Disarray on the Workfront

October is my crunch month, the busy month at my place of employment, when we have concurrent fundraisers so we can keep the doors open the rest of the year. Last week, I submitted a draft of a schedule for the month, but it still hasn't been approved my management. For some reason, the Powers that Be have decided to limit the part-timers to a cap of nine-hundred hours for the year. I have four part-timers in my department, so I can foresee some bad decisions being made for us, decisions which will negatively impact our functioning. So far, I have had to cover two sites for two nights in a row due to staffing limits.

I spoke to my immediate supervisor about this, and he is trying to make things work within the parameters set by the mucky-mucks. He's a good guy, but this is his first Fall with the organization, so he is still learning the ropes and feeling his way through management. His suggestion was 'calling a meeting' for everyone in my department (he himself is juggling several departments), but I think that tomorrow I will try to get him to commit to a certain amount of hours per employee so I can coordinate with everyone in order to allocate shifts. Personally, I only need two days off this month (both SSC nights), and have already joked about setting up a cot onsite somewhere.

Needless to say, morale is bad. Even our contractors are picking up on this- I had a long conversation with one guy I have know for years and mentioned a grumpy vibe. To compound matters, one employee who was universally beloved by the rank-and-file, including myself, was fired for snapping at a vendor when said vendor broke a piece of equipment that was crucial to his job. Even worse, one of our contractors wanted to hire him, but was told that that would be unacceptable under any circumstances.

So... the 'spider sense' is tingling, telling me that the coming month is going to be an unpleasant slog. I am probably going to have to pull an ad hoc schedule out of my ass, and justify my decisions after the fact. The way I see it, I have to be willing to force the staffing issue in the face of institutional paralysis. I've been with the organization for over ten years now, and I feel that I have a reputation for level-headedness and a sincere, though not sycophantic, dedication to the organization. To paraphrase 1980s-era local band Dancing Hoods, I've got a reputation and it's giving me the hoops of fire:





I must jump through, when I've got a reputation, you know.

Hef Dead

In the world of celebrity, if being able to go by one name means success, what is being able to go by one syllable? At any rate, 'Hef' has died at the ripe age of ninety-one. I think it'll take a while to process exactly what his overall effect on society was. My favorite snarky assessment, which I can't seem to find on the t00bz, of his career is that 'he brought masturbation out of the bathroom and put it in the newsstands.

Obviously, Hugh Hefner didn't invent pornography, but he did 'class it up' by placing it tastefully in a magazine featuring articles and fiction by a host of luminaries. Hell, I bought an issue of Playboy six years ago for an article about narcotrafficking. In an interview I recently heard on the radio, the impetus behind Playboy was repackaging men's lifestyle magazines, which generally focused on hunting, fishing, and fighting off inexplicably hostile animals for the urban sophisticate. Hefner himself held a lot of progressive views, even putting up $25K for a reward for information leading to the arrest of killers of slain civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

Despite Hefner's progressive bona fides, there's still the nagging feeling that his fortune was based on the exploitation of young women. Was Playboy's depiction of women in various states of undress liberating or demeaning, or both or neither? The prudes of the time sure got their dander up, but did women benefit? Hefner obviously was a product of his time, a time during which sexism was rampant, but was the freedom he offered really a liberation? I don't describe myself as a feminist, because I feel that it's a label that has to be bestowed by others, and I honestly don't have a good handle on how erotica should be considered (for instance, a friend of mine who is an alternative model told me that she got over her body dysmorphia by posing without clothes- sorry folks, no pics!). I will defer to my great-and-good friend Vacuumslayer to explore the less savory aspects of Hef's legacy. I agree with her that Hefner, who seemed to have been prematurely weaned, pushed an airbrushed image of pulchritude which is unrealistic and unhealthy and has fed into a Beauty Industrial Complex. Personally, though, while I can see how someone could derive benefits from posing nude, I can't imagine that any of you would be happy to discover naked pictures of your mother:





At any rate, I can't help but feel that Hugh Hefner remained in the public eye about forty years too long- after his heyday of the 1960s, he seemed to devolve into a parody of himself, ending up as an elderly cartoon lecher canoodling with girls young enough to be his granddaughters... not that I'm knocking it. I can't say that I, like the vast majority of straight men, have never had an occasional fantasy about such a life, but few of us have that combination of wealth and arrested adolescence that we attempt to live such a life, and most of us recognize the sleaziness of the fantasy.

Yeah, Hefner was a complicated fellow, and his legacy is pretty hard to unravel- I'm having a hard time even sorting out my attitude toward the guy. That being said, I can't help that our current president fancies himself a 'playboy' in the model of Hefner, but lacking any of the redeeming qualitites.

9/11 Was an Inside the Butt Job

Republicans sure know how to pick candidates, with the GOP voters of Alabama picking Roy Moore as their candidate for an upcoming special election to fill Jeff Sessions' former Senate seat. Moore is a religious fundamentalist who, among other things, recently blamed the 9/11 attacks on, among other things, 'legitimizing sodomy'. Weird how much he sounds like the senior members of Al Qaeda, blaming the victims of religious fanaticism for incurring the wrath of God... fundamentalists are fundaments, to a man.

