You Do the Math

As a Therapist in Training, I fall under the purview of California's Mandatory Reporting Laws. They basically state that if I become privy to any information regarding child abuse while in a professional capacity, I am required by law to make a report to the Child Protective Agency. This weekend I learned that while it is not mandated that I report a client engaging in consensual sexual intercourse between a 46-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl, I am required under penalty of law to report oral sex between partners of which either or both are under the age of 18. Write your congressmen, ladies and gentlemen.

Effing Movies

There’s something about the fall that makes me start thinking cinematically. The barometric pressure, ambient temperatures, and change in lighting angles seem to conjure up crisply framed scenes accompanied by poignant soundtracks in my mind for the most mundane of daily activities. The camera cuts to a strait overhead shot as I sit hunched, head in my left hand, shoveling oatmeal into my mouth in the semi-light of 6:37am. The colours are muted and the contrast high as Dire Straits subtly compliments the quiet clink of silverware and the muffled thwack of the morning paper hitting the door. With the embers of the day smoldering over the bucolic spread of vineyards and dilapidated barns, the camera pans along with a sprinting Honda as Bob Seager growls out Roll Me Away. I have these moments at other times of the year, but they seem to intensify and proliferate in the cooling environs of the fall, so in that spirit I've decided to renew my movie reviewing efforts. As per the previous review post, I’ll only review one film thoroughly and leave the rest to scores and highlights.

Since the last film review post I have seen a staggering 10 films. They are, in chronological order:

1. Born into Brothels
   
2. Capote
   
3. Memento
4. Charade
   
5. The Boondock Saints
6. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
7. The Chorus
8. Weird Science
   
9. Knocked Up
10. F**K
    

Maybe it’s the serial position effect or maybe it’s my affinity for the taboo, but I’ve decided to give the feature to the most recent documentary I saw, F**K.

Carl Jung believed that we are all connected through a collective unconscious, and as such the Universe will tell us things that are, that have been and that will be if we pay attention. All week people have been randomly dropping the eff-bomb all around me, and last night (Saturday) I ended up watching Steve Anderson’s documentary on the word. I have no idea what the Universe might be trying to tell me through that, but I sincerely hope that it’s not an omen of things to come.

This documentary did three things very well. It let me know what Ice Tea thinks about the eff-bomb. It let me know what Drew Carey thinks about the eff-bomb. It also cleared up the urban legend that it is an acronym of some sort, which is a spurious urban legend according to the many distinguished linguists they paraded across the screen. Expecting a smart and well-crafted film about the history and utility of society’s most exciting and well-known taboo, the film ended up being more of a smorgasbord of famous opinions about the value of censorship and either idolization or vilification of the eff word, a la ‘I Love the 80’s.’

The movie was far from void, I don’t mean to give a completely pejorative vibe on the thing. It was generally well shot, there was an interesting cast of interviews from Sam Donaldson to Tera Patrick and everyone in between. There were some interesting segments over the linguistic flexibility of the word (it can be used legitimately as almost every part of speech), its history and the public debate over its use in several different contexts, and an honest effort to provide some contrast in opinion. In the end, however, the film ended up coming off juvenile due largely to some poorly constructed segments arguing for a categorical absolution of FCC regulation. Based entirely on Red Herring arguments about increasing fines under the Bush administration and some half-baked parenting philosophy pitched by Kevin Smith, it was 25 minutes of shaky rhetoric and shoddy diatribes that lost the film a lot of the luster it had previously garnered. It’s not everything I hoped it would be, but it’s a good film for everyone who’s ever muttered it under their breath after an excruciating exam or screamed it at a roommate after they ate your last lasagna again and took your calculator to study in the library when you needed it for a test.
Grade: B-

Scores and Highlights:

Born into Brothels: If someone had told me three years ago that it was possible to shoot an uplifting documentary about children born to generational prostitutes in Calcutta's red-light district, I would have had a hard time believing them. Zana Briski was able to manage just that in this stirring picture of the impact of one woman’s refusal to be content with moral outrage and instead commited her life to brightening an otherwise dark situation. Witnessing the change in how the children composed not only their photographs but also their lives was nothing short of miraculous.
Grade: A-

Capote: Phillip Seymore Hoffman is superb in this relentless film about Truman Capote’s pursuit of his groundbreaking non-fiction fiction piece In Cold Blood. The film didn’t do much for me other than give me an appreciation for the spent-uranium durability of the author and provide a fascinating look into the life of the midwife of modern American literature. The writing, acting, directing and pacing are all accomplished at the highest levels. So yeah, I guess it kinda did do a lot for me after all.
Grade: B+

Memento: I hadn’t seen this film in a long time and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a film before or since as conceptually intriguing as Memento, and while the acting is a little stilted at times and the writing is more than adequately covered by bizarreness of the plot, the film is able to sneak a surprising amount of character development in among the twists and is thoroughly enjoyable to loose yourself in. It was even better the second time after a bottle of wine.
Grade: A-/A+++

Charade: I have a bias against old movies, and I’m not sure why it is. If a movie is filmed before 1985, I always end up looking at a movie jacket and thinking it’s going to blow. Well, after polishing off this smart action/comedy circa 1963, I had not only changed my tune about older movies but also found myself completely enamored with Audrey Hepburn. A charming and classy woman from another time and another place, she is something we could use much more of in contemporary cinema. Decently acted and cleverly delivered, Charade was good clean fun for the whole family. Random casting note: This was apparently the other movie Walter Matthau did before Grumpy Old Men.
Grade: A-

