Smoke on the Water

by David Walske

[Note: All posts this week are being made from a remote location via primitive dial-up ISP connection. Therefore you may notice a distinct lack of graphics. Don't worry, they'll be back next week.]

Yesterday at dusk we enjoyed yet another magical Sedona sunset. One can almost, but not quite, become jaded by this diurnal display of "fire in the sky" at days end. This sunset was particularly stunning: a dusky orange red bloom bursting from within the deep violet of evening, acquiescing to cerulean blue and cotton ball white, outlined by a finely drawn line of fiery deep red. And as I enjoyed this nimbus of fire and ice, I gave pause to think of a fire in the sky of a different kind.

Tomorrow we drive home to Los Angeles, one of three diamonds of light set along the California coast, beset as of late by raging inferno. My deepest sympathies to those, friends of mine among them, who have lost their homes and neighborhoods in this tragedy of flame. Here in Sedona, set amid the Coconino National Forest, we worry so about fire. And yet in its absence, the years of drought and beetle infestation have exacted a great toll on our Piñion pines. Each time we return to discover that more have been lost. It is heartbreaking to see the forestland we love so dearly become devastated in this slow but steady continuum.

Our human perception of the earth is expressed in the sentiment of words such as "terra firma." In our minds all that is of the earth is immutable and permanent. Standing before the mighty buttes, spires, and mesas towering above Sedona how could one think otherwise? But in fact these majestic, seemingly perennial structures are themselves a phantasm of continuous change. These red rock formations of Sedona are but a snapshot in time of the gradual process of erosion that has carved them from the great Colorado Plateau, its southern edge demarked by the Mugion Rim, succumbing even now to the continuing metamorphosis.

The great San Bernardino and Santa Monica Mountain ranges of Southern California are also but a snapshot in time, likewise of a storyline much longer in duration than our own, of giant tectonic plates compressing against each other, massive granite and earthen upheaval. The world around us is as described by the character "George Malley," played by John Travolta in the film "Phenomenon" (1996). "Everything here is on it's way to becoming something else." This is a difficult lesson for us as human beings to comprehend, our experience rooted in the limited timeframe of our own perceptions, but one we must ultimately embrace. Our lives, all life, all things, are not of a destination, but rather are of a journey.

Satellite weather photos depict huge plumes of smoke streaming offshore on the Pacific Ocean. The weather prediction for Southern California over the next few days is thankfully one of rainfall. Let the rain quench the raging fires. Let the smoke on the water be of inferno extinguished. And let us all find the strength to carry on in the continuing journey of our lives.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Liar Liar

by David Walske

"Shame on you Mr. Bush. Shame on you." - Michael Moore

While I largely agree with Bill Maher that, "religion is a waste of time," I am not without a religion of sorts myself. If it is necessary to classify my position along the spectrum of religious belief - one side of the spectrum being total submission to traditional theology of some kind, and the other being absolute atheism - I would be near dead-center in calling myself a "hopeful agnostic." In my view I dare not be so presumptuous as to declare with absolute certainty either the existence of a heavenly - or hellish - afterlife, or conversely that death leads to the assured oblivion of nonexistence. I can not in good conscience make a statement of absolute fact as to the afterlife in any regard, either to myself or to others. As a hopeful agnostic, while I can if pressed elucidate what I hope to be true, it is my lifelong duty to seek what in certainty is true. This pursuit must necessarily continue as long as I draw breath. Should I decide prematurely to avow either atheism or Christianity -[or the absolute teachings of any other faith, for that matter]- then I shall have given over to dogma, given up the struggle, settled for the easy way out. Much more difficult is the path of he who questions all, seeking truth all the days of his life, but surely a life all the more righteous in the living.

My religion of hopeful agnosticism includes a set of commandments. But instead of ten, my religion has three: Truth, Trust, and Loyalty.
TTL for short - not to be confused with PTL.

• Truth
  Be truthful in all you say and do. Liars are to be abhorred. When one lies, he proves by the act of perfidy a disrespect for human dignity. All liars are eventually consumed in the flames of deceit of their own making.
• Trust
  A confidence is a sacred vow. To betray a confidence in word or deed for personal gain or in aid of a third-party's selfish gain is a dastardly deed. To betray those you have sworn to protect is the despicable act of a despot.
• Loyalty
  Above all else, be loyal to those that have been loyal to you. Life is not a popularity contest, although it often seems so. The sacred bond of friendship is cemented by the glue of loyalty. True friendship bound by unshakable loyalty is as impermeable granite, witness to, but untouched by the erosion of time and passing fancy.

President George W. Bush has lied - and continues to lie without contrition - to the American people, a people to whom he publicly vowed an unswerving oath of allegiance.

President George W. Bush has betrayed our trust. He has damaged our nation and endangered the safety and security of its people, a people whom he swore to protect. He does so in the ignoble pursuit of personal gain and the enrichment of others who stand to profit from the blood-money of his warlord activities.

President George W. Bush has been and remains disloyal to America. He serves not the many of the American people, but rather the special interests of the rich and powerful few. He places at risk even those who have sworn and given their lives in the service of defending American liberty.

"Hai Excomunion Reservada U Santidad Contra Qualesquiera Personas Que Quitaren"

Begone foul specter, begone.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Gilligan's Dilemma

by David Walske

[Note: All posts this week are being made from a remote location via primitive dial-up ISP connection. Therefore you may notice a distinct lack of graphics. Don't worry, they'll be back next week.]

Recently in conversation with my twelve-year-old neighbor, I asked her what profession she would like to pursue. She replied, "I want to be a doctor." "That's great!" I responded enthusiastically, hoping to encourage what I perceived to be a desire to serve a noble cause, and to perform a vital service. "Why do you want to be a doctor?" I queried.

"So I can drive a Porsche," she answered.

Bearing in mind the naïveté of my young friend, I attempted to gently but firmly impress upon her the fallacy of her reasoning. Unfortunately her attitude is representative of a greater problem in America. It is emblematic of much of the health care industry, and represents the crux of what is wrong with our broken health care system. I'm not pointing my finger at individual M.D. practitioners or small medical partnerships. I am all too aware that these smaller medical practices are being systematically squeezed between the vice-jaws of ever higher business costs on one side, and shrinking insurance reimbursements on the other. The problem is higher up the food chain.

I'm speaking here with some first hand knowledge, fairly close to home. My father is a retired surgeon, my mother a retired nurse, two of my sisters are registered nurses, three of my nieces are registered nurses, and my nephew is a physician. I think it would be fair to say that although I resisted a career in medicine myself, I come from a "medical family." [My father offered to put me through medical school. Well, actually it was more of an order than an offer, but I resisted nonetheless.] I've often said that my father was more comfortable at the operating table than at the dinner table. While that may have been true, he was never adverse to bringing discussions of health care issues home with him to dinner. I heard debates of medical ethics from a very young age. Such discussions were a part of daily life in the household in which I grew up.

Until recently my personal physician was a doctor in a very small private practice. I received excellent care from him and the kind of personal attention that I had previously seen only in fictional medical practices such as that of "Marcus Welby, M.D." It was necessary for me to leave his care and to find another physician, a task I undertook with great displeasure. My "Marcus Welby" physician could not afford to accept the reduced payment terms required of him to become a "network physician" provider. Because of this my medical insurance paid for his medical services at a much lower rate than they do for plan-contracted physicians, and I could not afford to make up the difference. This sort of business practice on the part of medical insurance companies is clearly punitive. "Join our club, or we'll squeeze you out." There's only one other organization that I can think of that operates in this fashion. It used to be known as "The Mafia." Apparently we didn't stamp out the "protection rackets" we simply hid them under a corporate logo.

So-called Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), Medical Insurance Companies, Medical Laboratory Service Companies, and Pharmaceutical Companies show a sad face to the public and medical regulators, crying poverty while privately enjoying huge profits. Anyone who thinks that it is all that difficult to "cook the books" must have been stranded on a desert isle for the past several years. Welcome back. For your sake, I sure hope your only illness is a bit of residual island fever. If there's anything seriously wrong with your health little buddy, you and the skipper might as well go back to the island. I think the professor is cooking up some kind of tonic in a coconut shell, and that's more than you'll get from our screwed-up health care system.

A career in medicine should be tantamount to a career in theology. One should enter the medical profession or any of its supporting fields as one would enter the seminary. Medicine is not a money machine; it is a sacred vocation. For too long the Hippocratic oath has been replaced with the hypocritical oath. Health care in America needs to be reformed from the top down and from the bottom up. Twelve-year-old physician hopefuls should not have their eye on the brass ring of the Porsche. And our national health care policy should reflect the inalienable right of all Americans to guaranteed medical care, from cradle to grave - without rushing the trip.

Yesterday, Democratic Presidential Candidate Wesley Clark announced his plan for a new national health care policy, the summary of which follows this post. Click here for more information on General Clark and his platform.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

More at www.clark04.com/issues/healthcare.pdf

Jumpin' Jack Flash

by David Walske

[Note: All posts this week are being made from a remote location via primitive dial-up ISP connection. Therefore you may notice a distinct lack of graphics. Don't worry, they'll be back next week.]

Toyota has introduced the first ever mid-sized hybrid passenger car, or "vehicle" as is the preferred terminology of shows such as "Cops" -["Step out of the vehicle sir." Take that one better: Nevada Highway Patrolman, in the film "Lost in America" (1985), to character David Howard, played by Albert Brooks -{whose last name is actually Einstein; that's right he's Albert Einstein}- after having stopped him for speeding in a motor-home, "Sir, please step out of the home."] Why, after considerable hyperbolic parenthetical digression, am I making such a big deal about this? Because it is a big deal. Certainly to me. And to others like me, involuntary members of a social caste I'll call indentured SUVites. Shamefully I drive my Trailblazer to Starbucks for a nonfat latte, ruefully unable to get the fat out of my automotive consumption as I have my coffee.

Help, I've fallen - into SUVitism - and I can't get up. For some time I've aspired to ownership of one of the hybrid [gas/electric] cars that have been on the market for a number of years. Not that there wasn't a time when I gazed longingly at the Hummer, but that was long ago; and I have since realized that a car is just a car, and no matter how big can never truly enhance one's sense of self-esteem. And as for the dimensionally challenged that need reassurance of their manliness - that ain't gonna work for you guys either. You can't take your SUV into the bedroom. [I suppose you could take your SUV to bed. Would that make you a Hummersexual? Is that why Arnold has FIVE Hummers? Just how small is it?]

I drive a Trailblazer - and mind you I'm fretting over my mini-sized SUV while driving in the shadow of a stampeding herd of butt-ugly Escalade, full size SUVs -[Each year the Escalade seems to get more and more vulgar. Big chunky piece of crap with the tasteless bling-bling of a tinseled oversized Cadillac logo displayed disproportionately large on the back.] I drive a Trailblazer because I have two big dogs that I frequently transport to Laurel Canyon Dog Park and Huntington Dog Beach. I need more interior room than a Prius sedan can offer me. When my SUV is packed full with people and dogs I don't feel so guilty. But I'm beginning to lose sleep over my solitary jaunts to Starbucks. Just in time, along comes the mid-sized Prius. Enough room for my dogs, yet much easier on the environment and gas consumption. Like Bill Maher I prefer to minimize my involuntary weekly donation to Al Queda at the gas pump. I haven't test-driven a Prius yet, but you can bet I'll be getting behind the wheel of one at my next opportunity.

Of course hybrid cars are not the total answer. The combination electric/internal-combustion powerplant and overall lighter vehicle weight greatly increase fuel efficiency, while decreasing consumption and environmental pollution. But it is still at its heart, a fossil-fuel powered vehicle. A step in the right direction, but just a step.

So what's next? Hydrogen? Probably. NASA chose hydrogen-powered fuel-cells for its manned and unmanned spacecraft because of the remarkably high efficiency and low payload overhead -[i.e., light weight - batteries weigh a ton by comparison]- offered by this technology. Hydrogen fuel-cell powered electric motor propelled passenger cars and light-duty trucks are well within the reach of our technological and manufacturing abilities. So then why then aren't all the Arnolds of the world tooling around in Hydrogen Hummers? Give the boys their toys, while at the same time checking them into fossil-fuel rehab -[ we could establish a "Henry Ford Center" to help the truly petroleum addicted kick the habit]. We're not all driving hydrogen powered cars, in part for the same reason we're not all driving battery powered electric cars.

