because this is what made me laugh today

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall [in northern europe] will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

from a march 30, 2000 independent article entitled
"snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

 as you consider the above quote, from an article similar in its alarmist tone to thousands of others written during the golden age of global-warming hysteria, i invite you to peruse the following images which beautifully capture the weather conditions which are presently paralyzing northern europe:

and then i want all you true believers--you know, those of you who didn't wake up when they had to change the spin from global "warming" to global "climate change"

i.e., those of you who are not laughing along with me

to ask yourselves the following simple question:  if climate scientists can't even accurately predict what the climate's gonna be like in a mere ten years, how could you possibly believe they can tell us where we're gonna be in a hundred?

and then get back to me--i'm waiting.

ghost story

all i have to say about the following story is what i said back then, and what i will maintain unto my grave:  (a) andrew was a singularly supple piece of ass; and (b) that motherfucker moved without any goddam help from me.

*     *     *     *     *

weho, 1992 (or thereabouts)

i still remember how it all started: i was fuckingdating this hot, snarky little blond south african number, to whom my roommate-at-the-time paul took a particular shine. one day when he was over at the house, paul roped him into a discussion of one of his favorite subjects: the paranormal.

having heard it all before, i tried to head him off, but was too late--turns out andrew was into all that shit, and before i knew it, my other roommate royce was involved and the three of 'em had a pre-party seance planned for the following saturday night.

after andrew left, i remember asking 'em what the fuck, and they told me not to worry--it'd be fun.

when i inquired as to how exactly we would be communicating with the spirit world and paul whipped out his ouija board, i couldn't help it--i burst out laughing, even though i knew that was a mistake.

see, it was always two-against-one in that house.  as the guy who was there only because they needed a third, i had met paul exactly once before the three of us moved into 841 north crescent heights boulevard, and royce only on the day of.

they, on the other hand, had known each other for years, were several years younger and had been out forever--and took every opportunity to remind me of same.

oh, and the other thing they had in common?  paul and royce were both poz back when that was still a death sentence--which perilous status, they explained to me on that particular day, had conferred upon them them an extrasensory sensitivity unknown to the rest of us mere mortals.

"let's just say we're both on speaking terms with the other side, mike," paul told me, "but royce is closer."  royce confirmed this with a solemn nod.

when i snorted again, paul asked, "you ever play with a ouija board when you were a kid?"

"of course i did--that's why i find this shit so ridiculous."

"c'mere--sit across from me."

to humor him, i pulled up a chair, did as he asked.  he balanced the board on our knees, we rested our fingertips on the planchette and, working together, spent a few minutes spelling out words royce called out.

it was every bit as slow and jerky a process as i remembered--even a simple word like "cat" required concentration and the coordination of two people's movements in searching out each letter on the board.

"see how hard it is when you consciously try to do it?"

when i nodded, he smiled, replaced the board in its box and said, "remember that when saturday night rolls around, ok?"

i had no idea what he meant, but i'd find out soon enough.

*     *     *     *     *

by the time saturday night did roll around, word had gotten out--we had a full house.  the lights were dimmed, candles lit, margaritas flowing and chattering fags jammed into every available nook and cranny.  not exactly an atmosphere conducive to conjuring up spirits, i thought to myself, but whatever.

the stage was set:  the furniture in the living room had been pushed to the periphery, and two opposing dining-room chairs set up at its center, with a third off to the side for the guy who'd be recording the spirit's every utterance on a legal pad [me, as it turned out].

when the time came, paul called for quiet, and he and royce took their places.

they sat across from each other so close that their feet were almost touching, and balanced the board on their knees.  upon this shaky foundation was laid the planchette, upon which the tips of their fingers came to rest.

as the room fell silent, paul called out, "is there anybody out there?  i'm sure this old house has some stories to tell."

nothing.

paul repeated the question, and waited--again, nothing.

this went on for several minutes, as the crowd grew increasingly raucous--when all of a sudden, the pointer jerked violently across the board to 'yes,' and royce said, "ah, we've got a live one."

the laughter stopped, and the room got very quiet.

our spirit's name, as it turned out, was jackrabbit, and he "answered" questions--from royce and paul, and from the audience at large--for almost an hour.

and boy, was he a chatterbox--i was writing down each letter the pointer stopped at, and i swear to god it was moving so fast i could barely keep up. i further swear that royce and paul's eyes were closed--hell, they weren't even looking down; there was no way they were doing this on their own, and the answers to each person's question were too weirdly on-point to be made up.

paul tired pretty quickly, so several of us took turns at the board, sitting across from royce, with varying degrees of success. some couldn't get the thing to move at all, and others could barely keep it on the board.

me?  i'll never forget the feeling that came over me when i took my place across from royce, placed my fingers on the planchette, someone called out a question--i don't remember what--and that goddam thing flew across the board, completely independent of any conscious effort on my part.  but once it happened, and i accepted that it was happening, it was almost like good sex--i just let go, and let the spirit take me where it would.

please remember--up to this point i had been about as sensitive to the "spirit world" as a pile of rocks, and this was my first tangible inkling that maybe there was something out there after all, even if it was nothing more than a collective consciousness we were tapping into.

anyway, as the alcohol flowed and the crowd's awe faded, the questions became silly, and the session ended when jackrabbit's answers began to take on a childish, petulant tone that quickly degenerated into dark, violent threats against a couple of the biggest wise-asses.  royce, who had warned us earlier to be respectful, said the spirit wasn't happy about not being taken seriously.

whatever--bottom line, what had started out as lighthearted fun turned ugly and scary just as fast, and we quit, headed out for the bars, and those of us who weren't already got shitfaced as quickly as possible.