The Boondock Saints: This film is exceptionally violent, frequently obscene and almost entirely dark, and yet somehow manages to preserve an unidentifiable quality which would resemble hope if it wasn’t so grizzled. This film also manages to capture filial piety in a way that transcends acting, writing or directing, and I have always been impressed by that. My favourite scenes from this movie are the old Irish barkeep screaming, “F**K!!!!! ASS!!!!!!!!” and blinking apoplectically as a group of Nuns hurry past in a hospital hallway and the brothers conversing in five different languages with Agent Smecker. It’s not a flick for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for some film noire killing and maiming, this one’s for you. Best taken with a Guinness or five.
Grade: B

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Yeah, I saw it. I could have spent that 97 minutes counting the hairs on my forearm and been about the same off intellectually and emotionally. It wasn’t even bad enough to be entertaining. The end.
Grade: C-/D+

The Chorus: This charming French film about a transformation in a delinquent school for boys has found a warm spot in with me. Part of it is likely my inexplicable affection for the French, but this film did a fine job of portraying the power of decency and humility when speaking into even the most hardened of environments. Due to the film being entirely in French, this isn’t the flick for you if you don’t like subtitles and/or don’t speak French, but it’s well worth trying to get over either obstacle to enjoy this warm and affirming tale about the importance of being human in inhumane circumstances.
Grade: A-

Weird Science: What can you really say about this Saturday afternoon classic? It's basically a distillation of male juvenile primary processing, right down to the fecal troll Bill Pullman gets turned into, and it had been years upon long years since I'd seen it. Between the mutant biker gang, stealing the popular girls from Robert Downey Jr. and jaunting nonchalantly around town in Ferraris, it's a fun house of every Jr. High guy all dressed up in undeniably 80's threads. Not really intelligent, not really subtle in any way shape or form, but campy and random.
Grade: B-

Knocked Up: I actually enjoyed this flick a lot more than I thought I would when it came in the mail. I had heard rave reviews from several different sources over the months since its release, but remained skeptical. Partly because of my low expectations, however, and partly because most of the cast were strongly reminiscent of my friends in high school, I ended up appreciating the crassness and awkwardness captured so authentically in this film of trying to negotiate life between people who are so unalike. An enjoyable film as long as you don’t take anything too seriously.
Grade: B

Destination: Destruction

*** This is one man's account of actual events that transpired on the evening of January 13^th, 2000. For another man's recollection, please take a dip in the Language Pool ***

///////

It was the middle of winter; the time of year which on occasion leaves you thinking you’re late for bed before the 6 o’clock news is even into their sports coverage. It was the time of year when the sun goes to bed early and this particular evening it happily obliged, pulling a blanket of high clouds after itself as it plunged the Western hemisphere into night leaving only occasional peeks of the lunar physiognomy to provide light. The preternatural gloom that followed, obscuring almost completely the memory of lavish summer evenings spent outdoors until late, had fallen long before I got the call; when I heard James’ voice on the phone, however, a light was kindled against the darkness. It was the moment we had been waiting for since the previous evening at Bible Study; or had it been our entire lives? We were 18, and we were going to purchase dynamite.

James had joined me in the ranks of adulthood just recently, and the Knudson brothers were the ones who first floated the idea. “Yeah, lotto tickets and smokes. Turning 18 just isn’t as exciting as I thought it’d be,” I said while Al Nunez desperately tried to redirect the group’s attention back to Galatians Chapter 2. “Welcome to the club anyhow, James.”

“You can buy dynamite,” Peter interjected. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Totally,” added his brother Nathan. “You’re adults now.”

There were some guffaws and ‘nu-uh’s’ followed by more ‘uh-huh’s’ before Al’s persistently patient redirections were effective in returning us to the text at hand, but the damage had been done; James and I were hooked. Dynamite was available for the purchasing and there was no way we wouldn’t be buying some.

After the study was over, James and I took council together. “What are we gonna use it on, though, James?” I said. Always the Bert to his Ernie, I’m thinking practically. “Heck, where are we gonna use it?”

“Can’t we use your house?” James asks, dead pan. A forgone conclusion.

“We’re not that far out in the country, James. And plus, I’m pretty sure my dad doesn’t want us blowing stuff up in the back yard with dynamite.”

“Well, we can probably find somewhere up in the foothills or around camp to do it, then,” he countered, undeterred.

“And the target?”

“Who cares? Even just a hole in the ground would be cool.”

“I wonder how much dynamite costs? For that matter, where do we even buy it? I don’t remember seeing it at Wal Mart or Target or anything, ya know?” I was excited about the project, but I couldn’t get myself past a few logistical hiccups. Like price per unit, and felony destruction of property charges.

“I betcha OSH has it,” responded James. “If anybody has it, I bet they do.”

“Yeah, I guess they’ll be our best bet. OSH it is. If they don’t have it there we could probably try Home Depot or something, too.” There was nothing left to do now but play it out, so when James called the next night I knew what he wanted. He swung by my house in his battered Geo Metro and we sped off into the gathering night to meet our destiny.

