The Urban Elf

London is not calling

2012-01-26T02:39:00.000-05:00

It’s these moments

When the bar is near dead

The clock runs down to closing time

And the jukebox sings of regret

I expect him to walk in

Like he always did

Rescuing me from self parody

Lifting me from ignominy

But he never does

Two years after my mistake.

The fates seldom hand you laughter

Let alone singing in the street

I was shortsighted and stupid

Making obelisks out of obstacles

And tithing to a demise

I wouldn’t allow the prerequisite rise.

Forgive me, London.

Forgive me and find me.

I was and am a fool

Petitioning too late

To find a place in your court.

scraps of other people's lives

2012-01-12T13:59:00.002-05:00

Digging through boxes can produce the most interesting results. Below is the content of a photocopy of an undated note found in a dusty file. The Bureau ought to be more careful about what comes in and out of the records room.
______________________

Dear Ulysses,

I try so hard not to hate everyone, but with few exceptions humanity at large is such a monumental disappointment. People understand so little and see even less. The world is a dark gem of sparkling complexity. Why are so many blinded by its slightest reflection?

Eddie

Late night Green Line musings

2011-11-17T19:33:00.003-05:00

Edgar roused himself from a not unpleasant dream. Blinked at the semi-darkness. Something was wrong. Where was the train? The trains always lulled him in his sleep time. The irregularity of their clatter and clank, hustle and screech were the lullaby he had grown up with. Something was wrong.

Slowly he unfolded his limbs ears straining to reach beyond his shadowed space to seek the assurance of a merely delayed clatter of transit. Nothing.

Something was wrong.

Lillibeth would have warned them of a change in schedule, a change in routine. They never knew how she knew, but The Queen always did. It was part of being queen.

Something was wrong.

Careful of the work lights that shone vague yet unfalteringly Edgar crept toward the tracks and laid a cautious finger… and then an even more cautious ear. Nothing.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong and Edgar was not prepared to deal with whatever that wrong thing might be.

2011-11-09T02:53:00.001-05:00

Hope springs eternal

Despite the inevitable fall

Winter hushes far too soon

Summer’s hedonistic siren call

ghost whispers

2011-10-21T02:25:00.001-04:00

That’s the story

Lived in Rachel’s shadow.

Never enough

Never the right thing.

Always lauded

Often acclaimed

Yet never claimed as a prize.

Always lacking

The salient bits

At least

In the hero’s eyes.

a reluctant manifesto

2011-10-02T03:43:00.002-04:00

I can’t do it anymore.

Not that the garden of delight

Is not a theme park

Ridden with dopamine.

I just saw the reality.

It will never be me.

I don’t want to be a side dish

A choice tater from a goes-with menu.

You have him

And he is enough.

If you need something more

You will have to find it elsewhere.

The buffet is closed.

Make a choice

Take a stand

And grow up.

scrabbling scrawl

2011-10-02T03:35:00.003-04:00

I can smell him on my moustache

The man I released to hunt again,

What is wrong with me?

This is what I do…

When I’ve got game.

Yet something was wrong

Maybe

In my heart

Or neurosis overwhelmed practicality

My ability

To fence in my manic disability

Failed me…

Or fate saved me.

Which is the truth?

I cannot say.

Whether other crashing realities

Colored my view of what should be

Or laid quietly

Along the road to epiphany…

A credentialed person will have to explain.

echoes of a passing

2011-09-30T02:30:00.000-04:00

Where was I

When your beaten opponent

Launched its last coup d’état?

Nursing my cobbled bones?

Hobbled by genetics and history?

Hiding behind discord

And broken continuity?

I apologize.

I should have been there.

Crutches akimbo

To hold your hand

Hear your words

Broker your passage…

I failed you.

And yet

You spoke to me.

Sent me on my greatest journey

And I am better

As you promised

For the travel.

Please find peace

Whenever it is you are.

What comes now

Is for the living

To unravel.

rain soaked typing

2011-09-24T03:55:00.000-04:00

There’s a pummeling hush
An earthy smelling shush
As the rain beats down
I’m lost in its embrace
It seems a shame to waste
This quiet time
Yet the soothing fails to reach
Too far inside
There are fires in my mind
And I wonder where my answers lie
Where am I
Where am I
There is no you and there is no him
It’s only me and my plaintive hymn
Crying to the void
Created and destroyed
And wondering
Wondering
At all of this white noise

foxy news

2011-09-13T17:44:00.000-04:00

Deep beneath the makeup
The devil smiles too wide.
Wrapped in paper looking like facts
We’ve filled your brain with lies.
Go to the market.
Go to the polls.
We’ve told you and sold you…
But really, you decide.

the pros of cons

2011-09-06T03:03:00.002-04:00

They met at the Orion party. Fake bid parties were always the best, focusing on atmosphere and liquor more than stunning facilities and go-to destinations. It was early only a little after eleven and without a sufficient buzz to make him immune to the fears of sounding stupid, looking out of place or simply making an ass of himself Devon was glued to the flat screen as Anne Francis levered her faux-nude torso out of the soundstage pond.

“Shakespeare in space… It’s based on The Tempest you know.”

Devon pointedly did not turn. Still focused the screen he replied, “Yes, although Frankenfurter got way more mileage out of this than the bard ever did.”
A laugh echoed into a plastic cup. “True, but who ever knew that the Airplane guy was ever so hot?”
“Generations best left unnamed.”
Another laugh. “I’m Jean.”

Of course you are thought Devon, Madeline Kahn singing mockingly in the back of his brain. He’d been tracking “Jean” for three room parties now as he moved in and out and among a contingent that seemed to be mostly Brits and Canadians. Two of them were here. Where were the others? Oh, who the hell cared? Jean was here and talking to Devon of his own free will.

“Jean Michele? Like Jean Michele Jarre?” That is the nature nerd-dom, a pissing contest of whose brain contains the greatest reservoir of minutiae and obscure trivia, the alpha determined by this and no other physical or social criteria considered valid in the broader world… unless one is female, then, sometimes cleavage can be entered into the equation. Having no cleavage Devon had learned to reach outside of genre to make up for his lack of native knowledge.

“Uh, no. Sorry, is that an author?”
“No. French musician. Sorry, I’m being obscure.”
“Well it’s new anyway,” chuckled Jean, “I usually get, ‘like Jean Luc Picard?’
“You could do worse…”
“I know, but still, how obvious!”
They laughed together. Bonding, thought Devon.
“It’s actually Jean Patrick. What you get when your people are Irish from Quebec I guess.” He pronounced it with two ‘k’ sounds.
“Umm, I’m Devon,” Devon said flipping the con badge at his belt.
“Devon….?” intoned Jean, eyebrows arched over Bambi caliber brown eyes.
“Devon Brewster. It’s what happens when your people are Irish from Cape Cod.” Devon hid his embarrassment in the dregs of his alarmingly green beverage. Never let them see you sweat, he thought.

Just then the world reopened. Three women in corsets, goggles, and incongruous anime pigtails fell into the room wrapped in a cloud of giggles and trailed by a loud man in a 3xl TOS medical corps jersey.

As Devon’s thoughts ricocheted between “Not frakking now” and “I need another drink” he felt a poke in his consciously tightened midsection.
“This green stuff’ll kill you and London is serving whiskey. So, Devon Brewster, care to join me?”
Devon hoped like hell his useless blinking pause hadn’t been quite so long as it felt. “Well sir, whiskey you say?” Then turning to the giddy storm front that was his friends, “Ladies, there is important drinking that needs my attention. You will excuse me.” He tipped an imaginary hat and added, “Please do keep Ensign McDougall out of trouble!”

It took a good five minutes of introductions and fumbling loose of hugs before the boys finally stumbled into the hallway.
“Sorry, I, well we’re all here together and…” Devon dribbled of into silence facing the look in Jean’s eyes. “Right,” he breathed, “whiskey.” Jean smiled wickedly and cut into the milling throng of hobbits, harridans and storm troopers, Devon hot on his heels.

2011-09-03T00:15:00.000-04:00

Sell me something
I don’t want to buy
Slip me something
Hot on the sly
Make me want
What I don’t know I need
Fill me with your purpose
Make it my greed

flotsam in the stream of consciousness

2011-07-30T00:08:00.004-04:00

Tidying my bedchamber I discovered several queer looking scraps of paper covered in the ravings of a mad man. Indeed I am as yet not entirely sure if the level of my alarm fell or rose upon the realization that the scribblings were in fact in my own hand. These fragments of a fragmented mind were marked with nothing indicating the dates of their creation, though I suspect the oldest of them could not have crawled from my pen any earlier than nine months ago. Here transcribed are two of the more coherent bits... of scrawl.
_______________________

Show me what you meant to say
Wrong or right
Written down in black and white
All those years ago
When tears softened reason
When anything we said
Was grounds for treason
What is it you meant to say
Falling down on resurrection day
People praise the truth they see
What was the lie you gave to me
When shallow came the tide of truth
Eroding sand from hollow roots
The myth of we still stood in vane
Sneering at my every pain
It could have been
Would have been
Excuses I should never
Ever have uttered
No wonder
Now my heart
From the storm is shuttered
____________________

Stop haunting my mind,
A happy ghost
Of an unseen time
Thrilling my possibility
With your uncertain reality
And its kisses
Made of air
And imagination.

questions abound

2011-07-26T17:16:00.001-04:00

.
You with the illegal eyes
Looking at me like I’m the prize
Do you want my heart
Or just my soul
In some flesh pile version of rock ‘n’ roll?
The island left
And the mountains held
Can you love two cities
Or is one just sacrifice to the swell?
I’ve seen the fire
In those weaponized eyes
Held that fire between my thighs
But does the volcano create land to till
Or mindlessly conquer deaf to the kill?

ad hoc song lyrics brought to you by brain soup and pop country

2011-07-21T13:52:00.003-04:00

.
I need someone to help me forget
To push him from my mind
‘Cause no matter what my heart wants
He’s never going to be mine
I reach out into darkness
Reality is heartless
And fantasy brings only pain
I need someone, need someone
Who can make me feel happy again

Spins my head around
Laughing in the sunlight
Your hands in my hair
Dancing in the moonlight
Filled with your desire
Our eyes reflect the fire
That will burn the past away
Dawn a brand new day

Seeing them together
Is knowing this forever
Is never going to be mine
I’m trying to outgrow this
Yet it sometimes feels
I’ve lived too long
And I just don’t have the time
I need someone, need someone
Who can make me feel happy again

Spins my head around
Laughing in the sunlight
Your hands in my hair
Dancing in the moonlight
Filled with your desire
Our eyes reflect the fire
That will burn the past away
It’s the only way

I need someone to help me forget
And lets me feel happy again
Let me feel happy again

Spin my head around
Laughing in the sunlight
Your hands in my hair
Dancing in the moonlight
Filled with our desire
Our eyes reflect the fire
And burn the past away
It’s a brand new day

2011-07-02T03:17:00.001-04:00

What do you do when all your lost loves are so empirically lost that sad songs just ring hollow?

I have spent my life chasing the love that might be, could be… if only just, maybe.

What do you do when you know that all of the ones still extant unequivocally won’t be?

My pathos is hollow.

My narrative leads nowhere.

I guess my story can only be about me.

I have spent my whole life living in reflection… if only of a dream.

I don’t know what to do… with no grail to attain and no sword on which to fall.

Is this tragedy all that I am?

what began in scrawl

2011-06-29T16:58:00.001-04:00

Here in the broth
The froth and the fray
As I am tossed
And lost
Not knowing my way
Whose are those eyes
I see shining me home
Not any of the heroes
That have left me
Alone
I reach for a dream
And he has no name
Perhaps I will find him
Though in time
Just the same
I shall die
As we all must
Happy or no
No matter the ending
The book will be closed

irreverent musings

2011-04-27T03:16:00.000-04:00

Blistered by the burning
Of being left behind
I’m reminded of what it was
To be young

I haven’t given up the ghost
Nor am I the sacred host
That doesn’t mean
They shouldn’t eat me

inspired by changing 3 letters in a one line facebook post

2011-04-23T19:54:00.001-04:00

Maybe ain’t you baby
I just don’t understand
You’ve always been so yes or no
So on the mark
So in command
Where is all your certainty
Where is all your pride
What’s with all this wavering
Eyes cast down and to the side
What are you not telling me
Where is your resolve
I’m the river
You’re the rock
And I’m not playing ball

two moments of scrawl

2011-04-19T00:01:00.001-04:00

How early is it?
How drunk…
Am I?
This is not
What I had planned.
How quickly it can
All evade you.
Yet for all the looking
Back that this affords me
I have no more answers
Than when I went in.
Where I went in…
That’s a whole
Separate
Question.

