Troubled Teen-agers in Iowa have uncovered a sinister conspiracy. What happens when they face ultimate evil?

-Hi. When you use the publisher link, you might have some problems. I'm really sorry. They provided it and it doesn't work so well. But it's worth it to get the book from them. So, here's what you do: Go to their online bookstore, select 'horror', go to page five, then on page five go halfway down to my book. Bingo! Easy.
(Their website is www.PublishAmerica.com, in case the link totally doesn't work)

Merry ... somebody ... Mas!

At a former job of mine there used to be this one older, kind of sour, guy who would sit out all of the office Christmas parties because: 'The Bible says there were shepherds out in the field watching their sheep when Jesus was born, which means that he couldn't have been born in December, so it's wrong to celebrate his birthday now'. Well, duh. Okay. But that doesn't mean that you can't have a few cookies and chug some egg nog anyways and just pretend that Jesus was born December twenty fifth, just like the rest of us are doing.

This guy, by the way, was a member of one of the more extreme Christian evangelical faiths - I forget which one - and, predictably, it was discovered that he was misbehaving scandalously. As you probably could have predicted. For some reason you never hear about this sort of stuff with secular humanists. Why do you think that is?

Really, there is about a one in three hundred and sixty five chance that Jesus was actually born on Christmas, so it's not entirely wrong to celebrate on this day. It's just not very likely that you're right. The Roman Emperor Constantine wisely decreed that since every good Roman was celebrating Saturnalia at this time - where people exchanged gifts and whooped it up a lot -
this would be a good time to also celebrate the birth of Christ. Constantine wasn't himself a Christian but a worshiper of Sol Invictus (the all conquering Sun) so, in the Good old Roman tradition of borrowing convenient Gods from foreign lands, he decided that Jehovah was just another name for Sol Invictus and there you go. Problem solved.

You have to wonder how pleased the Son of God is to have his birthday commemorated ... whenever. It's not really an honor when your worshipers purposefully and knowingly have it all wrong and don't seem to care much. It's nice, I guess that people remember your birthday but it probably would be nicer if they remembered your actual birthday, rather than just some day they were partying, anyways. Did you ever think that maybe one of the reasons he hasn't come back to the Earth is that he wants us to get it right? Maybe when we do, maybe then he'll return from Heaven.

Oh, the Shame

Apparently I had a better Sunday then Brett Favre in that I didn't throw any interceptions and he threw two. 48- 3 is certainly a dismal score, although from what I hear from True Blue Packer fans this means that we are more likely to get better draft picks next year. That's sort of the Football booby prize, isn't it? You Eff up big enough and they reward you for it.

Sigh. I claim not to be a sports fan, but even in my sports oblivion this is pretty depressing. Why is that? I don't actually play on the Packers or even watch them but it makes me sadder to live in Wisconsin when they aren't performing.

The best I can figure out is that Sports is actually sublimated, symbolic warfare. Therefore, we in Wisconsin are at war with every other single state or city that also has a similar sports team. The Packers, then, are our symbolic army - symbolic defeated army. Thank God, too, because if it were real and not fake then we would be marched away as slaves of the victorious Ravens. As I understand it - not a good team.

Who Deserves to Die?

Former Crips co-founder Tookie Wilson was executed in California when Governor Arnold Schwartzenager refused to grant him clemency. Even though I don't believe in the death penalty I still debated with myself whether if I did I would still execute the guy. He's been on death row for twenty four years, supposedly a changed man. But really, if they were going to keep him there much longer then they might have lost the opportunity of taking his life at all because he was getting old, man.

The debate centered on two things, first, whether he actually committed the murders that he got sent up for and, second, whether he had redeemed himself through good works and was doing more good alive than he would dead. I don't know if I would stress so much who he had or had not murdered myself so much, because even if he hadn't killed the particular people that he was convicted of - he's killed a lot, I'd bet you. I can't prove it. But what do you think? Do you think one of the founders of one of the bloodiest street gangs in the world has clean hands?

And what about the good works he's committed since being incarcerated? Well, I don't think you should get so much credit for seeing the error of your ways when you're not given any choice in the matter. As far as doing more crimes and murders and such - it's not much of an option when you're on death row. So, why not write childrens books saying how awful gang violence is? Who knows better how awful gang violence is than the guy who created a whole bunch of it? He's an expert on the subject if ever there was one.

Killing people who kill people is thought to be a fair punishment - eye for an eye and such, just like Hammurabi told us. But is it a Christian punishment? Most of us here in the US claim Christianity as our faith - eighty percent - so you other twenty percent can sit this one out. Christians believe in redemption. They believe in forgiveness. They believe that through the power and faith in Jesus Christ anyone can go to Heaven as long as they truly repent and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.

Just like Tookie Wilson did. Do any of the Death Penalty Christians - who worked so hard to see that this man got what was coming to him - realize that what he got coming to him was a trip to Heaven? According to the Christian scheme, he goes straight to the head of the line. And he gets there sooner than others, because instead of letting him cool his heels doing more good works in the slammer, you all decided he should get his afterlife right now. Did you think that maybe God would want to decide when his number was up without our help? Maybe the Lord Almighty wanted this guy to write more books or maybe he just wanted him to stick around and think about the suffering and pain he'd caused.

The Subtext of Jonny Quest

I got the first years episode of the cartoon series Jonny Quest, which I just watched this weekend and holy crap! Is this stuff gay or what? Adult Swim did a neat satire of Johnny Quest with it's Birdman Attorney at law series which I thought it was a little harsh until I revisited my memories with the actual videos.

Jonny Quest was a cartoon show where blond and very pretty ten year old Jonny travels the world with his single scientist father, Dr. Benton Quest, and Dr. Quest's large blond muscluar companion, Race Bannon. Bannon serves as Dr. Quest's man Friday doing everything including flying jets, teaching Jonny self-defense, rescuing them from cannibals ... you name it.

The three of them travel the globe having adventures until a few episodes into it they find a pretty brown boy named Hajji whom they invite along. Then it's a threesome having adventures while rarely being troubled by the presence of girls. It's never explicitly stated that Dr. Quest and Race Bannon are gay lovers, just as it's never explicitly stated that Hajji has been taken along as a catamite to sate their twisted desires. But what else could it be?

There is a female character named Jade who shows up in Hong Kong and has some connection to Race. But it's real clear that he wants nothing to do with her. The same goes for Jonny and Hajji because - ewww girls are icky. Perhaps the lack of meaningfully developed female characters on the show could also be due to old-fashioned patriarchal mysogeny. It's a toss-up, but either way - no chicks are allowed in this club.

I never really got exactly what kind of Doctor Dr. Quest really is. He is a medical doctor, because he does medical things, but he's also a scientific researcher. His scientific research involves pretty much anything. Like, he's an anthropologist but he's also a physicist, but it turns out that he's also a chemical engineer, and he's a linguist, and a biologist. All this in addition to practicing medicine. He's probably a chiropractor, too. So, I guess they must have thought that Doctor means you can do every type of job that might mean doctor.

These guys travel the world doing their best to extend the American empire and take on their white man's burden. Constantly they are running into 'primitive' cultures who are beating their drums while saying 'Ooogah-Boobah' more or less. Don't worry. These types can be easily tricked into worshiping our heros as Gods by means of cigarette lighters or handily placed loudspeakers. Or Race painted purple to imitate a Water God. And they worship airplanes and all sorts of other silly stuff. No one is at all afraid to deal with stereotypes and believe me, if you have a german accent or a Chinese accent you can tell which side of the Good/Evil equation you're on. (Hint: Evil)

Anyways, I do wonder why Race wasn't fired from his job. In two seperate episodes he has to land their wonderful special jet someplace remote because he has forgotten to do some sort of maintenance. For instance, because Race neglected to put fuel in the jet the whole crew has to land at a landing strip in the Andes where a fugitive Nazi has his castle. What is wrong with Race Bannon? He almost kills everybody because he's too lazy to fuel up the jet. How did he not think about this? Or another time he crashes the jet in a jungle somewhere while remarking that he thought her heard some noises in the engine. So why did he take off instead of trying to fix the problem?

I'll tell you why: Dr. Quest didn't want to fire his boyfriend.

How Jason Does It

There is a scene in slasher movies where the slasher/murderer/bad guy/what-have-you is chasing the young nubile maiden through the woods, she's the virgin, of course because we know that they have the best odds of surviving to the next sequel. She has usually already taken a little damage and she is absolutely hauling tail along the trail, just running to beat the band and the slasher/what-have-you is striding slowly and purposely after her. The key word here is slowly. She stumbles and stuff, but even so, she is still going a lot faster than the guy who is chasing her.

And then he catches up with her.

Did you ever wonder how on earth he did that? I sure have. Even in the world of fake movies where mass murders are regularly committed at Summer camps, and it never makes the network news but instead has to be whispered as a story around a campfire, this couldn't happen. Faster still beats slower, or at least it should, wouldn't you think?

Okay. I have the answer. You see, while the terrified virgin is fleeing the woods the awful slasher/or whatever is not, in fact, pursuing her through the woods, but rather he is intercepting her. The horrible killer is not following the exact path that she is but using his precise knowledge of the woods - gained from his years of lurking out there - to use the shortcut which is why he can afford to take his time because he wants to be fresh for when he finds her.

