the ship in the bottle

yep, it's in there--45" of drawers into 45" of space. i learned the hard way how 45" of space fails to account for the 1/2" of door moulding on the way in, so me and my stanley tools wonder bar had to pry that off (very carefully) in order for everything to fit. good luck to the heirs to figure out how to get everything out after it's put back and the dust once again settles to cover my tracks. there's capacity for all thirty 1'x1'x3" drawers, (each partioned into four 3" wide compartments), with 15 drawers readily accessible in front, and 15 more tucked behind for longer-term storage. should be enough to get started.

there's still the matter of the workbench top to sort out, but that's just a measure and rip job as soon as i decide what it's going to be. the top i do have is plywood (very industrial strength 1" plywood, but plywood nonetheless) and its finished around its edges with metal strapping that i already know won't survive my heavy-handed way with power tools. (i do so hate finish work). i know it's the sensible thing, so in the morning i'll take stock and possibly get to creating more sawdust, though i always enjoy dreaming of the alternatives, and awakening with fresh ideas.

once that's in, the last pegboard is ready to go up, and the whole thing will be finished, and just waiting for the next reason to duck into the work room to get something done.

for christmas this year, santa, i would surely enjoy more tools. a man can never have enough beer, food, girlfriends or tools.

what makes happy?

i've ripped out the shelves in my front utility room right down to the bare walls, and the leftover screw holes in the sheetrock be damned, because i'm happy. actually, it's not just the de-shelving, but it's the piles of scrap wood, miscellaneous hardware and sawdust, too. right now, i can't reach my stairway without tripping over a radial arm saw and who knows how many other tools of various sorts. i'll climb over them on my way to bed tonight, and back across them again to go to work at my desk in the morning, and i'll still be happy.

years ago, i could visit a place where anything was possible. they had told him that suspending a concrete two-car garage floor over a completely open space was not only impractical, but practically impossible. yet, into the recesses formed by the series of steel-reinforced concrete t-beams, he had built an overhead warren of cabinets and storage spaces that wasted not one cubic inch of the opportunity.

beneath this all was a one-of-a-kind shangri-la of do it yourself. when the local high school scrapped all its old belt-driven shop machines, he bought the lot of them. when the local hardware store closed, he wrote a single check and took home every nail, bolt and screw. he had a complete welding set-up from when he ran his own dairy, and a pile of material from hardwoods to soft woods to sheet and scrap metal, to a set of industrial glass tubing that once carried the milk through the pasteurization process, and was planned for re-use as a water-transport system for his combination rooftop solar collector and backyard heat pump. (did you know that groundwater around here varies but a couple of degrees from 50 all year round, and with a little solar electricity to accomplish the exchange, even here in new england you can heat and cool your house for free, providing you can afford the materials and labor to build the system?) there was nothing that could not be fabricated, from furniture to automotive frames to hydroponic gardens where he started each year's crops.

i "helped" him with some of it. knowing children as i do now, i realize that it must have added days to each job to have me involved, but i was always made to feel critically useful, and i realize now that it also must have made him happy to have himself delayed that way. i recall the lesson in electrical voltages, amperages, capacitance and resistance to build the power supply for the homemade electrical fence so critical to keep the racoons out of the cornfield. (his acreage was in the woods, and surrounded by a virtual army of opportunists, from coons to woodchucks to rabbits to squirrels, and everything in between, that had to be resisted in order for there to be anything to eat). we cut hundreds of wooden stakes out of soft wood lathing, and fashioned the necessarily resistant holders for the bare wire out of heavy sheathed copper. i would cut each length, and coil it around a spike nail before bending the last inch so that it would fit exactly into the holes he drilled in the stakes. the current-carrying wire then nestled neatly into the void with a little deft twist, and we strung two complete perimeters, one around six inches, and another around twelve inches above the ground. the object wasn't to achieve a barrier, but to ensure that anything with a taste for the corn would first be getting a taste of the 12-volt car battery hooked to the system. as he said, the result was just a tickle, but we each had our share of accidents while testing it out, and we knew that the littler creatures were not going to be enjoying the results. but it was a pure joy to head out each morning to examine the animal tracks in the soft tilled earth, and to deduce each move towards, and jump back away from, the fence when it was finally built. and we never lost an ear of corn.

these are all memories held in the drawers of hardware i have so jealously kept all these years. 9/10's of it was scrapped, but even the bit left over is a more widely-varied and copious collection than i will ever have means to ever use. and that will never be the point.

these things make me happy.

i have them now with me in my place. MY place. i have the frame of the hand-built wooden table separated now from the steel four-wheeled dolly on which it was fashioned, and the furthest set of drawer spaces rough-hewn off with a hand saw so that it will fit in my modest little utility space. it will be hours to undo the fasteners for the hardwood rails upon which the drawers ride that are making the frame just an inch too wide. they're cantilevered through with carriage bolts, which are at their ends threaded into the hardwood, and the whole construction is deftly and quite intended to be permanently glued to the frame. i don't want to damage it while i undo it, and i will need to retrieve from the drawers a selection of shorter carriage bolts to redo the design, only on one side so that the frame can be butted directly up against the wall. (countersinking the bolt heads, of course). once upon a foundation frame of two-by-fours of around 15" in height, (so to leave space for storing the shop-vac and power saws and such), and allowing for the additional 27" for the five courses of drawers, and a final inch for the re-fitted top, it will all sit just millimeters beneath the circuit panel door. (reminder to self to call the electrician so as to wire a new power strip from the circuit panel into the back wall--one thing i learned while electrocuting the coons is that there is no substitute for a man who is experienced with electricity, especially when voltages and amperages trend up towards more than just a tickle).

this is what makes happy.

cadillac eddie

ok, this is just me taking my petty revenge for having my tv kidnapped and held for ransom yesterday by all those miter-capped apologists, but you know i can't resist.

why is it that among all those hours and hours of television we did not once overhear anyone using one of the man's more appropriately-earned nicknames? it's all "lion of the senate" this, and "the last of camelot" that... never "cadillac eddie", and the rousing bedtime tale of his grad school days, and careening through the late-night virginia neighborhoods at 90mph with his headlights off. (it's on one of the citations, i wouldn't make this stuff up).

i only hope when my eulogists stand up for me they're half as judicious with the stories they will tell...

a "mock" election

i couldn't help but wince at the irony that lowell sun editor kendall wallace had to use the word "mock" to describe a proposed plebiscite being planned to replace the undemocratically cancelled lowell city primary election, and not the actual election to take place in november.

it is perhaps the highest privilege of our free press that it can chronicle the process of our governing ourselves. in this case, kendall hits the daily double by being able not only to chronicle the "legal" process (that seems to be anything but legal in its intent, other than to make sure all the proper paperwork is in order to escape easy legal challenge) as well as the additional one that appears to have been spawned to make up the difference--extra, extra, read all about it.

the most encouraging demographic segment in support of this effort is neither a PAC nor a semi-self-obsessed blogger or two. when the normally to-themselves VFW membership thinks it's time something be done, then you know it's definitely time something be done. it's not hyperbole to remember that these are the men and women who have put life and love on the line to fight that our right to vote might always be preserved, as kendall wallace has alluded, and it's something that they're making the effort to do so yet again at home where you'd really rather prefer they didn't need to. no, casualties are not this time expected, unless (hopefully) you count the political careers of six particularly democracy-opposed city councillors--KMLEMC--Keep Making Lowell Elections More Competitive--Kazanjian, Mercier, Lenzi, Elliott, Mercier, Caulfield--remember them so you can forget them in november.

(and, no, mssrs panagiotakos, golden, nangle and murphy, we have not forgotten that you were only so pleased as to run to uncle deval with your home rule petition to cancel the city council primary at the behest of, not the citizens of the city of lowell, but, rather, a half dozen self-serving city councillors).

chicken shit we are

bigots objecting to a meritocracy have always seemed to me the most ridiculous of sorts. if your philosophy is based upon your own intrinsic superiority, what then could you possibly have to fear about instituting a system that rigorously and assiduously defends against favoritism of any sort? wouldn't that just be removing the very last leg your inferiors would otherwise have to hope to stand on?

well, this past week i was reminded that bigots aren't the only authors of ludicrous out there, and among the many others would be the so-called proponents of democracy who cannot escape their own abiding fear of being voted against. one fresh-faced and eager proponent of local democracy, actively participating in a specific endeavor to increase voter turnout, actually used the phrase "if we lose" in subjective reference to this year's city council election and the efficacy of said specific endeavor.

whuh?

um, i should think any true devotee of democracy would be satisfied in having the largest possible number of people deciding the outcome of any election, guaranteeing as that would the closest possible alignment with what i always understood as the principle object of democracy, which would be governing at the will and whim of the entire electorate. however, as might be deduced by the use of the term "lose", it would appear that many purported fans of democracy are actually either base partisans at their core, and possessed of very little interest in the will of the majority if it should coincidentally not happen to coincide with their own, or of the lowest possible respect and regard for the intelligence and wisdom of the voting public at large. either way, you clearly don't care about the will of the majority--in the one case refusing to acknowledge its validity, or, in the other, refusing to truly believe that democracy is the best form of government, and that the people need to be protected from themselves by wiser sorts. (such as oneself).

it's a wonder to me that we ever manage to govern ourselves, sometimes.

