fire & brimstone

it's been a strange week here in the land of the cod.

for the most part, this is a safe city. (random acts of violence in broad daylight damaging noodles notwithstanding.) when crime spikes or shots ring it's gang and drug-related, in the same besieged but isolated neighborhoods and since the victims are usually teenagers of color it all flies under the media radar. the rest of us stroll about admiring the tulips in the public gardens and enjoying the mayberry aspect of life in a small city. we feel unscathed and safe amongst cobblestones and friendly faces.

but this week:

monday: i let some staff duck out for coffee. when they came out of the shop, one froze in panic. her car was parked next to another that was ablaze. cops yelling, sirens blaring, acrid black smoke pluming up. happy memorial day.

tuesday: errands and getting dinner to-go from work for the owner and me. as monsoon rain begins to smash down, i descend into the subway, but a swarm of people are coming up, muttering. turns out there is a fire someplace -- all lines impacted -- no downtown "t" at rush hour. i slog towards home, getting drenched and muddy, and discover a jigsaw jam of fire trucks, haz-mat teams, emt's and police cordoning off a major train hub due to an underground fire.

wednesday: a "t" driver talking on her cell phone, crashes full-speed into another set of cars. she dies, 11 are injured. service remains disrupted 3 days later.

thursday: a twilight amble home through the commons. finally feeling relaxed and decompressed from work, i get to the entrance and am again met by police tape. cops shot a guy not long before. i keep going and don't rubberneck. what are all those other people watching?

friday: a landmark burns to the ground. a 4th generation fish business is consumed by a 7-alarm fire that began in the dark early morning. 130 firefighters work in vain. it's a ramshackle series of sheds on ancient wooden pilings. daily they shipped upwards of 50,000 pounds of lobster (plus major poundage of other fish) -- the place was full of cardboard boxes, refrigerants for the lobster tanks and walk-in coolers, oils that kept all the gears running. the fire became so intense the hose streams rolled right off it. at least $5 million gone and the building a complete loss. more suspicious whiskers might twitch and sniff for insurance lightning or real-estate muscling. open since 1925, the place is a decrepit briny vestige of the old waterfront, now surrounded by 5-star hotels and gleaming convention centers. the family swears they will rebuild.

i don't think the end is near, the 2nd coming isn't around the corner and i don't hear the hoofbeats of the apocalypse. if pat robertson's god was going to punish us for the whole gay marriage thing, i think that would have happened awhile back.

my acceptance of the random allows me to toss it all in the bucket of strange days. i imagine local newshounds have had wood all week rushing from drama to drama.

i do know when the heat rises and the economy lags, bad dangerous things happen more often.

anybody know what the farmers' almanac has to say about summer '08?

my deck seems like a good place to hang in the heat this year, ya know?

i know you are, but what am i?

picture window in the restaurant, a stunning view of two of the city's gems, plus good people watching. when we can, we sit and have a quick lunch or a cuppa. long slow week unpopulated by stay-cationers, (tyvm, kb) so a bit of extra window time for certain.

chef sees a guy: "oh, that fucking guy. at restaurant x, we called him *scottie-too-hottie*. always lookin' in the mirror, always checkin' out dudes, but with a too hot girl-friend."

guy in question did have a very tight t-shirt, an up-da-butt kinda walk, and a brisk pace.

"gay?"

"so fuckin' gay. liberace gay."

"yeah, so?"

