Strange Bedfellows

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Credit for this quote widely goes to Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and friend of Mark Twain, who himself never said anything pithy.
In keeping with the spirit of strange bedfellows, what about Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum? This, according to his website:

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the US Senate. In 2000, he was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Republican Conference Chairman.


Eventually, he got walloped in a Senate re-election bid. Mr. Santorum fancies himself "A Champion of Traditional American Values." That's actually the title of a PDF you can download on his site. He advocates fiscal sanity and wrote a book called "It Takes a Family." To that end, he and his wife have seven kids. The youngest, Isabella, 3 years old, is in the hospital with something called Trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality tha can cause developmental and cardiac problems. Apparently about 90% of children with this problem die before birth or result in a stillbirth. For those who survive, fewer than 1% reach age 10. A horrible situation for a little girl and her family.
The difficulties the Santorums face and his recently elevated profile bring to mind another incident involving one of their children. Their son, whom they called Gabriel, died at 20 weeks gestation in 1996. Again, tragic. And under such a circumstance, parents could have unusual reactions. But they took the dead fetus home and allowed their other children to hold it. Before that, the couple apparently spent the night in a hospital bed with the dead baby. He's against embryonic-stem-cell research but finds it acceptable to sleep with the dead baby. Truly a strange bedfellow. People of faith, if you were to poke around the Internet, seemingly find inspiration in the Santorum family's embrace of the fetus and willingness to channel its grief in such a fashion. Wouldn't anyone not caught up in religious zealotry find it troubling, not to mention sleep-disruptive, to have a fetus in bed? If he were really pro-life, perhaps Mr. Santorum would support stem-cell research, which has the potential to save other lives.
Aside from which, you, as an adult, bringing a dead child home to your other children are either forcing them to retreat further into your religion to rationalize such behavior or fucking them up forever. Or both.
This guy is running for the Republican nomination? Seriously?

***

Speaking of people running for the Republican nomination (again, seriously?). Newt Gingrich, Mr. Conservative, the one who trumpets himself as the true standard bearer. One of his ex-wives recently did a television interview in which she said Newt wanted to, basically, fuck another woman but not necessarily separate. She called it an open marriage. and Newt isn't unique in that respect.
That was his second wife. He currently is married to #3. I might be wrong, but that kind of track record doesn't seem fitting for one who campaigns on such a platform. When the CNN guy, John King, hosted a subsequent debate and asked him about the open-marriage issue, Newt responded quite testily that he was appalled the moderator would broach such a subject during a presidential debate. Indignant self-righteousness, that's the way to go. Bully the guy because you're so far off-base you have no cogent argument to provide. With his campaign platform relying on conservative values, people do have a right to question whether he advocates, at least for himself, a guilt-free piece on the side. Even more amazing is that at least three women have been willing to fuck him.

Pissed Off

Were you here, we might be discussing these subjects:

Some Marine have caused an uproar by urinating on their vanquished foes, apparently some Taliban guys. I believe the video went viral, as they say (they being the people who talk about stuff like videos going viral). The U.S., doing damage control, has concerns that it might appear to be disrespectful to Muslims. I guess the part where they killed them wasn't disrespectful. Somehow it seems like wartime bestows some sort of nobility on killing.

This book talks about how some Japanese soldiers admired the fighting spirit of some U.S. soldiers during World War II. So much so that one Japanese guy, right after killing an American, thought he must look that guy's family up after the war and tell them how bravely he fought. Hell, I admire the guy who toughs it out to the end, but I'm not sure pissing on these men was as bad as killing them. Out of respect for a worthy adversary, yeah, you might not want to urinate on them after the fact. But these guys have indiscriminately harmed civilians and might not be worthy of that respect. Anyhow, I digress. I guess the central question is whether it's worse to piss on somebody or kill somebody. Or piss on somebody after killing him. Or pissing on somebody before killing him. That's probably the worst, since then they're aware of being pissed on, which likely would really piss them off. 

