Note

I never said I'd proof-read these.

Another Get Rich Quick Scheme

Hurricane Cassie was called a Category 4 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA (No-ah) for short. Moogie had no idea what NOAA was until his wife, Tessa, had brought it up, calling them ‘a bunch-a skinny pencil neck geeks with nothing better to do than put a ruler on a swirling cloud.’ Moogie did know who Noah was, though, and at the moment he felt a certain kinship with the man, particularly now that the storm waters were raging down Main Street and through his socks and shoes.

Tessa had gone off on a tirade, not two hours ago, about how NOAA didn’t know nothing about no hurricanes, how ‘Category 4’ was just some geeky science talk, and how Moogie had made her a promise, and god damn, you big sissy-ass, can’t you keep a promise now and again? At the end of a solid Tessa tirade, and lord, how there had been many, poor Moogie often found himself at the raw end of a good deal, or some half-baked scheme. It was getting harder to call this particular instance a half-baked scheme, though, what with Moogie looking through the tiny window of the Winn-Dixie basement, as light poles as lawn furniture hurtled down the street at 70 miles an hour. This was very far from being half-baked. This idea hadn’t even made it into the oven.

Of course Tessa wasn’t here with Moogie, because “here” was the middle of Jacksonville Beach, ten minutes from the eye of Cassie. It was 10am but there was no sun in the sky and Moogie could hardly breath with the wind forcing the air down into his lungs. Sand and debris pelted his neck and the palm of his hands shielding his face. He would shut the window, but a mailbox had busted out the glass, and all the stood between him and the raging world outside were a few iron bars.

But maybe this would all pan out. He looked across the street and saw there, still aglow, the ATM machine wobbling in the parking lot of the Redstone Credit Union. Behind the building, beyond the pier, the heavy body of Cassie kissed the wild sea and sent it into horrible torment. Moogie tried to remind himself this was his idea in the first place.

Visualize. That’s what the self-help book from the library said. So Moogie visualized. He visualized Cassie swirling two blocks down. He saw the winds picking up that ATM, swooping it up into the air and bashing it down onto the concrete. He saw it splitting open like a eggshell. Then he saw himself running out in the middle of all that wind, a magician in a bubble of calm, sweep up all those bills into his grocery bag and whistling off down the block.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw a VW Van cartwheeling down the center of Atlantic Boulevard. There was a sudden bolt of lightening and before he heard the thunder of it, all the lights in on the block when dead.

Well, he thought, there were worse ways to get rich.

Bucky, Hero of Ocean World

There stood Buck, hero of Ocean World, the man who brought in three thousand visitors a day. Bucky, they called him. It said so on his belt buckle, shining in the high noon glare of the employee cafeteria. He had his thumbs hooked in his wranglers, his eyes fixed on the dwindling supply of macaroni and cheese as he slowly inched forward, person-length by person-length toward the buffet. I hoped he didn’t feel my gaze burning at the back of his head. I hoped he didn’t suddenly turn and catch my wide-eyed admiration. What would I do if he did, I thought. Suddenly look to the soda machine behind him? Run out the door? Duck behind the, Lisa, whale trainer?

As he grabbed a tray, I sidled up next to him in line. I felt incomparable: him in his his rodeo spurs, two water pistolas on his hips, the gold embroidery and pearl buttons of his western shirt; and I in my khaki shorts, my peach fuzz, my polo, and name tag. He was everything I could never be: a star, an entertainer, a smile on the lips of Ocean World patrons. And here I was finally next to him. I could smell the fish chum on him. I breathed it in.

I had seen his show fifty times since I started my job at Ocean World. Every day I studied his technique. It was masterful to watch. At the start of the show, the announcer would say his introduction, say his name, and Bucky would dart out on stage, whooping and hollering. There was something in his energy in those first few seconds that made even the most cynical teenager pay attention. He had a force of charisma that would pulse and wash over the audience like waves of the sea. It was something steady, reliable, and sublime. By the time the audience waddled out of the auditorium, some never evening knowing of him before they entered, some soaking wet from all the splashing, each one smiled like a kid.

Somehow, while I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, I had pulled out a pad and pen from my back pocket and he was staring down at me. What was I doing? Was I trying to get an autograph? Why couldn’t I stop myself? I didn’t want him to think I was just another star struck shlub. Oh, but here I was, holding the pad and pen up to him, an offering, a plead.

My throat was trying to form words: “M-m-Mister . . .”

“I can’t give autographs to employees.” His glare beat down on me. “Sorry, kid. Company policy.”

I nodded and I felt my pen and pad slipping back into my pockets at the behest of my now completely autonomous hands.

The whole room was staring at my right then. I was sure of it, even though I could barely to look up from my own tray. I felt every eye in the room beaming disapproval at this, this idiot kid who dared ask a favor of the great Bucky. My stomach felt like lead bricks and I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of eating the three helpings of chick peas I had mashed on my plate.