And how does he know where she'll go? That's simple. Humans without the aid of maps or compasses have a tendnecy to go in large circles. I think people to go more towards the right than the left. It's just like rabbits do. Anyways, the awful, horrible slasher/killer/What-have-you only has a short jog to make to find his way to his victim.

As far as the rest of the seemingly miraculous and superhuman things these guys do: I don't have the answer to that. Most of that is just bad screen writing, but you know what? If you're watching one of these movies in the first place you pretty much know you're not going to get Shakespeare. A little implausibility goes with the territory.

The Best Defense

When I was driving home a few minutes ago I saw a guy in another car who looked like Saddam Hussein and then I looked twice. Because, of course, it's entirely plausible that he would be standing trial in Iraq one day and the next one be driving around free in a small town in Wisconsin.

Anyways, I just checked out CNN and there was no word that he had escaped from American custody or anything. So, maybe I was wrong.

I've got to say that he really looks much better since he trimmed down and grew that beard. I feel guilty about thinking that, but the US military really did a nice make-over on him. He looks good. The pentagon must have had the Queer Eye guys fly out in secret.

I notice that former attorney general Ramsey Clark is now sitting on Saddam's defense team. He was the attorney general for - I believe - Johnson back in the sixties. The guy is really, really ancient. These days he's been taking on the cause of horrible mosters like Hussein. He had previously defended Slobadan Miloscovic who commited genocide in Serbia. You know, everybody deserves the best defense thay can have, though I got to wonder if Ramsey Clark is the best one out there. He didn't get old Slobby off, after all.

And he won't get Saddam off, either; that's just a given. If I were Ramsey and I were defending Saddam I would definitely try and go for a plea bargain - not to spare Saddam the death penalty since boy, oh boy, that's never going to happen. Instead I would try and negotiate how they're going to execute him. It's not much, but it's about the best he could ever do.

Dolphin Dreams

Dolphins, I've just found out, do not sleep at all. This, supposedly, is why they have such unnecessarily large brains for what they need to do. Because they never sleep, the theory goes, they also don't dream and since they don't dream they have to have large brains since the reason for dreaming - again, the theory goes - is to clear the brain of neurological garbage. Dolphins aren't really as smart as their huge apparently well developed brains and especially forebrains would indicate. They just have a lot of brain trash that they don't know what to do with, so it just sits around there cluttering up their head like that closet you never got around to organizing.

I'd read a book on early Dolphin research by the scientist John Lilly from back in about the sixties. I forget all that he discovered, but I remember the way he started out with his research was to vivesect five or six of these cute sea mammals so that he could carefully examine slices of their brains. Also, in setting up his special research facility he killed a couple accidentally since he didn't know the proper way to transport them. He didn't seem too troubled by his casual slaughter of these adorable animals.

After reading this book, I looked around to find out what other studies had been done with Dolphins and I found virtually nothing. Well, there had been a lot more Dolphin research it turns out, but the problem was that it was taken over by the US military and was therefore classified. The Navy soon figured out that Dolphins were very trainable and cheap - they worked for fishes. Word is that Dolphins now patrol underwater at sensitive government marine facilities. Oh, and of course the Navy figure out that if you strap a bomb on the back of Flipper they make really neat guided torpedoes. You'd have to figure that they wouldn't miss that one.

I'm not sure that I really buy the argument that Dolphins have big brains for no particular reason. After all, Sharks don't sleep do they? And they don't have gigantic craniums. And if sleeping sharpens the intellect how come cats aren't geniuses? They sleep all the time. They're smart enough at killing birds and such, but have you ever seen a cat do calculus? They just mess it all up.

The fact of the matter is there is not one universally accepted scientific theory about why animals sleep. That is scary. You would have thought that would have been one of the first things they would have nailed down, but for some reason, no. There are a lot of guesses or scientists who are willing to state their guesses with the certitude of God himself, but they don't all agree.

I'd like to believe that Dolphins are as smart as humans and they use every single one of their brain cells. I've wondered, though, what on Earth they would do underwater all that time without any hands. They can't build nuclear bombs or anything, or play chess and if you put an X-Box in front of them they would absolutely be out in the cold. Pretty much all they could do is swim around all day and look at fish. I think I could do that for a day or two and be pretty happy, but after that, man, it's got to get a little old.

Dolphins communicate with each other, even though I haven't heard that their system's been entirely figured out. Certainly no scientist is willing to give them the benefit of believing they could have an actual language. But, you know what? I will. Dolphins have a language and it's absolutely beautiful - to them. They spend all day telling each other stories and most of all they create the most exquisite poetry the world has ever known. And the reason they don't sleep is because life to them is absolutely wonderful and they don't want to miss any of it - not even to dream.

The Jack LaLanne Principle

A couple of weeks ago a number of football players from the football team the Minnesota Vikings were revealed to have been part of a cruise on Lake Minnetonka where great quantities of alcohol were consumed and some of the players had sex with prostitutes. Or maybe it was all of them. In response, the front office has published a code of conduct for them, because apparently the players didn't know that getting drunk and having sex with prostitutes is considered wrong. Thank God it's in writing, so that they don't have to figure out these gray areas for themselves.

Actually, it's totally beyond me why stories of athletes misbehaving like this even make the news. This is what these guys do. Always have. Remember Babe Ruth - one of the greatest baseball players that ever lived? Hey, real choir boy, wasn't he? Or how about Ty Cobb? he murdered somebody, or was reputed to, but again - no choirboy. Or how about ... oh, never mind, I could go on forever and ever and ever with examples.

But, you know, athletes are role models. We should expect them to display exemplary behavior. Right?

Says who?

I sure hope no young child is looking up to these people and using them as a basis for living. In fact, I dare say that most kids are way too smart to do that. They know better. Athletes may be appropriate role models if you're talking about throwing a football, or learning how to do a lay-up, or kicking a soccer ball or other sports stuff. You can certainly look up to them when it comes to the dedication and fortitude that's needed to be successful in sports, but as for the rest of it: most of them are just young idiots with money.

When I was going to school in Minnesota we had 'student' athletes. I remember one series of basketball scandals where some of the basketball players had been sort of raping women on the road, or near to it, since the women were too drunk to quite know what was going on. When these guys were arrested, it was revealed that the graduation rate for U of M basketball players after five years was ten percent. And that was high for a big ten school at that time.

About that time there were a couple of football players - the Golden Gophers - who were thrown out of the special football dormitory for doing stuff like throwing animal parts around and crucifying cats. In the dorm rooms. One of those guys had his college major declared as wild life management. I'll bet! Just look at how great he already was at managing wild-life.

The football players especially felt that they should be priveleged since they were bringing so much money into the university, especially the alumni money, though none of these athletes that I know about was doing it for free out of the goodness of their hearts. And to top it all off they were rated as the worst team in the nation. Thanks, boys, I appreciate it.

In a Playboy interview about this time the fitness expert Jack LaLanne (ninety, now, and he can kick your butt) was asked how it was that pro-athletes could party so much and still perform on the field. His reply was that since they were such superbly conditioned athletes in the first place they could get away with it and he pointed out that: 'The more money you put in the bank, the more money you can take out of the bank'.

Me and some other guys I used to work out with came across this quote and took it to mean that if we worked out hard then, ergo, we should also be partying hard. Saint Jack told us it was the right thing to do, after all. We compounded our gross and purposeful misunderstanding of his words by labeling this as 'The Jack LaLanne Principle' and thus when we were out on the town on a Friday or Saturday night (or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday ...) we said we were using 'The Jack LaLanne Principle'.

I feel a little embarassed about that now. Mostly I hope Jack never, ever hears about this.

He'll kick our butts.

You are your Music

Lately I've been doing a lot of surfing around the Goth sites - because I do have a heavily Goth scented book and I thought that these would be the places to let people know. But on the way, I've also stopped by a few Blogs and sites and especially one called Fetish Kitten the pain of ... something or another. It has a few blogs, told mostly in a sort of diary form, but the one I keep reading is by a nineteen year old British girl which I find endlessly fascinating simply from finding out what she considers ordinary for her life.

These blogs have profiles and a main aspect of the profiles is a list of the music they listen to. As a matter of fact, I took as little time as possible to fill out my profile for this Weblog and I was almost embarassed to list the music that I listen to. Not that there's anything wrong with any of it, it's just that it's so ordinary and I absolutely know that there are tons of music snobs out there who define themselves and, of course, everybody else by music. The more obscure and adventurous or unusual your music is, the more you are, too, is the way it goes. Or as Jon Cusack famously said in the movie High Fidelity, 'It's more important what you like, than what you are like."

The fact of the matter is, music is almost always a background activity for something else that I'm doing. I listen to music on the way to and from work. I listen to it when I'm out running. And I listen to it when I'm writing. But I don't believe I've just listened to music by itself for the longest time. It isn't central to my life and I know that my disinterest in music means that I'm virtually nonexistent to a major portion of the world.

I've got a buddy up in the Twin Cities who co-hosts a music review show on cable. It's on a Monday night and they've ingeniously timed it so that the show comes on almost exactly during half-time for Monday night football and when all the guys are remote controlling their way through the channels they come across his show. Like I said: It's ingenious. To my buddy the most important part of any movie is the sound system in the theater. He has gotten his money back from theaters when they've misrepresented what system they were using. It's that important to him, but I'll bet most of you have never, ever thought twice about it.