Politico-economics aside -[the fascist reign of the oil industry is another subject unto itself]- battery powered electric cars have not found broad consumer appeal for several reasons. For one, they don't have the oomph we're accustomed to in our cars. Simply stated we like to lay a little rubber on the road. The poor weight/power ratio of the heavy batteries required by all-electric cars has never been fully overcome. And this lack of power also makes air-conditioning -[my personal above-all-else favorite feature of any car]- an iffy proposition at best. But beyond these cry-baby excuses, myself being one of the cry-babies, there is the problem of recharging the batteries which requires 1) time: more time that it takes to put a tiger in your tank, and 2) a charging facility: either at home or on the road. What do you do if your batteries conk out in the middle of nowhere halfway to Bakersfield?

Hydrogen fuel-cell powered cars overcome the weight/power ratio issue. The lightweight batteries found aboard hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles are there for buffering power, not supplying it. Such vehicles can provide ample oomph and plenty of power for "essential luxuries" such as air conditioning. The real problem lies in the tandem roadblocks of production and distribution.

Hydrogen fuel-cells produce power in an electrochemical reaction that consumes hydrogen and oxygen in a power production process that emits water as its only waste product: H2 plus O equals dihydrogenmonoxide, better known as water. Hydrogen is the single most plentiful element on the planet. This seems like a solution that is environmentally friendly to the extreme. It is. So what's the problem? Currently, our commercial hydrogen production process is one that involves removing the carbon from natural gas. That's right. We make hydrogen from a fossil fuel source by "de-carbonizing" natural gas. What happens to the carbon that is removed? You guessed it. It is released into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse gases already burdening the environment. Leave it to the energy consortium hegemony to vilify something as pure as hydrogen-fuel cell energy production. Before we can fully benefit from hydrogen power alternatives, we need to retool our commercial hydrogen production industry. Remember - and this bears repeating and many times as you can bear - hydrogen is the most plentiful element on earth. Conversion to an eco-friendly commercial hydrogen production process shouldn't be all that hard, at least from a technical point of view. Again, the politics of change is another issue unto itself.

The other problem is distribution. We have a vast global petroleum-based fuel distribution system in place. We need to at first augment and then eventually all but replace the existing infrastructure with a hydrogen distribution system. And therein we have that pesky issue of the politics of change again, dang it. We have to realize that change is not the enemy. To [badly] paraphrase Albert Einstein [the physicist, not the actor], "The only thing that is constant is constant change."

The real end game solution is a gradual ongoing process of continuous change, not a destination. In time, we may well progress to the point technologically at which hydrogen fuel-cells become outmoded. And when that change occurs we must embrace it. Until then, Hydrogen fuel-cell technology seems to be our brightest hope, one just now coming into view. In the meantime I can can hardly wait for that mid-sized hybrid test-drive.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Blogging from Sedona

by David Walske

[Note: All posts this week are being made from a remote location via primitive dial-up ISP connection. Therefore you may notice a distinct lack of graphics. Don't worry, they'll be back next week.]

Space Cowboy Dave - remarkable, the unmitigated megalomania of referring to oneself in the third person, even be it wrapped in the guise of pseudonym - is vacationing in Sedona, Arizona this week. This, a self prescribed tonic that includes red rock vistas, frequent hikes, and voluminous reading. And yet, the third rock rolls, the universe expands, and the blog goes on. Jouissance never sleeps, in spite of the fact that its author, uncharacteristically has the past few nights. My circadian cycle, which normally - quite out of sync with the rest of the world - spatters the sleep cycle across the face of nychthemeral artifice, here while in Sedona nucleates slumber into a compact seven or eight hour capsule. Although ironically, in juxtaposition, the diurnal presence of Jouissance has suffered in this transition, having been postless two days running, the first lapse in more than a month.

There was a time, some fifteen years ago, that I thought I would welcome the opportunity to leave the roar of the city, permanently forsaking Los Angeles for the peacefulness of Sedona's red rock rurality. But like Virginia Woolf - with no suggestion of the hubris that would be self-comparison to Virginia Woolf - I find that after a time I disdain the enervating quiet of Richmond in my longing for the vibrant buzz of London. This I did not know about myself until such realization took me quite by surprise during a period of extended Sedona residence in which I found myself suffocating in the claustrophobic peacefulness. So I have long ago concluded that it is the city life for me, but in sine-wave-like alternation with Sedona reverie. Perfect. Neither Richmond nor London; Richmond and London. It has been suggested that all truly creative artistic expression arises from a state of pain in the artist. Perhaps this suggests that creativity itself exists like a parasitic malady unto the artist. The host must however enjoy periods of remission should it not perish. The cycle of the muse.

There is something to be said for the pendulum effect. Observable in nearly all aspects of that which is observable: philosophy, politics, biology. Even an extremist such as I must in the end acquiesce to the inevitable stasis of Le Chatelier's law. But without extremes there would be no mean. So oddly, not only do the opposite poles each need their loyal opposition in stimulation of fervor, but also the milquetoast moderate could not exist at all without the equalized gravitational pull of the zealots. "Moderation in all things, including moderation."

So there you have it. The grand arc. The cosmic dance. Oh my, how obvious is it that I'm blogging from Sedona?

In the week that follows you may notice a Jouissance comprised of posts that are less favored by accompanying graphics and links, and greater therefore in density of text and original content. This due in part to the lack of a high speed ISP connection. Dial-up only out here in the primitive sanctuary of the western lands, the place of the dead roads.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Old Dirty Bastard Comes Clean

by David Walske

Well he sort of came clean. Okay, he did his best to try to weasel out. Here's the scoop:

It appears that the Bush White House has once again become tangled in its own perfidious web. [Dominos, anyone?] Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld - AKA "Old Dirty Bastard," AKA "Grumpy" - got snared but good this week in a trap of his own words. Trammeled by a "leaked" internal memo that he himself had authored - see USA Today (October 22, 2003) for the full text of the memo - Rumsfeld in a feeble, bumbling self-defense resorted to quoting from the dictionary to define "slog," a word he had used to characterize America's progress in fighting terrorism. It's not good when the Secretary of Defense has difficulty defending himself.

"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

- Donald Rumsfeld

In a recent televised interview, Rumsfeld denied characterizing the path ahead as "slogging," offering several alternate connotations of the word, while managing to contradict himself within the span of a minute or two. Apparently it all depends upon what your definition of the word "is" is.

Rumsfeld's secret memo went on to ask:

Not to blow smoke up your dress Alice, but you're already so far down the rabbit hole you might as well keep going until you reach China. Maybe you can meet up with your pal George, have Laura tuck you both into bed, and read you a bedtime story about "Macaroni Penguin." Try to keep up you two. Mrs. Bush, as a former librarian, is a fast reader.

May we please get some real leadership in the White House? Smirky and Grumpy just aren't up to the task. Hell, "Ol' Dirty Bastard" could probably do a better job than either of these two crackers. Bring the Wu-Tang cabinet in the hizza and then we be fly for real, dawg.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

The Band

by David Walske

"We may not know how many men identify [themselves] as bug chasers. But we do know unsafe sexual practices among gay men are resulting in more and more cases of sexually transmitted disease." - Advocate.com, posted February 19, 2003.

Perhaps we're not yet able to get a complete Bug Chaser census bureau statistic, but thanks to the marvels of modern marketing and a new product known as the Bug Chaser Wristband maybe now we can at least recognize Bug Chasers on sight. Just imagine, bright yellow wristbands to quickly and positively identify them. Maybe a nice pink triangle to balance out the color scheme. Please excuse my flippant satire of a serious [and serous] issue. Bug Chaser Wristbands are not designed for the purpose of flagging those desirous of HIV seroconversion [bug chasers], but rather are intended to repel [chase] mosquitoes and other flying insects away from happy campers, hikers, and other such outdoor enthusiasts, without requiring that they slather themselves with DEET (N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide), the active ingredient in most topically applied insect repellents. Sounds like a good idea. I don't know whether these wristbands actually work or not.

But, will someone please tell me who is behind marketing that brings us products with names such as Bug Chaser Wristbands. Didn't rabid marketeers learn their lesson with Ayds® weight-loss candy? [Weight-loss caramel-candy, now there's an oxymoron you can sink your teeth into.] I enjoy cutting, sarcastic, take no prisoners, humor as much as the next guy - no actually I'm fairly certain I enjoy it more than the next guy, whoever he is. There is no cow so sacred that it shouldn't be skewered with humor, so long as beneath the decidedly un-PC veneer is a search for truth. In my experience the road to truth is a rocky one. Be afraid, be very afraid of quick, simplistic answers presented in bright happy, packaging, delivered in bite-sized portions for easy consumption. A bag of manure is still just a sack of shit, no mater how you market it.

Life is messy. Life is complicated. Motives are mixed. Information is filtered to fit a particular spin in the service of occult goals and ambitions. Rolling Stone runs a tabloid-style article on bug chasing. Magazine circulation goes up. Vivendi Universal Net USA Group, Inc., makes more money. A "journalist" gets notice - and notoriety. The Christian Right Wing - America's very own "home-brewed gang of 'evil doer' thugs" seizes upon an opportunity to further its agenda, bash the Gay community, and make us look bad in the eyes of middle-class, white consumerist America. GLAAD reacts with a typically PC response. And the truth, paraphrasing Scully and Mulder, is still out there, although getting harder and harder to recognize for being trampled by so many feet in pursuit of "the story."

As a former bug chaser myself, successful as such before the term had even been coined, I can assure you that this is a complex issue. It is a topic worthy of honest exploration and discussion - sometimes in the guise of satirical comedy - but not suitable fodder for magazine sales revenue. Serious and complex issues deserve more than the all too brief exploration of a shoot-from-the-"hip" Rolling Stone article, afternoon talk shows, or even the limited context of a Blog post such as the one you're reading now.

The Rolling Stone article that caused such furor at the time, was published in February. It's late October now. Why am I even discussing such ancient history, as it is perceived to be in our long-term memory challenged world, fixated on the continuos stream of sound-bites regurgitated daily by FOX News-style journalism? Rolling Stone has moved on. Why don't I? Because nothing has changed since the publication of Rolling Stone's exploitative article. Nothing that is except for the rate of new HIV infections, which continues to rise in the so-called developing, redeveloping, and developed worlds [more so in the developing world, where the only thing that seems to be in decline is the rate of development]. And still there is no cure, lifesaving illness abating treatment - for the fortunate, but no cure. And now the Bush Administration turns its wanton gaze to Syria. And the band plays on.

I wonder what Britney Spears is wearing at the next MTV awards show.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Colinoscopy

"You can't eat plutonium."

Colin Powell
Secretary of State, United States of America

I have nothing to add.

David Walske
Secretary of Jouissance, Blog of Space Cowboy Dave

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

A Warning Sign

by David Walske

How is it that my entire life can be encoded
on a single music CD?

How can four poet musicians I've never met know so much about me?

I had not listened to Coldplay's, "A Rush of Blood to the Head" for awhile. When I first discovered it, I nearly wore out my CD player listening to it.

Flying into Manhattan, December 5th 2002 - headphones on, portable CD player in my lap, "Clocks" filling my ears, filling my head, filling my heart, filling my soul, filing me up, pushing out the darkness of my oblivion, is it mine or am I its, neither just then - gliding through the crisp windstorm blown night air - the city sparkled crystalline as we soared slowly past on our way to JFK.

This collection of beautiful noise is somehow a journal of me in sum total. How is this possible?

I had put it away on a shelf. Forgotten about it. Passed by.

Then for no reason in particular I had to have it in my ears again today. I had to bring myself to tears, rip at my heart, and push out the dark space again.

"Take me back to the start."

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Write Like a Man

by David Walske

Apparently my writing reeks of testosterone. Not that I'm complaining. In fact it does wonders for my image. Like the confluence of events that recently provided me all the flesh and bone artifacts I needed to spin a rough and tumble hyper-masculine tall tale of a "Fight Club" style bar fight in which I had gotten a tooth knocked out, had taken a bullet, and had lived to tell about it. One tough customer I. "You shoulda seen the other guy." I had my lines memorized and rehearsed, sense-memory raging; Strasberg would've been proud.

None of it was true; there was no bar fight. The "gunshot wound" was an incision from the removal of a basal-cell carcinoma - stay out of the sun, kids - and the missing tooth was the result of a loose crown having been inadvertently extracted by a piece of chocolate-covered chewy-caramel. Not nearly the swashbuckling fiction I had concocted, which I never did have opportunity to ply on an unsuspecting naïve anyway.

Not that I need a lot of help in bolstering my masculine persona. At times in my life I've felt some envy towards obviously, stereotypically, effeminate Gay men, those of us that set off Gaydar everywhere they go. I recall all of the times in my life I've had to initiate the "I'm Gay," conversation. Had I been a "flamer," my autonomic pervasive queer je ne sais quoi would have obviated the need for all that awkwardness. Hey sister, not that I can't put it on; I can snap with the best of them. But for me it is affectation not genuine persona. Oh sure I have my fay moments - I love wearing my Queer Duck t-shirt - but for the most part I naturally present a Gay, but overtly masculine demeanor. And apparently so does my writing. Go figure.

