Happy Halloween!

No trick-or-treaters this year, perhaps because it was pouring rain most of the day today right up until just before sunset.  

Maybe it's because I never get trick-or-treaters.  The first and only time I ever have was last year, when a plucky group of young-teen girls came to the door in a daring adventure to climb up to this pile of bricks on a hill.

Maybe because it's Thursday night, a school night, and for all I know, the "official" night for trick-or-treating is tomorrow, Friday, when the weather's forecast to be much drier (although chillier) than today.

I hope no one shows.  I bought one bag of Pay Day bars and one bag of Butterfingers just in case, but I'm hoping to eat them all.  

Don't want to share with any candy with anyone else.

It's mine, I tell you, mine!

Reflections From the Video Games Desk

I don't recall the last time the Video Games Desk had a chance to post anything, but in order to catch up, it's been a trying year.  

I started the year playing the dreadful Fallout 76 - a boring, repetitious taskmaster of a game that made up for its lack of charm with glitches, bugs, and crashes.  Fortunately, though, that was followed by the immensely satisfying and fun Assassin's Creed Odyssey - a long romp through ancient Greece, both historical and mythological.  

Odyssey took forever to complete and yet at the same time, I never wanted it to be over.  But all things do eventually come to an end and I eventfully completed all of the many main and side quests. By April, I was playing the quiet little indie game, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, and an early Assassin's Creed game, Unity, which was so glitchy that I simply and uncharacteristically quit playing mid-game.  It wasn't worth the headache, and all the NPC's kept calling me "pisspot."

In May, I started another epic-scale game, Metal Gear Solid 5 - The Phantom Pain, about which I still have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it was excellently produced - very detailed and authentic - but on the other hand, it was grim and militaristic, and the missions were all very similar and redundant. By late July, I was only 23% of the way through the game, and once again quit mid-game and started on the very enjoyable Far Cry 5.  I had no desire to play MGS any further and yet keep looking back fondly on some aspects of the game - despite it's many problems, the game somehow managed to get under my skin.

I was finally retired by this time and had all the time in the world to play games, but wasn't sure where to go after Far Cry.  I played my way through the Far Cry and Odyssey DLCs, and also experienced some computer problems that my mind inflated into a near-existential crisis of confidence.  The DLCs weren't nearly as pleasurable as their source games, and even after getting my computer professionally repaired, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the next game I downloaded, wouldn't play on my laptop.  Each year, games get more sophisticated and require more resources, and with Tomb Raider, game requirements finally surpassed my hardware's capabilities.  I consoled myself by joylessly replaying some previous, older games that I knew still worked on my laptop.

Which is all to say that through September and much of October, I wasn't playing games very often, and when I did, it wasn't particularly pleasurable.  

Well, I'm happy to say that all of that changed starting this week.  On Monday, I downloaded the brand-new Outer Worlds game, and it's a blast.  I did some careful research before purchasing to make sure the game was compatible with my system (it was), but was still cautious when I tentatively booted it up Monday evening to see if it would actually work (it did).  My first full-on play session, other than dipping a toe in on Monday night, was yesterday, when I played for some six hours and completed Edgewater, the first major mission.

It was great - good story-telling and not without some self-effacing humor - and reminded me of why I like these games so much.  It looks great on my little, under-powered laptop and plays without glitches or issues.  My only concern is that it's not a long game - some have completed it in as few as 40 hours - and I'm not sure where to go after this.

Anyhow, after the Edgewater mission, I now have my spaceship, The Unreliable, up and running. It's somewhere in outer space right now, so excuse me as I wrap up this post and join my crew on the next mission.. 

"Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?  A few things spring to mind.

 

"Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

 

"Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.  I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

 

"But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

 

"Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

 

"And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

 

"There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

 

"Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

 

"And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

 

"He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

 

"And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.  That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

 

"There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

 

"So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

"This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

 

"He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.  And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?

"If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."

- Nate White, London

A Foggy Morning In Atlanta

Posted by u/kfree_r

I had a meeting downtown this morning for one of my former clients.  Although now retired, I'm still doing a little moonlighting, as it were, so as not to leave some of my loyal clients in a lurch.  This morning, that required me to meet with a client and their counsel at the offices of the Georgia environmental regulators.

I'm not used to getting up in the early morning and going through my former daily routine - shower, coffee, some light breakfast, and then off into rush hour traffic.  It was even more disorienting this morning because a thick layer of fog settled around our fair city, casting everything in a bleary light to match my Monday morning frame of mind.   

There aren't my pictures, but were posted to Reddit by various users today.  Most of the pictures seem to be from some of the new, high-rise lofts and condos built over the last couple of years.  On the ground level, where I live and where I was driving this morning, it all looked a little grayer and blurrier than this.

Posted by u/KlvrDissident

Posted by u/actuallypittsburgh

Posted by u/brkpwl

The Lonesome Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

As much as we hate to see the execution of a sentient human being, al-Baghdadi made a good case for the need of occasionally culling the herd from time to time.  Plus, an ethics question: is it appropriate to kill a person to prevent that person from killing still more people?  I've heard it said that the Buddha once killed a pirate while sailing to Ceylon to stop him from killing the other passengers, but I've only heard that story orally, never in writing, and then only in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.  The story may have been expeditiously made up to Buddhist Americans to justify their support for the U.S. war effort. But it still illustrates the point.

