Left of the Dial

Not Gone Fishin'

Not much posting lately. Bizzy bizzy life intruding, most rudely. Also had a fever on Wednesday, a bit better on Thursday and Friday, but then a painful cough developed today. If it don't get better soon, it looks like I'm doctor-bound on Monday. That does not please me. Such is life.

Love 'Em Lawyers

I know that as an American I’m supposed to dislike lawyers. But I don’t. I love ‘em. Oh, sure, there’re the unscrupulous bastards who’ll give the entire profession a bad name, but of what profession can that not be said?

Besides stay-at-home dad/freelance comic book writers, that is.

I’ve noticed that even the most rabid of tort reformers don’t hesitate to sic a lawyer on someone the minute they think they’ve got a case (hello Rick Santorum, you heinous hypocrite, how are you?), even if that case might seem a tad tenuous to the eyes of an uninvolved party. When it comes to attorneys, it seems our entire nation has a whopping case of "do as I say, not as I do." Or maybe "one set of rules for me and another set for everyone else." Or I guess it’s just "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, especially if you can maybe make a buck or two million."

Anyhoo, I don’t know where this here clip falls into all that, except that even though I’ve never actually been to a deposition I suspect they’re not all nearly this interesting. If they were, you’d probably be able to sell tickets. I mean, that’s just a good time, Texas-style.

I love lawyers.

[Note: I’m not just professing my affection for attorneys simply because I know for a fact about 5% of my regular Left of the Dial readers are lawyers, but as a sidenote, please don’t sue me.]

Bath School Disaster

Hokey smokes. Every time I think I’ve come near the limit of my ignance, new stuff pops up. Seems there is, in fact, no end to my ignance. That's just one reason I'm so fond of The Baby--she has no idea (yet) what a bonehead her dad is. I usually have about a year before my kids figure that out. I'm hoping for a year and a half this time. I'm guessing that means about eight months.

Anyhoo, this wikipedia entry is in honor of April 15th. And you thought you hated paying taxes. Jeeze.

The Bath School disaster was a series of bombings in and around Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. The bombings comprised the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history, claiming more than three times as many victims as the Columbine High School massacre.

The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardship which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.

On the morning of May 18, Kehoe first killed his wife and then set his farm buildings on fire. As fire fighters arrived at the scene outside the town, an explosion rocked the school building, killing most of the people inside. Kehoe used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his shrapnel-filled vehicle, killing himself and the school superintendent and killing and injuring several others. During the rescue efforts, searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing.

Neighborhood Animals

So we’ve got a bear in our neighborhood.

At least, that’s the rumor going around. I’m a little skeptical myself. I suspect people have seen the local llama
and gotten a bit freaked out and let their imaginations run wild.

But whatever. I could be wrong, I reckon. It’s been known to happen. Hourly.

More, likely, I think, given the plethora of flora in our little paradise, is that the bear is actually a relative of this cute and cuddly lil’ feller:

Monster Rabbit Devours English Veggie Plots

LONDON (AFP) - In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit.

Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill.

"It is a massive thing. It is a monster. The first time I saw it, I said: 'What the hell is that?'" the Northumberland Gazette newspaper quoted local resident Jeff Smith, 63, as saying on its website (www.northumberlandtoday.co.uk).

What and Where Am I?

So you’ve probably seen them little online tests you can take to to determine what kind o’ animal or tree or whatever you are. Here are two of my recent results, just so’s you all know exactly what you’re dealing with.

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

You Are Austin

A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. You're totally weird and very proud of it. Artistic and freaky, you still seem to fit in... in your own strange way. Famous Austin residents: Lance Armstrong, Sandra Bullock, Andy Roddick

What American City Are You?

I am a little disturbed by how accurately I can be assessed with only seven questions.

I Always Feel like Somebody's Watching Me

There is freaky. There is scary. And then there is this:

Ohio Company Implants Workers With ID Chips

And in Ohio, a private video surveillance company called CityWatcher has embedded radio transmitter ID chips into two of its employees.

