Betrayal and Other Sad Stories

I actually deleted a blog post. I'm sure this is against the rules of the truly hard-core blogger, but I had to remove it because I just couldn't own it. According to one friend (who was kind enough to phone me rather than leave a comment for the world to see) it was "whiny, self-centered, self-induglent, and untrue." Not that untrue has ever affected what I put up for the world (or self-indulgent either, for that matter.)

But no, I had to delete it because I've given it all a bit of thought. One of the reasons I'm very late to the blogging game is because it took me a long time to figure out how NOT to treat a blog like a journal to avoid just dumping whatever emotional weirdness was going on in my life into one. The other day I did that 'cause I wasn't done bleeding yet.

I bleed. It's one of my favorite lines from a Pixies song, and really, when I'm hurt, I *do* bleed like a stuck pig. I don't run and hide by myself and cry - maybe for a little while, but eventually, I pick up the phone and start bleeding to whomever willl listen until it's over.

The deal was this - like many of you, I grew up surrounded by the kids of other "broken" families and we built our own weird little units - posses, crews, gangs, cliques, whatever. In fact, I have several layers of these scenes going on in my life, but my O.S. (original scene) recently celebrated the wedding of one of its members - and for reasons that still aren't clear to me, I wasn't invited to the wedding - and it absolutely crushed me for a couple of days.

I spent a long time talking about it with some other pals, but one said something that I liked a lot, to the effect of "Betrayal is only possible where we feel attachment," which basically puts the onus on me for my pain (which I can accept) but leaves me with a whole other question:

"How do we build families around detachment?"

Well, I'd bet we don't. I think probably once we realize that someone else's actions can really trigger painful emotional responses in ourselves, we probably start detaching right away - I know I have. And once detached, well - it's sorta hard to imagine family with that person, no matter what the history or other attractions.

If you'd told me a week ago that this kind of thing would've cut me to my core, I wouldn't have believed you. I found out Wednesday night and literally spent most of Thursday blubbering like a baby about it. It was absurd, and I knew it, but I just couldn't stop. It was as if everything I believed in had been pulled out from under me. It was as if all the stupid unspoken community crap that we bandy about around here was all a complete lie, and that I was just fucking kidding myself if I thought that I had special friends and lived in a special world with tight ideas about community and love and friendship and all that shit.

In other words, I was becoming DIS-illusioned about my illusions. I was coming to terms with the fact that someone I thought was a "friend forever" from the days of the Teenage Musketeers (you know exactly what I'm talking about) well, just, wasn't.

I don't care that you couldn't invite me to your wedding - but the fact that I had to hear about on the street from someone else just shows me what a crass motherfucker you can be. Did you honestly think that I wouldn't hear about it? Did you honestly think it wouldn't upset me?

HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE AND CALL SOMEONE?

I wish you'd called. I would've called you. But now...I probably won't. Detachment, y'see.

Michael Jackson, Acquited Why I Care

It was only a very short while ago, like maybe an hour, since I posted my pleasure at the verdict in the Michael Jackson. Elation and jubilation are more like it, and I've had friends ask me why it matters to me one way or the other. And I'm going to tell you why, right now.

First of all - I'm SICK-TO-DEATH of celebrity trials. Sure, O.J. was much worse than this one, but every eighteen months or so (as soon as the last one is over with) Hollywood treats us to its seamier underbelly with some absurd trial that is given wall-to-wall coverage on all the networks and CNN and too many websites to count. These trials tend to crowd out whatever is *really* happening in the culture (like the 10 Downing Street Memo, for example) until everyone on earth seems to be coated with the wet sticky goo of said spectacle, and totally oblivious of reality.


Secondly (and this is pretty cynical, so maybe you want to go read something insipid) when it comes to Michael Jackson, I've always maintained with absolute certainty that "if Michael Jackson really wanted to molest little boys, he could go to Thailand and buy one off the street.