***

I still don't understand why marijuana is illegal. at least not while alcohol is. A recent study found that marijuana smoke appears not to damage one's lungs.
So, with the tobacco industry bucking up against hard times, I may have arrived at a solution: Let Altria, formerly Philip Morris and still a purveyor of Marlboros, and its ilk get into the game. Some tobacco fields in North Carolina and Virginia could convert to growing marijuana, the big companies could harvest it and I could go to 7-Eleven for a few joints. The government could collect tax revenue, and we'd have fewer problems at the border. In addition, people wouldn't be taking over remote tracts of national forests to cultivate weed. Then, when people smoked, they'd get hungry and eat a bag of Doritos. So it would be good for the economy because of the food we'd have to buy. And in my experience, people tend to think shit's funny when they get stoned, which appears preferable to getting violent.
With the Super Bowl coming up, and the accompanying wife beating, now would be a good time to consider this policy. At parties, stoned people wouldn't even care that the vegetable dip sucked, or even that it had vegetables in it. And instead of engaging in fisticuffs, they'd chill, man, or maybe play some hacky sack or even fall asleep. Everybody would win.

***

This guy Haley Barbour, the outgoing Republican governor of Mississippi, recently decided to pardon a few people. Apparently working at the Governor's Mansion gives you a leg up if you eventually want a pardon for killing your wife or whatever, as eight of those who received pardons seem to have done. What was he thinking? Take this guy David Glenn Gatlin, for example, who apparently shot his estranged wife while she held their baby. Perhaps Haley thought, "Oh, David Glenn's a good guy. He cuts the grass around here and makes a mean whiskey sour."

Random

If popes represent God here on Earth, and God is eternal, then why aren't popes eternal? Why do they die? Oh, yes, they're human. And since they're human, what makes them so special? Because a bunch of guys in weird-looking hats decided that that person should be the top dog? What if someone else had been chosen? Does it turn out that the loser never really was pope material to begin with? Or does papal headwear confer extraordinary capabilities? Apparently the papal hat rack contains an array of items, and the logical conclusion has to be that these hats bestow magic, like some sort of voodoo. Like Frosty the Snowman's hat.

There must have been some magic
In that old pope hat he found, 

For when he put it on his head, 

He began to dance around....(dancing pope here)

***

Can anyone seriously consider voting for a Newt or a Mitt? If anybody wanted to introduce me to a guy from Georgia named Newt, I'd be inclined to run the other way. His name is Newton, and he fancies himself a thinker along the lines of Isaac Newton. But a newt is, like, an amphibian, scurrying around the ground and stuff. Oh.
Mitt's name apparently is Willard. I seem to recall a movie by that name, in which the protagonist interacted with a colony of rats. Nevermind. Anyway, Romney's first name is Willard. According to Wiki, he decided in kindergarten that he didn't want to be called Billy anymore, so he started going by Mitt. Hmm, I don't know. He thinks "Mitt" is better than "Bill" or "Will" or something like that, and he's a Mormon.   

Herman is a name I can get down with. Problem is, Herman apparently was getting down with a bunch of the ladies. I'm not sure how he burnished his foreign-policy credentials, since he was a pizza guy. Maybe, though, he can embark on a new career as a porn star. For the first script, I suggest he show up at some lady's door ostensibly delivering a pizza and, you know, she immediately wants to fuck him. Happens all the time. I'm thinking of going into pizza delivery. What if Herman had become president? Perhaps Veronica Hamel could have been his running mate, and whenever he came into the room, she could have said, "Hello, Pizza Man," just like she did to Daniel J. Travanti on "Hill Street Blues."
 And Ron Paul has two first names, which is kind of strange.

***

Homeless people populate the streets of New York. In cold weather, passersby can spot them hanging around the train station, usually because they're asleep on the floor or wearing a sign that asks for money. A shopping cart also can be a dead giveaway, filled with possessions or Mountain Dew cans. I don't know what aluminum fetches these days, but I imagine trying to make a living that way poses challenges.
I often give money to panhandlers, which I guess a certain slice of the population would say encourages them to keep at it instead of getting a job. But I can't give money to the same people every day. So I have a proposal: Give them some money, Mayor Bloomberg. You're a public servant. You got elected to help solve these kinds of problems. 
Homeless people in New York City number somewhere just north of 40,000, according to a New York Times article from March 2010. Forbes says Bloomberg is worth $19.5 billion. By my math, rounding Bloomberg's wealth down to $19 billion, he could give 40,000 homeless people $475,000 each. And he would have $500 million left over. For $10 billion, each of those 40,000 could get $250,000.
Ok, so if you don't want to give them the money, create the jobs. Yeah, I know Bloomberg the company employs thousands, but what about these poor sops? Not everyone is qualified to work at Bloomberg the company. You're the 1%, Mr. Mayor, and you can't be taxed more, so say those who control the House, so create the jobs.
In a similar vein, Paul Allen, the guy who co-founded Microsoft, this week announced plans for a new commercial spaceship, the Associated Press reported. Allen's spaceship apparently will carry private passengers into space. Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos is building a rival spacecraft intended to carry astronauts. Why don't these guys cut the shit and feed people? Maybe they already do, I don't know, but feed more people. You have so much money that the best you can do is try to build a spaceship? Maybe you can launch the homeless people into space if you're successful. That would clean up the streets and train stations.

