Thursday´s child, a haiku

Horizon´s shade looms
Dark days on to get darker;
Stick to what you´ve got.

Captain Bridesmaid

Today is “Freudian Remembrance Day” at the blog, which means that it´s okay to keep on saying crazy stuff about the Spear of Destiny, only that on this specific day we´ll have to take the Freudian approach and consider it as the phallus of Nazi empowerment or something.
Else you may tell a funny story about your mom (but please keep it clean).

Let´s stick to the latter.
Back when I was a kid I was given the Captain Marvel action figure from the Superpowers toy line. It was a pretty neat action figure, with the sculpt ranging somewhere there in between the Don Newton and Kurt Schaffenberger-after-C.C. Beck versions of the character. It had an embroidered cloth cape with yellow trimmings, and when you squeezed his legs together he´d pop up his arms like if he were getting ready to fly or something.
He also came with this very cool mini-comic book which I´d basically take everywhere with me; I actually took it to the supermarket once with my mom, and I was (pardon the pun) marveled at the fact that Captain Marvel had the stamina of Atlas, and mom was buying milk of that same name.

Now, my parents have always despised superheroes.
Needless to say, it was hate at first sight for my mother and the Captain Marvel action figure; devil-woman must´ve had a chip on her shoulder the size of a sequoia or something. She was as mean as Dr. Sivana and Black Adam and Mr. Mind all rolled into one that day.
“Why is this toy dressed up like a bride,” I was asked in scorn as I waited for my dad´s ride to grandma´s house to lunch.
“It´s his cape,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Looks like a bridal veil to me,” she replied.
“Captain. Marvel. Is. No. Bride.” (More gritted teeth)
“Captain Marvel? Looks like Captain Bridesmaid to me.” It went on like that for the remainder of the week.

When it came to superheroes my parents were supervillains worse than Lex Luthor.
That old Hulk TV show, for instance, scared the crap outta me when I was very small… so every time mom and dad were flipping through the channels and caught the Hulk on, they´d call me right away, not telling me what it was. “C´mon son, you gotta see this!”
I´d cry the night away every damn time. I don´t like the Hulk to this day because of that.

On the other hand I did get over the Captain Bridesmaid thing (eventually). Took me almost two decades but I ended up buying this really cool collector´s edition Captain Marvel action figure a couple of years ago.
No cloth cape on this one, though.

Song for a future generation: a screenplay

FADE IN:

INT. KITCHEN AT MY PARENTS´ – EARLY MORNING
DAD storms in through the half-opened door. He holds a couple of CD cases in his hand.

DAD
You know Stravisnky?

He handles me down one of the CDs.

ME
Yeah, sure. Russian guy. Did the thing with the dinosaurs.

DAD
No. I don´t thing there were any dinosaurs involved.

ME
(picking up the CD)
Right on. “Rite of Spring” and all that. Dinosaur song.

DAD
(looks rather skeptical)
It´s that damn Walt Disney thing all over again, isn´t it?

ME
(staging a mock-dinosaur fight with my hands)
… And the T-Rex is fighting off this huge stegosaur…

Older

My birthday´s coming right up, there on Sunday the 15th.
Funny thing is, I´ll be 26. As old as the Flash!

Means absolutely nothing; very cool, though…

Inspiration for a screenplay

I´m not going to write a movie script. If I were, though, it would go something like this:

Guy in his late teens (protagonist) is courting this drop-dead gorgeous blonde at the beach (love interest), she the archetypal “hot chick” clad in a leopard-spot bikini. All of a sudden heck breaks loose and there are explosions everywhere.
Cut to an outer space shot, where an old Cold War-era Soviet weapons platform orbiting the Earth has just come back to life and is firing upon the planet. Space station belongs to the long-defunct “bat force” (antagonist) of the URSS, named for the queer fact that its crew stand upside-down in zero-G all the time.
First third of the movie is basically a boy-meets-girl sequence amidst commie fire pouring down from the sky. Needless to say, it is theirs the task of saving the world (established conflict).