__________________________________________________

Why did you
Up the ante?
Set my dreams
In high relief?
Let your fingers
Do half
Of what I need?
I’ve set you
On your course.
Fostered and fathered
As best that I can.
Why now,
And now again
Did you feel
You had to
Pretend
To being
My man?

2011-03-02T23:39:00.000-05:00

I have seen you scheming
Inside your shell,
Fighting the fight
Fought best with yourself.
Who is the enemy?
Not those you oppose,
It’s the you that you won’t see
For all your emperor’s clothes.

remembering in scrawl

2011-02-16T02:04:00.002-05:00

We’re on a road to nowhere.
We’re on a ride.
How could we lose Worcester
With New Hampshire behind?
There’s gas in the van
And we’re both big fans
Of watching worlds collide.
Pitch the map out the window, baby
As we swallow our pride.
We’ll end up somewhere
(ended up somewhere)
Agendas aside.
We’ll arrive somewhere
(guess this is somewhere)
We’ll let our dreams decide.

.
.
for Robyn

the grizzling of a fanboy

2011-02-12T04:03:00.001-05:00

Unexpectedly the Way-back Machine delivered me to a convention three years in the past. It was a sweet feeling, a giddy feeling, until the inevitable comparisons began to take place.

It was a time and a place of unrequited desire – not unusual for me, I assure you – but a time and a place of desire nonetheless and that is the sticking point. It was one of the up to now last such times… at least in the con context. Yes, I initiated a lame-legged chase of a certain publisher this last Arisia but prior to that…? Let us just say that since Gaylaxicon ’05, L. A. Con IV and Arisia ’08 there has really been no sexual intrigue on the adventures in nerdopolis front. Not such a heartbreak if these tribal gatherings hadn’t become my last best hope. Obviously, or maybe not so, there were intrigues outside of that sphere but none but one came to fruition and that sole scion of hope was undone by life and intractable logistics.

Given the failures of the mundane world I still find myself approaching each convention, including the two I likely will not be able to afford attending this year, with an unbridled sense of hope and expectation. This is not simply the hormone-fueled dreaming of a biological or psychological adolescent anticipating some endless sea of nookie. No, this is more the desperate grasping of a man trying not to admit the inevitability of middle age, or should I say middle age alone. When one has been waiting one’s whole life not so much for a knight on a steed, but for the rapscallion he alone could redeem or for the sidekick he could rightly elevate to hero realizing that the quest has dragged on long enough to make his role no longer that of the virile heartthrob but that of the cuddly curmudgeon… well… it sucks. Thus he doesn’t want to face it, and every chance to believe that the world is still full of possibility will be seized with near manic voracity. Yet as we all know enthusiasm rarely correlates to success.

Finding more silver in my hair and less fire in my loins as I approach each of these last best hopes of meeting my fan-tastic soul mate I am thankful for anything that stokes the fires. Follow-through, physical fulfillment, whether stolen moments in a stairwell or a long night in a four star hotel bed, these things would needless to say be welcomed with more than open arms, but even feeling the rush of hormones and optimism that the chase provides can be in the short term its own blessing.

I’m hoping that this outlook is a passing thing; that either my mood or my prospects… or both, will improve. There is always possibility and in fact adventure to be found if one is open to hearing them beckon and to following their call. For all my militant innocence that is the hardest part – remaining open. At some point the weight of history can lay its finger on the scales of belief and it is a wise man, perhaps wiser than me, who can not only spot that guilty finger but swat it away to let the heart swing and bounce until it finds its own balance. I am now out of balance, but hope to be swinging and bouncing again soon.

Super Bowl Sunday Scrawl

2011-02-07T02:06:00.000-05:00

I sought possibility
As impossible
As that may be
In a place exhausted
Of destiny.
Where must I look
To hook what I seek?
Exploration strains me
Expatriation pains me
The narrative fails me
Again and again
And again.

2 bits of scrawl

2011-02-04T01:21:00.000-05:00

Poke and peek
Peel me alive
Kill a joke
And choke me
Inside.
Kill a dream
Break a mirror
Snort a blizzard
Avoid the lizard
He’s got blood
In his eyes.
Kill and crawl
The glass won’t hurt
Break and brawl
The ball is over
The era ended
Slippers slide
Slide
Slide
Into surrender.

_______________________

Kisses lost in
Someone else’s memory
Inform the dream
That fades
In the face
Of this moment’s tedium
Trials are lost
Found and discarded
In the evidence
Of this
Most
Lazily
Executed
Decline.

Arisia - the seven year itch

2011-01-22T03:54:00.002-05:00

Rereading my Arisia wrap-up posts of previous years I realize that I have been, well, slacking. It’s not that Arisia is not my first love of con-going and the one in which I invest in various ways the most amount of work; it’s just, well… there hasn’t been that much drama these past two years.

The move to yet another new hotel was a shake-up that from where I sit settled out about 90% positive. Really all I miss about the old hotel is the concentration of activity such that you ran into everybody, the use of the atrium for party spotting and the delicious burgers served in the bar. I’ve already posted about this subject – OK, not the burgers, but the rest – in the appropriate forum.

So what do I have to say? Sadly, not much. Yes, PVC is the new corduroy. Yes, a panel of psychologists told me that it was OK to mourn the deaths of my imaginary friends. Yes, I was foiled in or at least failed at my attempts to flirt with my ex-roommate’s publisher. (Don’t ask.) But, ultimately? There really wasn’t much that was… I don’t know… epic. A lot of what has become the regular cast of characters were on hand and we had a lot of fun…but maybe that’s the point, or more precisely the blunting. The usual cast of characters has grown to encompass those folks that were once exotic, once an adventure just by the being there. This was an Arisia full of old friends and party buddies. No one stole nor broke my heart (although I would have given said publisher a shot – just sayin’). No one nearly drove me to homicide, you know, other than those whom I knew would do so in their androgynous Trek TOS uniform with their seemingly endless soliloquy of me-me-me-me-ME-oh-and-did-I-mention-MEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and therefore tuned them out prior to the necessity of police involvement.

I’m guessing that Arisia and I have reached a new stage in our relationship. The courtship and the honeymoon are over. We have settled into something comfortable, enjoyable, but maybe a bit predictable. I’m hoping that next year the spice will return and I’ll be shaken out of complacency and once again experience a vacation in the land of adolescent intensity. Fires need to be lit, maybe under my ass, for ritual, for sacrifice and maybe also for making s’mores. Drama and intensity must be reintroduced to the mix. Rumor has it a certain hot bartender may be out of the big house by this time next year and regardless of any direct effect that may have on next year’s antics and festivities I hope it’s a harbinger of… something.

Today on VisageTome

2010-12-22T18:07:00.003-05:00

I do so enjoy the internet age. A month or so ago several friends from once disparate parts of my social life met at a party I was co hosting. As the next day's hangovers began to ebb the “friending” frenzy commenced. The following is a conversation on a certain social networking site (and subject of a feature film) between two of those people.

Scooter Poppins posted:
What happened to the Good Old Days when we lived in caves and picky eaters died of starvation and were removed from the gene pool?
20 hours ago • Like • Comment • Share

Temple Ben Shalom: Def not a picky eater here! I put anything in my mouth.
2 hours ago • Like

Temple Ben Shalom: Oops.
2 hours ago • Like

Scooter Poppins: yeah, we've seen those videos!
about an hour ago • Like

Temple Ben Shalom: Hey, those are for paying customers only! No sharing accounts!
about an hour ago • Like

Scooter Poppins: yay for bit torrent
about an hour ago • Like

Temple Ben Shalom: Damn pirates...
about an hour ago • Like

Scooter Poppins: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!
about an hour ago • Like

Temple Ben Shalom: I'd consider it for side work, but the plots are few and thin. I stand behind my artistic integrity!
about an hour ago • Like

the unadulterated yet inebriated truth

2010-12-16T03:22:00.000-05:00

Better than the sainted audience
Better than the noble roadies
Better than my brother
In his rum-fueled haze
He simply
Makes me whole
Not a lover
Not a sister
Not a thing
Society can name
We are a road show
And I am nothing
Nothing
Without him
There is no word
To contain
What he is
What he will be
Save maybe
The deceptively
Common name
Blanche.

scraps of memory

2010-12-11T01:00:00.002-05:00

Going through old files in neglected directories I found "song in progress.doc" created back in 2007. Here are its contents.
__________________

From a book never written
By a man too afraid
I have cut these words to give to you
For the difference they might make

Stolen from the Dream Lord’s keep
Where all lost words must lay
I’ve bound them in lover’s skin
For you to find as you may

You are the answer
To my well settled prayer
Uttered too soon
Into lonely empty air

I must quest and I must wander
I must do and I must dare
But I’ll return to you
My glory to share
_____________

Might do something with it. We'll see.

some random scrawl

2010-11-20T03:19:00.000-05:00

Puddle me this,
My self in solution,
What is this pollution
That delivers me here
Scorning my surroundings
And dismissing the foundlings,
Who in ignorance,
Would promise me bliss?

It has never been easy being... green.

2010-11-16T14:47:00.004-05:00

Sesame Street debuted nationally when I was a few months shy of four years old. I don’t believe I first saw it until sometime the next year. At that time the target audience was three to five year-olds (recalibrated younger in the 1990’s) and I as a somewhat emotionally lagging child and “outgrowing” the demographic just as my younger sister entered it was still watching in elementary school. Elementary school: where it all began; where it all began and lasted until senior year of high school; where the earliest scars were formed, scars that at times made me a bully in some ways to some people while remaining the constant victim of others and now forty years later leave me with a brain so wired to survive in an emotionally and physically dangerous environment that I reflexively attack and berate myself reliving any screw-up, no matter how far in the past, that brought unwanted attention; vivid flashbacks created by the animal mechanism of skull meat as it tries to ensure survival and gives not a damn for peace.

Why all this confessional carrying-on? Well, other than because this is my blog and that is one of the things I do. Today I watched a video that is part of the ever-growing It Gets Better Project… and I wept, spontaneously and uncontrollably until the credits rolled. While the project is focused toward LGBT youth this message was slightly different. It was created by someone named Chris Tuttle and features a commercially available version of Kermit the Frog that in a passing imitation of the Muppet’s voice earnestly tells the viewer how hard it was to be young and green but that it does get better. Kermit continues to deliver with classic Sesame Street intonation the message that no matter how different we feel or people try to make us feel we all are valuable and we are not alone and urges anyone being harassed or bullied to talk to someone in authority, and keep talking until someone listens and DOES something about it. He charges those in authority, parents, teachers, and clergy, to DO something about it. He reminds us that lives are at stake.

This touched me deeply. It was as if a spark had found one of those scars closer to the surface and the charge chased all the way down into the core of my being, into the vaults of my history. How long had it really been going on? I rarely focused on the years prior to fifth grade when I spent the entirety of recess hiding in the hedges to avoid being taunted and threatened if not outright brutalized, but it goes back farther than that. My mother once said to me after I had come out in my sophomore year of college that I had changed. I was me again. She told me that she was happy to have back her vibrant little boy she put on the bus to elementary school so many years ago and they never sent back. Fourteen years. Fourteen years to even begin undoing the damage that time and even therapy have not yet wholly healed. How different would it all have been if somehow Chris Tuttle and Kermit could have given this message to six year-old me? And I am one of the lucky ones. I’m here to weep into my keyboard and write cathartic confessional self-indulgent blog posts admonishing the past for its failures. I’m here. We know there are far too many who aren’t.