The ride over was uneventful, James expertly spiriting his nimble automobile through, around and over traffic. “This is gonna be awesome,” he had said while down shifting and accelerating past an old Dodge Ram, screaming through an orange light. Caedman’s Call blared over the small tinny speakers in the car.

“Totally,” I had agreed, looking up at the patchwork of high clouds and the penumbral moon high above, face half smashed against the cool window.

We skittered into a parking stall under a guttering light near the front of Orchard Supply Hardware, the closest corporate equivalent to Mom & Pop’s Hardware N’ Things. If the parking lot was any indication, they didn’t get a lot of customers after six on a Thursday night. Piling out of the Metro and casting furtive grins at each other, we strolled through the automatic doors as they whooshed aside and we stepped into the mausoleum. The fluorescent lighting above hummed in subdued tones, harmonizing with Kenny Loggins who was politely crooning over the store’s speakers. The tang of galvanized metal and fertilizer was thick in the air and employees conspicuously thin on the ground as we began combing the store for our prized purchase.

“What aisle do you think they keep the dynamite in?” I asked James as we made our way past the impulse-buy stands, coiled garden hoses and E-Z Up shelters.

“Well, you can make explosives out of fertilizer, right? Maybe they’re with that?”

“Yeah, I dunno. I figure we can probably just go down every aisle and check it out,” I guessed. We still hadn’t seen any employees.

Fasteners? Not there. Drivers? Nor there. Lighting? Plumbing? Sealants? Paint? Nope x 4. We had worked our way through roughly ¾ of the store from left to right, muttering to each other about the odds of finding our target down this aisle or that aisle and ogling power tools when we found our first employee re-stocking the snail bait shelf in the pest control section. The boy looked to be about 16 with floppy hair and a slightly hunched posture, dutifully putting box after box of Ortho Slug & Snail Bait next to its kindred. His nametag informed us his name was Travis.

“Here we go,” James breathed to me and quickly approached the kid. I followed along in tow slightly slack-jawed and still very much wondering how the immanent exchange would go down.

“Hey,” James began, stopping at just the right distance from the employee. Not too close, not too far away. “I was wondering; do you guys sell dynamite?”

Travis’ hand, which had been methodically conveying box after box from his cart to the shelf, ground to a halt in mid air. It set cautiously down the box it had been carrying, and instead of retrieving another brushed his floppy hair back out of his face as he looked from the shelf to the cart and back again, conspicuously avoiding looking at James except for a quick glance between oscillations. “Oh – ah – uhmmmmm, yeah. Wow. Dynamite? No. Gosh, no. Wow, yeah. Dynamite? Yeah, we don’t sell that, I don’t think. I’m pretty sure, yeah, we don’t sell that, what do you need it for?” Travis was obviously flustered.

‘Shit!’ I thought to myself. ‘This is what I was worried about. Travers thinks we’re terrorists.’ I started looking for escape routes. Luckily James had no such compunction, and responded cool as a cucumber.

“Rodents,” he stated matter-of-factly, his face inscrutable.

“Oh, wow. Yeah. Gosh,” floundered the kid. “What kind?”

My stomach fell down my pant leg. ‘I wonder if they’ll give us cells near each other?’ I despaired. This wasn’t going as well as I had hoped. I thought I might have heard police sirens swiftly approaching outside, and every creak and groan of the store around us was the stamping of booted ATF agents. Still apparently unperturbed, however, James soldiered on.

Furrowing his brow just slightly and leaning towards Travis for emphasis, he replied “Big,” nodding slightly.

“Gophers . . . actually,” I found myself saying. “Big gophers. Making a real mess out of the place, you know?” I was trying to sell an Eskimo a refrigerator.

“Wow. Yeah, gophers. Gosh, ummm, yeah, must be pretty big. I guess they really can make a mess out of things,” Travis weakly agreed. I could taste his apprehensive skepticism. “What have you tried to get rid of em?”

“Just, you know, poison. Uh, flooding.” My mind raced through a conversation between my friend’s dad and another guy I had overheard about a gopher problem he was having. “The, uh. Um, well, the usual. Nothing’s really worked and my dad just wants ‘em gone.”

“Have you – uh -- tried, um, gopher gassers?” Travis asked. “I, um, I think they’re one aisle over. They usually, uh, they usually work pretty good.”

“Oh yeah?” At that moment I couldn’t have been paid any sum of money to stay in the store one minute longer. “No, we haven’t tried those yet but we will, one aisle over? Thanks, have a good night, see ya around.”

James and I turned on our heels and pushed the envelope for conspicuous walking speed, flashing wan smiles at a bored elderly lady slumped at the customer service desk as we strained towards the automatic sentries to freedom. Three steps from the door we both broke into a run and the Metro had started rolling before I had managed to fully shut my door. It wasn’t until we’d made it a block and a half with no lights in the mirror that we nearly died laughing ourselves to death.

It’s been a long time since James and I made Travis fill out an incident report on Orchard Supply letterhead; there are a million and three stories, jokes, and sorrows between then and now, and we still never have managed to procure ourselves any dynamite. In retrospect, it wouldn’t have been appropriate (metaphorically, not legally), but that’s never something you can know at the time. My relationship with James has never been centred around destruction, explosion or demolition. Instead, it has been a nearly 10 year history of encouragement, exploration, trust, intimacy (in a masculine way, of course) and growth which I count among my most treasured of gifts. I’m just glad I never had to shank him with a filed down toothbrush in the Big House for a carton of smokes and some lotto tickets during our 16 year stint for Conspiracy and Terrorist Threats.