In any event, Barack Obama, the last real American President, oversaw a technically more challenging operation to take out Osama bin Laden (a covert raid into Pakistan) and gave a more Presidential and professional announcement that Trump's bellicose and unhinged rantings this morning ("whimpering like a dog," and "he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying").  And, of course, Trump had to thank Russia for their support (can't miss an opportunity to ingratiate himself to Putin).  

Trump's ego couldn't even resist elevating himself over the intelligence officials who planned the operation that he was trying to praise ("They're very technically brilliant. You know, they use the Internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. But they use the Internet incredibly well").  

As you listen to Trump praise himself for al-Baghadi's death, remember that after bin Laden, Trump didn't think Obama deserved any credit.

Dreaming of the Masters

Here's the new London jazz band Ezra Collective covering Sun Ra's signature tune, Space Is The Place, on their 2017 EP, Juan Pablo: The Philosopher.

Sun Ra would typically close his sets with chants of Space Is the Place.  The band would dance and march while chanting, and often break through the fourth wall of the performance and march off the stage into the audience chanting.  It was not unusual to see them out in the lobby still chanting after the show, or even outdoors on the street after the show.  You half expected them to follow you to your car or the subway - you half expected to see them in your bedroom the next morning still chanting "Space is the place."

Here they are closing out a set in The Hague back in 1979.  At this point, if you've been following this series, you should be able to recognize several of the core members of the Arkestra, including Sun Ra, June Tyson, Marshall Allen, and John Gilmore.

The Lonesome Death - An Interlude

Teddy, sniffing glue (he was 12 years old), fell from the roof on East Two-Nine.  Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug on twenty-six reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukemia - 14 years old, he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine.    

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten so they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan. Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head. Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed. They were two more friends of mine, two more friends that died. 

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room. Bobby hung himself from a cell in The Tombs. Judy jumped in front of a subway train. Eddie got slit in the jugular vein and Eddie, I miss you more than all the others and I salute you, brother. 

Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof. Tony thought that his rage was just some goof but Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchin' proof: "Hey," Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?," but Tony couldn't fly. Tony died.  

Brian got busted on a narco rap. He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers. He said, "Hey, I know it's dangerous but it sure beats Rikers."  But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers.  

They were all my friends and they died. 

- Jim Carroll, 1980

Jim Carroll is the author of The Basketball Diaries, a chronicle of his life as a teenager in 1970s New York City.  The book covers his high school basketball career and his addiction to heroin, which he financed through prostitution in the vicinity of 53rd Street and Third Avenue.  In 1995, The Basketball Diaries was made into a motion picture; Leonardo DiCaprio starred as Carroll. After overcoming his addiction, Carroll moved to California and formed the punk Jim Carroll Band with encouragement from Patti Smith, with whom he once shared an apartment in New York along with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Carroll died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on September 11, 2009 at the age of 60. At the time of his death, he was in ill health due to pneumonia and hepatitis C and was reportedly working at his desk.  His funeral was held at Our Lady of Pompeii Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich Village.

The Lonesome Death of Robert B

Be careful opening a Pandora's box - you never know what will come out, and it's almost impossible to shut it once it's been opened.  

This week I learned a lot of things - good and bad - about my childhood friends.  Some have passed on, some are thriving, and some are somewhere in between.  I learned that Robert B, easily my best friend from the Fourth Grade until at least my sophomore year of High School, passed away after a long career as a well-published professor and genetic researcher.  However, his obit didn't disclose the cause of death. 

Of my group of four friends, Robert was clearly the smartest of us all.  He got perfect, straight-A grades through school, and he encouraged and coached me to try and keep up as best I could.  When he said something, or suggested a solution to some puzzle we were facing, he was almost always right.  You didn't have to question it - it would have been foolish to not accept what he had to say.

Robert was the smartest, and Doug turned out to have been the most successful.  Stephen was the heart and soul of our group and I was, well, we never really know who we are or how we're viewed by others, do we?  The other three all lived close to one another but my home was a good 15-minute walk away, a formidable trek for a schoolboy, so I didn't get to hang out with the gang as much as they did with one another.  So I guess I may have been the "outsider," the frequent absentee of the group.  

Yesterday, I learned through Doug, with whom I've just this week re-established contact after a 40-year hiatus, what the obit didn't state. Robert always had a hidden side to his personality - no matter how well I knew him, it always seemed there were dark corners of his psyche that he didn't share with anyone, even his childhood best friend.  He would become withdrawn and distant at times, appearing to be aloof and unfriendly, and then suddenly "get over it" and be his same old affable self again.  But it was always up to us, his friends, to seek him out and bring him back into the fold following one of his introverted phases.

Robert was clearly a genius but sadly we’ll never know why he was so tortured.   The last time I knew him he was in college working toward his first degree and I was laboring in a series of dead-end, blue-collar jobs.  He was particularly withdrawn and unreachable then, even by his usual standards.  I had heard a rumor, which I never substantiated, that he even had tried to kill himself once around this time, and while it may or may not have been true, it was certainly believable.  To be honest, when I saw his obit, "suicide" was the first thing that crossed my mind.  But he did eventually go on after that and married his high-school sweetheart, and together they raised one son and one daughter. Robert joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in 1987 and settled his family in Amherst.  