Then, suddenly, I was saved from the humiliation:

The exterior door swung wide and inward. A gust of hot summer breeze blew it against the wall and it thundered against the brick. We all turned, all of us in cafeteria, and saw the figure of a man standing there, the shifting light of the shark tank outside silhouetting him.

Everyone was still as he stepped forward into the fluorescent light and the harsh, jagged lines of his face became visible beneath the shadow of his fedora. His black eyes with their black pupils were fixed on one man and one man only: Bucky.

“Douglas Winster?” the man called out from across the cafeteria.

A moment passed and then Bucky replied, matching the other man’s tone with his own: “That’s me.” The look in his eye said: ‘what of it?’ and his right hand dangled down to the pistola at his hip.

“You the man they call, Bucky?” He stepped forward, crossing the open space in the center of the room. He had a strange step, like his feet weren’t quite put on right. Soon he was right up next to Bucky, and right up next to me. “Bucky, the Dolphin Wrangler?”

The man had stained teeth, and I could smell the tobacco and energy drink on his breath. I could feel Bucky tensing next to me, all the muscles in his body coiling up and preparing to spring into action.

Bucky nodded, slowly, the tip of his hat bobbing. “Yeah. So?”

The man reached into the breast pocket of his coat. I suddenly felt the impulse to leap over the salad sneeze guard and throw myself to the floor. Nobody in the room had taken their eyes off either man, no one had drawn a breath.

“Served,” the man handed an stuffed envelope to Bucky. He jabbed his thumb at another man, one I hadn’t notice, standing at the entrance. “ . . . and witnessed. You’re wife says hello.”

The men left. Bucky and I took our food, and sat down. He never opened the envelop, just shifted the green beans from one side of his plate to the other until he noticed me staring at him again.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Its alright,” he said.

When lunch was over, he left, put his tray over on the garbage cabinet, walked out the door, and past the shark tank. It was the last, I or anyone else ever saw of Bucky The Dolphin Wrangler, hero of Ocean World.

A New Lease on Blogging

I have a new project: every day I’ll post a new short story, short short story, or really really short short story. We’ll see how long this lasts. Ready? Here we go . . .

Mr. Positive Takes a Nose-Dive

For a while, I was harboring the intent to become more positive in my life. I thought I had become altogether too negative, dwelling on what's wrong with the world, what's most worthy of ridicule, finding ways to exact that ridicule, etc, etc. My girlfriend is always pontificating on the inspiration she derives from the famously positive and more often than not when she speaks of them I find I hadn't even realized these people were positive at all. Will Wheaton? I thought he was just a famous nerd. Apparently, he's an inspiration and a model of positivity. Jackie Chan? Apparently NOT just a man who hurts himself for a living; he's an icon of hard work and discipline. Huh!

People love positive people. Positive is IN; irony, out. Its the mantra of the late Twenty-o-oughts, and the Obama-lama vision of the next decade. Its new! Its hope! People love it! That's the rub of it though. I realized I was trying to be more positive for the exclusive reason that I wanted more people to ascribe that quality to me. I actually WANTED people to LIKE me. That's absurd, even cynical. I've never really cared how many people like me or whether they like me for the right reasons or not. I'm not just saying that for antithetical reasons. I'm just the last of the Gen-Xers, last of the seasoned aesthetes of apathy. That makes me a dinosaur in this new age of hope and its nothing to be proud of. Its no surprise then that this sudden approval seeking sentiment had taken over my thinking. There are other external factors in my desired change of attitude too, and I was frankly more than a little surprised by them:

Damn you, Facebook. Curse you, Twitter. A pox on both your houses! Yes, I blame you more than anything else.

I escaped the four year popularity contest of high school unscathed by the drudgery elitism. I never once considered an avenue of microcosmic stardom, although more likely then not because I wouldn't have been capable of carrying any kind of fame-nabbing stunt to fruition. I was just not fated to be a popular guy, and I embraced that fact.

Now all these years later, I suddenly found myself in the throes of an internal popularity experiment much to the contrary of my own nature. Lets be fair though, there is something about the easily quantifiable measures of popularity in online social networking that appeals to my scientific side. You can readily read the progress of your sociability on myspace, facebook, or whatever by the little friend counter in the corner of the home page. On twitter, they even offer grading statistics that are derived from your ratio of posts versus followers versus those you follow. You can quickly determine your net worth as a cyber-human based on any of these indexes. You can then evaluation your own performance and adjust your strategies. Its a twisted little game and its relatively easy.

So that's it. Decades of my life spent preening, dressing nice, being polite, funny, erudite, entertaining, charming, yadda yadda, have all been for naught. Complete wastes of time, it turns out. Who knew? Apparently, all I had to do to make friends was sign up for myspace, make a few snarky remarks about myself and start sending out those friend requests.