But in this particular case, that's not even the half of it. Since 1992, when prosecutors in California first went after Michael Jackson for alleged child molesting, a parent would have t have been living under a goddamn ROCK not to have any aforeknowledge of Michael Jackson's alleged disconnect about sleeping with little boys. Thus, it always amuses me to no end when these people "suddenly" discover that maybe, perhaps, allowing their kids to spend the night at Michael Jackson's house (or any other other adult single male in their late forties) maybe isn't such a swell idea.

If California prosecutors like the shit-for-brains that just blew this case to pieces by dealing with wack jobs like this particular parent and her kids are really serious about ending child molestation by Michael Jackson, then I think it's time for interviews between parents of Michael Jackson's victims and prosecutors to start looking a little like this;

Prosecutor: So you say Michael Jackson molested your kids?

Parents: That's right.

Prosecutor: And this abuse occured while you allowed them to spend the night with Michael Jackson in his private room at his private estate?

Parents: That's right.

Prosecutor: Uh-huh. And I suppose I can assume that once you get me to pursue my case, you'll turn around and use it as a means to file a civil suit?

Parents: Well, I...

Prosecutor: You are under arrest for the willful conspiracy to enable Michael Jackson to molest your children, and I'm going to charge with pimping as well, since I assume that while this was going on, you were accepting gifts of shopping sprees from Michael Jackson on Rodeo Drive...

Parents: It was just a fifty thousand dollar tennis bracelet!

Prosecutor: Okay, come on, let's go.

To sum up: Michael Jackson is a world-reknowned alleged child molester. Any parent who allows their kid to spend the night with him and then cries wolf should be IMMEDIATELY SUSPECT as a con-artist, and should be arrested for pimping and conspiracy. End of story. Prosecutors who aren't interested in this approach aren't really especially interested in ending child molestation or have any interest in the children in question - they are, as was this git in Santa Maria, a grand-standing "I'm tough on crime" publicity seeker who wants to make some kind of name for himself. And that's just wrong.

Third - and last - this morning when I opened up my mailer I saw a headline that I ran from - "Jackson's Hidden Accuser - Racism." I can't tell if this is the reason I am happiest or not, but I am about as happy as a pig in shit that we don't have to have a replay of the Rodney King debates where a man who is RICHER THAN GOD gets to have the race card pulled in his name by a bunch of whiny, self-righteous, hand-wringing white liberal academics. Had Michael Jackson spent one day in jail, we would have been subjected to this kind of nonsense for months on end - never mind that the man has had more plastic surgery than Liz Taylor or that he really has said on British television that sleeping with little kids is "innocent" - all that reality would have been thrown away in the name of a race (black) that Michael Jackson has spent most of his life and MILLIONS of dollars trying to bleach out of himself.

Now, no one gets to pull that card in the name of Michael Jackson. And the rest of us get to breathe a much needed sigh of relief that on some level, justice has been served.

Michael Jackson Verdict Watch

I'm sitting in front of my computer, waiting. Waiting with the rest of the world about what the ury has decided in the Michael Jackson case. I wouldn't even have known if I hadn't received - of all things - a "blog survey" from MIT, asking me about my blog. I clicked the link, for the fun of it, and my browser (Firefox) wasn't supported by their dumb survey. But I was intrigued by what kinds of questions they'd have, so I opened up IE (yes, I still have a copy for emergencies) and ended up on the YAHOO! home-page (my mom configured IE for her tastes) and there it was - a link to a "live video feed" to the reading of the verdict - and suddenly, it was time to play "Kill the Jacko."

I could feel the frenzy in my veins - that feeling that the whole wide world was at the edge of their seats waiting for this stupid trial to be over. I was starting to feel left out, staring at the link, so I gave in and clicked it - and my browser crashed almost immediately, which I imagine has been happening all over today.

Microsoft blamed RealPlayer - and they may have been right, because when I tried to open it manually, it said I'd never finished my stupid setup. About once a year I want to see video on the web, and here it was, that moment had arrived, and so I had to go through some setup - only to be informed I needed some kind of super-premium subscription in order to view it.