*     *     *     *     *

we talked about doing it again, but somehow never got around to it--life, as it has a tendency to do, intervened.

andrew and i parted ways shortly thereafter.

royce, turns out, was closer to the other side than any of us knew.  his undoing--paul and i both tried to talk him out of it--would prove to be a late-term circumcision gone awry

a white-faced paul after viewing the damage: "lemme put it this way--if he ever wants a blowjob again, he'll have to drive to silverlake"

the resulting infection from which ultimately killed him.

i'd move out a few months after that, leaving paul with two new roommates--the legendary dougs--to fill the void royce and i left in our wake.

ultimately, paul himself would abandon 841 and move in with his friends rod and tim--who, while they welcomed him with open arms, wouldn't allow the ouija board under their roof.

which is how it ended up in my possession, forgotten until today.

my only regret is that i didn't clean out this corner of the garage a little earlier--this woulda been a perfect halloween post.

sandwich, anyone?

.

my mother was alive, although a mere tot, when the last american double eagle was minted.  just shy of a full ounce of gold, it was a thing of beauty:

and it was worth twenty american dollars--i.e., this damn thing was spending money.

of course, if you didn't wanna walk around with a bunch o' huge, clunky gold coins in your pockets, you could, like most people, use the infinitely-more convenient greenback instead



secure in the knowledge that, anytime you wanted, you could freely switch between the two.  because, as it had been since its inception, every american paper dollar in circulation--as it said right there on its face--was fully redeemable in an immutably-fixed amount of gold.

by the time my mother was eating solid food, that was no longer true--americans had by then been forced by their government to surrender their gold, given $20 and change for each ounce they possessed, and then left to watch in helpless dismay as that same government then hiked the exchange rate to $35 an ounce, thus (a) granting itself the ability to print tons of new dollars, which had the effect of (b) instantly diminishing its own citizens' wealth by almost half.

nice, huh?  all done in the name of patriotism, of course--and thus, dollar inflation was born.

we kept it in check for awhile, but only because our international trading partners weren't as easily cowed as our citizens--having gold-backed currencies themselves, they demanded the same from us.  and thus, gold remained internationally redeemable at $35 per ounce for almost 40 more years.

what changed?  simple:  the french, shrewdly realizing by the late 60's that we were running huge trade deficits and couldn't possibly be paying for the vietnam debacle without printing far more dollars than could be redeemed at a mere $35/oz, started demanding gold instead of greenbacks in settlement of trade.  this drain on fort knox went on until 1971, when nixon finally said "fuck it" and closed the gold window.

and thus, freed from the shackles of the gold standard, america fired up the printing presses and never looked back.

*     *     *     *     *

silver?  now, silver was different--a relatively cheap, unappreciated metal, silver remained the american coin of the realm well into my childhood.  quarters, dimes, half-dollars--they were all 90% silver until 1965.



until, that is, the money-sucking military-industrial complex swung into full gear, and that quickly changed.  i still remember how they sold our money's sudden new debasement to the american people:




see?  we were "saving" silver with these new coins.  they even had a cute name--they were called "sandwich" coins, for the fact that, instead of the solid silver of the originals, they consisted of a thick copper core, with a thin coating of cheap nickel on each side (i.e., not a speck of silver to be found).

i remember when they came into circulation, all the kids at school couldn't wait to trade their stodgy old silver coins for the neat new sandwich versions because they were so shiny and cool.  but we were just dumb kids--what did we know?

in retrospect, it's the reaction of the adults of america to the new coins that's so goddam disheartening.  most of 'em were old enough to remember when their gold had been taken away a mere 30 years before, but even with that memory fresh in their minds, they let their silver be stolen with nary a whimper.

*     *     *     *     *

today?

it would take seventy-one $20 bills to buy that same ounce of gold a single twenty woulda bought you in 1933.

the silver ratio's not as extreme--you can still pick up a pre-1965 silver quarter for only twenty-two of today's copper/nickel quarters--a bargain, you ask me.

why did i write this post?  because i'm tired of being called glenn beck, and because i'm tired of hearing all this bullshit from the government and the economists and the pseudo-intelligentsia about how gold and silver are barbarous relics which have no place in today's "modern" monetary system.

but mainly, because i'm tired of americans looking at "inflation" as just a commonplace occurrence, like the weather or something.  because it's not--it's a systematic, carefully calculated theft of your wealth.

eighty years ago, folks, gold was money in america--and forty-five years ago, silver was, too.

and you know what?  regardless of how much these assholes try to convince you otherwise, they still ARE money--in fact, the only money that matters.

a fact that's gonna become only more apparent in the coming months--trust me.

mkf weighs in on the israeli/palestinian situation

.

so tonight i came across an anti-israel rant on a blog i follow to which i took exception, and since (a) posting around here has been light lately, and (b) my response to same was my first decent drunken comment in months, i'm re-posting it here before i stagger off to bed:

it always amazes me when, given the choice between supporting the israelis or the palestinians, the faggots almost always go with the side that would superglue their assholes shut right before beheading 'em.

me? i go with the side that doesn't inculcate its children from birth with the belief that the other side are subhuman pigs who deserve to be slaughtered in the streets, and that sacrificing themselves in the accomplishment of this goal is their god-given mission in life.

these people coulda had their own state 10 years ago--the israelis bent over backwards agreeing to every concession arafat asked for while clinton and madeline albright simultaneously kissed his ass, and it still wasn't enough. why? because that might've brought peace, and that's the last thing the palestinians really want--whiny, bomb-lobbing victimhood's much more fun.

don't worry, tho--the palestinians have demographics on their side, and through sheer numbers they'll overrun the israelis soon enough--i give it 20-30 years. and then the one oasis of stable, western-friendly civilization in the middle east will descend into the chaos characteristic of the rest of the region, and every faggot in america but me will raise a glass in celebration.