the reason i got onto all this is a thought provoked by a very thought-provoking post over at the right side of lowell. it would appear that the earnest and tireless opponents of the argued-to-be failed policies of the previous, alernatively-partied administration, cannot wait to flatter it by continued imitation. to wit, the US government is still proudly in the business of kidnapping people (as long as its on foreign soil, it must not be breaking any of *our* laws, right?) and sending them to convenient places (syria, guantanamo, etc.) from which to have torture and other american-extra-legal means carried out in pursuit of truth, justice and the american way.

so here's my problem:

how can anyone be a patriot and true believer in this great nation of ours, and the constitution upon which it is founded, and accept even for a nanosecond the premise that any of its founding principles are subjective to the accident of genealogy or geography? if all men are indeed endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, who among us have the standing to cross that creator and deny those rights to anyone anywhere anytime? either we stand for something as a nation, or we don't.

oh, sure, the argument will be that if we allow terrorists to use our legal system against us, they'll be "winning", but, seriously, how can this possibly be so? if our system is superior because it is just, is it not just for us to follow our faith in that superiority to its very limits?

bigots betraying their underlying fear of inferiority, like proponents of democracy afraid to trust the will of the full electorate, are the mothers milk of so-called american patriots who refuse to respect their own constitution--obviously out of their fear that it is weak and flawed in its philosophies, and in need of being selectively enforced a la the pigs on orwell's animal farm.

chicken shit. that's what those people are. all of them.

and it pisses me off that nobody calls them on it.

the stain of party politicking

some party registered folks (some from each, as a matter of fact) tried to suggest to me the other day that party organization is important in order to "get things done". as usual, and as you can imagine, i was not plussed.

today, reading all about the ethical vaccuum surrounding one of lowell's city councillors, by whose fiat it's also been argued by none other than our commonwealth's governor at the behest of his party affiliated brethren among the statehouse delegation related hereto, that the democratic process (i.e. legally mandated primary elections) should be suspended, it cannot be helped but occur to me that once you stick that capital letter after your name, be it D or R ("demican" or "republicrat"), you're immediately party to all the evil that is enabled by that affiliation. while the whole world (it would appear) eulogizes one particularly prolific senior senator, i can't help but consider all the petty and not-so-petty evils that have been enabled simply by his being who he is--supremely connected among one of the two major political parties.

"oh, but just think of all the good he's done" you'll all say... but, really, should we? even while saying the best possible things he could think of to say, orrin hatch, arch conservative political opponent extraordinaire, had to point out that there has been no greater boon to his own fund-raising (and, hence, the perpetuation of his own personal brand of conservative politics and consequent reactionary legislation), than teddy k. is that something i or anyone else ought to ignore??? (and, please, if they were eulogizing orrin hatch, you know teddy would be saying the same things, and, please trust me, i'd be swapping the conservative and liberal labels and happily saying the same thing only backwards--this isn't about ideology, it's about the corruption of ideology).

the simple truth is that major party affiliations accomplish exactly two things: one, the perpetuation of the major opposition party's affiliations, and, two, the kind of slimy slippery-sloped graft and corruption that leads to the simultaneous deregulation of wall street, accompanied by the complete elimination of oversight for the main quasi-government mortgage outfits who are then free to generate such a prodigious pile of bad mortgage paper that no end to the number of corrupt investment bankers can take home seven-figured bonuses (continuing to this day) for the pushing of that paper right into the insatiable sucking maw of the federal budget deficit and treasury debt. and you and me (the suckers who are born every minute) are left to pick up the tab.

no, i don't believe teddy k is a proverbial "great man". no, i don't believe he intended to be evil, no more than i believe that he intended a drunken (possibly passed out, who besides teddy knows) mary jo kopechne to be unable to extricate herself from the front seat of a submerged 67 oldsmobile. but the "legacy", such as it is, contains no sweeping and un-asterisked historic legislation, and what compromised bits he has been able to pass, (and there have been hundreds, if not thousands, so it's not a question of laziness), have all been passed in ethical, legal and moral compromise with opposition apparatchiks like orrin hatch, who have likewise crafted a "legacy" that is as much mirror image than anything of substance, and they've all gotten their bits of offsetting evil passed with the erstwhile assistance of each other, and no other way. it's how the political game is played.

so now my governor must argue that the people of lowell have requested suspension of their democratic rights based on the behest of his party-affiliated lowell statehouse delegation, who, in their turn, are getting their political instructions by the city apparatus who has itself been the source of the corruption of the process in the first place. and the only people who lose are you, and me, and every other registered voter who does not stand to gain from the political corruption currently being investigated inside the walls of the lowell city hall. (is your name not kazanjian? sorry...)

all i want to do is vote fairly and squarely for candidates who are for professional, transparent and graft-free city, state and federal government, and best if they're for doing it at reasonable and affordable cost.

the latest episode of the sopranakians

why wait a week for your favorite soap to come on? the sopranakians is now running daily--even on weekends!

to summarize today's episode, they've changed the locks on city hall, and the feds have set up shop on the second floor, right in the city's inspectional services department offices. they've been photocopying documents there since thursday, complete with two lowell city cops to "assist and keep the peace". (city police superintendent lavallee is proud to say that "the lowell police department has joined the state inspector general and the FBI in the investigation"). yup, that's right--federal state and local--no free pass unless you are *completely* connected. stay tuned to discover if anyone might be...

in the meantime, the sun's lead story reports that state inspector general gregory sullivan's investigations, along with those of the fbi, extend to handling of building projects done by mcbee development LLC, which besides acquiring and renovating and occupying (free of pesky permits) a series of properties in the city since 2008, is headed up by kevin broderick's (that's city councillor kevin broderick's to you) father.

meanwhile, back on the ernest "sandy" ames saga, they're (allegedly) finding falsified time sheets and other documents, moonlighted income from work while also on city time, (for none other than developer slash city councillor alan kazanjian, for whom ernie/sandy also pulled out-of-town permits, as well as approved in-town permits for one of kazanjian's business associates against state conflict of interest laws, while on the city clock), including work done within the city of lowell which is another one of those ethical no-no's. sandy's comment to city solicitor christine o'connor? "yes, yes, you got me, you got me".

you can read the entire preliminary ames investigation report with minimal redactions here.

i love this town!

the sopranakians

not sure if armenian, greek, or any other ethnicity is most appropriate for the headline, (we have our share of italians here, too, i suppose), but it's better than TV these days up here in shangri-lowell, and you just have to read it to believe it. here's the current headline story from today's lowell sun, (link to it while it's hot, people!), and it's as rich and deep a story as any man could have wished on his birthday. thank you, shangri-lowell!!!

by way of disclaimer, the following is intended for entertainment purposes only. resemblances to persons living or dead is completely unintentional, and should not be construed as factual or held against the writer for having a weak sense of humor. but, anyway...

setting the way back machine to a few months ago, (see, it's got to be fiction, cuz he's writing about a way back machine), let me catch you up: a certain city councillor named kazanjian and five of his best city council buddies inquired politely of the city solicitor how best to word a motion to legally do the illegal, which would be to fire a city employee (and political ally of the city manager) under our plan E form of government. "why, just ax the line item for his salary in the budget" she said, and with that city manager bernie lynch found himself with a serious shot across his bow. you could almost imagine the little note tagged to the horse's head in bernie's bed not to cross the gang of six. (KMLEMC--Keep Making Lowell Elections More Competitive--Kazanjian, Mercier, Lenzi, Elliott, Mercier, Caulfield--remember the names so you can forget them in november). well, perhaps figuring old bernie had been put in his place for awhile, the gang turned their attention to other things, like subverting democracy, (e.g. cancelling the legally-required primary election for city council spots), and the bylines have gone relatively quiet for awhile. (notwithstanding a quixotic effort by apparently reality-challenged councillor milinazzo to suggest the council vote to investigate itself for taking a perfectly legal vote, but let's not get too far off the track, lest we lose the thread).

oh, silly, silly gang of six: in the meantime, there were apparently some complaints about the city's inspectional services department forwarded to the city manager. (though name me a city department immune to complaint on any given day of the week). so our erstwhile city manager, under the "plausible deniability" mantle of doing the city's official business, authorized a surveillance operation to follow the daily comings and goings of one ernest (seriously, you can't make these names up) "sandy" ames.

ernest "sandy" ames, you see, is the city's plumbing and gas-fitting inspector, and you can imagine what sort of competitive impact he might have on behalf of, say, a local businessman with whom he was friendly, who also might coincidentally have a seat on the city council. (if, by "friendly", you're wondering whether or not i'd mean "employed as president and manager of an after-hours drinking and gambling club owned by the friend/businessman/city councillor", let me confirm to you that, yes, i do mean "employed as president and manager of an after-hours drinking and gambling club owned by the friend/businessman/city councillor"). oh, and you'll say, kad, kad, you're shocked, shocked i tell you, to hear such baseless and unsubstantiated allegations coming from someone who has only walked past the door of said alleged after hours drinking and gambling club owned by the friend/businessman/city councillor and never set foot inside, but, seriously, you don't have to walk past the door of said alleged after hours drinking and gambling club owned by the friend/businessman/city councillor too many times after hours to be quite convinced that not every commonwealth of massachusetts or city of lowell ordinance is being followed to its letter, least of which being those covering the dispensing of alcohol within its four walls, up to and including over-serving. (remember, this is the city that runs a series of headlines about a civil suit by a bookie against his siblings for emptying almost a million in cash out of a safe deposit box without ever batting an eye or pausing to remind readers that gambling is, actually, illegal in the commonwealth of massachusetts, and that it's generally suspicious to cite your professional as "bookmaker" in pursuing civil litigation, but i digress).