Eight Across

Across:

8. Classless institution found in a God-forsaken, backward, wasteland of a town

Down:

2. One who dislikes, see 8 across

I've made no bones about my dislike for Texas Tech University. They've finally decided to make my job easy and show their true colours to the rest of the world. May they reap what they are so wont to sew this weekend; so let it written, so let it be done.

The Deeper Truth

I stumbled unexpectedly on koans while reading an incredibly dull book about cognitive behavioural therapy and borderline personality disorder; a flasher on the morning commuter train of my Thursday afternoon that has left me unable to get the idea out of my mind. A koan is a saying or story which contains aspects of Truth which are inaccessible to rational logic, but which are said to be approachable through a deeper wisdom. They are a tool of Zen practitioners used to move both student and teacher towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. They cannot be answered by any power of intellect, nor apprehended through a purely emotional encounter. A koan may have many right answers and even more wrong ones. The koan is a mercurial thing, some would say a capricious at best, seldom retaining it's Truth for even the same person for long at all. The true interpretation of a koan is said to be found only in experiencing life. That is to say, I have been enthralled with the concept of coming to knowledge of something outside of reason and yet not based entirely on my own inner subjectivity since last Thursday at about 10:45 am.

Here is a famous Zen koan:

A monk asked Kegon, "How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?"

Kegon replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."

And a famous koan from Chistianity:

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

Not to go too Mr. Miyagi on yall, but I've been thinking about this and figured I'd share the wealth. In parting, I leave you with my favourite koan I've read so far.

The world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your robes at the sound of a bell?

Blue Sevety-Two Razor!

Uhhhhh, actually, folks, we're gonna have to call an audible on the previous post due to some unforeseen scheduling complications. Right now we're looking at perhaps the 10th of November. Email me back with an ideal date for you and your others, texafornian@gmail.com, and we'll try and accommodate as many people as possible.

Ganza!

The best part about that album cover: Disc II of Pipe Organ Extravaganza IV! I sometimes wonder how I haven't managed to release an album myself. There's obviously people out there willing to press, not to mention buy, just about anything (note the small script above the title!!!!!).

ANYways . . . I'm sure you've all been looking at your calenders and thinking to yourselves, 'Isn't it about time the Qualles threw another Fallstravaganza? I mean, it's been Fall for a least a week or so, what's the hold up?!' Or something to that effect. Well, wait no longer. The date has been set for October the 20th at my parent's place out east of Clovis from like 6ish till 9ish or so. Ish. If you forgot what it's like or didn't get to make it last year, it'll be a bunch of people hanging out and eating good food, and it'll be fun. So much fun that you'll want to compose a limerick about it when it's all said and done. There will be great food, likely some games, and generally good clean fun for the whole family. I'm posting this here because it's likely that I don't have the email addresses of everyone I'd like to invite and this event has historically been one which brought a lot of people together, so if you want to come and read my blog you're in. Email me or drop me a comment and we'll connect on the details.

Things You Should Know

Alright, just kidding. I have no idea if cats actually even paint, let alone why. Nor do I know who would buy this book or why. What I do know is:

1. Next Tuesday, Oct. 9^th, is the National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding. The Global prevalence rate of mental illness, encompassing everything from substance abuse to schizophrenia and everything in between, is somewhere between 65 and 85%. Whether you're aware of it or not, you know someone who has been intimately affected by psychopathology of one type or another. Let's not wait for one day a year to pray for our brothers and sisters.
2. In two days, we will eclipse the 50^th anniversary of Sputnik I's maiden voyage into the final frontier. This is really three things in one. The first is the anniversary. The second is a plug for Orson Scott Card's Ender series; I find them some of the better sci-fi political/military commentary available. Third, how long would you ride on a space ship to reach another M-class planet?
3. Eerily mirroring a movie I think I saw on the Sci-Fi Chanel at 3h30am one Tuesday night in college, brain-sucking amoebas are descending on our nation. Not good. Nose plugs might be un-cool, but not nearly as un-cool as having a pseudopoded microorganism feasting on your gray matter. Bleck.
4. Existential human connection is a real phenomenon. I have experienced it, and it totally freaked me out. Believe me or don't, I know what I felt.
5. I am now two years older than James Dean was when he died two days ago in 1955. What a lot I have accomplished in the last two years, and what a lot has changed. Sometimes I wish that we'd have had the chance to see Dean continue to grow and evolve, and sometimes it seems fitting that he remains unsullied by the corruption of time.
   

All in the Family

“Yeah,” quipped Liam, hardly cognizant of choosing his words before the tumbled from his mouth. “Long time no see.”

“Oh, so now you remember me? I knew you were full of shit, Liam. I knew it! Damn it, and now I’m payin’ the price for m . . .” but Liam stopped hearing the now constant and virulent stream of words erupting from his captive’s mouth. What was this guy talking about? What did he mean, now I remember him? Something tugged at the corner of Liam’s mind, an unsettled buzzing that evaporated with every attempt to bring it to consciousness, only to reconstitute again just past the fringes of his awareness.

Liam squinted away the confusion and raised the pistol he uncomfortably realized had fallen almost slack by his side. “Stupid stupid stupid! Stay focused here,” he thought to himself and he snarled and took a shuffle step towards the interloper in the chair. “Why don’t you just shut your mouth for a second. How ‘bout that, for old time’s sake?” And he pulled the hammer back with his thumb for emphasis.