[and if none of the above moves you even a little, i recommend you get naked with at least one israeli soldier before you condemn the whole country to hell--trust me, it'll change even your brother's mind.]

and in case you're wondering, his name was shaly, it happened about 10 years ago over the course of a weekend at the century plaza hotel, and its effect on israeli/mkf relations was incalculable.

yeah, so i've got ADD--eat me, you smug, skinny little bastard

.

so the other day i storm into the apple store in a righteous froth of indignation--my new toy's giving me less than half the battery life they promised and i wanna know why, goddammit.

genius:  have you changed your "energy saver" settings?

mkf:  no.

genius:  you're keeping the screen at no more than 3/4 brightness when you're on battery?

mkf, scornfully: yes.

genius:  you turn bluetooth off when you're not using it?

mkf:  of course.

genius:  are you watching movies at full volume, running multiple programs or doing anything else that requires a lot of processing power?

mkf: nah, i'm just surfing the web.  i'm tellin ya--there's something wrong with this thing, and i want a new one.

he turns the machine toward him, flips it open, pushes a button, snorts, pokes the genius next to him, says, "get this--guy's got 17 windows open and he's wondering why his battery's dying."

oh.

tinfoil-hat wearers of the world, unite!

god knows i have my negative qualities, but i've never been one to gloat.

ok--almost never.

hey, we all have our limits--and after five solid years of ridicule and scorn for my "extremist" views, vindication has finally found me.

cast your mind, if you will, back in time to october 20, 2008 [i.e., back when i told y'all to buy gold for the first time].  the chart looked like this:

yeah,  $800--and boy, was i ripped to shreds by my sensible, mainstream-media-reading friends for even suggesting such idiocy.

flash-forward to this morning--a scant two years later:

that's right, bitches:  we're at $1,420--a mere 78% return over two years.  not bad for a falling-down drunk, if i do say so myself.

and although i haven't advertised it [what can i say--at some point even mkf gets tired of pissing in the wind], after a great run with gold, back in mid-august i rolled most of my paper holdings over to the infinitely-more-crazy silver stocks.

why, you ask?  because ben bernanke told me to.

and lemme tell ya--in the six days since good ol' ben banged the final nail into our collective national coffin via QE2, my 401(k) [in which i can't trade options] has risen by 20%, while my private trading account [in which i can] has more than doubled.

pyrrhic victory, of course: i win, even as my country goes down the tubes. almost sucks all the fun out of it.

almost.

an interim post

.

yeah, i know all three of you can't wait for my promised post-mortem of the dead-on-arrival california proposition 23--but while i'm putting it together, take a look at the following chart:

and now for the only statistic that really matters these days:  while california has been hemorrhaging jobs for the last 10 years, texas has been creating 'em literally by the hundreds of thousands.

as you ponder the above--and as preface to my prop 23 post--you might wanna ask yourself a couple questions:

(1) why is it that the most highly-taxed and/or unionized states are generally also the ones that have the highest unemployment and/or are the most broke?

      and more particularly to the topic at hand,

(2)  what's more important in the overall scheme of things:  further impoverishing an already-bankrupt state for the strictly symbolic cause of "saving the planet", or preserving what little industry and technology said state state still possesses in order to provide employment for its remaining productive citizens?

california, in its wisdom, just made its choice.  tell me, what do you think?

nice knowing you, california

.

remember how i was talking yesterday about how it really didn't much matter whether the red or blue team came out on top?  well, forget all that when it comes to state and local elections, because they still very much matter.  and few states faced more crucial choices than did california this election year.

the results are in, and how much more fucked are we today than we were yesterday? lemme count the ways:

1.  jerry brown

if you had told me a year ago that california--a state that has been bled dry by state-worker unions, their bloated salaries and pensions--would turn for salvation to the guy who

• not only foisted the state-worker unions on us in the first place, but
• whose campaign was almost totally financed by said state-worker unions,

i would have laughed in your face.  well, today i'm still laughing, but only because i have a sick sense of humor.

of course, jerry brown's re-ascendency wouldn't have been possible without the help of

2.  meg whitman

if you had told me a year ago that a bright, accomplished former CEO of one of california's most successful companies with an impeccable track record and a $150-million war chest would lose by 13 points to fuckin' jerry brown--again, i wouldn't have believed you.  but somehow meg managed the impossible.

how'd she pull it off?  she had a two-pronged strategy for failure:

• outspend and out-hardline her conservative primary opponent--and then once he was put away, do an about-face in the general and start pandering to the middle and left in an attempt to please everybody; and
• waffle, obfuscate and dodge every challenge and question that came her way

to the point that, by election day, nobody believed a word she said.  she deserved to go down, but trust me--the last laugh will be on us.

and speaking of laughs, the voters of california in their wisdom also went big for

3.  proposition 25

"prop 25 will ensure that the legislators don't get paid until they pass a budget!" the ads blared, over and over--and the people bought it.

what the ads didn't say was that prop 25 would ensure the speedy delivery of those budgets by reducing the pesky 2/3 vote needed to pass them to a simple majority, thus effectively giving the permanent democratic majority carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want without the necessity of a single republican vote.

so, one more vital check removed from the few checks and balances we had left.  seriously--can't wait to see next year's budget.

but as bad as the passage of 25 will be for california, it's nothing compared to what happened to

4.  proposition 23

the failure of which will have such profound and far-reaching implications for the state's future that it deserves its own post [i.e., i'm tired and will get to it tomorrow--but, seriously, it does].

one team two team red team blue team

.

as america breathlessly awaits the results of tomorrow's crucial election

will the red team take the house?  will the blue team hold the senate?

i just sit back, shake my head and take another swig of vodka.

it's sorta the same feeling i had back in august of 20002008 when i watched the redblue team jubilantly anoint its chosen one in philadelphiadenver and realized, "holy shit, this idiot's gonna be our next president."

