Technocracy in America

Last night I completed my physics curriculum for the summer, reading the last of four books in my care on great physicists of the 20th century.

One was mainly a survey of modern German history, Fritz Stern's Einstein's German World. I found it an interesting though disjointed collection of biographical essays on Einstein and other prominent German physicists of his day. The title misleads the reader as well, as really only a little more than half of the book's longest chapter discusses Einstein; the remainder includes only tangential mention of Dr. Albert or doesn't bring him up at all.

The other three I read were by Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman. One I mentioned earlier, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a collection of his short works I found a bit technical for my tastes. Not to worry. My dad proved correct in his assertion that Feynman was an interesting cat, as evidenced by "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, which lived up to its billing. But really fascinating and instructive was the book I just finished late last night, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" Further Adventures of a Curious Character.

Most fascinating in this was the lengthy section in which Feynman recounts his work on the Rogers Commission, appointed by ex-Communicator-in-Chief Ronnie Reagan to investigate the causes of the Space Shuttle Challenger catastrophe. I'm a wee bit too young to remember this time myself, but Feynman became a popular hero for playing the role of Mad Scientist/Bureaucracy Buster. He's the one who first made public the problem of cold temperatures on the rubber o-rings used to seal the shuttle's booster rockets.

At one of the commission's meetings, a typically dull, banal affair full of bureaucratese and so utterly bogged down by technical discussions and the jargon of officialdom, Feynman made his point dramatically and theatrically. To illustrate the fragility of the o-rings at cold temperatures, he stuck one in a glass of ice water to demonstrate that it no longer maintained the flexibility essential to keeping a seal and preventing disaster. Pretty impressive stuff that gave pause to a lot of people. I found it really illuminating, however, that Feynman focused on a more fundamental cause of the Challenger accident, one that went beyond the physical limitations of o-rings.

As I read this section, I thought to myself that were I to ever teach a political science class on the institutional workings of government, this book would be required reading on my syllabi. (It's the aspiring professor in me. Fortunately, I plan to avoid political science like the MS Blaster worm, so I won't put myself through such a torturous exercise as teaching a college course on the intricacies of bureaucracy.) The performance of the o-ring at low temps mattered, Feynman argues, because of the management culture at NASA. Engineers would raise concerns about some potential design flaw or other problem, say the failure of o-rings in freezing conditions, but management and other higher-ups would not only disregard such warnings but pervert them and claim it demonstrated a greater level of safety than actually existed. Facts were overlooked, ignored or manipulated to stick to an ambitious launch schedule. Unsurprisingly, this meant safety suffered, and six astronauts plus a teacher perished in an accident that could've been prevented. All to make sure that we kept having frequent launches. Sound eerily familiar? Hasn't the term "broken safety culture" been used recently to describe NASA in the wake of the investigation into the Columbia explosion?

If only governments and bureaucracies, societies and peoples could learn a lesson or two from the past. Then I wouldn't have the ethical imperative to become a history professor and instead could take up a frivolous avocation. Like rocket scientist.

Triumph of the Immoral Minority

In case you've missed it -- "Yes, I have been in a cave on Mars with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears." -- His Brawniness, Ah-nold Schwarzenegger is finding himself in a bit of hot water for an interview he gave pin-up mag Oui back in 1977. Ooh la la!

It seems that Ah-nold has exemplified such upstanding moral behavior that he could put Jerry Falwell to shame. Of course, that's not surprising since Falwell did admit in a 1983 issue of Hustler that "his first time" came while drunk and with his own mother. All Ah-nold did was participate in a "gang bang."

Unfortunately, that damn liberal media doesn't seem keen to jump on this like they should. Check that. Today's edition of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman's excellent radio program, probed the more haunting complications of Schwarzenegger's misogynist, chauvinistic past.

There are some perfectly fair and legitimate comparisons to be made between Arnold's sexual indiscretions and those of ex-Prez Bill Clinton. I'm not on a crusade to defend Clinton or any other Democrat. Personally, I think Clinton did a lot to lower the quality of life for the country, whether his draconian "Welfare to Work" program that helped put lots of poor folks on the street, the passage of NAFTA to enable thousands of jobs to migrate south of the border, or the signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that immediately removed effective caps on radio station ownership and paved the way for ClearChannel to dominate the airwaves and help prompt the decay of modern music. But I judge Clinton on his record, and the terrible things he did, like pushing the Democratic Party to act more Republican. Never will I count myself in the camp of so many other Democrats like my own mother, who seem captivated by his charisma and will exalt him to the end.

That said, I frequently find myself in this awkward position of defending folks like Clinton (or California Gov. Gray Davis) because the attacks they face lack all merit whatsoever. I certainly don't approve of Clinton having or not having sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, but I've never heard any evidence it wasn't consensual, if not inappropriate. So I don't find it criminal behavior, and it easily flunked the "high crimes and misdemeanors" test that's supposed to be used for impeachment, but got conveniently ignored by Clinton's political opponents.

But what about Ah-nold? Marriage and family life don't appear to have halted his pattern of promiscuity, but more importantly, his is a long, ongoing history of sexual misconduct. There's the "gang bang" he described in 1977, along with several episodes of groping women. Most appalling though, occurred on a film set where a woman rebuffed Schwarzenegger, who then threw her against a bathroom wall. As Karen Pomer, the rape survivor interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning, recounted, this is a rather grave episode.