"went to get him to go drinkin' one night. he's not home. g/f answers the door in a little robe that *slipped* open. me an' my friend were bangin' the shit outta her in less than 10 minutes. whadda fuckin' whore."

ahem. ok, so that makes you... what exactly?

as seen here

not here, exactly, because i was crossing the salt & pepper bridge over the charles at the time.

the "t" has been plastered with p.s.a. boards picturing the backs of a youth and a man. the man is hugging the boy. (NO! not that kind of message -- get your mind out of the gutter!) the warning is something like kids who start drinking before age 15, are 4 times as likely to have alcohol problems than those who begin drinking after they are 21. having our moms buy us kegs in junior high maybe skewed our perspectives?

but...

a snarky pointy-headed red line rider wrote: "a correlation does not prove causation here."

that's the kind of graffitti i can get behind.

memorial day

how can a person remember that which he never knew?

according to the project for excellence in journalism's news coverage index, coverage of the wars in iraq and afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all american print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last september. collective television stories now add up to about 4 minutes A WEEK. was the 4000 death toll count anybody's lead story last week? nope. just another day in the desert. far cry from the blood and guts that spilled onto american dinner plates with cronkite and vietnam, eh? despite the admin's peacocking about the success of the surge, last year was our bloodiest in iraq, with over 900 dead, and last month the worst of the year thus far.

most editors and producers put it down to "iraq fatigue". readers and viewers weary of what looks to be calcified entrenchment, and who are more affected at home by foreclosure follies and four bucks a gallon at the pump. my pointy-headedness leans towards media outlets which prefer not to run breathless accounts of last night's "dancing with the stars" voting, but instead feel an implied contract to impart the *news*. even these guys admit that the military makes it increasingly onerous for the press to do its job, which is showing soldiers doing theirs. from the beginning, we were told to honor the men and women fighting overseas, but where is the honor for the fallen, whose flag-draped coffins are brought home under secrecy and silence? at all military bases, especially at dover which is the receiving hub for the dead, there is a complete prohibition on any photographing of "movement of remains at any point." one lesson our block-head-in-command did learn was the power of images. a refusal to submit his wars to the "dover test" proves that handily. his dressing up in costume on that aircraft carrier crowing "mission accomplished" (how many years ago was that?) still sears my brain.

reagan, carter, bush the elder and clinton all attended memorial or funeral services for exceptionally horrible losses. shrub has given up golf.

with the pentagon's iron-fisted ham-hands, it is no wonder that some of the wars' most iconic images were leaked -- those from abu ghraib. the naked human pyramids, the snarling dogs, lynndie england with a guy on a leash and megan ambuhl with her trademark thumbs-up, even flashed reflexively over an ice-packed corpse.

a few weeks back, i watched erol morris' "standard operating procedure." what struck me most was the youth and ignorance of most of the players. (charles graner remains in a military prison, so could not be interviewed.) kids from way-out-nowhere let loose in a "lord of the flies" environ. at the time, england was 20. none of these kids were our best or brightest by a long shot. they were given not-so-ambiguous orders to "break" prisoners in preparation for interrogation. most of the men being held had been netted in street sweeps, wrong place wrong time for them. can we imagine the horror of being a baker or taxi-driver headed to work in your war-torn town, thrown in jail, guilty only of being an iraqi? subjected to vile humiliations, bondage stress-positions, sleep and food dep for days upon days?

it was the miligram experiment once again writ large, with digital pictures and hand-held video as shocking proof. to clean it up, a few kids went to prison and nary a big-shot stepped forward for the shameful accountability for this moral stain.

stricter rules came down on soldiers' access to the internet and the owning of cameras.

general john a. logan, a veteran of bull run and vicksburg in the union army, a fierce proponent of a volunteer army and one of the men primarily credited for coming up with the memorial day holiday wrote long ago that both the glories and the consequences of war needed to be shared by all. he warned against “the dangers of confining military knowledge to a comparatively small number of citizens, constituting the select few who may hold the destinies of the country in their hands.”

we go from this:

if in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free” ~~ franklin d. roosevelt

to this:

“the function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.” ~~ a.j. liebling

gluten and gluttons

food allergies can be deadly -- shellfish, mushrooms, nuts, peanuts, stone fruits are all delicious, but lethal for some, and dining out can be tricky. they ask careful questions, avoid many ethnic restaurants where either translations or food combinations can be dubious and carry epi-pens. if allergic to shrimp, they don't ask if they can have the seafood chowder without it, ya know? there was a notorious incident at a bertucci's a few years back where a server assured the patron the pesto had no nuts. the woman died and the company was sued for millions. by then pesto was no new food phenom, so how could the woman not know? how could the server be so blase and not check with the kitchen if unsure? chefs, line-cooks and servers all know this is serious stuff. the grill, the tongs, the cutting surface, even the fry-o-later can be carriers of doom. a severe allergy stops all the kitchen wheels. an anaphylactic guest is a real bummer.

