Diztopia

Wednesday 8 P.M.

Went to coastal Maine for much-needed vacation decompression, and I and the Girlfriend Attorney stayed in the little tourist town of Ogunquit, which it turns out is something of a gay Mecca in terms of twee New England destinations. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Though I imagine Muslims get annoyed with the "gay Mecca" term, and perhaps gay Muslims get even more annoyed, offended by the suggestion that the actual Mecca is not already gay and accepting enough of their lifestyle. Because, you know, it totally should be. And anyway, how do Meccans refer to a non-Mecca location that attracts people of a particular demographic?

But enough Andy Rooney bullshit. The trip was great and too short, though the coast was seized by the same tyrannically brutal steam wave that broiled the rest of the country this past weekend. It was comparable to the Alabama heat I remember so well, and experiencing that in Maine just seems like a betrayal of fundamental climatological law. North = cold. That's what we learned in AP Confederate Studies, and that's the way it oughta damn be.

It's housecleaning time. Ongoing and upcoming projects will keep posting sporadic here for the foreseeable future, and one practice I'm definitely killing off is the weekly link dump. Might still pass along something particularly choice, but no more tiresome regular agglomerations of net dross. But as a last hurrah, here's several week's worth of bottom feeding, most of which have been encrusted among my bookmarks long past their rightful expiration. Not even going to try and give them the full treatment, so consider this more whimper than bang:

Tape babies. Stunt City. The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show. Robot body builder. The Cat with Hands. Horned Gramma. Animal Dress Up 6. Unusual Cards. (via)

Interactive Buddy. Kitten Cannon. (via)

Sugar Bush Squirrel (pictured, penitent). The Credit Card Prank II. (via)

Operation Raccoon Bye-Bye. (via)

Tom Cruise's Medical Forum. (via)

I was a demolition-derby-deprived child, and remain a similarly deprived adult. I caught one tiny glimpse of a demolition derby at the Alabama State Fairgrounds when I was about nine. Then I was hustled off to see prize pigs or some other agricultural abomination. For years after that, my only contact with demolition derby was via an eponymous video game that placed far too much emphasis on protecting your radiator rather than crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, hearing the lamentation of the women, etc.

I finally got a chance to watch the end of a derby in Spokane, WA, while in grad school. It was pretty glorious, as the competitors were a bunch of suicidal hillbillies in dreadnought pickup trucks. And no one seemed to mind when the winner drove his victorious clunker of  a Dodge into the broken spine of his last opponent, again and again and again. They had an amateur event as well, where two people got in whatever car they brought, with the driver blindfolded and the passenger shouting instructions and warnings and generally screaming in terror. I badly, badly wanted to do this. I almost put together a coalition of other grad students to buy an ancient hearse ($400) for use as our derby vehicle, but the cheap motherfuckers wouldn't pony up. The owner assured me the hearse would run for at least forty yards, providing we towed it to the arena.

My last attempt to see a demolition derby was in Birmingham, at those same Alabama State Fairgrounds. It had rained all day, so most of the entrants had not bothered to drive into town. That meant we had two cars: a lurching green Oldsmobile and a woody station wagon. Not much to go on, but I figured there would be a couple good slams. The two cars faced off, or rather, assed off, as they faced away from each other and prepared to zoom backwards to attack. The gun went off, they charged and hit with barely moderate force, and the woody stalled. End of show. Bring out the trophy girls, everyone go home. The two cars barely even broke their tail lights. What a waste.

Posting may be light(er) for awhile as I look into some side work... you know, sweeping, baby-sitting, telemarketing, clubbing baby seals, etc. But I was enthused to see this article in Slate about Jack Gilbert, an oddity among Beat-era poets whom I had the pleasure of meeting when he taught at my MFA program in Spokane, WA. I was a Fiction Man, and we had no truck with Poetry Men normally, but everyone had to take one workshop out of their discipline, and I figured, hey, famous poet guy, might as well. Gilbert was in his early seventies then, thin and wispy-haired, but wiry and vibrant and scary like an ancient karate master. Which is sort of what he was, and is. He's a goatish monk, if that makes any sense, and the Slate pieces explains his lifelong conflict between asceticism and pleasure.

Three incidents stand out from Gilbert's months in Spokane. First was at a party, where he was magnetically drawn to a tall, statuesque, blonde student. She was visibly flattered by the attention of this eminence grise, and probably a bit flirtatious... I mean, Gilbert seemed perpetually hornier at 71 than I remember being at 17. He chatted with the girl and her nominal boyfriend, but he always turned the conversation back to their relationship, specifically concrete physical details (though nothing overtly naughty). At some point they were discussing hair, and the boyfriend commented how the girl's hair was so long that sometimes of an evening, he would sit behind her and brush it out. Gilbert rocked back on his heels and squinted, exhaling, "Ahhhhhh, that's nice. Sooo nice." He fairly gleamed with lust. He was so randy, it was cute. Even the boyfriend couldn't bring himself to resent it.

The second memorable occurrence with Gilbert involved me almost accidentally killing him. I drove a moderately dented Chevy Cavalier at the time, and a small fender-bender had damaged the back right door such that you had to really yank (if outside) or push (if in) to get it open. After class one night, I was driving various students plus Gilbert to our respective homes, as we all lived in the same neighborhood. The calculus of the dropoffs worked out such that Gilbert, sitting back right, was the last in the car, creating an odd chauffeur-passenger dynamic between the two of us. But when I stopped in front of his apartment, Gilbert couldn't open his door. I started to get out to come help, which must have really set off his self-reliance instincts (he wasn't feeble, just 71), because he threw his body hard against the door. The door popped open and Gilbert popped out into a snowbank. I gasped, because that snowbank topped a very steep hill that terminated in the rushing, freezing Spokane River. This would be difficult to explain to the university. Fortunately, Gilbert was just stuck in the snow, and had extricated himself by the time I rushed around. He brushed off his coat, gave me a look that was half amused and half accusing, then stomped away.