Like many people, my musical tastes got stuck in an era. I'm not going to reveal that era, but it had a type of music called 'Rock'. I hear now that Rock stations are going off the air in droves, K-Rock in New York which also sponsored Howard Stern is going to an all talk format, bringing in David Lee Roth as one of their hosts. Hip Hop is the music that's sweeping the country. I wish it weren't so, but I only get one vote on this one.

I hear you. Hip Hop isn't really music. It's just musical talking or if you want to be real grumpy about it, it's unmusical talking. And you know what? I couldn't agree with you more. The problem is that it's not my agreement that you need. Get all of those silly kids to agree with you and we'll be well on our way to ridding the Earth of this noise.

But when it comes to matters of taste, as the old latin tag goes, there's no dispute.

Other Worlds to Live In

Kiddies, in the olden days there used to be a game called Dungeons and Dragons that was not played on a computer, but with people and many sided dice and graph paper. And the only thing you had to make this game real was your own imagination. Sigh. Those were the days, yep.

Well, I can't say that I was really much of a D & D player, ever. I encountered it when I was in military language school in Maryland and my Dungeon Master - there were no kinky overtones to that back then - was a marine Seargent named Dave. Dave took me and another sailor or two into some truly magical worlds - Hey! There's still nothing kinky about this. Come to think about it Dave did take me to my first strip bar (and second) so maybe you really could say that he took me to some magical worlds. Anyways, I might have played D & D on and off for about a month before I realized that language school was pretty effing hard and I didn't have time for this. The other sailor, who was also in language school, didn't come to that realization and he flunked out.

If it makes any difference to you I had a seventh level eighteen double zero strength warrior with a blue flaming sword. He was awesome, man. For the life of me I don't know what ever happened to that warrior of mine, and if he isn't in some other dimension of space and time wondering what happened to me and why I haven't called or E-mailed. To anybody who knows anything about this I suppose that's considered a really lame character, but it took me many hours in a barracks room huddled over many-sided dice to accomplish that and for some reason it's just doesn't seem like so much of an accomplishment.

Does anyone ever play Dungeons and Dragons anymore? Is that just an old school thing which only gray haired dorks would ever think about? The thing is, now with all the marvelous on-line games that you can choose to be a part of - why would you bother? The ones I can think of off the top of my head are Final Fantasy XI, and World of Warcraft, and the ever popular EverQuest which is also called 'EverCrack' because of the addictive nature. I feel sad that people are living in these worlds, spending hours and days, and they aren't even using their imaginations, dammit!

I've spent a few hours with my beloved PS2 and I can tell you that it certainly can be 'addictive'. After spending hour after hour not moving any part of my body but my fingers, I've asked myself what really would be the difference between that and being an opium addict and spending the same amount of time doing ... pretty much the same thing. Okay. Opium costs a lot more money to begin with, also ... I don't know. There are other differences, though, I'm sure of it. So far, I've only played regular games and they are self limiting at one point or other. You can only play a game until it ends and after that you're done. Unless you want to play the exact same game again, which you probably will.

I've never been tempted to go into one of those online games. For one thing, I would just hate starting out at the bottom of the bottom where you have to spend, like, days doing nothing but killing bunnies to get yourself leveled up and it's not even as easy as that because the bunnies kill you back. That's got to be frustrating. Then the other people who have been playing for ever don't really treat you all that well. It's not a very encouraging process in my mind.

Mostly, I fear getting lost in those other worlds at the expense of this one. I've already heard stories where it's taken over lives so that it costs more than just time, but lots of money, careers, relationships and then when failure occurs in the non-real world, some have taken their lives in this real one. That's pretty scary. I tell you, some of these on-line games look really beautiful and enticing, but all that's going to do is make the one you have to go to bed in look all that more ugly and uninteresting.

The Darwinian Impossibility of King Kong

I'm not too much of a fan of King Kong, not the old, old version, or the eighties remake starring Jessica Lange - who a buddy's uncle in Minnesota dated once - and I don't think I will be one of the Peter Jackson version that's set to hit the theaters soon. Don't get me wrong. It looks fantastic and clearly Jackson's vision is realized in this version. From what I understand Jackson has been a Kong-o-phile since he was a little kid, so this thing is his life's dream come true.

Don't tell him, but I never got into it much. I didn't care any of the characters like the girl or the scientists or anybody else in the story and especially not King Kong. Sorry. Maybe Jackson's version will be different, but I don't think I'll give it a shot.

Here's why King Kong would be an impossible creature. It's called the island rule and it's something biologists have known ever since Darwin. On islands the resources for the creatures living on it are limited, so two thing happen. First: The big creatures become small, because food is limited, and Second: The small creatures become bigger because they have to compete for that limited food. On some islands scientists have found the remains of both giant mice and miniature elephants. It's true.

King Kong is discovered on Skull Island which is over-run not only with King Kong but with other giant prehistoric creatures. It couldn't happen. What on Earth are all of these giant animals eating? They would literally eat themselves out of house and home within a generation. I believe that superstitious villagers on skull island set out virgins on stakes for Kong to eat, but how many of those can there really be? Not enough to feed a monstrous gorilla, that's for sure. I don't think you could find enough virgins in the whole continental US for that.

The Problem with Vampires

I've been catching reruns of this show, The Mad, Mad House on the reality channel. The premise of the show is that a bunch of people with alternative life styles - the 'Alts' - take on a group of normal people in a mansion and whichever normal person stays the most normal at the end of the episode, that person gets booted. See, they're testing their capacity for change and growth. Or something. Anyways, the Alts are composed of a naturist, a modern primitive, a voodoo priestess, a witch and ... a vampire.

Well, he's a guy who says he's a vampire, though I seriously doubt that he's immortal and undead or any of that stuff. He drinks blood, sure, and he sleeps in a coffin during the day, and he has prosthetic fangs attached to his incissors, and he has creepy contact lenses, and he's really pale, but as far as being a 'real' vampire - if that term can be used for a fictional creation from folk lore - Naah. He aint it. This 'vampire' is just one more weirdo looking for some attention.

Vampires strain my ability to suspend disbelief, especially depending on who's vampire you're talking about. Like take the 'classic' vampire as described by Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula has been 'living' for centuries in Transylvania and they know about him in the area but for some reason nobody has taken the trouble to dispose of him. That's okay. They mind their own business in Transylvania. Well, according to the legend he can't be seen in mirrors, is scared of crosses, is mostly afraid of daylight, hates garlic, enjoys long walks in the country, fine dining and genuine people. He can be killed with a stake through the heart or fire ... and maybe silver. I'll have to check.

Every time that Dracula feeds on someone till they die- pay attention, this is important - they also become a vampire. And that is the problem. The mathematics of vampirism just doesn't work out. Dracula would have created a geometric progression of undead so that each vampire would inturn create multiples of more vampires, and they would each one of them create even more so that you would have a pyramid scheme of the undead. It would not take long until the entire world is full of vampires and who's going to be left to suck on?

This is hinted at in Steven King's excellent vampire novel, Salem's Lot. It's a great book. I really love it. But at the very end when the hero has gone off with his boy companion, after the whole village of Salem's Lot has been turned into vampires, I wonder ... what's stopping the vampires from going to the next little village in Maine, or the next one, or the next one and so on? Answer: Nothing. They'd just keep going until the entire world is full of vampires and, you guessed it, there's no one left to suck on.

Anne Rice takes care of this problem, sort of, in her vampire novels the most notable of which is Interview with the Vampire. In her scheme, it's not enough to just be bitten by a vampire; That won't turn you into one automatically. Instead, the vampire has to select you and then there has to be a process where you drink blood from the vampire and by doing that you ingest the essence, which turns you into one of the immortal undead. But there's a catch, of course. You have to be beautiful. I guess it's comforting to know that there won't be any eternally ugly ones, but still ... that's so not fair to all the non-beauty queens out there. The benefit of this is that they aren't promiscuously making more of their own kind. Sort of undead birth control.

What really bothers me most about her books is that once you're a vampire you can never have sex again. The act of draining someone of their blood is supposed to be an orgasmic experience that's even better than the real thing, but I don't care. It just wouldn't do it for me. I'm used to the old fashioned way, thank you. Her vampires are real sensuous and all that, and in love with each other, and that's nice. But as much as they love each other, they can never consumate that love in any meaningful way.

And her vampires feed every single night - one human sucked dry apiece. Here's where the math really gets tricky. In Interview with the Vampire there are three vampires in the group and they live together for about seventy five years. So let's do the math: That's about twenty five thousand victims, times three, which yields approximately seventy five thousand dead bodies around this very, very small group. Do you honestly mean to tell me that this would totally escape everybody's attention? Not even the dumbest law enforcement would miss this coincidence. Okay, Anne cheats a little and says that her vampires have a special way of healing up the bite marks so that the dead people would be taken for dead. But still, they have no blood and we're supposed to believe no one would ever figure that out?

I don't think so.

The vampires I like the best are the ones in the TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is a great show and the greatest thing about it is how tongue and cheek everything is. Things may seem more than a little improbable now and then, but the characters roll with it. Creator Joss Whedon's vampires are more fully realized, and these guys have 'romantic' lives, if you know what I mean? You do know what I mean. Right?