I'm up to a hundred pals on Facebook. I'm surpassed by most of my friends and until yesterday this bothered me endlessly, although I didn't know it or was even aware of it on a conscious level. There was a burning fraction of my brain consuming itself with calculations of how to attract more friends, how to be more clever, how to instigate more comments, how to truly brand myself. I have given myself a thorough slapping and have since quarantined this part of my brain.

Last night I dreamt people were reading my blog and judging me on it. That was the final straw of nonsense. I'm not going to spend a good night's sleep on social anxiety.

Now, I have no intention of cutting any one off, leaving any of these sites, or stopping myself form blogging. I enjoy all of that immensely. I enjoy the forum of ideas that is the internet far too much to disown it. Worse, I would become a hypocrite. I've already spent an awful lot of time making fun of my Luddite friends who refuse to join the social networking party and I wouldn't want to make myself eat my own words or become a comedy of duplicity. I need a steady platform on which to ridicule others and leaving any of these sites would pull that out from under me. That would be an unacceptable tragedy.

Also, I'm no longer making any effort to be positive. Screw that. Its not in my nature. I couldn't write a letter to my own grandmother without oozing some sort of sardonic vitriol about some thing another. Good thing I don't have a grandmother and I don't write any one any letters. I'm sarcastic, pessimistic, a fault-seeker, and I have no reason to ever change. To be anything else is to be against my own personage and an outrage to the very cosmic order of the universe.

So much for that New Years resolution then. It was a mindless one anyway, conceived out of brief self-abandonment. You positive people need us negatives around anyway. We keep every one grounded; we point out your flaws of logic; we let you how goofy you look in those sweater vests; we tell you how much your favorite bands really suck. Sometimes we even change your mind. We're worth having around, really, no matter how much fun we spoil.

Also remember the law of conservation of fun: fun is never created nor destroyed, only transferred to some one else. You may not be having any when we're around, but we are. That's something to be positive about.

Redefining Liberalism and the Task Ahead

Obama! What to say? We've finally dragged ourselves out of a long era of conservative dominated politics and begun the upward swing toward liberalism. This will not be to the liking of everyone, no, but for us liberals we're quite pleased. Take a euphoric moment, toast each other with champagne, come back when you're ready for some reality. Ready? Okay.

Just think for a moment: it wasn't long ago, during the Clinton and Bush years, it was a taboo in the world of politics to call yourself a "liberal." From 1980 to 2003, give or take, conservative media reigned supreme and they held a boot heel to the collective throats of Democrats. When a liberal reared their head, conservative media took aim. At first the assemblage of talking heads in the right-wing editorials and radio shows had a quiet but unified voice. As the years went on, they became a juggernaut of think tanks and lobby groups. By force, their ideas entered our culture, and as they grew larger and larger the political forces of the left became more and more fearful. After the grand jury hearings of Clinton, Democrats became paralyzed with fear, cowering at the slightest thought of negative headlines. The Democratic vanguard faltered and capitulated with the GOP, relenting on issue after issue. They started labeling themselves as "conservative" or "middle of the road" Democrats. Even in my personal life, I'd hear otherwise thoughtful Democrats say they were "conservative on fiscal issues," as though some apology or concession were necessary when declaring your political party was not Republican.

Now, fortunately and much like during the initial Progressive Era at the onset of the 20Th Century, we are once again becoming receptive to the ideologies that inhabit the Liberal side of the map. These ideas need to be redefined, however, and clearly for this new generational transition. Remember, we have emerged from an era during which liberals were thought to be "out of ideas" or "without a plan." In a sense, that was true in 2004 when that sort of derision was at its peak. Democrats lost the presidency then despite a growing alienation and distrust with the incumbent because they failed to communicate clear progressive ideas. Perhaps because they had completely forgotten what they were.

So what are these progressive ideas then? They're simple and here they are:

-Government is not the problem. Corruption is the problem. The people ARE the government and the government is our way of looking out for ourselves.

-Regulation is a necessity. Multi-national corporations do not have our best interest at heart. We must use the government to protect ourselves from their potential abuses.

-Regulation must also prevent monopolies. A competitive market is a healthy one, but by nature, corporations detest it and will eliminate it whenever possible.

-Unions are the best way to protect labor. Our representatives in government should afford protections to unions against the free market, wherein powerful corporations would quickly dismantle them for their own profit.

-A nation's wealth is its infrastructure not its treasury. Spend money wisely to build it into a powerful force. Roads, bridges, commuter trains, power-lines, water ways all enable the free market to expand and profit.

-A social safety net, like welfare, Social Security, and universal Health care, is a healthy part of the infrastructure. It enables those who falter a chance to redeem themselves and those born under-privileged a chance to prosper. Compassion is independent of free market values.

-Taxation should be progressive. The least taxed should be the poor, who use the least national resources and the highest should be the rich, who use the most.