“Sure, fine, whatev . . .” the stranger began again, seeming to gain steam with his mounting level of consciousness, but was swiftly clammed up as Liam lifted his pistol a few menacing inches. He splayed his hands up in a sign of contorted surrender from under the binding of the tape.

“Here’s how this is gonna work,” said Liam, now itching his temple with the dark muzzle of his borrowed piece. “I’ll ask you questions, you’ll answer. If I think you’re snowin’ me, you’ll get a matching set,” he finished, now gesturing with the pistol at the stranger’s duct taped forehead. The rumpled man grunted and rolled his eyes in resignation. “So first things first, champ. Who the hell are you.”

The man raised his eyebrows, questioning, until Liam waved him on with his free hand. “My name,” came the man’s low reply, “is Cwik. Ricky Cwick.” As the man began his response, Liam had began rifling through the small pile of the man’s possessions. He grabbed the wallet and flipped it open. The Nevada DL of Reginald Walker glowered back at him through yellowing plastic sleeve. Liam shook his head slowly, sneering as he stepped towards the chair and raised his gun.

“Wait!” yelped the prisoner, trying to maneuver his bound body away from the impending blow. Liam remained statuesque, pistol raised back over one shoulder ready to deliver a vicious blow. “Christ! You don’t think I carry my real ID around on me, do you? Walker’s my cover, I’m trying to be honest with you here, man.” Cwik ventured a quick look back up from his cowered position. “You really don’t remember me, do you Liam.”

“Remember you from where?!” erupted Liam, but as Cwik began to formulate his answer, Liam held up a finger. “One thing at a time. One thing at a time, Ricky. Who sent you after me?”

“Well that’s really two birds with one stone right there, Liam. You always were one for efficiency, weren’t you?” Cwik’s eye was crinkling into what appeared to be a grin, but the twinkle only managed to come out menacing in Liam’s estimation.

“So?” demanded Liam, pistol now back at the level, unwavering.

Cwik sighed and dropped his chin towards his chest, then brought his eyes back to meet Liam’s squarely. “Your father sent me here, Liam. Your father sent me to find you after what happened last April, and that’s how you know me. I’ve worked for your father and his family for 27 years.”

The buzz in the back of Liam’s mind got louder, but it was soon drowned out by a loud thud against the door to the suite. The door must have been sturdier than it looked to turn back the first assault, but the frame creaked and Liam saw the wall next to it shudder as a second blow was landed. It was evident the door would not hold long.

“Well,” said Cwik brightly, now apparently fully recovered from his stunning blow earlier. “They didn’t take long to show, did they? For all your efficiency, Liam, you do get bogged down in the details from time to time.”

Blood singing again in his ears, wild eyed, Liam scanned the small room and its contents past the barrel of his pistol. There weren’t many options.

Liam should now:

A) Attempt to barricade the door with furniture

B) Cut Cwik loose and attempt to use him as a hostage

C) Gag and hood Cwik, using him as ambush bait

D) Kill Cwik and use his body as a human shield while trying to escape through the unknown assailants.

Get Learnt

I have earned a meager income for the last two years of my life working for a tutoring centre that tries to fill in the gaps left by our state's education system. I see lots of kids who don't understand the reading strategies employed by their teachers, kids who have yet to learn their math facts by 10^th grade and kids that can't sit still for more than 83 seconds without climbing the walls and swinging from the ceiling. Some of my closest friends and my mother are also in the educational system, so when my professor recently assigned an article for my practicum cohort based on a lecture by a psychologist named Rudolph Dreikurs, I was extremely impressed by what he had to say. It has certainly given me material to think about as I tutor and work as a therapist. Here is the link to the full article, and below are some of the more exacting excerpts.

First Dreikurs lays some groundwork:

I have found many, many people who try so hard to be good. But I have failed yet to see that they have done so for the welfare of others. What I find behind these people who try to be so good is concern with their own prestige. They are good for the benefit of their own self-evaluation. Anybody who is really concerned with the welfare of others won't have any time or interest to be concerned with the question of how good he is.

There is only one area where we still can feel safely superior: When we are right. It is a new snobbishism of intellectuals: "I know more, therefore, you are stupid and I am superior to you." It is superiority of the moralists: "I am better than you; therefore, I am superior to you." And it is in this competitive strife to establish a moral and intellectual superiority that making a mistake became so dangerous again because, "If you find out that I am wrong, how can I look down at you? And if I can't look down at you, you certainly will look down at me."

And then he gets to the crux of his article . . .

I feel that in the majority of tests given to students the final mark does not depend on how many brilliant things he said and did, but how many mistakes he made. And if he made a mistake he can't get a hundred regardless of how much he has contributed on other parts of the same assignment. Mistakes determine the value. In this way, we unwittingly add to the already tremendous discouragement of our children.

It seems to me that our children are exposed to a sequence of discouraging experiences, both at home and in school. Everybody points out what they did do wrong and what they could do wrong. We deprive the children of the only experience which really can promote growth and development; experience of their own strengths. We impress them with their deficiencies, with their smallness, with their limitations; and at the same time try to drive them on to be much more than they can be. If we want to institute in children the enthusiasm which they need to accomplish something, the faith in themselves, regard for their own strengths; then we have to minimize the mistakes they are making, and emphasize all the good things, not which they could do, but which they do do.