Yeah, they get it on. The story lines are much more satisfying and the inherent Romeo and Juliet type conflict is heightened when Buffy the Vampire Slayer is involved with not one, but two seperate vampires ... and she's a vampire slayer! Boy, tell me love isn't blind. Joss's vampire infested world does kind of have the problem of too many vampires that make even more, but he does have a slayer to take care of the overpopulation, like Buffy is their predator. If I had to choose from which type of vampire I could have faith in, his would definitely be the closest.

Evil Super-Villains Need Some Lovin', Too

I just saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night. Really cool movie. By far the best of the lot. But, of course, the movie gets to the climax where Harry comes face to face with his nemesis Lord Voldemort in a scary graveyard and they have a Wizard's duel and Harry is down on the ground where Lord Voldemort could deliver the coup de Grace. And what does Lord Voldemort do instead of slaying the foe he has pursued all of these years? That's right. He gloats. He goes into a long speech, which gives Harry the opportunity of scheming his way out of it and the evil lord loses. Again. Why don't these guys ever figure it out? If you got the good guy on the ropes just shut up and kill them.

Ah well, they'll never listen to me, will they?

But that's not my point. My point is: Did you ever notice that Super Villains never have wives or girlfriends? Think back on it. Think about every single super villain in the comic books and in the movies and ask yourself whether you ever see these dudes with female comapanionship?
Lex Luther? Nope. Braniac? Nope? The Joker? The Penguin? The Bookworm? no. no. And no. Dr. No. No, way. Dr. Doom? No, there never was a Mrs. Dr. Doom and, of course, there wasn't any Mrs. Lord Voldemort, either. C'mon, these guys can't all be gay, can they?

So, what's up with them? Do you think maybe they got the idea for all this evil crap because they were lonely and had a lot of time on their hands? Take my word for it, you don't plan the destruction of the entire world if you have to pick the kids up from day care and mow the lawn and fix the toilet or listen to your wife nag you all night long. It doesn't happen.

And that doesn't only hold true in the imaginary world. The most evil, horrible real-life villains -serial killers - they've never been lucky with the ladies. Have they? I guarantee you that if every single one of these awful men'd had a submissive super model girlfriend they wouldn't have bothered to go out a' killin'. They would have stayed home. And if for some reason they still had thoughts about commiting the worst crimes in the world - I think they would have just kept that to themselves.

Which would you rather do if you had the choice: Stay home with Tyra Banks or go out and murder people?

Thought so. Case closed.

The Son he Wished he Never Had

Rumor has it that President George Bush had been on the outs with his Pa, ex-president George Bush. The issue is the senior Bush's warm friendship with that scoundrel Bill Clinton. I guess you can't blame W to much for being jealous, because W never had peace and prosperity in his presidency like Billy and he's yet to balance one single budget and now his own father is acting like Clinton was a better president than Georgie is now. And to top things off, he was the one who introduced these two in the first place.

Clinton and Bush Senior aren't the only odd couple ex-presidents out there, by the way. Presidents Ford and Carter developed a warm partnership between themselves, once they'd gotten together and aired their differences. It turned out that they had a lot in common and the only people who ever understand what it was like to be president of the United States - you guessed it - are other people who've been president of the United States. Clinton, as a matter of fact, was well known to have taken advice from Tricky Dick himself out in exile in San Clemente. Maybe Bill should have asked Dick whether cigars and interns were such a good idea.

Speaking of rumors: Now the rumors are that Georgie has had a nervous breakdown and/or has taken up drinking again - much to the dismay of his wife; rumored dismay, that is. Bush's popularity numbers are in the toilet, where they should have been all along. I'd bet it's probably because most Americans are starting to pay their heating bills and wondering why this is, after the US invaded one of the largest oil producing nations in the world. 'Coincidentally', the oil companies have posted their largest profits ever.

Or is it a coincidence? Hmmm.

I feel bad for the president and I feel guilty for feeling bad for him, because you know what? He should feel a bit lousy. At least a hundred thousand Iraqis are dead based on crummy decisions he made. Tens of thousands are maimed or wounded or are languishing in our prisons and camps since they are accused terrorists, or enemy combatants, or some other name that means that they don't deserve to be treated fairly like the human beings they are. Not to mention the Americans who are dead (two thousand plus) or maimed or wounded (fifty thousand plus).

Come to think of it, the President does deserve to have some sleepless nights. At least he's still alive to have those sleepless nights, which is more than you can say for all those permanently deprived of their right to ever sleep again on his orders. And if his father is treating Bill Clinton as the son he would have rather have had, then W deserves that, too.

Bring Out your Fat-Suits

Tyra Banks, Maria Menoulos and now an un-named model on the Today Show have all taken to the streets in padded suits and jowel make-up to expose with hidden cameras what it's like to be overweight in America. And ... Are you ready for this? It's not fun. Tyra was absolutely in tears. I mean, really, is this what it's like not to be a Super Model? Poor baby, how could she take it for the few hours that she didn't have everyone kissing her butt?

Well, there are a lot of people who could tell her what it's really like, and a lot of them are living here with me in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is now the most overweight state in the USA. And the US is the most overweight country in the world, so if you happen to notice the Midwest sinking a little in the middle that's the reason why. I guess we should take 'pride' in being the pudgiest of the pudgy, but I don't know if I feel like jumping up and down yelling 'We're number one!' because it would take me so long to get out of my LaZee Boy, and by then I'd be winded.

I don't know what motivated all of these people to dress up and pretend to be heavy and not beautiful for a day. It must be like a sort of tourist destination for them, as in: "I wonder what it would be like to be ordinary and not splendid and wonderful?" This is their self chosen penance for having it too damn good, with the only difference being that they're just visiting, and can rip off the blubber make-up when they've had enough.

Overweight people are treated poorly. There's no question about it. And a lot of people have no sympathy for a voluntary condition like obesity, because if you think about it, no one has to be fat do they? These people should just not eat so much, right? It's never, ever as simple as that, of course - unless it's not you. Then it is. Excess weight is one of those conditions that's also considered a moral failing to many.

From an evolutionary standpoint - or intelligent design standpoint, if you insist - obesity indicates unfitness in a potential mate. It also indicates, for a male, that the woman is potentially pregnant with another man's child who you wouldn't want to raise as your own, would you, you big brained ape, you? The dismay that humans feel towards the non-healthy is in reality innate in the species; we either evolved or were designed that way.

I can't claim to have spoken with every three hundred pound person in the world, but my experience has been that when you find somebody that heavy, you inevitably find somebody with a lot of trauma in their life. Ask and I guarantee that you will hear a horrible story or two that will bring you to tears. The excess eating is medication to kill the pain. So, not only are they living with the awful things that caused them to overeat in the first place, but now they have also the scorn of society to deal with.

I haven't seen the entire TV pieces from Tyra, Maria or the Today Show so I can't tell you what lessons they may have had to teach. I find it personally distressing that for almost certain they will take up the cause of this 'new form of discrimination' for a day or so, then abandon it for the next 'new form of discrimination' that comes their way. Maybe they'll actually succeed in helping those who need that help. Or maybe they'll just get higher ratings.

I Like the Drug Companies Running my Healthcare

In a healthcare statistics class I had last year, the instructor told us that the United States ranked seventh in infant mortality and she asked us - the class - what we thought might be the reason for the US not being number one, having the best available health care in the world and all. I raised my hand and told her that it was likely that every other country that ranked ahead of us had universal health care while the US did not and factors like better pre-natal care and such were the reasons for this. The instructor, bless her, looked puzzled by this news as if this were the very first time she'd ever heard such a thing.

Here's another more recent statistic: The United States now ranks twenty-third in over all life spans. Twenty two other countries have citizens who live longer than us. Do you think those countries might have universal health care for all their citizens? As you read this, forty five million Americans have no health insurance at all. That's about twenty percent of our population (I think. I actually didn't do all that well in that statistics class). There is no other industrialized country in the world that would trade their healthcare system for ours, that is their socialized healthcare system.

But Steve, I don't want the government providing my healthcare! That was a statement I heard from my brother-in-law years back when Bill Clinton was attempting to provide healthcare to all Americans. In reply to my brother-in-law - the postman - I mentioned that the government was already providing healthcare to him and it seemed to working out for him just fine. He was a bit nonplused, but not for long and I forget how the rest of our discussion went.

More statistics: The administrative costs for Medicaid and Medicare are two percent, that is, this is the cost that these agencies charge to distribute and administer funds. The comparable costs for insurance companies to perform the same service is between thirteen and thirty percent, in other words they are six to fifteen times less efficient than the despicable, inefficient government in providing the same service.

But how can that be? Everybody knows that private industry is automatically better than government because of competition and all that. Right? Well, first of all, not necessarily, and second it isn't the function of government to provide services as cheaply as possible while charging the most money possible and lining their pockets with the rest. But that is exactly what private companies do.

Here's something not a lot of people don't know about insurance companies: They don't make money only from taking people's money and then paying out less than that so they make a profit; Insurance companies invest the money in the stock market. A major reason for the rise in medical insurance after the year 2000 was that the insurance companies had to make up for stock market. You didn't pay more because you were getting better services in order to better save your life. You paid more because the people you had entrusted with your money had gambled it all away. No one would stand for them taking their money to Vegas and putting it on the Roulette table, but that's more or less what they did and the odds were poorer.