Basically, Roy Moore was blaming 9/11 on buttsex, but he's wrong- lube doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel beams!

On a serious note, how the hell did our nation, founded on secular Enlightenment principles, come to this?

Banning Chad?

Like most people who follow current events, I am puzzled over the addition of Chad to Trump's new travel ban. Chad has been an ally of the United States in the fight against radical fundamentalist Islamist (the GOP's magic words!) terrorism. Chad is particularly helpful in the fight against Boko Haram. My brother Vincenzo, who was with the US Army's Africa Command, liaised with the militaries of Chad and Mali to a great degree (he'd jokingly refer to himself as 'Vinnie of the Sahel' those days).

Part of me wonders if Trump had a high school rival named Chad, the sort of perfect specimen that the MRA/incel types hate. Trump is the sort to never forget a grudge, maybe he's got the country conflated with some guy he hasn't seen in decades.

Remember this Handsome Fellow?

Some years ago, I posted about a magnificent black cat which sometimes hangs out at my principal workplace. His status was pretty ambiguous, he was un-neutered and bore no collar of any sort, but his glossy pelt and overall healthy, well-fed condition suggested that he was not a stray. He shows up from time-to-time onsite, but yesterday he was hanging out outside of our visitors' center, receiving adulation from an adoring public, including myself:

He's even more well-fed than before, has been altered, bears some flecks of gray in his beautiful coat, and bears a flea-collar, but no identification tags of any sort. He is even friendlier than he previously was:

I still have no idea if he belongs to any particular neighbor, or if he's just the recipient of care from the neighborhood. Apparently, there is a local woman who cares for feral cats in the neighborhood. If his status were less ambiguous, I have no doubt that we'd grab him and put him on the payroll

Llorando Para Puerto Rico

Being a New Yorker, and one who worked in the South Bronx for fifteen years, off and on, I have an appreciation for Puerto Rican people and their culture. Being U.S. citizens, the Puerto Rican population of New York city, Nuyoricans, often have jobs as civil servants- cops, firefighters, state and local clerical workers. Puerto Ricans have a long history of serving in the US military- they are good people, good neighbors, and good Americans.

It's heartbreaking to see Puerto Rico devastated by hurricane Maria after having been hit by hurricane Irma just days before. To compound matters, the government of Puerto Rico has labored under a debt burden for too long with no relief in sight.

At least FEMA seems to be on the ground, though Trump has been spending his day picking fights with football players. Knowing the close relationship between New York and Puerto Rico, our governor Cuomo traveled to the stricken island with needed supplies and a cadre of aid workers. At least one of our local papers has been vociferous about Puerto Rico's need for aid.

I've been reading up on which charities to donate to, and I think I will choose Voices for Puerto Rico, as they don't have a 'faith-based' agenda.

Here's a video of Ponce, Puerto Rico-born Eddie Palmieri and his band playing a love song to the island:





To all of my Puerto Rican friends, tuvieron mal suerte, tiene que estarán fuerte... y no se olvidáramos.

Nibiru? Nah, Beer/Brew

Yet again, some idiot is claiming that a 'hidden planet' called Nibiru is going to crash into Earth today, killing us all. Meh, we've seen these idiots claim that the world is going to end time-and-time again. Nibiru, my ass... if a friggin' planet were on a collision course with Earth, it would be visible to the naked eye by now.

At any rate, this is a shitty day for an apocalypse, because it's the day of the local street festival, and I plan on going on a twelve-hour bender. October is a hell of a month on the job, so I figured I'd binge on craic (this elicited a hearty laugh from a co-worker of mine) before going on a long slog. The festival is always fun, and I only need to crawl two blocks to get home.

The beauty of the neighborhood is that it has its own theme song by a bunch of great local guys, a song which perfectly captures the spirit of the community:





There's no need to worry about the end of the world when there is an endless supply of beer.

The Festival Circuit

Today, I decided to make a couple of recreational stops before heading to work. I decided to visit the Boyce-Thompson Center in Northwest Yonkers. The center was originally the Boyce-Thompson Institute for Plant Research, until the institute relocated to the campus of Cornell University. After the Institute was abandoned, it deteriorated into a near-ruin, afflicted by vandals and, ironic for a botanical research facility, runaway plant growth. It was rehabilitated into a multi-purpose medical/retail/commercial property earlier this year. Here's the impressive brick facade of the building:

In a nod to the history of the Institute, there are bioswales adjacent to the parking lot, containing a mixture of wild plants, such as milkweeds (to my delight), and plants which were used for research purposes by the Institute scientists:

Being across the street from Lenoir Preserve, one of my favorite places in Yonkers, the Center is destined to be a favored post-hike destination for me. I had lunch at The Taco Project, which manages to be 'contemporary' while respecting traditional Mexican cuisine. For instance, the pork belly tacos had the crispiness of well-made carnitas with a pineapple flavor reminiscent of tacos al pastor... washed down with a delicious horchata, the tacos were a perfect meal, just the pick-me-up a stroller in the preserve or Untermyer Park could ask for.