The last bit is my favorite. Because Gilbert was such a big deal, his one class was packed, and there were several Fiction People like myself on poetry safari. One woman in particular was perhaps the most clueless, gratingly pretentious person I've ever met. We'll call her "Daria" for the sake of a slight joke and to (hopefully) prevent her from tracking me down for castration. Daria was a walkin' talkin' writin'-school stereotype, with a vital though abjectly superficial passion for all possible political and social causes. Humorless, didactic, accusatory, the works. Her writing was almost unendurable, but far worse were her droning and irrelevant monologues when it was her turn to comment on other students' work. During the poetry class, another student submitted a nice and fairly standard sex poem involving some boisterous rolling around in the woods, with crushed brambles and underbrush scratching up the naked bodies of the enthusiastic lovers. Daria held forth on how she saw this as a poem about nature striking back at mankind for despoiling the earth, turning against violent and destructive humans by scratching their naked bodies, etc. The poet in question was obviously appalled, and everyone else in the class (me included) was bored to tears as usual. Normally, the instructors tried to gently deflect and defuse Daria's tirades in some faintly constructive manner before moving on. Gilbert, however, was watching Daria attentively throughout her speech. When she finished, there was a pause while we waited to hear how Gilbert sidelined her. But instead of a diplomatic approach, Gilbert leaned toward Daria and declared, "You're a FREAK."

Stuff On My Cat: just what it says. Ditto: Smoking Monkey. Then there's Ops!, for which I'll steal the perfect Screenhead summary, i.e. "Imperial stormtrooper sees the blaster bolt which has his name on it, and so has a moment of satori before his death." The Adventures of Mr. Coo may sound dirty, but it's a perfectly entertaining and innocent lil' 'toon. Not so with De-Animator, a zombie-shootin' game that really can only end in screaming and dismemberment for all concerned. French AIDS-awareness group AIDES seems to be commissioning all the best ads these days, and they score again with this very well done, funny, and (OK, I'll say it) heartwarming commercial/video. (via)

When you're done killing the undead, it's time to play Kitten Cannon. And check out the online gallery (excerpted above) for graffiti outlaw Banksy. He tags buildings, museums, cows, and pigs, among other objects and creatures. (via)

Plagued by document clutter? You're in luck: it's Virtual Stapler. (via)

Easily the most comprehensive online photo gallery of famous feet. (via)

CBC Canada: "[Hayden] Christensen also confirmed recently that Lucas got a helping hand with the script for Revenge of the Sith. In an interview with Playboy, he said the rumours about playwright Tom Stoppard working on the dialogue for the film are true. Stoppard, known for stage works like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, gave the Lucas-penned screenplay a more 'human' dimension, Christensen said."

New York Times: Review of revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross

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PALPATINE: You think you’re queer? I’m going to tell you something. We’re all queer. You think that you’re a thief? So what? You get befuddled by Jedi morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. There’s an absolute morality? May be. If you think there is, then be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. You ever take a dump make you feel you’d just slept for twelve hours?

ANAKIN: I don’t think ...

PALPATINE: The Jedi Council want control of the Republic ... they’re planning to betray me.

ANAKIN: I have to admit my trust in them has been shaken.

PALPATINE: Why? They asked you to do something that made you feel dishonest, didn’t they? The great fucks that you may have had. What do you remember about them?

ANAKIN: What do I ...?

PALPATINE: Yes.

ANAKIN: Mmm ...

PALPATINE: They asked you to spy on me, didn’t they?

ANAKIN: I don’t know ... I don’t know what to say.

PALPATINE: For me, I’m saying, what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broads, forearms on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made ... or, me, lying in bed. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete. Eh?

ANAKIN: The Jedi use their power for good.

PALPATINE: Good is a point of view, Anakin. And the Jedi point of view is not the only valid one. The Dark Lords of the Sith believe in security and justice also, yet they are considered by the Jedi to be. . .

ANAKIN: ... evil.

PALPATINE: Through amassing power beyond all measure? No. And what’s beyond all measure? That’s a sickness. That’s a trap. There is no measure. Only greed. How can we act?

ANAKIN: The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.

PALPATINE: I say this is how we must act. I do those things which seem correct to me today. I trust myself. And if security concerns me, I do that which today I think will make me secure. And every day I do that, when that day arrives that I need a reserve, (a) odds are that I have it, and (b) the true reserve that I have is the strength that I have of acting each day without fear. According to the dictates of my mind.

ANAKIN: The Jedi are selfless ... they only care about others.

PALPATINE: Or so you’ve been trained to believe. Why is it, then, that they have asked you to do something you feel is wrong?

ANAKIN: I’m not sure it’s wrong.

PALPATINE: A guy comes up to you, you make a call, you send in a brochure, it doesn’t matter. An opportunity. To what? Join the Sith? Perhaps. “There are certain powers of the Dark Side I’d like you to learn.” What does it mean? What you want it to mean.

ANAKIN: Is it possible to learn this power?

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