Update: November 19, 2010

I know that some people find it hard or do not wish to believe bullying can and does start at such an early age. Today another facebook friend posted a link to an article by the mother of a first grader (and Star Wars fan) about her daughter’s first encounter with bullying. This story is a good example of how innocently it can all begin, that gender role programming and its fallout begin before sex and sexual attraction are even comprehended, but also how we out here in on the internet sometimes really can do something. I encourage you to read it and if you are a female science fiction fan to post a comment to bolster this brave younger member of the tribe.

teatime is over - time to remove the gloves

2010-11-03T03:16:00.000-04:00

The midterm election is over. Some ugly things have happened. And, I rejoice that my state maintained a modicum of sanity even as I lament that the House was lost. That said, as much as it chagrins me, I have to admit my own party must own a portion of their own failure on the national level. Even before the previous administration left office the Democrats were given control of Congress, a mandate from the people. They failed to deliver. As much as I love John Stewart and his call for reasonableness and moderation… we are playing a rough game. Those who would appear to represent the left have failed for the same reason they always fail… despite the viciousness of the playing field they tried to play nice. Nice guys are sometimes exonerated by history, they sometimes win wars, but they rarely win battles without stealing a page or two from the bad guys’ playbooks. Let this setback be a wakeup call. Let this loss be a call to arms. The Left must rise; roar; cry to heaven. We must be mindful of civil and lucid discourse, mindful of common ground and where it can be found but we must also free ourselves from the compulsion to be nice. There will be a time for “nice; it is not now. Now, now we need to use whatever tools may be at our disposal to champion what we know to be important, imperative, crucial to the progress and survival of this people, this nation, this Great American Experiment. We must shed our shared discomfort with, if not outright aversion to, conflict and fight. Will we be saints in heaven and martyrs in history while the legacy of our inaction is a hell on earth? As Massachusetts is a beacon for the nation the United Sates of America is a beacon for the world. If that beacon were extinguished or even dimmed by corruption of the focus and color or its lens then we should fear for the future of all humanity regardless of the continent on which or the borders within which it lives. We have been charged, whether by a divine power or history or simply inescapable reason, to lead the way out of the hidebound past of monarchies and theocracies of classist hierarchies and racist empires. True, we have more miles to go before fulfilling that charge than perhaps years humanity has stood on this earth, but that is only more reason to not fall back or fall down now when all the world is watching. They watch and they hope. Hoping with us, for us, for themselves… for the future. Isn’t that worth a little discomfort as we chose the cause of our convictions over the ease of our social grace?

inspiration strikes

2010-10-28T11:47:00.002-04:00

We drove the hearse to the graveyard
To bury a box of bones
Once we’d planted the dearly departed
We drove the hearse back home.

I sense the potential for a T-shirt or perhaps a children’s book.

Self-referential scrawl

2010-09-25T03:34:00.000-04:00

Their faces haunt me,
The imagined people.
Like ghosts
Of what never was.
Dreams never realized
They stare
With eyes full
Of nothing more subversive
Than empty hope.
I cannot make them real.
For all
That I might wish,
The imperative of their songs
And
The potential of their narratives
Are something separate
Well removed
And far beyond
My power to set free.

porchlight scrawl

2010-07-29T01:00:00.000-04:00

The night fades
Wending its way towards morning.
Warm with the weather and the wine
I consider how I got here
And realize
Despite or for the sake of
All the adventures
It’s all as it should be.

not even scrawl

2010-06-16T00:57:00.000-04:00

How quickly
A world of hope
Can collapse
Into a singularity
Of emptiness

...and we will all go down together

2010-05-14T14:10:00.001-04:00

I hate wasted gumption. (Although am a fan of the gumption provided by being wasted.) It can take a lot of effort (alcohol-fueled or nay) to finally bite the bullet and approach “the cute guy”. Then if it goes poorly… or worse, seemingly well until he mentions the boyfriend, the letdown is greater for the energy invested in getting there. It’s easy to say one should be cavalier about rejection and that the more attempts made increase the likelihood of success, but amassing the requisite gumption, impetus and armor, is not nearly so easy whether it comes from inside oneself or inside a bottle. We should all feel we are beautiful… and smart… and awesome… and should ride unicorns to our $300k 3 hour a week jobs in Bermuda… but most people don’t. In reality the single life is much like war; there will be carnage, collateral damage, and wanton disregard for humanity – if you are lucky you make it through with minimal injuries, some great stories, strong bonds with a few brothers in arms, and maybe just maybe the satisfying knowledge that your side won. So until we each find our own way off the battlefield we must, as they say, soldier on. But no one is brave all the time; no one is a hero in every skirmish. The best can lapse into cruelty, the most dastardly evidence compassion in this smoky world of shifting grays full of distant voices that could be laughing or crying, singing or screaming. So to my brethren in the trenches I say be brave, as brave as you can. That will have to be enough. Our hearts will break, our crests will fall, our egos will be bruised. We will sometimes be gun-shy and sometimes charge the hill. All that matters is that we make the most of the experience knowing we are in it until it’s over.

latest scrawl

2010-04-17T21:36:00.000-04:00

Laughing as we do
In this minor key
Pretending it doesn’t hurt
The passage of time
The fading of our flower
The aging of our grace
Defiantly constructing
Our newest now best face
There is a point
One must question
The terms of winning
This race.
Is it already lost
Or is the clock still running?
Can any amount of wit
Or cunning
Defeat the landslide of time?
We hope and try
We do or we die,
But do we die alone?
This is what we defy
This is our do or die
This is the crux and the cross
Of all we have to bear.

No Saving Throw

2010-01-15T11:33:00.001-05:00

Last night with all my packing and prep for Arisia completed I headed down to the bar for well deserved break. Shortly after I arrived there I was informed by one of the bartenders that a fellow regular and friend of mine had died early that morning. This was not the first time my friend had been hospitalized and being a private person he had let little word out onto the street as to the gravity of his condition. It was the kind of news you hoped not to receive yet knew in the back of your mind was always at least a remote possibility. That said it was still a shock.

Nigel was the most ardent D&D player I have ever known participating in as many at five active campaigns at any given time. He was the other, and funny to say bigger, RPG geek at our local bar. It was often that he would excitedly regale me and sometimes Blanche with his characters’ latest adventures especially the beguiler – a class that did not exist in the older editions of the game with which I was familiar. I enjoyed the stories nonetheless. For years I had been trying to convince him to attend Arisia. “These are your people”, I told him. “Maybe next year,” he’d say. I guess we just ran out of years.

I will miss his rich laugh, his broad smile and his boyishly exited recounting of tabletop triumphs and near disasters. We were not the closest of friends, that was always difficult with him, but the shared years of laughter and stories and outright geeking had certainly bonded us far beyond mere acquaintance.

In the end like all his imagined alter egos Nigel faced death bravely. I don’t know where he is now, but wherever it is I hope that he is finding all the adventure, excitement and glory that he had to imagine here in this world… and I hope he’s still slaying dragons.

On Beyond Epiphany

2010-01-10T00:04:00.004-05:00

Christmas in January has now come and gone. At last we here at the Alcott Street Home for Wayward Geeks and Lunatics say goodbye to the holiday season. Ahead in nearly no time lies Arisia, the grand tribal gathering. Shortly following we celebrate the first full year in the reign of His Imperial Majesty, Wee Mr. N, who has changed all of our lives in so many brilliant and unexpected ways. Is there yet an oracle that knows what waits for us beyond that as this new decade unfolds? There are clues. Another birth is imminent. Another wedding beckons seasons on and I have been granted the great honor of being a part of it. Some among us will be moving into new living quarters and yet into old patterns of living. I pray, please God, let those of us who are not currently so be eventually employed! There will be negotiations, skirmishes, alliances and wars. There are adventures planned by many and surely even more adventure ahead for which none of us can plan. There is expectation and there is hope. There is trepidation and exhilaration. We are not naïve though we may be fools. May the bells ring. May our hearts sing. May we be wrapped in wonder and awake to long awaited bliss. In our hearth fire shall we forge our plows and swords to take us boldly forward into this brightly awakening time. This is tomorrow and we embrace the future.

the scrawl continues

2009-12-01T02:06:00.000-05:00

I stare into the night
The wires lie still
The ether empty and silent,
Not a signal
Not a sound.
Without a word
Without a forecast
With but an omen of what might come
I have prayed
For unsalted rain,
And on faith
Have broken ground.
In the hope
In the hope
In the hope
You will sow the seed.
Seed that given time and loyal tending
Given time and given care
Will offer forth the bounty
That will save these starving souls.
That in the bliss of plenty
We might strum the idle wires
And fill the empty air
With our song of joyous harvest
Our hymn to heart and happiness
Of perseverance and care.

angst in five haikus

2009-10-27T02:41:00.000-04:00

Disconnected from
The crackling ether siren
The air seems empty

Life is not online
People talk and laugh and sing
Why am I silent

Distance creates doubt
Silence fosters my worry
I need to relax

I can reach this far
Without my hand being met
Where are your fingers

We have history
This may not be destiny
Please tell me your dream

An open email to the Massachusetts State Senate

2009-09-30T14:19:00.000-04:00

Dear Senators:

As a long-time resident of Boston and the surrounding metro area I am writing to you in support of Senate bill No. 1983 presented by Senator Tolman. In a city where many residents do not own cars and rely on public transportation exclusively it is often both an inconvenience and a financial hardship that the T does not run between the hours of 1:00 and 5:00 or sometimes 6:00 AM. While the return of the "Night Owl Program" is neither an optimal nor complete solution to this problem it is an important step in the right direction.

Best regards.

R. L. Allison
Allston, MA

Closing day of Worldcon - a lament

2009-08-10T18:19:00.003-04:00

Perhaps for the exhausted people who make the magic happen it is a relief to find that the blur of days is over and the con has ended. Their jobs well done they may finally get some well deserved sleep, food, peace and or quiet. I, on the other hand, always find it sad. My suspicion is that this feeling is not unique. The depressive reason might be given as the frontloading of personal expectations that have now no tomorrow in which to be realized, but whose fault is that but one’s own? There are always things left undone due to time, fate, cruel coincidence or faulty logistics. Such is the nature of life and is worthy of being honored with frustration but not mourning. The broader and more meaningful reason is that the end of a con signals the return to the real world; a stepping out of these stolen hours and days back into real time. The mundane terrors and stressors that haunt daily existence still wait to be released from oubliettes in the recesses of our brains where they have been sequestered, compartmentalized and nearly silenced while a popular madness of consensual reprioritization has elevated things beloved, but quite often neglected, to the highest level of urgency, gravity and import. For a few days we are surrounded by those who share our passions or at least understand the significance of those passions through the prisms of their own. We can be not simply as we will but as we would. This is a landscape and a society of our own making and while like all societies it includes dissenters and factions even they jostle on a field belonging to us all. We have gathered from all corners to share and sell and meet and court and preen and parade, drink and be merry. We gather to recognize our own; lauding those whose achievements we deem greatest; mourning those whom we have lost. We are in these moments “the people of the place”. It is always a celebration when the tribe gathers and always a sorrow when it disperses.

on the telephone

2009-07-27T19:20:00.001-04:00

Just now our west coast correspondent was filing a report via cell phone at one point referencing that, “Snoop Dogg’s pimp got all religious. Now he’s pimping for God.”

I replied, “…and that’s what God needs… a pimp. The problem is the people pimping God are getting too high a percentage.”

liquor lubricated lucidation

2009-06-20T02:22:00.002-04:00

There is insufficient evidence
And far too little providence
Of the thing I seem to seek,
While merely alleged opportunity
Fails to manifest plausibility
Anywhere remotely within reach.
Naught a placebo of sufficient caliber
To quiet the internal agitator
Can be torn from these woefully meager fields.
Famine strikes its lingering blow
Not to the belly, but to the heart, the soul
Of the longing and lonely
Coldly consoled only
By being far far too much in the know.

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 3

2009-04-22T13:23:00.003-04:00

.
This is the last of his songs my young friend Theo has given me permission to post. Some have said this one sounds a little bit world-weary for the work of someone so young. Perhaps, but Theo is a student of song and has read more books thus far in his life than many adults have in theirs… and sadly if anyone has a right to be weary of the world for all it has shown them that they never wanted to see it’s these kids.