did you know less than 2% of the american adult population has actual food allergies and that less than 5% of children do? from the peanut butter-free zones in schools, you'd guess it's more rampant than the plague in 16th-century venice, right? it just ain't so, and most of those kids will outgrow them. i was wildly allergic to wool as a baby, but by the time i was 4 or 5 there was a safe soft pile of tartan and mohair in my life. mothers now are terrified to feed their babies nuts or honey or whipped cream. where did it get lost that broad exposure to small amounts of many foods may prove safer, rather than a very limited menu? (i suspect the germ-o-phobes flooding every playground with purell are involved. hell, aren't kids supposed to eat dirt?)

where on the continuum did intolerances and dislikes get conflated in people's minds as allergies?

first there was the wave of the lactose-intolerant. manic-obsessive behavior to remove every drop of butter or cream in their meal. explain to me again why you're paying $100 for steamed plain fish? OH! so you can have creme brulee for dessert. i can only hope you get diarrhea after the hoops you had us all jump through.

once a woman insisted if her husband had ANY salt, he would DIE! oh, lady, soooo don't tempt me, ok?

it wasn't long before we learned to ask if it was really an allergy, or merely an aversion. "garlic will kill me." "oh, so you're deathly allergic to everything in the lily family?" "huh?" "well, all of our stocks and sauces contain either onions or leeks." another blank stare. "so, garlic disagrees with you?' "well, yeah, it gives me heartburn." "ok, thank you, i will tell the chef." really it's that simple folks. please leave the dire warnings to those who need them.

the new villian is gluten. every day this week someone asked at the podium if we had a gluten-free menu. "we can easily accommodate you, but we don't have a special menu. just have the discussion with your server." simple. all were women and all grossly fat. celiac is genetic, life-long and very real. it's not always the first thought because western doctors are loathe to look at what we put *in* our bodies as potential culprits. i am in no way trying to diminish the pain and frustration of celiacs before being diagnosed. what i do suspect, is that the grossly cheap bounty of processed foods in american grocery stores and restaurants has led other people down a very unbalanced path. 8-oz bagels are not *portions*, ok? so this unconscious carb-loading leads to system-stress because your insulin goes completely whack over-reacting to all the sugars. couple this with the invisible insidious demon of high-fructose corn-syrup and your body is a tilt-a-whirl. recently i ordered a 100% whole wheat bagel. in my mouth, it was soft and sweeter than a donut. wtf? yuk. i threw it out.

is it a wonder the body finally cries uncle? affluent men used to get gout from the diamond jim brady diet -- mountains of protein and oceans of brown booze. menus from those days are a wonder to the modern eye. dinners of 5000 calories were not unusual in wealthy households!

put down your snack-well cookies and your carb-free bread. (what the hell is that anyway?) stop with the soda. ( i work with a woman who drinks a 64-oz 7-11 fountain soda, everyday!) the starbuck's muffins, the finagled bagels, the all-u-can-eat breadsticks: stop. stop. red light. have an apple.

if you've poisoned your own body so badly, stay home and eat thoughtfully until it's back in balance. dinner shouldn't be a minefield and restaurants aren't for triage.

table scraps

the rising cost of food continues to disturb and alarm. nobody in the u.s. pays much attention to rioting in haiti or street violence in malaysia, ever. that it's now frequently fueled by rice or cooking oil shortages matters not. long lulled by cheap food brought about by farm subsidies (i... will... not... rant...), americans are suddenly faced with price spikes unseen for over a generation. as bad as it already may be, the fall-out of shrub's ethanol debacle is just beginning (i ... will... not ... rant...)