actually, lets not give bernie lynch too much credit on this one, as one of the accompanying pieces of documentation to the complaint filed simultaneously with the city manager's office as well as the local paper, was a photograph of ernest "sandy" ames asleep on the loading dock of councillor kazanjian's used auto part business, lest anyone find it difficult to follow the cookie crumbs. (unless, of course, one strays to wonder at whose behest the first photograph was taken in the first place...) but let's not go too far down conspiracy lane on this one, as we would then also have to muse on the classic soprano-esque implications of owning and operating an auto salvage operation, and we'd never get to the bottom of this post...

so, the way one might see it, if one were writing a fiction of a fictional city, bernie has cut out the pound of flesh he intends to take for the sacking of his lieutenant, andy sheehan, and it's a doozy. cuz this one, rather than anecdotes of bad sophomoric behavior during a sacking spree of downsized city hall employees, is quite likely to be accompanied by very headline-worthy findings of illegal influence within the inspectional services department, either on behalf of councillor kazanjian's businesses, or, even more salaciously, against some of councillor kazanjian's competitor's businesses. that is, if one were only interested in the entertainment value of such things.

because, as you know, none of this could ever possibly be true...

whose fault is our vacant senate seat?

republicrats and demicans in the general court will argue back and forth about which side has been more crass in their past jiggering of succession rules, (and they're both right), but i know exactly why we have only one sitting senator in washington right now, and so do you.

a diagnosis of brain cancer is not the sort of thing at which one can express surprise a year later that you've ended up dead and having cost your constituency fully half their representation in the upper chamber. A properly focused politician, i.e. one who could prioritize the best interests of their consituency ahead of their own personal sense of entitlement, might reasonably have planned for a resignation date to coincide with a special election to select their replacement, at which point no gap in representation would have existed in the first place.

but, as we all know, here in the great state of kennedychusetts, such things are never even considered. in fact, as was quite eloquently pointed out over at the newenglander the other day, it was suggested by one of our state reps that the great (as in portly) senior senator was maybe "owed" a special law written specially to fill his seat with someone not selected by the constituency, but, rather, by our senior senator's own private and personal political agenda.

oh, but so many of you will want to leap to your feet and argue that the senator's position on healthcare is our own, but, i would then ask, why would it be so bad, then, if we might be trusted to elect his successor? oh, it's the timing thing--we need someone in the seat TODAY, not six months from now.

well, guess what. return yourself to the top of this rant and consider that the reason we have no representation today is because that very same senior senator disrespected us so completely as to never consider that it was his resignation, not his ego, that would serve us best. i hardly think this kind of person's opinion is the one i would most trust to guide us in selecting our next senator, and i hardly think we owe anyone but ourselves a fair and fairly-voted decision on who earns the privilege to next serve.

everything else is a propagation of more of the same ego-centric, selfish and self-serving crap that we've had to endure all along.

all hail bobby byrd

teddy k couldn't even make it within four years of fifty in the senate, so it's now left to danny inouye to chase down bobby byrd for the all time record. (fifty years, 235 days, and counting). strom thurmond left office at age 100 with the record at the time, and, sure, ted stevens made it all the way into the 40-year club (by 10 days) but he couldn't keep it going either, and so spring chicken bobby at a sprightly 91 is now da old man to beat. (you remember bobby, right? he was one of the guys who filibustered the civil rights act of 1964, and he's also the guy who reigns as the undisputed king of pork--remember, ted stevens has left the house, y'all--funneling billions into west viriginia--one year fully 50% of federal highway funds were spent within the border of his tiny little state--and lending his name to over 30 pending or ongoing federal pork projects).

anyway, i bring this up because, to me and to many, teddy k's biggest claim to fame remains his senate longevity, and related pork-barrel prowess. byrd's puny attempts at sluicing off federal funds for the benefit of his backwater fiefdom ultimately pale in comparison to teddy k's bringing home the big dig bacon. of course, folks with longer memories will remember the youngest kennedy brother being expelled from harvard for cheating on his freshman spanish exam, and trying to go waterskiing in a 1967 oldsmobile delmont 88 with one of his brother bobby's "boiler room girls", while refusing to admit that trying to pilot a full-sized olds across the old dike bridge required his usual and ever-since well-documented drinking habits. (can't help but wonder what those habits did to contribute to his ex, joanie, turning up absolutely stewed with a concussion and a broken shoulder in the gutter of a beacon hill street, but, then, joanie never could hold her liquor the way teddy could, my favorite story of which being william kennedy smith's "girlfriend" slash rape date describing running into the sauced senior senator from massachusetts in a polo button down and boxer shorts on the way out).

the "lion of the senate's" many benefactees and other fans will do plenty to fill your inbox and online reading today with the long list of all his accomplishments, as well as all sorts of other and usual obituary staples, but for the kopechne's and for sister rose's botched lobotomy, i'd like to hold a virtual candle for all that is very, very wrong with the kennedy clan.

i, for one, am looking forward to my chance to vote in a meaningful us senate election.

oh, and if it wasn't already kinda obvious...

i had to work late, really late, over the weekend to finish up a couple of projects for work, (or was that really early?), fresh on the heels of staying up late, really late, to chase music and what have you all over the area earlier in the week, and you know i'm a guy who's sunniest on generous quantities of sleep. (no snide comments about doing my work during normal working hours please--you know i don't work like that).

the good news is that i'm catching up day by day, and by next weekend and the first soccer game of the fall season, i should be well on my way back to my usual shangri-lowell, life-is-always-good, self. (and i'm still sayin' brad penny didn't help things this past week, but don't let me digress too much about that).

until then, please try to keep a thick political skin about my rantings and ravings against your pet politicos, and take solace in the fact that i object to their opponents as least as much as you do. ;-)

it's always about common ground, isn't it. or, as alice roosevelt longworth (or dorothy parker depending on whose opinion you trust) is once reputed to have said, "if you can't say anything nice, come sit here by me".

since it became coke vs pepsi

in the soda game, since it became coke vs pepsi, we've lost both rc as well as any semblance of choice in our soft drink aisle. oh--and a can of that sugar water, that's really high-fructose corn syrup water, is now generally over a buck a throw.

in the us, since the disappearance of the know-nothings and the rise of the two-headed republicrat vs demican monster, our national debt has spiraled ever-upwards towards today's almost $40,000 FOR EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD in the country. (i can no longer stand to divide it out for every wage-earning man, woman and child in the country, because it's too depressing to even think about). given estimated multi-trillion dollar annual deficits into the foreseeable future, this per-citizen debt is going to be running up at a rate of about $5,000 per year per person, on top of the $10,000 per year per person being paid in taxes. or, put another way, imagine an outstanding credit card balance of $40,000 that's going to keep getting bigger by $5,000 every year even while you're paying almost $1,000 A MONTH on it to keep it "current".

yep, almost $1,000 a month is the current bill to each and every man, woman and child in this country for the privilege of watching their $40,000 share of the debt run up an additional $5,000 every year. any guesses as to whether or not that $1,000 a month we're currently paying to run our government is going to go down or up?

if you're like me, and lucky enough to be gainfully employed at a well-paying job, this is already sounding like real money. but the painful truth is that the vast majority of americans are not gainfully employed at well-paying jobs, (being children or students or retirees or among the tens of millions of the unemployed), and the per-earner share of this debt is positively staggering no matter which way you look at it. and who, exactly, is going to be able to afford to pay all this back?

here in lowell with our own tiny little microcosm of the greater problem, one of the proposals is to tax meals more heavily, but i'm of the opinion that masking the mountain of debt by taking a bigger and bigger bite out of each and every little transaction is never going to be the point. we simply have to stop spending, and there is simply no other way this is ever going to be made to work. taxation is something that's long ago ceased to be anything about paying to simply govern ourselves, but, rather, it's become a narcotic to spend-mad party-affiliated politicians whose every answer to every problem is to spend more money on it.

if you're a registered republicrat or demican, i'm asking you very politely and sincerely today to explain to me why it is that i should be required to pay for the rape of my own country by the party hacks of your party, in cohort with the party hacks of your other party, just because you claim to be supporting *your* party because it isn't the *other* party. from where i'm sitting, you're fully half my problem, and if i could find a way to fire your people, i'm quite sure that half of my problems would be solved.