"We're not talking about somebody who is an adulterer. We're not just talking about someone with infidelities. We're talking about sexual harassment. That's sexual battery when you throw someone against a wall."

Of course, this story hasn't cropped up anywhere, undoubtedly buried by that wretched liberal media.

Why I will and won't vote for Arnold

In case you were confused or in the dark, Arnold Schwarzenegger clarified his platform yesterday for all the skeptics and critics who said he lacked substance to go with his style. As a guest on the Eric Hogue Show in Sacramento, he spelled out his candidacy for the confused and the doubtful:

"I'm a Republican, and I'm running as a Republican to be the next Republican governor."

Thanks for clearing that up, Arnold. I now feel I can make a fully informed decision not to vote for you. Instead, I think I'll cast my ballot for TV's Arnold -- that's right, former child star Gary Coleman.

Odds and sods

A quick check of my blog statistics revealed that, among the obvious search strings that yield my site, were two most peculiar phrases:

"i install fifa 2002 and when i tried to load it from my desktop nothing happens"

and, I swear I'm not making this up and have no idea why it comes up with my page,

"stretch little ass till end".

The crappiest place on earth

Today I couldn't avoid MouseLand, try as I normally do.

Generally it's not an issue. The Big Cheese (actual title) frightens small children aged 8 to 88 on the other side of my hometown from my house. And, mercifully, it's out of the way for pretty much everywhere I ever go, so unless I have business there or a fit of masochism (one and the same), I avoid it.

Unfortunately, today I had business in the Big (Mouse) House.

Actually, I shouldn't say it was unfortunate. The occasion was my cousin's wedding. The bout of bad luck was their decision to hold the entire extravaganza at the Disneyland Hotel. Cue gag reflex

Yeah, certainly not my choice. But it's the preferred wedding site for couples-to-be who want to be married in the setting with greatest probability of a 7-foot-tall cartoon character sans head.

The ceremony itself was nice. It was in a garden with a nice gazebo and the bride entered the venue in a horse-drawn carriage. I found it a little odd that hotel guests in the overlooking tower could simply gawk at it all. And it was a little bizarre having an active, bustling hotel operation going on all around outside. But the ceremony wasn't bad. It was relatively quick, which was fortunate since the heat got oppressive despite still being morning. Still, I don't know that it was worth the hefty price I'm sure it cost to stage such pageantry in Ratville.

Then came the "cocktail hour," a pre-reception staged on a grassy area in a different part of the hotel complex. This was a bit insufferable, between the pounding sun that only got hotter, the limited board of fruit, insufficient chairs and shade.

Following that came the reception itself, a modestly swank soiree in an air-conditioned ballroom. Once inside, I would've forgotten I was on Disney property if I hadn't caught sight of the carpet, complete with mouse ear pattern. Groan

There was an all-you-can-eat buffet, which was two rows of food: breakfast on one side, lunch on the other. When our table finally decided to skip waiting and go, I opted for the much shorter breakfast line. It was nothing too fancy, mainly breakfast meats, some french toast and delicious blueberry blintzes. At the end was a station with a guy making omelettes to order. I waited several minutes to reach the front of the line, then when I got there, some server came up with egg orders for three people who apparently couldn't get their own eggs. Don't ask me who or why. When the cook resumed taking orders from the line he skipped me(!), and my dad, in typical fashion, didn't notice and put his order in. I had no success getting the cook's attention to prevent him skipping me a second time, at which point I gave up the quest and went across the room to pick through the remains of the lunch buffet before sitting down to eat. That left me in a foul mood for the rest of the reception, which was about four hours.

Perhaps that accounted for my inability to enjoy the wedding much. Of course, there the other factors of discomfort (Did I mention that beverages other than water and a small glass to toast the bride and groom weren't included, despite the $50-a-person price tag?) that contributed to my sour temperament. And then the whole Disney is evil/Mickey Mouse is death dimension.

But maybe what made me saddest was my discovery after I got home that I would've had a better time at the amusement park across the street, where it was unofficially "Goth Week", I kid you not.

Rest assured, whenever I get married, I will not put anyone through such an experience. The ceremony will be air conditioned, unless the weather is really damn nice out and not hot. No money will go to the Evil Empire. And, if I have my way, not only will sodas and iced tea and other cold, refreshing, non-water beverages be complimentary, but beer will be free and flowing.

Saving the earth, one Hummer dealership at a time

Radical eco-terrorists on a rampage. In what appears to be a series of coordinated attacks, or just a really busy night for a couple of people, SUVs across the Los Angeles area were targeted for vandalism or destruction last night.

The Earth Liberation Front torched at least one dealership and tagged several SUVs around the area, leaving an impressive trail of destruction. And the eco-terrorists prompted several SUV lovers to open their mouths and remove all doubt of their extreme stupidity.

My personal favorite, courtesy of Patrick Navarez of Monrovia, who discovered graffiti on his SUV's window: "The funny thing about it is that they're just targeting SUVs. I think that's really dumb." Thanks for playing the game of natural selection, Patrick. We have some nice parting gifts for you, including a one-way ticket to Extinction!

Imagine the stupidity of eco-terrorists targeting only(!)SUVs. I can't believe they didn't tag a single hybrid vehicle, and spared the bicycle store down the street. What kind of eco-terrorism is that? What kind indeed, Philippe?