The final installment of The Songs of Theo Schaffer:
____________________________________________

Since Baltimore
Words by Theo Schaffer music by Ian Brady & Theo Schaffer

You ever get the feeling
That there’s really little meaning
To the things we have and hold
And try to keep
I’ve moved around so much now
Swear I don’t even know how
I tell this place is my home
Or just where I sleep

It’s been a long time now since Baltimore
Can’t see it clearly anymore
Funny how some memories can slip away
Long time gone from Baltimore
So what is it I’m waiting for
Come on babe, let’s just fly away

If home is where the heart is
I’m wondering what the part is
We play keeping each other
Safe, sane and warm
Is this the happy ending
Or just foolish hearts pretending
To roles we had learned to want
But just can’t perform

It’s been a long time now since Baltimore
Can’t see it clearly anymore
Funny how some memories can slip away
Long time gone from Baltimore
So what is it I’m waiting for
Come on babe, let’s just fly away

I’m just so tired of questions
Have you got any suggestions
How we can make the world just
Go far away
Foolish hearts can do wonders
They’re full of fire and thunder
If you let me be you’re home
I’ll know where to stay

It’s such a long long time since Baltimore
Can’t see it clearly anymore
Funny how some memories can slip away
Long time gone from Baltimore
So what is it I’m waiting for
Come on babe, let’s just fly away

Fly away

2009-04-06T16:39:00.000-04:00

Here on this spit of sand
Curling into the vastness
Of an old world ocean
Like a gem in the surf
Mysteriously returned
As suddenly
As it was once taken away
Shaped by your journey
Rounded at the edges
Made all the more precious
All the more wondrous
All the more beautiful
By the tumbling
In time’s own sands

Revelations and reunions on a Cantabrigian night

2009-04-01T13:44:00.003-04:00

.
Last night was a strange one. Mostly delightful, occasionally a little nervous-making, all in all a good time spent outside my usual and predictable realm of socializing. The evening began with the unexpected and very happy news that our darling lesbian duo is expecting. They will no doubt be wonderful parents however the two of them pushing a moppet-laden stroller at the Pride parade might just exceed all tolerances rolling directly into cute overload. There was the impromptu reunion of those who had passed through the doors of the same university so many years ago – some departing possessed of credentials others not. This far out though that seems much less important to anyone but the Alumni Association. Scars and memories, lasting bonds and wistful delusions, a certain underlying commonality of philosophy, we all left with those things no matter the degree to which specifics vary. It was a time. It was a place. I digress. Anyway, much to my surprise included among the sheepskin wielders was my friend Michael whom I hadn’t seen since we passed for a few weeks nearly sixteen years ago as I moved into and he moved out of Boston. Time and memory… there is little sense to either of them. I found myself in constant flux, vacillating between the feeling that we had spoken not more than a week previous and that I knew almost nothing about him. This was I’m sure thrown into higher relief by the presence of his adorable and talented partner Tom whose arrival in town had precipitated this little gathering. We had congregated at this particular bar in this particular shadow of MIT to attend a performance, Tom’s “Boston” stop on his cross-country tour. A singer songwriter in his Subaru headed from the northeast to the west coast and back by way of Nebraska, Texas and any number of other places that summon up images of Kerouac and The Hills Have Eyes. Now that is indeed an adventure. What more and what else transpired? Details. Discussions of discovery probing for current or future social crosspollination. Talk of food, whiskey, music and “big gay drinks”. Promises of continued or renewed contact. How all nights end, we parted our separate ways dispersing into the night each of us remembering a different evening than the ones remembered by the others with which it was shared.

I continue to get the best email.

2009-03-27T13:37:00.001-04:00

The following is excerpted from a recent missive sent by our west coast correspondent.
________________________________________________

BTW- Today, I asked the English teacher (Amsterdam coffee house, poetry-liberal/literature/writing major in college) I work with, if we can still use the word "Fabulous" in LA... so she put her fingers in quotations and shrugged "Fabulous"; thus I repeated, with extra emphasis ala Ab-Fab. Then I asked her, "How many s's are in the word 'pronounce'?” Without batting an eye, she tilted her head up, slightly crooked, looked me dead on and said: "Six"...

I took a big breath, then turned on one foot and walked out of the class.

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 2

2009-03-20T15:21:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned previously my young friend Theo (aka 3) has given me permission to post some of his song lyrics that they may be seen by a larger audience. The caveat that some references within his work may be obscure is especially true of the following song. Here I will chalk them up to his being an avid reader, a comic fan and possessed of a fertile imagination, in another darker place some might see them as glimpses of history and even a hero’s journey.
_________________________________

Have to Be
Words by Theo Schaffer music by Ian Brady & Theo Shaffer

I was lost and I was found
Like luggage for a jet plane bound
Not passenger but stowage class
Until time came to break the glass.
Take my heart and take my hand
I have a dream, do you understand?
This is where we have to go
From Idaho to Chicago
We are all there is to know
Family, friends and overflow.

So it was
So it is
Hard to believe
We’re only kids
Follow me and we’ll be free
This is who we have to be

Cornered in an alleyway
Climbing walls and laser play
Garbage fists and claws of fire
We’ve come too far. We’re going higher.
Huddled in the dark man’s nest
So many arms in which to rest
Hiding on a pilgrim ship
With comic books and bitten lips
We found a fifth to fill our ranks
To ether ghosts we gave our thanks

So it was
So it is
Hard to believe
We’re only kids
Follow me and we’ll be free
This is who we have to be

With guns and trucks black eagle came
To terrorize and to defame
The fire was lost that we might see
The horror that could come to be
The princess tortured in her ice
Mental magic cast the dice
Dying storms the world engulfed
We shepherded by the wolf
Fled along the open road
To haven's hope and streets of gold

So it was
So it is
Hard to believe
We’re only kids
Follow me and we’ll be free
This is who we have to be

Now I’m here in New Amsterdam
Still trying to build my master plan
You’ll have my heart if you take my hand
I have a dream, do you understand?
I’m flying high on angel wings
I’m seeing far too many things
We’ve fallen far. We’re climbing fast.
More chasing me than just the past
There’s more places that we have to go
Than U.N. Plaza and old SoHo

So it was
So it is
Hard to believe
We’re only kids
Follow me and we’ll be free
This is who we have to be
This is who we have to be
This is who we have to be
Have to be
Have to be
Have to be
Have to be

late night mumblings

2009-03-12T01:16:00.000-04:00

March comes
The winds rise
Rending the old
That he new may arise
A force of change
Eviscerating
Or invigorating
Which
The choice is yours

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 1

2009-03-11T12:38:00.002-04:00

My young friend Theo (or 3 as he is also known) has given me permission to post some of his song lyrics that they may be seen by a larger audience. He and his band, Lost Luggage, are still a little reticent about posting videos of their performances but given that their school’s policy on such things is a bit vague and there exist far more potentially dangerous attentions to attract than those of the dean such caution is not unwarranted. This is the first installment in The Songs of Theo Schaffer. Some references may be obscure but given that he is only just fourteen and lives in a world much darker than this one I think he’s off to a pretty good start.
____________________________________________________

You Took My Hand
Words by Theo Schaffer music by Ian Brady & Theo Shaffer

Children fall and skin their knees
Some might want to think that’s me
But I don’t bruise that easily
Though the odds were stacked against us
Trapped behind their tallest fences
Escape, escape was on our minds
So they brought down their boots and clubs
Brought their searchlights and their guns
And they let loose their dogs to terrify

And then you took my hand
And magic filled the air
Magic not my own
I felt wings I hadn’t grown
When you took my hand
And everything came clear
I knew why I was here
I felt wings I hadn’t grown
When you took my hand

We were cattle herded to the slaughter
They didn’t care that we were sons and daughters
Of people they would never know
Up into our crying places
We put on our bravest faces
I didn’t know if I would break or bend

And then you took my hand
And everything came clear
I knew why I was here
I felt wings I hadn’t grown
When you took my hand

Out of the prison, out from the pain
To seek and find our freedom train
In cities strange on highways stranger
Your eyes wide in the face of danger
I didn’t know what you would do
Were you sure of me
Like I was sure of you
It was time to take a stand

And then you took my hand
And we were stronger than any foe
We knew what we had to know
I felt wings I hadn’t grown
When you took my hand
And magic filled the air
Magic not my own
I felt wings I hadn’t grown
When you took my hand

I Left My Heart

2009-03-06T14:59:00.006-05:00

I’m missing San Francisco. Unlike a normal person I did not miss it so much as the snow fell and I was cut to the bone by icy winds. No, I miss it now as we are teased and tickled by Mother Nature into believing that maybe this time the blush of spring is really just around the corner. I missed the snow when winter came and I was in the land of sunshine, although really at that point it mostly rained. There is something ingrained in me I suppose that the world must sleep so that it may then reawaken. As longer days and occasional mild breezes tease my mind free of the tangle of daily drama so that it may be lofted on zephyrs of daydream I think of warm days and sun-filled streets bustling with people free of their layers of wool and thinsulate not focused on the slippery concrete and brick beneath their feet but on the trees and gardens and flowerboxes all around them bursting with color and life. And that… leads me to San Francisco.

My first city is beautiful in her Easter finery. Boston wears spring like a joyous young lady of another age in an exuberant hat, ribbons down her back, a frilled parasol in her one hand as the other holds up the skirts of her new dress so that she may dash with shockingly childish glee in the direction of the ice cream vendor as her chaperone is left to heave her grey severity off of a park bench grumbling in the proverbial dust. San Francisco I have never seen in spring. I have seen her sunning herself oiled and glittering in a long hot summer that extends its reach far into autumn. She is distracted, seemingly lost in her own dreams as she sips a margarita beneath the broad brim of her thrift shop hat the dark lenses of her cat’s-eye sunglasses masking a gaze that may focus on the throng, the Maupin novel, the bougainvillea or nothing at all. Somewhere a window opens and the air is infused with a sensuous beat. In one fluid motion she rises, doffs her hat, plucks a cold beer from somewhere, perhaps nowhere, and taking a long slow draught begins to dance, a glorious confusion of sensuous undulation and peals of innocent laughter at once alone, before an audience, at one with a crowd, part of a tribe. How can one not miss that?

I really honestly do get the best email.

2009-02-25T16:46:00.001-05:00

This excerpted from a recent report from our Suburban Affairs Correspondent.

“It’s amazing how tiring it can be keeping one's patience for extended periods of time. I hope the delicate equation that represents the balancing act between anger and discipline and love and kindness that ultimately prevents me from drowning my own children in the bathtub continues to come out with positive values for n... at least until they are big enough to fight back... so I can claim self-defense.”

Ah, the joys of parenthood.

Dodging an arrow

2009-02-16T14:47:00.001-05:00

Valentines Day has passed without event. Despite the mercenary conspiracy between the terrified kings of retail and the scabrous whores of media I managed to pull myself through February 14th without blowing my money on blood diamonds or my brains out for lack of a super-sized heart-shaped box of low quality mass-market chocolates. I did not flail myself upon the rocky shores of the internet the contents of my wallet plucked away by the icy fingers of the frigid wind as I succumbed so completely to the siren song of the likes of eHarmony before, heart bruised, ego bloodied and face tearstained, seeking solace of the most base kind in the lower darker stickier regions of the electrical ether. I tithed nothing to the corrupt curates of Hallmark and traded not one shekel for the gift wrapped communication devices, digital televisions, portable computers or any other of the myriad impersonal and often isolating products we are being cajoled into believing are suddenly rendered the crème de la crème of romantic tokens and fetishes simply by the addition of a red bow.

That said, do I hate Valentines Day? Most of the time, yes. It is an obscure Catholic feast day that was spun up into a candy floss castle of contrived romanticism first as a means to sell cards and now, because in this culture nothing succeeds like excess, to sell everything from x-rated candy to SUVs to laser hair removal. However it is not only the blatant meddling of avaricious industry in the most intimate affairs of the general populous that starts my hackles rising. No, there is also the callous disregard for the collateral damage inflicted upon those who are not the fertile demographic ground with potential of offering up the sought after fiscal harvest. One last stab after surviving “the holidays” from Thanksgiving’s explanations at the prodding of familial inquiries that, no, one is not seeing anyone just now, to the gift giving days writing tags and cards to couples and even on rare occasions triples, to the killer queen of them all New Year’s Eve at midnight when a raised glass of champagne is met by strangers and friends but lips pass into yet another year unkissed.