-Corporations devour resources to generate wealth, that wealth can be shared to those they profit from through taxation.

-A society prospers when its member are treated equally: minorities, women, the disabled, etc. Create and preserve that quality however we can.

-International trade is good so long as it is of benefit to the working class. Fair trade must be our goal or else we are simply perpetuating low-wage slavery in other countries and loosing jobs in our own.

As a whole, Americans did not forget these things. When a palpable sense of longing for these old ideals returned to the collective consciousness, it was only a matter of time before a savvy politician with an ear to the ground picked up on it. That's precisely what happened this last November 4Th. Barack Obama did not stand up on the podium and sound the trumpet call. He only answered it. He did not invent these ideas, he simply repeated them to a nodding crowd. When we started the parade, he stood up in front of it and waved the flag.

I will contend and always will, that there is an ever-present liberal base in America much larger than is portrayed in the behavior of our representatives in government. People complain often that those elected have no ear for the pleas of their constituency. They are unresponsive to our needs the people say, but the truth is politicians are highly responsive by nature. They act swiftly when called upon. When presented with problems, they react with capable force. The problem is that they hear only those with the loudest voices and in American democracy today, those with the most money have all the say. Politicians are therefore highly responsive to the needs of the people so long as those people are millionaires, billionaires, multi-national corporations, or massive lobby groups. Those voices drown out any voice the average working Joe might have in Washington.

At least that WAS the case. There comes a tipping point in any society when the least privileged of the classes cannot be tread on any further. They finally speak out and, in a unity consolidated by common suffering, they are heard. If we, as a nation, have reached this tipping point then it means one important thing: whether Obama is really a champion of the people or a just another savvy politician who is capitalizing on a wave of sentiment in America does not matter. So long as we continue to put pressure as a consolidated liberal base of the working middle class, he and Congress will have no choice but to pay attention to us.

We are the outsourced, floundering workers. We are the unemployed. We are the struggling to get by. We are the over-burdened, the over-indebted. We are working jobs we hate, no longer for stuff we don't need, but for stuff we do and can barely afford. You see, we buy what the millionaires, billionaires, and multi-national corporations are selling and we can't buy it for much longer. Politicians have to stop and listen to us now because we keep the gears greased, the power on, the criminals in jail and, damn it, we need help!

They have to listen to us because other wise the Jenga stack could come crashing down. So, keep shouting, America. I know I will. Right here, just like this.

Thanks for reading.

I Need An Enemy

Twenty-Nine years have gone by since that fateful, earth-shattering moment I was born and I'll admit things have gone a little down hill. Initial expectations were high and with good cause. When I popped out, I came out swinging. I had a hunger, an appetite, and real glint in my eye, the kind that twinkled with all the possibilities of the world. When I had a problem, I made it known. When I was hungry, you're damn right every one knew it. When I was pissed, when I had a problem, you'd know it. That's the kind of person I was at that age. I thought I knew it all. I was immortal, on top of the world, and I thought it would never end.

Well, it ended. It took a long time but it ended. The curve went something like this:

At age one 1, I was on high alert. Everything was a threat. I could be knocked over by a large house cat and I lived with one. The seductive mystery of the electrical socket, though thoroughly explored by age 2, could have left me a charred, fizzy-haired toddler. Shiny, heavy things on high counter-tops could have, at any moment, slipped from my prying finger tips and caved in my delicate skull. The world was a coiled deathtrap and it kept me on my toes. The danger was invigorating and it kept me young.

At age 5, I had explored the house to exhaustion. There was nary a bread crumb left uncatalogued in all the greasy corners. I knew every drawer, every cabinet, every lift-able flap of the carpet, every inedible crumb beneath the fridge. The mystery had been removed and I, at the peak of my abilities but with no imaginable goals ahead of me, fell victim to depression. I spent countless nights lying awake, drinking alone, recounting past glories and hoping somehow, someday, some one would seek me out for adventure once again.

And then it happened . . .

Age 6, school began. Where once I was master of my domain, I found myself thrust into the frigid and violent waters of the Albuquerque Public School System. Other children, fat and docile from years of child-proofed homes, found themselves suddenly struggling in an dangerous ecosystem of predators and prey. Me, I knew danger. It was my religion, and I bravely waded into that scholarly kiddie pool we came to call hell.

Age 7-12, the Age of Bullies. Mentally a juggernaut but left by the Fates a small and physically diminutive child, I found myself plagued by bullies. While class time passed as a quiet refuge, the recess bell would ring in my mind like the start of a boxing round. The knell signaled it was time to put down the salve and Vaseline, put on the gloves, and get back on the mat. So I would head out into the playground each day with a warriors heart. There was one enemy in those days of note: Greg. I shall not make reference here to his last name so as to preserve his dignity.