For dinner, I hit the Middle Eastern Festival at the St John Paul II Maronite Church at Immaculate Conception... basically, I pigged out on a combination plate of falafel, baba ghanouj, hummus, spinach pies, and my favorite, kibbeh, all washed down with an Almaza beer chased by a tiny cup of Arabic coffee. Before leaving, I purchased some pastries, including baklava and basbousa, from two absolutely charming women to bring to work. I might have to stop by again on Sunday to buy more baba ghanouj (it had a perfect smoky flavor) and kibbeh before going to work.

Tomorrow, I am taking a day off from work so I can attend the local street festival and get my drink on. Before heading out today, I had a conversation with my next door neighbor and he asked me, "Which bar do you think you'll be drinking in?" I thought, "All of them, Katie" but answered, "The street will be closed, so I'll be open-carrying all up and down the street." I have to get my licks in, recreation-wise before, as I told my neighbor, "Work turns me into Captain Nemo, eventually resurfacing in a month-and-a-half."

Been Busy, Catching up with the Atrocities

It's been a busy week... on Monday, I went out drinking and learning, at work I am in Fall mode, compiling and re-compiling schedules, dealing with contractors setting up for the Autumn fundraisers, and generally staying on my toes. I'm getting a full dose of the horrible performance by our moron president at the United Nations (Vixen Strangely is killing it all week).

It's not normal, with Trump referring to Kim Jong Un with his jokey nickname while threatening to totally destroy North Korea, and making up a new mashup African country while bragging about his friends exploiting African nations and peoples.

This week of diplomatic blunders can't end soon enough- I fully expect Trump to mention his very fine allies from Kekistan before the week is over. Maybe it's a good thing that I've been ensconced in a cocoon most of the week.

Uh, You Could Use Your Own Services, Man

Today has been an unusual day on the job. I arrived at 5PM, my department being stretched thin, necessitating some shift reshuffling. Shortly after arriving, I received a call from my department head- a couple visiting one of our other sites was stuck in our parking lot with a flat tire, and the daytime staff would be leaving shortly. I made sure everything was locked up at my primary site and drove down to the site at which the visitors were stranded.

It wasn't a standard flat-tire situation that a typical motorist support club (or a person with a lug wrench and a basic degree of know-how) could cope with- the couple were traveling in a camper van, but not a Camper Van Beethoven... the sort of thing which demands a special jack and a special lug wrench. Luckily, the owners had a membership in an RV club that provided roadside assistance. This organization had a service contract with a tire company which specializes in truck tires.

The roadside assistance tech arrived in a truck which, frankly, needed a new set of tires:

That thing was balder than I am. I guess the shop owner doesn't want any of his employees dipping into the profits.

The whole process was fascinating to watch- the tech used a pneumatic jack to elevate the dual-wheel assembly, removed the tire, which had a leaky valve stem, from the rim and exchanged it for a new tire. Picture this on a larger scale. Oddly enough, it took longer for the owner of the tire place to figure out the billing than it took to change the tire, because the RV club operator had told him that the camper van was a rental and he didn't know who to bill. A few phone calls, and the billing kerfuffle was eventually resolved and I was able to lock up the parking lot.

Basically, half of my shift was spent dealing with this situation, three hours and change spent in order to lock up a parking lot. At least it was a gorgeous evening, a temperate night after a glorious sunset. Sometimes, even when work is a pain in the ass, it's wonderful.

Secret Science Club Post-Lecture Recap: Two Lecturers, Two Black Holes

Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, for this month's Secret Science Club lecture featuring Princeton University physicists Steven Scott Gubser and Frans Pretorius, whose latest book, The Little Book of Black Holes, is literally hot off the presses. The two doctors lectured in a 'tag team' style, taking turns at the microphone and occasionally engaging in physical demonstrations of concepts.

While setting up, Dr Gubser joked that, while living in a two-religion household is fine, living in a two-operating system is more difficult, so he made the switch from Linux to Apple at the behest of his brother-in-law. He then began the lecture by discussing time dilation- according to the Theory of General Relativity, time moves more slowly for a moving observer than for a stationary observer. He confessed that the demonstration would be 'slightly fake', because he's not the Flash and could not run near the speed of light, then the two demonstrated the Twin Paradox, as one ran across the stage and the other remained stationary. At the end of the jog, he joked that, at this pace, the jogger would be one femtosecond younger than the stationary observer. The Twin Paradox is not an optimal frame of reference, general relativity doesn't take into account acceleration, and the 'paradox' is a red herring- a better analogy is a pair of hypothetical light clocks, using a photon traveling between two sensors. The speed of light being constant, the photon of a moving time clock would appear to an outside observer to be moving on diagonals, moving a greater distance than a stationary clock:





At greater speeds, the photon would move greater distances. The photon trajectory forms a right triangle relative to the 'clock' and its trajectory, so the Pythagorean theorem can be used to derive the value of Tau (proper time). At any rate, a moving observer would experience slower time relative to a stationary observer.

The lecture then shifted to the subject of gravity. According to the Theory of General Relativity, gravity is a product of the curvature of space- mass bends space, and gravitational forces can also produce a time dilation, with time moving faster the further an observer gets from a source of gravitation. The mass of an object determines the degree to which it can curve space, and the good doctors displayed a graphic which contrasted the amount of curvature among different heavenly bodies, ranging from our sun to a white dwarf to a neutron star to a black hole. Each of these objects represents a degree of compression of mass- a white dwarf is the remnants of a star approximately the size of our sun compressed to a diameter of approximately a few thousand kilometers (thanks, Smut). A neutron star is the remains of a supermassive star which has collapsed under its own gravity- a star with two times the mass of the sun would collapse into a two-kilometer diameter. On Earth, gravitational time dilation effects GPS units.