THAT'S why i don't vote for your candidates. not because i think the other folks are any better. truth is, i'm not voting for them, either. and you can't ask me to do anything more than that.

what are you doing today to reign in the federal debt and deficit? and don't tell me it's supporting one side against the other, because it's "one side against the other" that keeps us buried beneath this pile of mounting debt.

the log in the eye

comments attached to a recent post here have pulled me back into one of my favorite fish-in-a-barrel pursuits, which would be pillorying sarah palin's profound lack of suitability for public office. what i find most remarkable in this, is how quickly "but [insert guy or gal from the opposing political party] said/did the same thing" comes up in these sorts of discussions.

is no one paying attention to a word i say? (sorry, rhetorical question with an obvious answer, and i'm not saying not paying attention to a word i say isn't a sensible way to be, and you can try to unwind those nested negatives all afternoon, but they'll still not make any sense). excusing a repubicrat, or was that a demican, by arguing that a demican, or was that a republicrat, is worse, would be like me trying to argue to a probate court judge that i ought not to be treated so harshly in my divorce, since oj's marital behavior was far worse. yeah, that's sensible.

which is to say, just because obama, biden, or any number of woefully naive democrat politicos make noises about admitting georgia and the ukraine into NATO, it will never, ever make it a right thing for a republican, either. because it's wrong. why we can feel great about blockading cuba at the first signs of a foreign military presence, and understand why being ready to go to war over it was right and necessary, but then have no concept about the proximity of the ukraine and georgia to mother russia, and how defensively the russians, who have been routinely invaded by a remarkably long list of our NATO and other allies, from the french to the germans to the japanese, might feel about something like that, is profoundly troubling to me. i know that georgians and ukrainians, just like cubans, deserve autonomy and freedom, just like we do, but certain things, like full NATO membership, can't ever be part of that bargain while memories of stalingrad are still on the russian history books. that's just the way that is.

which brings us back to sarah and the fact that i seem to have to include with every rant against a republicrat, or was that a demican, that I'M NOT A [INSERT POLITICAL PARTY ALIGNMENT HERE]. isn't it yet clear to all that they're both crooked? BOTH? the current financial meltdown was created by both democratic-sponsored coddling of fannie and freddie which produced mountains of bad paper, combined with republican-sponsored deregulation of financial institutions left free to trade in those insolvent-mortgage-backed securities with the implicit guarantee of government bailouts, which were immediately made available to the tune of almost a trillion dollars by the bush administration. which is to say, bailouts were clearly a bush idea, (though at first only for wall streeters), and now they're being blown out of all proportion under obama who wants to make them available to everyone, including everyone who wants to buy a new car, but, apparently, not for anyone who wants to buy a used car, and too bad if you're a used car dealer these days, but i digress. BOTH parties are killing this country, kinda like a bad parody of a tag-team texas steel cage death match, with our future retirement savings as the deceased. BOTH OF THEM. what is so hard to see about that? the fact that we're being treated to yet more bernanke has to be one of the best indications yet that we have a serious problem here. if something and/or someone is ok with both parties, then you know its time to start stuffing cash into mattresses, and converting all your investments (illegally here, ironically enough) into gold bullion. (my extended plan includes ownership of an assault rifle, if that gives you any indication about how fluid my political opinions can be).

i discount each and every republicrat's anti-demican rhetoric the same as i discount each and every demican's anti-republicrat rhetoric, which is to say, completely. if any defense of sarah palin has to resort to comparing her to joe biden, then see my marital comments about oj, and we should all reflect to ourselves as to why that is.

ron paul for president. (yeah, i know he's aligned with one of the major political gangs, but in his defense, he and his ideas are despised by both of 'em, and that's got to count for something).

when you can't tell the funnies from the rest of the newspaper...

you hear a lot about "convergence" these days, and a lot of ink gets spilt on the decline of daily newspapers in america, but todays sun bookends paid adverts asserting that banks were forced, forced i tell you, to loan money to people who couldn't afford to pay them back, with their usual next-to-last-page funnies, and i have to say that, better than crosswords and the daily jumble, it's always most fun to try to tell the difference between the entertainment content, the advertising content, and the editorial content in my local rag.

where was "queen of the people" rita when they weren't HER friends stranded?

i hear a lot of gum-flapping about rita mercier's indefatigable defense of the "common man" in defense of her indefensible actions against open democracy and professional city government, but i have to say her deafening silence this past week, and that of all the other city council candidates who at least *claimed* to be in favor of professional city government, on behalf of dozens of elderly disabled residents of the SUN building downtown when its single elevator failed is what i'm always going to remember.

you know rita. she's the one in the city council meetings who is always standing up to cite anecdotes of standing in line to pay bills at the city collectors office and overhearing grievous affronts to the dignity and fiscal livelihood of those being treated unfairly by those in certain positions of bureaucratic power, who, conveniently enough, also are coincidentally aligned with her political enemies. andy sheehan got the sack for as much. and you know the rest of the candidates. they're all the folks who are for professional city government, and who are shocked, shocked i tell you to find lapses in the inspectional services department.

anyway, while i'm listening to all sorts of people, including the editor of the local paper which was alone in publicizing the critical public health danger of the failed elevator, characterize downtown residents as "blowellians" and luxury condo owners, i'm amazed that no one actually drives or walks down here to see who the majority of downtown residents really are. (jennifer myers' original story in the paper did a better job at documenting the reality). here we have citizens whose basic life needs are at critical risk (would you want the ambulance team to have to climb 8 or 9 flights of stairs to get to you, or to have to be taken out that same way if, god forbid, you needed it?) and for whom not one city politician or public figure could be found to be outraged at the situation.

for FIVE DAYS a high-rise building with multiple elevators had NONE. the owners were in the first place too cheap to ensure that a second elevator was functional as a backup, (they just let it languish, broken), and were in the second place too cheap to bother having it attended to in any kind of timely manner as should be legally required in matters, such as this, of public safety.

lowell needs professional city government. lowell needs more folks like catapult978 and jennifer myers documenting all the reasons. lowell needs a new city council.

i'm only distressed this morning that so few of the contenders are paying any sort of attention to what goes on where i live.

so wrong on so many levels

apparently, alec baldwin has "no use" for joe lieberman, and feels compelled to spread rumors about moving to connecticut so as to run for the US senate in 2012. (it must be true, because alec said it in playboy magazine). for his part, and from the sexiest media platform he could manage in retort, (CNN's "state of the union"), joe immediately riposted that alec should "make my day".

i fear for the future of this country.

i guess its just yet more of the halcyon days of bald political opportunisnm. it apparently long ago ceased to be an issue where one might be from, or on behalf of whom, exactly, one might have an interest to represent. swapping zip codes and political parties is just all part of the game. mitt romney, like all the top kennedys, moved to massachusetts, (though he's had to move to new hampshire), on his road to self-importance. the small time kennedys, and their potential alaskan imitators, make do with rhode island, though hillary pulled a bobby and opted for the empire state and it seems to be doing just fine for her. (i also hear bill is thoroughly enjoying his tour through the real housewives of westchester county). it's pretty old news that john mccain isn't actually from anywhere.

lest we all think its just one more part of the joke that al franken was born in new york, it's fair to remember that he, like joe lieberman in connecticut, actually has his roots there. (though i'm pretty sure al has always been a democrat and won't be speaking at the republican national convention anytime soon, unless it might be to answer to the president's special interrogation team during prime time, should barack's little inquisition brainstorm fly and be inherited by a republicrat (or was that demican?) successor.

connecticut actually seems a pretty fluid place for opportunists. geo dubya bush's story begins there, (though it stopped off for prep school in andover, massachusetts, where he became head cheerleader, which has got to be at least as well-qualifying for national office as being a beauty pageant runner up), before it went back on a bender through new haven with the rest of the skull and bones crowd. (at least between summers in kennebunkport). but what is deafening in its silent omission as part of this story is any mention of what anyone in connecticut might think of their commonwealth's senate representation being trumped by a circle jerk of trumpeting national political gadflies with personal axes to grind.

me, i just think its more important than ever for people to get out and vote to call a stop to all this BS.

i dig liz longley

i had every intention of giving carl johnson's guitar every minute of my attention tonight, and thought it safe to entrust the early evening's entertainment to livinston taylor down at the lowell summer music series show at the high school auditorium tonight safe in the knowledge that i could effortlessly duck out at the intermission and be down at the sky box in tewksbury in plenty of time, but you know what they say about the best laid plans.

livingston taylor, who i've had the pleasure to have seen several times before, never fails to bring a smile. his deft way with a tune, and immaculate fingerings running such eloquent chord changes through the heart of so many a standard, are something to be heard more than once. and he's always entertaining. and tonight was no exception, though still not, to that point, getting in the way of plans for an early exit... and then...

liz longley.

like a bell her voice is--so true. livinston has done this before, i'm told, and brought one of his berklee students onto the stage to share it, but i can't imagine any like liz. when the two of them brought the audience to its feet and the house down during their final duet on "over the rainbow", i had tears in my eyes, and a feeling of music in my heart like you can touch. with the top down and the stereo on 11 on the way down to tewksbury, i knew i had chosen well.

even so, it was hard to know that big trouble had been at it awhile before i got there. 70's classics (war, grand funk, etc. etc.) were the staple of the sky box evening, and carl's guitar was a fender tonight, and sounding great.

best place on earth

i don't dig celtic

the ex discovered her nascent loathing for me while on holiday in the old country, but i swear that's got nothing to do with this. i just saw eileen ivers last night as part of the lowell summer music series, and two things became rapidly obvious.

first of all, WOW. eileen ivers can play. she amped a midnight blue violin through a classic hendrix-esque rock amp setup, complete with wah-wah pedal, and the effect was, well, electric. stunning. and, second of all, she overloaded her show not with zeppelin covers and hendrix-esque solos, but with borrowings from riverdance and who knows how many other traditional celtic and traditional celtic-sounding songs, and though i've NEVER seen an audience with so much white hair in it rocking along to any kind of music the way last night's did, (it was pretty surreal, let me tell you), the effect in the end on me was pretty ho-hum. (i had to be elbowed awake at one particularly drone-some point).

you know, when the whole schtick is to clap along, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap with every 1 beat, and have the stage virtuosos just playing as many notes as quickly as they can without particular rhyme, reason or rhythm, it doesn't take long for me to wonder where has all the music gone.