today the ny times (no point in a link, they go dead pronto) had a great in-your-face piece. by best but rough estimates, americans "waste" almost 30% of their food. this includes supermarkets pitching blemished produce or milk past its sell-by date; all that take-out lurking in fridges, eventually becoming a mystery and tossed; all the prepared foods at the shaw's? end of day-- dumpster; the steam tables and buffets at hotels and casinos, the groaning boards on cruise ships? yeah. britons throw away about as much, and even the swedes, whom i perceive as minimalists in every way, heave about 25% of their groceries when they are a family with small kids.

working in restaurants, i see an astonishing amount of food go in the garbage. that 30% figure seems slim to me. when i worked at the steakhouse, besides the flintstone portions of cow, everything served was bigger than your head. the a la carte baked potato and the chocolate cake slice each weighed a pound, ok? we had "muckers" -- same job-title as people who shovel out horse stalls -- who scraped the obscene uneaten portions into the trash before piling plates for the dishwasher.

when the boston dining scene was beginning to bloom, certain local chefs got known for gargantuan portions -- plates that were bold, piled up and unfinishable. i never knew if it was merely for dramatic effect, or some weird kow-towing to the city's frugal old guard. if they didn't get "left-overs" there wasn't enough food. alan richman was burned in virtual effigy for a national article slamming that. can you imagine any diner anywhere else in the world feeling cheated because he didn't get to bring bits home to microwave? or not?

nearly a decade has passed since i got hired by a truly amazing chef. his personal foibles aside, he pounced on the city with food like nobody else's. he wasn't part of the local 3 degrees-of-separation-kitchen web, so didn't have the big plate fever. we got skewered. even though entree proteins were 6-8 ounces and larded with enough butter to clog an army's arteries, the visual presentation was stark and tight on white plates. people went angry-nuts. for over a year, we did not have to-go bags, because "we serve just the right amount of food." explain that to the seersucker brahmin wanting cod and beans, but also wanting to say he'd been "there."

it was amazing to witness the disconnect. i saw how much butter went into everything. yet, people's eyes *saw* a smallish piece of something that would not have tipped over fred and barney's car at the drive-in, piled on top of the starch, on top of the veg. stark plate, but it likely contained at least 2000 calories, and was the day's last or main meal. if i had a buck for every time somebody insisted they needed to go out for burger after? bah.

will it be the money that finally brings americans 'round? i mean, hamburger/tuna helper really aren't the answer.

the sudden affluence of india and china are now often trotted out for food shortage excuses. yet, a very cogent argument remains, that if americans threw away less food, fewer people would be hungry. sure, bombayans want more beef. but poor americans eat too damn much. in las vegas, more shrimp is *consumed* than in the rest of the u.s. combined. (hello, red lobstah. nevah been.)

at last in the states, slow-food and voluntary reduction finally seem to be gaining a wee bit of traction. in my world, the former is huge, but then again, my friends never want a happy meal.

rock fight

this is a college town, and this is commencement time. over 4-5 weekends, it begins with northeastern and ends with harvard/m.i.t. this weekend is the big daddy, when b.u. and b.c. both play "pomp & circumstance". may is now second only to christmas/new year's for revenue in the local hospitality industry. nearly $8 million is spent on hotel rooms and most restaurants add 25% to their sales. multiple generations flock to the city to bask in junior's glow. they fill the hotels, shop til they drop and have celebration dinners. frankly, it's brutal, but much like the pain of childbirth, it's a fresh hell every time. (however, a few years back, these graduations coincided with mother's day and that is an agony that will live within me forever.)

last year i was hired, but had yet to start working with this company. the city is overflowing with too many people too loud, lost and slow-moving, so i skipped going into town.

thursday night, aware of what we faced, i met with this g.m. and was told his philosophy of how to build a $100,000 weekend. then i saw it go live friday.