No Evolution for Deer

A school board in Pennsylvania was thrown out by their voters in a recall election for coming up with the rule that science teachers would have to take one minute to tell students in their classes that there was such a thing as a theory of intelligent design. Likewise Kansas has been wrestling with the Darwin V. Intelligent design theories. My question is, sure you can make all of your science teachers teach intelligent design - they want to keep their jobs, after all - but can you make them keep a straight face while they're teaching it?

As I was driving home tonight, beeping my horn frantically while a stupid deer stood in the middle of the road staringat me, I pondered evolution. 'Why,' I asked myself, slamming onthe breaks, 'Hasn't evolution worked here, evolving this speciesenough common sense to stay away from cars?' It's a good question. There have been automobiles now for over a century, and in my book that's plenty of time for so-called evolutionto do it's job. Unless, of course, the theory of evolution is total bunk in the first place. Well, maybe I won't go that far. But there are clearproblems with Darwinian evolution and I don't think that reasonablepeople should too quickly dismiss intelligent design.Wait, wait, wait. Don't get ahead of me. I'm not saying therefore: Jehovah,seven days, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, etc. Far from it. Butthe alternative to intelligent design is fantastic coincidence; the 'fact'that the universe is just randomly situated to allow for what we call life.It's as if scientists are saying that the universe is a sort of giant jigsawpuzzle that for no particular reason matches up into a beautiful picture and more than that, this jig-saw puzzle also just happens to have assembleditself just by pure chance, too. Pretty incredible, right?There is a theory called the anthropic principal that somewhat explains this.In the anthropic principal there is not just one universe but many universesor a multiverse. (Strictly speaking you can't have more than one UNIverse).These universes all have different laws of nature and only the one weare in right now had the exact right combination that would allow forintelligent self-aware beings like ourselves who can ask ourselves thesequestions. My problem with this, Mr. Smarty-pants Scientist, is where areall these other supposed universes? I don't see any extra universes layingaround anywhere. And I've looked real hard.Alright, I actually know the answer to this one, too. All of these extrauniverses are in other dimensions that are supposed to be curled up real small and you can't see any of them because they are so small. But why would there even be extra small dimensions in the first place. Where did they come from? Would one of you scientists answer that for me?

Why Packer Fans Wear Cheese Heads

I was born and raised in Wisconsin, but actually have lived most of my life in Minnesota - so, even though technically I could say I'm from Minnesota just from percentage of life lived in that location, I fear I'm forever stained as being from Wisconsin. Our State quarter came out and the bas relief picture on the reverse had a picture of a dairy cow looking adoringly at a huge wedge of cheese. Yes. That is the image that most and best describes who we are and exactly what we do.

You can see, then, how it would make so much sense that the Packers would have so much pride thrown their way by us. Sure, they haven't been hot this season, at all. Real embarassing as a matter of fact. But their performance in any given year is the point so much as them being a football team in Wisconsin. Period. That's something, and if we all can't take much pride in how they play on the field they are the one and only team that is actually owned by the people who live in that area and not some out-of-state whiney billionaire who cries if a half billion dollar stadium isn't built for him at taxpayer expense, so he can make money and take it back out of the state that built him that stadium.

I'm thinking of the Vikings (Vi-QUEENS here in Wisconsin) last owner Red McCombs. They got sold to somebody else now who's actually talking of building his own stadium, but I'm sure somewhere down the line he'll try and stick-up Minnesota for a hundred mil or so and call it a bargain. And while the Vikings have been to the Super Bowl four times, they've lost every single time, which is how you always win a sports argument with a Minnesota fan. You just remind them that their team will choke and break their hearts. They'll get quiet then, look down at the ground and say sadly: "Yeah. You're right."

Border rivalry's are pretty silly, generally, because they're based on nothing more than random geography and nothing important, like in the past when the people of Wisconsin invaded their state and enslaved all the Minnesotans and made them work in our cheese mines. As an example. That didn't really happen. But if it did, then it would make more sense for them to hate the packers like they do. Personally, I have less reason to participate in border rivalries like this since I've lived almost equally on both sides of that border.

Wisconsin people call Minnesotans 'Mud Ducks' (I don't know why) and they call us 'Cheese Heads' because of our production of cheese and putting it on our heads makes it insulting. Actually, I think Minnesota actually surpassed Wisconsin as far as their number of total cows, so if you ask me they should be the real cheese heads. But, you know, they don't have cheese on their coins, so maybe it's fairer to call us that rather than them.

The cheese hats came about - I believe - as a way to take an insulting term and take ownership of it. That would be much the same way that gay people started taking the term 'Queer' and using it openly and unashamedly for themselves. It took a lot of the power and the sting out of it and a pejorative doesn't work so well when your subject refuses to be shamed by it. The problem with the cheese head hats, though, is the very act of putting something that is made to resemble a huge wedge of cheese is in itself very undignified and make yourself look even stupider in no way gives you ownership of the insult. It kind of adds to it.

The New Veterans

When I was in the Reserves, I used to occasionally take the bus to the meetings on the weekends. Seeing a man in a sailor suit, the other passengers used to - of course - take this as an invitation to start a conversation with me. A lot of times these conversations would be comments by tired middle-aged men that if they had stayed in the service they would have gotten their retirement and presumably they wouldn't be tired midde-aged men on a bus in the very early morning hours of the weekend on their way to a job.

Not to give away my age, but now that's me. I wonder now what it would be like be collecting that wonderful retirement for the rest of my life and never have to work very hard again. Because you do still have to work since the retirement doesn't really cover all of your living expenses for the rest of your life anymore. It would probably cover my living expenses, but I'm really, really cheap.

Looking back on it is certainly a whole bunch different than the other side of looking forward to it when I was in my twenties. I tell you, one year in the service was a very long year and at the end of the first four of those long years sixteen was thoroughly unimaginable. Somehow I let myself get talked into six years of the reserves - for the money - and then when those years were up I didn't re-enlist. Since they must have figured that nobody with a dozen years in would not re-enlist the Navy didn't send anybody to try and persuade me to, or offer me any money or anything else.

The next weekend that I was out of the Navy I didn't show up at the Reserve Center. On Monday they called me and asked why I hadn't showed up for my meetings and I told them it was because I wasn't in the Navy, which truly puzzled them.

I was stilled owed my last yearly installment on my re-enlistment bonus from six years back, so I called up the Reserve center and asked for the commander of the unit, but got the executive officer instead and I asked when the Navy was going to pay me the money it owed me. He kept trying to tell me that what I had to do was go to my unit and work through them. To which I replied that I didn't have a unit and I wasn't in the Navy and what I had was someone who owed me money and when did they intend to pay? I got that check in three days. I think it was because I just plain embarassed that guy.

The second alternate reality that I envision is if I hadn't joined the service at all. To that, I believe that I would have ended up with a boring life without any adventure in it. It just might have been a happier life, but it sure wouldn't have the same color as the one I led and I wouldn't have about half of the stories I love to bore people with.

Back when I was in, the military had switched to an all volunteer force. That's been awhile now so it's safe to say that the result of the all volunteer force is that many Americans are shirking their responsibility to their country to give back what it's given them. The people with the most to gain and keep from living and doing business in America are the last ones to send their own sons and daughters out to defend it and the policies that they support.

That's right. I'm talking about all you rich guys. Not that I want to engage in blatant retro-snobbery or class warfare, but its rare that somebody not motivated by economic need joins these days, which has made service to our country a lower and working-class exploit, except I suppose for the officers. Otherwise, risking death and dismemberment is for the other guys. But you'll put your flag out on Veteran's day, won't you? Or slap a magnetic yellow ribbon (made in China, by the way) on your car to show your patriotism. The one thing you won't do, though, is put on a uniform. Will you?

But thanks, anyways, for thanking me for my service. It means something that you'll patriotically take this day off to honor the service of others who did it in your place. Insincere gratitude is still gratitude. And that's all we veterans are likely to get.

Chai Vang's Last Stand

Chai Vang, the Hmong deer hunter from St. Paul who was convicted of murdering six Wisconsin deer hunters, was sentenced and had his chance to speak out about his situation. He said he was happy that he would no longer pay child support for his seven children, and he was grateful to the State of Wisconsin for housing and feeding him for the rest of his life. I'm not sure, exactly, but I think he might just have been a little sarcastic. It's hard to say, because he might in truth be pleased that he will no longer have to do a lick of work to put food on his or anyone else's table.

During the trial much was made about the 'racial slur' that was made about Mr. Vang, to wit: "I'm sick of those Mud Ducks coming into Wisconsin and taking our deer". This was supposedly said by one of the Wisconsin hunters. Actually, you should know, 'Mud Ducks' does not refer at all to someone of Cambodian ancestry at all, but rather it is a pejorative term used by someone in Wisconsin about someone from Minnesota. I have no idea about the origin or etiology of this insult, but if you're from Minnesota and I say this to you in a bar ... well, them's fighting words. Even if neither of us knows exactly why.

There is a fairly sizable Hmong community in Western Wisconsin where I now live, but I haven't had much contact with them. When I first moved back, I worked briefly at a motor factory (before I got canned) and there were a number of Hmong workers there, who were held rather in awe by the other (white) workers because the Hmongs were especially speedy and dextrous. In fact, to amuse each other they would have contests among each other to see who could be the most productive.

There was one cheerful older guy I used to talk with occasionally who found it absolutely amazing how much his white co-workers complained and tried to slack off. He thought he had it good and what to me was back breaking work, he thought was a piece of cake.