the essence of it all came home while the band used up their final encore with what i'm sure they believe to be a raucous and rocking rendition of "will the circle be unbroken". the blue-hairs, white-hairs, and everybody else in the audience clearly loved it. and, it's true, you could hear the faintest glimmerings of a gospel lilt between the soporific pile drivings of measure, but instead of evoking aretha, it left me aching to hear aretha again, or anybody with a little soul for that matter, because, in the end, you really couldn't, and there really wasn't, even on such a "standard" as this.

all that talent on stage... and it was prodigious talent, no question about that. i'm glad i saw it, because i've never seen anything like eileen tearing it up on a violin before.

but i won't be worrying about missing any more celtic-themed shows anytime soon.

at one point the bass player let some latin slip into one of his extended solos, and i couldn't help but think to myself that a lot of music is more equal than others.

lowell rocks

where else in the world can you head out for lao on your way to catch "stevie wonder goes to cuba", aka jen kearney and the lost onion, turning a simple city park into absolute eden?

ok, the ambience of perfection was polluted just the least little bit by a sitting city councillor glad-handing his way around the crowd during the music, (to his offer of a little orange popsicle stick emblazoned with his name i was happy to be able to say "no thank you, i'm for professional city government"), but you can't have a pile of phien's homemade sausage with sticky rice and then get knocked off your zen so easily, especially while carl johnson is bending that slide on "you're wrong this time" until you are almost literally lifted up out of your seat and levitated on a cloud of music. (i have never been held in place so long waiting for a suspended note to be resolved as i have been during this song these past two nights, and i'm suspicious carl could hold it for just about forever and i'd still be feeling lucky to be allowed to wait for it). "bravery" isn't jen's easiest cd to find, but for this tune alone worth the effort, and, for that matter, it's never so sweet as when the band's doing it live, so get thee to a live show so you know about which i'm tellin' ya.

but the best news is that i've still got a whole pile of phien's beef tongue (cilantro, mint, and i can't even guess how many more contributors to the flavor in there) in the fridge, and i can't wait to have at it again, and then to go back for more.

phien's kitchen. i can now personally vouch for the spring rolls, homemade sausage, beef tongue and sticky rice. (all unequivocally and unconditionally GREAT). i've had it on multiple authority that the purple rice for dessert is absolutely not to be missed, but i didn't go with an army of friends, and so ran out of room long before the plates were emptied low enough to allow a frugal yankee room for it on his conscience. which just means i am going to have to go back, and soon, and i couldn't be happier about that.

who knew the highlands had it so going on?

heather rules

even lumping all snl-related searches together, (with "quien es mas macho" leading that group by far, though "sometimes women will be uncomfortable doing something at first" is putting up respectable numbers, too), they still don't add up to queen heather's contributions to random readership of the mindtivo among the past 500 hits. for those who remain curious, the bathing suit fanatics haven't yet eclipsed general interest, but they're getting closer, and would be tied if you combined them with the "is heather unruh really blond" contingent. (my opinion is "no", but i'm jaded because she so closely resembles a certain someone i know who is also not really anymore, but i digress).

north preston nova scotia (carson downey--yeah!) is pretty well represented, oddly enough, considering how few people are actually from there, but such is the beauty of the long tail of the internet, that relatively thin demographic slices can become positively fat when you've shaved the internet population closer and closer to zero.

so, to all you nova scotian heather unruh fans out there, i say, "hello!"

republicrats and demicans

lest anyone become confused about the pervasiveness of self-serving chicanery among both our major political parties, today teddy kennedy reminds us all that it's never about the best interests of the electorate.

i know it's a long way back for folks to recall, but once there were republicrat (or were they demican?) governors here in the great commonwealth of massachusetts. in those dark (or were they halcyon?) days, it was such a terror to the demican-controlled statehouse, (or was it republicrat?) that a republicrat (or was that demican?) might appoint another republicrat (or was that demican?) to fill a senate seat vacated by a demican (or was that republicrat?) running for president. oh the horror.

so these slippery and sly demicans (or were they republicrats?) changed the succession law here in the great commonwealth of massachusetts so that a republicrat governor (or was that demican?) could never appoint a republicrat (or was that demican) to fill a vacated demican (or was that republicrat?) senate seat without having that senate seat filled instead by the choice of the people (that's us! yay!) via special election within 5 months of the vacancy. sounds reasonable, no?

well, to teddy kennedy this morning, ailing lion (or was that lush?) of the demican (or was that republicrat?) party, this does not any longer sound reasonable, since now the sitting governor is a demican, (or was that republicrat?), and the vacated senate seat, in his humble opinion, needs to be filled immediately by a demican (or was that republicrat?) or else the world as we know it will undoubtedly end, and the evil republicrats (or are they demicans?) will have one fewer demican (or was that republicrat?) vote to overcome in their [his opinion] evil opposition to the [trade mark] will of the people.

WTF

i'm going to have to come up with a new acronym for this sort of thing, as the paint on the W, T and F keys on my keyboard is starting to wear thin.

yeah, that's right. if it's my party, then let's appoint my guy ASAP. but if it's THEIR party, then screw appointments and let's make it all but impossible for the other side to seat someone instead. yeah, that's fair.

i kinda like the rule that says the electorate is polled before the insider deal gets done. teddy, you can kiss my ass, my ballot, and my ever-luvin "don't tread on me" t-shirt.

fire 'em all. it's the only way.

fire with fire

so hopes that my civil right to vote in a primary election here in lowell this year might be respected grow ever dimmer...

i don't have the means or the time to pursue a civil lawsuit against the city council and complicit statehouse delegation, nor do i have any standing with any of the challengers to influence how they will respond. however:

what seems to exist here is a cabal of incumbent councillors who are playing their concentrated numbers against the dilution of a wide field of challengers, and cancelling legally-mandated primary elections in order to do it. lets face it, the chances of any one, two or three challengers of concentrating opposition to the degree necessary to unseat even a couple of the incumbents are very small.

so.

my suggestion is a caucus. just the same way "incumbent" creates a logical slate, wouldn't it be wonderful if the entire collection of challengers could agree upon nine names from among their number that could be advertised as a block squarely opposed to the present hegemony of nepotism and provincialism and law-disrespecting that currently exists? (recall that state law says our council is not supposed to fire city employees, even though, by eliminating the budget line item, they're doing exactly that, not to mention that state law mandates a primary election as specified in our city charter, though that's also being thwarted by insider chicanery).

yes, i'm dreaming.

but, think about it. 16 or 18 folks get together and decide a fair means to identify 9 names. maybe it's a town-hall style meeting in one of the school gyms (with proper arrangements and permitting, of course) and a show of hands. maybe it's a comparison of campaign signature numbers, with the biggest piles earning the spots. who knows. but i'd have to reason that any one of the 15's chances to reach the council would be best served by agreeing to such a collaboration, rather than by taking ones chances in the general election in november and running the incumbency gauntlet.

and, from my perspective, it would give me an easy way to know that my vote against the law-flaunting status quo was being counted.

the readers digest version

lots of folks don't read 'em when they get too long, so here's the short version:

orwell once wrote (in animal farm) that "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others". here in lowell, in our own little dialect of newspeak, (nods to orwell's 1984), this gets shortened to "you're not from around here, aren you".

last saturday's sun column by kendall wallace introduced two city council challengers as alternately "a relative newcomer to lowell", and "lived here all his life". this before hearing absolutely anything about them beyond their perceived "sincerity".

WTF.

our city council meetings are littered with testimonials to lifelong residents and other friends of the gang of six, and direct pejoratives aimed at anyone who had the temerity to move here from anywhere else. ironically, given the current state of this city, and the lifers' collective embarrassment over what can be easily filmed on most any streetcorner, (just for laughs, ask 'em about youtube and catapult978 some time), it's impossible not to conclude that we're dealing with the sorts of people who would rather kill their child than let it be partially raised by anyone else.

and that's just plain batshit crazy in my book.

but, hey, i'm not from around here...

"some animals are more equal than others"

george orwell first fascinated me as an essayist and language stickler. (to me, the most powerful passages in 1984 are those that deal with the corruption of language to influence and control, which is double plus un-good, and also highly pertinent in this age of "haters" and name your steven colbert "the word" here). but, above all, it's his simple allegory, "animal farm", that has me today.

for those who may not recall, or who might not yet have read the little book, (just over 100 pages--too short for you to have an excuse not to at least scan quickly), some anamorphic pigs overthrow the brutality of farm life, and replace it with an intended animal utopia that relies upon several sensible commandments that are quickly distilled to a single law which simply states that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

here in lowell this might otherwised be paraphrased as "how long have you lived here?"

i'm currently up to saturday's sun, in which editor kendall wallace immediately characterizes the two city council candidates with whom he has recently met as alternately "a relative newcomer to lowell", and "lived in the city all his life". this is before we hear anything else about either candidate, other than their perceived "sincerity".

oh, holy jeezus.

back in pre-colonial times, voting and office holding were restricted to men (yes, only men) of property, which i'm guessing would have suited kendall and his dream girl-next-door-all-her-life, rita mercier, just fine. (assuming that rita, like her outspoken pubic personae, is not bereft of testicles). since then, as a country, we've dabbled with literacy tests and other various means to ensure that those whom we do not trust to vote or hold office do not vote or hold office, but here in lowell we seem to have arrived at "you're not from around here, are you" and winner-take-all-voting (sans primaries to ensure maximum dilution of challenger voting) to perpetuate the inbred mentality of our little private fiefdom.