They will need help, of course, and from the unlikeliest source possible: Enter this guy from Iceland called Onan Reykjavík (comic relief), named after that fellow in the Bible after whom the term “onanism” was coined. He´s in his mid-60s and should be played by Monty Python´s Eric Idle, else the gig is shot. O.R. claims a great deal about himself, which is exactly why he´s the only person on Earth capable of stopping the Soviet death satellite:
He claims he´s the first Caucasian man to have joined Haiti´s Tonton Macoute death-squad back in the late-1960s (true), he claims to have designed Lockheed´s SR-71 Blackbird spy-plane (false), and he also claims to being the Wandering Jew of legend (unlikely).
So this is the second third of the movie, in which the boy, the girl and the deranged old man roam America after a long-lost relic -the Spear of Destiny (which pierced the side of Christ at the Cross)- which has the power to bring down those pesky Russkies from the sky.

Not sure about the third third of the movie, but the fourth third is definitely a Douglas Adams joke.

Telegraph Road, part III

Success in calling Bhuthan (the country) from my cell phone seems now only a new cell phone away.

On the other hand, the idea has been slowly developing into a sect; friends at the office have begun sharing my fascination with phoning Bhuthan from a mobile.

Have I mentioned that, not only calling Bhuthan from my cell phone, I want to speak in Spanish to the other end of the line?
I don´t speak Spanish, and as far as I´m concerned, neither do ´em folks in Bhuthan.

Introspective

Back in High School, I used to send a daily e-mail to a select group of friends talking about the occurrences of that day in school, a few jokes thrown in, maybe some thoughts and quotes and stuff, a primeval blog.
Now, the year was 1997 and barely a year after Internet access began reaching a wider audience. We´re talking about a classroom of say, 40 upper to middle class kids and no more than five had Internet access at home. Most of them already had computers by then.

For 48 days, including weekends, the e-mails were sent. I made sure I got them all saved through the ages; I still have that file today.
Part of me half-half-half-wishes to save it for future reference; when the time is right I could write a book based on that stuff (it´s instant total-recall, trust me).
Part of me has never looked back.

Those were simpler times and everything was so beautiful.
Then we grew up & Life got in the way.

Kids, don´t do drugs

This is a caffeine-free nation as of this morning.
I really hope the apple juice kicks in just as good & fast, otherwise we´ll be cooking one heck of a cold turkey in here…

The Zeitgeist post

[or, “Khomeini 4 kids”]

I don´t know the odds of randomly bringing the late Ayatollah Khomeini into a conversation for two days in a row, but in a move totally unrelated to yesterday´s post about 1986 I caught myself having to explain… to describe… Iran´s late Ayatollah to my 13 year-old cousin on the phone.

Now, keep in mind we´re talking about the poster child for the prototype 21st-century mass teenage audience as targeted by international marketing conglomerates… The Kali Yuga never had a sweeter designation; it´s a generation bred solely for the mass consumption of disposables and the superfluous, it´s the Matrix met Andy Warhol insomuch as eternity itself has acquired a new meaning all of a sudden, sorely lacking that bit about having no end in sight.
Quoting The Clash on them is like casting a Megalodon out of summer afternoon clouds, but as the “phoney beatlemania” of their Britney Spears & related boy-bands has “bitten the dust”, the kids are currently being swept away by this millennium´s notion [reads, aggressive marketing-induced, artificially inflated hype] of a sectarian plastic punk rock revival with notables like Avril Lavigne spearheading the godhead with the second coming of Green Day for the Apostles.
(I would know. I took my kid cousin to an A.L. concert a few months ago.)

The point is actually pretty simple: it´s perfectly okay that they have absolutely no idea of just w.t.f. is an “Ayatollah Khomeini”; as long as they´re concerned, and not really wrong at that, he´s just one of those tacky afterimages from the Reagan-era tailend of the Cold War like Mr. T and the Care Bears.
Can´t say I disagree on that, though.