Stellar black holes are stars which have collapsed into a small enough radius that they cause spacetime to undergo a gravitational collapse within a radius known as an event horizon. This collapse of spacetime is the ultimate expression of curvature, a condition in which a singularity is formed. The spacetime dilation at a singularity is infinite, a hypothetical clock would stop. The Schwartzschild radius is the radius at which a body's mass, compressed into a sphere, would result in gravitational forces which had escape velocities which exceed the speed of light. At the Schwarzschild radius, time dilation is reversed- a stationary observer would find that time moved slower than a moving observer would. One of the pillars of the Theory of General Relativity is that there's no such thing as gravity, just the movement of time in space.

At the event horizon of a black hole, the curvature of space becomes infinite in 'a nasty way'. Crossing an event horizon, an observer would experience an 'oh, damn, what do I do now?' moment. With the stopping of a clock at the singularity, escape would always be in the victim's future... there would be a spaghettification as a subject is stretched out by gravitational forces.


Einstein initially doubted the existence of black holes. As Carl Sagan quipped, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Evidence for black holes was circumstantial... observations of the center of the galaxy revealed that the stars were orbiting an object four million times the mass of the sun, but no such object was observed. Strong-but-circumstantial evidence pointed to the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Stellar black holes are inferred from accretion disks orbiting something which cannot be observed directly. In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detected evidence of two black holes colliding. As Dr Gubser noted, the era of gravitational wave astronomy had finally arrived. He also joked that scientists are better at breaking discoveries than making them. Gravitational waves 'marry' matter and energy. In the LIGO-detected event, two stellar mass black holes orbited each other, forming a binary. Two dense concentrations of matter were coming together at the speed of light, and energy was lost to gravitational waves. As the two black holes moved closer, they collapsed with a massive javascript:void(0);energy output- the death throes of a binary black hole collapsing into a single black hole. The evidence for this energy output is circumstantial, the gravity not allowing photons to escape. LIGO's detection of gravitational waves signifies the dawn of a new era in astrophysics. LIGO uses interference patterns to detect the stretching and squeezing of space due to gravitational waves. The collision of the black holes cause the gravitational waves to produce a 'chirp' pattern:





The way in which the waves chirped helped researchers infer the size of the black holes. If the collision of the two black holes had been visible, it would have outshone all of the stars for a fraction of a second.

The lecture was followed by a Q&A session- the Bastard did not have an opportunity to get a question in, but Drs Gubser and Pretorius fielded a wide variety of questions. A question about the evidence for relativity led to a discussion of the eclipse observations of bent light which resulted from gravitational effects. A question about GPS systems elicited response that the systems need to take time dilation into account. A discussion of pulsars, spinning neutron stars, revealed that they pulse at regular frequencies, so they are good clocks. A question about the fate of the universe elicited the response that time ends- relativity predicts its own demise, but that a collapse could possibly be followed by a re-expansion. A question about whether a racecar driver would age more slowly than an avid jogger was answered by the assertion that extreme velocities are needed to make an observable difference in aging. Another audience member asked about Hawking radiation- black holes emit dim and faint radiation, but it is swamped by the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Asked about his 'fantasy' experiment, Dr Gubser answered that he would want a range of interferometers measuring a range of interference pattern up to the ten kilometer ranges, and more sensitive detectors. He also wanted to explore the analogs between black hole collisions and heavy ion collisions (PDF).

Once again, the Secret Science Club has dished out a fantastic lecture. Kudos to Margaret and Dorian, Drs Gubser and Pretorius, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House yet again.

Move Under Ground

This is going to be one of those days- New York City will be congested because of Trump's visit to the United Nations, even though he's not exactly endearing himself to members of that body. I have to get to Brooklyn for tonight's Secret Science Club lecture. While the roads will be a nightmare, the 4 train should be as reliable as ever... as usual, the best way to move is underground.

The post title is taken from Nick Mamatas' 2004 Beat Writers against Elder Gods novel. While the subway system can be a scary place, it's got nothing on crosstown traffic:





Now, that's scary stuff.

The Life of a Character Actor is Always Intense

Another fave of mine gone... Harry Dean Stanton, perhaps the finest character actor in cinema history, has died at the age of ninety-one. Stanton's filmography, spanning seven decades is formidable, and Stanton was good in every film in which he acted. No less a film authority than Roger Ebert formulated a Stanton-Walsh rule: No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad. An exception was CHATTAHOOCHEE (1990), starring Walsh. Stanton's record is still intact.

Stanton managed to be ordinary-yet-distinctive looking... he was instantly recognizable, but looked like an everyman. He excelled at playing working stiffs, even a working-stiff-in-space (this is a rough scene, so if you're easily horrified, skip it, poor guy was a cat lover to boot):





The man also was a soulful crooner:





Here's a great video of him singing a duet with Art Garfunkel at a roast of Jack Nicholson, with some funny banter beforehand:





Stanton and Garfunkel... what a concept!