well, kendall, rita, bud, et al., i'm not from around here. i do vote. as a matter of fact, i have a constitutionally protected right to vote in such as way as to guarantee that my vote is worth exactly the same as every other vote tossed into the box by those who may or may not have lived here longer than i have. in further point of fact, observing how embarrassed all you "lifers" seem to be about the state of our fair city these days, what with complaints about video portrayals of what really happens on the streets of said fair city and all and many other things, i might argue that myself, and the folks like me who love this place unconditionally regardless of their tenure and who also aren't prone to be embarrassed about the way it is, are actually better qualified to be "more equal than others" in our little political shell game, but, hey, that would be wrong, wouldn't it.

lowell was arbitrarily carved out of a whole lot of other places (the type of one of which my forebears, who are also coincidentally lifelong sun subscribers, still call home, but, hey, who's keeping track of that sort of thing), and populated overwhelmingly by people who came here from elsewhere to live, work, raise families and otherwise better the world. (remember--"art is the handmaid of human good"). it was founded on foreign ingenuity (francis cabot lowell, who was from boston, not lowell, by the way, stole his power loom design directly from the english) and built on the backs of no end to the list of foreigners, from irish canal diggers to immigrant new england and quebeqcois mill nee farm girls. an wang, whose footprints still literally cover this city, from the middlesex community college building by the lower locks, to the crosspoint towers out by the highway, was born in shanghai. when you get right down to it, besides kerouac, who fled, and ed mcmahon, who let his alcoholism likewise carry him away towards california, the most recent "local" son we seem to be talking about these days is billy sullivan. (ok, i peeked ahead at the front page of tuesday's paper). you remember billy--he's the guy who bankrupted the patriots figuring out a way to somehow lose ones shirt bankrolling a pre-pedophilia michael jackson tour. the way i figure it, besides kerouac, all we've got of any substance being born here is mickey ward, who i think is great, but, let's also be honest, whose claim to fame is losing 2 out of 3.

yeah, but i'm not from around here.

want to know what i think?

i think lowell is great because the majority of us AREN'T from around here. i get to look forward to thursday night's foray over to tyler park to hear jen kearney (who's not from around here, but who lives here now, to our great advantage) which can include a supper stop at phien's kitchen, that i understand on good chowhound authority is one of the best little lao restaurants anywhere this side of the pacific. tonight, over at mickey's, i'll get to say goodbye to (quasi-local) melanie driscoll, whose dreams are taking her to nashville, while reveling to the sounds of all sorts of GREAT musicians who presently call lowell home, and who aren't going anywhere, even while their music is taking them everywhere. (yes, jen's rumored to be coming, but you know it's always been carl that i love).

not from around here? GOOD.

double plus good.

from around here and still open-minded about the rest of us?

double plus good, too.

as for kendall, rita, bud, and the whole raft of "how long have you lived here?" folks, well, they can just kiss my ballot.

is it just me?

is it just me, or did nancy actually have to back up to avoid having marco scutaro's two-run "single" in the bottom of the 8th hit him in the head?

oh, it's on for sure

apologies for being more than a complete week late on this one, but the WTF (or WTFO as cliff at the right side of lowell would say), factor is off the charts on this one.

rita mercier, ex-mayor and presently self-appointed mouthpiece for the gang of six, (KMLEMC--Keep Making Lowell Elections More Competitive--Kanzanjian, Mercier, Lenzi, Elliott, Mercier, Caulfield--remember the names so you can forget them in november), (and, by the way, whose verbal gurgitations could make joe biden blush), has once again spouted off within earshot of the local press, and captured a good 8 or 10 column inches in the week before last week's "the column".

yes, it can now be confirmed that citizens asking for their otherwise legally-granted right to participate in a primary election whenever the number of city council candidates exceeds 19 are now a "special interest".

see, queen rita is "disappointed" that state senator steve pangiotakos is now rethinking his support for a state house measure to waive lowell's primary election requirement yet again. she says he's not "being his own man", and that he's "doing the bidding of a special interest". (that interest would appear to be us, btw). rita's big point? "a majority of the city council made a vote and now he is not going to respect that".

there isn't font large enough to emblazon WHAT THE FUCK all over this one.

steve, last time i checked, represents, among other people, the full citizenry of lowell in the great and general court of the commonwealth of massachusetts, and doesn't, last time i checked, answer to a voting subset of the lowell city council. or at least according to most people who aren't rita mercier.

see, if rita and five of her incumbent friends on the lowell city council want their own private election, custom designed to create the highest possible barrier to challengers, then rita will insist that everyone, including our sitting state senator, get on board with making it happen for her.

WTF

i'm guessing/hoping a civil lawsuit may have grounds if an election is waived, but what do i know.

i do know that the gang of six have to be carefully and diligently watched, or whatever passes for open democracy in this city is not going to be easy to bring back.

caveat emptor

the last time i encountered such extreme commercial obfuscation was when shopping for a mattress. everybody's swears they have a better-performing and cheaper option than the next guy, but while you're trying to decipher the alphabet soup of model numbers and sizes, there's only the inescapable conclusion that it's always about profit margins and in-stock quantities. my car just needs good, quality tires, ya know?

working against me is one of the immutable laws of commerce, which is that, in just the same way as bad money always drives out good from circulation, (that canadian quarter was always the first one you used to buy candy when you were a kid, wasn't it), the only thing left on the average store's shelves is the stuff that previous shoppers chose not to buy for potentially very good reason... but wait! now it's on sale! (yeah, and let's buy 2 so we can save twice as much...)

the stock honda setup uses fairly expensive bridgestones that from all accounts are rather noisy. i have extreme confidence in the honda engineers that those particular bridgestones must perform fairly well across the board, but the economics of new car selling are not always the economics of used car driving, and i'm inclined to want something different for myself now that my ride has passed 60K miles and gets put through my particular/peculiar sort of paces. adding to the confusion is the fact that it's hard for me to distinguish the handling characteristics of my car separate from the technical merits of the hankook tires currently installed, (because i've never driven it with any other setup), and "grippier" may or may not be more important to me on dry pavement as opposed to wet, let alone when things get colder in the fall and winter. (i do wish i had better wet-weather traction, but i can count the number of times i've driven on wet roads on one hand, and i'm resolved that my baby never EVER sees snow and its related road salt, so it's not a very straightforward question at all). add to all that my inclination not to have to be buying a new set after 10K miles just because soft and grippy summer tires coincidentally achieve a lot of that soft and grippy-ness from leaving parts of themselves on the roadway as they go, and here you now have a recipe for supreme indecision.

well, you know, i'm pretty good at making up my mind when i care to, even if i rarely make up my mind when i don't need to. (unless, of course, it's about music, in which case refer to all previous posts extolling the virtues of elvis costello, who was, by the way, resplendent on letterman the other evening, even if that new moustache he's sporting is pretty skeevy, which, i guess, must be part of the intent, elvis being elvis). kumho ecstas seem like the best bargain option out there, (less than half the cost of the bridgestone potenzas that came with the car, and well regarded in their own right), but there are a whole raft of other options that claim to offer trade-offs in various capabilities and wear characteristics for their various increases in price. the key, as always, is in knowing what one really wants. but want to know the irony? the kumho's rate better in almost every characteristic when people test 'em head-to-head, except for the fact that they wear out quickly. (which puts us back to square one...)

with tires, as with mattresses, you almost never get what you pay for, unless you are very, very diligent. want to know what i really want? i really want the folks who install my tires to do a good job taking care of my car. it matters to me how carefully the alignment is done. i want to be enjoying myself well into the six-mileage-figures, and cutting corners in the short run is no way to do that. a mattress? that just gets tossed onto the box spring, and there ya go.

use it or lose it

this past week i had opportunity to discuss my theory of practical mortality, which includes both the moral acceptibility of bouncing ones very last check, along with the zen of expiring without functional joints of various sorts. (to wit: of what possible use can a bank balance or walkable knees be to a dead person?) in daily use, this philosophy means first of all that my kids do indeed need to plan for their own financial independence, and second of all that i'm perfectly free to play soccer as hard as i please for as long as my body is able.

now, mind you, this is NOT to be construed as advocacy for spendthrift ways, or the squandering of ones physical gifts--i do want to be able to gas up the convertible for my last ride, and operate the clutch, too, as necessary, and you can be sure that the reason i gave up running was to conserve my knees for my preferred method of using them up. but this IS a suggestion that i believe that "normal" conservative behavior needs to be moderated under certain circumstances so that we can all live a little better and more.

today's life example pertains to the new set of tires i just arranged to have put on the convertible, or, more precisely, what there is to do with the old set of tires that are due to be replaced in the morning. since i first learned about cars, i've always been admonished how not to treat ones tires--no burnouts, or hard cornering, or locked-up stops, among many other things. well, here we have both the perfect car in which to enjoy burnouts, hard cornering, and locked-up stops, (or at least as locked up as one can get with ABS), and the perfect set of tires on which to practice. (after all, they're going to the recycler in the morning, so if there's any tread left on 'em, it's all wasted grace).

SO!

who wants to have some fun tonight? i promise not to break any traffic laws (the tires may be expendible, but my STEP rating is not) or risk harm to the car or, by extension, the driver or passenger in it. but there's plenty of fun to be had even so. and i'm not going to spare one nanometer of rubber to do it!

the high road

this one was going to be entitled "entrainwreck", but recounting for you the bad sound and monotonously redundant percussion at boardinghouse park last night just doesn't seem to be in the spirit of things today. see, i just returned from a wonderful week of unpluggedness, and life is too short to waste any of it, either on staying more than a few songs where one doesn't feel one belongs, or on writing too much about it afterward. a good vacation is a thing of beauty...

the real question for tomorrow is whether a frugal-yankee repair to the flat on the convertible is a better course of action than a whole new set of automotive athletic shoes. (long story involving the ride home from portsmouth a couple of fridays ago, but we can skip that part). i really can't afford them, but, then again, i really want them, too. driving to soccer this morning with a roof over my head was really bumming me out, so one way or another, it's gotta be fixed by wednesday.