A Web-based program, "Gender Genie", hosted by bookblog leverages experimentation by Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon of Illinois Institute of Technology, and others as reported in published research entitled, "Gender, Genre, and Writing Style in Formal Written Texts," to determine the gender of the author of written works. Inspired by data reported in an article by Charles McGrath, in the The New York Times (August 10, 2003), the Web-based Gender Genie application uses a simplified version of an algorithm, developed in the university research, that analyzes written content based on specific criteria that associates certain words with male writers and others with female writers. According to an article by Philip Ball in Nature News Service (July 18th, 2003), "The program's success seems to confirm the stereotypical perception of differences in male and female language use. Crudely put, men talk more about objects, and women more about relationships."

Ever one to rail at the propagation of stereotypes against my will - "You don't know me!" - I was ready to put this application to the test and see the Genie's gender divination prowess go up in smoke. I fed it several written pieces, including posts from Juisssance.

I even threw some of my experimental prose and poetry at it hoping to do some gender bending. The Gender Genie consistently ranked my writing male regardless of what I did in trying to throw it off the track. Genie characters always seemed a bit androgynous to me, their body builder physiques paired with willow the wisp underpinnings, but certainly this Genie seems to have no doubt about everyone else's gender. Daily Candy NYC also put the Gender Genie to the test.

Give the Gender Genie a try, and see if you write like a man, dude!

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Many thanks to Carole Goldstein for suggesting the Gender Genie.
Click here if you'd like to make suggestions for future posts.

Parallel Universes

by David Walske

Not just science fiction

I've long been fascinated and at times transfixed by concepts from the frontiers of physics: string theory - [not to be confused with Silly String, which is in it's own right pretty fascinating. What is that stuff?], the thermodynamic arrow of time and the the possibility of accelerating it or reversing it at will - [otherwise known as bi-directional time travel], the localized existence of cohesive states within a generalized state of entropy - [trying to keep at least one small corner of my desk neat and clean, but necessarily at the expense of my office as a whole], and so forth. But about six months ago, a concept caught my attention and has refused to release me from its deathgrip-like hold. A new meme has taken root in my brain. [See previous Jouissance post, "blackSpot, the unLogo" for more on memes.] This meme that has been sucking up gigawatts of electrical energy in my cerebrum - [Do you think this energy consumption could have been the cause of the recent east-coast blackout? I was nowhere near Ohio at the time; I swear it.] - is that of the absolute mathematical inevitability of the existence of parallel universes.

The idea of parallel planes of simultaneous existence is certainly not a concept that is new to me. Ten years ago I had begun to explore my own hypothesis that I called, "Recursive Convergent Parallel Planes of Reality." I envisioned parallel planes consisting of concurrent streams of consciousness, diverging outward from a singular point, and then doubling back to the original point of origin, to begin all over again in a cosmic endless-loop of infinite recursion. Still with me? I created a killer graphic that really captured the concept visually, but alas that was many years ago. I created the graphic in some long forgotten and now unsupported graphic file format [Does anyone out there still remember the "C prompt?"], saved it on a backup tape cartridge - a storage medium for which I no longer even have a compatible computer drive, and stored it who knows where. I fear I might fall into a recursive endless-loop of another kind - the kind with lots of swearing - should I even attempt to look for it. But it really was a cool graphic.

The idea is perhaps best explained in an analogy of driving the freeways in Los Angeles. You move mono-directionally, hopefully - please don't try to back up while driving on the freeway. You drive in one lane at any given moment - once again, hopefully. You can choose to remain in a single lane as you move forward. But who ever does that? Usually, for one reason or another - or for no particular reason at all - you'll decide to change lanes at least once - probably more - on any given trip. And finally, if you keep driving long enough, you'll find yourself back at the same point in the freeway system at which you began. You'll have traveled full-circle, recursively. As you continue, circle after circle, you're likely to make different choices about when and where to change lanes. You could even choose a different freeway interchange, diverging dramatically from your previous circling paths, but round you go, all roads lead to Rome - make that Los Angeles - and eventually you find yourself at your original starting point nonetheless. This is not a scenario that is difficult to imagine. It happens countless times, everyday in Los Angeles - trust me on this - and in many other major metropolitan centers as well.

Now imagine one of these recursive trips, not as as a roundabout car tour of Los Angeles, but as your personal stream of consciousness, your journey through life as expressed in your awareness of a continuously flowing stream of reality. At nearly every moment in your life, you are asked to make decisions. Each decision, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is one link of an unimaginably large chain of decision points in your life, each link connected to the link that came before and after it in the chain. We tend to think in terms of the "big decisions" when pondering the direction of our lives - should I move to Vancouver [yes, definitely], should I buy a new SUV [no, definitely not], should I take that job [don't ask me, I barely have a job at all], etc. But in truth your life's path is the concatenation of each and every decision you make, not just the big decisions. The decisions you have made up to this point in your life, no matter how great or small, form a chain of links that have lead you to this current moment, at which you are reading these very words.

Make one tiny change - I think I'll go grocery shopping on Thursday instead of Wednesday - and the entire course of your life changes. [Spooky, huh?] My theory of "Recursive Convergent Parallel Planes of Reality" as well as many other, undoubtedly superior, similar theories suggests that just like the never ending Los Angeles road trip, reality bends back on itself. This concept of "reality bending [burrito style] back on itself " has been suggested as a visualization of the space-time continuum. You go round and round and round again, through limitless iterations. One go-round - [recursion] - may stray - [divergence] - significantly from another, but you always end up at the same point of origin - [convergence]. As much as I enjoy contemplating this concept of recursive planes, I must admit that it is limited. It is a meme that loses its virulence after awhile. More recent - and more complex - theories of parallel universes, and specifically those that have been advanced along the lines of mathematical inevitability, not probability, are much more compelling.

Max Tegmark's article in Scientific American (May 2003), explores the mathematical equation of parallel universes with great eloquence. Tegmark offers mathematically sound, mainstream science that logically supports the existence of parallel universes. It begins with a Level I multiverse concept that is fairly easy to assimilate, once you admit to the failure of human cognitive ability to fully grasp the concept of infinity.

Author Tegmark's use of scale in the article - more evident in the print version than on the Web - in expressing large number theories is a noteworthy example of excellent information architecture. It is almost impossible to comprehend a number as large as 210118 [two to the tenth power to the 118th power]. In contradistinction a number like 24 [two to the fourth power] is quite easy to mentally resolve: 16.

This limitation of human cognition holds true to some degree for all large number constructions. Grand concepts are easier to comprehend when scaled. For instance it is difficult to understand the real meaning of the fact that 60 percent of the 6 billion people on the Earth are undernourished. Sure, it sounds like a big bad number, but it doesn't resonate in a way that is personal and palpable. Scale the world population down to an imaginary village of 100 as David J. Smith does in his book, "If the World Were a Village" and suddenly it is easy to take to heart the fact that sixty of your 100 neighbors are starving.

Mathematical certainty predicts the ramifications of the fact that within the unlimited realm of infinite space there are a limited number of unique arrangements that can be created using all available subatomic particles. To explain what this means and how it supports the concept of parallel universes Tegmark begins with a scaled example. In this sample scaled universe there are 4 particles - instead of 10118 [ten to the 118th power] particles as is the case in our observable universe [also known as our Hubble volume]. In this four particle universe, you can see that all possible arrangements of the four particles are expressed in sixteen instances. Outside of these sixteen possible variations, the pattern of the four particles must begin to repeat. Therefore at any point within a distance of approximately four "universes" there could be an exact duplicate of one of the original sixteen.

Now take this concept and inflate the number from 4 particles back up to 10118 [ten to the 118th power] particles, our Hubble volume. Rework the math in the context of infinite space and you'll discover that within the boundlessness of an infinite number of pattern replication instances, there only 210118 [two to the tenth power to the 118th power] possible unique arrangements. [Don't actually try to rework the math or you may possibly be driven quite mad, as have I. Just imagine reworking the math.] Within the infinite reach of this mathematical construct, eventually a parallel universe that is identical to our own universe must inevitably occur. This may sound far fetched, but it is a fact of mathematical certainty. The question is not if it will occur, but rather when, or more accurately where.

The crux of this vexingly complex concept comes down to a simple matter of odds. All Las Vegas slot machines eventually pay off. If you have an unlimited number of pulls, you will eventually, inevitably win the jackpot. In our inevitable doppelgänger parallel universe, all of the particles that it contains are arranged just as are the particles here in our universe. Such a serendipitous parallel arrangement must undoubtedly seem like the mother of all long-shots, and perhaps it is. But it is also a certain eventuality that is incontrovertibly bound to occur in the context of the infinite: a universal jackpot of sorts. Included in this arrangement of particles in such a parallel universe is another "me" and for that matter another "you." Further because of the boundlessness of infinity, the parallel "you" in an identical parallel universe may have had the exact same experiences as you here in our universe, and might therefore be your duplicate not only in physical form but also as respects memory, temperament, values, and the like.

If that doesn't blow your mind try this: Included in the multiverse is also an infinitely large number of nearly-identical parallel universes. Every time you make a decision no matter how monumental or infinitesimal, no matter how grave or frivolous there is another you in a parallel universe making that same decision, but with the potential of free will to make that decision differently than you do here in our universe. So in a sense with each passing instant there is a divergence of realities in which everything that can happen does happen. This is the essence of quantum mechanics and the underlying theme of the 2003 season's opening episode of Alan Ball's "Six Feet Under" HBO original series.

All of this occurs in what is referred to as a Level I multiverse: a simple two dimensional view of pattern repetition. Level II is similar to Level I - but elevated one rank in the hierarchy. That is to say a Level II multiverse is a set of Level I multiverses, or if you will a multi-multiverse: [Our universe is one member of a set of universes. That set of universes is called a Level I multiverse. There are a many Level I multiverses contained in a Level II multiverse.]

Level III and Level IV do not represent mere hierarchical progression but address further dimensionality to posit explanations for some of the additional questions raised by the existence of quantum states. But for right now, let's not go there. Stay tuned.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Not Dead, But Forgotten

by David Walske

Growing up in the era of the Vietnam war, but far too young to serve or to conscientiously object to service as I hope I would have, I clearly recall the nightly body count as reported by Walter Cronkite on the evening news. Like a scene out of Oliver Stone's "Nixon" (1995), my family and I calmly ate our bloody steaks, safe in our middle-class Tucson, Arizona home watching the evening news, while the blood ran on our plates as it did in Vietnam.

The reporting of casualties must have been given a lower priority, because what I remember is that the nightly tote board tallied the dead, not the injured. More than a few jaded newscasters have been known to recite, "If it bleeds, it leads," as the central precept of how stories are prioritized. Which events get the spotlight of daily news coverage, and which fade into obscurity. But that's only the first half of the golden rule of modern journalism, especially in the reportage of the continuing Iraq war - a war declared "Mission Accomplished" months ago. The sickening punch line of the rule is, "If it dies, it flies."

Just as we, as a nation, were mesmerized by Walter Cronkite's death-count tote board - [I kid you not, each night we were presented with the American death count, side-by-side with the Vietcong death count, ostensibly so we could keep score on a daily basis, rooting for the home team based on these numbers.] - so are we now fixated on the metrics of war fatalities - a statistic which is nearly always lower than that of non-lethal, but often debilitating casualties. If it wasn't so heartbreaking, it would almost be funny in its Pat Sajak game-show presentation. In no way do I mean to make light of the horrific loss of life and limb, in either the Vietnam war or in Iraq. My intent is to draw attention to the shameful midway-carney-style of reporting that is so prevalent today. At least Walter Cronkite managed to keep a smirk off his face, and to his credit shed a tear on camera when President John F. Kennedy passed away. Our mainstream, meanspirited news coverage of today is tilted and spun and in some cases outright falsified. And these are the news sources that most of America depends upon for for information that they believe to be the truth.

Instead of the sychophantic coverage of every bumbling Rose-garden Rodeo of a failed Texas oil tycoon wannabe turned President, we should spend more time telling the story of the grieving, the wounded, and the walking dead. This morbid daily count is more than just a set of numbers. By all rights the tote board should be gushing blood like the lobby elevator in the film, "The Shining" (1980). I mourn the dead, but to no less extent also the injured, the maimed, and the mutilated that are shipped to Walter Reed Army Medical Center daily in near total obscurity. Let's have Bill O'Reily get his Factor up from his chair, and out of the studio to do an unedited mini-cam report, navigating ward after ward filled with the mangled flesh of the formerly intact and vibrant young men and women that George Bush sent to Iraq, while his own children were safely tucked away in college.