A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to visit a Wisconsin prison. This one was a minimum to medium security one, so it's probably not like the one Chai Vang's going to go to. My visit was quite a shock to me. I'd expected, I suppose, the type of prison that you see on TV and in the movies, you know, huge scowling men in a powder keg of violence hiding in the corners sharpening their shivs waiting for their opportunity to gang rape the new fish in the shower. Instead everybody was real relaxed and casual and the expected sadistic guards were rather easy-going and pleasant.

Out in the yard, the prisoners played scrabble and threw horseshoes and were going for their morning runs. And since these were Wisconsin prisoners they were nice - they smiled at you and said 'Good Morning' and held the door for you. For sure, they did something wrong to get there in the first place but they were nice wrong doers. Aside from the involuntary aspect of it, I really thought that I might take a weeks vacation and spend it there. It looked awfully restful.

The Magical Diet for Everyone

Reading diet books is my occasional hobby - not using, not following - just reading. So far, I haven't been much influenced to go along with any of these books for very long because I realized a long time ago that they all suffer from one flaw: They don't know me. These books start with the insane premise that every single person in the world should be eating the same exact things and you know what? No way. You mean to tell me that a twenty year old marathon runner should be eating the same food as a ninety year old nursing home resident?
Hmmm.

A number of years back in Hawaii a Doctor noticing that a number of his native patients were suffering from obesity and the related health problems - Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, etc. - switched them to a more traditional diet that their ancestors would have, and his patients lost weight and became healthy. The culprit was thought to be our evil Western diet.

Every now and then you'll read how different countries have diets that are just horrible, like the French or the Italians, but there seems to be some one element, like the tanins in the wine or the asparagus they eat with their meals will be scientifically determined to counteract this. Or you might also read how the Japanese have a super diet because they eat a lot of fish and Sea Urchins and thus the whole world should be eating fish and Sea Urchins.

Excuse me, bull crap. The French are healthy because they are French people eating French food, and the Italians are healthy because they're Italians eating Italian food and ditto with the Japanese and pretty much everybody else. These foods represent the fuel that they've been genetically designed to run on over thousands of years. It absolutely should not be a surprise that they do well with traditional diets.

The US government has, of course, one recommended diet for every single person in the US called the food pyramid. I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty leary about following any diet created by government bureaucrats. Do you really want your body to be the same type of well oiled machine that our federal government is? I'd read that what the food pyramid suggested to eat as far as proportions of fat to carbohydrate to protein was almost exactly what you would get in one American candy bar. This it turns out is pretty close. After I finished eating a salted nut roll one day I looked at the nutritional information on the wrapper and - yes - it was almost exactly what the food pyramid recommends. The candy bar had a little less then optimal protein, but otherwise you can eat candy bars and the government thinks you're doing okay.

If I were you, I'd be leary of taking any diet advice from proponents who are not themselves actually thin. I'm thinking mostly of Robert Atkins who was absolutely chubby when he passed away, but this also holds true for bald and not thin talk-show psychologist Dr. Phil and the very excitable, not very sane, and not very thin Richard Simmons. They aren't necessarily wrong in what they tell you, but how come its not working for them?

In the past, I've gone for both higher carbohydrate diets, when I was running a lot and needed the fuel to propel me for miles, and higher protein when I was lifting weights and needed to the protein to build tissue. Both, I think, work just fine for those purposes. When I was more sedentary, then I just reduced my total calories and that seemed to work just fine, also.

The one popular fad diet that I gave a serious shot at was the Atkins diet, and I'd have to say it worked - in sending me to the bathroom a dozen times a day in fear that I'd crap my pants. I'd started on the advice of a buddy who'd trimmed down nicely on it and told me how easy it was for him. So I did it and lasted a week, and in that week I lost eight pounds. But I couldn't take any more so I had to stop. When I told my buddy about this, he urged me to get back on Atkins because my body would adjust and in the meantime I should just get used to it. So I tried again and did not adjust or get used to it and quit again, because I'm not going to spend that sort of money on Adult Incontinence Products just so my jeans will fit a little looser. Thank you.

But I will occasionally recommend the Atkins diet to others. Why, you may ask, is that? Is it because I'm a sadist and want other people to get the runs several times a day and risk social embarassment like I did? No, no. Not at all. The reason is that I've talked with many other people who it's worked for wonderfully - one was a cardiologist - and so I realize that even though it was not right for me, it's probably right for many others and so if you're having a tough time losing weight this might be it for you and go ahead and try it. It didn't work for me, but it might for you.

Today I'm on what I call 'the gravity enhancement diet', which has been specially designed to ensure that the centrifugal force of the spinning Earth does not fling me off into outer space. I don't want to give away too much information on this, but it does involve frozen dinners and fast food. It will all be detailed in my new diet book, including sample menus. Mostly from McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Wendy's et al.

Here is the magical diet that is guaranteed to work for everyone. Are you ready? Commonsense. Nobody knows you better than you do. You are the expert on yourself and you know who you are and what you do and with this information you really should know what and how much you should be eating. The thing is: you just have to stop fooling yourself. The magical diet can be as simple as just not eating so much.

Sneaky, Sneaky Co-workers

Misbehaving co-workers endanger your livlihood. If you know about a misbehaving co-worker you are automatically in a double bind, given the equally unpleasant choices of turning in the miscreant - being a despicable snitch - or putting up with it and saying nothing (ie) betraying your employer by being complicit in the misbehavior. Neither one of these are very pleasant, which is why your misbehaving co-worker not only does not hide the misdeeds, but rather would prefer you know about it so you will be in that nasty double bind.

Think about it: If you turn this person in what do you gain? You focus the spotlight of management not only on this person, but also yourself. Are you so pure that you have absolutely nothing to hide? I'm not. You probably aren't so, either. So who wants that? And if the co-worker is not canned, you've made an enemy - actually a few, because no one else you work with is going to trust you so much, you snitch, you.

Your boss isn't going to be grateful that you've brought an unpleasant problem to solve. In fact, it's just possible that the boss was aware all along and was happily ignoring what was going on. I'd probably say it was more than likely. Now the boss isn't happy anymore. And if the boss has something to hide - well, you see the mess you've created. You're the one who's the most inconvenient.

It gets worse than this. Your misbehaving co-worker is going to try and tempt you into misbehavior, also. There's a good chance that you might indeed want to work a little less hard than you do, especially if you have a real butt head job. And this way you're both of you in the same boat and you can be black mailed into silence, because you're doing it, too.

Yes. I have a story that goes with this one.

Back when I was in college, one of my jobs was as an evening security guard as a parking ramp. Before you turn your nose up at me for this, it's an excellent job for a student because you have a good deal of time where you are actually not guarding a damn thing and have time to study your course work. I didn't. But I could have.

I was working at the parking ramp with a very charming, but shifty fellow named Jim. Shifty Jim would nightly regale me with amusing stories of his shiftiness. I guess I envied him a bit, wishing that like him I could also do so many wonderful things like he did without worrying about a conscience to bother me.

One Friday night, a couple of hours before quitting time, Shifty Jim told me that I could take off and he would cover for me, and then the following Friday, I could do the same for him. Sounded good. So, I left and for the next couple of months or so we took turns covering for each other and I didn't feel very bad, because the security company didn't pay all that much and I wasn't taking off that many hours anyways.

Then one Wednesday, about four hours before our shift was supposed to end, Shifty Jim told me that he'd signed up for an evening class which he was going to right now, and if I wanted to report him I could. And then he left. Well, I couldn't report him, could I? He had just about as much dirt on me as I had on him - he'd made sure of that - so all I could do was sit it out and hope no manager from the company came by enquiring where Shifty Jim was. Eventually, that was precisely what happened and I was then in the position of having to come up with some sort of lame lie to cover for myself, and I barely kept that job, though - really - I should have been just as fired as Shifty Jim.

What should I have done? First of all, (obviously) I should have made sure I was doing my job, regardless of what anybody else was doing. Should I have reported him, if I hadn't been taking off myself? That one I'm not sure of. Probably in that case, I could have, because what he was doing was so egregious but also he wouldn't have done it in the first place if he hadn't carefully laid his foundation of blackmail so that I couldn't.

If you have a co-worker like this, I think you have every right to be angry right from the start. Somebody has to do the work they're getting out of and that nice person is probably you. And they are putting you in an unpleasant situation that you didn't ask for. Maybe what you want to do when you start a new job, you might want to let it slip out that you just cannot keep any kind of secret of any kind, ever. That could well save you some trouble later down the line.

Bob Cratchit was a Lousy Clark

I can never watch any version of a Christmas Carol any more because I keep getting bugged by one nagging question: If that damn Bob Cratchit thinks he has it so bad with Scrooge, why the hell doesn't he get out there and get himself another job? You hear so much in the story about how miserly Scrooge is with his, but you know what? I'll bet Scrooge must have been paying a competitive wage for his clark. If Cratchit thought he should be getting more for his work, then he should have found the employer who would have paid him more and treated him better.

But he didn't. And do you know why? It's because he was a slacker. Maybe Scrooge was paying less for his clarks then anyone around him - that's possible - but that was because no one would pay even as much as he did. Cratchit was plain lucky to have Scrooge pay him what he did and keep him on for as long as he did at any salary at all.