It's Back

I'm bringing it back, and this time I've got backup. One of the better shows on network TV starts up again October 5th, let's hope their sophomore efforts match their debut.

Magic Brownies

It’s common knowlege that chocolate is not good for dogs, so naturally my wife and I were concerned when we discovered my 11 lb. Jack Russell Terrier ate 12 brownies. It took us a while to put the story together, piecing together the clues. About 6pm, we noticed her little pink belly was taunt and distended. She refused dinner. She licked her lips a lot. We were pretty sure she’d gotten into something, but the list of what it could be was extensive; it wasn’t until dessert time that we discovered the batch of brownies had turned up missing. Quelle méchante.

Reba lounged around the apartment for the rest of the evening, legs pushed slightly askew by her bulging belly. So far we hadn’t seen the brownies make a reappearance. When we put her to bed around midnight, Reba yowled and cried in her crate. Fearing that she might detonate a shitstorm of explosive diarrhea and vomit if we kept her confined all night, I was moved by compassion and a desire to not clean up the mess. “Let’s just leave her out tonight, babe,” I said. “If she tries to get up on the bed, we’ll just push her off, it shouldn’t be a big deal.” And it wasn’t. Until about 5am.

Consulting the internet about chocolate consumption in dogs the next morning, we discovered that . . . “As time passes and there's increased absorption of the toxic substance, you'll see an increase in the dog's heart rate, which can cause arrhythmia, restlessness, hyperactivity, muscle twitching, increased urination or excessive panting.” That would explain the manic rampage around our apartment from the hours of 5-8:30am. After the fourth strait lap through our apartment, jumping on and over every piece of furniture we own barking like Bill Cower on Crank, I finally got out of bed and groggily held one end of a rope with Reba spasmodically clamped onto the other. 150 minutes later, she seemed to have taken a slight edge off. She has since been fed a mild laxative, squeezed out several piles of a gooey tar-like substance, and calmed down substantially though her small belly still shows signs of distention. While I am sure that chocolate consumption poses a serious physiological threat to my dog’s life, it’s nothing compared to the carnage which will be visited upon her if she pulls off a repeat performance tonight. Oh, and check out my nasty ankle!

1. This morning about 6h30 during a brief respite from Reba's rampage




2. 10h30 tonight, after working on the car all afternoon




3. Some context

A Time to Laugh, a Time to Cry

I cried last night. I can’t say that it’s an unheard of occurrence; I remember one time particularly from my childhood when I had fallen off a ladder. It was the first time I had the wind knocked out of me. Sprawled on the ground in Osh Kosh B'Goshes and deck shoes, a fish out of water, the most terrifying part of the experience was trying to cry from the pain and finding the agency to do so had left with the forceful expulsion of air from my lungs. It wasn’t until they had time to reboot that I was able to give voice to my panic and pain. And voice it I did, clinging to my mother like a frantic baby rhesus as she patiently carried me back inside and smoothed my hair, accepting without question or protest the large damp spot on her Easter blouse where I buried my face .

It’s been a long three weeks for me since the beginning of my semester. Early mornings and later nights have taken their toll, so it would seem, on my psyche. I have doubled my client load at my first placement. I have helped a husband commit his wife of 35 years to a mental institution. I have stumbled upon the startling possibility that the reason I think my therapist is full of shit may in fact be because I think I am full of shit most the time I’m doing therapy. I have played 10 games of softball in two days. I have started academic work after a summer of solely clinical exercises. And last night after a particularly nasty sprained ankle in a fútbol match my team narrowly lost, the weight of this reality got to be a bit much for me. As I sat on the couch in the intermediary period before the ibuprofen took hold, frozen peas tied in place by my socks, the throbbing in my ankle kept time with the repeating third person replay of me landing awkwardly while trying to avoid the prostrate player. I make a small hop over a leg, take a stab at the ball, connecting tissues sue for breach of contract and the whole thing starts over again. Morgan’s face makes an appearance in my reverie: “They didn’t score, did they?” I ask, still clasping my lower calf with both hands and grimacing. He smiles a wry smile and cocks his head while he pats mine.

My tears were Pringles, impossible to stop after just one. This time it was my wife’s sweaty soccer jersey that absorbed my tears as she held me and smoothed my hair. I’m not embarrassed that I cried, in fact I’m glad that I did. It’s started me thinking: in a world rife with suffering and pain and hurt and sorrow as well as joy, celebration and ecstasy why do we laugh so much more than we cry? Or is that just me?

Seeing Double

I actually think that Carrie has done well in the Country market, so this isn't a slam on her. This song has been bugging me for a while, though, and I thought I'd feed it to the wolves to see what yall think. Click on the video and move ahead to :40 and/or read the chorus provided below. Woman power, right? Female empowerment? Three snaps in a 'Z', etc, etc. Now switch the gender pronouns and ask Quaadir Brown if the tune sounds familiar . . .

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats,
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Worm Hole

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 6:30. Am. It's by no means a record for me, but after the second early morning rousing to drive down to scenic Handford, CA . . . the body wasn't diggin' it. Despite the severe and legitimate protests by my circadian rhythms, I slouched down the hallway and mindlessly spooned a bowl of oatmeal into my mouth. I evidently got dressed somewhere in the intervening minutes, hastily collected an assortment of portfolios, gym shorts and computer bags and kissed my wife goodbye. Bemoaning the fact that I had woken up at 6h30 and was still running late, I wrenched open the front door and stepped unexpectedly into Houston, TX.