So when it came to describing Mr. Khomeini to her, insanity ensued as it always does, and it was pretty much like this:

He looks like Shazzan the genie from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the 1960s, but with more of a constipated countenance, as if perpetually waiting for his Ex-Lax.
And by Shazzan of course I don´t mean Captain Marvel´s Shazam, which for some weird reason people do tend to mix those two. Now, did you know Captain Marvel actually outsold Superman in the 1940s? Guy´s mag actually sold more than a million copies a month!
Anyway, the Ayatollah also didn´t have many magic powers, and was probably not associated with an underage American blond girl (at least not in public, God knows what really happens in those crazy mid-eastern harems), which I still maintain must´ve grown up to become one sexy woman, that Nancy. Still, the Ayatollah was, or at least looked, a bit older than Shazzan the genie, and I don´t think he was that much into fancy pants and the weird hairdo either.
All in all, the biggest difference is that whereas Shazzan could be seen grinning all the time, the Ayatollah didn´t seem to be a funny guy. But then, there´s this big gap between the 1960s and the 1980s. SDI, for one. I mean, there really was talk about a space-mounted, laser gun-based “strategic defense” project for the USA. Talk about grim´n´gritty. And remember all the songs? Even Cyndi Lauper herself sung of the woes of the blue-collar common man under the harshness of an economy severely hampered by the previous decade´s successive oil crises.
So yeah, I guess that was why the Ayatollah didn´t look as happy as Shazzan the genie most of the time.

There was also this bit about Khadafi but I sincerely forgot…

I know it sounds utterly crazy, but it isn´t. Upon close scrutiny it is, simply put, the description of this brave new world we live in:
Kid automatically knew about Shazzan but not of Khomeini, hence the comparison was valid.
History (as they say) is written by the winners, so thank Capitalism for Boomerang on TV.

Walking in Liberace´s shoes

Have been erring continuously at work for the past couple of weeks.
At first it was more like a minor nuisance; it was funny and everybody laughed and everything wrong was made right again with a single stroke of sending a “correct copy” via e-mail.
Now either the stakes are getting bigger or my head´s just off to orbiting Pluto. It´s been kind of like, “What, firebombing Berlin? I thought you meant Dresden!”…

Three alternatives before getting my behind busted & re-located to the back-end of the breadlines:
Option one is out of the question these days. Very, very sad but I can´t do anything about it. Option two would be vacations, which I´m beginning to convince myself are sorely needed… but might be unwillingly postponed once again by forces beyond my control. Option three is the poor man´s idea of hitting the gym, hard: which in my case is getting back to jogging on the streets full-time.
Knees are at almost 100% now.

Turns out I got new sneakers for Christmas from some long-since forgotten (but very cute) godmother (she´s kind of hot, really!! And single!). They are silver, they are shiny, they´re the latest model of running shoes with those fancy space-age outsoles or something.
Were they golden I could´ve said I was “Wally West, the Flash, the fastest Man Alive” and all that. But naww. They do look kinda girlie.

Let´s put ´em to some use today, anyhow. Liberace´s gonna eat my dust: “Look at the little f------ go!,” they´re gonna say as I pass them by.

Then & Now

1986
a) Likes: Breakfast cereal, cartoons, action figures.
b) Dislikes: the USSR and Warsaw-pact nations in general.
c) Fears: Ayatollah Khomeini, girls.
d) Idol: Batman.

2006
a) Likes: Breakfast cereal, cartoons, action figures, girls.
b) Dislikes: Rush-hour traffic jams.
c) Fears: Globalization-spawned Single Markets and Free-Trade Agreements.
d) Idol: Batman (post-Crisis).

Telegraph Road, intermezzo

Forget Bhutan (the country) for a second; the real challenge today lies in calling my Alma Mater. It´s been more than a year since I graduated and I still haven´t bought the sheepskin home (readers with sharp eyes will probably notice I intentionally missed an “r” somewhere in that sentence).

Mater = Mother, then I guess mine was an alcoholic, abusive mom on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But then again, I was probably her Rosemary´s baby anyway…

Soon to be a movie with Tom Hanks

True story:
So, one of my roommates is a member of this right-wing tough as nails Catholic cult which we´ll only identify as the O--- D-- here.
Guy´s as meek and submissive as all cult members must be in order to give in to brainwashing and all that crap. But anyway.