Should we feel sorry for Bob Cratchit because he had a large family to support? Well, who told him to have all of those kids in the first place? I'd bet you if he and his wife had paracticed some sound family planning and had perhaps only half as many children, then the money would have stretched a lot further. Anyways, he was able to put a roof over his families head and food in their mouths. They weren't in the poor house or anything close to it.

But that was the thing: The guy was just a complainer. Look at it from the Boss's perspective. Would you want someone under you who was always complaining about everything? Like, the office was just too cold for Cratchit, so, of course, he has to waste precious coal so that he can be toasty warm. What about the company? Scrooge and Marley is paying good money for that heat, bucko. Wrap your muffler and take one for the company. Be a team player for a change.

Or how about all that extra time off that Scrooge's clark kept asking for? Back in Victorian times, Christmas was a minor holiday at best. Nobody was really asking for Christmas off. Most Victorians worked on Christmas so that they could have an extra day away from their family. It would be like me asking for Captain Kirk's birthday off. What sane boss would grant that request? It was the same with Christmas back then.

I get so angry at the end of a Christmas Carol. Everybody thinks it's so wonderful that Scrooge turns his mean, bitter life around but all I can see is him giving this awful Bob Cratchit a big Christmas goose and a pay raise when he really should be giving him a pink slip and a boot out the door.

Revenge of the Sith

If you ever get to be an evil galactic overlord, I've got a bit of advice for you: Don't gloat. If you have your opponent on the absolute ropes and all you have to do is to deliver the coup de grace - deliver it. Don't stop and talk to your apparently fallen foe. Kill him. Then if you feel like gloating, you can indulge yourself to the brim and you can speak as much of a monologue as you want over his dead corpse. If you do that your nemesis will not come back to save the day.

But does any super villain ever do that?

No.

Anyways, I just rented the DVD for Revenge of the Sith and there was a scene where the evil emperor to be Palpatine AKA Darth Sideous has Jedi master Yoda on the ground after shooting him full of blue lightning and instead of shooting Yoda full of more blue lightning and finishing him off, guess what he does? That's right. He gloats. And by gloating he paves the way for three more epic movies and two more trying to be epic, but instead being tedious movies.

What I want to know is this: Do you think most people in the galactic empire had it all that bad? I don't. I think in the Star Wars Universe most everyone on all the planets just lived their lives like normal and there wasn't a whole bunch of suffering. They could give a rip whether they lived under a galactic republic or a galactic empire as long as the crops came in on time and there was food on the table and they could slip out Saturday night to Mos Isley for a few belts.
The ones who were most inconvenienced were the rich lords and ladies with the titles and it doesn't look like they had their luxurious lifestyles impinged on too much, so what was the problem with having an evil emperor?

I've got another question: Doesn't anybody in that galaxy ever think about getting laid? In the first three movies there was plenty of indication that the inhabitants all had healthy sex drives. The three prequels make it look like they're all constipated and pre-occupied and got better things to do. Yeah, I know, Anakin, future Darth Vader is married, but it really looks like almost a pain in the ass thing for him and there doesn't seem to be a whole bunch of passion between them despite Natalie Portman's overacting.

At the end of the movie when Darth Vader becomes Darth Vader, you know, when they finally put the suit and the mask on Anakin Skywalker completing the transformation, I almost had to laugh. That's not Darth Vader! That's Darth Vader lite at best. Hayden Christiansen is just too short and skinny and you just wonder to yourself how he packed on all the muscles and extra height for episode IV. He must have gotten onto the roids big time.

Thank God George Lucas won't be making anymore Star Wars movies so that I can stop seeing them and being hugely disappointed. I just get the feeling that he's a real lonely bachelor who watches a lot of C-Span and thinks it's riveting. That's what all of these pre-quels felt like to me. Who cares about senate deliberations, even if they are galactic senate deliberations? It's still a huge yawn. And good old George can stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars in order to bore me stiff.

Witches and Terrorists

A few years back in a bookstore I ran across a volume called Malleus Mallificum or Hammer against Evil (roughly translated). This book was the infamous medieval witch-hunting manual which advised the witch-hunter that when he had his suspected witch safe and sound in his dungeon, he should show the suspected witch all the instruments of torture and then explain how each and everyone of them is used. Then the witch hunter should simply wait for the confession to come spilling out, which the book advised was just about all that was ever required.

I believe it. I don't know about you, but after that little lecture by a robed and hooded inquisitor, I'd be howling for a pen and paper so I could write down for them exactly how bad a witch I was. Because you know what? One way or another I would know I was done for and I would want to save myself whatever suffering I could until my inevitable fate.

The United States, it seems, has been getting away from the idea that torture is wrong and horrible in all circumstances. The CIA has - allegedly - been running their own franchise of torture chambers in different countries that aren't so finicky about cruel and unusual punishment as the United States used to be. 'No! Not the CIA!', you say. Well, I'd hate to think it could be true, because it's just so, so unlike that organization but the evidence is kind of mounting up.

Are we all 'shocked ... shocked!' to discover this? I guess I have a little more reason to believe that the CIA would actually do this. You see, a relative of mine once worked for them. Please, don't worry, I'm not going to out him like Valerie Plame, and even if I were, he's long since been out of their employ (he claims. But I'm not so certain). Anyways, he left their gentle loving arms because of unspecified 'moral' problems and that was all he would ever say about it. We can probably guess what some of those moral problems might have been especially knowing where he was when he had these moral problems - in the Mideast, working for one of the many despotic tyrants we used to bankroll back in the day.

The victims of the new CIA torture chambers are not witches, but terrorists, they say. Few people really have much sympathy for terrorists and I have to admit that I'm one of them. Torture is wrong, but my sleep is not so troubled if some of these awful men experience some discomfort before they're rewarded with seventy two virgins in paradise for their deeds.

The problem is that they aren't really terrorists, but rather they are 'accused' terrorists. They have not had any public trials in front of a judge and a jury of their peers with a defense council, you know, all that sixth amendment stuff. Nor have any of them even had a secret military tribunal, either. They've just been spirited away in the middle of the night and who knows what happens to them, then?

Like we used to do with witches. My God, the Bible says we should not suffer a Witch to live and do we really want these minions of Satan in our midst? What rights should Witches really have? All of our souls are at risk and I think extraordinary measures are thoroughly justified to get rid of them - just like 'accused' terrorists.

Secret CIA prisons for suspected terrorists are one thing, but has everybody forgotten that we already have a thoroughly out in the open prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? On Meet the Press one Sunday there was an evil Republican senator who was defending the 'detention facility' in Cuba. His ploy was to read off the menu at Guantonamo for a particular Sunday to show how well the terrorists were being fed, and this bozo even exclaimed in astonishment that they were getting... rice pilaf! Tim Russert, the moderator of the show, asked a very pointed question about due process and the evil Republican went back to the Guantano menu and read off next Sunday's entree ... glazed chicken! Well, case closed. If these guys are getting rice pilaf and glazed chicken, then screw anybody who complains that some of them have been held incommunicado for three years without any legal process.

What a bunch of whiney cry babies!

Russert asked Evil Senator about some of the interrogation techniques that were documented at Guantanamo and he listed: Sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, stress positions, being stripped and forced to stand naked, the use of dogs to terrorize them, having women violate their personal space, Christina Aguillara music. E.S. (Evil Senator) responded by not responding and told Russert how every cell has an arrow that points to Mecca and we scrupulously have the call to prayer for them five times a day. Russert asked again about the use of the guard dogs for one particular suspected terrorist and E.S. sneered: "oh.. he had a dog bark at thim." Um, it was probably a little more than that, Senator.

The problem with getting any sympathy for these people is that, first of all they're thought to be terrorists - bad, bad people - and second the interrogation techniques are what are called 'psychological' and they don't sound all that bad. Until you've had them done to you, that is, and how many people really have? (I have and so have a handful or military people of my aquaintance).

Just likethe inquisitor from the middle ages they haven't physically done much ofanything to you. There certainly isn't much drastic tissue damage and that's really what torture is, isn't it? None of it's allowed by the Geneva Convention, of course, but the Geneva Convention outlines rules for the fair treatment of prisoners who are signatories of the convention, as we define them. The Red Cross and Amnesty International beg to differ, but who are they? They don't have any armies.

Now, the one about a female interrogator violating my personal space, I've got to confess: That one sounds like it might not be so bad, and when you throw in that Christina Aguillara music they talked about, that's basically a lap dance. Terrorists getting lap dances doesn't sound so awful to me. The thing is: I'm an American and it's different for a Muslim male. The equivelant for me might be a technique that I heard from an Army guy who was enrolled in military interrogation school in Texas. This guy told me that one of the techniques they taught him was to have your subject hand cuffed to a chair and then you, the interrogator, come in and start grilling the subject while you're butt ass naked. American men are very homo-phobic and this one tends to freak them out a lot.

You know, these guys in Cuba have been there for years and there'slittle of intelligence value they could still provide. If they're terrorists, then prove it. It's as simple as that. They should have their day in court just like every single horrible murderer here in the United States.

I guarantee you that we are right now holding innocent men prisonerand have been for years. For example, one of the people that theyactually did let go (after holding him for two years) was one hundred and four years old. I don't know if I feel all that safe with this guy back out on the street, probably committing terrorists acts or something.