I am of course a hypocrite… to a greater or lesser extent. When I have been involved with someone and the big VD rolled around again there were always schemes and plans aplenty. Though my style tended towards buying a small box of quality chocolates and making a card, maybe revealing some long sought after treasure I had hunted down over the previous months on my beloved’s behalf. I never wanted big gifts either. I’m always up for an indulgent dinner the cost of which I could rarely justify, but it has never been about the big box with the big red bow. To be honest, as much as I am a sucker for flowers the path to my heart is not most easily walked by Nicky Arnstein his arms full of long-stemmed roses and leading a legion of porters carrying bushels more. A fistful of daisies because it’s Wednesday. Daffodils from the grocery store when he ran out to get milk. The roadside buttercup he tucks into my shirt pocket. That is romance. So don’t let all of this bilious carrying-on lead you astray. I am a big fan of both love and romance. There is nothing sweeter or more beautiful than the incidental, as it occurs to you, because you want to kind of gestures that do not flow from clumsy corporate brainwashing and the guilt that underpins culturally sanctioned gold digging. And, would I like to have somebody to drop forty grand on just to mark the return of February 14th? Hell yes! Because that would mean not only was I in a relationship… but that I could throw around forty-thousand dollars with impunity. That is not the point. The point is I’d rather be and be with the kind of person who knows that money is not love, advertising is not real and that stopping by someone’s office to give them a quick kiss and a candy bar because from the tone of their lunchtime blog post that was what they most needed right then is better than cold carbon, a hot car, or a flat screen any day.

An open email to the powers that be at BART

2009-01-10T13:39:00.004-05:00

As an American and specifically as a former Bay Area resident I was shocked to learn of the January 1, 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer. This shooting of an unarmed man who presented no threat to the police officers or the public was witnessed and recorded by several people. In view of this it is only appropriate that the officers involved be taken off duty without pay while both a criminal investigation of the shooting including charges and possible prosecution as well as an independent investigation of the shooting that includes a review of training and hiring practices are conducted. As both an act of good faith and to prevent future tragedies of this kind BART should also establish an independent residents’ police review board.

___________________________________________

This email was sent to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors, Chief of Police and Police Internal Affairs.

A thought for 2009

2008-12-31T11:53:00.000-05:00

-
I want to write something profound or at least uplifting. I want to render unto the internet some insight into where we have been and where we are going on the cusp of this new year. I want to and yet just right now I cannot. Outside the snowfall is beautiful and my city is quiet. Inside my concerns are petty and my capacity for big thinking about big issues has been taxed to the point of fatigue. So in lieu of philosophical punditry and eloquently phrased beneficence let me simply say to all of you this one thing.

I wish you love.

Say no to a Cheney clemency Christmas

2008-12-23T10:21:00.002-05:00

I grow weary of sounding the same alarm over and over again; however the risk to the future of our nation if the actors in this ugly drama are not held to some level of accountability is too great to allow silence in this nearly eleventh hour. Simply, allowing them to get away with their crimes will leave stand a precedent that members of any future administration can cite as justification for their own overreaching power grabs and insistences that they are above the law. The danger of a runaway executive branch was supposed to have been ended with President Nixon and Watergate, then it resurfaced with Iran-Contra and now we are seeing the death throes of an entire administration that has been nothing but one seemingly endless exploitation of the office for personal gain at the expense of the American people and of America's good name. We cannot allow these people to trample the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, the American electoral process, the human and civil rights of thousands and then gleefully walk away with our money in their pockets and their victims' blood on our hands. We cannot allow this. They must be held accountable. They must be investigated. They must not be pardoned. Make your voice heard.

Enjoy the festival days!

2008-12-04T13:37:00.000-05:00

There was once a time when many mused, “Why can’t we behave all year long as we do at Christmas time?” Referring to the once common improvement in the general level of congeniality and human compassion expressed in many nations as midwinter and its associated Christian holiday approached. The sad thing is that we are beginning to see this idle wish come true… but in a through-the-looking-glass sort of fashion. Instead of our behavior being kinder, friendlier, more caring or at least polite the whole year round, our behavior during the “holiday season” is becoming just as insular, suspicious and rude as it is the balance of the year. Why you ask? Out of fear of retribution or rebuke. Yes, in a nation built of myriad cultures each with countless traditions and numerous holidays it has become increasingly acceptable to stand in the middle of the commercialized glitz-krieg of spinning flashing once meaningful symbols appropriated by corporate Kings Avarice and incongruously pretend that we have no holidays at all.

As creatures with the ability to learn from our experiences we are steadily dropping the holiday specific greeting from our shared American culture. Slap the hand offered and see if it is offered again. In an attempt to be more embracing (or frugal – one box of cards to cover a diverse social circle) or less controversial more universal expressions of good cheer have been sought. “Happy Holidays” is a fair generic, or perhaps a safer option might be “Enjoy the season,” but someone will inevitably have a problem with these as well although I decline to give them a head start by suggesting reasons.

So instead of trying to homogenize ourselves into an inescapable corner, let us step back for a moment and examine the idea that people are offended by someone wishing them a pleasant holiday which they happen not to celebrate in common. Why is this a bad thing? Only in this country could we turn the expression of good tidings into something despicable. The assumption is that the “well-wisher” is foisting their religion, culture, dogma, and or retail strategy upon a person who does not share them; let’s turn this around for a moment. What if within the tradition of the “well-wisher” the time of year in question is one festival and celebration, a time glowing with happy memories of childhood, of family and/or community, of spiritual joy or hedonist indulgence in the company of fond fellows? What if all of this good will they experience so seldom during the balance of the year is bubbling over and out of them to the point that they wish to share it with strangers? Why is this not brilliant? It is impossible to know what holidays a stranger may or may not celebrate so why not simply offer them the wish that you would like to receive relative to what you are celebrating. One can have a Happy Chanukah watching Christmas specials, a Merry Christmas going to the movies and eating Chinese food; the longest night of the year could be enjoyed drinking with companions or in quiet solitude, and Kwanzaa might happily be spent vacationing or shopping clearance sales.

The point is that when one is wishing another person well in holiday specific language one is not saying, “Be like me for there lays the only path to happiness.” What one is wishing the other person is good will, good times, joy. The well-wisher may be inspired by their own faith, culture or circumstance but that does not make that context a prerequisite of the hoped for outcome. Perhaps I am part of some naïve minority that has yet to join the ranks of those so suspicious of humanity that they autonomically attach dire imaginary conditions to every action originating outside their own heads… but I cannot believe that the average person is attempting an act of spiritual, cultural or intellectual imperialist expansionism and dogmatic repression when they wish someone any flavor of joyous holiday. It is not often enough that our hearts swell so much as to push us up and out of our ambulatory personal cocoons to see each other as fellow human beings and not merely obstacles and background noise. We are free in this country to celebrate or not whatever we wish (a fact we celebrate with yet another holiday on the opposite side of the calendar) but during this season, if not during all seasons, I ask that you consider celebrating the too few and too fleeting moments when regardless of affiliation or fealty we take a few seconds to be kind to one another in whatever imperfect and clumsily earnest ways we can muster.

My nation 'tis of thee...

2008-11-05T16:51:00.002-05:00

We the people, the United States of America, have elected our first African-American president and made history. We have also in that same moment elected our first mixed race president and acknowledged the future of our demographics and proved that in the much hyped “melting pot” any child really can grow up to be president.

The people have spoken and been heard. The election was not yet again stolen. My own faith in this system I love so much has been restored. For the first time in too many years I am relieved and elated to know that the great American experiment has not failed. I love my country and as a true and unapologetic patriot recognize it to be not a nation defined by or arisen from land and blood ties and lock-step religious uniformity but ideals. Grand beautiful transcendent and enlightened ideals. Our light, the light, the shining beacon for all the world to look toward for hope, guidance and inspiration is relit. Let us now as Americans, generational and newly arrived, foster and nurture that light as it leads us, its caretakers, out of the darkness as we return it and ourselves the place we both belong, reaching out to those in the broader world and within our own midst who pine for liberty and struggle toward freedom. Last night my nation and her future were returned to me and my fellow citizens, and I have never loved her more nor held greater hope for what great things she shall accomplish.

Tuesday Morning

2008-11-04T13:49:00.004-05:00

Despite getting to bed late last night I was up and out of the house early this morning. The weather was surprisingly mild and the walk to the library to vote was a pleasant one. Arriving about 45 minutes after the polls opened there was already a line just outside the door, but that bit went quickly as poll workers asked people's addresses and directed them to the particular lines in which they needed to be. I took the time waiting in line to review the state provided copies of our three ballot questions. This turned out to be good planning as once I got my ballot it was the simple stuff that confused me. Little sleep and one wee cup of coffee in transit to my destination had not properly prepared my brain for anything the vaguest bit complicated. You see, I couldn’t find the presidential section. Scanning the top left corner where it should have been I found names I had never heard. Confusion increased as I scanned around the general area for an explanation and found text in Spanish. Once my eyes finally and quite accidentally landed on a name and office I recognized a had a place from which to get my bearings and slowly I took in the dizzying text packed display of black and white that shimmied giddily under the fluorescent lights. So I voted for a Senator, a Congressional Representative, some other offices and then still confused as to where they had hidden the big race I reexamined the only unmarked quadrant of the page not reserved for the ballot questions which claimed the bottom-most front and entire back of the vexing sheet of cardstock. Did you know that in Massachusetts there are six tickets on the ballot? They are listed under the heading “ELECTORS OF PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT – STATEWIDE” and they are listed in the following order:
BALDWIN and CASTLE, Constitution
BARR and ROOT, Libertarian
McCAIN and PALIN, Republican
McKINNEY and CLEMENTE, Green-Rainbow
NADER and GONZALEZ, Independent
OBAMA and BIDEN, Democratic

So now you may see why my foggy not-anything-like-a-morning-person brain was thrown off kilter. Beyond the biggies and the now ubiquitous Mr. Nader I have no idea who these people are and I didn’t immediately see any of the names I did know on this crowded list rendered in nine point type for the sake of fitting everything on one two-sided page. The line was growing behind me, it was crowded and far too early, and panic was setting in. At last through some sort of buried sense I can only imagine is an evolutionary left-over from when humans once found it necessary to dowse for bile my twitching eye landed on the name Palin. “That’s who I don’t want,” I internally exclaimed and then found Obama. The ellipse was clumsily filled in with the squishy-tipped pen provided and after a quick dash through the ballot question (remember I studied in line for this part) I was off to hand in my ballot.

At this point I realized that I should have relaxed. It was not me who was fostering delay but the ballot scanning machine. Luckily it would seem that I had a steadier hand or a less squishy pen than the people in front of me because while the temperamental machine accepted my ballot on the second try it kept spitting back others. The gist gleaned from the heavily accented gentleman manning the machine was that it gets terribly fussy if one colors too far outside the lines. I saw three people have to return to their little semi-private niches with a fresh ballot as the completed yet untidy one was discarded. If only I had known that it was quite literally the machinery of bureaucracy that was delaying this process and not fuzzy-brained caffeine-deprived folks like me. Perhaps with the pressure off I could have more readily decoded the inscrutable document and therefore taken even less time to take advantage of my franchise. Either way, mission accomplished. Next it was out into the still lovely morning to be stood up by an over-full bus. Flush with the hope I have been trying not feel for months for fear believing again in the possibility a presidential election could go the right way was like believing my abuser had really changed this time I set out on foot for the subway. What the heck? The day was warm, the sun bright, the sky clear blue and every tree a riot of Van Goh dealt chromatic celebration. The world was beautiful and for the first time in a long time it was possible that the future might be too.

...

2008-10-25T02:18:00.002-04:00

There is a wistfulness that transcends the onset of mania.
It is redolent with nostalgia and heady with the scents
Of what could not have and will not be.
Abstract in its aspect temporarily alien as a construct
It fails, perhaps productively, to manifest as regret.
There are paths we all must travel that weave and twine
Producing crossroads in the most inexplicable places,
But seldom, if ever, do they manage to arrive
At a common or synergistic destination.

drinkin' 'n' scrawlin'

2008-10-18T12:30:00.001-04:00

-
I lost my heart
And I lost my mind
Lost my sight
And I was blind
To everything
Reality could show.
Lost my place
And couldn’t see
I was barking
Up the wrong tree
And had chosen
The wrong road home.

And against all odds I continue to get the best email

2008-10-17T14:27:00.002-04:00

---------------------------
Subject: The gayest thing printed in a sports column
From: the leeward side of England
To: various people whose brains I enjoy hurting… mostly in revenge

"Not that I don't feel like I'm part of the team, but when you get that nice celebration coming in the dugout and you're getting your ass hammered by guys, there's no better feeling than to have that done."

from:http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20081014_Just_A_Win_Away.html

I love sports
---------------------------

Me too.

a touch of drunken scrawl

2008-09-23T15:33:00.000-04:00

-
Stepping into the alley
Parting the cigarette haze
The air is redolent
With the scent of the sea
And suddenly Boston
Is Provincetown
A quiet bar
A full juke box
A glass of bourbon
And the night is full of chance
If not possibility.

