Authoritay

The local library remains a treasure, and an incredible value at five dollars a month.

In the last two weeks I've checked out several great CDs, including The Blasters Collection, a Peggy Lee comp, Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, and four by Elvis C.: Blood and Chocolate, My Aim Is True, The Juliet Letters and When I Was Cruel.

I also perused the magazine section for back issues of The Nation, Esquire and Smithsonian. Among the good stuff recently found was a book review by Stephen Holmes, of Bush Justice Department legal scholar John Yoo's book on what's legally permissible in the post-9/11 world.

Point by point Holmes takes on Yoo's assertions about the Founding Fathers' supposed intent to allow a president extra-constitutional authority in wartime, and pretty much eviscerates them.

I found this passage from Holmes particularly insightful:

(T)he book's unstable mixture of contextualism and originalism stems from Yoo's decision to yoke two distinct rhetorical ploys for winning public support for presidential power: fearmongering and ancestor worship. By highlighting the unprecendented dangers of the present, he encourages people to entrust their families' lives to a savior-President. By claiming that the Framers themselves would have been perfectly happy with unchecked presidential power, he encourages people to believe in the deep fidelity of a constiutionally unleashed President to an ideal America that was always meant to be. Although it is not particularly coherent, this fusion has a certain emotional appeal.

Neoconservatives and Republicans in general are propagandists and con men first, thinkers and statesmen second. Motivated by fear of the liberal boogeymen they've formulated in their heads, they have no problem with manufacturing a faux reality and then packaging that reality for public consumption, if it keeps liberals at bay. And in our uber-corporate, media-drenched post-9/11 world, that passion for propaganda fits the poisonous zeitgeist like a glove.

For Kicks

Went to my daughter's high school on Friday night, for its homecoming football game. 'Twas a lovely September evening for football.

I videotaped my daughter while she played in the school band, this being her final homecoming game. I let my son hang out with his classmates on the track surrounding the field. I remember going to high-school games when I was his age -- although when I was 10, I was into the game itself far more than he was on Friday.

Not surprisingly, I felt uneasy in the crowd, like an uninvited alien in a sea of callow, self-absorbed teenagers. Standard Greg T. neurosis.

As I videotaped a few plays from the game in the second half, the home team started to come back from a 14-0 deficit. They were 3-0 prior to Friday, and trying to go 4-0 for the first time in 20 years, so there was an urgency to come back that motivated them. They scored one TD, missed the extra point, then later scored another TD, and missed the conversion. With less than two minutes left, they were down 14-12, and preparing to kick off.

As I stood there on the sideline, near the kicker wearing a green uniform, the team looked like it was going to attempt an onside kick, and I felt a deja vu from something that happened six days earlier.

At the Oregon/Oklahoma game on Sept. 16, another kicker in a green uniform, from a school I graduated from, made an onside kick that led to his team's controversial (to say the least) 34-33 comeback win.

The UO/OU game had been on my mind all week...at least until I saw An Inconvenient Truth with my brother on Thursday, and realized that football games mean less than zero, since most or all of humanity will be dead of heat stroke by 2050. (Just kidding. Maybe.)

At the high school game, the ball clearly went out of bounds before traveling the required 10 yards, and there was no instant replay required. The visiting team got the ball, took a knee for the remaining snaps, and the game was over.

Call it projection or something deeper, but my reality always seems to reflect what I most focus on.

Big Mac

Twenty-nine years into his recording career, and I've yet to see a record company release a fully representative, maximum-quality mix of songs from Elvis Costello's oeuvre.

Rhino's The Very Best of Elvis Costello, from 2001, covers a lot of ground and creatively goes beyond a chronological progression, but the mix is ultimately disappointing: too many of my favorites are missing, and everything included from after 1994 (even "God Give Me Strength") is, to me, a letdown.

Columbia/Sony's 1989 collection, Girls Girls Girls, is about as solidly creative an EC mix as you'll find, but it has nothing post-1986, plus it doesn't include the only US Top 40 hit of his Columbia years, the excellent "Everyday I Write The Book."

The Warners compilation Extreme Honey, from 1997, has several quality 1989-97 tracks (including "London's Brilliant Parade," "Hurry Down Doomsday," "All This Useless Beauty" and "My Dark Life"), but the compilation suffers from omission of any track from 1977-86, when Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus did what I'd assert is his best work.

So, like I did with the three CDs of Essential Elton John I burned last year, I'm taking it upon myself to build three top-notch CDs of my favorite Elvis C. I hope to have them done in the next few weeks.

So September 10th

All due respect to those who lost their lives or had their lives shattered five years ago on Monday, but damn I'm tired of America's 9/11 mania.

There they were again on the front page of this morning's Oregonian, those two burning towers. They've burned a bigger hole into our collective memory than perhaps any other filmed event. Five years of having our noses rubbed in 9/11 has gone way beyond mere media overkill, into an extreme, manipulative, masturbatory zone of fear and hate porn. And thus, when the nose rubbing began again this morning, I could barely look at the O's front page.

Enough already. I get it. It's a dangerous world, and I'm to believe that as a loyal consumer American I'm on the good guys' team in a death match between good and evil. And I need reminders of this, like, all the fucking time. That's the message from corporate High Command.

My bro at Ape Tech, who aptly called 9/11 "Nightmare On Starbucks Street" soon after it happened, as usual poetically cuts to the brutal heart of the matter:

oh that plastic in your starch
the icon wave slaves that you
gobbled down
like wheels of blood
you turned them

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, whether or not their willful inaction allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen (when they might otherwise have been thwarted) -- and whether or not their cabal actually had a hand in planning them -- knew that 9/11 was useful enough to exploit for the benefit of their business and political cronies, and their corrupt behavior since has demonstrated just how useful they found it. That alone, minus whatever unproven (if at times very intriguing) conspiracy theories you want to throw out there, is more than enough evil for at least one generation, in my book.