Trick´s he wants out. Says he´s seen enough of the thought police. He´s sick of the endless lists of forbidden books, TV shows, movies, songs and so on, and the crazy confessions and inquiries and anything shy of the medieval iron maiden.

Trick´s they don´t want him out. Fella from the O.D. calls home day and night, “where is he?”, “give me his work number” and etc, and never says who he is. Last Thursday I asked the poor geek about and he came out, he says he´s actually afraid they´re gonna round him up at home to take him back.
Serves him right, heh.

Me, I got a small role on this. I´m the comic relief to the Pope.
Next time O.D. fellow calls home all I´m saying is, “Oh no. He´s not home. Sorry. He went his weekly séance.”
Hopefully that will get him shot by those crazy cultists and then I´ll write a book about it. Maybe throw in some obscure Mona Lisa reference and I´m done...

Lesson for ya kids out there: Think twice before joining up with a cult; A rose is a rose is a rose, and a cult´s a scam´s a racket.

Anyway.
Religion is a deeply personal, thorny business.
Captain Kirk said it best in Stark Trek V: "Excuse me... Excuse me... I just wanted to ask a question. What does God need with a starship?"

Doogie Howser, MD does Cassandra

[which I´ve just realized would make for a pretty neat title for an adult movie]

Feeling a little queasy right now.
Currently foreseeing a fever comin´ up.


Memo to self:
Move the DVD player to the bedroom.

Memo to self: (CONT´D)
Pls refrain from taking other people´s medicine at the office just for laughs in the future.

Shopping Center Blues

´Scaped from traffic, hidden from the rain.
Lock´d in with a book & a milk shake,
Just a mile out of all the pain…

Telegraph Road, part II

Still unable to call Bhutan (the country) from my cell phone.
Will keep you posted.

Book review for week 01

Book of the week is Paul Bowles´ The Sheltering Sky (1949).
I was a big Jack Kerouac reader back in College a few years ago, but oddly enough that was as far as I went regarding the Beat Generation.
Bowles was an American writer who lived in North Africa, and was friends with William Burroughs. Never got into Burroughs´ works, though, probably because once after I´d read that poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg I accidentally stumbled upon an odd less-known piece of his, about a carrot & the author´s own anatomy, which clearly made me decide to stick with JK´s less-risqué stuff.

The book is about three Americans traveling south from North Africa in the years following WWII. They chose Africa on the grounds that it was the one place left in the world that was not marred, or less marred, by the War.
There´s the young, well-to-do married couple in their early 30s now about a decade into their marriage and equally that far from newlywed bliss (so much that they actually sleep in separate rooms and barely talk to each other), and their younger friend.
No stranger to traveling and living abroad, they roam the world never settling down, always looking for something else, to be somewhere else… kind of on a quest after a meaning to their own lives and such.

The desert is the setting for the story and its antagonistic force at the same time; upon its fiery white-hot sands and poor villages the characters are tested time and again both by the natural hazards of the Sahara and their own views on life and themselves.
The vastness of the nigh-infinite blue sky is their only constant, their “shield” per se from the unknown dangers that lie beyond, or better yet, from their own fears and doubts, and ultimately from the darkness that dwells in their hearts.
…And they fail miserably. One of them dies, one gets lost from the pack, and the other suffers a severe breakdown.

If one were to use a single word to define the book, it most certainly would be “ominous”; there´s always the notion of something bad ahead, not unlike the thunderclaps before a storm, lurking behind every corner.
It´s a dark, brooding, introspective tale about the discovery of character and measure of mettle as fascination with the exotic shatters and melts under the scorching Saharan sun.

I was very surprised because I was not expecting to enjoy it this much, which I did. The book rocks! (Must´ve blitzed through its pages in what, three sittings tops…)
By the way, The Police based the lyrics to their Tea in the Sahara song (from the Synchronicity album) on a passage of the book.


PS: Will skip next week´s book review. About time to go back to the real world and read a periodical or two for a change.