It is believed to be the first time U.S. workers have been electronically tagged for identification purposes.

Privacy activist Liz McIntyre said "There are very serious privacy and civil liberty issues of having people permanently numbered."

The company has planted the electronic chip into the upper right arms of two employees. The implants ensure that only those two employees have access to a room where the company holds security video footage for government agencies and the police.

The "radio frequency identification tags" are made by the U.S. company VeriChip. The technology allows a company or government to permanently track anyone embedded with an ID chip.

As a big fan of privacy and security, I’m glad that this company is taking serious steps to make sure those thing are being protected.

But I’d really, really, really rather these weren’t the steps. As the Chicago Tribune put it:

One indisputable answer in our increasingly technological society is that anything that can be done eventually will be done. And millions of RFID chips already are in use in the United States to track everything from pets to livestock to research animals to packages shipped by truck.

Implanting them in humans is just one more step. In 2004 the federal Food and Drug Administration approved an implantable microchip to store medical information right on a patient's person, as a means to reduce errors and improve treatment. About the same time, the attorney general of Mexico began use of implanted chips to control access of officers to high-security offices.

Ultimately, of course, government and the courts will be called upon to decide whether such technology constitutes an invasion of personal privacy and the right to free association.

Use of the chips was entirely voluntary in the Cincinnati case, but what if workers at, say, a large warehousing operation, were required, as a condition of employment, to have similar implants so the boss could keep track of them?

Most Americans would probably balk at such a requirement, but many also would be surprised to know that the Constitution does not include an express right of privacy.

A series of court decisions over the years have construed rights of privacy from the Bill of Rights as, for example, in the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" against unreasonable search and seizure under the law.

Some legal thinkers, however, including a couple now inhabiting seats on the U.S. Supreme Court, contend that no general right of privacy exists.

In the final analysis, a person's privacy is probably as much a matter of expectation as anything, and substantial vigilance will be required by the American public to maintain a right that is, or should be, more than skin deep.

This seems like such a precarious step onto that slippery slope. This is just way too sci-fi/Orwellian. It just feels so wrong.

Linda Blech Visits

Oy.

What a couple days it’s been. Top Management had an appointment at the midwife’s and all was deemed Good. She’d gained quite a bit of weight over the previous two weeks, which is outstanding for My Petite Thing.

And then she came home and sat down. And jumped up two minutes later and ran for the bathroom. And almost made it in time.

Seems the Exorcist bug our pal Dave and his daughter had last week decided to visit our home.

Say what you will about having a little kid with cancer, but it surely prepares you for dealing with other people’s bodily fluids.

And a good thing, too. Practice makes perfect and by now I’m damn near hemi-semi-demi-god level. Because Max decided to join Top Management in spontaneously and violently evacuating her body of all liquid on a very, very, very irregular but frequent basis.

Too much information for y’all? I know it was for me.

Of course, just to make things ever so more interesting, our washing machine broke the day before. For the second time in eight months.

So none of the three oldest people in the house got more than about three hours of sleep on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Which led to an interesting observation: I am not all that much less functional on three very interrupted hours of sleep than I am on seven. And while the bar, admittedly, is not set all that high, that still struck me. Of course, the coffee may have helped, but it didn’t help that much, and I didn’t drink any more than usual.

I remember the feeling from my very first concert—Billy Joel in New Haven in 1984, I believe, on his Innocent Man tour. Had to get up for school about three hours after I fell into bed (what were my parents thinking? Or were they teaching me a lesson?), and realized my body didn’t seem to have had time to relax all the way yet—my pulse was still as elevated as it’d been and I was wide awake and jittery, and actually felt more alert than normal all day. Until about two in the afternoon, when I started walking into walls. Which wasn’t all that unusual. Still isn’t.