In the mid-80's and humid as a Gorilla's armpit at 7 in the morning, the electrical storms and intermittent pelting of precipitation reminded me fondly of my time at University in College Station, TX. I am one of the few who inexplicably love humidity. Partly because my hair can't get any worse, partly because I've vowed to align myself with the Powers of Heat over the Powers of Cold, yesterday was a free sauna and I loved every minute of it.

Enchanté

Chapter 3

Still absently blinking as his heart rate began to stabilize and the rest of the room came into focus, Liam’s hands fell momentarily to his knees and he stood silently bracing his body on locked elbows like a man who had just sprinted down a hallway and knocked an unexpected interloper to his hotel suite out cold with an oak book-end. As his brain began to warm up, executive functions beginning to catch up with the primal explosion, Liam soon realized that leaving the man unrestrained on the floor would soon prove to be a disastrous course of inaction. Stripping the man of his overcoat, Liam quickly ran through the man’s pockets and retrieved a small pile of booty. Both hands full, casting about the small sitting room in the tangerine glow of the serene ceiling lamp, Liam dumped his haul into the utilitarian wood grained laminate desk against the wall behind him. Next he grabbed the stunted table lamp from where it had been holding up a guide to local eateries and a Gideon’s Bible, and wrenching the cord from the back of the lamp with his left hand he set the pistol down next to the man’s possessions on the desk’s pocked surface got to work on the downed interloper. After awkwardly attempting to reassemble the scattered limbs, Liam hog-tied the stranger where he lay and eased him onto his side. Liam was almost overcome with the wave of stale marijuana smoke mingled with cheap booze and cheaper aftershave as the man’s face oscillated towards the ceiling. Wrinkling his nose in distaste, his still-heightened senses reeling from such a salient olfactory encounter, Liam left his ears in the sitting room and shot back down the hall towards the bedroom to retrieve his large black duffel. Ripping the zipper the length of the bag and unceremoniously dumping its contents in a shower of matted socks and rumpled t-shirts, Liam scooped up the roll of duct tape that had fallen heavily on top of the clothes and hurried back down the hall to find his charge unchanged.

Lugging the man’s body into the musty overstuffed sitting chair, cheek to cheek with the sallow visage of his assailant, Liam could feel his shallow breathing as the abrasive stubble grated into his own moderately scruffy skin. He haphazardly spun several dozen laps of the silvery webbing taut around the man’s body, the tape screeching as it pulled loose from the roll, securing him to the seat. Gaunt frame sagging against the restraint, Liam quickly assessed the man’s wounds. Not too bad. The man’s nose had nearly stopped bleeding, but the gash on his head looked angry and was still pushing a moderate amount of blood through the nascent clots. Wincing despite himself as he leaned in for a closer look, he took in the face’s features. They were craggy and grizzled, a face that could have been any age between 28 and 53, and seemed malicious even in their unconscious state. Scars festooned the man’s lips and cheeks, and lines of hard living were etched into deep folds around his eyes and mouth.

Liam quickly double checked the bonds on the man’s hands and feet and dashed off again down the hall to the bathroom, retrieving a spare roll of toilet paper and a plastic trash can with a brown flower on the front. Filling the trash can with a few inches of water from the faucet, Liam returned to crudely staunch the wound and clean some of the blood away with a sopping mass of cheap one-ply toilet paper. Once he had effected some semblance of repair, Liam dropped his bloody wad of tissue into the remaining water at the bottom of the trash can. As diluted blood continued to make its way down the eroded crags of the man’s cheek, Liam ripped off another four-inch swatch of duct tape and stretched it as tight as he could over a patch of fresh toilet paper before pressing it over the rend on the man’s oily forehead. Slapping it soundly once for good measure, he nearly tripped on his own feet as the man suddenly jerked and began to struggle against the layers of tape adhering him to the chair. The prisoner emitted a growling noise as he vainly thrashed in the grips of the tape, wild and low, but never cried out. Swiftly regaining his poise, Liam snatched the pistol from off the desk nearby and leveled it at the stranger, now glaring at him. One eye was nearly obscured with blood and duct tape. The other eye half squinted at Liam, who was unable to tell if the man was attempting to smile or glare at him.

“Oh, hello, Liam,” the man croaked. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Liam should respond:

A) "Yeah, long time no see."

B) "You've got about three seconds to start talking before I paint my nice pretty room here with the shit you call your brains."

C) "Who are you and what do you want with me?"

D) Say nothing, but stare coldly down the barrel of his new gun.

Who, Me?!

Today was a day of firsts for me. This morning I started my new work-out routine from Bill Pearl’s strength manual. Today was the first time in a long time that I’ve spent consecutive days in the Daily Book of Prayer. Today is the first time I can remember when I have been overtly propositioned.