Greg was the typical bully. The short, spiky hair was of faded straw, like his hate of the world had burned the very color out of each follicle. His eyes were steel coins, icy blue and they shone like vile lanterns on the shores of the Styx. Everyday, he scanned the school yard with those eyes, reading every face, piercing into our souls for some weakness therein. Often he'd find me and come pacing down from the top hill, zeroing in on me and my friends. We theorized he had vicious blood left over from some previous life, maybe a betrayed centurion abandoned by his legion to the Gauls, raging for all eternity inside of Greg's fevered mind. For an 10 year-old, he was an awfully tortured soul.

"Hey Mucus," he'd call. This clever derision he'd derived from my uncontrollable nasal problems. Unlike other children my age, I was born with a unique condition wherein my nose generated up to 10 times more snot than an ordinary human. In time, I grew to accept myself for who I was, but at the time in 3rd grade it was my cross to bare. "Talkin' to you Mucus," he say again and shoved me face first into the tire patch, or the sandbox, or whatever I happened to be engrossed with at the time.

But this, only if he caught me. By the 4th and 5th grades, I had been living under constant mortal threat for so long my senses had become as keen as any soldier. I knew the sound his Scooby Doo pump sneakers made on gravel, the way his weight and the expanded air bladder drove his heels down. I knew the sound of the door slamming on the side of his mother's 1983 Dodge Caravan as she dropped him off for school; the smack of his slap on bracelet. I knew the smell of his Fruity Pebble breath as it wafted on the air conditioner exhaust of the John Baker Elementary compound. Like a gazelle, I sensed these things in the still air over the playground, my ears ever-perked, my nose ever-atwitter, and could find quick refuge behind a tree or vanish inside a turbulent game of freeze-tag.

Greg, as a villainous foil, had made me stronger than I had ever been. Running from him kept me in top physical form. I was lean and wiry. My mind was clear and cunning. To top it all, in a triumph of natural selection, I learned my mutation of excess mucus production often made me difficult to grapple and often undesirable as prey. Though, I had yet to pass this gene, I knew mates of all varieties actively sought me out in hopes of securing this ability for their own bloodline. With it, some day I shall be king of my tribe. Or so, at the impressionable age of 8, I thought.

Age 10. Years spent in chase and exile from the civilized hub of the playground eventually drew its toll on me. I was exhausted. Snacks and supplies became difficult to come by. I could maneuver away from his taunting only so much more and I knew it was only a matter of time before I slipped up. I was ready at last to make some concession to Greg. Perhaps with the right words, we could make truce. Or perhaps surrender would be necessary. I welcomed anything but more of my life on the lam.

I was in a difficult position, you see. In the 5th grade of Mr. McGutkin's class, we would periodically shift seating positions based upon her capricious whim. At the end of the school year, she had decided on some sort of perverse experimentation and had positioned me at the end of a row sitting next to none other than Greg and his dull-witted buddy Frank. Together, they turned my sanctuary of class time into a nightmare of constant mental assault. They taunted me, called me names, made fun of my clothes, and all the while, from across the room I could see the stiff grin on Mrs. McGutkin's face. Looking back on those times, I think she may have been some form of wraith feeding on the suffering of our young psyches. I only hope the holy water I poured the water cooler did some good, for the sake of humanity.

Months passed next to Greg and Frank. The pain made time blur but just as I had begun to give up on life, the fates smiled on me. As another cruel fit of experimentation, I had been assigned by the Wraith to vacuum the floor during recess. What I had done to merit such mistreatment, I can't recall. Perhaps it was the string of garlic cloves left in her rain coat, or maybe the tiny crucifixes I etched in her arthritis pills. I could not say, but nevertheless there I was, while all the other children were playing, sweeping pellets of gerbil food off the carpet.

I had begun to sing a rhythmic song in my head, like a chain gang laborer trying to find solace in the melancholy music, when suddenly I found myself alone in the room. Mrs. McGutkin had stepped out. I took sift advantage and hurried to her desk. She had left her assignment plan open and I quickly formed a plan. I thumbed through it and memorized the next 2 months of torturous homework assignments her inhuman mind hand devised for us. By the time she returned, I was already whistling a song of freedom to the harmony of the vacuum pump.

Thus began my liberation. Each day, near the end of the day and within view of Greg and Frank, I would slump into a trance-like state. When I knew they were watching, I would begin to mutter cryptic ramblings about our homework: pages to be read, problems to be solved. Slowly they caught on and began writing it down for verification. Before long, they took to asking me out right. What's the homework tomorrow, Mucus? they'd ask.

I worked an elaborate story and they gobbled it up: for the past 3 months I had been experiencing strange dreams in the night. Visions of homework and projects would come to me in riddles and by morning I would solve them. If they wished, I could harness my psychic powers and reveal to the both of them Mrs. McGutkin's devious plan to destroy our childhood. Armed with this foreknowledge, Greg and Frank could torment other children well ahead of time into a doing their homework for them.