But I think Brian Akre takes the cake. The spokesman for Hummer manufacturer General Motors had the following to say: "If this was some kind of misguided attempt to make a political statement, those responsible should know that committing arson and putting property and people in danger is not the way to gain public support for their position." After all, putting property and people in danger is the way to hawk millions of overpriced, unsafe, gas-guzzling SUVs -- a ticket to corporate riches, not political capital.

Perhaps I shouldn't take pleasure at this act of eco-terrorism. But then, it's hard not to find joy in anything that strikes a blow, even a small one, against oil culture. SUVs are evil. Period. They exist only as status symbols and serve little utilitarian purpose. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that you need such a beast to navigate city streets. And no, don't try to convince me you need four-wheel drive to handle the off-roading required for life in Beverly Hills. You'll never take that urban assault vehicle off pavement because you shudder to think what kind of damage that could do to the precious exterior of your luxury car. (Why do you think one of the original and most popular ones is called the Suburban?)

No, SUVs just exist to proclaim "I have money and don't give a damn about the environment." Most SUVs face much more permissive emissions standards than more sensical automobiles. The lot of them fall into the same category for emissions as pickup trucks, which have looser standards because back when emissions became a consideration, people who owned pickup trucks actually needed to go off road with them. Worse still, some SUVs are so beastly in size they're actually too big to fall into any existing category for emissions standards and thus face effectively few limitations. So forgive me for not crying over a few Molotoved H2s or the odd redecorated Suburban.

Besides, a wise man once told me "property is the worst form of violence."

Amen.

Making the world safe for hypocrisy

Few things irk me more than hearing people proclaim America as the land of freedom, of opportunity, model democracy and bastion of humanitarianism. Needless to say, the past two years haven't exactly been chipper times for me...

Everywhere I look on these shores, red, white and blue blind the eyes.

Stars and stripes pollute the landscape the way graffiti dominates an urban alleyway. A mushroom cloud of mindless patriotism explodes overhead, raining toxic fallout. Its poison taints the earth of my citizenship, seeping into the water table, contaminating the rivers that sustain my compatriots. All around, the sludge encroaches. Always waxing. Never waning.

Despair drives me to howl at the top of my lungs, warning of the cancer preying on the now-diseased locus. Yet my cries resonate as silence. Worse still, the alarms I sound fall silent, the deadly agent snuffing out the cure before its antibodies can kill the killer. Pestilence perseveres. Cancer marches on. From the stricken nation-organ at its root, it infects the surrounding cells. With the lifeblood of the world-body the fatal contagion courses through the arteries. Salvation only in global suicide. Leaving hope.

That's how I feel when I look at the world today. More accurately, it's the feeling inculcated in my bones every day as I observe the country of my birth proceeding apace in its apocalyptic program, hell-bent on leading the world into a hell from which there is no return.

It's a frustration more metaphysical than material. Small tokens of success -- decent job, modest wealth, picket fence -- tempt with their empty promises of escape. But it's all fleeting, intangible, unsatisfying. A lie. Collaboration always necessitates succumbing to the lie. Yielding to its vagaries, relenting to its moods.

Denying the lie's existence = Denying one's own existence.

For millions of my countrymen, the lie doesn't exist.

"War is peace.
Slavery is freedom.
Ignorance is strength."

They believe it just as wholeheartedly as they believe in the infallibility of their man-gods, the elite that feeds them the lie. From it they derive sustenance, and in turn propagate its seed. Not a weed. A cancer. Spreading across the horizon. Far and wide discovering an army of unsuspecting and willing carriers. Vectors of disease, dispatched from body to body. Armies massed like continent-sized tumors, hemorrhaging their mother orb.

Propagandists on the idiot box hawk the lie. "The U.S.-appointed council that replaced the tyrant by destroying existing infrastructure, arresting the development of civil society and bolstering tribalism has satisfied all preconditions for Iraqi democracy, we're happy to report." Beaming, they proclaim that cancer cures cancer. The cradle of civilization now wholly uncivilized.

"Mister anchor, assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing"

Humanitarianism means making Iraq safe for imperialism. The cancer spreads, leading to sweetheart deals on pillaging Iraqi oil reserves. This plunder, this new colonialism, this is what "democracy" looks like. The neighbors could stand to learn a thing or two.

Cancer must move on. The Iraq-organ worked well. More than a decade it sustained the disease. But now the tumor begins to rupture, threatening explosion. New cells must be formed. Cells in nearby nation-organs. And cells elsewhere. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. Pakistan. Jakarta. Hamburg. Buffalo. San Diego. Pathogens fan out. Geometric progression progresses. The hosts are always more promising on the other side of the fence.

Iran-organ waits uneasily next door. Cancer targets it, fearing its development of a powerful antibody: democracy. This supposed cure lurks as a "weapon of mass destruction" for the cancer. Democracy resists the pathogens of imperialism. Iranian democracy will not tolerate the erection of an oil artery through this organ. The organ must be attacked.

Meanwhile, far away on the shores of West Africa, a small nation devours itself.

For nearly two centuries, the people of Liberia have viewed America as a beacon of liberty and guarantor of its freedom. But freedom comes under attack. A bloody civil war imperils the entire population of this country. Despair and the grim shadow of death overwhelm the civilian population. Facing starvation, they beg and plead for U.S. intervention to stop the bloodshed. No avail. Their entreaties fall on deaf ears. Liberia has no oil wealth. It holds little strategic value for the great American colossus. You can go to hell, Liberia. Go on, kill yourselves. We haven't got the time to tend to your petty squabbles. Can't you see there's oil in them thar Persian Gulf?