for those of you unaware, before service, we look at the reservations and plot where each party will sit. it's an imperfect science, and we have a rule of thumb as to table turn-times, yet are wary enough to make a plan b if the goldbergs or the o'haras decide to make a night of it. it gets sticky with groups larger than 6 -- people tend to arrive separately, somebody is always late, it takes forever to get their food orders because they are busy catching up, then customizing their meals, and you feel the clock ticks in your brain and the tension mounting as the waiting time soars, and reservations run later. it's kind of a rush, but you're also getting your head chewed off by folks who have been cooling their heels in the bar for an imagined eternity. yelling at me will not make those other people get up, ya know? and if you walk out to go elsewhere, you're shit out of luck, because every place else is sold out too.

there is always a conflict here between owners and managers. we know enough to over-book, because the no-show rate is higher than normal, but you also don't want a lounge full of pissed-off starving people whose table time went out the window, all swearing they will never return, and still fuming when they finally do sit. the owners want more money than last year. it's 3 days. we live through it.

this g.m. made his floor plan for friday. he plotted any groups larger than 6 -- they take at least 2 tables and big big rezzies may take 4 or 5 tables out of play -- so, yeah, you do those first. he made no allocations for parties less than 5. he said, "those guys are all one-timers and will never be back. i don't give a shit if they have to wait, or for how long." he also figured lightning-speed turn times, that he admitted were unrealistic. i was stunned. it is the antithesis of everything i have ever learned or done in a nearly 20-year career. he instructed the hostesses to accept any and all comers and tell them the wait was about 45 minutes. he refused to comp drinks or apps to mollify anybody.

he appointed me floor manager -- the one that would put out the fires -- while he stayed in the kitchen. in short order, i was roseanne rosannadanna. " i thought i wazza gunna die." for 5 hours, i got pummelled. of course, the kitchen went down. it had to, having been set up to fail by this gm. tickets got lost, orders got mixed up, food took forever. half the food that went out looked like shit. most of the waiters were in so far over their heads, i actually felt sorry for them. one girl cried and a few more certainly wanted to. the chef got in a fist fight after his shift.

it was the worst graduation night i have ever worked.

the gm was thrilled because we rang $25k. he did not give rat's ass about how things went. "it is what it is."

last night i asked to expedite, which i hate, but i simply could not be *out there* again. at the end, the executive chef told me i was way better at it than the gm, lol, and i only swore at one waiter who was inept beyond redemption. any other night, i would have sent him home. i can't even imagine the horrible night his tables must have had. i wanted to wring his fat sweaty neck when i heard him bitching about his crappy tips. don't you get it? jeebus.

just one more tonight. it's a gorgeous day outside. i am off tomorrow. i have resumes in the pipe-line. it's just dinner, and it ain't my dime.

old folks

it occurred to me the other day, i' ve been clubbing more in the last few months than in the last few years combined. not sure why, but it's been very fun and the disparity of bands very amusing. how many other people saw michelle shocked then the dropkick murphys? do you believe they both sang "amazing grace" ?

this week i lucked into 2 nights of free tix from a dear friend. one was for the cure. somehow, *back in the day*, i just never got to them, even though i saw so many shows and so many artists. sound was great, robert smith sounded exactly the same and 2 days later i still have "lovecats" happily running through my head. i danced hard for the first time in a long time and security chilled and let us have at it. 3 encores!!! the finale was "killing an arab." camus would have been thrilled.

bands like jane's addiction and smashing pumpkins definitely listened to plenty of the cure as kids. and there is a reason south park had robert smith save the world from mecha-streisand, lol.

next day though? ooooh-eee. my brain was very aware of only having slept 5 hours and my bad knee (i'm old, so now i have one) was aflame.

last night, same friend, with extra bonus company of the owner. like a date kinda! it wasn't a band he nor i follow or know, but m. really likes them. middle band the sound was so badly mixed our little cocktail table refused to stay still and hold our drinks. since we couldn't fix the bass that was even shaking the spotlights, our other friend finally put the miscreant out of service.