Maybe Oprah should tape a show on Alzheimer's in Florida

2008-09-18T10:50:00.003-04:00

I recently read in a local newspaper that there is some great kerfuffle over Oprah Winfrey’s refusal to have Sarah Palin on her television show. Now I can’t really give a rat’s ass about this nonsense… although I suppose if I did happen to come into possession of a rat’s ass I would happily give it to Mrs. Palin wrapped in a bright blue box from Tiffany the tag affixed spelling out in delicate script “To Mommy Dearest”. However that is neither here nor there.

What struck me was this quote from the Miami Herald’s conversation with Linda Ivell, champion of the NO O boycott and president of The Florida Federation of Republican Women, "We are deeply disappointed in Ms. Winfrey's decision to sit out the greatest political moment in the history of women since suffrage."

WHAT?

Could she be that excited by the first gun-toting, rape victim loathing, Alaskan secessionist female candidate for the nation’s number two seat? I have to ask because this as a way of giving Ms. Ivell the benefit of the doubt. I would hate to think that she had succumbed to the convenient periodic dementia endemic to her party and forgotten that just a scant eleven months shy of a quarter century ago the United States of America saw the first major party nomination of a woman for the Vice Presidency. If Ms. Ivell is such an ardent feminist I’m sure that she must recall with great pride the announcement of Geraldine Ferraro as the Democratic candidate for Vice President back in 1984. I’m sure that she strode to the polling place that November with head held high and voted Mondale/Ferraro not Reagan/Bush. Because she believes above all else in progress for women, just like Oprah.

Charles Stross’s website hates me

2008-09-16T17:04:00.004-04:00

-
Wandering the theoretical if not downright imaginary corridors of the internet this late afternoon I found myself at Charles Stross’s personal website. This is not a terribly unusual sort of happening in and of itself, however as my gaze tracked down the screen it came to rest upon something sitting there so unassumingly at the bottom of the bullet point list as to be easily overlooked. Something that shocked and delighted me. A link labeled simply “Bug me by email”.

One click and before me boldly titled “Send mail to Charlie Stross” was a simple form (rendered in rather dreadful Easter egg colors) a form for submitting email directly to Charles Stross. It requested the sender’s email address, the subject and the message text. Of course I had to send him something. I was here wasn’t I? It was only polite… because as we all know I am NOT a stalker.

So this is what I wrote.
______________________________________________
Subject: In joyful remembrance of the terrible lurking unknown

Dear Mr. Stross,

Stumbling upon your web site today I feel compelled to take this random opportunity to thank you personally for your participation in the H. P. Lovecraft panel at Denvention 3 this past month. It was one of the most memorable moments of my convention experience… and not just because I happened to be sober when it occurred.

Many thanks.

Be well.

The Urban Elf
___________________________________________

Then I smilingly clicked upon the “Submit Query” button and I was suddenly smiling no more as I was confronted by this…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bogus content
Due to comment spam received in the past couple of days, this script has implemented spam checking. You appear to be using a spamming tool or attempting a buffer overrun attack. This mail has not been sent. Please accept my apologies if you are indeed a legitimate user.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It would appear that Mr. Stross is skipping hand in hand with the zeitgeist of the Cthulian mythos. Setting pastel painted electronic traps bent on the inducement of insanity in those who would wander into certain seemingly harmless quadrants of the internet. Clever. Very clever. And eeeeeeeee-vil. No wonder he was so good on that panel.

A brief reflection upon meeting the Emerald City envoys a mile in the sky

2008-09-12T13:06:00.001-04:00

Look into his eyes
And you will find
It’s not like the story
Is spoken
Though the tin man seeks
Something he lacks
His heart is not missing
It’s broken

In this hot political season I'm still getting the best email

2008-08-31T01:19:00.002-04:00

This just in from our SoCal correspondent reporting on the Republican VP choice.
_________________________________
This woman is Lucifer's right hand man, she's an ANGRY OIL WHORE! Yes, I said it "OIL F@#$!! WHORE!"
She also supports shooting wolves from airplanes (good sporting fun!)
It doesn't bother her to allow for poisonous mining and killing off the salmon population, either!
She makes Darth Cheney look like Cinderella.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/51169.html

I urge everyone to support the National Resources Defense Council and stop this HORROR! http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/ you can click on the link to tell your congress person.

calmly yours & with much Peace and Love,

Your L.A. Connection

btw - Does anyone think it would be too unkind of me, to wish a successful, inadvertent Bear mauling upon her...???
Would that be too ironic, too dark comedy, anyone??? (and why do I suddenly feel like Stewie Griffin, from Family Guy?). :P
__________________

I love it when people do my ranting for me. - The Urban Elf

ahem

2008-07-31T02:07:00.002-04:00

----
I give you fetish poetry inspired by The Plain White T's.

Swept away like Ganymede
To fulfill his always growing need
To luxuriate in daddy love
All else I was far above
With him is were I did belong
Until the chorus ends the song
And I fall back like Lucifer
A fallen star that angels curse
The sole thing that is left to me
Is the pungent memory
Of how I served him selflessly
And how he called me tenderly
His beautiful and hungry joy
His ever faithful special boy
And that’s the place I always go
When darkness comes and I’m alone
Into a space safe and confined
Where I am his more than I'm mine
That sacred secret memory
Of what his strong arms meant to me
And how the world has grown so cold
Since he ruled I’d grown too old

a note to Congress

2008-07-29T11:05:00.003-04:00

Dear Check and/or Balance,

If no one is held accountable the crimes of the Bush administration will not just go away with the departing President. They will instead lie festering within our history until they are eventually used as precedent to justify the overreaching and possibly even more contemptuous actions of another power hungry administration. Please, do not pass this time bomb of corruption and potential despotism to our children and grandchildren. They will already have their hands more than full with the ravaged environment, crumbling infrastructure and enormous debt we have arranged to leave them. So stand up. Grow a spine. Put on your big people pants and your outside voice. Do it for the children.

Thank you and have a nice day.

songwriting?

2008-07-14T02:33:00.003-04:00

Since You Left Me

Looking ‘round the bar I see
No one left that appeals to me
I’ve played this game before
Maybe I’ll play it ever ever more
Nothing left
Left for me to do
But go to bed and never dream of you
This is what my life seems to be
Since you left me
So I’m drunk and I can’t drive
But I’m feeling happy that I’m alive
And that’s what God made taxies for

Did you think I’d die ‘cause you were gone?
Well you were wrong
You were so wrong
I’m going places you can’t see
Since you left me

I’ve cleaned the house
And moved on out
Getting rid of all the stuff
You couldn’t bother to take
What was I supposed to make
A shrine of what you left behind?
What goes through your mind?
That guy may not be cute as you
But I bet I’d never have to do
Half the crap you always asked me to
My vision's doubled
But I see fine

Did you think I’d die ‘cause you were gone?
Well you were wrong
You were so wrong
I’m going places you can’t see
Since you left me.

This one has his degree
From someplace smothered in ivy
That one has a package bigger
Than UPS can deliver
Oh, and there’s the other guy
With the soulful soulful eyes
Who sings Barry White at karaoke
Not to mention the young one there
Who likes to run
His fingers through my hair
Or the bartender with the dangerous smile
I could make him happy for a while

Did you think I’d die ‘cause you were gone?
Well you were wrong
You were so wrong
I’m going places you can’t see
Since you left me

You make me laugh instead of cry
I’m so much better than your current guy
And the public agrees with me
What were you thinking
When you left me?

Did you think I’d die ‘cause you were gone?
Well you were wrong
You were so wrong
I’m going places you can’t see
Since you left me.
Since you left me
Since you left me
Not my fault
Since you left me

standing in the book corner

2008-07-09T11:36:00.001-04:00

My gallivanting housemates recently returned from their latest jaunt – apparently a self designed hodgepodge of couples therapy, explosives training and irresponsible forestry techniques set in the rustic majesty of the mountainous southwest – with among other things a copy of the new David Sedaris book. The other night before turning out the light I read two of the shorter essays. OK, honest to God laugh out loud kind of stuff. Not just internet-ese LOL but drop the book to my lap, cover my face and cackle kind of funny. Sometimes I think it would be fun to be David Sedaris all whimsically maladjusted, overflowing with analyst’s couch eloquence and queer in a way so multi-faceted and complex that mere homosexuality is only its most obvious and comfortingly banal face. Then I realize, no, I have enough trouble with my own neuroses. I don't need to evolve out of my quiet little niche in the mostly functional amateur-medicated food chain and into the leviathan status of the psychosa regina majora. Then I think, after much reasoned consideration, it would be far more practical and much more fun to stalk him. Then I realize that such an endeavor would involve multiple airports, learning to speak French with a German accent to avoid raising suspicion, and a high likelihood of restraining orders being issued against me by any number of National Public Radio personalities. At this point I just shelve the whole thing and try to divert myself with considerations of configurations and construction methods for found object birdbaths or whether one can finance a cemetery plot.

"Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. "

2008-06-23T12:45:00.002-04:00

****

George Carlin has died. This was the first thing I heard as my alarm clock broke the morning silence with radio news. I know many have already posted on this so I’m not going to go on at length. Oddly enough I’m still a little dazed. George Carlin has made me laugh, made me think, since my early adolescence. Carlin’s humor was one of the first things I shared with the younger and seemingly hipper adults in my life and that leveling of the generational landscape informed the development of my own sense of humor. It is strange to know that he is no longer out there in the broader world stirring up much needed trouble, taking authority to task, helping us laugh at ourselves. I can only hope that he will attain some sort of secular afterlife, that though he is gone his work will continue to live and to inspire others to look more closely at the world around them; see the folly, illogic, hypocrisy inherent in our culture and language and outraged, bemused or confounded, rant about it just a little bit.

George Carlin
1937 – 2008
“Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.” – G. Carlin

A is for apple

2008-06-14T01:10:00.002-04:00

Just got the time to watch the season premiere if Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List on the DVR.

Seems she is… or was… dating Steve Wozniak. Woz (unlike the other Steve of Apple fame who is over-busy trying to be either the A-list Ron Popeil or the L. Ron Hubbard of compu-gadgets {is there a difference?}) was so damn cute. Not in an oh-my-god-I-could-eat-you-with-a-spoon kind of way, but in that way that all of us who feel an attraction to nerdy geeky guys know and adore. He’s sweet, smart, cuddly, a little socially and culturally clueless… and filthy effin’ rich!

If that’s life on the D-list, honey, downgrade my ticket and make it a one-way!

Can I get an “AMEN”?

It is Friday... right?

2008-06-06T10:59:00.005-04:00

I made it to work despite stackable packets of drama. First I was stopped on my way out the door by one of the plumbers from next door asking me to move my world traveling housemate’s car so that they could get their rolling warehouse of a truck out of the shared driveway. This required a trip back upstairs for the key and an unnecessarily elaborate job of parallel parking in the only available space that did not require driving around the block. I wonder how well this thing was actually going to roll seeing as if recollection serves it has at least one flat tire if not more. That’s their problem I suppose, but they had better not backed over the garden or they will have a real problem.

All of this was most likely moot in the grander scheme of things since I arrived at the bus stop to find ten or so anxious and aggravated people waiting for the bus. There were a dozen of us by the time the twin pair of 66 busses finally arrived. I suspect that had I proceeded directly to the bus stop eschewing the opportunity for un-caffeinated parking Jenga I still would have ended up boarding the same bus.