But that dark side was still present and eventually resulted in his becoming a serious alcoholic.  I learned from Doug, who had endeavored to stay in touch with him, that it got so bad that his wife eventually told him he had to leave.   He apparently moved in with his mother for a while down on the North Carolina coast, near Myrtle Beach where we had once camped and stalked sea turtles together as teenagers.  From time to time, he would go back north to Amherst to visit his kids.  

It was on one of those trips back home that he died alone in an Amherst hotel room.  Apparently, his liver simply stopped working and he just collapsed.  March 30, 2010.  RIP.

It’s truly  heartbreaking.  A wife and two children couldn't save him from himself and a successful career in science and academia couldn't save him.  His friend Doug couldn't save him, and I hadn't known him at that point for some 35 years (if I ever really knew him at all).

Impermanence truly is swift.  What was here yesterday is now gone today.  As our dew-like life so easily disappears, we should try to do good for others as long as we are still alive.

The Lonesome Death of Dickie Glasscock

"Glasscock" wasn't his real last name.  His actual last name was even more outrageous - it sounded even more fictitious.  He wasn't a Glasscock,  but out of respect for the surviving, I'll use a surrogate here for his actual surname.

Dickie was a bully.  Perhaps with a name like that, he had to fight all the time, but now fighting is all that I remember him for.  I don't recall him having any friends, and he wasn't a member of any gang of bullies to the best of my memory.  He was just a mean-ass kid who would pick fights with anybody and everybody who crossed his path.  I wonder if it was his funny-sounding name that compelled him to fight.  Or if his combative tendency compelled everyone to call him by the cruelest version of "Richard" possible.

Now, for some context, I'm going back to the Third Grade here.  Dickie Glasscock was in my Third Grade class, but everyone avoided him on the playground, because of fights, and you tried not to stand near him waiting for the afternoon school bus for the same reason..  

We were only about eight years old at the time, but Dickie already wore his hair in a high pompadour held up with copious quantities of gel.  Grease - Dickie was a "greaser."  We were all still too young for facial hair at that time, but I'm sure that he grew long sideburns as soon as he was able.  Even back then, he dressed like he was heading to a casting call for Grease, although at the time, the standard for delinquent fashions was still West Side Story. It's hard to imagine him not becoming a chain smoker and frequent drunk.

Yes, Dickie Glasscock terrified eight-year-old me, and I remember him to this day for his aura of menace and for his ridiculous-sounding name.

The other night, while I was Googling the names of my childhood friends, I also went and searched for other names I could remember, and who can forget the name "Dickie Glasscock?"  The name is unique, and I quickly learned that he had joined the Navy and served in Vietnam.  Of course he did - his pugnacious spirit probably couldn't wait to fight overseas, and his only regret was probably that due to his being the same age as me, he couldn't serve until he turned 18 in 1972, as the war was winding down.  But still, he served and he fought.

People change, I get it, and I have no way of knowing what Dickie was actually like after the Third Grade.  All I know is that one of the meanest, most belligerent bullies I have ever known went on to later serve in Vietnam.  But he may have blossomed into a kind and caring family man, he may have taken up literature or music and expressed his deepest thoughts for all to share, he may have been one of the countless Americans working a job, paying a mortgage, and raising a family.  But based on the trajectory he seemed to be on back in '63 and '64, I suspect he may have been a mean, friendless drunk, a 'Nam vet picking fights at the VFW with anyone who looked at him wrong.  I hope I'm wrong about that, but those are my  impressions.

Based on his on-line records, I know that he lived out in Suffolk County on Long Island, so I don't know what he was doing walking of the side of I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida in 1995.  Returning from a vacation when his car broke down?  Walking back to his hotel after an ex-wife kicked him out of her car?  Taking a short cut back from the VFW Hall to wherever he could get another drink?  It could have been anything.  All his on-line obituary notes is that he died in Duval County, Florida in 1995.  

But someone posted a comment to his obit, in all likelihood the most bizarre and confessional comment I'll ever see posted to an obit in this life:

[Mr Glasscock] was killed at the intersection of Interstate 95 and Pecan Park Rd about 9 pm on Thursday the 14th of Sept, 1995. He was walking along the shoulder of the interstate when a heavy rainstorm suddenly broke. He was struck and killed by a hit and run driver. His body was thrown into the roadway and he was struck by several more drivers because their vision was impeded by the sudden heavy downpour. I was one of those drivers who was unable to avoid hitting him, and I was the only driver to stop.

The commenter added, "I did not know [Mr. Glasscock], but I remember him and his family in my prayers regularly."

Let's be clear - eight-year-old me may not have liked eight-year-old Dickie Glasscock (no one did), but no one deserves to die like that and I take no satisfaction or pleasure in the cruel circumstances of his death.  But I also have to note that those events have to be about the most Glasscockian way to die, the Dickiest demise imaginable. Even while dying, he was able to psychologically damage at least one of the drivers who struck him.