***

I just started paying attention to Amy Winehouse. I knew she was a singer with substance-abuse problems who died, but I never listened to her music. Then I heard Tony Bennett say how much of a tragedy her death was and how talented she was. He put her up with there with some people considered to be among the greatest female singers. The chick was, in fact, great. Too bad she was so fucked up that she drank herself to death, but, hey, I can relate.

As He Lay Dying-3

Pickerel served as a sort of siren call of the New Jersey Pine Barrens for Dave and me, ensconced as those bullet-shaped fish were in the tea-like cedar water of the former cranberry bogs. New Jersey ranks somewhere in the top five of cranberry-producing states, after Wisconsin and Massachusetts, according to the Census Bureau. And sometimes we drank a little cranberry juice with our liquor. Mainly, though, cranberries were of tangential interest to us because of the fish habitat provided by their former harvest areas.
Our most productive trip to our favorite bog came as we fished yet again on a college spring break. Between us we caught more than 50 pickerel that blustery March day, the peculiar beauty of the dark-green chain link patterns on their sides contrasting with their paler bodies, their ample dentition ensuring that we didn't grow careless when removing hooks. Joe and Brett went to the go-go bar that day, and when we got back to the house, they told us they encountered far fewer teeth in that not-so-upscale gentlemen's establishment On that trip, Joe walked into the roof rack on the side of my '68 Dart and wound up with a rectangular indentation in his forehead that seemed to last for years.
Dave, we also took your brother Jeff there, on another occasion, and he reminded me recently of how he threw up intermittently on the car ride there and how that angered you. That's what he got for visiting his big brother in college and drinking with us.On one of those occasions, he offered this maxim:

     Liquor then beer, nothing to fear.
     Beer and then liquor, never been sicker.

Those Pine Barrens also allegedly housed the Jersey Devil, and didn't we end up going to our share of New Jersey Devils games? Maybe we did drink a bit more than we should have that one particular night. Just that once.
Back to the pickerel, though, and how some years after that we spent some gray March days in a different environment. You and Kim, and Joe and Jeff, were among those there for me when I had my hospital and ECT stint. Kim and I not too long ago tried to remember the year you guys got married; the cancellation of the World Series served as her reference point, and it occurred the same year I was in the hospital. I suppose when we took to the hunt for pickerel I didn't suspect what would befall me, and I regret that you guys felt like I didn't pay as much attention to our relationship following the hospital stay. I certainly didn't feel cured, only that I perhaps had gotten a reprieve, and my perceived aloofness really amounted to me withdrawing into a shell and tending only to the details necessary for survival. Not what I would call the best of times, and shame sometimes enveloped me. Shame over a marital dissolution and shame over my inability to meet the expectations laid out for me.
Had I the chance I would change some of that. I don't believe those people who say they wouldn't change any of it, that it all somehow contributed to the people they became, and that's good. I'm not entirely satisfied with who I've become, and maybe a little less adversity or a little more of a proactive approach would have meant a positive difference. Fewer terror-filled nights and fewer fruitless sessions with out-of-touch psychiatrists might have served me well.
I wouldn't change our time together, though. When we hung out at the house on Whitehorse and you watched the TV so fixedly that I couldn't get your attention, much as it drove me crazy. Those Sunday nights getting Chinese food from the Panda. The time in the bar next door, of course. The parties outside and the quoits, and you picking me up--this time in joy, not anger--when I won that game on our last shot as the yellow-tinged parking-lot light offered barely enough to see by just this side of midnight.
You and Jeff on one of those trips mocked me over toilet-paper technique, you advocates of the upswipe. You relented some years later when Howard Stern, that renowned wiping guru, recommended the downswipe. Some motherfucking nerve, you students of scatology. We also stopped off after one of our pickerel trips at the school over which your father presided as principal. We arrived just in time for the assembly at which animals took center stage. That is, until you and I saw the kid trying to pick up the lop-eared bunny by those very ears. Another incident stuck in the scrapbook of my mind, a building block that helped to construct the compartment in which reside the accumulation of snapshots providing testament to a friendship. 

