris in his review in the New York Observer. "We are never quite sure. All we learn from this relentless saga of mental and physical solitude are the many varieties of suffering one can endure when one feels alone in the universe."

That's some mustache is all I can say. Or... is it?

From there I hit Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's films, which weren't very satisfying, stachewise, if you want to know the truth...

Ha ha, George. Very funny.

After I'd finished Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, I got totally distracted by the unexpected discovery of the lovely and talented Jalil Lespert, in Le Petit Lieutenant...

I also rented Ressources Humaines, and a couple of others, but in none of them does Jalil have a mustache. If he were to have one, it would very likely look something like this:

I think it would have been a nice little touch for his role in Le Petit Lieutenant, actually. I mean, come on. Cops and mustaches: two great things that go great together!

The truth is Jalil Lespert would look good no matter what kind of stache you stuck on him, as the following exercise clearly demonstrates:

Just sayin'.
__________________________________________
*Radical Beauty Sleep Therapy

Baby Globe Thistles and Cone Flowers

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:27:50 GMT

We've been getting some of that rain we missed out on all Spring. As wet and wild as it's been in the Midwest, we've had a drier than usual last couple of months here. There's nothing like a good thundershower to really perk things up in the garden.

Economists are from Mars

Mike Mennonno — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:00:25 GMT

The Times reports that producers prices rose 1.4% in May, "the fastest [rate] in six months." But, not to worry: "core inflation — excluding food and energy — grew only moderately."

Oh, it's only food and energy you can't afford. Whew! That's a relief. Carry on.

The aliens are among us. They don't need food or energy, apparently. And they're running our economy. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Father's Day Thoughts

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:50:31 GMT

I feel for fathers. I do. I know they're lazy bums. They don't do their share around the house. You gotta nag 'em not to throw their dirty underwear on the floor, never mind doing the laundry. You gotta keep asking them to make sure the seat's up when they take a whiz, and then to make sure it's down when they've finished (I live in a house full of women these days, and it's got so confusing for me, I just piss in the sink now).

But the one day a year we've set aside to celebrate dad's contribution, however you want to look at it -- in sperm count, extra income, comic relief -- the newspapers use as an excuse to lecture them on how they could always do more.

Check out the Mother's Day cover of the Times Sunday Magazine this year:

Here's the one for today:

That's a rollicking "Happy Father's Day!" if I ever saw one.

Let's just all try and remember that we've come very far very fast from our primate cousins, for whom infanticide at the hand of the dominant male is not at all uncommon. I'm not saying we should look at that as our baseline, but let's back up a bit and try and see where we came from before we bang dad over the head for sticking it out. I mean, with all this nagging, it's a wonder he's not off hunting mastodons every weekend with the boys.

The ThirdPath movement discussed in the Times Magazine article is obviously a quantum leap forward in hetero evolution, although they're still light years behind gay and lesbian parents, who have been completely liberated from traditional gender roles in the home and can afford wet nurses and nannies to do the real work anyway.

The secret's out, though. As one of the husbands in the article notes, equality is a lot easier when you can balance it on the backs of the working class, and "outsource chores," presumably to women who go home to their families after cleaning up after yours, but then, unfortunately, they have no one to outsource their chores to.

There are other problems, participants in ThirdPath acknowledge, with watching the clock a little too closely. As one of the women in the article says: “The question should not be, Is it all exactly equal, but, What is best for all of us as a group right now? If we decided it’s really important that we are 50-50 on everything, we would work on that. If we decide it’s really important that we be close to family, then we work on that.”

I'm all for everybody pulling their weight around the house. Lord knows, I've discovered here that it takes a village to clean a bathroom. But let the poor slob alone on his special day. It may look like he's not doing much, but actually he's swimming pretty hard against the evolutionary current.

When Gore Gores

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:00:48 GMT

There is an absolutely delightful interview with Gore Vidal in Today's Sunday Times Magazine. Vidal is a brilliant writer -- I prefer his essays to his fiction, myself (Sex, Death and Money is a good place to start)-- but he is a cranky old queen! Yee-ikes!

Excerpts:

You live in California , where last month the State Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriage. As someone who lived with a male companion for 50-plus years, do you see this as a victory for equality? People would ask, How could you live with someone for so long without any problems of any kind? I said, There was no sex.

Were you chaste during those years? Chased by whom?

Are you a supporter of gay marriage? I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.

Why doesn’t it interest you? The same reason heterosexual marriage doesn’t seem to interest me.

I think you get the picture.