Impermanence is swift; life-and-death is the great matter.  Our life is like a dream and time passes swiftly.  Our dew-like life easily disappears.  Since time waits for no one, try to do good for others as long as you are alive.

Personal History

When writing last week's story about the time my father threw a snake at me, I went on line to be sure I had the full and correct title to Roger Conant's A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America.  While on line, I saw that a copy of the book - the cherished Second Edition from my childhood, with the original cover! - was on sale at Amazon for a mere $3.99.  How could I resist?  I went ahead and bought a copy on the spot.

The book arrived yesterday - in great shape for a used book, but sadly without the paper jacket.  But you can't judge a book, as they say, and the contents, including the color plates, the range maps, and the reference to "copious quantities of foul smelling musk," were exactly as I had remembered.

This got me to thinking about the life-defining road trip I took across the USA back in the summer of 1969 with my three best friends, camping in state parks and hunting for reptiles and amphibians, Conant's field guide ever at hand.  I had gone through elementary school, at least Grades 4 through 6, with two of those friends, Robert and Doug, and met the third, a "Stephen," through the other two by Grade 6.  We were best of  friends, inseparable, or so we had thought before the rigors of Junior High schedules and of family relocations (mine) ultimately drew us apart.  But in the Summer of '69, the summer between our 8th and 9th Grades, we were still fast friends with identical interests, which largely consisted of lizards, turtles, and snakes, British Invasion rock 'n' roll bands, science fiction, and a budding awareness of girls.

After we were all assigned to different classes in High School, and then after my family moved out of state, we tried to stay in touch, but as we entered our mid- to late-teens, we found our interests and personalities had diverged and that we no longer had as much in common as we had thought.  We never had an official "falling-out" or any big fight or confrontation or anything, but we just sort of drifted apart - Robert and Doug off to college (Emory and somewhere in the upstate SUNY system, respectively) and Stephen and I to the blue-collar work force (I eventually enrolled at Boston University in '76).

So last night, while leafing through Conant, I got curious and Googled my old friends.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of doing that years ago.  Whatever  happened to my old best friends, and where and who are they now?

I couldn't find much about Stephen, other than a few different addresses all within 25 miles of where we grew up, and a LinkedIn profile identifying him as a "Transportation Specialist" for our home town's public-school system.  Fortunately, I didn't come across an all-too-easily-found obituary for him, either.

It turns out that Robert became a well-published professor of plant genetics at U Mass, Amherst. After Emory, his education and the road to his Ph.D. took him through U Cal Davis,  New Mexico State, Cornell, and Melbourne, Australia.  He has a long list of publications on plant DNA technology with those dense, scholarly titles nearly unfathomable to laypersons.  I had always known he was the smartest of our group of friends, and was glad to see that he had achieved his goal of becoming a for-real, bona fide research scientist.  Sadly, though, I learned much of this through his obituary - he passed away in 2010. The obit didn't disclose the cause of death. 

It turns out that Doug, still very much among the living, became probably the most successful of all of us.  He was always interested in the arts and as I recall, he entered college as a Theater major.  It turns out that somehow, like many creatives, he wound up in advertising and is now a Senior VP and Creative Director for a big-time Manhattan agency.  In 2012, Business Insider listed him among the "37 Creatives Most Lusted After By Rival Agencies," and shortly after being added to the Lust List, in fact got recruited by one of those rival agencies.  It's often cynically said that we secretly resent the success of our friends, but in this case, I am truly happy for him.  I reached out and "friended" him through Facebook, and he accepted my request this morning.  We briefly chatted through Messenger, but there's only so much you can say about a 45-year gap in contact, other than it's great to know each other are still alive and well.  He looks good, toned and healthy, dresses like you'd expect a mid-60s Creative Director living in Brooklyn to dress, and posts almost as many anti-Trump memes as I do.  

Picture four skinny boys wearing t-shirts, shorts, and mocs, chasing after a corn snake in a Carolina pine barren during the summer of '69.  Woodstock was just a few weeks away from happening.  No one had head the name "Manson" yet.  America had just landed a man on the moon.  Picture us running, then freeze that frame and cut to the closing credits.  One of us would go on to become an academic and scholarly researcher of plant DNA, one of us would become the Creative Director of a prestigious NY firm, and somebody has to drive the school buses.  

And one of us became a . . . what?  A "very happy 60-something former Zen Buddhist looking forward to a bright and wonderful future?"  A "recently retired environmental consultant?"  A "blogger who goes to a lot of music shows?" What would be their thumbnail sketch of me?

A Modest Proposal

Let's hold the G-7 meeting at my house, this pile of bricks with an unreliable roof up on a hill.  Sure, the World Leaders will have to share rooms (I only have three bedrooms), but that would increase the camaraderie and force them to all get along better.  Plus, extra bonus, the house next door is empty and for sale, so they could use that space as well.

Anyway, let's make fun of this imbecilic douchebag before he gets impeached and isn't around to kick any more.  Let's beat him like a Doritos-bag pinata!

(Nice to get all that out of my system!)

Not My Pictures

 

Even though I didn't take these pictures, I still want to share some of the photography of the City of Atlanta I've been enjoying on Reddit.  