In time, I came to be revered as a seer. I ventured predictions into all sorts of things. "Next week . . . I see George Jetson . . . Mr. Spacely . . . they fight . . . Spacely fires George . . . He and Elroy must devise a plan to get his job back!" I predicted sporting events (with no knowledge of sports), I predicted the news, I predicted what teachers did outside of school. I even predicted which girls liked Greg and Frank. They consumed those particular prophesies with great attention.

I went from a school yard victim to the school yard High Priest, Speaker to the Gods, Most Beloved of the Bullies. From then on, I was free.

Age 11-13. I had conquered the playground. None touched me. I walked the grounds a made man. I soon grew bored, flabby. My senses dulled. I expected to be lavished with protection and all the riches of middle school: tootsie rolls, scratch and sniff stickers, libations of chocolate milk to be poured in my honor.

Age 13-18. High School. The dread years. I had grown weak again. I was complacent in a long expired victory and now I was unfit to face the new social rigors of the Teens. My olfactory passages, I soon discovered, were no longer of benefit but instead a hindrance! I realized the game of High School was not evasion, but social interaction and I had no adaptations to aid me along. I became a scourge. I was avoided, looked down upon, outcast. And worse still, I came to accept it.

Age 18-22. College. The tables turned again. College was a utopia of acceptance. I found peers and like-minded people whom I befriended. I learned to control my mucus powers and wield them only for good. No one bothered or challenged me. I was happy.

Age 22-Present. Years have passed since I faced a bully. I have no competitors. My friends regard each other as equals and rarely quarrel. Its terrible! In the bygone years, I have become a shadow of my former self. I'm laden down with excess fat tissue. My eyesight is in atrophy. My instincts have forgotten the thrill of the run, the pleasure in a pumping heart, the rush of adrenaline. I am, I fear to say, unfit for combat. My wits are dull, my intellect as nimble as a plank of wood. I should, by all accounts, have been defeated by now, eaten by the vicious world.

But here lies the problem! The world is not vicious. It is not cruel. There is no ever-present danger afoot. I have no enemies to challenge me, no tormentors to best, no competitors to vie for natural resources with. There are no villains, no madmen, no brutes. No swords men to out-skill, no giants to fell, no devious minds to outwit.

So I find myself a shadow, peaked at age 11, and with no where to go from here. I need an arch-enemy. Some one to rival my world view and champion all that I detest so that, by combat with this person, I might become greater than myself.

I need a Greg.

So if you see him out there, perhaps leaving threatening comments on myspace or trolling wall-to-wall sections on facebook, please do send him my way. Tell him I miss him rather dearly. Also tell him I said he was an ass-face. That should get things going.

Christmas Relapse Syndrome

Its twelve days into January and I'm still singing Jinglebell rock, much to the dismay of those around me. Yesterday, it was Christmas Time. Tomorrow, it mighty be Frosty the Snow Man. I have no way of telling. When the impulse strikes, I have no control, and the carols just come out. Its clear though, from the symptoms, that I am experiencing a common form of Christmas Relapse Syndrome, or CRS. Don't bother picking up your copy of the DSM IV or logging on to the CDC webpage. There aren't any wikipedia entries on CRS and be prepared for some odd looks if you go down to the emergency room looking for attention. There is no help to be found, but nevertheless, one out of every twenty Americans is hit with this affliction in wake of the Holiday season.

I'm sure you've encountered it, driving down the street at night into your own neighborhood. You've seen the one solitary house on the block lit up with all the cheerful splendor of another bygone Christmas. Next to it, the houses sit quietly, unadorned, and try not to be embarrassed by the gaudy display next to them. Sure, the lights may have weathered some in the three or four weeks that have passed since the stockings were un-stuffed. Yes, the icicle lights are mostly de-hooked from the wind and lying in a puddle of snow-melt. Yes, the nativity has collapsed and from the wreckage of the manger, a baby Jesus hand stretches out calling for rescue. Yes, the inflatable penguin is waving a little less emphatically from inside the snow-globe, and the plastic ceiling has starting to droop down, deforming his skull. He doesn't mind. Why should you? What's that? The blinking blue LED lights are scrambling electrical impulses in your motor-cortex and this is the third time this week you've rolledover Mrs. Florence's juniper? You say a fiberglass candy cane blew out of the tree and nearly wrenched out your kids eyeball on the way to kindergarten? Well, excuse me, Mr. Grinch! Why, don't you know its still the Christmas grace period?

Well its not. Christmas grace period is long closed for the season. The office memos have gone out, already: take down the reindeer figurines. The gas station attendent isn't wearing the red stocking cap anymore. Starbucks is no longer serving the holiday latte with whipped cream and you won't find the Creamland peppermint ice cream in the store anymore. Still, I can't let it all go. I see the worlding moving on around me and I'm aware of the time, the date, the general sense of the cultural momentum pushing ever onward, but my brain will not motion to catch up. It wants to watch A Christmas Story again.