A beacon of hope. American Marines in sight. Monrovia, the Liberian capital, under siege, desperately needs relief. U.S. troops can put an end to this all. Just a few soldiers would halt the conflict and allow the war-torn city to breathe, perchance to heal. Seven American Marines touch down inside the U.S. embassy compound. They evacuate the diplomatic corps and embassy personnel. In the words of the Great Liberator, they will only protect Americans and American interests. No oil means no interest. Mister President will brook no humanitarianism. Democracy doesn't matter here. False hope is a cruel bitch.

Oil is democracy
Imperialism is humanitarianism.

Lest we forget,

War is hell.

The Ozzmen howleth

Did you happen to catch Ozzy Osbourne's rendition (accompanied by wife-manager-handler Sharon) of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" Sunday afternoon at Wrigley Field? Unbelievable.

Of course, sadder than Ozzy's godawful crooning (he clearly had no clue what the lyrics were and seemed determined just to wing it via incomprehensible mumblings) is that this is arguably one of the most realistic imitations of the original, Harry Caray himself. Caray was never going to get asked to sing in Carnegie Hall, much like Ozzy, though Ozzy has a narrow leg up in having a record contract. Amazing, ain't it?

21st-century Moses

Another trip to the ER, another real-life episode of "Cops".

My mom and I took my grandpa to the ER last night as he evidently needed to go, based on my mother's medical knowledge. (He turned out to have bronchitis and a urinary tract infection, and my mom remains convinced he would've developed pneumonia without the ER treatment, so her judgment held up.) As always at the VA hospital, this mainly meant a lot of waiting in the lounge of the emergency room.

Not that I really minded. I brought along the two books I had been reading, finished the last 90 pages or so of The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a collection of short works by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman that my dad loaned me, and got through a like amount of Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts, an excellent living political history in the form of travelogue I recommend to everyone. For good measure, I also had my 30 GB iPod with me to ensure hours of musical enjoyment.

Of course, there was plenty of free entertainment on hand.

Sometime around midnight, paramedics brought some guy into the ER on a stretcher. I overheard them say something about the guy having mental problems of some sort, but didn't think anything of it. A little while later, we heard some screams coming from the ER, and a hospital police officer standing outside soon started yelling at the guy in the ER, telling him to get down, and using his nightstick to try to hold him at bay. That didn't seem to work, so he raced out to his squad car and returned to pepper spray the man, who was then sedated and confined to a bed with leather straps. It was a bit harrying, mostly because we could only see the cops reacting to whatever was happening and couldn't actually see the guy in the ER.

But, we shouldn't have minded so much, because the delay meant we got to meet Moses.

Shortly after the commotion in the ER, another prospective patient wandered in, ostensibly because of inscrutable pain in his stomach. It soon seemed, however, that he was determined to be a pain in the neck to the rest of the ER waiting room.

At first I didn't pay much notice to the guy. But then he started ranting about the meds they were going to give him, how they'd give him Vicodin and he wanted Demerol, so he'd have to get a little marijuana to go with it for the pain. This prompted a discourse on how the Germans had invented Demerol since they didn't produce poppy seeds and needed a synthetic substitute. This then prompted the guy to talk about Hitler and the Second World War, subjects that really grab your attention.

Essentially, the guy thought Hitler did pretty well, raising Germany out of the Depression and taking a tiny country -- he touched his forefinger to his thumb to illustrate -- damn near took over the world. Of course, the whole killing Jews thing was bad, but that stemmed from Hitler being angry. Angry about not making it as an art student, angry about Germany losing the First World War, and angry that the Jews held all the money. Yup, he managed to propagate at least two of the more popularized and dangerous German myths for why life sucked in Deutschland during the interwar years: Germany had been stabbed in the back in the last war and now suffered at the hands of supposed Jewish usurers. It was harrowing to hear someone in the flesh who seemed an apologist for Nazi Germany.

If I wasn't paying attention before, I couldn't help it now that the guy turned around and began talking to me. He asked me if I was German. I do have a fair bit of German heritage, so I replied yes. It was the truth, and I was also getting the sense that this was not a conversation I wanted to keep up.

But it was OK that I was German, he assured me, since I hadn't done any of that. See, the guy thought that I was German in the born-and-bred, Leiderhosen-and-Spätzel vein. I am, in fact, your garden variety German-American, someone who's ancestors immigrated from the Vaterland more than a century before and who experiences his German heritage primarily through Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. Still, I figured better to allow him to keep believing this and spare myself a lengthy explanation.

From there he started going on and on about how well Germany did during the war and the reasons they ultimately failed. This took some rewriting of history, as the German Army never actually took either Leningrad or Moscow. Nor did it seem likely they'd turn against the Italians (or the Japanese for that matter), at least so long as they remained allied against Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, et al. I also thought it prudent not to correct him when he asserted that Hermann Göring, not Josef Goebbels, headed the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force. Still, he went on and on, confusing history and claiming that tiny Germany, a country apparently 1 inch in diameter, came close to conquering the world. That was interesting.

