The Urban Elf

Yesterday I received an email from Governor Howard Dean newly made Chairman of the Democratic National Committee asking me to "Join the conversation." Unable to resist... no comments from the peanut gallery... I submitted my comments along with my signature of the online petition. Since the response form would only allow 2,000 characters (including spaces) I had to do a good deal of editing. What follows is the unabridged version.

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I have been disheartened, offended and often outraged by the language associating values with the right wing agenda and morality with church attendance that has saturated the media throughout 2004 and continues to do so with renewed vigor since the November election. Yes, this race was about values and morality; it was about values like equality, economic and social justice, patriotism and human rights; it was about the moral issues of allowing same-sex marriage, stem cell research, the right to abortion, waging preemptive war and telling the truth. This is why I voted. This is why I voted Democrat. We are a split nation not only because we disagree but because there is as much passionate moral outrage on the left as there is on the right. Unfortunately, and despite the impassioned efforts of so many among us, we as a party continue to grease the wheels of the very right wing machine so hell-bent on our destruction. Meanwhile, a small faction of glib and media savvy deceivers pilot that speeding machine over the rent bodies our people, principles and ideals. Powered buy the masses of the misinformed and undereducated they have duped into complicity the machine hurtles onward towards its ghastly destination, a place we once called but would hardly recognize as The United States of America.

As far as most people I know are concerned it is the fundamentalists and evangelicals who are grossly immoral. It is the political and military leaders that allow war crimes and human rights violations to be committed in the name of our great nation who are the threat to America. It is the people willing and eager to write prejudice and bigotry into the Constitution of the United States, those scrambling after every opportunity to nullify its establishment clause and change the nature of our nation from democratic republic to repressive theocracy that are unpatriotic. We as Democrats need to retake the moral high ground that was once so clearly ours. Not by falling into the spiraling trap of "centrism" but by sticking to our principles and feeling the empowerment of our own deep moral convictions. We need to make it clear to our fellow citizens that liberalism is based in deeply held moral, ethical and philosophical convictions. We need to remember that we are the "left"; we are of and for the people; we are the party of compassion, charity, education, equality, diplomacy, justice and above all hope. We need to remember why we are Democrats.
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On this day in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII announced the New Style (Gregorian) calendar. This got me wondering where else does this date resonate in the tapestry of time?

* Today is Steve Jobs’ birthday.

* Actor Abe Vigoda (Barney Miller, Fish) was born on this day in 1921.

* On this day in 1983 Tennessee Williams the great American playwright died at the age of 71.

So it was a loooong weekend of drinking and life, reality and the cosmic gnomes being what they are (conspiratorial) about halfway through I managed a brief meltdown. So here transcribed as best I could read it is the lates bit of liquor-mad cocktail napkin scrawl. I am such a drama queen when I'm loaded.

********************** ****

anger and pain
and bile and blood
that boil and threaten
a violent explosion
you say that you want me
you make me believe
then shower these infidels
with the manna
of your affections
why do you do it?
why do I fall
into this mire
of obvious doubt?
it is all just a game
the both of us play,
us and the masses
in this drunken
testosterone trance.
there is something inside you
I could let myself love
but so much about you
that warns me away.
incubus bastard
broken child
unfathomed
lover
****************************

The world is full of scary things. Oh, I know, “this is not news”, you say. “You rail about the evils and the horrors of the world all the time”, you say. However, while you are absolutely correct, I am speaking of a different sort of scary. The aesthetic philosophical oh-no-they didn’t kind of scary. What I wonder is why people seem to be hell-bent on sharing them with me. Is this cosmically significant and if so what does that mean for the impending weekend?

What a strange day… or, more accurately, what a strange mood I am in today. I have been rather productive with respect to the needs of my employers, but distracted and remote from my deeper self. NPR has not been helping. I suspect that being assailed by the insincere bleating of right-wing bigots sporting apple pie facials, biblical pasties and American flag diapers, or being appraised of the dire and horrifyingly prolific use of children as soldiers in the pettily motivated bloodshed of a world in turmoil have done nothing but send me into some sort of cognitive retreat. I have received so much news lately of both a personal and public nature that along with this most recent “holiday” and its attendant baggage comprise quite a list of reasons to be depressed. I am trying to extract myself from this mire of simultaneous disassociation and hedonism, sleep depravation and fiscal tomfoolery. Why can’t the people at NPR be more sympathetic? Don’t allow the jack-booted christianist extremists yet another mouthpiece in a media landscape they have already slashed and burned and sewn with the seeds of deception. Yes, educate me as to the injustice of the world and the plight of these legions of victimized children, but please, follow it up with an uplifting story. How about how a bald yet beautiful and powerful Melissa Etheridge newly finished with chemo therapy for breast cancer rocked the Grammys with an inspired tribute to Janis Joplin? Don’t tell me how the monkey prince is going to ruin social security and leave me destitute and panhandling for pills outside a straight-christian-whites only geriatric clinic. I already know.