Beyond the issue of good and evil, which to my mind is always approached subjectively, I found this view from left field to be an interesting and insightful spin on the 9/11 phenomenon. Your mileage may vary.

When I turned on the TV on 9/11/01 and first saw the burning WTC towers, the person narrating the scene for me was...Katie Couric. And despite my objections to her usual perky yuppie whitewash shtick on the Today Show, I found that she set the right tone of gravitas and heart as those towers fell. "Navy SEALs rock!" and further Today goofiness would follow, but in that epic moment of American angst, Couric was a class act.

And now, in a way I couldn't quite have predicted then, here we are, with Katie occupying the position once held by good ol' Uncle Walter.

It's too early to tell which Katie will win the day: the perky yuppie whitewasher, or the respectful and gracious eyewitness who can rise to the occasion. But from what I've seen, the former scenario is more likely, sad to say. Couric seems a willing accomplice in the ongoing dumbing down and Oprah-ization of network news.

Flyboy

On my vacation to southern Oregon last month, the combination of oversleep and overeating led me to some especially vivid trips on Greg's Dreamland Express™.

It's been awhile since I shared some Express tales with my six readers. And since I'm lacking for other, saner ideas, here we go...

Too bad about the man who died near the World Trade Center, after falling off the long thin metal extension that was attached to the roof of the second WTC tower. He was in a competition to see how much total time his team could stay up there, in the makeshift seat at the end of the extension. As I was watching this on TV, I was rooting for his team to lose.

When the extension broke and he fell -- eventually hitting the ground like a pigeon dropping -- part of me felt glad because this assured that the team I was rooting for would win the competition...and part of me felt ashamed for feeling any kind of glad.

Later, I went to a small gym inside a Landmark Education center, where people were racing like slugs on the ground, each partially covered by blankets that looked like big dollar bills.

One participant was lying motionless, in the fetal position, and I was told that my decisions would affect her fate, for better or worse.

"Fuck you all!", I shouted, avoiding making direct eye contact with anyone there, and then I flew out the door and into the clouds. I notice that I can only fly in my dreams when I'm naturally "being" flying, and when I start analyzing what I'm doing, I begin to lose flying ability.

Back on the ground, I encountered a vagabond Bob Dylan, living out a "Like A Rolling Stone" existence with what seemed like acceptance and contentment. I discovered that there was something about my essence that made even Bob Dylan step back a bit in quiet awe. Just what that something was, however, I couldn't say.

Then it was up to Hamilton, Ontario, for the United States final of the Little League World Series, featuring a team from Beaverton, Oregon (the city where I work.) In the stadium before the game, a little boy almost the same size as Stewie from Family Guy gave a pep talk to the Beaverton players. I'm carrying a microphone and I put it near his face so he can talk into it.

"Let's win one for Scooby!," he says. The Beaverton players let out a cheer, then go to fetch their video-camera tripods.

Soon afterward, in a small TV studio in Burbank, Johnny Carson shocks everyone by leaving in the middle of his final show. To help fill the remaining time, the producer sends out John Byner, performing from his one-man show about Professor Irwin Corey.

As I wonder what will happen next, Jessica Simpson comes up and gives me a hot kiss.

Post Time

A summer's worth of interesting horse names, taken from entries at race tracks across the U.S. of Archie A:

Hugh Betcha
Raceland
Distorted Humor
His Name Was Rico
Superbowl Joe
Trytanic
High Cholesterol
Kenya Hear Me Now
Digimon
The Garbage Man
Valentoad
Trust Nobody
Untitled
Flying Elvis
Pacific Northwest
Governor Arnold
Freudian
Jiminy Ticket
Global Warming
Mr. Thatcher
Laptop Computer
Earth's Vain Shadow
Gilligan's Island
Ivan Denisovich
Sea Of Sin

Last month I hit the seven-year mark at my job in a horserace wagering customer call center. I realized that only myself and one other person (a female) there on the call center's first day in August 1999 are still here and still on the phone talking to pony playas. A couple others who were there on that first day, both women, have moved on to supervisor positions in our office.

A supervisor position recently opened up here, and I considered it and was considered for it. But the hours for this particular supervisor shift mostly begin in the early morning, and that conflicts with my getting the kids to school in the morning while my wife is at her job.

Drat, drat and double drat! But at least I learned that as the kids get older, and/or a more convenient shift time opens up, I'll likely have a decent shot at movin' on up to a supervisor position. Which would be the first paid supervisor position I've ever had.

Gee

Last month I went to the doctor to get my cholesterol levels checked. This year's level of 175 was still below the danger level of 200, but higher than the 148 from last year. Any more backsliding into Burger Land and I'll likely be in trouble again.

While waiting to talk to the doctor, I do what I've done in doctor and dentist offices since I was young boy: open a Highlights magazine and read the latest Goofus and Gallant comic. The yin-yang aspect of it always struck a chord in me, as did the WASP-ish moral certitude.

This time, I found to my disappointment that Highlights has recently watered down the comic, to the point where I'm probably done with it.

I suppose in this PC day and age it was just a matter of time before Highlights magazine blurred the classic distinction between Goofus' scary coldness and Gallant's bland politeness. To my mind, this distinction served the G & G comic very effectively for decades, making it closer to a slice of real life than much of what has passed for kiddie infotainment. Now they're like two sides of the same "cute and lovable" coin -- the new Goofus seems more like a confused, cheerful puppy dog than a would-be Machiavellian.