As He Lay Dying-2

Dave and I took another fishing trip, to upstate New York, in search of yet more steelhead. This time, we weren't fortunate enough to latch on to poachers and came up empty with respect to fish. While the fishing proved disappointing, the hanging out didn't.
We spent some time at a bar called The Silver Nickel after the waitress at the diner tipped us off that that was the place to be. Or that was where she planned to be, at least. And how could we have resisted hanging out at the bar where the waitress planned to be, she who joked about her menstrual cycle while serving us food?
And not just any food: Dave ordered the liver, and liver he got. A plate full, about the size of a fucking football. Yeah, he was going to eat it all. I would have felt as if I were in a Richard Russo novel, had I been familiar at the time with Richard Russo novels.
We played shuffleboard at The Silver Nickel, and the waitress did appear. That bar didn't particularly provide many entertainment opportunities, and we already had heard about the waitress's menses, so we drank cheap beer, perhaps Pabst, and eventually returned to our little fishermen's retreat, a modest boarding house of sorts that offered clean accommodations at a reasonable price.
An array of snapshots runs through my mind, a scrapbook chronicling the highs and lows of a friendship that consumed the majority of our lives. Mostly highs, though even the lows serve as a reminder that the road from start to finish rarely involves a straight line.
Like the time Dave and I planned to share a student subscription to The Wall Street Journal while in college. He didn't pay me over the course of an entire semester after I bought the subscription, so when he fronted the money for the keg one night, I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to break even. When I left his dorm room without chipping in for the keg, he grabbed me from behind in the hallway, picked me up and started swinging me. I, preferring to have my feet hit the wall instead of my face, stuck my legs out and kicked off the cinder block. I must have jarred myself loose at some point, or he let me go, but as my feet hit the floor, my girlfriend ran up and kicked him straight in the balls. Apparently that hurt. Then Dave started to be more conciliatory, and I popped him hard in the chest with an open hand and sent him across the hallway. Somebody intervened, and I left in alcohol-fueled indignation. And leaving I was, until my girlfriend refused to go. She wouldn't leave until he and I talked.
As selfish as I consider her actions throughout most of that time, she did recognize the significance of my friendship with Dave. Our friendship with him. So I eventually went back upstairs, and we went back in the room and drank some more.
He always blamed that disagreement on our girlfriends at the time, despite mine having jumped to my defense. He may have been right, that they fomented the underlying tension because of how they felt about one another, then his Lady Macbeth drove him past the breaking point. 
He had a picture of a bodybuilder or some other fitness guy on the mini-fridge in that room and bet me that his abs would look like that in a few months. He never had a chance, but he didn't pay up on that bet, so maybe he did get me back for not helping out with the cost of the keg. Fucker. Then again, he bought plenty of stuff for my kids. But the clothes he took from me over the years, at least when he could still fit in my clothes.... 
So we caught no fish on that sojourn into Richard Russo land. Did we have to? We would have liked to. We really did go to fish. But we had the time, and it never amounted to a waste.