and as america's deterioration continues under his watch, the current idiot is furiously traversing the country stumping for his team's candidates--when, if he asked me, i'd tell him what he should be doing is rooting for the red team's victory tomorrow, so that

when the shit really hits the fan over the next couple years, thanks to the combined incompetence, criminal malfeasance and neglect of both teams

he can conveniently blame the other team's obstruction of his policies for the coming catastrophe, thus assuring his team's re-ascendancy in 2012.

it's all so stupid, really. nobody in american politics ever thinks more than one move ahead--it's all about the next election.

right now, the red team's effectively doing everything it can to set itself up to be the fall-guy for the next leg down, and the blue team's doing everything it can to resist them.

they don't see it that way, of course; it's all about the moment.

tomorrow night the red team will exult in its victory, convinced that they've just saved the country--you know, just like the blue team did two years ago.

one of these days, the country's gonna wake up and realize that while we were squabbling over such red team-blue team distractions as abortion, gay marriage and the "war on terror," the bankers made off with all the money, and the chinese with all the oil.

*     *     *     *     *

look, folks, you can pull for whatever team you want--knock yourselves out.  i just wish more of you understood that the people who really pull the strings in america couldn't care less whether you wear a red shirt or a blue shirt

just so long as you keep the blinders on.

v again

.

outta the blue, he calls

if he hadn't, sooner or later i would have

and invites me downtown to see his new place, on the fifth floor of a grand old residence hotel on spring street that had once been home to the cream of hollywood's golden age.

he makes me knock twice

i knew he'd be nervous, just like i knew i wouldn't be

and before he even has time to show me around the apartment mary pickford had once called home--and outta the 7,000 or so songs from which i know his ipod has to choose--a song i had sent him comes up on shuffle.  as the banjo twang fills the room, he turns to me, wide-eyed, says, "i swear to god i didn't plan that."

i know, babe--and if the same damn song hadn't come up on shuffle tonight, i probably wouldn't be writing this

over dinner i warn him that being around me's not much fun these days.

he says, "was it ever?"

and just like that, we're back.

*     *     *     *     *

for those of you who don't understand this post, lemme just paraphrase tolstoy and say that, while most easy relationships are all alike, every complicated relationship is complicated in its own way, and leave it at that.


or you can just listen to the music.

i just love these online tests

.

pretty much nails me, don't you think?

really, ben?

Mr. Bernanke has used the analogy of a golfer with a new putter: Unsure how it will work, he finds the best strategy is to tap lightly at first and keep tapping until the golfer figures out how best to use the putter.

jon hilsenrath of the wall street journal,
describing federal reserve chairman
ben bernanke's intended approach to
the next round of money-printing
(you know--the one he promised
wouldn't be necessary)

for any of you out there who still harbor illusions that the experts in washington steering us through this crisis are firmly in control and know what they're doing: if this bit of brilliance doesn't once and for all open your eyes, then i fuckin' give up.

seriously--god help us all.

postcards from the boom

.

came across the following email exchange tonight while looking for something else from that year, and it instantly took me back to those lazy, hazy, crazy days of what turned out to be the height of the california real-estate insanity:

From: [noblesavage]

To: [mkf]

Date:  Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:28:52 -0700

Subject: Got the mail today...

...and there was a postcard from a realtor offering an 850 square foot house on Betty Way for $825,000.  I was shocked.  I went online and here it is for only $799K.  Here it is:

[link to listing]

Then I saw this 1 Bedroom 1 Bath condo on Kings Road across from Gelson's for $419K:

[link to listing]

I'm just wondering when the bubble is going to burst and just how ugly it is going to get. 

Happy Saturday.

Rob

----------------

my reply:

i've been clinching my sphincter in anticipation of the coming crash for so long that i've got the asshole of a 12-year-old again, rob. hell, the little house on portola that i (thought i) sold at the top of the market has appreciated at least $150,000 since we closed. 

i've given up prognosticating. our entire economy is a house of cards waiting to collapse; the idiot masses simply don't know it yet. america is, metaphorically, wile e. coyote pedaling madly in mid-air, right before he realizes that he's just run off the cliff.....

*     *     *     *     *

what's the point of this post, you ask?  the point is, if even way back in 2005 a couple shmoes like noblesavage and myself knew where that runaway train was headed, is it really possible that all the geniuses in new york and washington completely missed what we saw so clearly?

way i've always figured it, there are two possibilities, and only two: either some or all of them were (a) so collectively and individually stupid, greedy and short-sighted that yeah, they did miss it; and/or (b) so irredeemably, recklessly evil that they totally saw the inevitable outcome of their machinations and simply didn't care, because they knew they'd get theirs.

either way, every day that anybody who was in a position of fiscal or elective power in america on the august day on which the above email exchange occurred and didn't sound the alarm (i.e., almost all of 'em) is one day too many for this country boy.

which means, among other things, that i literally can't wait to watch batshit-crazy sharron angle mop the nevada desert with the dried-out husk of harry reid come election day.

i'll be in the booth on tuesday, and i don't plan to vote for a single incumbent.  how about you?

this post has no title

.
i've been called a bad pet owner more than once, and probably with some justification.

and god knows i've been lax with maggie--probably shoulda put a collar and tags on her at the very least, but i could never bring myself to do it.

see, she was wild from the day she was born, and as soon as she didn't need me to bottle-feed her anymore, she made it clear she wanted out to roam the canyon.

and once she was big enough, i obliged her--opened the doors wide, let her come and go as she pleased, tossed a handful of cat chow in her bowl twice a day along with a little water and that was pretty much it--i used to joke that she was the bic disposable lighter of pets.

i never worried much that a car or coyote would get her; she was the nervous, hypervigilant type and always on guard when she was outdoors--far more predator than prey, i told myself [and god knows she'd left me enough dismembered birds and field mice over the years to prove it].

sometimes she took off for two-three days at a time, but she always came back, chuffing a little "hello" as i scooped her into my arms and asked her where the fuck she'd been.