Nestor blew through this town yesterday and left about 1-2 inches of rain, depending on where in Atlanta you live.  As forecast, the rain started around 8 a.m. on Saturday morning and lasted all day, never letting up until after 10 p.m. and reaching peak intensity between 4 and 6 p.m.

Other than the constant rain, though, there wasn't much wind in this part of the state.  A few trees came down and a few neighborhoods lost power, but fortunately for me, those neighborhoods didn't include mine.  Power stayed on here, the roof held up, and I spent a lazy day indoors watching college football and playing video games.

Here's a few pictures depicting Atlanta's terrible traffic.

The Tenacious C still hasn't fully let go yet, although I'm not nearly as stuffy. I can breathe freely now and sleep through the night, but I'm still a little phlegmy.  Other than some occasional sniffles and clearing of the throat though, I'm okay. 

Here are some nighttime shots of the City.

It's now Sunday evening and the weekend is coming to a close.  I'm looking forward to seeing the premiere of HBO's The Watchmen tonight, and hope the series lives up to the 2009 movie and to producer Damon Lindelof's wildly imaginative previous shows (Lost and The Leftovers), but I'll try to watch with an open mind.

Enjoy your week.

Dreaming of the Masters

The song Space Is The Place was Sun Ra's signature composition and as close to his theme song as anything.  It was also the name of his one and only motion picture.    Filmed in Oakland, California in the early 70s while Sun Ra was teaching a course, The Black Man in the Cosmos, at Berkeley, the film Space Is The Place couldn't have been more a product of its time.  Here's a short segment featuring the song Outer Spaceways Incorporated.

In case you want to hear the song without all of the dialog interruptions, this is from the soundtrack LP:

Uh Oh!

First Impression - Trump was right!  While we were all stuck in the linear thinking of this space-time continuum, Trump was playing precognitive three-dimensional chess with us and trying to warn us in advance that a future storm was going to strike Alabama.  But since all he had access to were primitive, September 2019 NOAA maps, he had to use a Sharpie to try and enlighten us as to the part of Alabama that would be in danger in October of 2019. If only we had listened!

Second Impression - The storm, Tropical Storm Nestor, will track south of Atlanta and the weatherman's saying that the worst impacts (e.g., possible tornadoes) will be on the east side of the track, but we'll still be hit by the rain.  The forecast is for 100% chance of rain here on Saturday from early morning until at least late tomorrow night.  With that much rainfall following a long period of drought, there's a good chance of branches falling from trees and of entire trees coming down, which generally results in power outages.

Third Impression - I stepped away after the Second Impression but now I'm back from the supermarket!  I bought a lot of different no-cooking-required meals in case I do lost power - a couple pre-made deli sandwiches,  a Caesar salad, two fruit salad bowls, cheese, crackers, bagels, bread, peanut butter, bananas, and chips.  Enough to survive on for 24- to 48-hours of blackout conditions, if necessary.

Fourth Impression - I need a new roof.  One of the benefits of the long Georgia drought is that I didn't have to think about it for the past four months, but with the weather patterns changing (we seem to lurch from prolonged droughts to prolonged flooding around here), I may not have the luxury of ignoring the roof much longer.

Fifth Impression - Something like this:

Quarter Life Poetry

This might well be one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen.  Samantha Jayne is a genius.

This tenacious cold of mine (the Tenacious C) is still lingering on but this morning felt like I'm finally starting to turn a corner.  Still some stuffiness, but the headaches and wooziness are subsiding. That, and I was finally able to get some sleep last night.

I might have picked up the Tenacious C when I was out walking on Sunday.  The long summer drought of 2019 has finally abated and it actually rained on Sunday morning, the first time in literally months.  I took my walk in the afternoon, but it was a lot cooler (70s) than it had been for the past several weeks (90s), and I walked through a fine misty drizzle.  I understand how germ theory works and know you don't contract colds solely by wet weather and damp clothes, but the cooler temps and damp clothes may have lowered my resistance to the point where the Tenacious C could overcome my immune system.   

Speaking of weather changes, last night the temperature fell below 45 degrees.  Just last week, temps were in the 80s and the week before that, in the high 90s.  It got cold enough last night that I had to turn on the heat, and usually there's at least a four- to six-week period in Atlanta where you don't need AC or heat.  It's called "autumn,"  when you can finally crack some windows open and let in air that's neither hot and humid nor bitterly cold.  We've gone from having four seasons a year to two - long. hot summers followed immediately by (albeit mild) winters.

Also, what was the point of Tuesday night's Democratic debate?  With 12 candidates up on stage, no one got a chance to say very much and I doubt too many people's opinions were swayed.  You either like Candidate X or you don't.  But providing a forum for some candidate polling at only 1% to get on the same stage and trash-talk the front-runners hurts the front-runners more than it helps the underdog. What about taking just the top three, or maybe 4 or 5, candidates and allowing them a chance at a real debate, an exchange of ideas and policy positions? Wouldn't that be more refreshing than watching a dozen folks each trying to get their own "Instagram moment?"

I need to take a beat and circle back.

Finally, RIP Elijah Cummings.  You're already missed.