As He Lay Dying-1

The distillation of a man's life into printed words poses a formidable challenge, considering the array of experiences and the necessity to weed out the less interesting moments, but one way in which my friend Dave characterized himself to me as he and my son and I were about to embark on one of our numerous fishing excursions summed him up: "You got two kids to take care of today, Tom."
The scene playing out in my kitchen rang familiar, with he and Brian greedily grabbing at one bag of snacks or another, a not-quite-noon beer accompanying Dave's portion, and the two of them leaving the kitchen floor resembling the crumb tray at the bottom of the toaster.
Their indulgences extended to our actual fishing time, wading the Delaware River, and grew even more acute once we had a boat. It was during one of those wading trips, riding in the car from one fishing spot to another, when he said, "Tom, you gotta get a boat." So I did, a 16-foot aluminum boat whose carpeted floor was left much the worse for wear after Dave and Brian got done with it. From chicken-liver gunk to crumbled-up Doritos, that poor floor took a beating.
One of our earliest boat trips up a Delaware tributary serves as an enduring memory for Brian and me: I steered from the tiller position in the back while Dave guided me. He after all, knew where the sand bars were in this creek. At high tide, we made it up the creek without incident, but on our return, we hugged that right bank and, of course, rode up on a sand bar. Not especially interesting until Dave got out of the boat to free us, because once out, he had to haul his considerable girth back on board without benefit of a ladder. The gunwale acted as a sort of fulcrum, stuck as it was into the fleshy area between the navel and hip bones, as he attempted to haul his nearly 300 pounds back into the boat. I don't remember where he stood with respect to the cancer at that point, but he had undergone at least one surgery and round of chemotherapy already.
He owed me for freeing us from that predicament, for about 20 years earlier, I was the one who jumped out of our canoe to dislodge an anchor stuck on who knows what in a lake's murky depths. A turtle, he feared, could spoil the day if you entered those waters. I got back into the canoe without incident, a not inconsiderable feat, though I always carried fewer pounds, and we were 20 years younger. I marveled at that scene that day on the Delaware as he attempted to climb back into the boat, among many others we shared, for at no time in our often-wayward youth did I consider that my own child and my longtime friend and I would be doing what Dave and I had done so many times over the preceding years.
Like the time he and I went to Erie, Pa., to fish for steelhead on our spring break one year in college. We showed up less than well-prepared for what turned out to be the source of  memories of that endured throughout our friendship. We had made no preparations for accommodations, just a tent in the back of my VW Rabbit, but eventually found a cheap, and practically deserted, campground. When we awoke to an inch of snow on the tent the next morning, the reason for the deserted campground appeared obvious. We had no firewood, and we shivered that night after an unproductive day of fishing, watching with envy as the one other party at the campground huddled by an oil-barrel fire. Soon enough, though, in what one can charitably term a mixed blessing, one of our neighbors sauntered over, inquiring as to whether we would want to hang around their fire. Naturally. That cast of characters read like something out of a John Irving novel, or a David Lynch movie. Art was the patriarch, and Art. Jr. the seemingly misguided youth. He had the weed, though, and that turned out to be an upside. Dave and Art Jr. woke me up around midnight one night, as I reclined outside on an aluminum chaise lounge in the 30-degree weather, by slapping a stringer full of steelhead on the ground at my side. They already had been into the aforementioned weed.
Art Sr. could best be described as, well, somewhat uncouth, and dentally challenged. Another member of the party, Loren, used to drive a truck, but he had retired on disability. That didn't stop him from maneuvering a chainsaw in the middle of the river on which we camped, in an attempt to remove some deadfall that obstructed the flow. Eventually he hooked those trees with a chain to his pickup and hauled at least some of them out. That truck took a beating, though.
Poppy had but one eye, and gray stubble stuck out from his sallow face like truncated porcupine quills. He bore the responsibility for netting some of the steelhead that the rest of us spooked up because, well, why wouldn't you pick the guy with one eye for that? He greatly irritated Art Sr. when he failed to net one of the silvery trout. But then Art would acknowledge that "goddamned Poppy" had only one eye.
Art Sr. had told us that he, upon hearing that we were college boys, feared that perhaps we were studying to be game wardens. That would have been unfortunate for those gentlemen, considering that their preferred fishing technique involved a "silver spider" dragged through the water. A silver spider consisted of a three-pronged hook with a lead weigh melted around its core. Not the most sporting approach, and illegal, but those goddamned steelhead ain't much for eatin' when moving up into the tributaries to spawn. So, snag them we did. Or, as I indicated, we would spook them and Poppy, standing downstream and wielding a net big enough to snare a dolphin, would try to scoop them up. I have to admit that their methods proved more productive than the conventional approach we were taking before they befriended us.     
 HBO was a relatively new phenomenon back then, and it aired a show called "Not Necessarily the News." The opening to that program showed a camping trailer floating down a flooded river. Art's claim to fame, if he was to be believed, was that he owned that trailer. We were suitably impressed with that.
So went our four or five or however many days we spent there. I think we ate at a Wendy's every night, and we drank LaBatt Blue, and we didn't have access to a shower. We were lucky to have potable water, those days being before you could get water in plastic bottles everywhere. By the time we wound that trip up, we had pretty much had enough. I mean, we stayed in a tent and didn't have shower access. So we decided to leave and drive through the night to get home, us and the deer and the tractor-trailers on lonely I-80. I drove and nearly drifted to sleep about 20 times but caught myself as I started to veer off the road. Dave swore up and down the night we left that he would stay awake. I knew he wouldn't, but I guess I wanted to believe it, sort of like what happens in my relationships with women. I think he would have said anything to get me to leave, since Art and his crew had invited us to stay in their trailer for the night. We had packed up our tent and gear, and they lobbied pretty hard for us to stay. Pictures do exist of this excursion, though we seem to have misplaced them. But for those who have seen the movie "Deliverance," it has been what most readily comes to mind for those who have seen the photographs. My concerns did grow the more they tried to persuade us to stay, and Dave always maintained that they wanted to show us some love. Neither he nor I found the prospect of getting fucked in the ass appealing. I guess we were fortunate they didn't break out the guns. Dave, naturally, fell asleep 20 minutes after we hit the road.