Lawrence F. Kaplan reports in The New Republic (October 10, 2003), that Walter Reed hospital has assumed "the feel of a Civil War Hospital." If this concept is unclear to you, see the film "Dances with Wolves" (1990), for a hint at the horror represented by that observation. Amputees, and victims of severe and permanently disabling injuries are commonplace in this setting. While you're at it, getting background in trying to comprehend this nightmarish reality, see the film "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), for another, more modern perspective on the same "shop of horror" theme.

"[What] one notices about these young men evacuated from Iraq is that many of them are not whole. Where there should be arms and legs, there are too often only stumps," Kaplan continues in his article. According to "The Week" (October 17, 2003), "So far, more than 1,600 soldiers have come home maimed - missing arms or legs or parts of their faces." This is a "meat grinder" operation we're conducting. And these statistics only speak to American casualties. Is an Iraqi life any less sacred or important than an American life?

Mr. Bush, did you not have the audacity to stand before the American public and proclaim that God made you President? You appear to be citing God, as an authority greater than that of any mortal, from which you have received direct and specific instruction as to your divine duty. [That sounds disconcertingly like George's namesake, British King George of pre-Revolutionary times. Read the Declaration of Independence for background on that concept. I carry my pocket-sized version of the "Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America" with me at all times. Get yours from the Cato Institute at www.catostore.org and read the operating manual for this country, as our president seems not to have bothered to do.] Well King George W., your God has a few rules himself, which he apparently prioritized a long time ago. At the top of that list of rules, as I recall from my youth is, "Thou shalt not kill." I would think that wounding and maiming has got to be in there somewhere as well, but I'm not entirely sure - Bible thumping is really your department, George not mine. By all accounts though, God is really, really pissed at you.

George, you've got some explaining to do.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

It's not Television It's TiVo

by David Walske

"There are few worse cocktail-party quandaries than being sandwiched between a TiVo® owner and the wall," according to Brendon Koerner who in October 2002 predicted the imminent demise of TiVo in an article posted by Slate.com. Fortunately this prediction has proven to be grossly inaccurate. TiVo is alive and doing quite well, thank you very much. Koerner was correct, however about the cocktail party observation. So be forewarned. If you find yourself within shouting distance of me, consider yourself sandwiched. I am one of the TiVo faithful. TiVo is a bit like a religion - with proselytism and everything!

The Queen of England

In his Slate.com op-ed piece, Koerner expresses his impatience with hearing about, "the glories of pausing live TV, fast-forwarding through the ads, and watching King of the Hill reruns whenever you damn well please." This guy just doesn't get it. A lot of people don't understand TiVo, in spite of the fact that the word TiVo, like the word Google, has become a verb of the lingua franca : "I TiVoed 'K Street' if you want to come over and watch it." When I try to explain TiVo to the uninformed I often get comments like, "Oh, well you must watch a LOT of television," followed by the ever-annoying condescension, "I don't watch television." To which I have been known to reply, "And I'm the Queen of England, so now we're even!" My favorite snap in response to supercilious pronouncements of television abstinence is the retort delivered by the character Jules Winnfield played by Samuel L. Jackson in Quenton Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction" in response to John Travolta's character Vincent Vega, "Yeah, but you are aware that there is an invention called television and on this invention they show shows, right?" Or have you been living in a cave in the Khyber Pass the last fifty years?

Oh Ye of Little Faith

What the unenlightened don't realize is that since becoming converted to TiVoism - I watch less television than ever. It's a clear-cut case of "less is more." Instead of flipping through 500 channels of digital cable box junk, I select from an easy to use on-screen menu. Like a VCR, the TiVo DVR (Digital Video Recorder) let's me preprogram the recording of a scheduled show. That's in itself is not much of a feat. Or is it? Remember all those botched attempts at doing that very thing with your VCR before you got frustrated and gave up on the whole idea? It's a simple and foolproof task with TiVo. Select the program by name, press a button, and you're done. With a VCR it's hit or miss at best. Suppose you do manage to get the programming right, but then happen to come home earlier than planned to find that you are 15 minutes into the taping of a two hour movie. You'll have to wait an hour and forty-five minutes for the taping to complete if you want to watch the entire movie, from the beginning. With TiVo you can start watching the movie, right away, from the beginning, while TiVo is still recording. Are you starting to get it? Do you feel the power of TiVo in ya brothah?!

And yes, you can indeed pause live TV - this seems to be the TiVo feature that you hear about the most. From the popularity of this idea, I guess I'm not the only one that invariably needs to use the bathroom as soon as the show starts. Then there's the "instant replay" button on the remote that rolls the program back eight seconds. You'll find that in most cases eight seconds is just the right span of time to go back and catch that line you missed. Now you feel it, don't you? Say it with me, "TiVo." Feels good, doesn't it?

Gourmet Faire

All of this is great, even if it is annoying to Brendon Koerner to hear about what he's missing. But in my view, the most awesome and useful feature of TiVo is the Season Pass. I have never missed an episode of Alan Ball's, HBO series "Six Feet Under," one of the best written, directed, and acted dramas - serialized or otherwise - ever produced. This is true in large part because of TiVo. I owe the lush jungle-like landscaping around my house to automatic sprinklers - don't let anyone tell you otherwise, the secret ingredient for a lush garden is water, assiduously applied water. But let's face it, human beings are just not very consistent - about anything. If it were up to me to remember to water the garden regularly, my yard would look like the Mojave desert. Likewise, I just can't always be home and ready to watch television at a specific time on a specific day with any real consistency. But TiVo can.

The truth is, I rarely watch TV at all anymore; I watch TiVo. I've set up a TiVo Season Pass for all of my favorite shows, so whenever I have time for them, they're all there waiting for me. Did you catch that? My favorite television programs wait for me, instead of me waiting for them. With TiVo, television programming conforms to my schedule instead of the other way around. I select shows from the TiVo menu and I watch only the very best programming, from a menu listing that is preselected based on a set of criteria that I've custom tailored to my personal preferences. No more channel surfing through random LOP (least objectionable programming), reruns, and infomercials. It's the difference between eating junk food and a nutritious meal. The empty calories of channel surfing leave you hungry no matter how much you consume, so you keep watching in the hope of finding satisfaction. TiVo is a Five Star Restaurant: great service, great food, so you feel fully sated with less food.

You may think that the point of all this TiVo evangelism is to get you to convert, and in part that is true. But my real aim here is to share with you the way I've been able to use TiVo to turn my television from a "boob tube" into a sophisticated entertainment and information aggregator. For me it's all about the TiVo Season Pass!

So What's Playing on MY TiVo?

• Now - with Bill Moyers (PBS)
  One of the very best sources of in-depth coverage of important issues often overlooked by the CNN/MSNBC/FOX blather. A right-wing conservative pundit criticized this show, calling Bill Moyers, "overly avuncular." Uncle Bill, I'm all ears. Keep up the excellent work, you are a national treasure and a credit to the world of journalism which is becoming increasingly untrustworthy.
• Real Time - with Bill Maher (HBO)
  Again, full coverage of issues and viewpoints that would otherwise go unreported, plus Bill Maher is genuinely gifted as a comedian. Currently in hiatus. Why HBO only gives this show half a season is a mystery.
• K Street (HBO)
  Not everyone "gets" this show. A George Clooney - Steven Soderbergh production, this show is pure genius, but I'm afraid zips right over the heads of many viewers. Soderbergh produced the film, "Solaris," starring George Clooney, (directed by James Cameron). Solaris is also a project that most people just didn't get. The cinematic expression of K Street reminds me of Solaris. And I loved Solaris - I think I was one of four people that did though; and the other three were the producer, director, and star. I hope HBO renews K Street next season. Come on HBO, don't wimp out, stick with it.
• Six Feet Under (HBO)
  Alan Ball's brilliant serialized drama. After the film "American Beauty," the big question was, "How do you follow that?" "Six Feet Under," is the answer. Currently in hiatus. I'm on pins and needles waiting for it to return, so I can be on pins an needles for another season.
• The Daily Show - with John Stewart (Comedy Central)
  Another show that routinely reports the news stories that routinely go unreported. Hosted by John Stewart, who refers to, "The Daily Show" as a, "fake news show," referring to the fact that the show is actually intended to be a satire of a news program. Under Stewart's stewardship, "The Daily Show" has remained hilarious while at the same time morphing - sometimes more so, some times less - into a "real" news show.
• Race - The Power of an Illusion (PBS)
  A three part documentary that clearly explains the fallacy of racial stereotypes and their use in unfair discrimination, both now and throughout the history of the United States. I've got TiVo programmed to pick this up whenever it shows up again on television.
• Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo)
  The "Fab Five" use their discerning queer eyes to perform weekly miracle- makeovers on hopelessly couture-challenged straight men. Great fun! This is the show that turned the faltering Bravo network around. But I considered boycotting the show when I found out what an "unfabulous" salary the Fab Five guys were being paid for their work. They had been locked into a five-year, three-thousand dollars per episode contract, for a show that is worth millions to its producers and the NBC owned Bravo network. Word has it that NBC, after putting up some resistance has agreed to renegotiate new contracts. New episodes airing soon.
• Sex and The City (HBO)
  Sex and New York City: What's not to like? The series centers on the lives, loves, and lusts of four friends in New York City. The four women are played by Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie "Manolo Blahnik" Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Smantha "Hello sailor" Jones), Kristen Davis (Charlotte "True love at last" York), and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda "Steve at last" Hobbs) - but let's face it, in spite of the fact that these are female characters, these girls are really Chelsea boys. Currently in hiatus. Series finale run begins in January 2004.
• Queer as Folk (Showtime)
  The adventures of five gay friends and their, (gay and straight) families living in Philadelphia, near the predominantly gay Liberty Avenue district. Based on the hit British series of the same name. Not as well written as HBO's "Six Feet Under" or "Sex and the Ctiy" - a bit too predictable and sprinkled with less than brilliant dialog - but I love this show anyway. And the writing is improving. The five gay men are played by Gale Harold (Brian "Once is enough" Kinney), Hal Sparks (Michael "Who's my daddy" Novotny), Scott Lowell (Ted "From bean-counter to tweaker in three seasons" Schmidt) and Peter Paige (Emmett "Good looks overshadowed by a kind heart) Honeycutt - with fellow cast members Sharon Gless, Randy Harrison, Michelle Clunie, Robert Gant, Thea Gill, Jack Weitherall, and more. Currently in hiatus.

More next week.

I've barely scratched the surface of TiVo here. And just today I received my copy of the newly released book, "Hacking TiVo: The Expansion, Enhancement and Development Starter Kit with CD-ROM." So there'll be even more to tell when I work up the nerve to "crack the case" on my TiVo - voiding the warranty - to juice it up even more.

I'll also continue to offer accounts of my TiVo Season Pass adventures with a semi-regular report: "Now Playing on MY TiVo," including mini-reviews as here.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Barry Kaufman

by David Walske

When I was eight years old, there was nothing in the world I wanted more than a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The year was 1964, long before the invention of audio cassette tapes, let alone VHS, CDs, or DVDs. My friend Barry Kaufman had a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder and I envied him greatly for it. Barry's parents were somewhat well-to-do, certainly better off financially than most of my classmates' parents, and it seemed to me that he flaunted this by flashing the bling-bling of his tape recorder so. In reality this remembrance is probably more a machination of my blue eyes turned green than reality. But, oh how I sinned the sin of envy as I coveted my neighbor's tape recorder. Good little Catholic boy, I had to have something to confess on Sunday lest I appear perfidious in not performing a weekly act of contrition. Better to make something up, than to go without the confessional blessing and be at risk of falling out of grace, seven long days before the next opportunity of sacrament. What if I should get hit by a truck in the interim? [Who are these truck drivers of whom we were warned so often? Madmen all about the streets, running down pedestrians at random!] Needless to say, stealing the object of my desire was out of the question, compounding sin upon sin. And the purchase price was well beyond my financial reach. I was never able amass any amount of money on my meager weekly allowance, most of which went to buy Beatles cards.