Stanton excelled at playing the laconic, competent straight man opposite various lunatics, whether a lipstick-smeared wicked mom in Wild at Heart:





Or a ranting conspiracy theorist in Paris, Texas:





Being a child of a certain age, my first exposure to Harry Dean Stanton, and the role that forever established my fandom, was his take on a world-weary car repossessor in Repo Man, the movie from which I took the post title:





While not an admirable character, Stanton's repo man did have a certain code of conduct:





By 1984, Harry Dean Stanton was often characterized as the world's greatest character actor, which I would not dispute:





David Lynch had a nice take on Harry's appeal:





At 91, he lived a good life, he was a character actor who managed to take on the status of a big star, the ordinary guy who, through his very ordinariness, achieved acclaim.

POSTSCRIPT: This appearance by Harry on David Letterman's show seems to have an allusion to a scene in Kelly's Heroes.

The D.C. Stands for 'Dark Carnival'

Today is the day I've been anticipating all year, the day of the Juggalo March on Washington. The Juggalo march will coincide with a pro-Trump, fake patriotism rally. Check out this bullshit from the 'Mother of All Marches' organizers:


ANYONE WHO WOULD PROTEST THIS RALLY IS PROTESTING AMERICA AND SHOWING THEMSELVES TO BE THE VERY DOMESTIC ENEMIES OUR FOUNDING FATHERS WARNED US ABOUT. ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO SILENCE US IS COMMITTING A DIRECT ASSAULT ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF FREE ASSEMBLY.


Yeah, blow it out of your asses, righties. While it seems like people from all sides of the political spectrum are jockeying for Juggalos, the Democratic Socialists will out out to support the march, even planning on handing out Faygo to the marchers. Since a lot of Juggalos come from broken homes, growing up with an 'economic anxiety' that is supposed to be the motivating force behind Trump's election, it would seem that the Democratic Socialists will have a sympathetic audience. At any rate, the subculture isn't sympathetic to the iconography of the Lost Cause, having (very NSFW)two songs specifically denigrating Confederate iconography. To be sure, I am not a fan of the songs, with their misogyny and homophobia, but I appreciate the sentiment about CSA supporting white supremacists.

The idea of Juggalos becoming an anti-fascist force among working class American Heartlanders is intriguing... and the memes that this idea has spawned are hilarious:

It's going to be an interesting day, to be sure... the NSFW trailer for the event details the travails of the fandom, and features a great spiel by the band's lawyer about the problems the band is having finding a concert venue:





It looks like Washington is going to transform into a Dark Carnival as the Juggalos make their righteous anger towards conformist authoritarianism known... they aren't a gang, they shouldn't face government sanction. While I'm not a fan of ICP, the Juggalos are alright by me. WHOOP WHOOP, my friends.

Hart Had Heart

Now, here's another death that hits me where I live- Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü died at the all-too-young age of 56. Besides being a monster drummer, Hart was a writer of poignant lyrics, bringing heart as well as melody to the hardcore punk movement. I first heard Hüsker Dü on a local college station while I was a high-schooler and immediately became enamored of the Twin Cities music scene of the early 80s.

Hüsker Dü never received much commercial airplay, but the band was influential- according to one anecdote, the Pixies found bassist Kim Deal by putting out a classified ad: "Bassist wanted for rock band. Influences: Husker Du and Peter Paul & Mary." Hüsker Dü's fingerprints can be foud all over the grunge music scene and subsequent 'alternative' music.

In honor of Mr Hart's passing, I have been binge-listening to the band's magnum opus, the double album Zen Arcade. The album is a sprawling concept album, a hardcore punk rock opera about a young man's alienation. One particular standout track is Grant Hart's Turn on the News, which, sadly, is even more topical now than when it was written:





With its mentions of shootings, airline disasters, and refugee crises, the song couldn't be more relevant. It's a tribute to Grant Hart's perspicacity and devotion to humanity. It's tragic to lose Mr Hart so young, especially at a time when he is needed more than ever.

If Everything Is Simply Jake then You're Frightened of Death

Another literary giant dead- this time it's J.P. Donleavy who has shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 91. An Irish-American who studied at Trinity College after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War 2, Donleavy was best known for his first novel, 1955's The Ginger Man, a stream-of-consciousness novel widely held to be autobiographical, about an American rogue ostensibly studying law at Trinity. The Ginger Man. first read by Brendan Behan was originally published by the storied (heh) Olympia Press, a French publisher known for its smut as well as its experimental fiction. The Ginger Man straddles this line. The novel is a picaresque, and the main character a sociopathic reprobate who sees women as sexual objects and sources of funds, but the language is glorious. The title of the post is taken from the novel:


“But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.”


I'm somewhat conflicted about the novel- the misogyny expressed is toxic, but the character comes off as an obnoxious Mary Sue/Gary Stu. Nevertheless, it's a great read, it offers a glimpse of life in postwar-Dublin, life in a country which, albeit poor, was spared the horrors of World War 2.

Donleavy had a knack for salacious grotesquery, The Onion Eaters being a black comedy about an unusually endowed young American inheriting a castle in rural Ireland from his aunt and running into all sorts of bizarre characters, including the titular onion-eaters, who have hatched a scheme to introduce poisonous snakes into Ireland to undermine people's faith in God. This review is spot on- The book reads like Hunter S. Thompson meets Mervyn Peake, or National Lampoon's Animal House in Castle Gormenghast.