But as promised, this week’s bug was almost exactly twelve hours. It was like being sea-sick: as soon as that twelve hour mark hit, Top Management and Max both seemed to be like, "hey…didn’t I feel like death just a few minutes ago?" Of course, after their previous half-day, they weren’t exactly ready to go jogging, and so began the long process of bringing their tummies back up to speed.

But Top Management even let me sleep in a little extra this morning, being the one to get The Boy up (as she usually does when healthy), which meant he got to see his mom for the first time in thirty-six hours. And he’s much, much happier for it. He was pretty great, actually, for the most part. Sometimes he’d walk around softly moaning, "Mommy…" over and over and over and over, but that was about it. And The Rose blossomed, as usual—she loves to be needed, so the fact that she was my right-hand during this ordeal made her grow about eighteen inches. She’s Big when she’s Useful.

Now, of course, we’re just waiting for the rest of us to get it.

I know, this is kinda rambling. But, hey, it’s a blog. Aren’t they supposed to be full of rambling asides? I know I’ve read that somewhere.

I’ll be back tomorrow. And maybe I’ll tell you about the SUV that tried to run me off the road. In our own little development. Right by pal Sarah’s house.

Or maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

But first…more coffee.

Punk/Not Punk?

So for reasons too boring to get into (I know, you’re stunned to find that there’s anything remotely related to my life I’d consider too boring to post on Left of the Dial), I pretty much always write my Left of the Dial pieces down here in the office, but am unable to actually post them from this here computer. So I have to email them upstairs and post from there.

But as happens about ten percent of the time, the act of emailing the piece causes Outlook Express to quit, which means I have to restart the computer. Interestingly (or perhaps not), it happens far more often with Left of the Dial pieces than any other email. Coincidence? You make the call.

So whilst I’m waiting for the computer to restart, I pick up the acoustic guitar I keep in the office for just such all-too-frequent occasions. It was pal Dave’s but he wanted to sell it so Top Management surprised me with it for Father’s Day. She’s good like that. Very, very good. Far better at acquiring guitars for me than I am at actually playing them.

So I just sorta fiddle around and then find myself playing Green Day's "Basket Case." That’s the one that starts: "Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?"

I know. How inappropriate for me.

So I finish the song shortly after the computer finishes starting up and I put the guitar away. And I’m starting to write a defense of the Bee Gees’ work on the Saturday Night Live soundtrack to my Miles Davis email list when I realize Top Management is right above my head. From the sounds The Boy is making, it’s pretty clear that she’s changing his diaper. Also that’s just about the only time she’s right in that exact spot. Sherlock Holmes got nothin’ on me.

And then I notice that she’s singing "Basket Case."

Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I’m cracking up
Am I just paranoid? Oh no no no

My sweet, adorable wife, mother to a house chock full o’ younguns, happily singing punk in her beautifully clear country-tinged and conservatory-trained voice. While changing a diaper.

What does that mean? Is that punk? Or does that automatically shift the song itself, not just the performance, into the Not Punk category?

I think about this for a while. And there’s really only one conclusion to be reached.

There's feces involved.

It's punk.

But if Top Management’s thinking it’s time for a nose ring, eyebrow ring and tongue stud, well….yeah, that’d be pretty cool, actually. They’d match her tattoo that no one but me knows about.

Happy Anniversary

So Top Management suddenly said to me today, "Hey! Happy Anniversary!"

Which are not words any hubband wants to hear out of the blue.

After watching me frantically wracking my brains for any hint of what I missed this time, she finally took pity on me (this time) and laughed. "It was one year ago today that you first posted on Left of the Dial."

Do you have to buy a blog a present? I’ve certainly put this one through enough that it's not entirely unwarranted.

So off and on today I’ve been wondering what to say on this momentous occasion. Inspiration was in hibernation but then as anyone who reads Left of the Dial on a regular basis knows, that’s not unusual.

Still, it was kinda neat to think back on the past year. Twelve months ago, I’d never have dreamt I’d be posting some of the stuff I’ve written this year. I mean, who the hell in their right mind posts about religion, politics, abortion? Clearly I’m not in my right mind. At least I never got around to finishing that piece on animal nookie I was working on.