I collected Beatles cards. I adored The Beatles. Still do. The very first record I every bought was the newly released forty-five, "She Loves You," with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the flip side - sometimes referred to as the B side. Actually there was no B side to any Beatles record, it was all A's from the Liverpudlian quartet. Beatles cards, like baseball cards came wrapped in colorfully printed wax paper - five cards to a pack plus a powdery, brittle stick of gum. But instead of baseball players, these cards featured John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Turn any card over and you'd find a puzzle-piece image that when laid beside all of the other cards in the series in just the right order formed a poster of the "Fab Four." That's Fab Four, not Fab Five; in those days instead of the "Queer Eye," we had the "Brit Guys," of the musical revolution that had been dubbed, "The British Invasion." Although... many years later, certain unsubstantiated rumors about Beatles manager Brian Epstein and his special relationship with the fabulous boys did surface. It was probably just wishful thinking on the part of the rumormongers. But can you blame them, or him if the rumors were true? These guys were hot! Screaming mobs of tearful young girls and boys pursued them ceaselessly.

Owing largely to my Beatles card habit - I never got a Beatles wig or a pair of Beatles boots but I did lust after both in my heart - clearly the only way I would ever get my own tape recorder was to convince my father to buy one for me. I begged. I pleaded. I cajoled.

"Everyone at school has one." What a lie, Barry was the only kid at my school with his own tape recorder; there now I was all set for Sunday confession. My entire life I've been a maladroit liar - probably why I have never played poker. I just don't have the face for it. Read me like a book, you can. But somehow I pulled it off with the fib I told my father that day. Maybe he knew I was lying, but felt compassion for a child in such desperation as to lie, and so feebly, to his father. I think that counts as two Mortal sins. In any event, my tact worked, and he agreed to the purchase. Thank you God. Wait, God had just rewarded me for lying. That would take some time to reconcile. But it would have to wait; I was off to the store with my father to buy a tape recorder. Take that, Barry Kaufman! Oh crap, now the sin of pride to add to my ever-mounting confessional list. And swearing now too. How far I had fallen, and here it was only midweek, reckless truckers in wait. Surely I was Hell bound, but at least I'd be able to document the journey on audio tape.

I tape-recorded everything. Sometimes I'd even record the audio of my favorite television programs. Mostly I did "man on the street" interviews with members of my family or with any of the neighbors that would suffer my interrogations. My mother had little patience for such nonsense at first - there was housework to be done - but eventually warmed up to the idea and became quite the guest on more than a few episodes of my talk-variety-comedy show. I idolized comedian Red Skelton and vowed that one day I'd host a television show just like his weekly network broadcast. Meanwhile, no one escaped my wily microphone. Even Dickie-bird, our parakeet became a guest on the show. Eventually Dickie fell out of favor but occasionally included himself, uninvited as background noise. "Dickie, shut up! I'm trying to make a show!" When I couldn't manage to line up a guest, I'd read articles from the newspaper. "Influenza B! Several cases of Influenza B have been diagnosed on Arizona's Papago Indian reservations..." My parents were beginning to take note that my fixation with audio recording was more than a passing fancy, and a few years later my father purchased a "big" tape recorder. I was in Heaven, apparently having escaped the Dantesque fate I had previously imagined.

My recording career was booming. With the new equipment - seven-inch tape reels instead of the smaller three-inchers of my portable deck - I was unstoppable. Once or twice I even got my mother to sing on tape. She chose a Sunday school song from her youth. I can hear her singing it in even now.

Although the song was unfamiliar to me at the time, I remember the lyrics verbatim.

Once, when my father's stern presence was absent from the room she also recorded a childhood parody of a religious song. Such blasphemy would not have been tolerated had Dad been within earshot, but I delighted in it, as did she.

The words mocked the authentic lyrics, "Pass along the watchword, sing it as you go." My mother had converted to Catholicism as a condition of marrying my father. I had the sense that although she maintained a ritual practice, my mother really didn't take her adopted religion all that seriously. And indeed she was the first in my family to stop attending Sunday Mass, about the time I started High School. Even though she has since backslid into religion as do many of the elderly, to this day I'm proud of my mother for the courage she exemplified in her unspoken, quietly stalwart self-excommunication. My father looked the other way. This was the beginning of the end of his role as enforcer of the family faith, except for the mental self-flagellation of the dogma that he still metes out upon himself to this very day. I was the next to follow in my mother's rational footsteps in leaving the church. Others of my siblings left as well, some remained devout.

I continued making tapes on that same seven-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder until I graduated High School and left my parents home at the age of seventeen, moving to Los Angeles. An entire audio library of my youth sits in a drawer in my parents' house. One of the tapes was nearly lost when it accidentally fell into a bucket filled with a mixture of Pine Sol and grimy mop water. I was never quite clear on the details of how that could have happened. But the recording was successfully transferred to a cassette tape before the original became degraded by the pine-scented cleaning agents to which it had been exposed. This is the one tape of the library of which I am in possession, a sophomoric attempt at "Hew-Haw" style comedy that I and my sister recorded, coincidentally during my sophomore year of High School. My parents have urged me repeatedly to take the remaining tapes and the reel-to-reel recorder. But somehow I can't yet bring myself to do it, in spite of the fact I do sincerely want these tapes of great sentimental value. I think that, perhaps the act of taking the tapes represents an admission on my part that my parents are quite advanced in age - my father just celebrated his ninetieth birthday; my mother is three years his junior - and that their passing is not long away. I'm just not ready to surrender the image of my mother, young and vital, singing "pass around the wash rag" into the microphone of that old reel-to-reel tape recorder. Years from now, listening to these recorded memories I'll have Barry Kaufman, at least in part, to thank for them. Thanks Barry.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

blackSpot, the unLogo

by David Walske

A meme is a terrible thing to waste

What is a meme? Evolutionary biologist and self-described "militant atheist," Richard Dawkins coined the term and describes it in his book, "The Selfish Gene" (1976, first edition). In this well received volume - currently in its third printing - which has elicited testimonials such as, "Few popular books are good. Few good books are popular. 'The Selfish Gene' is both," Dawkins postulates that all animals, including humans, are unwitting containers or "survival machines" of the gene, which achieves immortally by passing its DNA code from receptacle to receptacle, generation to generation expressly for its own selfish goal of survival. In this view the individual is merely a wrapper of genetic code, mere throwaway packaging. In this cutthroat competitive biology, it is the genetic code that is of primary importance. The preservation of the species, while necessary, is of secondary relevance. Survival of the individual ranks a distant third. That's right, we're each returning home with a tarnished bronze medal. Daunting contemplation, this.

Upon my first reading of, "The Selfish Gene," I felt smugly superior to this process Dawkins describes. As I have not, and will not produce offspring, I assumed that I had therefore neatly removed myself from the equation of the selfish gene. But now, some years later, I recognize my assumption to be false. In as much as the current state of human overpopulation threatens to exterminate mankind, my lack of participation in further propagation of the species indeed serves the goal of preservation, which in turn serves the selfish gene. Scientific studies have shown that when a group of any species is compressed into greater than optimal population density, that there is an observable increase in the occurrence of homosexuality above the expected baseline percentage. Yes, we truly are everywhere. Queer mice, go figure.

As self-aware, sentient beings most people find the idea of of being unwitting, expendable, "survival machines" repugnant. We envisage ourselves supreme as individuals. We assert our personal autonomy vis a vis the fact that most of us also claim some kind of group allegiance, such as that to family, clan, country, religion or other belief system. In my opinion, "Atheism" is as much a religion as is, for example, "Christianity." At two extremes of a spectrum, one declaring total faith in a specific afterlife scenario, the other denying it with equal fervor, both schools of thought draw a dogmatic conclusion. Mirror image declarations of a spiritual absolute. I touch on this theme lightly in my personal manifesto du jour, in which I describe myself as a "hopeful agnostic."

The larger message of Dawkins' book however subsumes these questions of spiritual dogma in the greater discussion of the meme. As human beings we have a unique capacity for self-determinism. As such our minds are fertile ground for the meme, which is in a way both counterpart to and in competition with the gene. In his book, Dawkins explicates, "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions... Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain." Dawkins continues, quoting a colleague, N.K. Humphrey who states, "Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell."

Best selling author, Seth Godin has applied these concepts to the world of business and marketing in his book, "Unleashing the Ideavirus." Savvy marketeers have been parasitizing fertile human brains for decades with clever marketing and corporate image campaigns that include catch phrases, jingles, and logos carefully engineered to be pleasing and memorable, all the better to take root in our minds. In so doing, they splice their code into our thought patterns, our concepts of truth, desire, and purpose.

Salon.com features a piece by Linda Baker, "Are you ready for some 'unswooshing'?" in which Kalle Lasn - the founder of Adbusters [the "anti-consumption" magazine based in Vancouver, B.C.] and author of "Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Binge," - states, "America has become a bit of a monster." The monsterization of America can be attributed in large part to the parasitization of the wrong memes into the code of the American mindset by and at the behest of the the corporate hegemony. Modern corporate marketing has evolved to a very effective, ubiquitously distributed global brainwashing technique. The memes represented by familiar corporate logos have become a kind of mental comfort food. Adbusters has launched a new campaign in opposition to the logo, which it views as the infectious agent of malignant memes. The specific target of this anti-logo campaign is Nike and its copyrighted "Swoosh" logo. Why Nike? Ask Michael Moore. Or visit blackSpot, the Web site of the Adbusters anti-logo, anti-Nike campaign. According to the blackSpot Web site, "Phil Knight [Nike CEO] had a dream. He'd sell shoes. He'd sell dreams. He'd get rich. He'd use sweatshops if he had to. Then along came a new shoe. Plain. Simple. Cheap. Fair. Designed for only one thing: kicking Phil's ass."

The blackSpot shoe sports a simple eponymous black spot as its anti-logo. The Adbusters campaign is gearing up to compete, David-and-Goliath-style against the behemoth Nike, its CEO, and its mammoth line of sports shoes. The blackSpot shoe, which resembles a retro-style "Converse" basketball shoe, is priced at sixty dollars a pair - considerably less than the average designer sports shoe pricing. Preorders are currently being accepted. The shoes cannot go into production until a minimum of 5,000 orders have been received. At the time of this writing 1,074 preorders are on record - customers are not actually charged until the shoes are shipped to them. For more information, to order, or to invest, visit the blackSpot Web site at: www.blackspotsneaker.org.

Our unique human capacity for rational thought allows us to reconfigure our mental genetics, largely as we see fit. We each have the free will to choose whether to accept what we're told without scrutiny, or to use our higher faculties of thought to decide for ourselves which memes to incorporate into our mindset and which to reject. The unLogo of the blackSpot shoe represents a meme that you might want to consider accepting.

Copyrigh © 2003 David Walske Inc

Brubeck

by David Walske

My life has taken many twists and turns, and I find myself now at a unique crux. I recently turned 47, young by standards of the western world of privilege - a world rife with clean water, abundant food, and advanced medicine. I am awakened as if from slumber, having dozed in-transit, to suddenly discover with some consternation that I am swiftly approaching that most sententious station of temporal chronology, the golden anniversary of my birth.

The picture of youth-like vitality that I present today, stands in stark contrast to an image of myself a mere eight years ago as I lay ill, hospitalized with an AIDS-related pneumonia, without benefaction of efficacious therapy - none available then, advancing with seeming intractability towards imminent death. Prudent medical prognosis had given me a year to conclude my earthly interactions. The simple act of walking but a few steps often precipitated a spell of exhaustion that left me weak and gasping for breath. It was unlikely that I would see my fortieth birthday. But yet here I am today, physically strong and in a state of vigorous health, the odd symptom or transient malady aside, my fiftieth birthday coming into view in the distant horizon. What have I done with the extra years granted me? Have I spent them wisely? What shall I do with those to come?

After a recovery akin to resurrection, I went on to enjoy moderate financial success as a Content Management consultant. To me such good fortune felt like something somewhat more than moderate, and I am thankful for it. But in fact I have reached a level not nearly tantamount to the pinnacle of worldly achievement of many. Clearly the occasional paroxysm of anguished self-doubt arises not entirely of neurosis borne of my own psyche. I've wrestled with inner demons, a battle that rages still - although news from the front brings the impression that victory or at least the modus viendi of détente draws nigh. In three short years, algorithms of chance and fate allowing, I'll see my fiftieth, the gold standard of birthdays - a prospect once unthinkable.

I have made a decent living in my career. However I have never really achieved the kind of success for which I yearn: a Brubeck. Self-coined term for the embodiment of the revelation that came upon me whilst listening to Dave Brubeck's classic recording session, "Take Five." I'd heard it many times before, as have many. But all at once while listening to this track, one of several in a compilation CD - a montage, the assembled works of various artists - it was as if I was hearing it for the first time. Every note so perfectly placed, yet casual and offhand, defenestrated to fly freely while at once maintaining precise formation, with a sense of indefatigable faith that they could do nothing but. A perfect thing. An accomplishment so grand that if one produced nothing else of consequence in this life, it would be enough. A Brubeck.