The Lady who Liked Clean Restrooms was a slight novel, based on an urban legend, about a Southern belle, Bryn Mawr educated and living in Scarsdale, whose life becomes unraveled through her husband's infidelities and an impending divorce. It's a nice love letter to New York City, and is one of the few Donleavy novels which features a female protagonist and an unambiguously happy ending.

My favorite novel by Donleavy is A Fairy Tale of New York, a 1973 book adapted from a 1961 stage play about a native New Yorker returning to the city with his dead wife after a period of time studying abroad. In order to pay for his wife's funeral expenses, he has to work off the bill at the funeral home. In the course of his work, he meets a rich widow, and embarks on yet another of Donleavy's bawdy picaresques... in this case, being sued by a widow for 'tarting up' her dead husband with an excess of makeup and engaging in petty larceny and a string of seductions. The novel takes a while to warm up to, being written in a stream-of-consciousness style composed largely of sentence fragments. My favorite passage in the book is a dirty, dirty tale about a gentlemanly cook on a naval vessel who entertains his fellow seamen after baking them 'fluffy golden delicious biscuits'. The book also reads as a melancholy love-and-hate letter to the city itself. While it is the sort of place which can crush and dehumanize people, New York, from the lowlands of Brooklyn, past the canyons of Manhattan, to the catacomb hills of the Bronx is the sort of place in which even a young orphan can indulge in self-reinvention: "When I was a little boy. Left in a brand new foster home. I went out playing the afternoon around the block got lost, so busy telling all the other kids a fairy tale of New York. That my real father was a tycoon and my mother a princess."

The novel is exactly the sort of novel which could inspire the greatest Christmas song ever written, a bawdy, funny, melancholy melange.

I will be the first person to admit that Donleavy's prose is an acquired taste, with a lot of 'problematic' content, but I have long been a fan. His was a style and a narrative voice which was inimitable... a style and a narrative voice which I initially disliked until I could catch the cadence, the rhythm of it. His novels certainly warrant a slew of 'trigger warnings', but if you have a high tolerance for depictions of bad behavior, there are gems to be found amidst the sleaze.

Blame Your Porn Viewing on an Intern, Ted

Funny, I am sort of let down by the Ted Cruz porn-tweet scandal, I was really hoping that Ted would be caught liking something more outré, like Furry Porn, Vore, or some sort of Chuck Tinglean erotic weirdness. To be honest, though, the actual porn liked in Ted's Twitter account is perhaps the Ted Cruziest porn imaginable, as it involves someone barging in on a couple having sex, violating their privacy. What could be more Religious Right than that?

Ted Cruz being a weasel, he is now claiming that this tweet-like was not his fault, leading to a hilarious mashup of Ted with Jamerican rapper Shaggy. For the record, I am a Shaggy fan, being especially taken with his first single, 1993's Oh Carolina:





Of course, this was a cover of a 1960 original by the Folkes Brothers backed by Count Ossie and his Rastafarian Nyabinghi drumming troupe:





One of the music collections I had hunted for for years was a four disc history of modern Jamaican music, starting with the Folkes Brothers' version of Oh, Carolina and ending with Shaggy's cover. Unable to find it in record shops, I put it out of my mind for a while, only to be reminded of it by, of all things, Ted Cruz' Twitter Pornfest. When life hands you TMI, use that information to locate something of interest.

At any rate, since Ted is trying to pin the blame on an underling, let's hope that someone on his staff decides to reveal the good stuff, such as Ted Cruz' bigfoot obsession.

PrimarieZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Once again, a bunch of local primary elections are taking place, and my worksite is a polling place. I set the alarm for three-thirty in the morning in order to arrive at five. The poll workers started arriving at a quarter after five in order to get things up and running by six. Needless to say, I'm dragging my ass at this time- I usually get home from work at the time I left the house this morning.

For the most part, the poll workers are the usual crew that I have come to know over the past couple of years. There are a couple of new faces, but the core group, including a co-worker of mine, is intact. In a smart move, our retail department decided to open our gift shop (this also allows for some early fall re-merchandising), and the small cafe onsite is open as well.

Right now, I'm starting to flag, and I need to take the old contact lenses out... my relief comes at five PM. There's coffee to be had, but I may have to find a sunny spot on the property to take a short nap before hitting the road this afternoon.

The big regional race is the New York City Democratic primary between Bill DeBlasio and Sal Albanese. My personal feeling is that Albanese shouldn't be challenging the incumbent, but there's a not-so-loyal wing of the party in New York State, which has altogether too much power, largely due to heinous gerrymandering.

Disposable Heroes

September Eleventh again, a day on which friends of mine were killed. The memory doesn't dull- I see the family members of murdered friends, I teach children who will never know their parents. It really hits when the absence is made apparent at gatherings.

This year, I've done a pretty good job at ignoring the public memorial services, but one thing rankles- the first responders who worked on the recovery efforts are still suffering. Americans love to lionize our heroes, but we do a really bad job of caring for them. Once the photo-ops are over, the votes against survivor benefits are cast. We love monuments, but we don't love flesh-and-blood, especially when it is stricken.