No, the Christmas Spirit has not left me, but not in that Charlie Brown Christmas-should-last-through-the-year kind of way. More like the didn't-have-enough-eggnog kind of way. The I-didn't-get-a-Nintendo-DS-for-Christmas kind of way. Its a past-mongering malady, this CRS. Its an energy very much antithetical with the Snoopy-style spirit of the Holidays. Its a spirit jealous that I didn't get to eat gingerbread men the way I like them, with little raisins for eyes; or that I did not ingest one single atom of fudge this year; that I had only one bowl of passole; that I barely snowed and I never got to play in it. Or frankly, and more realistically, that I just didn't get to spend enough time with my family and my friends. More depressing still is the thought that none of it will happen again for another 12 months. I know there will be times just as good. There will be prefectly fine holidays to share with one another in the days ahead. There's a beer-guzzing Memorial Day barbeque cookout, I can already think of, in the distant future.

All the same, there is just something about Christmas that wards away the bad measures in life, the downs, the depressions, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Its an insular period where the cares and worries of the world take a two-week break and sip hot cocoa. To see it go means there is nothing ahead but wild fluctuations, the same old unknowns. Life, in other words. The sense that anything could happen, good or bad, slowly returns. The subconscious understanding of bleak reality comes back, having exhausted itself on the Slopes of Anglefire, and settles back into that dark corner of the brain where it nests. Not that these are bad things by any means. Reality has to come back some time. I'm certainly not going to chain my office door and live in here with my Christmas tree decorations wrapped around my head. Not for much longer, anyway. I just want to relish in the carefree holiday zone for a little while more. Is that so terrible?

It doesn't work though. You can rent all the Frank Capra you want, you can bake cookies, go caroling, and keep the decorations up until the HOA rips them down, but something in the joy of it always fades. Right around January 2nd, there comes a pang in the back of your head that tells you to knock it off, move on, strap on your boots, dig in your heels, and get ready for another year in the life. That's a healthy thing, I guess. Technically, that's what New Year's is for--its the official Christmas Is Dead holiday--but some how my CRS overrode that transition. I completely missed the New Year's rally for the fresh start. I didn't read any year in review articles in the paper. I missed all the top tens of 2008, and all the predictions of 2009. So naturally, I feel a little behind the times, as though 2009 never switched on.

Don't worry about me though. I've had this affliction before and if Valentines Day doesn't cure it, then you can bet your sweet ass Tax Day will.

Now, this is the part of the Christmas blog where I say: perhaps we shouldn't move on so quickly, perhaps we should keep a little Christmas in us all year round. Wretch. Barf. You didn't come all the way to the end of this article for that kind of nonsense. No, Christmas is dead, dear friends. Santa never existed and Christmas is dead. Dead like Walt Disney. Dead like Bambi's mother. Its just time to move on. Go to work, start stressing about your mortgage, do your taxes, hit an unissured motorist or something.

Next year I'm getting DS and eating all the fudge I want to avoid having this problem again. I suggest you do the same.

'The New Golden Age' Book Review and Tirade

For Christmas, my girlfriend bought me a book we've long been hearing about on the Thom Hartmann radio show (we both listen to religiously, by the way). Its "The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos" by the economist, Ravi Batra of the Southern Methodist University. What follows, dear reader, is both my review and (mostly) my polemic.

The book is Ravi Batra's indictment against the dominance of supply-side economics in our culture and its weighted heavily with cogent arguments, deft facts, and swift groin-kicking for the endless pro-supply punditry that has been the staple of American media. Is it even accurate to say that Reagonomic, suppply-side dogma has been a part of our media? Its been more than that. Much more. It has been infused into our culture from the bottom to the top, top to bottom. It has been inserted into our text books, rallied for by chair-holding professors at prominent universities, it has been indoctrinated into our youth, our working class, even our judicial system. In the short 30 years since its inception and dissemination by the right-wing thinkers, supply-side economics has become the very fabric of American trade, business, and politics.

Batra is not the only economist in the world with eyes on widening the discourse in the country, but he does have a keen pulse on the underlying currents: what's been causing this shift toward supply thinking. He's central argument is a simple one and a damning one, too. It is nothing short of corruption in the political system that is driving the call, and it continues still to this day, for Reagonomics and its supply-side fiddling.

We all feel it, we all know it: there is corruption rampant in our government today. We see its more obvious manifestations when our representatives are forced out of office, almost on a monthly basis, for some crime or misconduct or abuse of power. It's become so common the headlines barely draw the eye anymore. We accept the terms politics and corruption as near synonyms. But with The New Golden Age, Batra makes the case that corruption can only be tolerated for so long in society. Most importantly, he demonstrates from history how cycles of corruption and revolution change culture ever for the better. Unlike most books about current events these days, you put it down with a feeling of hope for the future rather than than disgust with the present. This is a real feat for a book that centers on the nasty and destructive tendencies of our economic system. Thank Batra's ever-present optimism for that. Reading the book, you feel that history his behind you, that though society may seem misguided and hopeless at the moment, that similar periods of history have been just as bad, if not worse, and have led with regularity into periods of drastic change for the better.