All this pontification, and I don't even particularly like Jazz. Genre is inconsequential to seminal inspiration. Did Dave Brubeck and his contemporaries realize the import of their performance in session that day? Unlikely that they did. Genius like its sister charity does not announce itself proudly, and is often recognized only posthumously. Look through your CD collection tonight, clear away the remnants of day and listen transcendentally to, "Take Five."

While I know that true happiness derives only from within - I am working diligently on that assignment - I also know that I must pursue my own Brubeck. Perhaps more than one, should I be so privileged. Attaining a single Brubeck, by definition is all that one can hope for. A single Brubeck in a lifetime is more than enough. I do not believe that such is attainable in my current career path. Therefore I have decided to dedicate myself: body and soul, blood, and bone to writing. Fiction mostly, some op-ed journalism, and even the occasional piece on Content Management and Information Architecture, but that only in the minority. To accomplish this goal I am taking radical steps. I have purposefully reduced my consulting client list to one, and I am slowly phasing out this final client by the end of the year. This has reduced and and will ultimately squelch my company's already meager revenue stream. At its zenith, it never was what I expected or hoped it to be. It never made me happy. And it never put me any closer to my Brubeck. Some remainder of it may still exist in the future, but it is to be in essence moribund as a profit generating enterprise.

And so I embrace the pauper's life of the writer as artist - not quite so drastic as that assuredly, but fiscally uncertain without a doubt: rejection notices don't "pay the light bill" - typically the pursuit of a much younger man, my chosen path forward, my destiny. I leap empty handed into the void, a hopeful agnostic. Hopeful agnosticism, the only conceivable religion of a genuine and unfettered lifelong seeker of truth.

My life in transition. I'm not sure exactly where this transition is leading. Hopefully towards a Brubeck. How will I recognize my own Brubeck when it materializes within the self-created harsh, white-hot glare of introspection and self doubt? Perhaps I'll not know while still in this life. Sometimes the Brubeck beckons, but never deigns so much as a glance from mortal of flesh still. Then must I but go from whence the siren muse calls, even should that be oblivion.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

President Prince

MSN Entertainment - News - Fresh Prince for President?

President Will Smith?

A Prince for President?

by David Walske

Well maybe, IF he appoints the following Presidential Administration:

• Tommy Lee Jones - Secretary of Defense
• Tim Robbins - Secretary of State
• Eddie Albert - Secretary of Agriculture (Just kidding)
• Quincy Jones - Secretary of Education
• Ed Begley Jr. - Secretary of the Interior
• Ed Begley Jr. - Secretary of Energy
• Ed Begley Jr. - Secretary of Transportation
• Samuel L. Jackson - Secretary of Justice
• Sarah Jessica Parker - Secretary of Health & Human Svcs.
• Michael Moore - Secretary of Homeland Security
• Michael Moore - Secretary of Labor
• Michael Moore - Secretary of Housing & Urban Dev.
• John Voight - Secretary of Veteran's Affairs
• Charles Grodin - Secretary of the Treasury

AND
Alec Baldwin
as Vice-president

Does anyone know anything about Mr. Smith's politics? Hey now, that gives me an idea for a campaign slogan, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washginton." Why is it that we, as a constituency feel compelled to run the celebrity face up the flagpole first and then find out about the candidate's platform after the absentee ballots are already in?

Not that I've heard anything specifically negative about candidate Will. Oh wait, there was that business about Will Smith and the advice given to him by Denzel Washington regarding his role in "Six Degrees of Separation." I'll not go into specifics but you can click here for more details. Google got the goods. Word.

It would be nice though to have a William back in the White House. Come on... are you better or worse off now than you were three years ago? I don't care who's blowing - or kissing - the President. It's really none of my business as long as he doesn't blow up the world.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Every Move You Make

by David Walske

Orwellian Mathematics: 1984 plus 19

Okay, so "1984" didn't turn out quite as dreary as George Orwell predicted. For that matter 2001 wasn't exactly the adventurous future of space travel Arthur C. Clarke suggested either. In spite of a 2001 budget increase, approved the previous year by the Clinton Administration, NASA's Mars Voyager got a dusty welcome, the soviet space station MIR took a planned nosedive into Earth atmosphere, and then the events of the September morning that will forever haunt us all, pulled our focus sharply into view of terrestrial concerns. Tragedy following tragedy, the Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew were lost nearly two years later on August 26th, 2003.

In spite of all the tragedy, turmoil, and doubt about the future of manned space exploration I continue to be, ever the space enthusiast. I've seen Stanley Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" (1968) in Cinerama®, no less than fifteen times, and I still long for a ride on that Pan-Am space shuttle, in spite of the fact that the Space Station was lit far too brightly for my tastes - definitely a Persol® moment - and I'm not sure, to where exactly I would be en route post-layover after sharing cocktails and conversation with sophisticated friends and associates, including a rather reticent, tightlipped Russian fellow. "Hey buddy, the Cold War... you lost it! Its over." Or is it?

Watching Big Brother Watching You

"Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you." So goes the the lyrics of the song "Every Breath You Take," by The Police. As mentioned in an article by By Steven Johnson in Discover Magazine, (October 2003), "In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration announced Total Information Awareness, a massive effort to build a counterterrorism database that can help track the activities of 'people loosely organized in shadowy networks.' The name was changed to Terrorism Information Awareness..." Johnson's article brings to mind the chilling specter of the possibility of Cold War era tactics, plus modern-day technology brought to bear by the United States government against the freedoms and liberties of its own citizens.

To counter this possible threat, MIT graduate student Ryan McKinley created his own information gathering and pattern recognition program. But this time the surveilled turn the tables on the surveillors. McKinley's Web site, Government Information Awareness which went live July 4th, 2003, gathers and assembles publicly available information about the various branches, appointees, and elected members of Government, assembling disparate chunks of information into a matrix that allows citizens to track the actions of their own representative government - and to see just how representative such actions may or may not be.

At first viewing the home page of the site may not impress. But as Steven Johnson notes in his Discover Magazine article, if you dig a bit deeper you'll find, "...a rich ecosystem of political connection lying in [the] database. As you move through the space, you're bombarded by factoids at nearly every turn." Turn about is fair play, and Ryan McKinley's, Government Information Awareness Web site may just help keep a new cold war from freezing over our Constitutional liberties. To the question, "Is this legal?", McKinley's Web site answers, "It should be."

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Hope

by David Walske

Doubtless a most desolate place. The earth without form. A void. But excogitated, void as firmament belying in camouflage teeming subterranean life. Mortuos occulere vivos. Duplicitous landscape offered not without cost. A long journey to reach the void.

Travel by rail, in pullman faded glory. Eight hours. Journey nocturnal. Window unshaded, cubare, succumb to sleep, fleeting moonlit landscape ochre and umber, head upon fabric, starched white pillowcase bleached a shade of white derived only of recursive industrial laundry.

Awakened at firstlight. Arriving not at destination, but a day's drive off. Nychthemeral journey. The fabled Sante Fe railroad line forever affixed in chaste segregation by its very spikes testament to failure of consummation, denied the adobe touch of eponymous settlement. We travel motorcoach another hour to reach its namesake citadel of missionary colonization. Then to let a vehicle, first this journey to wrest autonomous reign.

Old Santa Fe Trail yields to Pecos. Southward, Roswell yields to dust bowl Artesia. And yet not terminus ad quem. Onward westerly, from civic minimus to that of least manufactory. Idle in all respects. Less than modest mercantile. Saloon, feckless machineshop, postal. Sans hostelry. Reversion in course, Artesia return at day's end, lest one be consonant with hypaethral slumber, save the favor of local kinship. Hope is here.

Onward, pavement yields to gravel and gravel yields to clay. And at last arivaille. Wheatstraw acres undulate, gently rolling, infinite, oblivion. Engine choked, silence of palpable pressure exerts itself as surely as ocean's floor seawater. Suffocating seawater of air presses. The void offers greetings and subsumption as we but for a moment merge with that which is at once nihility and plenitude, summa totalis.

Oblivion cum plenitude, life renewed.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Rush to Judgment

I loathe Rush Limbaugh. I loathe everything about him. I loathe all that he stands for. I loathe his, brash loudmouth barroom manner. I loathe his politics, his anti-feminism, his anti-gay stance. I loathe his right-wing, blinders-on, "kill 'em all and let Pat Robertson sort them out later" attitude. He is little more than a white trash supremacist Klansman with a vocabulary and a six figure [plus] income. He represents all that is reprehensible. He is evil incarnate, if there truly is such a thing. He is the enemy.

And now I find myself in the very uncomfortable position of feeling compassion towards this cretin. My first instinct when he I see him on wobbly legs is to pounce like Mohammed Ali in a rematch with Joe Frazier.

To strike down upon him, "with great vengeance and furious anger he who has attempted to poison and destroy my brothers and sisters." [Paraphrased roughly from Ezekiel 25:17 - Hey, we sodomites know how to read the Bible too. We just recognize it for the page-turning "Pulp Fiction" that it is. Seriously, it would be difficult to get an honest film adaptation of such lurid material, as is the Bible, past the MPAA with an R rating.] So there's Limbaugh, held prostrate in the vice-grip of opioid addiction, inviting righteous blunt force disintegration. But no. Instead, I feel a "Michael the Archangel complex" welling up inside of me; an involuntarily sprouted wing reaches out to shield the weak and suffering sentient, faltering and sickly before me. Damn it! You know it's not that easy being a person of conscience.

I hope I've been clear about how vile I believe Rush Limbaugh has proven himself to be over the many years that he has subjected the public to his supercilious, blathering sermon of hatred and intolerance. Part of a larger gospel of ill will that has spread across America like the opportunistic infection of the mind that it is.

But ever the humanitarian optimist I cannot but hope that Limbaugh's confessional might prove to be not so much a downfall, as a turning point away from a life of "persecuting in public those who are no different than [himself]," towards one of thoughtful recognition, good will, and conscientious introspection. I know, it sounds far fetched. But it does happen. Everyday there are instances of those who have awakened from the stupor of hate. And not just in the movies.

Or he'll come out of rehab and continue being the same old shithead. I'm hanging on to my copy of Al Franken's, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" just in case.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Heroes

I wrote the following article - published in the current issue of FAB! (Issue 217, October 10, 2003) - in celebration of National Coming Out Day (October 11th) and reproduce it here in full. Enjoy.

Heroes
by David Walske

I first came out when I was sixteen. Many years later I still have a clear memory of this sexual awakening. Flush with the hormones of puberty, but still a virgin, subjected to the continuous bombardment of heterosexual propaganda as I was - as were we all at the time in which I came of age, the 1970s - like other young boys seeking titillation and release I resorted to turning the pages of a smuggled Playboy magazine while masturbating late at night in my bed. But I also entertained erotic homosexual fantasies. Yearnings that would not be repressed. A conflict raged. Everything in the world that I knew instructed me, in defining my sexuality, to draw upon the images of the busty nude centerfolds common to the glossy adult magazines of the day, rather than the sultry half-clothed pictures of men such as those of Baryshnikov that would occasionally find their way into the Sunday newspaper and then into my bed. Most of the time, I existed in a state of perpetual arousal, and therefore needed very little external stimulus to become sexually piquant. So in spite of myself, I continued to oblige Hefner's paper bunnies. But Mikhail was never far from my thoughts.

The heterosexual landscape was my only external point of reference; so it was not surprising that vaguely drawn female objects of sexual desire would populate my dreamscape. Of my frequent pubescent sexual dreams there is only one that remains crisply detailed in my memory. In this dream, I lingered in a pastoral setting beside a riverbank, swathed in the embrace of a female concubine. I gently rolled my body away from her, towards the water's edge. I continued, rolling effortlessly across a shallow riverbed to emerge from the water on the opposite bank and into the waiting arms of a male lover. The next morning I awoke with an exhilarating sense of self and sexual identity. A feeling that I had not before experienced, having dwelled only within the cloak of the false identity that had been prescribed to me. It would be more than a year before I would act upon my desires that had now been so clearly defined by the dream borne self-revelation of my true sexual persona, but at that moment I could feel the confusion, pain, and anxiety of my repression beginning to lift.

When I say that I came out at age sixteen, what I really mean is that I came out to myself. Self-revelation was to be the first of many occasions of coming out that continue to this day. To speak of coming out as a singular event in one's life is absurd. Yet that is how we often speak of it. It's a lifelong experience, a process in which all of us must continue to persevere, battling forces from without and within that would prefer to see us perish rather than express the core of our identities. And we occasionally do struggle against ourselves, as each of us from time to time, denies our own truth or that of others in our gay community.

