I heard somewhere the other day

(I really should write down where I hear these gems) that the point of democracy is not, in fact, to put good folks in power, and foster good things for the populi, etc. The point of democracy is, in fact, to provide a means of preventing or at least rectifying, (inevitable) abuses of power by those who get into office.

I think the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2006 are prime examples of this point of view. The 2000 election being of course an example of how a largely democratic system no-way no-how guarantees that good folks will get into office (even if they get the most votes), and the 2006 go-round being the alternate "curbing" phenomenon, where enough folks get sick & tired & pissed off enough to say "OK, CUT THE SHIT!"

OK, it may be indicative of my demographic

but the channels I tend to watch on TV also are the channels that are full of ads about reverse mortgages, and hair restoration, and erectile dysfunction drugs (whatta frickin' euphemism.) So there's one "ED" drug that keeps showing a couple of (attractive) old farts about to get laid when the grandkids show up, yatta yatta, gotta wait, etc. And - here's what puzzles me - after the grandkids and their annoying parents leave, the horny old farts, instead of getting nekkid and getting it on, get in the car, and drive up the coast or into the mountains or wherever, and ride bikes, etc. and - at the end of the commercial - are lying in side-by-side clawfoot cast iron bathtubs gawking off at the sun setting over the ocean. Forgetting the fact that for a large number of us the sun does not SET over the ocean, I have to wonder exactly how horny these old farts were in the first place? Is it just me? Or are these commercials somehow symbolic of something I'm too young (hah!!!) to get yet?

It has occurred to me, just today

that if you're a "glass-half-empty" person, it doesn't matter what's in the "half-full" part of the glass. In other words, if you're focusing on the empty part, you don't even know (much less care) whether the bottom of the glass contains Napoleon brandy or canal water.

Furthermore, the "glass-half-full" person has to get through half of an empty glass to get to whatever-it-is that the glass is half full of.

I don't know what this means, but - as Lord Peter Wimsey (or Bertie Wooster, I suppose) might have observed, "Interestin', what?"

It is, I suppose, a sign of age

when one suddenly, "for no apparent reason"* thinks of dead people from one's past. People who were alive in one's past, of course, but are dead now. Not people like Deacon Samuel Chapin or Everett Hosmer Barney, who were dead all along, as far as our lives are concerned. I've just been listening to The Dutchman as sung by Steve Goodman; the really good version not one of the many "live" renditions with pick-up bands of various qualities and instrumentations and crappy sound and Goodman tired or bored. The version from the "No Big Surprise" anthology is close to as good as a song gets, even better than Goodman's first (as far as I know) recording on "Somebody Else's Troubles" way back yonder in '73. But I digress - this is not meant to be about Steve Goodman or The Dutchman but about Mike Stevens, a pal of mine for a while back in the 70s and into the 80s.

After the Air Force, I lingered and lollygagged a while - I refer to it as my hippie phase - and spent a lot of time playing guitar and singing and drinking and smoking. I had recently been liberated not only from the military but from a marriage as well (not my idea, but we're not always in control of everything, are we?), and the early 70s were a bad time to be looking for work (remember CETA?) so I was cashing in my VA education benefits and cranking out some business administration credits at the local Community College. Had to be Bus Adm since I already had a liberal arts bachelor's degree. So anywhere there I was wandering into the cafeteria one afternoon, pondering a reason not to go to accounting class (debits by the window, credits by the door, that's all I know) so I sat me down with coffee and there was this lad with a kerchief around his neck, looking byronically around the place, and I thinks to myself "Now THERE is a lad with a story."

And that was the last I saw of him for a while

*"For No Apparent Reason" was also, as luck would have it, the name of a band once, of which neither I nor Mike Stevens was a member.

A Long Ago Diary

I don't know where this is going.

July 8, 1951

Went with M & R to the Smith. Stifling hot. Got nauseous eating meat loaf sandwiches in Q afterward, too much catsup. L says will call soon, by Wednesday.

July 11, 1951

Hot again, and damp. Very long walk to bus stop, very long ride downtown, very long hot day inside. M offered lift home. Almost not worth it. Spaghetti with sauce from Mrs F. All day gone by and nothing from L.

July 13, 1951

Not as unlucky as promised – note from L. “Taking longer than I’d hoped.” And “Tied up completely” and “I’ll call by Monday.” Hot again, sweltering in office. M offered lift home again, but NOT on Friday night. R is out of town, he says. Double no thanks. Bus nearly empty – stopped at library on the way. Browsed lazily, nothing worth checking out. Still haven’t finished the Rafferty novel. Radio distracts, heat puts me to sleep.

Beer is proof

that God loves us and wants us to be happy." This quote has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin (and others, for all I know), but who cares, it's amusing, and has been my email tagline for a while. I'll probably change it soon, but just this morning, while pursuing my Saturday morning hoo-hah (treadmill, laundry, preparation for errands to the bank & Home Depot, etc.) I flipped the kitchen TV on (how many TVs do you have in your house? I'm amazed to report that we have five, though to be fair two of them, in the kids' rooms, don't get much use these days - but I digress) - I flipped on the kitchen TV, which is normally tuned either to the channels on which we watch eagerly for School Closing reports, or weather updates, or else the History channel. So it was The History Channel, and it was their Modern Marvels series episode about beer (which spends 15 minutes pointing out how non-modern beer is, then 20 minutes pointing out how good American beer was until about 1930, then 5 minutes pointing out how crappy American beer was between 1930 and 1980, then the rest pointing out how retrogression since then has improved American beer). All right on, of course. But it reminded me of how much I love beer, and how much beer I used to drink, and how much I still love beer, and how much more important to me the six or eight beers a month I have now are to me than the cases of Miller's or Oly or Luck or Hamm's or Lone Star (etc. etc.) were that I used to drink in the bad old days when I drank all the beer I wanted to. But I can't help thinking back to my first beer (Miller High Life, and I loved it right outta the chute, unlike most people who claim it's an acquired taste), and periods in my life when a six of Pabst Blue Ribbon for $2.00 was a luxury, and also of course my introduction to dark draft at The Wursthaus in Old Harvard Square, served by Dino, who might - if you're not careful - burst into a Verdi aria, but that's a whole nother post.

I am very grateful for the resurgence of "micro" breweries, which return us (sorta) to the day when local houses brewed their own, and pubs were known by their brews, rather than their decor. Thinking about it, I'm not altogether sure that this time ever really existed, or if it's really a place in Wodehouse-land (theme park of my dreams!). But the fact is that local micros don't mind trying things out for a little while, then putting them aside for their "regular" lines and maybe coming back to them later if demand is there.

I dunno. There should be more good beer in the world.

All I have to do is...

Not intending this to turn into a dream log, I just woke from an absolutely delightful one that I'd be glad to have recur, or continue. It involved me traveling somewhere strange to me, with a host of luggage on some sort of mobile baker's cart, navigating (of course) through an odd array of gates, stations, and mallishly arrranged stores and pubs and cafes. After picking up some lovely used books and magazines and adding them to my impedimenta, I began a slog "out" - though in the dream context I'm not exactly sure what "out" is; the whole setting was kinda THX-1138-ish - and was happened upon by a friendly middle aged (40-ish) blonde with a little-un in tow. Never seen her before, didn't know her from Adam's off ox, but I made some pleasantry about the bairn, and the next thing I knew, Mom had fallen in beside me and slipped her arm around my waist, all comradely-like. Fair enough, thinks the dreaming me, I am not one to shun female contact of just about any sort in just about any circumstances, so I slips my arm around her waist, just to show there's no hard feelings... well, not entirely true, but never mind that.

So the next thing I know her hand has slipped down a tad and she is groping my ass. Well, I thinks, I never!! Well, no, that's not at all what I thought (in my dream, mind you) what my dreaming self though was "Yow, I guess I'll feel HER ass up" and so I did, and ... well, some heavier occurrences ensued, involving even erogenouser zones, all the while both fully clothed and in public, and then I woke up. Really. So how do we make dreams recur again, I forget?

No, Hon, you can't....

We were at TGI Friday’s, after a bit of shopping and schlepping Freshman Daughter’s gear back to campus after the (WAY too long, IMO) holiday break. A little quiet dinner, a drink, some reassuring conversation etc. Well our server was “Junie” who was way too friendly for my taste, but she meant no harm. We ordered a round of drinks, and mine was my customary Jameson’s, straight up, ice on the side. So far s’ok. In a little while Junie came back and said “We’re all out of Jameson’s Hon (!) can I bring you a Maker’s Mark?”

Now I said nothing about the “Hon” which as far as I’m concerned marked Junie as one step above trailer trash, but never mind. Where I got into trouble was this: “No, thank you, that isn’t even close. Maker’s Mark is bourbon and Jameson’s is Irish; do you have any Bushmills?” Why, I was queried immediately by family females, couldn’t I just smile and ask for Bushmills? Sensing a series of accusations of curmudgeonliness in the offing, I pointed out that a server in a place where booze is on offer really ought to have a clue as to the nature of the wares she’s expected to furnish – if for no other reason than so that she will not appear to be a dunce when suggesting substitutions. No, no, no, not a bit of it, I was being a smartass. I didn’t think so; I didn’t rave and fulminate and phumpher about her ignorance (never mind her inappropriate familiarity – the proper form of address is “Sir” not “Hon”), but wife & Freshman Daughter were having none of it, and I wore the hair shirt all the way home. Well, maybe not all the way, but at least as far as the next town.

But really; shouldn’t a waitress (or other server) know the difference between bourbon (even very nice bourbon, which I’m sure Maker’s Mark must be) and Irish? And not call people they don’t know “Hon?”

For the benefit of the visiting firemen...

Two or three times a year my boss calls together the members of his "distributed" team of "direct reports" (dontcha love the way I try to distance myself from The Corporate World by scare-quoting routine terms?) for a couple of days of meetings to talk about "what we did last year, and what worked, and what didn't, and what we mean to do in the months upcoming." One of the things we never do in these meetings is review "So, did we actually DO any of the things we said we would last year?" No matter - on the one hand, no one takes it terribly seriously as a career event. On the other hand, we all take it somewhat seriously because if we can make things work better, not only does our day-to-day existence become less painful, but the chances of our efforts contributing to the success of the organization are greater, and if we're seen to contribute to the organization's success, well then our chances of having the option of whether to continue working there are enhanced. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the things we'll tell ourselves for a buck.

So we sat there from 0900 to about 1830 (six-thirty peeyem for you civilians), with a few pee breaks, and a few email breaks (The Boss forbids laptop use in meetings, a stricture with which I heartily concur), and a little time off for byplay about lunch - apparently the place where he'd planned to send out for sandwiches was either closed for the holiday or lacking phone serivce because of the ice storm) - and then time to actually nosh lunch, and time for Himself to be on a Very Important Concall for 90 minutes... wait, where was I, where were we?

I dunno. Many of the folks cooped up with me in that room were enjoying their first outing in this particular event at this particular company; a few others have been through almost as many of them as I have (I predate my Boss in this particular organization and event). They were very interested, and did well presenting their slides for their particular projects. I'd almost say a couple of them were "cute" except that I suspect it would be disrespectful to speak thus of a 40-year old manager with 15 years experience in the field. So they weren't cute; but it was bubbly to watch them.

I'm way too old for this shit.

David Lynch & Neil Jordan, eat your hearts out

Well not really. I cite these two as topnotch purveyors of "dream" content in movies, and I fancied this post would be about dreams, but then who knows what it'll turn into. Recently, and not for the first time, I was treated (by my own subconscious, or wherever these things come from) to a dream populated by a couple of characters from my waking life, viz. some nieces (wife's nieces actually, but like many families we don't make those distinctions). These are young folks (college seniors) who are bright, cheerful and attractive. Interestingly, in the dream sequence they did not appear as themselves, but in fact they were "played" by two young females unknown to me; but I knew - i.e. my dreaming self knew - that these were the nieces, even though my dreaming self realized that "they" weren't really "them." Got it? So anyway, in the course of some rather pedestrian, unexciting action, one of the nieces whose back was turned to me, suffered a costume malfunction, and her jeans slid down exposing her (rather attractive) butt. My dreaming self thought, "How convenient that it isn't really [niece's name] so we don't have to be embarrassed." Perceptive chap, my dreaming self.
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But the real nub of the pith of the gist of today's symposium is recurring dreams.