If you think it's alright for us to hold people who are simply accused of terrorism then I know one more accused terrorist that needs to go to Cuba. You! That's right. I think you're a terrorist. Now that you are an accused terrorist, like all those men that we're holding overseas, you should be more than happy to give up all of your civil liberties and be held in solitary confinement for an indefinite period. But please don't worry. They'll give you glazed chicken and rice pilaf and you'll have an arrow in your cell that points to Mecca so you'll know where to pray to five times a day. Hell, the US government will probably even throw in a free complimentary copy of the Koran.

Or maybe you'd prefer to be charged with witchcraft.

It's up to you.

Too Horrible

Horror can certainly go to far. I was watching TV recently and saw the ads out for Saw II. It seems pretty similar to Saw I, that is, it features ingenious sadism on a low budget with unknown actors, and as far as I can judge, little else. This is one that I don't think I'll ever go to a theater to see, rent at the store, or watch when it comes to television, though if it ever does come to television it will be edited down to ... absolutely nothing, because that's about what they could show. I don't think there's much that will be redeeming or fun or scarey in the 'good' kind of scarey or spinechilling or any of that. It just looked sickening.

Now, of course, I obviously can't do a review of movies that I haven't seen or even state with confidence that nobody else should see them, either. I'll leave that to fundamentalist Christians, who can, it turns out judge a book by it's cover or a movie by it's trailers.

The first horror movie that I remember thinking was too much was The Excorcist when I was about twelve. I couldn't tell you now what I thought was so horrifyingly appalling about that movie. Perhaps I thought some of the blood and violence was entirely gratuitous or that it seemed too real and believable. I don't know. I went home terrified and asked my mother if this was at all true or possible. My mother, a bit of a hard-core Christian herself assured me: "Yes, Stevie, Demons can inhabit your body like that."

I didn't sleep for three nights.

Another movie that I thought went too far for the time - not a horror movie, but I'll add it here anyways - was The Godfather. I know, it's a classic and if it's on TV and not much else is on - then I will watch it, because it's a great story and it had great acting. But when I first saw it (13 years old) the portrayals of frank violence made me feel like I'd been hit in the stomach. I especially remember when Luca Brazi has his hand nailed to the counter with a knife and is then garroted from behind with piano wire. I kept thinking to myself: "Please don't show anything more like this."

But they did. And looking back on it, it seems almost hilariously mild, but up until then I had never, ever even seen somebody getting shot and then actually bleeding from that gunshot. That alone, the mere concept that people will bleed from being shot got to me.

Horror I've seen in real-life has gone too far. In Minneapolis at different times I've seen three different men get onto city buses - and they had no hands. Not only did they not have hands but they didn't have prosthetics, either; just the stumps. And each of these men were very dextrous with what was left of their arms, manipulating bus cards from their pockets and into the correct slot.

The first guy I saw do this - I tried not to look or stare, but there was almost no way not to - he noticed me and, instead of scolding me for my impoliteness, smiled gently and wished me a 'Good Morning'. It made me feel one inch tall. These guys I saw were all African in appearence and I would guess victims of the civil wars raging in Central Africa, where to spread terror they amputate the limbs of people they don't like so much. They would have been in Minneapolis, probably, because of the institute for torture victims that's in that city on the University of Minnesota campus.

Too far in horror, then, is too real. The frightening monsters in the mafia and in Africa are not mere figments of a writers imagination but live and breathe. I never want to watch a movie to find out the truth that the world is a horrible place full of evil, pain, sickness and death. I like to believe that at least some of us are going to escape and live until the next sequel.

Michael's Arabian Nights

Michael Jackson is now set to take up residence in Dubai according to the Tabloids. He's had his picture taken several times with a fan of his in that country, this fan happens to be part of the royal family - a prince, I believe - and has been encouraging Michael to move in. I couldn't say why the prince wants Michael to live there so badly. Jackson used to be an excellent musician and entertainer at one time many years ago, but he hasn't come out with any new music that anyone wanted to listen to for years.

My guess? The prince is, in fact, a big fan and dropped a line to Michael and told him that if Michael came over to Dubai he could sleep with as many young boys as he wanted to and nobody would arrest him or even bother him about it, because that's what all the grown men in that part of the world do. It wasn't for nothing that Sir Richard Burton labeled it the sotadatic (sodomy) zone. Sure, Sir Richard wrote more than a hundred and fifty years ago, but it probably still holds true.

I followed the Michael Jackson trial with re-enactments on the E channel and thought it was pretty riveting television. Our trial system, the adversarial system, automatically includes a lot of drama which is why there are so many lawyer shows on TV. We Americans like contests like this, which is what a trial is. Most trials, of course, aren't anywhere close to this one. The vast majority of defendents in criminal cases don't happen to be multi-millionaires so they don't get to put on these extravagant defenses with trials that last for months with witness lists in the hundreds.

They have lawyers appointed for them by the court and they go to prison.

However, they probably should go to prison. Seventy five percent of people serving time right now plea bargained their cases, which means that they not only admitted what they did, but they agreed to serve the time that they're serving. Perry Mason was probably the only defense
attorney who had the luxury of only defending innocent clients. The rest have to wrestle with this moral quagmire of trying to prevent justice for bad people they know should be punished. They can take comfort, I suppose, in the fact that they are doing their constitutional part in providing everyone with the best defense but there have to be times that they regret being as good as they are at their job.

Michael Jackson - I believe - got away with his crimes. Despite his 'Not Guilty' verdict, he sure wasn't very innocent and some of the jury were clear that they thought this, too, but that they couldn't in good concience convict him of this particular crime. The same probably went with the juries for O.J. and Robert Blake. Both were found 'Not Guilty' but it wasn't a slam dunk in either case. I'll bet some jurists in those cases are having some sleepless nights still.

The hell of it is for Michael Jackson that if he were born in a different time and a different place his actions would have branded him as a solid citizen and not a pervert (I mean, alleged pervert). Three thousand years ago (or so) in Athens it was thought to be the absolute civilized ideal for an older man to take a younger man under his wing and educate him in the ways of the world, acting as a mentor to his protege. And then boofoo him.

I remember reading Plato's Republic and coming across that. In the book, Socrates and his gang of philosophers were out in the market square bantering about before they got down to some serious philosophizing. One of the sub-philosopher teases Socrates that he 'knows how Socrates gets around a young handsome lad'. Ho, ho! Wink. Wink.

It comes down to this thing called age of consent. When is a person considered a grown-up? In ancient times the answer was that it better be as soon as possible. In Jesus's time a man was expected to be married when he was fourteen; In America we won't let a fourteen year old
cook a hamburgermuch less reproduce. But it was different then, because for most of human history a fourteen year old was a middle-aged person. So they better start breeding and keep breeding because otherwise there wouldn't be people.

It took six live births to guarantee that two people would live to replace their parents, meaning you'd better start early and keep going. We are all here right now because for most of human history fourteen year olds did it.

But, of course, this is the twenty first century and nobody under eighteen should be even thinking about that stuff. When they turn eighteen then they can think about marriage. Period. That's all. Although, I'm not exactly sure why exactly we've put the ages down for what's acceptable. In America you can drive at sixteen, vote and go to war at eighteen, drink at twenty one, and become president at thirty five. Doesn't this seem just a tad bit arbitrary? Why shouldn't it be President at sixteen, drink at eighteen, vote and go to war at twenty one and then drive at thirty-five? It sure would be a more interesting country if we did that.

In Europe people do drink at sixteen, then receive their drivers licenses when they're eighteen. It seems more sensible to me, somehow, that you learn the social responsibilities involved with alcohol before you're able to get behind the wheel of a car. People should be taught how to
drink with adult supervision first.

Okay. I got away from Michael Jackson and I promise I won't do that again. The most important thing about him that has not been getting the coverage that it deserves is that his music sucks. It didn't always. In his time he came up with some great tunes, but I haven't heard anything that I remotely liked at all since his Thriller album. And I just hate listening to his voice because it's so nasal since he chopped up most of his nose. I've heard that he never stopped writing songs and could have other artists release some of this unheard music, now that he's in the clear being associated with him might not quite be career suicide.

The key to this Michael Jackson business, I believe, is revealed in his video for the song Thriller. In the video, a young and relatively normal appearing African American Michael Jackson with only a modest nose job is leaving a movie with his date, an attractive African American woman. (A playboy centerfold in real life). Michael looks pretty hip - 80's hip - and is dressed in a red leather outfit. The two of them leave the movie theater, go to his house and are about to start snuggling when Michael shyly stops her and tells her that he is: 'Not like other guys'. Then he turns into a monster, chases her away, and goes out into the street and dances with other monsters.

The way to interpet this video is symbolically and I would have to believe that it was all sub-concious on Michael's part. He didn't want us to know this on purpose. This is my interpetation
only and is merely speculation, I don't have proof and he was found 'Not Guilty', blah, blah, blah ... please don't sue me, Mr. Jackson.

Here goes: The opening symbolically shows a conflicted Michael Jackson who is struggling with his sexuality and his un-natural desires, (ie) his 'monster-hood' while pretending to the world that he is in all ways a conventional hetero-sexual, even a ladies man. To his date - the world - he reveals that he is secretly a monster (attracted to boys) and he rejects the standards and conventions of society (chases his date away). The last part - dancing with the other monsters - needs no explanation, because we all know what dancing with monsters means, don't we?