Points Of View

6-Year-Old: You're wearing a tie?
Me: Yes.
6-Year-Old: Why?
Me: Because that's what people do when they go to funerals.
6-Year-Old: What's that?
Me: That's when you say goodbye to someone who has died.
6-Year-Old: But they're dead.
Me: But their families aren't.
6-Year-Old (now addressing his brother): Tie my shoe!

His questions brought to mind the bigger picture of funerals and, even more so, viewings, those strange cultural phenomena.
Viewings cast a wide net and capture an array of characters, from the deceased's most casual acquaintances to the most intimate friends. Some people who show up didn't know the decedent but know someone else in the family. The security guard where he worked to those with whom the person had nearly lifelong relationships.
Most people who come to pay their respects aren't wracked with grief, and to some extent the viewing turns into a social gathering, people running into people they haven't seen in years, a sort of group catharsis. We are alive.
Some in attendance feel the pain, the loss, acutely, and can't help but have the tears welling deep within boil to the surface. The pain that causes the body to seize like an engine bereft of lubrication. Others feel the loss but remain stoic, while some attempt to alleviate the discomfort with banter, except in the room containing the casket, where visitors observe library-like decorum.
Those who attend exhibit a range of sartorial preferences, from the suit-and-tie crowd to the people who look like they just cut the grass. And if you knew the deceased person well, maybe you look at these other people and wonder who they are. How far did his tentacles reach into areas unbeknownst to you?
The guest book, the cards with the late person's date of birth and date of death and ostensibly serene images and ostensibly inspirational messages. This person has moved on to a better place and has reconnected with loved ones who earlier shed this mortal coil. Would be nice to think so. But if these people believe the dead move on to a better place, then why do they seem not to be in a hurry to get there? For Catholics, I guess, suicide would mean you wouldn't get there. You have to suffer to get to the better place. I want to know how they know a better place exists for those who die. And what form do the dead take when leaving their earthly bodies behind? Do the souls of the dead cavort in Heaven? Do they play cards? What do they do all day? How much space do they take up? How much space is there? A lot of people have died, after all. And pets. Who gets to be closest to God? Where are the virgins for the Muslims? And after they deflower those virgins, where do the virgins come from for the next martyr? Fly a plane into a tower, get a bunch of virgins.
The flowers and the subdued amber lighting and the dark wood in the funeral home form a backdrop designed, I guess, to provide a sense of comfort. Some of us traverse that lunar landscape, enshrouded by the surrealism.
And the family stands, mostly staid, exhausted, in a line receiving those delivering their condolences. Numb. On automatic pilot until the procession delivers someone who triggers the emotions, and the grief takes advantage of its window of opportunity to surface before composure regains the upper hand. And eventually people leave, some glad to escape the brush with death, others lingering, for to depart means committing the deceased to the past and venturing into the rain, or the sunlight, but undoubtedly into the dark without a compass.

The Devil in Disguise

The devil inside
The devil inside
Every single one of us the devil inside --INXS

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
Cause I'm in need of some restraint.
--The Rolling Stones