The bus brought me into Harvard Square and due to the ongoing construction dropped me and my fellow passengers a block or more from the nearest T station entrance… in the rain. An inbound red line train showed up rather promptly. I got on the exact car at the exact door that would line me up with the exit from the platform at my destination… riiiiiight. I looked down and spotted some sort of wee canine which was obviously the result of some terribly ill-advised but nonetheless expensive parental pairing. Owing to my allergies and erring on the side of caution I quickly hopped off and dashed into the adjacent car. No dogs, no crazies and at the next stop I even got a seat… this soon revealed itself to be only a reason for false hope. We bogged down in the tunnels several times. Apparently a delayed train somewhere ahead had caused a back-up cascading delays back up the line. By the time we pulled into Downtown Crossing they had closed the gate to the escalator that is opened at rush hour to prevent a terrific bottleneck at the single-file one-way turnstile gate. The only upside to this was the tacky woman trying to navigate the revolving bars of steel with her stupid little accessory dog on a string in tow, hastened by the very real threat that the swelling crowd would only pause so long before forcing the issue and employing the gate upon her person in the manner of a blunt and brutal Cuisinart. Obstacle removed; one by one we filed through the gate and ascended the escalator to step out into the now much more aggressive wind and rain. By the time this little adventure had wound itself to a close I arrived at my destination, my place of necessary yet tiresome employment, a half an hour late.

To quote the Diva Bayless, "Thank Judy It’s Friday!"

...and as ever, I get the best e-mail

2008-05-12T20:27:00.002-04:00

This just in from L.A.
_______________

Oh, it's all drama.. and i don't just mean "She"...There was the writers strike and now the SAG walk out thing is dragging on and nobody's working, but everyone's trying to make deals and be seen... and John Mayer won't go away... *sigh*

This may be crap, but I'm drunk and it's past 5 AM

2008-05-04T05:14:00.003-04:00

Where is the ocean
For this dandelion
Drowning in his own wine?

What am I seeing
In the haze of this moment
The inevitable wreck of my day?

Is there someone to believe in
A hero to wait for
Or an innocent to save?

Now as the others
Fall fast into sleep
What is it that I am to do?

Here in the dark
Hating everything I’ve been
What am I to be?

Love has never loved me
Like the others
But why?

I break open on her altar
My own best sacrifice
Why is it never enough?

Isn’t it so simple
The single thing I want
Just to be in love?

Easter Morn'

2008-03-23T12:26:00.003-04:00

The Easter Bunny came to my house. Well, it may not have been Peter Cottontail exactly; I suspect it was his cousin Penelope. Peter has had to expand the organization these past few years. In the twenty-first century this gentle enterprise has become far more than one bunny can handle. No longer a simple matter of hopping from house to house in the wee hours, no, now there’s a gauntlet to be run, and that eats up valuable time. What kind of gauntlet? Well, with the all those Right-wing Christians taking pot-shots at him with their unregistered rifles any time he tries to cross a meadow or field all the while crying for his hide as if he were the titular head of the vast pagan uprising, and the PETA folks lurking behind every bush along the Bunny Trail with their injunctions and subpoenas and buckets of red paint screaming bloody murder, calling for him to be dragged off to The Hague to face charges as the Uncle Tom and international kingpin of unfair animal labor practices. Not to mention all the spoiled rich kids hopped up on a week’s worth of one skipped dose a day of “normal-making” pills leaving him carrots they’ve cleverly hollowed out and filled with their parents’ favorite prescriptions hoping to stalk and capture the long-eared legend and display him proudly to their peers in some HGTV dream sweatshop their parents have commissioned just to shut them up since everybody has everything they have but NOBODY has the actual Easter Bunny. You see why poor Peter needs reinforcements. I’m just glad that one of his vast and loyal operation made it to my house this year, and that whichever one it was brought jelly beans.

The Dungeon Master Has Departed, But The Game Goes On

2008-03-05T10:07:00.004-05:00

Gary Gygax did not eradicate cancer. He did not bring peace to the Middle East nor did he stop global warming, but neither has anyone else last time I checked and there are legions of people around the globe whose lives would have been emptier without him. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons the role-playing game that began it all, a legacy that now encompasses any number of tabletop gaming systems, video/computer games, films, television shows and conventions spawned, inspired or influenced by the characters, rules and even players of that original game.

It may seem trivial to those who are not gamers to see this as a historic contribution, but for some of us life without Gary, D&D and its progeny would have been unimaginably different. Dungeons and Dragons was my second game. I cut my teeth on Traveller, part of the RPG diaspora and like its fellows owing an ancestral nod to Gygax and Arneson. Role-playing gave me back as an adult what had helped me survive my childhood; not only a needed escape but a socially interactive outlet for my fertile imagination. As I matured and my playing style evolved I discovered more facets to my favorite hobby. Gaming has allowed me to become a writer of sorts and an actor for very small audiences. It has taught me improvisation. It has helped me through inhabiting and interacting with characters possessing motivations and facing dilemmas vastly different from my own to have deeper empathy and better see things from someone else’s perspective. For the benefit of those of you who have played with me or simply know me I admit empathy does not always equal sympathy. Sometimes despite my lofty aspirations to deep method acting it was just good to blow off steam from a hateful day at work by gleefully slaughtering monsters in lieu of my coworkers. Thanks to Gary and many others in the gaming industry I have been lucky enough to imagine what it might be like to be a starfaring assassin, a duplicitous wizard, a wealthy dabbler in crime fighting, a single mother, a psychic shopkeeper from Salem, a psychiatrist, a Toltec god, a depressive horror illustrator enlisted by the FBI, an Irish super hero and a thirteen year-old mutant foster child. I have enjoyed the company of fantastical creatures and people both brilliant and bizarre, from opera divas, Estonian truck drivers, vampire diplomats, space traveling gold-diggers and greebly-poking clerics to a sheep loving Elf prince and the freak prince of folk. Yes, at 41 years of age I am still playing and hope to as long as I can gather a few of my fellow geeks around me for a night of beer, dice, melodrama and mayhem. These are my friends; this is what we do, and we found each other in whole or in part due to the legacy of a man named Gary Gygax.

E. Gary Gygax

July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008

Thank you, sir, for everything.

2008-03-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

You have your responsibilities
And I have mine.
Friends and family
Definitions that blur with time.
Will you ever have that license?
Will I always have this patience?
No answers evidence
We are blinded by our present tense.

a country song

2008-02-21T01:20:00.001-05:00

Am I the one who hit the lever
That kicked us into overdrive?
Am I the one who made you think
This was the reason to be alive?
Am I the one who made you think
All of your dreams had come true?
If I did I surely need to say
I’m sorry to do that to you.

I am a troubled soul
That walks a crooked road.
I am a crazy man alone on a hill
Watching history unfold.

It’s too soon to say I love you.
It’s too soon to say I do.
It’s too soon to talk of babies.
There are too many maybes
For me to sort through.

Did I create a place
Where you felt safe and warm?
Did I convince you you were truly
Sheltered from harm?
Did I open up so much
You thought that you had got in?
Then I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I did it again.

It’s too soon to say I love you.
It’s too soon to say I do.
It’s too soon to talk of babies
There are too many maybes
For me to sort through.

So walk away if you can.
I won’t say I want you to go.
You could better spend your time
But please, baby, know
That it’s not that I don’t want to
And it’s not that I don’t care.
You’ve just got to see
That the truth of me
Is like life
Wholly unfair.

It’s too soon to say I love you.
It’s too soon to say I do.
It’s too soon to talk of babies
There are too many maybes
For me to sort through.

That doesn’t mean I won’t
And that doesn’t mean I don’t
And that doesn’t mean
You couldn’t break
My heart in two, but…

It’s too soon to say I love you.
It’s too soon to say I do.
It’s too soon to talk of babies
There are too many maybes
For me to sort through.
Oh, so many maybes
For me to sort through.
I’m crazy, baby
With all the maybes
I’m trying to sort through.

2008-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

crystalline sparkle
eiderdown mimicked by ice
the wonder of snow

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Considering Cheney Impeachment Hearings

2008-02-12T10:19:00.000-05:00

Every administration sets a historical precedent for the administrations that follow. If the criminal actions of the Vice President are not formally examined and rebuked by the Congress then those same actions will stand waiting in the shadows as these days too become history. The inherent danger is that they become the history of a time when the fact that no official steps were taken to stem, prevent or rebuff these actions can be touted as historical precedent allowing them to be taken again. We owe it to America’s future to see that we do all that we can to prevent such a possibility. We owe it to the future to undo what little we can of the damage we have already allowed to be inflicted upon The Constitution.

Please email Chairman John Conyers and other members of the House Judiciary Committee and encourage them to proceed.

Blood Sucking Mercenary Bastards Must Die

2008-02-01T15:48:00.000-05:00

KILL!
Checking a seldom used email account I realized I had missed the renewal for robdamnit.com. When I went to re-register it I discovered it had been bought by a resale company. The domain robdamnit.com cost me under $10 a year...

THESE FUCKERS WANT $200 TO SELL ME MY DOMAIN BACK!

I have since purchased robdamnit.net for two years at a cost of about $19.00, but the amount of work this is going to cause is huge. Not only dealing with the web site itself, the links and headers on LJ and BlogSpot, but all the images and products in my Cafe Press store need new or ammended images.

And thus... the killing shall begin.

Be My Number Two

2008-01-30T11:13:00.000-05:00

The Democratic Presidential Primary is now finally under way after a year of needless posturing that left many voters bored and bitter well before the first polls opened. Yet now, less than a week before “Super Tuesday” when Democratic voters will at last have a chance to impact the decision making process in real numbers and with delegates that will truly count a rumor is circulating in the news media that John Edwards is backing out of the race. This would leave only two major candidates from which to choose when voters in 22 states walk into the booth next week. If Mr. Edwards is indeed declining the field at this early stage of the actual selection process I must ask why? By removing himself from the debate he sacrifices a key opportunity to keep some of the issues with which he is particularly identified alive and active in that debate. He may not foresee winning, but his poll numbers in the upcoming electoral-palooza would be a significant indicator of how important some of his old school blue-collared liberalism stances are to the party at large and bolster their chances of inclusion in the platform eventually hammered out come convention time. In the face of this I can’t help but wonder… Is he trying to force the two horse race of Hillary and Barack to become a bitter game of Rock’em Sock’em Robots in an attempt to so alienate them from each other in the public eye that neither as eventual winner can believably ask the other to take the second chair on the ticket in November leaving the grinning former senator as the only logical choice for Vice President?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Down the Rabbit Hole - a pop song

2008-01-28T13:09:00.000-05:00

In response to a recent plea for absurdist carrying-on I dashed this off. Kind of a Train on the lawn with cubic zirconia thing.

Down the Rabbit Hole - a pop song

She danced like a tree with stars in its hair
Spun around `til she wasn't there
Unlashed myself from the old May pole
And followed down the rabbit hole
Found a place where I could see
Jackals smoking carrot greens
Suddenly it occured to me
Why kobolds only drink ice tea
And nothing there reminded me
Of cremation or of alchemy
This is how it had to be
You see
You see

Crisco streaks across the sky
Pilot whales spit in my eye
Fear is why I used to lie
I used to lie I used to lie

He sang a song like badgers crying
I thought my body paint was drying
But then I heard it wasn't so
My snow cone was still well aglow
And no one let the sun go cold
Though paper plates had now grown old
And roosters proved to be too shallow
Though microchips still are hallowed
The fundamental trick they show
Only down the rabbit hole
This is how it had to be
You see
Are you me

Crisco streaks across the sky
Pilot whales spit in my eye
Fear is why I used to lie
I used to lie I used to lie
Grease me up into the sky
Pretty please spit in my eye
Fear is why I used to lie
I used to lie I used to lie
Crisco streaks across the sky
Pilot whales spit in my eye
Fear is why I used to lie
I used to lie I used to lie

A Tale from Arisia '08 or Siren Drags Pirate Onto Rocks - film at eleven

2008-01-22T16:10:00.001-05:00

Where to begin? That’s one of the problems with doing a “How I Spent My Con” wrap-up, especially for Arisia, so much happens and then by the time you’ve survived it all you find yourself tired muddled and most unfortunately sober. Here is the first of a few of my memorable moments and themes… some good, some not so good, some nearly traumatizing.

Skank, Frank and Infamy

We, the Tea Party, the Giant Squid Party and the harborers of the Intercon Party were in suite 832 (pirate flags, white x-mas lights and space field banner) our next door neighbors were the Skank Party… League of Extraordinary Skanks this year I believe. I had not yet realized this when early on Saturday I found myself in the elevator standing next to the mythically hot bartender of many a Skank Party sporting a badge which read “McLovin” (Ah… if only. I know this is a Superbad reference, but I couldn’t help but briefly imagine hot greasy drive-thru sex complete with special sauce… now that’s my kind of Happy Meal.) but I digress, as soon as the gentleman in question stepped off the elevator I resumed breathing and smacked my friend in the arm. “That was him. That was the hot bartender!” I hoarsely whispered. In return I received one of those looks reserved for earnest ten year-old anime fans, Delta Dawn or perhaps Charlotte from Sex in the City. Little did I know this was foreshadowing.