But then he asked me if I knew why he was here. Rather than state the obvious ("You seem to be in some kind of pain, man.") I shook my head. He then mumbled something about the Lord Jesus bringing him here because he was the Moses for the 21st century. Not Moses like Charlton Heston, mind you. That drew quite the chuckle from my mom and prompts me to lament what I've done to perpetually run across the delusional people who think they're Moses.

Soon the guy got up to ask the ER receptionist why he hadn't been seen yet, and I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. When I returned I thought it would help to listen to my iPod. This inspired Moses to pull out his CD player, and to show me all his CDs. Blind Faith, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and the Doors. To make sure I knew what he was saying with my music on, he started talking even louder. Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Jim Morrison -- all killed by the government, I learned.

By now I was wondering when my grandpa would be done so we could take him home. I didn't really want to listen to Moses much longer, since I think he was just trying to lead me into a desert wilderness of ignorance and misinformation. At one point he told me he thought that Berlin Wall was pretty cool. Why? But I think I managed to shake him by throwing his own misunderstanding back at him. He asked me where I was in Germany, Bonn, Berlin or which city. I told him Berlin. After all, that's where I had spent a weekend two summers ago (and I didn't think to mention Heidelberg, where I spent a day last winter). He thought I had been in West Berlin. I hadn't been in the East, right? I had. ('Twas true. The Circus Hostel where I stayed and most of my sightseeing had been in East Berlin.) That took him aback. "Oh wow, so you guys just got freedom. That must've been pretty exciting when you guys took down the Wall." I smiled politely.

So, there you have it. That's the story of how I became an East German in one night. Just remember, an estimated one-in-three East Germans informed for the Stasi at some point during the Communist era. Your attitude is being noted.

Hey, Rudy Park!

Funny what democracy means to the right.

You can see why someone wrote to the editor of the Register a few weeks back denouncing the editors for allowing "Rudy Park" to continue appearing on the comics page.

An open letter to my supporters

Dear Friends,

This time of political crisis has provided an extraordinary opportunity for advancement to our state's highest office. Many highly qualified and dedicated individuals have already announced their intentions to put their names on the ballot for the October recall election. I myself have been mulling the question of running for governor to replace Gov. Gray Davis in the event California voters elect to recall him in October. After much soul searching and consultation with my family, friends and advisers, I regret to inform all of you that I have decided not to throw my hat into the gubernatorial race.

I found it difficult to reach this decision, but I assure you that I gave it the most thorough and careful consideration I could muster before making up my mind. The governorship is not a post to take to lightly. As many of you have supported me since the days of my earliest political aspirations, I feel a duty to share with you the factors that have led me to gracefully bow out of the race at this juncture.

To wit, the attributes and experiences that qualify one to run for this fine office are many. I am not sure that I quite fit the bill at this time.

I have never shared the screen with a primate, nor have I worked alongside such talented communicators as Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sinbad.

Not once have I dated Linda Ronstadt.

As a child, I was never cast as an orphan taken in by a wealthy old benefactor. Never have I had occasion to smash an entire supermarket's worth of produce with a sledgehammer before a willing audience taking cover beneath plastic sheeting.

I am a native of California, lack an accent, or my own syndicated newspaper column. I did not serve as the commissioner of Major League Baseball, and cannot claim credit for bringing the Summer Olympics to our state.

Never have I held high office. I cannot even pretend to have magnificently had a political campaign go down in flames.

I have not used marijuana in a bodybuilding video and have never been a reigning Mr. Universe.

And not once have I created, produced and distributed a "gentleman's magazine." Nor have I appeared in an on-camera threesome or gang bang.

However, more than 100 individuals fitting some or all of these important criteria have announced their candidacies, so I feel confident that among the many, at least one will prove capable of winning the election and carrying the state in a handbasket.

Furthermore, a number of personal factors have led me to my decision. Chief among these is my plan to move out of state before the election. I feel unable to commute regularly to Sacramento from my residence in Chicago, and believe it unwise to conduct regular California business in Illinois.

Additionally, holding the office of governor would require me to give up my comfortable life of freeloading off others and not working.

So for those reasons, I respectfully withdraw my name for consideration for the position of governor and thank my friends for their support. To all those who made financial contributions to my campaign, I can assure you that the checks are in the mail.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

¡Víva la revoluccíon!

Pierre de Sisi

Cirque du Californique

I feel obligated, compelled, required to weigh in on a subject being made such a spectacle as to belie the gravity of the situation. I speak, of course, of the gubernatorial recall election in California, my home state.

First, a disclaimer. I don't support the recall effort. This is not to say that I think Gray Davis is a great guy. He's a Democrat, and I'm automatically suspicious of anyone affiliated with either half of the political party Janus in this country. But, he gets pretty high marks from the AFL-CIO, which counts for a lot in my book. And more important, I think the whole recall drive is little more than the latest manifestation of an annoying Republican tendency of late to whine and pout and bitch and moan and lie and cheat and steal to get office whenever an election doesn't go their way. (Exhibit A: The Clinton impeachment for lying about an extramarital affair -- clearly a grave crime and abuse of office. Exhibit B: The Florida presidential election debacle in which a compromised Supreme Court awarded the presidency to the candidate who received fewer votes, both nationwide and in the state of Florida.) Mainly for the last reason, I'm inclined to oppose the recall.

That said, I'm finding this whole situation funny as hell.