this time it's been thirteen days, and i've pretty much accepted that she's not coming back.

i tell myself she chose freedom over the safety of litter-box domesticity a long time ago, and that given the choice she'd do it again.

i tell myself that honoring that choice was the best thing i could've done for her--god knows she had a great run as queen of her domain.

i tell myself that every day she lived beyond the morning i rescued her right after her birth nine years ago was borrowed time anyway, so she was damn lucky to have me around.

i tell myself a lot of things.

godspeed, my sweet girl, wherever you are.

a pilgrimage to the holy city

dragged this kid home one night

      back in the mid-nineties, when random hookups were still fun

and during the preliminaries he surprised me with his musical tastes.  no hip-hop for this boy; he was truly old school--loved burt bacharach, sergio mendez, herb alpert--

all i needed to hear.  i fished the appropriate cd outta the drawer, cued up the track i'd always wanted to fuck somebody to, turned down the lights, started working him up--and when i judged the moment to be right, reached over and pushed "play".

try it sometime, and if you time your big finish with its big finish--and it's an eleven-second window, very forgiving--trust me, it'll be memorable.

quote of the day

.

It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.  Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare.

Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics,
University of California, Santa Barbara*,

in his letter relinqishing his 67-year membership
in the American Physical Society

read the letter, in which a principled scientist lays out the path whereby, in his lifetime, science has abandoned the objective search for truth and become the paid whore of the highest bidder--in this case, the global warming/carbon-offset cabal.  it's devastating in its heartfelt eloquence.

and it's not just climate science--far from it.  the food industry's paid scientists are telling us that high-fructose corn syrup doesn't make us fat, and that genetically-modified foods and antibiotic-drenched livestock are perfectly safe, even though europe has banned them.

the pharmaceutical industry's paid scientists assure us that loading up kids with ritalin and antidepressants is perfectly safe, even as levels of bipolar disorder among young people who take such drugs is skyrocketing.

people laughed back when the tobacco industry trotted out scientists who tried to tell us smoking was perfectly safe--why is it that we as a society no longer regard such paid whores with the healthy skepticism they deserve?

__________________

*and lest you be tempted to write prof. lewis off as some crackpot, here are a few of his creds:  Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

friend of bill

"ok, mike--ease it out like i showed you, reeeeeeal easy."

my first driving lesson. i'm 14, nervously hunched behind the wheel of bill's spotless '68 impala coupe which was [unfortunately] equipped with a three-on-the-tree.

instead of easing it out, i pop the clutch, the car flies backwards outta the driveway and across the street, bounces over the curb and mows down a grove of tender saplings in the neighbor's yard before coming to a stop.  i cringe, await the inevitable.

bill's response:  "hmm...maybe i shoulda backed her out for you."

any wonder i loved the guy?

my mother never remarried, but of the two men she dated seriously after my father's death, bill was the first, and by far my favorite.  a special agent for the IRS [i.e., the gun-carrying kind], bill was suave, smart, easygoing and funny as hell. oh, and he got me.

for our second driving lesson, bill took me out in the country in his old chevy pickup, drove up to a big tree, popped the clutch and slammed into it, turned to me and said, "see? you can't hurt this one."

great as he might've been in my young eyes, bill was a tortured soul. he'd recently left his bible-banging frigid wife after twenty years of misery but he couldn't get past leaving his kids, and it ate at him.

so he drank.

at first it was innocuous.  he'd pull into the driveway in that impala and get out holding a can or a glass--if it was something new, i'd ask for a taste and he'd usually indulge me.  the alcohol didn't seem to affect him much; if anything, it enhanced the dry, sardonic aspect of his personality i loved so much.

problem was, bill's problem, as it usually does, got worse.

one sunday shortly after the driving-lesson fiasco, bill, my mother, siblings and i go walking around downtown after a movie and end up at the local pontiac dealership.  bill watches in bemusement as we all go apeshit over the grand prix featured on the showroom floor.

the next day, there's a honk in our driveway and we walk out to find the impala's gone and bill's waving out the window of his new car.

any wonder i loved the guy?


of course i probably wouldn't have been nearly as enthusiastic about said new car had i known then that one late night a couple months later he'd use it to attempt to kill my mother and himself by drunkenly and at insanely high speeds running every red light in town when she picked the wrong moment to try and break it off with him.

how did it finally end?  with me taking the phone away from my mother one day after school and telling bill's by-then irredeemably drunken ass, "don't call here again--it's time for you to go away and leave us alone."

to his credit, he did just that:  took early retirement, crawled off to dallas and drank until he died.

i remember the day--we got the call, my mother broke down and i turned to stone.

*     *     *     *     *

there was my uncle huby before him, my uncle don after him, my mother's friend billie and her new husband fred--and, of course, the club.  object lessons all to young mike of the pitfalls of alcohol.

and they stuck for a long time--i got drunk exactly once in high school.  at college parties, i'd have one or two to be sociable.  when in my mid-thirties i finally came out and hit the bars, i'd buy a drink and carry it around all night just to have something in my hand.

why i waited this long to go from basic teetotaler to falling-down-drunk in five short years has already been dealt with in this blog--mostly pseudo-lightheartedly, 'cause god knows i didn't wanna scare my readers.

now that this blog is dead and i no longer have readers,  i can of course write whatever the fuck i want.

*     *     *     *     *

after four years, v and i hit our first rough patch this summer and our relationship folded like the cheap card table it apparently was.

i miss him every day, and can only hope that's what he really wanted.