That evening, in the sprayed-on jeans, chest hair ahoy, leather boots vest and gauntlets all arranged into some semblance of a hoochie pirate costume, I took advantage of the redundancy of hosts at our party and went off to check out the competition starting with the neighbors. Gaining entrance this year did not require toe touches and package adjustment as it had the previous year. This time I was waved right in. As usual the music was good and I danced a bit, but vanity and fashion of the prior evening had taken a toll (“Didi, can you pleeeeeeeeze meet me on the 4th floor with my cane?”) only nearly forgotten thanks to the Hollywood helpmate of liquor and pills. Since I was already liquored up and the local delicacy was not in evidence at that juncture it was time to sample another soiree.

Miss D, Rabbi Ben Wahburn and I went roaming, but after not too long drifted back to base. Along the way we ha stopped into the Smokers’ Lounge and I promised to take over from Becky (Minion Prime) for an hour or so at midnight so that she could party hop. Rational in this case: She has authority to close at midnight, anything that the people get beyond that is gravy. I had hoped to run into Pete (Evil) so that he could sign off on my earlier hours in the lounge, but he was not in evidence. At 1:15 I closed and returned to the madness of Homosexuality vs Giant Squid. I found there was still much laughter and chaos in 832. Stepping back out into the hallway I spotted Pete (Evil) chatting with the Skank Party’s siren/gatekeepers. When he finished the first part of the tale of his first Skank Party (it is always a memorable thing) I began to tell mine.

“WAIT! You’re Robdamnit??? You’re the blogger who wrote about Frank! Oh my god! This is the guy! You were writing about the hot bartender and I thought you meant me and then about halfway through you mentioned the hat and I went ‘Wait a minute, he’s talking about FRANK!’ Come inside, come inside!” Or something to that effect.

I was summarily dragged inside the party by the exclaiming, tall stunning corseted blonde (kindling a great deal of envy among the male witnesses and feeding me an extra dose Arisia’s special blend of sexual irony) and dragging me before… Frank, who had now returned to his place behind the bar. Neither one of us was thrilled. Although I have to admit that I found the whole thing rather amusing if uncomfortable, and between the whiskey and the small thrill at my niche internet fame I was certainly taking it better than himself. Who managed mostly not to scowl at his drunken and now giddy assemblage of comrades who thought this was the funniest thing since they put nipples on Batman. The running theory was that Frank had died and gone to hell and Lucifer in typical fashion had outsourced his management responsibilities to Frank’s gay friend Mr. McFeelyhands. Since the bartender now wore the expression of a deer in the headlights plotting its bloody revenge on the entire auto industry the drinks temporarily stopped flowing. As I had by this point drained the last of my Irish Xanax I laughed and nodded my way out and then dashed back to my bottle.

It is only fair to mention that the blonde siren stopped by our room Monday morning as we were all awaiting the promised baggage carts that had suddenly become as rare and elusive as gay midget porn and unnecessarily apologized to me. It was all in good fun… at least as far as I’m concerned… Frank may have a different opinion.

Standing count at this point in the con: 0 for 2 Both mentioned above and both historically established technical shut-outs. I may tell you about the third loss of the series in a follow-up post. I may not.

edited and reposted from lj

Massive aerial dispersion of Dihydrogen Monoxide crystals paralyzes east coast city

2007-12-13T19:22:00.000-05:00

Panic in the streets. Terrorism suspected.

This just in!

I get the best email.

2007-11-27T15:40:00.000-05:00

excerpted from a recent message:

"After the vegetarians took their teenagers home we all played Homosexuality vs. Giant squid."

Further excavations in scrawl

2007-11-17T18:01:00.000-05:00

Another one from the files... I like it, but feel it needs more work.

_________________________________________
Talk to me past midnight
In the sweltering air
‘Til we’re nursing our last beer.
Hold me in your gaze
Until our last damn cigarette.
Never closer than this
And too often further apart
I can sometimes comfort myself
With that smallest piece of your heart.
The music tells us a story
Of people who will never be
But for those moments
When play-acting
Might blurt out a truth.
I’ve fought too long in this war
To believe this a battle I can win.
You have your prize and your future
Both eager to begin.
I have a new world before me.
That doesn’t wash the bitter
From any possible sweet,
And I’m hungry to sweat some sugar.
So talk to me in these stolen hours
In the sultry air
‘Til staring at empty bottles
We’ve run out of hours
And all plausible excuses.

scrawl out of time

2007-11-13T18:24:00.000-05:00

Recently I have been fumbling through sketch pads and notebooks looking for any number of things that I should have properly filed for future reference. This of course means that it takes me forever to actually find (if I'm lucky) the thing for which I am hunting. The consolation prize is that I find along the way scribblings and bits that never made the transition from paper to ether.

I recently stumbled across this. It is undated, but I suspect it spilled across paper back in June of this year.
________________________________________________

Adam cries for a love
And a life that make sense
While anesthetic poisons
Flow through my brain
And back again
And I’m wondering where I am.

So much reaching
And so little grasped,
Held, pulled in tight
To my beating heart
And heaving chest
That bears too much
For too little cushion
Or flaunts some other flaw.

Cigarettes and scribbling
And poetry recorded elsewhere
Cannot fill
The hungry space they leave
The boys and men
Who find me but fail to
Find me worthy of pursuit,
Offerings on their altars
Kindly or not so disregarded
Despite their fostering
Of my attentions.

So here in the streetlight
Past last call and cab ride
And stumbled stairs
I listen to his pained questions
From the box with its lone red eye
And wonder how anyone
Thinks that it‘s different
For girls or guys who like
Either or both.

It’s empty,
I think,
Of reason or sense
No matter who you are
Or where your heart
Or hormones lead you.
People are confounding
And everybody is wanting
And needing
But never what is offered,
And seldom
What they pretend to seek.

continually getting the best email

2007-09-28T14:49:00.000-04:00

The following is an indicative snippet plucked from a message I received just today from a fabulous public persona and jewelry designer of my acquaintance who must remain anonymous for fear of tipping off the feral and ever-frothing paparazzi.

"We have a copy of one of the $20 tickets in our front window with a sign that reads “on sale now”. Someone ask me “If the $20 tickets are on sale, how much are they?” I thought to myself “Judy, don’t drop a house on her, she doesn’t know any better”. I will tell you about the woman who eats bibles on Monday."

I simply cannot wait until Monday!

3 Strikes

2007-09-12T15:05:00.000-04:00

The wind tugs at my hair, billows my clothes and pulls my eyes upward to the black expanse beyond the electric halo hovering above this maze of wire and concrete. Inside me an adolescent stirs and wrestles against his bindings, longing even demanding to spread his new grown wings.

How is it he landed here so far from his home and haven? His heart cries out for Andie and Whisper, Molly, Kyle and the colonel.

He has work to do. Power brings responsibility and he has a mission to fulfill outside and away from the team. If only I could let him loose. Let his sharp eyes behold this magical city from atop the ocean winds that caress and castigate this beautiful and notorious place. If only I could let him fly like I am just beginning to realize I can.

Fear not the pursuit of Justice but the Tyranny that Apathy feeds.

2007-07-27T14:12:00.000-04:00

We as a nation have already survived the trivialization of the impeachment process as it became the final act of a politically motivated taxpayer funded witch-hunt. We can well survive the employment of this grave process for the purpose for which it was intended... to protect the people and the Constitution of the United States of America from those who would abuse the power and position of their high office and betray both their oath of office and the sacred trust therein. The Legislative branch was provided this power for a reason and fails in its Constitutional duty if it fails to invoke it now when true criminality is so evident.

lost and found scrawl

2007-07-27T10:55:00.000-04:00

I am cleaning out my desk today. In the bottom of a drawer I found this... I believe it to be at least two years old.

headless as a baptist
horny as a john
drunk on indiscretion
blind to the coming dawn
prowling like a predator
coy as a femme fatale
swilling a cup of courage
as the beat beat beat bangs on

Will we stand for such an insult to all patriots living and dead?

2007-07-03T09:34:00.000-04:00

This is what I have just faxed to my Congressional Representative.
______________________________________________

On the eve of Independence Day, the commemoration of our nation’s freedom from the tyranny of a power-mad ruler whose government gave no heed to the thoughts and desires of the citizenry, comes word that the President of the United States has delivered a stinging insult to that legacy and to the American people and their justice system. By commuting the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby President Bush has all but admitted to the complicity of the Bush/Cheney administration in the criminal outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame and the obstruction of justice implicit in the ensuing cover-up. If we are to even pretend that this is still a nation ruled by its laws and not the whim and fiat of a cabal of corrupt elites we have no choice but to begin impeachment proceedings. I urge you to co-sponsor Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment, H.Res. 333 and to please add your public voice to the growing chorus calling for justice and accountability.

Please write your Representative. Demand accountability.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A city on a hill

2007-06-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

Today the Massachusetts Legislature took the final vote that would determine whether the rights of a minority, rights granted under the state constitution and confirmed by the courts, should be subjected to mob rule at the ballot box to the end of writing discrimination into the oldest, still functioning written constitution in the world.

Today the Commonwealth of Massachusetts once again raises her head high and points the way that a nation struggling in the darkness of ignorance may find its way to the enlightening horizon and continue evolution into the dream of its own conception.

Today the Massachusetts Legislature defeated the ballot initiative by a vote of 151 to 44. Today in Massachusetts marriage equality and the principle of protection from the tyranny of the majority are secure. If history proves the rule eventually the nation will follow.

I STILL get the best email.

2007-05-16T15:17:00.000-04:00

This urgent plea just in from the left coast...

on another note about tawdry Hollywood would be Blondes, does anyone know yet, if Paris Hilton's soon to be released, autobiographical book about her Prison Folly, Lesbian Bondage-Rough Trade - experience w/ Forward by Hillary Swank, will be released as coloring book???

Well, come on... Fathers' Day is just around the corner.

The Urban Elf

London is not calling

scraps of other people's lives

Late night Green Line musings

ghost whispers

a reluctant manifesto

scrabbling scrawl

echoes of a passing

rain soaked typing

foxy news

the pros of cons

flotsam in the stream of consciousness

questions abound

ad hoc song lyrics brought to you by brain soup and pop country

what began in scrawl

irreverent musings

inspired by changing 3 letters in a one line facebook post

two moments of scrawl

remembering in scrawl

the grizzling of a fanboy

Super Bowl Sunday Scrawl

2 bits of scrawl

Arisia - the seven year itch

Today on VisageTome

the unadulterated yet inebriated truth

scraps of memory

some random scrawl

It has never been easy being... green.

teatime is over - time to remove the gloves

inspiration strikes

Self-referential scrawl

porchlight scrawl

not even scrawl

...and we will all go down together

latest scrawl

No Saving Throw

On Beyond Epiphany

the scrawl continues

angst in five haikus

An open email to the Massachusetts State Senate

Closing day of Worldcon - a lament

on the telephone

liquor lubricated lucidation

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 3

Revelations and reunions on a Cantabrigian night

I continue to get the best email.

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 2

late night mumblings

The Songs of Theo Schaffer - part 1

I Left My Heart

I really honestly do get the best email.

Dodging an arrow

An open email to the powers that be at BART

A thought for 2009

Say no to a Cheney clemency Christmas

Enjoy the festival days!

My nation 'tis of thee...

Tuesday Morning

...

drinkin' 'n' scrawlin'

And against all odds I continue to get the best email

a touch of drunken scrawl

Maybe Oprah should tape a show on Alzheimer's in Florida

Charles Stross’s website hates me

A brief reflection upon meeting the Emerald City envoys a mile in the sky

In this hot political season I'm still getting the best email

*ahem*

a note to Congress

songwriting?

standing in the book corner

"Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. "

A is for apple

It is Friday... right?

...and as ever, I get the best e-mail

This may be crap, but I'm drunk and it's past 5 AM

Easter Morn'

The Dungeon Master Has Departed, But The Game Goes On

a country song

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Considering Cheney Impeachment Hearings

Blood Sucking Mercenary Bastards Must Die

ahem