It's not every day that your home state decides to start behaving like it has a whole bucket o' screws missing. I mean, really, I thought the circus left town last week? Did they just pack up the big top and set up shop in the capital?

You don't need a scorecard to follow the race; you need a list of all the registered voters in the state of California,though maybe a ring master would help to sort things out.

This much is known. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is in the race. So is state insurance commissioner John Garamendi. Likewise State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks). Former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth is in. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), the multimillionaire who bankrolled the petition drive, is out. So, too is another leading Republican contender, Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles. Also out is Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who consistently tops polls as the state's most popular politician, though she never seemed interested in running to begin with.

More confusing are the legions of folks still on the fence. Bill Simon, who ran as the Republican challenger to Davis last fall and lost to an unpopular governor in one of the most poorly run election campaigns in recent memory, is still undecided. Ditto Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), my representative in the House and a woman for whom I will always have a soft spot for finally getting off-the-deep end, right-wing loony "B-1" Bob Dornan out of office in the past decade. Just today it's become known that House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is mulling a run.

But if that didn't make it enough of a circus, there's a whole other slate of candidates ensuring that the election turns into one big farcical carnival. Foremost among these is Ah-nold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger, who's being seen as the leading Republican candidate. (I agree that it's a sad, sad day when "Conan the Barbarian" can be tabbed by Republicans for the state's top job, but then this from the party that brought you a monkey's co-star in "Bedtime for Bonzo" to the governor's mansion and eventually the White House.)

But wait, there's more!

Arianna Huffington, a Greek-born political pundit who has retreated from her earlier conservatism, has begun her campaign. Not to be outdone, ex-hubby Michael Huffington, who was a sore loser when he got beat for a Senate seat a few years back and refused to concede defeat for weeks after the election, also through his hat into the ring.

Then there's Larry "First @#$%^&* Amendment" Flynt, publisher of "Hustler" magazine and many a humorous tall tale about Jerry Falwell's Oedipal complex. If there's a smut lord in the race then it's only appropriate that Mary Carey, a 22-year-old porn star, is in the running, promising to make lap dances tax-deductible which levying a new sin tax on silicone breast implants.

No word yet on whether Hugh Hefner has decided to compete with Mr. Flynt.

And what carnival atmosphere would be complete without a midget? Certainly not California's! Fortunately, a Bay Area newspaper has sponsored former child star Gary Coleman, who's now on the ballot.

And there are countless others. I'm sure I've left people off. Hell, even I might consider running. My exploratory committee continues to investigate the possibility (when there's nothing good on TV).

It's so out of hand that the chain of 99-cent stores has gotten in on the act, running a promotion whereby the discount chain will sponsor the candidacy of a 99-year-old candidate, putting up the $3500 filing fee and gathering the requisite signatures. Why the gimmick? It seems everyone and their grandmother has declared.

But in all seriousness, the Ah-nold candidacy worries me. Not so much because I think he's unbeatable, but just because I think it's frightening to consider a world in which a Kindergarten Cop/Last Action Hero/Terminator/Choose your own crappy movie character can actually be chosen for a position of such power. Granted, an ex-wrestler did it in Minnesota (much to the chagrin of many Minnesotans, if the handful I know are representative of the state as a whole). And, of course, Ronnie did it here.

But really, what qualifications does Ah-nold have? What preparation does he have? It's great that he'd know what to do in the event California gets invaded by cyborgs, but does he really have a clue when it comes to managing a state in the midst of a grave economic crisis? Does winning the "Mr. Universe" competition train one for the state capitol? It seems doubtful. And frankly, I hope we never have to find out.

(An amusing aside: On the local NBC affiliate's evening news tonight, they discussed Ah-nold's filing and how he is the most popular candidate in the race, but asked rhetorically whether that meant he had any natural constituencies. The broadcast then segued to a man-on-the-street segment at -- I swear I am not making this up -- Muscle Beach. It recalls a lesser-known axiom: "As Muscle Beach goes, so goes the 'roid rage. I mean the state.")

So, in conclusion, laugh long and hard at this whole fiasco. Exploit it for the sham of democracy that it is. But for the love of God, come bail me out when the (political) machines rise up and California eats itself.

This is how it's done in Orange County

"Welcome to the O.C., bitch!"

That's right, the "culture" of my home-county has been tabbed as fodder for yet another major entertainment project, this time Fox's prime-time teen soap "The O.C."

I have to say, the show has pretty well met all of my expectations, at least it I can get an accurate read based off the pilot.

Coming in, I expected that any series titled "The O.C." had to 1) depict inhabitants of the Orange Curtain as incredibly vapid, hypocritical, rich-bitch spoiled brats, remaining true to life, and 2) suggest that redemption can come even in the "bubble of Newport". Check and check.

What I found most amusing about the former was coverage on the local Fox affiliate on the newscast immediately after the series premiered, which featured a live remote from a restaurant in the Orange Curtain where some honest-to-goodness natives watched "The O.C." and commented on it. And, sure enough, none of them broke the cookie cutter "affluent, young, skinny, shallow, white folk" used to churn out the cast of characters on the TV show. It has me wondering whether this is a case of O.C. life imitating "The O.C." or "The O.C." imitating O.C. life. Baffling.

