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?