Sitting at the intersection of Bullard and Villa at 11h45 this morning, listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR and (as Blake Shelton would say) minding my own, a setting which shall live . . . in infamy. I was making a bid for the right turn, sandwiched between the through traffic and the curb, when I noticed one of the girls in the car next to me casting furtive glances back in my direction. Catching her eye, I summoned by best head jerk and wan smile, expecting little if anything in return. To my utter shock and discombobulation, the girl mouthed something back to me. Puzzled, brows furrowing, I cocked my head shook it slowly from side to side, an electrocution in slow motion. I didn’t understand. Again, she mouthed her demand. Again I was nowhere close to deciphering the code, all blank stare and oscillating cranium. After three more failed attempts, the window crank was employed. I silenced Neal Conan with a careless flail at the radio face-plate.

“Hey, ma girl wants ta know, is you single?”

“Oh . . . uh,” I stammered, taken aback. I would have been better prepared to give the square root of 43 2/3. “Ah, no. I’m married,” I finished lamely, brandishing the ring of my left hand.

“Ah, aight,” and they pulled away at the light.

Thanks, random girls at the light on Bullard and Villa. I think.

Let's Try That Again . . .

Chapter 2b

Digging his knuckles into his eye sockets and straining his already extended senses beyond their limits, Liam could almost swear he could now hear the soft whistle of breathing intermittently trickle down the short dim hallway which lead to the rest of the suite he had been occupying for the last two weeks. His thoughts drifted to the past seven months of furtive habitation in suite after dingy suite in dive after dilapidated dive. He tried to remember the last time he had managed to string together more than six hours of restful sleep, but only managed to come up with a memory of his 7^th birthday party. Transformer theme. That had been fun.

Savagely shaking his head and rubbing his knuckles across his scalp, Liam froze as a he heard a soft suppressed cough ricochet down the hallway. His adrenal glands found a new gear he thought might actually cause him to vomit as the invisible spear of excitement exploded in his gut and effervesced through his scalp and toe-nails. Backing away from his perch directly behind the thin partition, Liam eased his head towards the hall-ward side of the door, catching a peek at the stark gray hallway and darker still room that lay beyond. Nothing could be seen stirring from that vantage, but all hope that he was alone in the suite had utterly evaporated. Tightening his gut and wiping his right hand on his boxers before re-gripping the cool hard bookend, Liam eased the door fully open and strained his eyes on the hallway’s aperture into the rest of the suite. ‘Fortune favors the bold,’ he thought to himself as he felt his feet begin to pump, grimacing mouth holding back his breath, a levy struggling against a flash flood. As the short hallway whizzed jarringly by, against the dim sitting room ahead an inky profile swung suddenly out from the left-hand wall.

“Oh, shit!” was all the gravelly voiced silhouette was able to blurt out before Liam hit him full tilt. Wrenching the body towards his own with his free left hand, Liam felt his forehead make contact with the bridge of the strangers nose, and as the intruder reeled back under the initial blow a vicious roundhouse swing with the bookend dropped the thin-framed figure to the floor with a perfunctory thud.

His shoulders heaving, blinking fiercely in the aftermath of the encounter, Liam spotted a wicked looking black Beretta Px4 on the floor near the body. Quickly stepping towards it and toeing it out of arms reach, Liam gingerly skirted the prone figure to be able to pick the pistol up himself. The body on the floor lay still, looking almost comical face down with limbs akimbo. “Squashed spider!” Liam wanted to guess, but there were no other contestants playing charades and the man on the floor didn’t seem able to either confirm or deny his postulation.

Keeping his eyes glued on the crumpled mass splayed on the floor, Liam backed up until his groping hand found the light switch, flooding the scene a warm light from the tattered orange light fixture hanging from the center of the room's ceiling. Taking a closer look, Liam could see that his interloper was beginning to ooze blood from his head and nose, slowly adding his own scarlet circlet to the already riotously stained carpet.

Liam should search the guy and then. . .

a) Jet, leaving the body there

b) Finish the job with his new gun

c) Tie the guy up in a chair and wait for him to come around

d) Take off immediately, forget even searching th guy

Long Shots

As jaded as I am with the current political process in this country, with its reward of duplicitous speech and exaggerated differences between facetious candidates impotently pandering to some vague middle ground which nobody at all seems to actually espouse, ‘Republican’ Ron Paul has recently piqued my interest in the 2008 Presidential Race. A ten year veteran of Texas’ 14^th district, Congressman Paul still stands on his Libertarian (and some would say, truly Republican) philosophy of reduced government spending, strong state’s rights and free trade. As a matter of principle he refuses his Congressional stipend, voted against what has now been exposed as the woefully under-planned Iraq War Resolution and in the process of saving several baby seals from being clubbed to death discovered a compound which makes teeth both whiter and stronger. Ok, so I made the last one up, but he is bringing a breath of fresh air to a party which by all other indications has become utterly moribund over the last eight hard years.

Sure his name sounds like an adult film star, but in a Republican race where John McCain is begging lunch money off the sound guy and Rudy Giuliani is scalping Yankees tickets to the debate moderator, something about the pugnacious Mr. Paul has caught my fancy. I know he’s not the prefect candidate. I don’t mesh well with several planks in his platform, he's at times ludicrously unrealistic and he would be a wildly impractical President, likely making Jimmy Carter look as efficacious as Josef Stalin moving legislation through Congress. Regardless, here’s hoping for the greatest American tradition: The Long Shot. Viva Ron!

The Little Things

Today is August 8th, 2007. The time: 13h26. The temperature? 84^oF (29^o C). This is a most convenient truth.

Liam's next chapter is coming soon . . .