It will happen again- already the Hurricane Harvey responders are suffering the effects of toxic chemical exposure. Again, the public pieties will be mouthed, the public obligations ignored. It's a day for loving America, I just wish it were a day for loving Americans.

A Horror Show for the Ages

Watching the footage of Irma hitting Florida is riveting- it's not every day when you get to see an entire state disappear from the map:

The videos of downtown Miami are chilling:





How much of a future does Miami really have, this low-lying coastal city in a storm-prone region? I am reminded of J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World. Tengrain is exhorting Florida's Rick Scott to seek high ground, but I know he lives on a mountain. Tengrain also mentions Donald Trump's weird assertion that the Coast Guard is improving its 'brand'... I never knew that this branch of our military has a 'brand'. We'll see how FEMA's brand fares in the aftermath of the storm when the cameras are elsewhere.

Speaking of cameras, Irma's got to be good for the television ratings... on the heels of Harvey, this is bound to be the best television season EVER. Stay tuned, you never know how things is going to turn out.

Fackebook

I haven't signed up for Facebook, and I don't plan on doing so at any time in the future. The site originated in a misogynistic, invasive college website, it compiles all sorts of information about its users including facial recognition data... and I really don't need to know that some guy I worked with twenty years ago is now a deplorable racist or woman-hater. No Facebook for me, thank you.

As if things couldn't get any worse, Facebook accepted a one-hundred thousand dollar ad buy from Russian sources seeking to affect the presidential election. Even worse, many of the fake Russian Facebook accounts were set up to promulgate divisive causes such as Texan and Californian secessionist movements; anti-immigrant, Muslim, and LGBT stances; and right-wing conspiracy theories.

I've long maintained that Facebook is a cesspool, but this sort of unopposed propaganda war takes the cake- Facebook compiles all sorts of data on its legitimate users, it's long past the time that they take steps to keep tabs on hostile foreign actors, who shouldn't be difficult to suss out.

There's Hurricanes in Florida...

With all of the natural disasters hitting places as far-flung as the Indian subcontinent to Mexico... With earth, wind and fire wreaking havoc, and a nuke-armed nutjob on the loose, I am reminded of a childhood favorite- the Kingston Trio's Merry Minuet, written by Sheldon Harnick, is a masterpiece of comedy so black it's fuligin. It's surprisingly topical, but it always seems to be so:





I'll be hiding under the bed, laughing like a hyena.

My Contempt for Chris Christie Comes to the Fore Again

I have long held New Jersey governor Chris Christie in contempt, not only for his bullying nature, but for his scuttling of a much-needed sub-Hudson railway tunnel project. Well, now, seven years later, the Gateway Tunnel Program is in the news again, with Donald Trump seeming to agree to the project, at least at this moment.

I'm not exactly optimistic about the funding for the project- besides the money needed for post-multiple-hurricane recovery, the upcoming Debt Ceiling conflict bodes ill for any large infrastructure projects that would benefit 'blue' America. This project should have been funded seven years ago, but that would have been a victory for the Kenyan Usurper and those liberals in the New York City metropolitan area. If it had been started back then, the damn thing would probably have been finished by now.

The Most Dangerous Storm in US History

Listening to the radio and reading the news on the internet has been pretty scary today. Besides the horrific damage caused by the category 5-plus storm (I made up the 'plus' part, but the Beauford scale tops off at 5) to the Leeward Islands. I really fear for what will happen to the people of Puerto Rico, who have been ill-served by the United States government for too long. I have a lot of Puerto Rican friends, I value their culture, and I have long felt that our government has to bail out this beleaguered American territory. Florida also looks to be destined for an unprecedented boning with several models suggesting that the storm will barrel right up the urethra of America's dong.

As if Irma's not bad enough, the fact that tropical storms Jose and Katia are also at large is enough to give one the creeping horrors:

It gets worse though- the party in control of the executive and legislative branches of government denies anthropogenic climate change and opposes regulations which would curb carbon emissions. To compound things, this party of small government had sought to slash FEMA's budget, while the agency is nearly broke, and is set to continue its debt-ceiling brinksmanship. This is exactly what the country does not need in the teeth of what could be a series of four massive blows to its southern coastal regions.

Hurricane Irma is the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, but it's got nothing on the most dangerous storm ever to hit the United States... the Category 45 shitstorm which hit Washington D.C. last January.

Donald's Acting Cruelly Again

Vulgarmort is as it again, he sent his house-elf Jeff Sessions to announce that he's planning to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Barack Obama instituted to provide undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors protection from deportation, the ability to obtain drivers' licenses and work permits, and (it is hoped) a pathway to citizenship.

Barack Obama described DACA in terms of basic decency, something that Vulgarmort lacks:


"We shouldn't threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us."


The 'Dreamers' who have benefitted from DACA are English-speaking and American-schooled... they have been vetted, checked for any possible criminal backgrounds or threats to the Republic. These are not unscrutinized individuals, they are assets to their local and state communities and the broader national community, exactly the sort of persons we Americans should welcome into the fold.