*     *     *     *     *

invited myself over to kenny's the other night, asked him what was new in his life--it had been awhile.  he didn't disappoint.  eyes shining, he regaled me with tales of his recent trip to central america volunteering for doctors without borders, among all sorts of other gloriously selfless shit.

when he was done, he asked me what's new in my life, and i told him the truth.

he then tells me what i knew he would, which--fuck the sex, i realize later--is why i'm there.

i protest.  i'm not like him--i'm not warm, i don't do groups, i hate people and people hate me, i don't have charisma and i can't hold an audience in the palm of my hand like i've seen him do--i'm not like kenny, i'm not like anybody.

he looks me in the eye, says it again: "90 meetings in 90 days, mike.  you do it, i promise you'll come across someone who's story's just like yours, and when it happens it'll change you just like it did me.  i wouldn't have the life i have now if i hadn't done it, and you can do it, too."

yeah?  i'll have to drink on that one.

_________________

sober update: somebody asked me why my memories of people are always wrapped up with cars.  i dunno, they just are.

the night a hookup saved the canyon

.

[usually there's a trigger, a song or something, but not tonight--this one just arose from the depths of my memory spontaneously and unbidden.]


in the world of mkf, there's two kindsa fuckbuddies:  (1) the dime-a-dozens who wait for my call, and (2) the one-in-a-millions i drop everything for. darrin fell into the latter category, which is why when he booty-called me at around three on the monday morning in question, and even though i was well into mkf cocktail #2, i without even a moment's hesitation topped off my drink and hit the road.

an artist of sorts, darrin lived in a dingy hollywood loft near western & santa monica, which location presented me with the eternal dilemma:  go south and then east via sunset to save time, or take the long way up through the valley to the 101 and thus dodge the cops?

as always when even mildly shitfaced [and unlike oliver stone and countless other idiot celebrities whose hubris overcomes their common sense], i went with plan b--a decision which on this particular night would prove to have ramifications far above and beyond my successful avoidance of a DUI.

pitch-black and deserted as always at this hour, which is why i chose this route--i loved the canyon like this.

rounding the hairpin at the nature conservancy, i saw something alien and unexpected up ahead--looked like a harmless little campfire burning brightly on the side of the road, but the sight of it was sufficient to drive all thoughts of darrin from my head, bring me to a screeching halt, fumble for the phone and dial 911 for the first time in my life.

while waiting for the cavalry to arrive, i clambered outta my truck and tried to stamp it out--hell, even went so far as to pour my drink on it--all to no avail.  in what seemed like no time [thanks, i'd find out later, to gasoline], the little campfire exponentially grew, worked its way under the chain-link fence next to the road and started licking at the brush surrounding a big, dry tree on the other side.  i remember thinking, "nice knowing you, little canyon."

on the phone with 911 again, stamping for all i was worth and screaming for backup, i remember feeling it before seeing it--the heavy diesel rumble coming down from the fire station at the top of the hill--and then, finally, blessedly, the flashing lights rounding the curve.

they'd sent the big one, complete with lotsa hot firemens hangin off it.

once it was out, the captain told me that if i hadn't happened along right behind the arsonist, this coulda been a really bad one.

"god sure had a plan for you tonight," he said, and smiled.  [when he asked what had brought me out at such an odd hour, i gulped, mumbled something about being hungry and oh thank heaven for 7-11 whilst trying to avoid either looking him in the eye or breathing directly in his face].

darrin, whom i'd forgotten about in all the excitement, was rightly pissed and having none of my lame-ass heroics--until i finally got to his place, he got a good whiff of me and we had us some of the most smokin' make-up sex ever.

two morals of this story:  (1) if you're gonna keep a category-2 fuckbuddy waiting, you'd better have an excuse at least as good as this one; and (2) next time you're confronted with a foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalist who claims gays and their unnatural perversions serve no useful purpose in god's plan for humanity, point 'em to this post, ok?

state of the blog

the boy at erewhon

.

so i've mentioned i'm on this health kick, right?

after quickly tiring of the sticker shock that is and will forever be the hallmark of the whole foods shopping experience, this week i decided to move further east, thinking an independent market's gotta be cheaper.

yeah well, think again--the old erewhon's no more.  today i'm in their slick, new nuts-and-seeds aisle swooning over $20/lb. raw macademias and wondering why the fuck i ever thought i'd save money in this place, when i suddenly become aware of a sweet, clear voice harmonizing with the golden oldie being piped in overhead.

i turn to my left to find about ten feet down the aisle the cutest lil' ol' boy you ever saw--short and dirty-blond, erewhon apron wrapped around his tight, compact bod, quietly and obliviously singing along to the muzak as he restocks his shelves.

i catch his eye with a smile and say [because i still always know what to say] "so 40 years later, touch me's still cool?"

he falls all over himself assuring me that yeah, it is; turns out he and his band are currently rehearsing love me two times for their next gig--am i a doors fan?  "from way back in the day," i assure him back, tell him one of my favorite jim morrison anecdotes and the payoff's immediate--from the body language and the look in his eye, i know i've got him.

we spend the next half-hour traversing every aisle in the store, this kid and i, shooting the shit as he personally and painstakingly seeks out every item on my list, and i casually toss it all into my cart without even looking at the prices.

as the easy intimacy between us builds, he knows exactly where this is going, and so do i--i.e., absolutely nowhere, but that's not the point.

how much did it all cost?  that's not the point, either.

the point is, the hermit needed a reminder that flirting's like riding a bicycle--you never forget.

why i'm not a republican

.
there's lots of yammering these days about whether or not the bush tax cuts should be extended.  i really don't give a shit either way, but if arguing over what amounts to a rounding error when we're on the hook for upwards of $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 20 years makes people feel better, then what the hell, i'm in.

the democrats maintain that the rich are rich enough and should give some back, and the republicans scream in horror that raising taxes on the $250k-and-up crowd will kill business investment, and thus jobs.

for some perspective on this issue, here are a couple charts* (because you know i'm all about the charts).  first, let's look at a couple income trendlines from 1979 to 2001:

if you just look at the lines, there's no real surprise--since about the time reagan took office, the rich have been getting steadily richer, and the middle-class and poor have been getting poorer--there's a shock, right?