Telegraph Road

New personal project: Manage to call Bhutan (the country) from my cell phone. Zero success so far.
Will keep you posted.

“Der Speer ist nun in Klingsors hand”

This just in. According to The Economist´s The World in 2006 edition, more than half the world population will live in urban areas this year.
Say goodbye to those long weekends that dragged on and on and on at a relative´s ranch when you were young and consequently bored beyond belief, incredulous to the very alleged connection between a sunny morning “outside” and not being able to watch GI Joe on TV.

I mean. God! Outside! What a vile word for urban people!

I live inside, for crying out loud!
I nestle among the torn-out, four-color yellowed pages from old DC comic books from the 1970s and breathe their cheap pulpy musty paper air. My suntan has always come from a 20” bluescreen despite mom wishing differently. Outside people played ballgames, I burned through the night playing Civilization on a 386 and wondering just how eerie the French national anthem sounded on PC speakers in those pre-Soundblaster days.

Superman could´ve ended the War in one afternoon. He didn´t. Hitler had in his possession the so-called “Spear of Destiny” (AKA the Spear of Longinus, AKA the Holy Lance from John 19:34), which he used to erect a mystical barrier around Nazi-occupied territory, thus preventing the American heroes from joining the fray.
Please keep that in mind when considering the post-Industrial Revolution trend of, for the lack of a better term, going to town.

I can barely balance my own checkbook. That is a fact. An attempt to discuss the issue at hand in a mature, even technical way would most certainly prove a) futile and b) way out of of my depth. This is a shallow, hollow blog after all. And I´m a shallow, hollow person.

For the sake of every kid in the world being threatened with spending a weekend at the country and away from their favorite cartoons, here´s my point:
Where is the Spear these days anyway? Absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Adolph & friends for sure, I´m all for Superman and the Justice League. Let´s do the opposite, then.

I hereby make public my wish of erecting a force-field around the urban areas, allowing people in but not out, especially kids bound for a boring weekend at the country with no TV.

"The Spear is now in Klingsor´s hand," says the Knight of the Grail in Wagner´s Parsifal… which you most certainly won´t be able to watch in a TV-less ranch, by the way.

Schrödinger´s Blog

Still basking in the lingering light of yesterday´s post a nagging question gnaws at my… my… keyboard-tapping fingers. Ah. Had the inspiration going for a second there. Goin´, goin´, gone.
Which sort of brings me back to the question at hand, How Long?

If there´s one thing I´ve discovered in my “vast” experience in blog-publishing (almost a week now) is that keeping the thing going is like Schrödinger´s cat under the author´s perspective: There´s the keyboard sitting still before the monitor screen, there´s the wise fool sitting still before the keyboard; the page per se is only a click away from the reader.
By all means, click then. There is a 50% chance of the radioactive nucleus decaying in one hour and a new post appearing before your eyes.

[SFX: The DECAY of a radioactive atom]

…Busted up my two knees playing paintball a couple of weeks ago, then went jogging immediately afterwards. Not the brightest idea I´ve ever had, by the way. Could not walk straight for the ensuing five days.
Had been jogging for about two months, ever since October. Well, not really true. Had been walking since October, then walking “really fast” since November, and had just begun jogging in December.
My future career in the Olympics, as you may conclude, was drastically cut short by my playing with g_u_n_s.
Well. Actually I was felled by a sharp rock half-buried in the ground, not by some water-soluble arsenal of liberty… which goes to show to all those left-wingers out there that it is more dangerous for the kids to play outside at all than to play outside with semi_automatics.

Will resume jogging-slash-walking really fast this evening after work if the raining subsides.
Without semi_automatics, though.

Tabula Rasa

Have a headache the size of Mount Kilimanjaro and I didn´t drink anything but water on New Year´s Eve.
Had the first cup of coffee for the last four days fifteen minutes ago (currently recalling a National Geographic article about coffee that said, if memory serves, that it takes about one hour for the caffeine to kick in).

Memo to my own metabolism:
"Pls allow the caffeine to kick in ASAP. Tks & Rgds".

...Otherwise I´m as prolific as a dead seal.