As is typical, Vulgarmort's timing is bad- his proclamation comes on the heels of a dreamer dying while engaged in post-Harvey rescue efforts (a case of Mexico sending us her best) and prior to a Houston reconstruction effort that will most likely require immigrant labor. As an aside, a Democratic congressperson should propose an 'American Jobs Only for Houston Recovery' act in Congress just to show up Republican hypocrisy.

I am pro-immigrant, I have many immigrant friends, I value the contributions of immigrants to American culture. I feel that this rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is cowardly, bigoted, and cruel. I make it a point not to inquire the legal status of my immigrant friends and neighbors, so I don't know if any of my friends will be impacted by this action, but I would hate to think that people I care for would be deported just so some rich, incompetent ogre can claim some sort of victory.

Laborious

Once again, I find myself working on Labor Day, but don't feel bad for me. Right now, I am typing out this blog post while watching the sun set from a hill overlooking the mighty Hudson:

It's been some day, I spent a good deal of it talking with one of the ladies in the gift shop about her family's recent trip to one of my all-time favorite places on Earth- Quebec City. When her husband arrived, we all continued rhapsodizing about the place. The prettiest European city is in North America. I also had a lovely conversation with a family which had arrived too late for our tours, but I took them to a hilly spot which overlooked the site and pointed out the attractions, so they can return at a later date. I describe my approach to work as '90% by the book'... every so often, you have to go slightly outside of the usual script, and in my experience, it benefits the organization.

When everybody left, I locked up and did my inspection tour of the site. Our apple orchard is at its peak, so I have had my pick of apples. The geese onsite are going nuts for the apples, and I indulged them by feeding them bits of apple (with the peel attached- when you have a gazillion free apples, you don't have to eat the peels like you'd do if you had purchased them) and then tossing them the cores, resulting in a free-for-all. I was able to feed one particularly brazen goose from hand, though it's not that appealing to have a sizable chunk of keratin knocking into your fingers.

It's not a bad life... I always joke that the job is cushy, except when it's not, and today has definitely been in the 'cushy' column, which is perfect for Labor Day.

National Day of Prayer

Prayer being the last refuge of a scoundrel, it's no surprise that Donald Trump proclaimed today a National Day of Prayer for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, even though Memphis Minnie told us ninety years ago that 'crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good':





The people of Southeast Texas don't need prayers, as pious fraud Joel Osteen found out... and now Osteen is doubling down on the stupid. Getting back to Trump, the idea that a man who has only worshiped Mammon and his own loathsome self would call for a day of prayer is even more ludicrous.

My religious leanings are best characterized as apatheism- I had a pretty traditional religious upbringing, but the failings and hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed interpreters of the will of God turned me off completely to religion and, frankly, the universe just makes more sense when you stop trying to shoehorn it into a religious framework. Nevertheless, I am familiar with the Bible, and one of my personal favorite verses is Matthew 6:5. As if the useless piety of hypocrites wasn't enough, the absolute worst of the god-botherers are claiming that Harvey created a hellscape in Texas because Bruce and George went hunting for furniture for their apartment together. Yeah, I think I've had enough from these creeps.

Have a Good Time, Picking up the Remains of your Shattered Lives

I've had things pretty good all my life... I've experienced lean times, I've had frugal stretches, but I've never experienced long-term privation. That being said, I'd like to think that I have a sense of empathy. I have experienced the aftermath of a destructive storm, but I had a dry dwelling to return home to. At any rate, I would not be the sort of person to tell a bunch of evacuees who have just lost their homes and possessions to 'have a good time'.

I love words, I love the English language (and, to tell you the truth, other languages, all other languages enchant me), I think I have a pretty good grasp on speaking extemporaneously. It doesn't take a goddamn genius to avoid telling a bunch of people who have experienced terror, loss and displacement to 'have a good time', as if they were camping out for a lark.

I can't fathom what sort of cognitive/emotional deficit it takes for an individual to be so blithe about the ruination of others' lives... and the fact that such an empathy-free monster is heading up our government creeps me the hell out.

Let Them Breathe Organic Peroxides

Oh, great, that ongoing explosion freedom pop crisis at the Crosby, Texas organic peroxides plant just got worse, with at least two trailers of peroxides having caught fire. The man-made disaster which is accompanying the natural disaster that was Hurricane Harvey is largely due to Republican deregulation- the Texas GOP played an instrumental role in blocking regulations that should have made an 'incident' less likely. Of course, this is the same GOP which brought us the infamous West, Texas chemical plant fire... can you just feel the lifting of burdensome regulations? Feels like a vibration underfoot, and a burning in the sinuses, trachea, and lungs.

The real kicker is the press conference with Richard Rennard an Arkema executive who tells the media that 'toxicity is a relative thing'. Well, duh, the aphorism 'the dose makes the poison' is centuries old... I get that, after all, I eat pokeweed. The problem is that the Arkema representatives aren't being upfront about the composition of the 'noxious' smoke, so the 'relative toxicity' of it will have to be determined by the authorities, something which doesn't seem to appeal to Texas' elected officials.

This is way beyond the 'let them eat cake' attitude, it basically boils down to 'let them breathe poison'. Tragically, I don't think any heads will roll (figuratively) for this disaster, and I foresee yet another douchebag 'Gulf region' CEO whining on television about wanting his life back.