A central argument in the book is the concept of civilized history as cyclical. This is not a new idea, but Batra, primarily an economist, not a historian, turns it into a predictive tool. Dividing cyclical periods of historical change into class distinction of ruling parties, the books presents four periods that occur with clockwork regularity: the age of Laborers, the age of Warriors, the age of Intellectuals, and the age of Acquisitors. One inevitably follows the previous. He argues further, and I find it hard to deny, that we are currently advanced in a new age of Acquisitors, the entrepreneurial, money-making class.

Money pervades American society and the world at large. When we talk about economics, we talk about money. When we talk about politics and elections, we talk about money. When talk about religion, or medicine, business, science, entertainment, or relationships, money enters the conversation. Our democratic government, unique in all of history, has enabled this rise of monetary dominance. When an office of civil service is open for election, whether it be Senator, President, Mayor, or County Clerk, great favor inevitably goes to those with cash. Money buys airtime in the media, it buys the ability to control the dialog of ideas, it buys friends and support, and as we've seen with the recent Blagojevich case in Illinois it can sometimes allow the outright purchasing of an elected office. Nothing in a democracy, as it exists today, can occur without the presence of tremendous funding and every power of the government goes to those who have it. Do our intellectuals, laborers, or warriors have such opportunity? Hell no.

With power comes the favor of the other classes. Acquisitors dominate and in attempts to flatter, enable, and join them the other classes relent greater and greater concessions to them. Warriors fight acquisitor's resource wars and help send the spoils to the wealthy. Intellectuals devise models and philosophies that justify the behavior of acquisition and work to mute the moral compunctions that follow. Laborers labor, build the products and perform the services that generate wealth for those already wealthy. In reward, money flows from the ruling class to each of the subjugated classes.

Profit is never enough for the acquisitors, argues Batra (and me). As their age of dominance progresses, they demand more and more of the supporting classes. Labor intensifies as a sole means of substance in an economy for the middle class. Pursuits of the warrior (exploration, law enforcement, sports) and the intellectual (writing, research, religion) become more and more compromised by the need to survive in an economy that favors the rich. As a result, they are forced to work directly in the thrall of acquisition as manufacturers and service providers. There becomes only two classes at this point: the acquisitor and the laborer. Other historical ages of this sort come to mind, periods like the feudal Middle Ages and the Industrial revolution, periods of economic inequity where the wealth of countries is concentrated in the hands of a small population of rich and the mass of people struggle to survive on the scraps.

Supply-side economics, argues Batra, is little more than a intellectual justification of this trend. The wealth will "trickle down" say the affluent. "Tax cuts for the wealthy stimulates job growth," "what's good for the rich is good for the poor," are all mantras we've heard repeated over and over in the past 30 years. But to what end? Batra shows economic evidence that end has been precisely for the betterment of those already better off. Gross Domestic Product in America has slowed. Consumer confidence is at an all time low. Real wages have fallen. Job growth is the lowest its ever been. And yet the divide between the haves and have nots has never been greater. The percentage of wealth controlled by the top one percent of the population has doubled in the last 25 years to 40%. A man working for a living is taxed 35% through income (and pays payroll and sales tax as well) while a man earning dividends and capital gains is taxed hardly %15 at the most extreme. With sufficient loopholes in tax law, corporation pay hardly an tax at all. This is the current state of America and the bias for the wealthy is palpable, the disparity is glaring.

As the name "The New Golden Age," implies, not all hope is lost. At the end of the Middle Ages the peasantry revolted and enacted reform laws that stimulated the growth of the merchant class. At the end of the Industrial Revolution, unions banded together, raised wages, and formed the basis of the American middle class. And now it is our turn, argues Batra, to take up the warrior mantle and fight for our stake in the future of our own lives and country. I wonder though, will history play out the same as it always has. Have the times changed so drastically that the cycle may have fizzled? Are we too steeped in distraction of our time, television, internet, games? Are we too involved in the minutia of our daily lives, our relationships, our dramas, our creature comforts, our work, to step out of the status quo for a moment and realize our place beneath a giant heel? The peasantry never had cable television, two-car garages, or Campbell's soup. The unions never had weekends or energy drinks. The means of revolution are available to us, that much is for sure. We have the capacity, if we speak in one voice and act with one mind, to dethrone the greed, the inhumane, the selfish who have mired us in inequity. But in the end do we have the stomach for it? Do have the momentum, the inner drive, the balls?

Batra believes so. Me, I'm not so sure, but there's hope for me still.