FEH!

I switched on the Real TV. I almost never watch TV unless I'm watching a DVD, and I found my way to CNN, only to discover that while i could see it (in B&W) I couldn't hear anything - I seem to have basic cable and no "premium" cable. So I went to the BBC and opened up their feed. And guess what? I'm watching BBC now from my computer, listening to British accents explaining to me the nuances of US child molestation law.

Almost as scary as the Jackson case, huh?

Everyone is waiting, they tell me, for the live video feed that will be read by Lorna Frye, the court clerk who is charged with being the voice of Michael Jackson's destiny, the James Earl Jones of ....oh wait - here she is!!!!

1) Not guilty of conspiracy!

2) Not guilty of lewd acts upon a minor child!

3) Not guilty of a lewd act upon a minor child!

4) Not guilty of a lewd act upon a minor child!

5) Not guilty of a lewd act upon a minor child!

6) Not guilty of attempting to commit a lewd act upon a minor child!

7) Not guilty of administration of an intoxicating beverage with the intention of committing a felony.

8) Not guilty of providing alcoholic beverages to a person under the age of 21

9) Not guilty of administering an intoxisating agent with the intention of committing a felony.

10) Not guilty of administering an alcohol beverage to a peron under the age of 21.

11) Not guilty of administering an intoxicating agent with the intention of committing a felony.

12) Not guilty of providing alcohlic beverages to a person under the age of 21.

13) Not guilty of administering an intoxicating agent with the intention of committing a felony.

14) Not guilty of administering an intoxicating agent with the intention of committing a felony.

Yes, MICHAEL!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!!

Jargon Watch - MODcasting

So today I read this fairly interesting white paper about podcasting and VOD-casting - i.e. video-on-demand. And it occurred to me that while these two niches of audio & video are being developed by different types of producers for different types of audiences, they both do essentially the same things:

1) they take content previously stuck in an "appointment-media" realm (radio and television) and make them available anywhere at anytime.

2) They use compression and RSS to do so.

3) They essentially rely on subscription to build and track audience.

Hence - we don't *need* two names to define them. To talk about podcasting and VODcasting as two separate ideas is just danged confusing. I propose a new name that would imply both video and audio - MODcasting, for media-on-demand. Instead of saying "podcasting" to imply audio, and "VOD-casting" to imply video, you'd just say "MOD-casting" - or

"We're delivering a MODcast audio feed,"

OR

"We just uploaded a MODcast video feed."

I think this would make things a lot simpler, and eliminate the learning curve and confusion of using two separate phrases. What do you think?

Cormac McCarthy Sighted in Santa Fe

Yesterday I received a breathless and semi-frantic voice-mail message from Plaza Rat Press illustrator, editor, and confidante Mike Brown. It ran thusly, "dude, man, I'm almost finished with my epic novel. Yesterday I met Cormac McCarthy in a used bookstore and it was like the planets were aligned! He quoted passages of 'Finnegan's Wake' at me and I almost pissed my pants! Cormac McCarthy, one of the world's greatest living writers, in the bookstore where I was buying books! I'm gonna finish my book, man, and we're going to publish it and it's going to be just fucking great and now I know it!!!"

Writers need little signs like that - I get them from time to time when I receive e-mail from one semi-famous friend or another that they've read something and dug it. (Honestly, it doesn't happen often enough, so if you could take the time to write me something...) But still the question demands to be asked:

"What the fuck was Cormac McCarthy doing in a used bookstore in Santa Fe?"

Well, according to the Wikipedia, Mr. McCormac actually *lives* here. You heard right - the master of southern gothic fiction, inheritor of the Faulknerian legacy, lives in the land of red'n'green chile where the most notable author (other than him) is probably John Nichols, (and by gum, he has no website!) author of the New Mexico trilogy.

Makes you stop and think, huh? If one of the best there is is actually living here - then maybe lightning could actually strike for the rest of our writer-folk in the City Different.