OH! and the real news? beachfront solitude affords all the time necessary to figure out where melvern hides all of those in-between chords in "working stiff" and "salisbury beach", and i gotta tell you i really enjoy being able to play them both. not well, but well enough for just me.

"and if it's raining..."

because i can

i know you guys don't click the links. every time i ask you if you clicked the links you always say, no, not this time, you didn't, but maybe next time. and so i've decided to invest the time in something to give you even less excuse--the embedded amiestreet player widget so that you don't even have to pause reading in order to hear what it is that i'm talking about.

like:

"she was a drunk divorced floozie goin' a 120 miles an hour
with an arab play boy toy down by the eiffel tower"

just press the button. go ahead. i dare ya.



you'll have to invest the twenty-two cents with amiestreet to hear the whole thing, (or more after the whole world catches on and the price creeps up), but i promise you you won't be disappointed. yeah, i know, this is totally tasteless, vile and reprehensible stuff, but, see, the thing is, it's GREAT tasteless, vile and reprehensible stuff. i mean, who else writes lyrics like this?

edited to add, since the reference to the earlier post identifying the particular drunk divorced floozy in question as diana princess of wales isn't obvious, that the particular drunk divorced floozy in question is diana princess of wales. (and not, in case it's unclear, a reference to anyone closer to me than that, because, what do you think i am, crazy?--wait, don't answer that). i kinda figured the line about "she died in the back seat unzipping dodi's pants" would be the useful hint, but i now realize that it's way down towards the end of the song, and even then not the kind of thing that sane people put together right away without context. anyway, enjoy!

new things

darrell hammond as bill clinton owns one of the funniest lines i think i've ever heard on tv:

"sometimes women will be uncomfortable doing something at first. i have found, with enough persuasion, they will come around".

leaving further innuendo out of this, because most of this is about my daughter, i will say that the aforementioned quote is absolutely true, even if the nature of that persuasion sometimes needs to be extremely delicate. last night, while straightening up the kitchen, i discovered the unmistakeable evidence of a knife that had been dipped in the crystal's all natural blueberry honey. (from merrimack valley apiaries, billerica, ma in case you're curious, and found at mvabeepunchers.com if you're even more so). this may not seem like a notable discovery to most people, but, to me, it's quite a terramotito around here.

and i couldn't be happier.

well, i could be, if it didn't mean a few fewer portions of crystal's all natural blueberry honey for the rest of us, i.e. me, but i know where it comes from, and i can always get more.

crystal's all natural blueberry honey was a thoughtful throw-in to my world peas csa share a couple weeks back. the june rains had beat the early season berry crops to absolute death, and those of us having purchased fruit shares would have gone without anything in the box were it not for the generous inclusion of what could possibly be the world's best honey that also coincidentally maybe contains "bits of pollen, propilis and beeswax". (i had to look propilis up in the dictionary, and apparently it's not the same stuff as beeswax, and the little honeydrippers prefer it to caulk up the narrower cracks around the hive, and, apparently, it tastes delicious). ok, who am i kidding--the stuff is like sweetened crack. it's hands-down the most phenomenal thing you can ever possibly spread on toast. trust me.

i say trust me, because the immediate impression when one opens a jar of crystal's all natural blueberry honey is that it doesn't look like anything us processed-food-consuming consumers have come to expect as honey at all. it's opaque. more the consistency of peanut butter than the stuff that squeezes out of those little plastic honey bears, but with the delightful quirk that it eventually settles back down most like a very, very slow liquid, and hides all evidence that you've been snacking by the following morning. and then you get the pleasure of being the very first to dip your knife in it all over again.

anway, back to our story: so i offered some crystal's all natural blueberry honey to my best honey a couple weeks ago, and the world's cutest nose turned immediately up and wagged no, no, no just like amy winehouse does about rehab. however, believing faithfully in darrell hammond's bill clinton's endless optimism for the ultimate open-mindedness of the fairer sex, i snuck a very light coating on a piece of toast i made for her a few days later because i knew i had to try. yes, there was a glimmer of a smile the moment that the nectar nirvana hit her tongue, but it was quickly squelched in the memory of needing to maintain that consistent and consistently negative indifference that immediately pre-teen girls are all so adept at portraying. and so i let the persuasion percolate...

last night, some time after daniel bard gave up the first run in his last twelve appearances, but some time before takashi saito decided to play gopher ball with evan longoria, (as in, i'll throw it, you'll hit it, and then we can see how long it takes for someone else to gopher the ball and get it) i came back to sort out the kitchen and clean up the dinner dishes. (i'm a guy--we never clean up the kitchen right away, and it's arguable that it's lucky that we'd ever do it at all). and i noticed the knife...

the evidence is unmistakeable. i'm guessing your average methamphetamine addict could whiff the scent of the object of their obsession just as easily too. and there she was, playing video games just as innocently as you please...

"you had some of the crystal's all natural blueberry honey, didn't you".

that smile was priceless.

"rock and roll is in the air--it's in your underwear"

"drum machines don't get drunk and start a fight, or sneak around your back door and try to screw your wife -- you ain't got no live drummer, you just disco dude".

i'm embarrassed to say that it's taken me 10 full years to catch up with mojo nixon's "!sock ray blue!". the whole thing started the other day when continental 128 reminded me of mojo's "elvis is everywhere" (because there ain't no bermuda triangle, it's just that elvis needs boats), and i wandered out to find a link on youtube, which then gave me the related brilliance of "are you drinkin with me jesus?" by mojo and jello biafra, which i absolutely had to have, download, learn from stem to bermuda-lost stern on both the guitar and the ukulele, and then muse this evening if anything else like it might be there for me to grab on amiestreet...

yes, mojo knows it--disco still does suck. he also knows that diana spencer was just a drunk divorced floozie, and i dare you to stay offended when you realize that, like every other lyric he's ever written, sung, and then laughed off in a bar, it's mainly funny because it's all completely true. listen to it. i dare ya.

"rock and roll is in the air--it's in your underwear--it don't care"

or, put another way:

"you think otis redding is going to be happy to see the eagles? he's going to kick glen frey's ASS"

all around

i worked many years down the road from casey's in natick, where you could get a dog all around for .50 cents back in the day. it's the same way to order today at elliot's on elliot street, which put me right to home, and no complaints about the sub-$2 2009 prices, either. also, instead of a steamed bun, a la casey's, they do them proper on the grill for the perfect mrs. duffy finish, so they've got that going for them as well. see, i grew up on mrs. duffy's grilled dogs at the stand in littleton, and though boiling 'em in beer a la casey's is a nice touch, and i'm not sure the composition of the boiling liquid at elliot's, there's still nothing like the patina from the grill to me, on both the barker and the bun.

so, in addition to the grillwork, i'd vote for a bit more snap, and to put the kraut and mustard UNDER instead of on top of the dog, but clearly this'll do. it occurs to me that folks around here will consider me the worst sort of carpetbagger to put qualifications on my elliot's hot dog love, but all i can say is that dogs, like the water in the salmon stream to the salmon, are a unique environmental imprint that can never be changed, and the home flavor is a lure that can never be bested. i'm just not from around here, ya know? but when in rome, here's a prime spot to do like the romans and love every savory minute of it. $7 for two kraut's with mustard, onion rings and a coke. can't beat it.

the other opportunity was to run into neighbors and friends (and even the lowell bloggerati) which is actually the prime element of any good dog stand. casey's sat 10, so you always had to stand in line at the window to get yours if you wanted to get back to work within an hour, and then you'd always want to stand around the picnic area beside and talk about doug flutie or whatever passed for relevant that day as you munched on your bagful. elliots seems to manage a couple dozen inside, but they've also got the classic patch of grass beside that'll accommodate another dozen streetcorner mayors with ease, so plenty of jawboning space.

as such, it was also nice to see four city council candidates and a fifth's petition gang respecting the opportunity enough to put in an appearance. (nothing from the gang of six, naturally, since elliot's wouldn't happen to be in any of their neighborhoods, nor, likely, in any of their concerns, but i digress). franky descoteaux was there from downtown, and also ryan berard (christian hill), paul belley (pawtucketville), and patrick murphy (the grove). i can't help but find the neighborhood thing fascinating, since practically no one in this city's politics or punditry has any understanding or respect for mine. a few know what it looks like and the businesses here, but they all seem to grok less than zero about the demographics and day-to-day living concerns, and it always shows. (yes, we need a recycling program and not the daily run-around from gunther "it's not part of my program" wellenstein). but it's nice that a few will make the effort to try to learn, and maybe some day things'll evolve a little for the better.

color me a downtownie, and proud of it. and now we've got elliot's right across the canal, and that's one more thing that nobody else in town has to compare.

and here we have it

while on the subject of both dangerous and crazy, it occurs to me with the eerily similar capture and incarceration of gadfly itinerant americans straying over international borders they right not ought to be straying in two particular "colorful" nation states, that a couple of easy conclusions can be drawn--first of all, that folks who want to believe that the days of meaningful international borders have passed are plum loco batshit crazy. want to go hiking along the border of any nation bordering on any nation ending it "AN" or "ORTH OREA"? take maps, GPS, and your rosary beads. you're going to need all of them.