when the headliners finally took the stage (10:20!! past the owner's bed time.) the sound mix was still a mess. it wasn't the fault of the acoustics, because a few weeks back, the b-52s sounded kick-ass. except for a few self-conscious musical interludes, 90% of the songs had the same tempo (fast-fast -- good for those on x?) and everything was just out of whack. we finally caved and got earplugs, which i've never worn before and only made it all muddy. i LIKE the high notes. back when, i was always happy to stand right next to the speakers at jack's or storyville or the rat. i loved the bass making my heart vibrate and my neckhairs stand up. i've disturbed more than one neighbor with my stereo on 11. last night i kept wondering if my ears would still hurt today. thankfully not, but somebody needs to tell b.s.p. more decibels ain't always better.

we left before the show even finished, begging out to not miss the "t". we weren't the oldest people there, but we agreed that band needs a lot more work or maybe some new members, lol.

my friend m. loved the show. it was "perfect". he is older than i am, but i guess not in some ways.

forgiveness

it's always been a squirrelly concept for me. the hairshirt of catholicism with its confessions,penance and absolution from a guy in a gown was never a good fit. for my first communion, my mom was thrilled, i had a cute lacy dress and shiny maryjanes and there was going to be a big party in the yard. (my dad blew it off at the last minute, no surprise there, but i digress.) even at that lump of clay age, i felt like it was a sham. for crying out loud, i was just a little kid! i actually made up sins to confess for my first real trip to the booth. (btw, what the heck ever happened to my glow-in-the-dark rosary beads? hmmmph...)

cut to my last one where i was banished from the church because i couldn't say the act of contrition. to that priest, the rote mattered over the intent. that i was only in there for my mother's peace of mind before i spent easter sunday in vatican square with the pope saying mass was besides the point.

my mother and grandmother often were heard to say something was "unforgivable," yet we had no murderers or molesters in the family, ya know? it was rare i heard the actual offense, so lacked context, but here's one: a cousin's husband ran off, leaving her and two kids and he was never heard from again. not being forgiven by the two peggy's certainly had no bearing on his life, now did it? maybe that cousin of mine was a raving witch and totally unendurable. i sure don't know and neither did my grandmother, yet she spat on his name for years til the next castigant (i'm making that word up, but i like it) got strung up.

as we all know, my grandmother was an armored tank of lies, duplicity and selfish disregard. we were forced into abetting. she doth protest too much, yeah, yeah.

the whole things smacks of a moral superiority whose mantle i just cannot wear. if somebody hurt my feelings, i rarely think they did whatever deed specifically to harm *me*. more likely, they actually tried to spare my feelings and the thing just went off the rails. all those times my dad flaked for short and long terms? he wasn't trying to hurt me. he just couldn't deal. sucky? mais oui. but maybe his and my grandmother's horrible behaviors gave me the coping mechanism.

the owner is reading a warren zevon bio, a book i've read much about. it's an unflattering and seemingly unvarnished portrait of a voracious sybarite with no conscience or boundaries. for decades everything was magnified and blurred by drugs and booze. there was a long conga line of women, because a) he was a rockstar; b) he was wildly intelligent; c) certain types of women cannot resist a man who is damaged.

i won't posit too much here, because i haven't read the book, but this whole thing came about because the owner stands amazed by the capacity of *forgiveness* exhibited by zevon's kids and lovers. i don't know how they define it, but in my life, i think of it as *acceptance*. i can accept that not everything will be my way, and that life will not be a bowl of perfect peaches every day. i can accept that people will fall down, fuck up,rarely change, but still love me too. i know what grounds me and matters more -- not my pride, but my love for them. somebody i love does something kinda crappy, my impulse is never to strike back or even pull back. i only want to know why. occasionally there isn't an answer, but i have always seen their internal duel. i've never loved a monster, so it's also clear that they struggle with having caused me pain. that's more than enough -- isn't it?