Personal History

The eastern king snake (Lampropeltis getula) can grow up to 4 feet long, but the one we saw next to the road back in the late '60s was only about 3 feet.  It was apparently warming itself on the blacktop near the side of the road and, startled by our approaching car, slithered off toward some high grass on the shoulder.

The family and I were driving back from the beach - one of the municipal beaches on the Long Island Sound, not one of the better beaches on the south shore of the Island.  The beaches on the Atlantic side had finer sand, better surf in which to play, and higher, arcuate dunes, but they were a longer drive from our North Shore home, and the beaches on the Sound, while stonier and with a disappointing size to their waves, were much closer.  It was a weekday, and the family and I were returning from an afternoon swim at the nearby beach on the Sound. 

Dad was driving the family car, a green Ford station wagon.  Dad always drove.  As was his want, he was wearing his trademark "Jake hat," one of those short-brimmed, vented hats fly fisherman hook lures into for safe keeping.  Everybody in the family was embarrassed by the hat - it was old, beat-up and grungy - and we called it his "Jake hat" because the Moms thought it made him look like "Jake the garbageman."  The name Jake wasn't as popular then as it is now, so apologies for any offense caused by the stereotype to anyone named Jake.   Also, apologies to garbagemen and all sanitation workers for any affront to a vitally important profession.  

In any event, Dad enjoyed acting the character and took a perverse pleasure in embarrassing the family so he wore the Jake hat every time we went to the beach.  Besides, it covered his bald spot and therefore, in his mind, made him look younger.  Also, don't underestimate how uncomfortable a sunburned scalp can be.  I know all this because I do the same thing now, wearing baseball caps backwards at rock shows and forwards while out hiking on the Tanyard Creek Trail.  

The Moms was in the front seat with Dad, and my two sisters - the girls - were in the back seat with my five-year-old brother, the youngest in the family.  I was about 15 at the time, and as was my preference, I was riding in the back stowage portion of the station wagon, laying on my back watching the branches of trees pass overhead through the side windows.  At this point in my life, I had graduated from childhood fantasies of becoming some sort of Jacques Cousteau marine biologist to an interest in reptiles and amphibians.  I had several terrariums back home filled with snakes and lizards I had captured, and had a fenced turtle pen in the back yard.   In hindsight, I'm amazed by the patience and tolerance of my parents allowing all those reptiles into their home.

I suppose that Dad, driving with his eyes on the road, saw the king snake first.  "Snake!" he called out and pulled the car over.  

I bolted upright within the second.  "Where?" I asked.

"Over there, in the grass by the road sign," Dad told me, and with the car pulled over a few feet away, I rolled down the back window of the wagon and jumped out to capture the snake 

I could see it tightly coiled up by the sign, trying to hide, and immediately recognized the yellow stripes distinctive of the common Eastern king snake, a not only non-venomous snake but a particularly passive and non-aggressive one at that.  I knew this because I had developed a passion for herpetology and had poured all over Roger Conant's Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern North America.  The guidebook was canonical to me and I had memorized the Latin names of at least those species native to Long Island and those I had captured on road trips across the U.S.  I knew how to identify the gender of turtles by the shape of their lower shells (males are slightly indented toward the rear), and knew how to differentiate species and subspecies of lizards and snakes by the number and placement of scales on their heads.  I even knew the names for the scales, the first, second, and third pre- and post-ocular scales, the inter-nasal scales, and the supra- and infra-labial scales above and below the mouth. In short, I was a nerd, but in times like this, my nerdiness was an asset because I could make a near-instantaneous identification of the snake.

Dad was not so sure of my abilities.  "It might be poisonous," he kept warning me, even though I kept reassuring him that it wasn't.

Capturing a snake is relatively easy once you know the trick.  You take a stick (a wooden putter golf club is perfect for the task, but really any stick will do) and pin the snake down just behind the head. Holding the stick in one hand, you use the other to reach from behind the snake (so it doesn't see your hand coming toward it) and grab it right behind the jaws.  Holding it there, it can't turn around and bite you, although it may wriggle and whip around ferociously trying to escape.  Some (I'm looking at you, Natrix water snakes) will even expel "copious quantities of foul-smelling musk" (Conant's description) to try and dissuade you from capturing it. But usually, once you've got it by the neck, that's pretty much all there is to it - you've got a firm grip on the snake and it can't escape or bite you.

So Dad and I came up with a quick plan on how we were going to capture the king snake coiled by the road sign.  With the Moms, the girls and my little brother watching from the car, Dad and I both got sticks. We decided that we would stand on either side of the snake, and that Dad would then use his stick to flip the snake out of the grass toward me, and then I would use my stick to pin it down and capture it.  That was the plan.

I didn't think Dad was afraid of snakes - at least not phobia-level fear.  After all, he let me keep a bunch of them in the house.  But now that I think of it, I never saw him handle any of my snakes, and he never seemed to be around when I had to remove them to clean their tanks.  He was basically a Brooklyn boy - raised in the city where he probably didn't have much first-hand experience with snakes in the wild.  At least not before his herptile-crazed nerd of a son came along and changed all that.  If he actually was afraid of snakes, than all the more credit to him for letting me keep them in the house. At the very least, he had no great affection for snakes but knowing my enthusiasm, there he was on the side of the road trying to catch one with me for some good, old-fashioned father/son bonding.