the other conclusion is a bit more subtle, but all that much more profound.

remember the good old days when being "captured as a spy" was the big deal? gary powers' little parachute jump is one good example of being one and being captured as one, (he was, after all, in their airspace on purpose and without permission taking pictures for the military), but there are plenty of other examples where the "spy" part is more than questionable. the thing with those cases is that it was always important for the captors to invoke the term in order to beat ones collective chest about the sanctity of ones sovereign borders. they're SPYING.

so now we have the present capture and incarceration of three american "hikers" over the border accidentally or not into iran from iraq, and the pejorative term on which their arrest is rationalized isn't "spy", but "journalist".

pretty outrageous if you ask me.

except here's where i realize there is never going to be a right answer. we're presently complaining about "agitators" from iran in iraq purportedly fomenting violence and terrorism along the sectarian lines that upset our sectarian sensibilities. once we get to arguing with iran over whether or not these kids were journalists, spies, or terrorist plot agitators, we're going to have to realize there's a pretty indefensible logic to our outrage. go across the wrong border and you're absolutely persona non grata. yankee go home just as clearly as irani.

so we have to go back to the first case--these folks are plum loco batshit crazy, and we're going to have to relax about what befalls them and leave it up to god, allah, or name-your-supreme-deity-here. you go walking where you ought not, and it's gonna be on you what happens next. hike mt washington in a windbreaker, and require helicopters and dogs and the local auxiliary to the sierra club to get rescued, and here's your bill. traipse willfully into north korea, iran, or anywhere else politically volatile for that matter, and you're going to have to sleep with flashbacks about that time you saw "midnight express" and got really spooked about it.

shit does in this world happen.

not crazy

re-reading last night's little reminiscence of the weekend it occurred to me that certain individuals of whom i bear close acquaintance (must easily be 100 of them) might be tempted to search the analogies and other protections of the innocent to make sure they're not somehow the object of the object lesson. it's remarkable how many perfectly sane people harbor well-reasoned conclusions that they're crazy.

judging by this quite non-scientific sampling, one of the easiest corollary conclusions to be drawn is that human beings have a peculiar predisposition to want to equate subjective understandings of their own private extrapolation of "normal" with the pejorative condition of "crazy", and they almost always get it wrong. which is to say, how many truly crazy people do you know who actually know that they are? (one of the primary reasons i know i AM is that i don't think i'm). this ephemeral notion of "normal" is actually quite fascinating, because it relies upon the proven fallacy that anyone might be. how crazy are we?

i believe one of the most reliable markers of the truly dangerous (extremely useful in judging political candidates) is thinking onesself both "normal" and "not crazy", and adding the inexplicable compulsion to try to use that standard to judge and punish others. have we as an electorate not yet had enough political scandals among the self-righteous behavior-legislators to catch on to this one yet? the irony to this one is that the self-righteous behavior-legislators on one side are the first ones to rail loudly against the self-righteous behavior legislators among their political opponents anytime the discussion strays to how people ought to be or behave, and scream that the very fabric of our society is being rent and irreparably destroyed regardless of reason. i don't know about you, but all i've ever wanted is for both pitchfork-wielding legion of them to sit down and shut up before people get burned at the stake, though i'm never quite optimistic enough to believe we'll ever be past the threat of that.

i know, writing this last paragraph, that there will be legions of readers (ok, the possibility of 1 or 2 maybe tripping across this mess by accident) who instantly recognize a lot of people they don't like, nodding their head in agreement, at least about the political party they like least, and still reasoning that the answer lies among those leading lights of the political party they like best to remain both sagacious and sensible about things, and, gee, wouldn't it be nice if they could be trusted to work it out for the rest of us. so here's the problem with this hallucination, people--it doesn't ever, ever work like that.

first of all, the very stripe of them will pull out of the woodwork a dedicated cabal of opponents who will stop at nothing to tear them down out of all reason for what they may or may not have done. (for you demicans, or was that republicrats, recall the witch-hunt for the semen trail of bill clinton's penis, and for you republicrats, or was that demicans, you can just ponder why it is that an otherwise charming housewife from a charming little always-winter state is being denied the right to pay for her own legal defense). second and most important of all, lets all call a spade a spade and say out loud that each and every political party ever invented is chock full of what we can all instantly recognize as capital-C, capital-R, capital-A, capital-Z, capital-y CRAZY.

i had my cheerios ruined yesterday by a link offered by one particular friend (no, i won't tell you if this particular friend is or isn't the C-word) who uncovered for me the growing phenomenon of "birthers", who believe that a legal challenge to a certified-legal birth certificate is the only possible way that this country can remain governable for the next few years. now, i'm not saying i really know anything at all about this, other than that barry's (their favorite name for our present president) birth certificate is accepted as valid by one of the 50 states in our union, but it seems to me that if we get too deep on investigating the validity of ANY birth certification, we're going to be on the one-way track right back into the days of peerage, where only those certified by those who are certified can be considered "good society", and worthy of any opportunity at all beyond penury and admonitions to like it because there'll be reward for it in the next life. (and bring me another leg of mutton, peon). i mean, who are we, or anyone else to judge?

i apologize for the short shrift being given the loonies on the other side who believe such things as that every legal challenge for identity has to be questioned if said identity being challenged is perceived to be among those for whom, apparently, identity must not be challenged because of, among other things, what someone else's father did to someone still else's father, but there'd hardly be time to go into every manifestation of both crazy and dangerous before i reach the storage capacity of the internet and can't fit any more text into this here text box...

at some point we all have to accept the fact that everybody else besides us is plum loco batshit crazy. for many, (the lucky ones), they will also realize that they are also plum loco batshit crazy, and they might otherwise have the opportunity to walk the earth at peace with the alignment of the stars, but i'm going to have to come back to the sad realization that most all of them are still captive to this notion that there is some objective standard of "normal" to which they don't ascribe, and they're likely feeling alone and cut off from the rest of the world because of it. and this ain't right.

some guys like crazy girls. obviously there are a lot of girls who like crazy guys. (i still know a few, anyway, in case evidence was needed to support the argument). a lot of us might worry about all of this, but why is it we feel responsible in the first place?

i LIKE crazy. actually, i should amend that. I like CRAZEE with two E's. crazy with just one Y is no fun at all, though i will defend to the death your right to be. yup, crazee is where its at. astute readers will immediately grasp the point, which is that i'd better like crazee because that's the only way i'm going to continue to find dates, but i would still argue that it's eminently likeable even without the possibility of sex. except, if there isn't going to be the possibility of sex among 30 or 40-something otherwise adults, then i'd point out the perfectly obvious fact that there's crazy with more E's than the universe can hold going on.

crazy

saturday night i drank beer while entertained by the spectacle of what would otherwise appear to be an adult woman chasing her tail around the barroom table legs, about whether or not the boy of her present obsession would notice her if she stood in the merchandise signing line (he's a performing musician, and we were enjoying our libations across the street from his big show). it was all very 7th grade, and almost too funny to stop oneself from laughing too loud and then having to explain to said woman what the joke was about. one companion of mine opined that this was as crazy as crazy gets, and i'm embarrassed to say that i couldn't agree because i had lived through crazier for many years, (long before the marriage--this isn't a divorce rant), and then even seen worse than that via the experience of friends. but, yeah, crazy.

this woman is more than pretty enough and all that, but, like i said, crazy. crazy like "gee i would never sleep with a boy on a date", followed within 15 minutes with a statement to the effect that "i am so hoping he'll sleep with me tonight". my life experience tells me without an iota of doubt that she's a regular circus of on again off again physical schizophrenia, and enough to make any man not completely crazy himself decide he'd much rather shoot himself in the head than have to listen to any more of it. you know, us guys like to know where we stand, and we like it even better when it's standing naked, but there's only so much we'll be willing to take before we decide it's better to head back to the bar and just have another beer. (but, most of all, don't get us undressed and then decide you can't decide, k?)

i should preface the next bit by saying i'm quite satisfied with my philosophy of personal responsibility. if i tell another friend exactly what a girl might be like, and he still wants to take a shot at it, well, then, that's on him and no responsibility of mine if he comes back and tells me, "man, she's CRAZY". trouble with this one is, she's not only crazy, but she's also the friend of a friend of mine...

yes, the gotcha here is that the crazy on one side (as long as it's not "play misty for me" stalker crazy) ends for a guy as soon as he stops playing the crazy game. (ps, girls, it's most often why he doesn't call). however, for said friend of a friend, the crazy would just be getting started. "why didn't he call me?"

so, in summary, i'm thinking, about the fix-up, "gee, why not", and my friend is thinking, "why don't you just toss the live wolverine into my sleeping bag with me and zip it up over my head". (i'm going camping in a couple of days--it seemed like the most appropriate metaphor).

i'm taking the high road on this one. the one closest to the crazy gets to have the call, and i'm guessing my other friend (the one with the tickets to paul mccartney and an indifference to crazy, in case any of you girls want to raise your hand and put in an application) will survive either way. actually, my friend (the friend of the crazy friend friend) is always up for live music, so the two of them can go drink beer and have a good time, and everybody will be happy, sort of.

the crazy girl is still alone and crazy, and my buddy still would be happy if boone suggested to katy that "we're willing to trade looks for a certain... morally casual attitude". good news is that there's more crazy out there for everyone.