am i playing semantics? i don't think so, because forgiveness also seems to come with a score card. the one holding the high hand has a savant's capacity to dredge up something from the mesozoic era and fling it into the present for drama. my mom can bring up slights from over 25 years ago. how could she not have healed? oh, right, cuz she keeps picking at that scab.

i watched both my mother and hers grow more and more bitter over time. they held on to hurts, and as they hoarded percieved slings and arrows their circles got smaller and smaller. so often, i see women who chose a life of anger, their faces wizened into permanent scowls. i always knew i wanted laugh lines instead.

everything happens for a reason

no.

it doesn't.

two days ago, i was mugged in broad daylight. for this account, the details aren't important and they frankly are not all that special from a million other purse grabs, i guess.

did anybody see? i don't know. i do know nobody stopped to help. i was blacked out for a few minutes, and have several spotty hours afterwards, so don't really have a knife's edge on this thing. it was a mess of a night and morning til i finally wound up at the police station exhausted and in tears. men with buzzcuts and guns in and out that little 1/2-door--how many women do they see crying every week? every single one still asked if i was being helped.

a confusion of jurisdiction brought me a statey. a guy named hugaboom (absolutely one of the best names i've ever seen. wonder if his daughter is a stripper?) his pencil map showed i wasn't his catch after all, so he drove me where i needed to go. turned out he'd done time on our local equivalent of s.v.u. his voice was a gruff smoker's, but he kept reassuring me that he only wanted to help, and was only asking and re-asking questions to jog my memory. the randomness of the attack? the absence of a good samaratin? my confusion and fear? none of it surprised him. he faces chaos everyday. it's interesting how cops file things in their heads: he told me about his ancient aunt getting robbed twice, and mother getting her car stolen. (uh, yeah, he's a townie from the bricks, lol.) it wasn't to make me more afraid, but to make me know i wasn't alone in the cruel swipe of the universe sometimes bloodying your cheek.

i don't run with bikers. my friends don't sell meth or kill puppies.

a majority of my female friends (and i) have been raped, and not most by strangers. ( "date rape" wasn't a concept when we were in college. how does it make it less worse if you know the guy? i swear a man must have coined that term.) a good portion of my gay acquaintances have been bashed, and 3 of my favoritest homos have been brutally hurt -- plastic surgery beat. i know women and men stabbed and shot. i know two women who were abducted and held.

for some, there is a need to find order in the universe. that presumes everybody's punching your same clock, ya know?

rural idylls, the cosseting of car travel vs. public transport (i know 2 girls raped by cabbies and have had my share of nastiness on the "t") and the reality of life as a tall white man put a spin on life i'll never know.

last night as i struggled to sleep under my bruises and sore head, i was reminded of the damn christian pablum about predestination. my anger welled and i couldn't sleep. the idea of some grand-master flash on high deciding your ticket before it's punched and then a life behavior based only a fear of us lowly worms not knowing the outcome made my teeth itch even as a kid. (strict calvinists even have double-predestination, which i think involves a tree-house and a bunch of backwards-facing r's on the sign, but i could be wrong.) the catholics added lots more wiggle-room with our infallible pope and all sorts of ante-rooms of hell like limbo and purgatory. the idea, and worse(!) the acceptance of a micro-manager nostradamus behind the pearly gates gets up my dander, k?

thomas paine rebuked the bible's paul, if god made us in *his* image, would he have made lumps of clay? insensible vessels, incapable of joy, misery and justice?

as part of our social contract, we owe it to ourselves and those we touch to do the *right thing*. yes, yes, ok. it keeps the fabric knit and gives morality a marker. i'm ok with that. i'm nice to babies, surrender my seat to old crones on the train and give directions to tourists, ya know?

when hugaboom was taking my initial statement, he said off-handedly that my apartment was "last night's numbah". did somebody get lucky?

some may think the reason this happened was to remind me life could always be worse. trust me, i have a mile-long list of possibilities there. if i'm dragged to this argument, best i can make out, it was to remind anything can happen.

i also still think that can mean for the better.