it's when you look at the percentage numbers going up the y-axis that your eyes start to bug out.  to make it clearer, take a look at this chart:

 

that's right, folks--today, in the united states of america,  the top 1% possess a third of the wealth of our nation, while the bottom half--150 million people--possess a mere 2.5%.  it's a slow swindle that's taken a hundred or so years to pull off, but it's damn near complete.

thing that kills me about republicans is, they know this.  they know, and they still--even the poor ones--happily and with great moral conviction vote year after year to continue to tilt the playing field in favor of the robber barons who are sucking what's left of the lifeblood outta this country's veins.

back when i was young and semi-idealistic, i once asked a very smart (and very rich) man if he didn't think it unfair that the rich were so rich and the poor so poor.  i'll never forget his answer--he laughed and said, "mike, if you took all the money from the rich, gathered it in a big pile and distributed it equally to everybody in the world, within five years it'd all be right back where it started from."

sad thing is, he was probably right--aside from the advantage of having the politicians in their pockets, the wealthy will always be far smarter and savvier when it comes to money, and more self-disciplined and able to delay gratification than the unschooled, impulsive poor.  but in their overreaching hubris, that elite 1% have apparently forgotten that they're far outnumbered--and the way things are going, that may end up being all that matters.

______________

*h/t clusterstock

because for me, it's all about building 7

.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

arthur conan doyle

unlike most of america, i slept through it all.

sad but true:  by the time i dragged my lazy ass outta bed at around eleven PDT on that ill-fated tuesday morning and flipped on the tv, it was all over but the endless replays.

which, in retrospect, is why i think i managed to retain some objectivity even as i watched in slack-jawed horror as the towers dropped over and over again in slow motion on my television screen.  observed repeatedly and ex post facto, the only thing my architecturally-trained brain could think was, "wow--looks like every controlled demolition i've ever seen."

dismissed that as crazy, of course--until later, i saw the buried WTC 7 footage [i.e., the almost-ignored building that wasn't hit by an airliner on that godawful day but nevertheless obligingly and impossibly disintegrated in exactly the same way as the twin towers], and connected the dots for myself.

because sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words

.

[or, in this case, the inspired juxtaposition of two.]

say what you want about drudge, that fucker knows exactly what he's doing--and is really, really good at it.

the flip side of "dreamweaver"

.

back in the late summer of 1976, i came crawling back home to east texas after yet another ill-fated adventure with beau [one of several i haven't written about yet], humbly enrolled as a freshman in tyler junior college for the upcoming fall semester and took a job at the nearest ken's pizza [which, unbelievably, is apparently still there] to help pay my way through same.

it was hard, miserable work, except for when it wasn't--once the doors closed for the night, we jacked up the jukebox, cued up our favorites and rocked the night away as we cleaned the place up, and life was good.

until that fateful night when somebody pushed the wrong button and instead of "dreamweaver," we got the b side.  at first we were, like, wtf, and then the bassline kicked in and "let it out" pretty much immediately moved into high rotation on our nightly hit parade.  we kept waiting for gary to release it as a stand-alone single, but it never happened.

*     *     *     *     *

flash-forward 25 (+/-) years:  my baby sister the producer [about as impressed with celebrity as i am, god love her--she once left me a message saying "mike, i'm stuck entertaining the dalai lama tonight--anything you want me to ask him?"], walked in one night, tossed me a cd and said, "i interviewed gary wright last week for a piece on vintage rockers and i know you love him, so i asked him to autograph his 'best of' for you."

to which, after flipping it over and scanning the contents, i could only cry in injured disbelief, "where the fuck is 'let it out'?!"
 

*     *     *     *     *

flash-forward to now:  i'm drinking tonight and this poor, great, unappreciated song is what came up on shuffle at just the right point in my incipient drunkenness [what--you expected a different explanation for this post?].
 

because this is the first time i've laughed out loud in at least a month and a half

.

and because god knows i'm nothing if not a connoisseur of pedophile humor.

[h/t todd x]

in other words, if you're a rich, white illegal alien, we don't want you

.

[disclaimer:  while piers morgan is undoubtedly one of the more useless assholes i can think of offhand, this story is what caught my shitfaced attention tonight i always try to rise above my own personal prejudices when it comes to defending core principles, because that's the kinda noble, high-minded blogger i am.]


think about this a minute:  here's a british citizen who's all set to finalize a multi-million dollar contract with a major american corporation which will ultimately end up contributing god only knows how many hundreds of thousands of sorely-needed dollars to our tax base--but no, our government's gonna give him shit and hold up production of his new show because he's an alien.

at the same time as this highly-productive, highly-desirable foreign petitioner is being made to jump through hoops for an american work visa, eric holder and janet napolitano are practically down at the arizona border with checkered flags waving in hordes of penniless mexicans and central americans who will each, over the course of their lifetimes, cost the american taxpayer at least three dollars for every dollar they contribute in taxes.

but hey--rich white people with shit to lose don't usually vote for democrats, do they?

finally, something sufficiently earth-shattering to drag mkf outta hibernation for a minute

she's throwing in the towel--i can't believe it.

after all the slings and arrows--bitter invective, nudie pictures, boycotts, demonstrations, unauthorized biographies, death threats--after all the crap this tough little woman has taken over the years and shrugged off, bloodied but unbowed--after all that, she lets the "n" word take her down.

god help us all.