Hanging on the wall behind my desk where I sit writing these words, is a series of small, framed photographs. This is my hero wall. From within unpretentious embrasures peer the countenances of great role models, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Each of them with their own unique story of untrammeled resistance against the enemies of individual and collective truths. Each of them unapologetic to the very end. All three of these men - my heroes - have passed on, but yet live on in the posthumous encouragement and succor they provide. They are there for us at our darkest hours, leading by example. There are others on my hero wall and others that sorely deserve mention. I mean no disrespect to those I omit. The three men I single out here, I do so in celebration of the spirit of National Coming Out Day. From each I garner a unique perspective and wisdom as I redouble my own will to persevere.

Thirteenth century Sufi poet, Rumi wrote, "Each tribe draws you into its own circle; the parrot sings of sugar, of ruins the crow." No one knew this better than writer and poet William S. Burroughs. Author of works such as Queer, Junkie, and Naked Lunch, Burroughs wrote of his life and struggle as an emerging Gay voice in an unwelcoming time. An author of his consummate skill could have easily allowed himself to be drawn into the din of the multitude. He chose instead a more noble path. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "...so I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time... It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting, though being read less so." Naked Lunch, now seen as a modern classic was once deemed, "pornographic and unpublishable" by the critical hegemony of the day. Burroughs battled demons from without and within, sometimes losing ground, sometimes falling prey, but persevering to live in heroism to the age of 83, defiantly unapologetic to the end. When asked late in life if he had any regrets he replied, "Hell yes!" Regrets yes; apologies no! Never capitulating to the forces that sought to censor his original and unique voice, William S. Burroughs paved the way for the many Gay writers and social philosophers that followed.

Winston Churchill is quoted as having said, "Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains." What is it about age that should allow it to turn a heart to stone? As a young psychologist working at Harvard University, Timothy Leary brought the hallucinogenic drug, LSD to the campus. He saw its potential as a useful therapeutic agent in psychopharmacology. For Timothy and many others it became much more than that. It became a doorway to a new perception, which transcended the narrow constraints of the time and helped spark a revolution of cultural and political thought. Tim suffered persecution at the hands of cruel government and civil authority for most of his adult life because of his awakening and his willingness to share it with others, but he did not capitulate. He was known to have said, "You get the Timothy Leary that you deserve." He lived to age seventy-five, ever young and buoyant in his heroic freedom of self-expression - defiantly unapologetic to the end.

Artist, Robert Mapplethorpe said, "I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before." In his work, Mapplethorpe sought to reflect the artistic, integrated totality of life. Like Tim and William before him, Robert did not shy away from aspects of life that the prudishly pious saw as dirty or evil. Unfettered, he saw the beauty that lies in the whole of life and he expressed it fully and freely in the magnificent body of work that he left behind. Like Abraxas, God of Greek mythology, Mapplethorpe undertook the task of inscribing the godly and devilish elements that in union make up the blessed world in which we live. To worship the sacred while deriding the profane is to live a life out of balance. Robert Mapplethorpe, defiantly unapologetic to the end, departed from us far too soon at the age of 43, but not before leaving us a legacy of epic proportions.

Mapplethorpe's famous one-man show, "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" raised the ire of right-wing Christian conservatives such as Jesse Helms and ignited a hateful war on freedom that began with Helms' attack on public funding of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and continues in battles over free expression that rage yet today. This struggle pits Helms and his ilk not only against free thinkers everywhere, but also specifically against the gay community. There are those both within and without the gay community that ask, "Would we not have been better off had Mapplethorpe not woken the sleeping giant that we battle still. Should we not pull in towards a more moderate view, forsaking the fringe so that the gay mainstream might more easily prosper?"

These are questions raised by well-meaning people. They see a quieter path to freedom. They propose that we mold ourselves into an image more pleasing to a gathering storm of opposition. Sadly, history has a tendency to repeat. These same arguments were made in post-World War One Germany as the Nazi regime began to take control of a fearful citizenry. Gay German men were among the very first to perish in the Nazi death camps. Yet only a few years before, non-Jewish Gays in Germany felt relatively unthreatened. Some were even openly conciliatory towards the upwardly mobile Adolph Hitler. Ernst Rohm, himself Gay, lead the elite Nazi SA storm-troopers until Hitler had no further use for him. Rohm and his compatriots were murdered in one of the first recorded Nazi massacres known as, "The Night of the Long Knives."

To the well-meaning supplicants of our oppressors that swell among our ranks I say, "No! No! No! Never again!" This October I implore each of us to affirm and reaffirm our defiant, unapologetic resistance and to follow in the path of the gay and non-gay heroes that have come before us. I offer the question posed by author Herman Hesse, "I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"

Come out October 11th. Come out to yourself. Come out to your family. Come out to your friends and co-workers. And if you're reading these words having already flung wide the doors of oppression's closet to walk unapologetically into the brutish light of day, I say come out again! And again. And again. Defiantly unapologetic until the very end.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Fear of Flossing

Dentophobia

On a scale of one to ten - ten being least objectionable - my experience as a consumer of dental services has been in the seven to nine range most of my life. My mother has a terrible fear of dentists. Dentophobia is defined in "The Pop-up Book of Phobias" ¹ as, "acute anxiety brought on by the intrusion or threat of intrusion of the oral-facial complex by a practitioner of dentistry. The phobia often manifests itself in the form of paranoid delusions of dentist as torturer..." My mother's childhood visits to the dentist in rural Ohio during the first quarter of the twentieth century consisted of painful, anesthesia-free procedures. No doubt such childhood memories are largely responsible for her inordinate and continuing fear of even today's modern, painless dentistry.

My own experience quite to the contrary, what I recall most clearly of my earliest visits to the dentist are the copies of "Highlights Magazine"®, the colorful toys scattered around the waiting room, and the child-sized tables and chairs of blonde wood all very rounded and unthreatening. I must have experienced some pain, sometime while visiting Dr. Tierney's dental office, but if so I can't recall it. In spite of such fond, idealized childhood memories, my dental past has not been entirely uncheckered. Throughout my late teens and early twenties, I neglected my dental health more than I care to admit. So it is a miracle of sorts that I still have a full set of 32 - including four perfectly formed wisdom teeth. Not that I don't have plenty of dental work in my mouth, but the teeth underneath are all real. Restorations, dentists like to call them. I've had fillings, dental bonding procedures, porcelain veneers, crowns, and root canals. Four root canals in all: one in my twenties, one in my thirties, and two in my forties... so far. Judging from past experience, if I survive the remaining years of my forties and then make it through my fifties, I should expect to have added three additional root canals by the time I round the sexagenarian mark. Not that I've created a spreadsheet to predict the trendline. Okay, I did make a spreadsheet. I make a lot of spreadsheets.

Polynomial Dentistry

With each passing decade of root canals, the procedure has become easier and faster - I've never thought of root canals as painful, that's what anesthesia and analgesics are for - just time consuming and boring. My last couple of root canals were a breeze. Really! I have a great dentist. I'll give you his name and number if you want it. Really! The dentist that I had been seeing before I found my current dentist started out fine, but like perishable foods and houseguests became putrid over time. I recall one particularly bad visit to the office of my former dentist, during which I was to have my teeth cleaned. The regular dental hygienist was out sick. So I got the substitute, a temp. She was a stiff woman. As stiff as the white uniform she wore. I can best describe her as a cross between Nurse Diesel and Ernst Rohm. She spoke to me in an accusatory staccato of German-inflected English that seemed to chide even when she was praising my state of dental health - which mostly she was not. "You haf a loht ohf calculus on your teeth," she intoned as if revealing information that should cause me to recoil in horror. I had no idea what she meant, and briefly pondered insolently inquiring as to whether I had Algebra and Trigonometry on my teeth as well, but decided against it for fear that she would strike me with her large manly fist. Demurely I asked her, "What is calculus?" She replied with irritation, "Plaque!" I wondered why she didn't just say plaque in the first place, but nonetheless felt fortunate that I had gotten off with such a light scolding, sans corporal punishment.

Stalking the Wild Floss Pick

Sessions with the dental hygienist at my new dentist's office are much more enjoyable. Instead of constant verbal assaults as to how bad my teeth are, and therefore by association how bad I am, I hear remarks such as, "Your teeth really are actually pretty healthy." This positive approach, completely foreign to me in any dental office I've ever visited as an adult, has really paid off. I bought a new, more efficient toothbrush and now spend two or more minutes brushing my teeth two or more times per day - instead of the quick-as-you-can thirty-second brush-and-run approach I've employed for most of my life. And for the first time ever, I'm flossing regularly. I know what you're thinking, but this is not some devout but manic and fleeting fixation. I've been flossing once or twice a day for almost a year now. I never thought I could get myself to do this. In the past, as I finished brushing I'd think about flossing, but would inevitably convince myself that I didn't have time and would floss tomorrow instead. But tomorrow never came, until the day my dental hygienist introduced me to the floss pick.

The floss pick has really worked for me. I'm hooked. Now when I tell myself that I'm in too much of a rush to floss, I reply to myself, "Whoever it is, they can wait." Who knows while they're waiting for me maybe they'll go floss. The floss pick has certainly been an instrument of change for me, but I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that without my dentist, his staff, and the positive attitude that they exude, I could not have achieved this degree of improvement in my dental hygiene habits. I'm happy, proud even, to have all of my original teeth - restored or otherwise - and I'm thrilled at the prospect of keeping them. All genuine, ME-EM parts. Next they'll be calling me Mr. Goodtooth.

¹ The Popup Book of Phobias, Melcher Media, Copyright © 1999 Gary Greenberg and Melcher Media, Inc.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Music, Maestro Please

"We have met the enemy. And they are us."

- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"

With more than just a bit of a different edge than Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign song: Fleetwood Mac's, "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign selection: Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" - performed at a widely telecast Sacramento, Schwarzenegger rally on October 5th by singer Dee Snider (or is it Snyder?) - raised more than just a few eyebrows while raising the pre-election spirits of the Schwarzenegger faithful. Let's do a side by side comparison of lyrics, shall we?

I'll resist the urge to compare and contrast the album titles: "Rumours" and "Twisted Forever," in order to focus on the contrast between the underlying mean-spiritedness and perfidy of the Schwarzenegger campaign lyrics as opposed to the gentle committed optimism of the Clinton lyrics. Snyder's lyrics on first reading may bring to mind an episode of the Jerry Springer Show - Jerry by the way is reportedly considering a run for the United States Senate - but dig deeper for a more sinister meaning. Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, a multimillionaire himself, ran as the "people's candidate" on a platform of vagaries, with the endorsement and funding of the Republican elite. "You don't know us, you don't belong?" No kidding Arnie. Don't expect anything but a "members only" government in Sacramento when the so-called "people's candidate" takes over.

Also, I find the near-plagiaristic similarity of the lyric, "...we're not going to take it anymore" to the line, "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," from the Sidney Lumet film "Network," (1976) as uttered by the Peter Finch in his portrayal of the character Howard Beale during a psychotic break, noteworthy. In Network, the oligarchy of a television network's elite upper management manipulated the public by capitalizing on the frustration of the masses, as expressed in Beal's desperate litany, diverting it to serve private gain while claiming vox populi.

As the final votes continue to be tallied, an up to the minute election results summary can be viewed at the Web site of the California Secretary of State. Notable is the fact that Arianna Huffington - who formally dropped out of the running in the last weeks of the campaign - as well as Larry Flynt and Gary Coleman placed in the top ten.

I don't known what songs Larry and Gary picked for their campaigns.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

T4

I dozed off just before dusk yesterday evening, and sank into a nightmare from which I cannot seem to wake. Don't you hate it when that happens? I dreamt that a trash-talking, womanizing, intellectually vapid, Hollywood "action hero" movie star - the term movie star as used here is not to be confused with the word actor: all gentlemen are men but not all men are gentlemen - had somehow been elected Governor of the State of California in a carnival-like, whirlwind recall campaign so transparent that you could actually see the special-effects wires they were using to "fly" the so-called hero. And no matter what I do, hours after waking up, I still can't clear myself of this horrible phantasmagoria.

Get ready to be terminated California, its your turn to get flushed headfirst down the toilet. But this time it's no movie. The name plate on the desk may read Governor Schwarzenegger, but peel back the blistered self-adhesive lettering strip, and you might glimpse the name of the real shadow Governor behind the meat puppet. The scriptwriter who'll be putting the words in the mouth of the guy who's been tapped to play the part of Governor, butchering the English language, as he shamelessly carves up the Filet Mignon of California serving it Schatzi-style to the Republican inner circle, leaving but gristle for the rest of us. Whom are the puppet masters, you may ask? What kind of a shadow government would that be if you knew the names of the Machiavels working the rag dolls? Then how about just one letter from the name of Governor Arnold's muse and master, you say? Fair enough, "W." No, not that "W." How bizarre would that be to have a puppet working the puppet?