One of the most accomplished charlatans of our age is at it again. In a landscape populated with a multitude of over-rated hacks the lunatic Christo stands out as a demigod of snake-oil salesmanship. And the snake oil is flowing again in New York City. Despite previous crimes against nature and humanity The New York Parks Department has seen fit to let this maniacal slipcover stitcher loose on public land. I can only hope it is part of a plan to scare off muggers by mortally wounding their sensibilities.

Apologies, apologies, my delectable munchkins, I have been so distracted by the swirling mists of tedium and drama that I have neglected you. How could I? It is not your fault. Why should you pay the price for other people’s dysfunction and misdeeds? You are not responsible for the bone crushing tedium of my toil as a wage slave. You are not responsible for the screeching hordes of shrews, harpies and harridans that have been plaguing my life of late… ok, it’s really only one shrewish harpy harridan but the repercussions of her clumsily maiming machinations are such that she often seems like a horde. You are similarly not responsible for poorly executed but nonetheless aggravating and lifestyle stymieing corporate intrigues. Nor do you have anything to do with the structural inadequacies and system failures of my own marketable yet shoddy physicality and the parade of technicians and shamans it forces me to engage. Please, forgive me, my darling bubelnichkas. I shall endeavor to remain focused. Because really, it’s all about you.

It appears that the social contract has fallen out of favor with far too many people. Yesterday I was stood up twice. All afternoon and early evening I was expecting a previously arranged telephone call from a gentleman with whom I was to make plans for an evening outing. I had planned to suggest we attend an early performance at a club in Cambridge and then meet up with some friends of mine for cocktails at a drinking establishment we both frequent. He never called. So, by the time I had given up on him it was too late for culture and time to move straight on to drink and revelry among my fellows. And I went to the bar, and I did have friends there, and I did have a jolly time. However, the specific group of people who were "most assuredly going to be there" never materialized. What in this age of inescapable communication is so difficult about calling to say, "So sorry, plans have changed. I can’t make it." or "Tallulah is in a snit and says we have to go to another bar, can you meet us at the Rum Guzzler instead?" I mean really, a little courtesy, people.

My web site is down.

I cannot complain as the web hosting is free, provided by a very generous friend.

I want to complain. I want to jump up and down and stamp my little feet and hold my breath until I turn blue, but this would accomplish nothing save perhaps ushering me out of my friend’s good graces. So I shall be patient. He will wave dead chickens over the server and blow cigar smoke into its cooling fan or whatever those high tech guru people do and all will be well again. With faith in this assured resolution I can turn my mind to more pressing matters. Will I go out tonight? If so, where? And what shall I wear on this foray before the paparazzi? I’m sure I cannot know.

So here it is, Groundhog Day. Up and down the east cost of the United States sleepy marmots are being drummed from their burrows, dragged before cameras and dragooned into prognosticating for the dominant primates. In response to this the groundhogs, who have been rousted early from their hibernation without the benefit of so much as a cup of coffee, deliver their prophecy with the unanimity of a an adolescent focus group.

In related news, a squirrel scampered out onto the Washington Mall only to recoil in fear at the shadow of Dick Cheney. The squirrel was reported to have been seen in a local bar bobbing for olives in his third Grey Goose martini and predicting four more years of malevolent stupidity.

Under the oppressive weight of the Arisia flu I last week took to my sickbed with a flourish and fervor fit to shame Camille and only just crawled forth to speak with you, my adoring audience, in a lewd yet homey rasp reminiscent of Harvey Fierstein.

I deplore illness. The way it addles the mind, weakens the body, distorts the taste of cigarettes and liquor…. and I suppose food. Really it is far too dreadful to be borne. Although the incidental weight loss can be an underrated perk. But seriously, it really is a trial. What good are days freed from the soul-wringing fist of necessary employment just to be spent lounging in bed alone, wheezing and coughing, sneezing and moaning, all the while spewing forth substances interesting only to ten year-olds and Nickelodeon producers? Then there is the fever, and the chills, and the aching so extensive that the fever actually starts to convince you are really are a freshly retired stunt double for Wiley Coyote. Ruinous. Ghastly, awful and ruinous.

Now, if you will excuse me I have some obscene phone calls to make.