*     *     *     *     *

[context for this post:  back in the early nineties, i literally got too sick to smoke.  three weeks later and all better, i figured what the hell--i've done the withdrawal thing, let's see how being a non-smoker feels.  it actually went great until a song i liked came on the radio, and the urge to reach for a cigarette became damn near irresistible.

and thus began my love/hate affair with talk radio.]


i've listened to dr. laura since back when she was the quiet voice in the wilderness toiling away on the graveyard shift on KFI-AM los angeles.  i remember thinking when she was suddenly plucked from late-night obscurity to helm the high-profile noon-to-three slot that she'd go national in no time.

i've gone with her through her phases--from semi-liberal and tolerant to rigid orthodox-jew and out the other side to somewhere in between.

i've followed her as she agonized over the gay issue--from laissez-faire nonchalance, to "are they a biological mistake?" [a perfectly legitimate question, btw, and one i've asked more than once], to breaking with the faith she had worked so hard to attain--i remember the day it happened, because i was listening--she said she could no longer condemn gay relationships, because "no one should have to live their life alone."

i've been there as her seemingly harsh philosophy regarding marriage and divorce and monogamy evolved over the course of many years as she (and i) listened to call after call from people who casually married and/or fucked around and had kids and then divorced, remarried and/or otherwise recoupled and then had more kids with the new guy/girl and then watched in uncomprehending horror as their original kids self-destructed.

i've listened to her initiate constructive dialogue in seemingly-irreconcilable marriages; i've listened to her reunite parents with seemingly-irreconcilable children--all in less than five minutes.

i've listened as she's made hard-resistant callers sit up and say, "my god, i never thought about it like that."

*      *      *      *      *

even when you're brilliant, the problem with doing basically the same shtick for 25-30 years is, you fall into certain patterns--when 90% of your calls become 100% predictable, you become peremptory, and that's what's happened to dr. laura.

which is why she she cut that black caller off--she heard 10% of the woman's issue and figured she could brilliantly extrapolate the other 90% like she usually does.

was she right--was the woman in question too goddam race-sensitive?  we'll never know, because the "n" word got in the way, and god knows that trumps everything else--even, apparently, the indomitable dr. laura.  and this is, ultimately, what pisses me off about this incident more than anything else:  by allowing her radio career to be ended on this note, she's given that ungodly word even more undeserved power than it had before.

*      *      *      *      *

[actually, that's not what pisses me off most--what pisses me off most is,  i will sorely miss those early afternoons happily semi-snoozing my way through the 99% of predictable calls just for that precious 1% when dr. laura still makes me sit up and say, "my god, i never thought about it like that."


and if you had any idea how seldom that happens in my life these days, you'd no doubt agree.]

if i'd known we were talking this kinda money, i'd have crapped the bed every day and made 'em spoon-feed me

.

so how much does a week in the hospital cost these days?

when you pick your jaw up off the floor, keep in mind this is just for the bed--the bills for all the various doctors and their various medications and tests will follow shortly.

the part i really love is, how since i have insurance, i get the discount [whereas, if i were some poor uninsured shlub who could no doubt totally afford it, i'd take the full hit].  and thus is the state of healthcare in america.

more than once in the past few years i've thought about chucking it all, cashing in my chips and traveling the world while i'm still young.  one of the main reasons that hasn't happened:  the thought that one little uninsured illness like the above could wipe me out.

and thus i remain an indentured (and insured) corporate servant, and probably will for the foreseeable.

[and for anyone who's considering commenting on how obamacare's gonna fix this shit--don't even, ok?]

the new mkf cocktail

.

so tonight noblesavage treats me to an early birthday dinner--essentially, the first non-work-related human contact i've had with anybody i personally know since since i got outta the hospital.

i relish the opportunity to leave the house--and to see him, because it's been awhile.  we argue the same old subjects and get nowhere as usual, but that's not what's remarkable about the evening.  what's remarkable about the evening is, faced with a panoply of mouth-watering carnivorous options spread before me, i happily opt for a simple greek salad.

that's right, folks--i'm now the "salad" guy.

wasn't always thus, i assure you.  hell, between the booze, my regular unhealthy diet plus all the crap i suddenly found myself stuffing into my face every day at the new job, i was on the verge of outgrowing my second pair of fat pants when the pneumonia struck.

and while i'm not ready to call that sudden affliction a gift, it did have some interesting after-effects.

that first night after having checked myself outta the hospital against doctor's orders and not feeling nearly as well as i insisted i did, i was scared shitless that i'd fucked up. i went to bed wheezing, still unable to draw a decent breath, but ended up getting my first good night's sleep in a week--nobody waking me up every two hours for fuckin' vital signs for a change, thank you baby jesus.

and next morning, instead of the standard hospital fare, i feasted on a fresh fruit-and-greens smoothie, courtesy of my blendtec and whole foods market.

that very afternoon i returned to work, assuring everybody i was fine [although god knows i wasn't, which everybody figured out pretty quick when i started coughing every time i tried to breathe].

whatever--that first night i headed down to the fitness center on my lunch hour, ran the treadmill up to 9.4 and did 30-second windsprints interspersed with what turned out to be overly optimistic two-minute recovery intervals [i.e., by the second round i was a gasping, coughing puddle of mush on the floor].

but the following night i did three--and two nights after that, i managed four. these days i'm up to eight with 90-second intervals, and i'm not coughing anymore.

and what's fueling this recovery? simple--the raw vegan diet i've adopted since getting outta the hospital. funny thing is, it was easy--somehow, this most recent trial by fire has killed my former urge to fill the empty with whatever cheap crap i could stuff in my mouth.

these days my diet consists of green smoothies [the one pictured above turned out to be a delicious, frosty concoction consisting of an orange, half a banana, a peach, a handful of blueberries, a huge handful of spinach, a few leaves of kale, half a cup of spring water and lots of ice], salads, guacamole, nut pates and other such vegan bullshit, and i don't miss the meat and junk food at all.

and the booze-bloat's dropping off--those last-resort fat pants i was worrying about having to upgrade are now falling off me, i'm working out again, my body's coming back, and my face is pretty much back to looking like it used to.

in other words, things are fine again, so i'm thinking maybe i should celebrate with a drink or two.

[you see where this is going, right?]