A recent TV show, replete with guttural invective and physical gyrations, concerned itself with the Devil and the people in whose bodies he allegedly resides and those who just believe in him. The "possessed" people's behavior struck me as a curiosity. If the Devil's greatest deception was to make everyone believe he didn't exist, then why the fuck is he, often in a woman's body, screaming and writhing and calling attention to himself? That ain't no way to keep a low profile, you damn dirty Devil. I capitalize the "D" in Devil because, well, we do it for God. It's a proper name, I guess, like Lucifer or Satan.He has a bunch of names, with Lucifer supposedly the one before he got kicked out of Heaven. Must be a bitch to get kicked out of Heaven, banished to somewhere beneath the ground. And it's hot. You go to hell and you get singed on the ass all day. And that's where we bury our dead. Isn't that like handing them over to Him?
How about the logic behind justifying the Devil's existence, that he has led us to believe that he doesn't exist. It's like having faith in God. We don't know he's there, but we believe he is. We can't prove the Devil's existence because he's so goddamned good at concealing it. But the Devil crawls inside people, or however he gets in there, and acts like a fucking moron.
Meanwhile, are all these temptations the Devil's handiwork. Does he make people drink? Does he make people have extramarital sex? Does he make people go to titty bars? Does he make people kill their kids? Does he make the Taliban murderers? Did he make people fly planes into the World Trade Center? If so, I guess God can't stop him. I'm familiar with the argument that people have free will and therefore are free to bomb embassies. So God just acquiesces? Turns them over to the Devil, the guy he bounced out of Heaven in the first place? Satan is so formidable that God can't kick his ass?
Anyway, back to the show. They spent some time on Long Island outside the Amityville Horror house. The show's host spoke to the stepson, I think, of the man who lived in the house, George Lutz. This guy blamed George for the haunting, saying he brought it on himself by transcendental meditation, that most evil of evils. George summoned the Devil by meditating. The priest who came to bless the house as they were moving in said a masculine voice told him to "get out." So the Devil speaks English. I guess he speaks all languages. What's cool about the Lutzes' experience, also, is that George would hear a German marching band tuning up. I'm not sure what makes a German marching band distinct from any other marching band, but he apparently said it was German. So the Devil favors marching-band music. And so many people suggest he prefers heavy metal. Another cool aspect of the Amityville haunting is that cloven hoofprints attributed to an enormous pig allegedly appeared in the snow; I can't help but picture a Macy's float-type-pig hovering outside their windows. Also, the house allegedly boasted cold spots and odors of perfume and excrement in areas of the house where no wind drafts or piping would explain the source. The Devil shit in the basement or whatever. Defecating Devil. Or maybe it was one of those marching Germans. Rude.
Another aspect of Devil stuff the show touched on involved exorcisms. Those rituals make me wonder: If a priest can expel the Devil from someone, why can't he prevent him from getting in there in first place? Why haven't we developed protection, like the pepper spray people use to ward off bears while hiking? Devil Mace. Or special clothing like the kind that blocks UV rays. Do priests learn in the seminary how to perform exorcisms? Part of the curriculum, Exorcism 101. AP Exorcism. Credits transfer when you move on to advanced seminary. And while you're exorcising the Devil anyway, get rid of those Germans and clean up the shit in the basement.

The Butterfly Effect

I must have been about 8 years old when, with my mother's encouragement, I started a butterfly collection. Not live butterflies, but butterflies that I captured and I guess executed. I don't remember exactly, but it wasn't like there was a surplus of dead butterflies lying around with which to start a collection.
I pinned these butterflies to a board, but I must say it lacked elegance. why my mother thought dead butterflies on a board would be a worthwhile endeavor for an 8-year-old escapes me. One day, to my chagrin, I found my butterfly collection in tatters. Turns out it met its demise at the hands of my oldest brother, who, when I confronted him, simply said that yes, he had destroyed my butterfly collection.
I didn't grasp his motivation at the time, but in subsequent years I think I've come to understand. I don't think butterflies typically elicit hostility, but, in his case, they triggered something in his psyche, manifested in a destructive outburst tinged with rage.
***
I awoke last night in the middle of the night recalling my own rage and my mother's suggested remedial technique: pound the shit out of a board with a hammer. So that's what I did sometimes when I got home, if I wasn't playing basketball. Basketball or board beating? It depended on the day.
Imagine the neighbors' reaction if they had seen me, at about 9 or 10 or whatever, beating a board with a hammer. At first they probably would have thought I was retarded. Then they probably would have locked the doors in fear of the serial killer in the making. Mom's other suggestion was that I go into the bathroom and scream, which likely would have elicited a similar reaction had witnesses existed.
So, having identified that her baby festered with rage, my mother offered less-than-sophisticated solutions. When I went to a psychologist, partially on her dime, she badgered me to such an extent that I eventually stopped. I imagine she figured a good board beating held just as much benefit. I didn't revisit that stress-alleviation technique, but I suspect it would have worked about as well as it did the first time.