Frankly, I think I may be hooked on "The O.C." -- rather unlike the O.C. -- because for me it's "train wreck television." I find myself unable to turn away from the hour-long paean to bourgeois decadence, Newport style. Watching it, I almost feel like Nero, fiddling as I watch Rome burn. Of course, in my estimation it would be far less tragic were the O.C. to burn than it was when ancient Rome bit the dust back in Nero's day, but I'll admit to being, perhaps, not the most impartial of judges on such matters.

My favorite aspects of the pilot include:

• the fashion show with fashions from "all the great stores at Fashion Island"

• a mother bitching about her daughter being made to wear Calvin Klein on the runway at said fashion show

• spoiled brat rich teens getting thoroughly sloshed at someone's parents' beach house

• the public defender who takes in a hard-luck kid from "the wrong side of the tracks in Chino" (Ed. note: There is no "wrong side of the tracks" in Chino. It's Chino, for crying out loud! What they mean to say is that he's not from Chino Hills.) and into his Newport Beach home to help get him back on his feet

• some O.C. girl at the aforementioned beach house party remarking, in response to mention of Chino, "Ewwwwwww"

• the greatest moment in television between 9 and 10 p.m. last Tuesday night, the crowning moment, pièce de résistance, words of wit and wisdom, the show's signature line (and potentially my new catch phrase": "This is how we do it in Orange County!"

Isn't it great when a drama oozes so much unintentional humor?

Abstinence is kinky

For those of you who doubt my fiscal responsibility, I submit to you the following:

Under the revivalist administration of George Bush the Blunder(er), the U.S. government has transformed sex education into abstinence-only brainwashing. The administration has allocated $117 million this year to teach American teens the virtues of a sex-free life before marriage, and hopes to push that figure to $135 million.

I wish I could dismiss this as merely an ill-advised attempt at wasting limited government funds to push an evangelical Christian agenda. But the danger goes beyond state-sanctioned and -financed religious propaganda. That's because the diversion of scarce monies from sex education means teens who get a healthy dose of abstinence proselytizing don't learn about, ahem, the facts of life. Instead of learning about sexually transmitted diseases and safe sex techniques, the poor teens are duped, simply told that no extramarital sex in the only way to prevent STDs and pregnancies. Granted, abstinence is the "safest sex" and surest method for avoiding unwanted STDs and pregnancies. But it's not a lot of good once teens actually start having sex.

And therein lies the rub. These abstinence programs have only limited effectiveness. Teens listen to a sermon denouncing condoms before participating in a ceremony where they slip on a silver ring (conveniently available for $12 in the foyer) where they declare to a room of strangers that they'll abstain from all forms of sex till their marriage. But most of the teens who make the vow don't quite make it to their wedding day before losing their virginity. They might wait a year or two longer than a peer who didn't take the pledge, except that they lack common-sense knowledge about safer sex practices, such as the use of -- gasp! -- condoms, thus they end up less likely than other teens to use condoms, placing them at greater risk of diseases and pregnancy.

So here we have a government mixing religion with politics to come up with an "education" program that winds up creating a greater public health problem. As Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood, notes, this policy is reversing the successes of two decades of safe-sex campaigns, returning U.S. sex ed to its Victorian-era state. "It is horrifying. Iit is terrifying," Feldt said. "It is back to the 1950s -- only it's even worse now because in the 1950s they simply didn't talk about it at all."

After all, what good is a conservative government if it can't reverse decades of progress?

Blocked

So, I've found the perfect job for me. Not for the rest of my working days, but at this juncture in my life, it's the ideal situation for me to be in. It's a researcher job for the AFL-CIO's Institute for Strategic Research. Potentially I could be based out of Chicago, doing research on union campaigns and making pretty damn good money, with benefits.

The problem is, this is the perfect job for me.

Paradoxical though that seems, it makes complete sense. See, because I want this job bad, not just because it would put me in Chicago, but it would be the job I want. More than once I've thought that the job I'd want would be as a research with the AFL-CIO, if it were in Chicago. And now that I've found an opening for just such a position, I'm really excited. But because I don't want this to turn out futilely like all of my previous job applications, I want to put a lot of care and consideration into my attempt. Therein lies the rub.

I know the sort of general ideas and things I want to convey in my cover letter. Things like my extreme enthusiasm for this job, this organization, the labor movement. My passion for research, my ability to think critically and solve problems, my strong theoretical background. And my whole-hearted desire to put all that education and preparation to use. But I can't figure out how to put that to paper. I want to write a gripping cover letter that grabs their attention from the outset and holds it all the way through. But I continue to suffer for a second day from massive writer's block and can't work my way around it.

Argh.

Maybe I'll have a moment of inspiration, or lucidity, and get it out on paper. All I know is that this is the job I want and need, and it's frustrating me to no end to struggle so much with applying for it.

Ruminations

I'm getting good and pissed off about this country yet again. There's just so much to dislike.

In no particular order, here's a rant about lots of things that outrage me.

This whole short-sighted humanitarianism you amerikkkans (I renounce my nationality and proclaim myself a citizen of the world, in case you were wondering). To wit, amerikkkans are masters of self-pity and autocompassion.

Take, for instance, the events of 11 September 2001. Something like 4,000 people died in a series of coordinated airliner hijackings and crash landings in the eastern United Snakes. I regret what happened that day, above all the tremendous human toll so senselessly taken on many innocent people who became unwitting pawns in a horrible episode of political violence. That infamous day, every person with a shred of human decency became a New Yorker. (I believe it was Jacques Chirac who remarked in the aftermath of the attacks that "We are all Americans." That's right, one of those freedom-hating, anti-American Frenchmen this country likes to berate.) You can't but feel awful and sad and upset.