On this day, he was clearly nervous, standing as far back as possible, as far as his stick could reach, to flip it out of the grass and towards his waiting son..  He was a sight - the Jake hat, the Bermuda shorts wet from the swimming trunks beneath - leaning as far forward as he could with his stick out in front of him.

"Ready?," he called out.

"Yes!"

"On three," he said and then counted, one, two, three.

I don't know how nervous he was or how much adrenaline was pumping through his bloodstream, but on "Three!" he flicked the snake out of the grass so hard that the poor animal temporarily became airborne and flew toward me.  I was bent over, expecting it to be on the ground, but it hit me on the neck.  The force of the impact caused the snake to wrap around my neck - not like a constrictor but the way a piece of rope might if you threw it at a post or something.  The poor snake's head came all the way around me so we were momentarily face to face, and either out of instinct or simply because its jaws were open upon impact, it bit me on the cheek, just below the eye.

Much screaming ensued.  The Moms came out of the car screaming, Dad was screaming something, and I don't recall but I was probably screaming, too.  The girls and my little brother started screaming as well, as it seemed to be the thing to do at that moment. 

I grabbed the snake with both hands and uncoiled it from around my neck and threw it on the ground.  The snake, dazed, just laid there.  What must it have been thinking?  One moment, everything was normal, just coiled in the grass hiding from some curious simians, and then suddenly it was flying through the air, then wrapped around some teenager's neck, and then cruelly thrown to the ground.

But it would only get worse for the poor snake.  Dad, realizing what he had just done, went into full caveman mode - "Must protect family!" - and got a baseball bat out from the station wagon and beat the snake to death, which is probably what he instinctually wanted to have done all along. Adrenaline still pumping, be completely crushed its skull and pounded its head to a pulp, hitting until there could be no doubt that not only was it dead, but that it couldn't still bite, just in case that was something dead snakes could still do.

I was correct - the snake was not venomous.  And a snake bite doesn't really hurt that much.   In the course of my reptile collecting, I'd been bitten plenty of times and was usually bitten at least once each time I had to clean the snake tanks at home. It's not pleasant and it can draw some small beads of blood.  It's not unlike getting scratched by a cat - not an experience one exactly seeks out, but nothing traumatic or life-threatening either. So my shock, such as it was, was more from the unexpected chain of events that culminated in an airborne snake biting me on the face, which was a first - and only - experience for me.   

The Moms insisted that I be taken to the Emergency Room. I still hadn't convinced anyone that the snake wasn't poisonous and no one dared to disagree with her.  Dad gathered up the demonstrably quite dead snake for identification purposes and we all piled back into the station wagon and headed to the hospital. 

Seriously, I think the ER was more traumatic to me than the actual snake bite.  The small wound was efficiently cleaned with stinging antiseptics, and I was treated to an injection or two of antibiotics and a tetanus booster.  The doctors saw no evidence of a reaction to venom, although Dad kept wanting to show the dead snake to get confirmation that it wasn't poisonous.

"What kind of snake is it?," he would ask the doctors and I'd say "It's an eastern king snake, Lampropeltis getula," but everybody ignored me because what do kids know?  The doctors told him they couldn't make a positive identification because the head was so badly damaged, but the truth of the matter is that medical doctors, as well-educated and as erudite as they are, are not trained in herpetological taxonomy.  But as there was no swelling, I wasn't experiencing any burning, and I wasn't displaying any other symptoms of a reaction to venom, I was eventually discharged and we were allowed to leave.

For the record, I wasn't mad at my father for what happened - it was an accident.  Although on the one hand, it was traumatic and could have been much worse had it been a rattlesnake or a copperhead, on the other hand, I couldn't help but see the slapstick comedy in all of it.  To be honest, the whole episode was ludicrous if not downright hilarious.  And you should have seen the expression on Dad's face when he saw the snake hit me!

But here's the point to this whole story: growing up as I did in a lily-white suburb and attending an all-white, suburban public school, I had only limited exposure to persons of color.  Although by the time of this episode there were a few black kids in.my junior high, they mostly stayed to themselves in their own clique and I hadn't had much interaction with them.  I had my friends and they had theirs. But in the ER, I was treated and cared for by several black nurses and orderlies, and I was surprised by the amount of empathy and concern that they expressed.  The white doctors and nurses were professional enough, but their treatment and bedside manner were very clinical and cold.  They'd tell me "Your wound had been properly treated and dressed," or ask "Are you experiencing any other discomfort?," but they didn't show any real concern other than their professional responsibilities.

But it was different with the black care-givers.  "Oh, Lord," they'd bemoan, "this poor child was bitten in the face by a snake!"  They hold my hand and look me in the eyes and ask me if I was alright.  They'd ask me how it came to happened that a snake bit me on the face.

"My father threw it at me."

At that, they'd look side-eyed at Dad, standing there in the hallway under the cold, institutional light of the hospital, still in his beach clothes, including the Jake hat.  His swimming trunks made it look like he had wet his Bermuda shorts.  I can only imagine what they were thinking. "Well, you're alright now, child," they'd reassure me. "That's all that matters."  Today, they'd be calling DFACS. 