Model Parents

Some humans ain't human
Though they walk like we do
They live and they breathe
Just to turn the old screw....
--John Prine

Recent articles from the Associated Press:

LAKE ARIEL, Pa. (AP) — Police say a northeastern Pennsylvania man accused of killing his newborn daughter twice dropped a cinder block on the girl because he said he and his girlfriend couldn't afford a second child.

MEDFORD, Oregon (AP) — A man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter in a brutal wrestling match.

Circuit Court Judge Lorenzo Mejia found 30-year-old Benjamin James George guilty of murder by abuse and first-degree assault in the death of Kacy Sue Lunsford. The Mail Tribune reports that the judge sentenced the former Marine on Thursday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years for the murder charge.

The little girl was nearly 3 when she died on June 15, 2010, at a Portland hospital, five days after the assault.

Prosecutor David Hoppe said previous episodes of abuse ended in one night of "ultimate wrestling moves" by the 230-pound man that left the 30-pound child with collapsed lungs, a lacerated liver, internal bleeding and massive head wounds.

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A father accused of abandoning his 4-year-old son along a rural West Texas highway in the middle of the night was charged Thursday with attempted capital murder, prosecutors said.
32nd Judicial District Attorney Ann Reed said she upgraded the charge against Carlos Rico after talking with the Sweetwater police chief.
The first-degree felony charge replaces the child-endangerment charge he faced after another man found his son along Interstate 20 near Sweetwater about 3 a.m. Tuesday. The 22-year-old father is accused of choking the boy and dumping him on the road about three hours before he was found.

These haven't received the attention the Caylee Anthony trial has, and, well, people are innocent until proven guilty. Interesting how the public, and CNN, zero in on a particular case, and the cable channels saturate the airwaves with their coverage. I find the cinder-block guy and the wrestling guy more intriguing. And the other guy, what irresponsible parenting, being out with your 4-year-old at 3 a.m.
I guess the Marine figured he could take the 2-year-old, and a girl at that. I bet a 2-year-old boy would have evened things out. But they likely will have defenders: "They're just kids themselves. Kids having kids."
I've observed a fair number of children, and I'm reasonably certain most know it's wrong to drop a cinder block on a baby. A kid I knew got fired from soccer camp for putting a duck in a cooler, but somehow it's not the same.
Maybe if cinder-block guy had used an anvil instead, the whole affair could have been funny. A YouTube video, perhaps, that could have recalled Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Could have gone viral, man, FWIW : ) Then CNN could have picked it up. No imagination. Maybe they would have done better with the other kid, but now they likely won't get the chance. I wonder if he and his girlfriend discussed the procedure beforehand.
Cinder-block guy: "Honey, how should we kill the baby?"
Girlfriend: "I don't know, maybe poison."
"No, that costs money, which we can't afford, let alone afford a baby."
"Garbage disposal?"
"And use up that fuckin' electricity?"
"Bleach in a garbage can?"
"Come on, cunt, that costs money, too."
"Well, how about one of those cinder blocks our TV is sitting on?"
"You're a genius. Sorry for calling you a cunt."

Then they could have fucked without a rubber again.
I once saw a guy dump bleach on a rat trapped in a garbage can, and I considered that unusual. So I got a sledgehammer and bonked the bleached-half-white rat a few times. A mercy killing. Die a slow death in a caustic chemical or let me dispatch with you now. Maybe I should have wrestled the rat.
But perhaps these guys aren't really disturbed; instead, they were sparing the children slow deaths, the ones that take 80 years or so and weaken you drip by drip until the dam breaks. Nah.

Babies and toddlers, however, are demanding. Diaper changes, feedings, crying, sleep interrupted, tantrums, self-centeredness. Oh, that's my mother. And babies, to be fair.
Then once in a while they look up at you with a toothless smile (the kids), and you at least imagine you start to see something in them. The purest smile. Unadulterated, untainted. And bittersweet, for you'll never again smile that way. Then they crawl and sit up and talk (and talk and talk). And you start to see some of yourself. And they imitate you and say "fuck" from their car seats when someone cuts you off. And they run down the hall to greet you at the door and cling to your legs like you're the life raft in a turbulent sea. And if you're open to it, a love develops like none you've ever known. And when they're at their most uncompromising, you try to bear in mind that they, unlike the dog, won't always run down the hall and nearly knock you over in their zeal.