So I was mulling some of this over this afternoon, thinking maybe I’d just skip the entire thing—I’m not big on anniversaries unless there’s something in it for me or, more important, unless I'm facing imminent death if I don’t make a huge to-do about it.

And then the washing machine broke.

For the second time in eight months.

So now I’m feeling grim. The perfect Left of the Dial mood.

And so in that spirit, I present to you a far more eloquent and inspired voice: Johnny Rotten.

Sex Pistols spit on Hall of Fame honor
By Chris Morris

The Sex Pistols have opted out on appearing at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The groundbreaking English punk rock group officially declined the honor -- to be handed out March 13 at a dinner and performance at the Waldorf Astoria in New York -- in a crudely scrawled, mispunctuated handwritten message posted on the band's Web site Friday.

" Next to the SEX PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain," the statement read. "Your museum. Urine in wine. Were (sic) not coming. Were (sic) not your monkey and so what?"

The statement slammed Hall of Fame voters as "music industry people," and excoriated the high price of attending the exclusive event -- $25,000 for a table, "or $15,000 to squeak up in the gallery."

It concluded, "Your (sic) not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real SEX PISTOL."

Other 2006 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame include Black Sabbath, Blondie, Miles Davis, Lynyrd Skynyrd and industry executives Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.

Susan Evans, executive director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said of the band's announcement, "They're being the outrageous punksters that they are, and that's rock 'n' roll."

As has been noted elsewhere, Miles Davis and most of Lynyrd Skynyrd are also not expected to attend.

I do wonder, however, if the "so what?" question is a Miles reference. Wouldn't entirely surprise me, the cheeky buggers. Solidarity?

I’ve been skeptical of the Hall o’ Fame myself since the beginning, but willing to give it the benefit of the doubt because some great performances and speeches were given and because I’ve assumed that some of the acts have truly benefited from the exposure, even if only temporarily.

But $25k? Yeah, that’s pretty insane. That’s exactly why the Sex Pistols were needed in the first place. And why we could sure use their equivalent today.

In the meantime, I’ll sit back, listen to Never Mind the Bollocks and A Tribute to Jack Johnson and Street Survivors. And wait for the repairman to show up.

Thanks for comin’ along for the ride.

From the Poor Us All to the Rich

So. What would you do with $7,000,000,000?

I'm guessing not this:

The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

But I mean, come on, yo. Them oil companies have fallen on hard times and…uh…

Oh.
Wait a second.

Exxon Mobil Corp. set U.S. records for annual and quarterly profits Monday as it easily topped fourth-quarter earnings forecasts.

The nation's largest oil company reported net income in the fourth quarter of $10.7 billion, or $1.71 a share, compared to $8.4 billion, or $1.30 a share, a year earlier [...]

For the year the company earned net income of $36.1 billion, or $33.9 billion excluding special items. That's up 31 percent from the $25.9 billion it earned on that basis year earlier.

Yup. I can think of a powerful lotta things I could do with seven billion dollars. And yet not one of my Top Thousand would be to give it away to the oil companies. Seems to me they're doing just fine. Better than they ever have in fact. Less in need of my our money than ever.

Oh, but those kids who've had their school lunches cut? Yeah, boy, seven billions dollars'll buy a peck of lunches for hungry kids. But, hey, screw 'em. If they were worth anything, they'd have lobbyists working for 'em and giving money to politicians.

Oh, that's right. They don't have those things because they're poor.
And because they're poor, they can't afford those things.
Interesting how that works out, ain't it?

And the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Except one thing's especially interesting about this particular rip-off:

That's our money.
All of ours.
Yours and mine.
The rich and the poor.
It belongs to the American people.

If oil companies want to make billions in profits off our land, often permanently despoiling that land in the process, I just don't think it's too damn much to ask that they pay us our fair share.

No. I really don't think that's too much.

$7,000,000,000.

Seven. Billion. Dollars.

Poof.