I felt so much better, so better cared for, under the black technicians than the white.  It was a most pleasant surprise - they were really, really kind to me!

Later that night, back home, I asked the Moms why the black people at the hospital were so much nicer than the white people,  why I felt so much better under their care and supervision.  "They can be very caring people," she reassured me. 

Which really was the wrong answer.  The Moms is most decidedly not a racist and meant nothing but well by her answer, but by today's thinking that was a racist response.  A caregiver, in fact several caregivers, had been nice to me, and those nice caregivers were incidentally also persons of color. But both myself and the Moms assigned the attributes of those few individuals, albeit very positive, to an entire ethnicity.  No sleight or disrespect was meant, but we were both still looking at certain people and seeing not individuals, but representatives of an entire racial demographic.

After all, based on the clinical, professional-to-the-point-of-antiseptic treatment by the white folks at the hospital, we didn't conclude that white people are very aloof and uncaring.

Anyhow, short version (too long, didn't read [TL/DR]): my Dad threw a snake at me.

Gentle Hearts Tear Vulgar Castles Down

I'm sick.  Literally.  Not just sick of the appalling politics here in America and not just sick of the national and international carnage, but literally ill.  I don't think it's the flu, but just a very bad head cold.

I was so stuffed up last night I couldn't sleep.  I finally took some old Clarinex from an expired prescription (expired in August 2011) that I found in the back of a bathroom cabinet, and it helped.  Pseudoephedrine's a wonderful thing.  I don't condone taking medications past their expiration date, but I was that miserable.  It helped.

To be clear, I found the old expired medicine  in the back of my bathroom cabinet, not some random strangers's.

I feel a little bit better today, but please excuse me if I make this post short and go back to recuperating.

According to the Blogger statistics, more visitors to this blog are from the United States than any other nation.  That's not surprising - I post in English and have a decidedly American slant on things.  It's only logical that the States would represent my biggest demographic.

But, surprisingly, the U.S. does not represent a majority of my readers.  American readers make up only 36.8% of my readership.  The majority of visitors here are from overseas, primarily Turkey (33.8%) and Russia (18.2%).  Germany, France, and the U.K. each contribute about 2% of the audience, and Ukraine, Brazil, and Poland each represent about 1%. 

I have no idea why.  Are Turks and Russians interested in the music I post?  If so, why aren't they on better, more informative web sties, like Pitchfork or Stereogum or Brooklyn Vegan?  Are they interested in Zen?  Last time I checked, neither Turkey not Russia were hotbeds of Buddhist activity.  Honestly, sometimes I deliberately post the most boring thoughts imaginable - I can't believe that this blog has attracted a multi-cultural, international audience.

My fear is that this site is being monitored by troll farms, those disinformation factories that spew forth propaganda and fake news to confuse the electorate.  According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the coordinated attack on our media, social and otherwise, originated in Russia.  I don't know Turkey's role in all this, if any, but it wouldn't surprise me if Russia used Turkish servers for their campaign to throw investigators off the scent.

I'll be generous and assume that I've somehow made some Turkish and Russian friends in the course of running this blog the past 15 years, and not that I'm part of somebody's analytics monitoring the effect of  their disinfo campaign.  So it's not without some regret that I'm about to offend some of my new virtual friends and tell them that Turkey's on-going military action in Syria is deplorable.  Yes, I know the U.S. is not without it's own culpability in this matter, far from it, and I'm doing what I can on this end to correct that.  But the Turks, who don't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to genocide, are reportedly engaging in ethnic cleansing and murdering Kurds solely for the "crime" of being Kurdish.

It's a complex situation, and sometimes it seems like there's no course of action without a terrible down side.  PKK terrorism against the Turkish people is deplorable, and will not be tolerated. I get it.  But counter-actions that result in genocide, that benefit primarily Syria, Iran and Russia, and are likely going to lead to a resurgence of ISIS might be the worst course of action of all.

Our president, speaking recently to the General Assembly at the United Nations, said, "The future does not belong to the globalists; it belongs to the patriots."  He couldn't be more wrong - he got it exactly backwards.  The overarching arc of history has lead inexorably to more trade, more connectedness, more communication.  Patriotism, especially of the blind, Trumpian variety, leads to nationalism, which leads to war.  

I call on my Turkish friends to protest and resist this nationalistic military adventure and bring this adventurism to an end.  Look at our friends in Hong Kong, taking to the streets in mass numbers for months on end for their cause. Meanwhile, we'll do what we can on this end to get our President impeached and than start managing diplomacy and foreign affairs on a coherent, less impulsive basis.

Sorry if I offend.  I don't mean to lose friends (if indeed we are friends), but I'm angry at the moment.

Who's Got Time To Blog?

Not me, not while I’m still mourning the Georgia Bulldogs' loss yesterday to South Carolina.

I’ll be okay - normal blogging will resume tomorrow.

Dreaming of the Masters

This is as self-explanatory as Sun Ra ever gets.  I needn't say anything about it, other than it was recorded on or around July 18, 1977 at the Bluebird, a Bloomington, Indiana college hangout bar. Here's a picture of the Bluebird today.