But what irks me, and most of the "non-Western world", insofar as I can ascertain, is the shallowness of this sympathy. Americans felt bad because Americans had died (to say nothing of the dozens of Pakistanis and other foreign nationals who also perished in the Twin Towers). Period. Now, I can understand this sort of instinctive reaction. There's a sort of immediacy, a capacity to relate to the victims closest to you at work here. The people in New York were shell shocked because it happened to their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and neighbors in their own backyards. I felt a little more distant, owing, I've always felt, to the physical and metaphysical distances that have always separated me from New York, which seems like another universe to me. Still, I felt sorry. But to the cab drivers and maids and vendors of Cairo, or the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires, or the impoverished the world over, 9-11 didn't evoke much sympathy. Probably for good reason. Speaking at least from my firsthand experiences in Egypt, most Cairenes simply live too close to subsistence, in ceaseless danger of dying, to stop and mourn a tragedy in New York. Maybe they felt bad, maybe not. But none of those Cairenes had the luxury of allowing themselves to be paralyzed by the devastation of someone else's loss. I'm not going to fault them for that, though.

No, what really chaps my hide is to see how amerikkkans, so eager to cull sympathy from foreign quarters (and to chastize those who exhibit insufficient grief), prove time and again their inability to see beyond their own borders. Worse still is the comtemptible manipulation of a human tragedy like 9-11 to propagate further human tragedies abroad. We've seen an unfriendly government in Afghanistan toppled for refusing to turn Osama bin Laden over to U.S. authorities (all because the Taliban stubbornly insisted on due process in seeing proof that bin Laden helped orchestrate the attacks), creating a fresh power vacuum in a country already strafed by decades of war and drought.

Then there's the little matter of Iraq. Saddam Hussein, unpopular and demonized since a U.S. aboutface of support a decade ago, was played up as the "Butcher of Baghdad" and proprietor of those legendary "weapons of mass destruction" we've heard so much about (and seen so little of). Shrub & Co. decide they want sweetheart contracts for Iraqi oil, so they create a little WMD problem and play up the democratic shortcomings of Hussein's regime. (Note to international community: Where was the expeditionary force when those ballots were being manipulated in Florida back in November 2000?) This, naturally, gives us the pretext to invade Iraq -- not to mention a fictitious U.N. mandate -- topple a long-ruling dictatorship, creating a tremendous power vacuum and all manner of instability (which is why invariably the nightly news begins with a story about how more U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq today, well after Shrub's proclamation that the war is over). Oh, and 6,000 to 8,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of this war. And counting. But we're setting Iraq up for democracy (by telling them what to do). And we're a model of humanitarianism (look at how humanely we took down two of Saddam's sons and a 14-year-old boy). And we're so committed to humanitarianism that we just said we want Saddam, if he's caught -- alive, that is -- to be tried by Iraqi courts. So what if it smacks of victor's justice, of letting the victims become judges? Sure, it might have been more fair to say we were going to put him in the dock beside Slobo at Den Haag, but we care about humanitarianism. Whatever.

What really brought this whole point home for me, however, was seeing the illustrious buffoon-in-chief talk about sending the Marines to Liberia as a peacekeeping force to bring a halt to a brutal civil war. Well, some Marines finally went into Liberia last week, landing in the U.S. embassy compound. Except that they were only there to evacuate people from the U.S. embassy. To hell with the innocent Liberians dying on the surrounding streets, or the mass of dead bodies piled in front of the embassy in protest of U.S. indifference. As if that didn't drive the point home, Shrub told the press that he was concerned with Liberia, concerned with the lives of Americans and protecting American interests. Not one mention of Liberians there. That's because, truth be told, the U.S. government doesn't give a damn for the lives of innocent Liberians (or Iraqis, or Afghans, etc.) because they aren't an American interest. About as plain as could be, Shrub told the world that he doesn't care about human suffering or devastation or war, except when he can use it to help out his oil and defense buddies. It's enough to make me sick.

So, I come back to wondering what I should do about all this. What difference can any one of us, or all of us, make? I don't know. That's the frustrating part. I don't know what good we'll do, and I don't know how we can accomplish even that. The popular pat answer among liberals is to get Shrub out of office. Maybe. But even if the most left-wing Democrat won the presidency (realistically this means Howard Dean, much as I'd really, really, really like to see Al Sharpton in the White House -- seriously), I don't know that the needed sea change in policy would occur.

Frankly, I've found myself rejecting electoral politics over the years as a motor of change. This is not to say that I think democracy is purely a bad thing, that it's intrinsically flawed. I just think that, at least in this context, it's unlikely to produce the fundamental restructuring necessary to get anywhere in this world.

And no, that isn't a call for revolution. Sure, I'd like to see some more significant and meaningful form of protest, some kind of uprising or revolt against the status quo. But I really don't have the answer. I keep thinking that maybe if the government keeps pushing to the far right, that it'll provide the spark to change society needed to make any real inroads. My fear is that we'll have to endure many more years of an even worse society before we reach that point. But in the meantime, I'll take heart from something the sage Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote that I just came across again:

"Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires.... But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist the force that is trying to repress, oppress and fight down the human spirit."

There it is. Take this revolutionary creed to heart and make it happen.