I have not had this dream in many years. I wish I could remember reliably when the last time I had it was, but it was surely more than 10 years ago. But I had it a number of times during my 30s, I think. It was not always exactly the same dream – the “plot” and the “setting” varied. Interestingly, it was a progression of variations, such that the changes that would happen (or appear) in one instance, would continue through the next instance, and probably be built upon, with more variations – often slight - and so on. I should probably set it up – like most dreams, it has “hooks” in reality. In this case the realities in which the dream has hooks are two: one is the old “Adult Entertainment District” in Boston, known as “The Combat Zone” – for many years, lower Washington and Boylston Streets, down to Kneeland and Stuart, were more or less officially set aside as a place where strip joints and smut shops and hookers could operate more or less “unmolested” by the cops. One could walk down Washington and there was an unbroken gauntlet of sleazy bars & “bookstores” and adult theaters. In the late 50s there were just a few theaters and bars where no one ever went “all the way” (strippers in G-strings and pasties, movies were pretty much restricted to boob shots and simulated sex acts) but by the late 60s it was pretty much Katie-bar-the-door, up to and including (as one barmaid described it to me once) “getting your nut.” Oops, ‘scuse me, I was kinda drifting down memory lane there for a minute…

Anyway, the earliest occurrences of this dream seem (as near as I can recall – I don’t remember dreams very often to begin with, and the first occurrence of this one was probably over 30 years ago), I am walking down Washington St. (“down” here meaning in a general direction from Old South Meeting House toward Chinatown,for anyone who knows the neighborhood). The old “Publix” and “State” theaters are there, and lots of smutshops and stripjoints, and I go into a few of each, and browse, and have a beer and watch a girl get naked on stage. In none of these dreams did I ever go into any of the movie theaters, I don’t think. I wend my way down through the Combat Zone, fending off approaches by various more-or-less young females, all offering to do sexual things for me/to me, for money. When I get to the “bottom” of the CZ, somewhere around Stuart St., I usually wake up. OK, so no big deal in this dream, right, pretty clearly the workings of an oversexed (and under serviced) mind.

Here’s where the interesting thing comes in – I spent a year in Korea in the AF (10/1970-11/71). The main US airbase there is Osan, a few miles south of Seoul. Outside the gates of Osan is what’s known as “Chico Ville” or “Chicol Village” depending on how drunk/Americanized your references are. As you might suspect of a village just outside the gates of an American airbase housing about 10000 GIs, Chico had a significant population of what were called “business girls.” And they worked in a bunch of clubs, mostly – places with names like The Stereo Lounge, and “The A-Frame” (not after the chalet architecture, but after the piece of equipment that was standard for Korean peasant to use when lugging huge loads on their backs – sort of a papoose thing that strapped on and had a flat bed you could tie bundles of sticks or hay, or charcoal, or whatnot to.), “The Aragon Ballroom” (honest), and the “Five Spot.” The FiveSpot had five large rooms with dancefloors and room for up to a couple hundred hookers in each. In addition to these “clubs” there were guys who would approach one in the street and offer to lead you to some little hootch somewhere down in the maze of alleyways, and hook you up with a young lady who would do various things for you/to you, for a small fee*. Anyway – after I returned from this assignment, the next time I had this dream, the venue had changed, and it was Chico Ville instead of the Combat Zone, though some of the things that appeared in the dream (smutshops, particularly) were in fact absent from Chico. For a while I had this dream fairly regularly – maybe 6 or 8 times a year. Then, it began getting less and less frequent, and – this is very odd, but I swear it’s true – the “neighborhood” in which the dream took place started going downhill. Many of the joints would appear, but were boarded up, or simply empty. Many of the places that were open had older, and older and seedier and seedier looking girls lurking outside. I don’t remember when the last time I had the dream was, but it was quite some time ago, and I was sad that what had once been so pleasant and exciting a dream, had, like so many things as we get older, faded, and didn’t offer the least thrill anymore.

*All of this information about the Combat Zone, and Chico Ville is, of course, hearsay.

Partum Shot

This will never work. Right up front that needs to be said - this will never work. I approach this with a Buster Keaton expression on my heart's face, knowing that it's here and must be dealt with, and having pressed the buttons and clicked the clicks and navigated past that "Your blog has been created!!" notice and past the "Start posting" command - and it IS a command, not a cheerfully offered optional opportunity. Once you clickety-click on the infernal create-my-blog combination of clicks, and it's THERE, dammit, you are obligated to populate the sucker, because lord knows you don't wanna be one of those fraidy-cats who won't "put it out there" nor one of those don't-wannabes with nothing to say. I mean, EVERYONE has something to say, right? And - sadly I fear - the Web has afforded everyone an opportunity to say things right out in the open that would better have lived their brief & brutish as tossed away mumbles. But there it is, and against my every fear, this opening has in fact turned into a "meta post" - a blog post about blogging. I oughta be shot.