Pete Wilson finally popped up in front of the lenses of the news media today, like some kind of vampire groundhog. Who knows what cave, along which border he's been hiding in. I guess once the diversion is in place, the most occult of hiding places is that which is in plain sight. In the words of the David Mamet character, veteran thief Joe Moore, played by Gene Hackman in the film, "Heist" (2001), "Everybody's gonna be looking in the shadows... The place to be is in the sun." Misdirection, the mainstay of magician and grifter alike.

I couldn't bear to watch Wolf Blizter welcome in the newest machination of underhanded skull and bones politics, so instead I watched Comedy Central's, "The Daily Show With John Stewart," which aired "mostly live" at 8 p.m. Pacific Time as the California polls closed. Better to laugh than to cry. And all the better to get the news about California's new fake Governor from a "fake news show." If only this were but a nightmare; cold shower and some hot coffee and I'd likely be able to shake it off like a hangover. But unfortunately the fakery is all too real.

I'm moving to Vancouver. I promise to write.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Hasta La Vista, Arnold!

Voting in my household has always been a family event. For many years on election day Rick and I, and our dogs Charlie and Eddie - my dear departed Katie before them - have walked the five blocks to the Robertson Recreation Center early in the morning to cast our ballots. Well, that is except for a short period of time when I had begun to feel so disenfranchised and hopeless about the whole system that I refused to vote. Rick voted solitarily in those elections while I remained in bed wallowing in depression. It was really only one or two minor elections that I boycotted. Specifically those immediately after the Presidential debacle that climaxed in Florida some three years ago.

I'm happy to report that I've fully recovered from my electoral ennui. This morning I rejoined the suffrage with renewed vigor. I live in a neighborhood of diverse population. It is mixed in ethnicity, religious belief, and age. My neighborhood is home to African Americans, Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, a large Jewish community - Reformed, Conservative, as well as a large number of Chasidm, a Greek Orthodox community, and also boasts the highest concentration of Sikhs outside of India. But for several moments today while casting my vote - NO recall, YES Bustamante, NO 53, and NO 54, to go on record - I could have sworn that I was in West Palm Beach. All around me were elderly people, confused about how to cast their ballots.

"So, I vote on the recall OR I vote for a candidate? Right?," the confused older gentleman in front of me asked no less than five times.

Over and over, as I waited to cast my ballot I heard this same question echoing through the room. Even some of the polling place workers were confused. One kindly looking elderly lady helping to run the polling site simply smiled silently in response to the question. Fortunately some of the election workers knew how to answer the question and tried their best to resolve the confusion bubbling all around. I always thought that these polling place workers were volunteers, but today I was told that they are paid a whopping four dollars per hour.

Hopefully sensible voters will make it to the polls in sufficient numbers and then understand how to cast their ballots so that we can say, "Hasta la vista, baby," to Arnold once and for all. With a little luck he'll not only lose the election but also leave the State of California altogether. Maybe he could move next door to George and Laura in Texas after "W" loses the White House in 2004. I hope I don't have to eat my words on this. Time will tell.

As I left the Robertson Recreation Center, with my "I Voted" sticker firmly affixed to Charlie's mane, I noticed the confused older gentleman that had been in front of me in line also leaving. "So, I vote on the recall OR I vote for a candidate? Right?," I heard him ask as he and his wife walked away.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Lost In Translation

For anyone who has spent more than a couple of days stuck in a hotel room while traveling on business, "Lost In Translation," (2003) - playing in theaters now - written and directed by Sofia Coppola who also directed "The Virgin Suicides" (2000), may well induce, as it did in me, an immediate sympathetic vibration. A superb performance by Bill Murray, perhaps the best of his entire career, while sober in character facilitates more than a few intensely humorous moments in this film. But do not be mislead. "Lost In Translation" is not a light comedy about strangers in a strange land. This film speaks to an alienation deeper than that of cultures. It speaks directly to the darkness at the center of the soul, to the plight of the human spirit enveloped in a universal entropy, to the ache of heart-crushing loneliness that - in the elemental state of tragedy in which we as self-aware sentient beings find ourselves - afflicts us all.

Its stunningly beautiful cinematography - "Lost In Translation" is filmed on location in Tokyo, Japan - has at once a visceral cacophonous edge, and a dreamlike quality that ebbs and flows, reminiscent of the works of the French impressionist masters. Indeed at times the unrushed, quiet stealth of the film reminds me of an afternoon spent lost in visual meditation at a fine art museum. If you are expecting an adolescent belly-laugh comedy, buy or rent "Ghostbusters" (1984) and pop it in your DVD player. But if you care to journey into the depths of human frailty and perhaps glimpse introspectively into your own, with just enough wry comic relief to keep you afloat, then "Lost In Translation" is a film for you. It certainly was for me.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

100 Suns

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

100 Suns

by Michael Light

"Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with one hundred photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers were sworn to secrecy."

- Excerpted from book review at Amazon.com.

Eating Sagittarius

New map of the Milky Way shows our galaxy to be a cannibal

Study Shows the Milky Way is Out to Lunch

Chicken Little was right. The sky is falling.

"Thousands of stars stripped from the nearby Sagittarius dwarf galaxy are streaming through our vicinity of the Milky Way galaxy, according to a new view of the local universe constructed by a team of astronomers from the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts... This image, and its associated movie, shows the distribution of stars in the shredded Sagittarius dwarf galaxy as revealed by the observations reported here. " [more]

listen

12WORDS4YEAR03

october 03

listen

"It's harder to listen than to talk. But give it a try. Shut out all the noise in your brain and listen to the ocean. Listen to what the children are saying. Listen to a stranger. If you want to be heard, then listen. Really listen."

Copyright © 2003 The St. John Group

Fifty Reasons NOT to Vote for Arnold

From Metroactive News in Santa Cruz
A Bay Area arts and entertainment service of Metro Newspapers

Fifty Reasons NOT to Vote for Arnold

1. He wouldn't vote for you-or anyone else.
2. He's in way over his head.
3. He thinks you don't care that he's in way over his head.
4. He keeps repeating that he's going to "clean house."
5. His own house isn't as "clean" as he wants you to think.
6. He's discovered "special interests"-and maybe they're not so bad after all!
7. As an actor-turned-wannabe-california-governor, he's got Ronald Reagan for a role model.
8. He wants Ronald Reagan for a role model.
9. He's a wimp.
10. He lies.
11. He drives a Hummer.
12. He may consider "The Crusher" a political strategy.
13. He is-no matter what anyone says-a Republican.
14. He chose one of the most hated ex-governors of California to run his campaign.
15. He voted for Prop.187.
16. As a gubernatorial candidate, he's an actor.
17. His own adviser can't think of three good reasons to elect him.
18. He's got woman issues.
19. No, really, there's something freaky going on with his woman issues.
20. He's a threat to working Californians.
21. If elected, he would be properly called the "Kaiser" of California in his native Austrian tongue.
22. As a gubernatorial candidate, he's a novelty item.
23. He supports prayer in school.
24. He may not support gay rights as much as everyone believes.
25. He picked Rob Lowe of "West Wing" fame to be on his campaign team.
26. He's known for "pumping up" the crowds at GOP conventions.
27. He's got creepy connections to the energy crisis.
28. He's got even creepier connections to the energy crisis.
29. He chickened out on Proposition 13.
30. As a gubernatorial candidate, he's a P.E.coach.
31. Bush thinks he'd make a "good" governor.
32. He's not really "the people's candidate."
33. His father was a Nazi.
34. He invited accused Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim to his wedding.
35. He's unequipped to deal with the state's $38 billion deficit.
36. He stumped for Bush Sr. in the 1988 presidential campaign.
37. His own party doesn't care who he is, as long as he wins.
38. If he wins, Bush gets re-elected.
39. He openly admits to and supports drug use.
40. He's got a Machiavellian streak.
41. Did we mention he creeps us out?
42. Oh yeah, and he's got those woman issues.
43. He's going to dumb down politics even further.
44. He can't get the Kennedys to back him.
45. For the last time, he is a Republican.
46. His knee-jerk attitude towards taxes is ridiculous.
47. He's a "family values" Republican.
48. He'd never survive a regular election.
49. He needs a serious ego check.
50. It'll be six months before we can recall him.

Copyright © 2003 Metro Publishing Inc.

New on DVD : Nowhere in Africa

I first saw "Nowhere in Africa" (2002) at a small "art house theatre" near my home. Our friend Patti had called that morning to invite Rick and I to go with her. It had been some time since we had enjoyed the pleasure of Patti's company, we had a free afternoon, so off we went to the movies. I attended the screening as a complete naïve - which I maintain is nearly always the best circumstance at one's first viewing of a film. So when the opening title sequence began... in German I was surprised, in my ignorance, that it was a subtitled foreign film I had come to see. Not that I object to subtitled foreign films - it's only dubbed films to which I object, with the possible exception of Woody Allen's, "What's Up Tiger Lily?" (1966). I mention my surprise only as emphasis in underscoring just how little I knew about "Nowhere in Africa," other than that it probably had something to do with Africa.

I really wasn't there to see the film, so much as I was to spend a pleasant afternoon with Patti. About ninety minutes in, I gave up trying to choke back the tears and succumbed to unrestrained sobbing. I'll reveal nothing about the film here, in hopes of preserving for others the pure cinematic experience to which I was privileged. I'll say only this. The film left me asking myself just how far out of comfort would I step, to what degree would I place myself at personal risk, how much would I sacrifice, to stand against injustice. I'm still working on my answer.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

"Nowhere In Africa" is newly available on DVD.

The Lesson

The Atlantic | October 2003 | The Lesson | Levine

The Lesson
by Phillip Levine

"Early in the final industrial century on the street where I was born lived a doctor who smoked black shag and walked his dog each morning as he muttered to himself in a language only the dog knew. The doctor had saved my brother's life, the story went, reached two stained fingers down his throat to extract a chicken bone and then bowed to kiss the ring-encrusted hand of my beautiful mother, a young widow on the lookout for a professional. Years before, before the invention of smog, before Fluid Drive, the eight-hour day, the iron lung, I'd come into the world in a shower of industrial filth raining from the bruised sky above Detroit." [more]

- Philip Levine

Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group.
All rights reserved.

Arianna Drops Out of California Governor's Race

Campaign Shifts to: Defeat the Recall, Arnold and Prop 54

Ariana Huffington has dropped out of the California Governor's race to focus on campaigning for the three NOs!

• NO on Recall!
• NO on Arnold!
• NO on Prop 54!

You go girl! No misogyny or patronization intended.

A fake President is bad enough, do we really need a fake Governor as well?

Don't forget to vote on Tuesday, October 7th.

If you hurry, there is still time to vote early using Touchscreen Voting - the deadline for Touchscreen Voting is Friday, October 3rd.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Dear Grandchildren

Alta Omnimedia Unveils New Book

The notes on the dust jacket of "Dear Grandchildren" begin, "Neither a professional author nor an aspiring writer, Alta nonetheless brilliantly recalls her life as a child on the frontier in the early 1900's." I concur. This is indeed a remarkable book. In this slender volume, the author recounts her picaresque life story with great poignancy, weaving it seamlessly into an historical retrospective of the waning years of the American frontier, imparting a sense of authenticity that can only be garnered from firsthand experience. Eddie, Glen, and Mary - Alta's siblings - spring to life as characters, lingering in your memory as if you had known them personally. Reading this book, I felt the joys and heartaches of the Brean family, "from snapdragons in spring to sad irons in the winter" as depicted in bas-relief against a hardscrabble Steinbeckian vision of our past as a young, restless country in transition.

"Dear Grandchildren" is an embodiment of the tradition of oral history that is sadly slipping away from us in our modern culture. Can we know who we are and where we are going without understanding from whence we've come? I recommend purchasing two copies of this book. Keep one for yourself. Send the other to your mother, father, grandmother, or great aunt in the hope of inspiring pen to paper in the inscription of your own family history.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Cheney's conflict with the truth

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Editorial / Opinion / Op-ed / Cheney's conflict with the truth

"'ON MEET THE PRESS' ...Vice President Dick Cheney said, 'Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with [Halliburton], gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now, for over three years.'

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey pointed reporters toward Cheney's public financial disclosure sheets filed with the US Office of Government Ethics. The sheets show that in 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary from Halliburton, the oil and military contracting company he ran before running for vice president. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298 in deferred salary from Halliburton."

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

All the Muck That's Fit to Rake

The gang's all here, except there ain't no Snow White in this story.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc