A problem with street-art, pt. 2

With a little bit of effort and organization I arranged to interview the street artist who I had mentioned in a previous post.  His given name is Angel.  I had made a contact through a local gallery and he offered to help me set up an interview.  I enlisted the help of a friend and we planned on using two video cameras (actually dslr's with video capabilities), and we also had a mountable audio recorder prepared to record his responses.  The idea was that we were going to interview him while he was doing some court ordered retribution work at a local park.  The park is used by two different schools that are housed in the same building and becomes a skate park when the schools close in the afternoon.  

Angel had already completed a few basketball backboards and now he was prepared to do a portion of the wall that lines one side of the park. 

We waited for about an hour, but he never showed.  

I don't think much of Angel's work, what little of it I've seen.  My original intention was to interview him and draw him out a little bit about the "importance" of what he does, to show what an ambitious spud he actually is.  The more thought I gave to it however, the more I saw a different angle emerge, one of a street artist having to give some redress to his community for the charge of vandalism. With so much current attention drawn to people like Banksy I assumed that there was an interesting story to be told, but from the opposite perspective.  

So I considered and reconsidered the opportunity. I lost my interest in vandalizing his reputation and developed a genuine interest in the story.

For those involved in this form of art there are some important distinctions between street art and graffiti.  The main differentiating criteria being that street art is meant to provoke thought while graffiti is just the assertion of the individual's identity over that of their surroundings, often through "tagging."  Others recognize no such distinction between these two approaches and see it all as remorseless vandalism. These are generalizations and the deeper one examines them the greater the differentiating criteria seem to become.

"Remorseless" was the word that my contact used to describe our hero's feelings about his tagging and subsequent arrests.  I had a list of questions that were designed to get to that aspect of what he does and seek some sort of explanation of this feeling, or perhaps reveal an artistic intention of some sort.  If not, then I hoped to show that it is little more than stylized crime and hardly qualifies as art at all. Though I knew this second contention would be difficult to reveal through his words alone. But I was hoping for the best, either way.

I decided to take some pictures of the skateboarders while we waited, without word, from the street genius....

I was tiring of him already but I wanted to be "fair" and see if there was an impulse that could be articulated for what he does.  

He originally emerged in the 80's as a graffiti artist that "worked with" Keith Haring. He was actually commissioned by Haring to do much of what came to be credited as Haring's street graffiti art that could be found in the East Village during and after Haring's success. There were a handful of artists who were hired to do so at the time.  It was not entirely uncommon for the "public work" of Basquiat, Haring, and even Kenny Scharf to be executed by lower level graffiti artists who were less conspicuous and perhaps more willing to get arrested.  The exploitative nature of the relationships that Tony Shafrazi cultivated is well known and documented. 

It has become my understanding through talking with some of the people in and around Angel's circle that there is some resentment over the fact that a gay-white-kid became famous while he, an underprivileged-hispanic-heterosexual, was mainly looked over.  It only takes a glance at the differences in their styles to understand the actualities for one's success and the other's continuing struggles.  Haring's pieces vibrate with much more of a sense of life, an understanding of chromatic relationships and combinations, and better compositional strategies. 

Angel's circle has even suggested that Haring's "vibrating baby" motif was actually Angel's all along and it was something that was "stolen" from him, much to Haring's financial success.  These contentious retellings of pop-art history seem unlikely when one looks at the actual work of the two individuals. Angel's seems much more like a sloppy, crowded and confused imitation of Haring's work, woefully lacking in content and visual context, rather than something that Haring was likely to have drawn from in the manner suggested by Angel's circle.  Angel's symbols are dull, obvious, and poorly rendered while Haring's at least function through a layer of suggestiveness and symbol. 

Haring no longer being here to defend himself also adds an imaginary credence to the claim, for some.

A friend of mine offered to set up an interview with another local street-artist, one that she is in occasional contact with through her work.  I thought that might be useful and I just might follow up on it. There's no reason for me to isolate this emerging interest of mine to one artist alone. This other guy goes by the name of "Dr. Pink" and it is claimed (by him) that he used to be a gynecologist.  

I find this equally hard to believe, but who knows, we live in very topsy-turvy times....

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Fu*k the Bunny!

Yesterday's post didn't address its own subject.  Somehow I forgot to write about the thing that I was writing about.

The subject was obsession...

It occurred to me yesterday afternoon when I was playing with our dog, Barkley, while I was taunting him with his "bunny", that I had not hinted at the dark core of the thing.  It only takes once witnessing this primal creature, enthralled in obsessive ecstasies with his one-eared plaything, to realize the full depth of its power over the mind of the beast.

I adopt a somewhat continental accent when playing with the dog. Much like Christopher Walken does with "Champagne" on SNL but with a more boundless manic energy:

"It brings you pleasure to possess the bunny, does it not?"


Then I will retrieve the filthy plaything and hold it away from him, laughing at his obsession.....

"Now you see that I possess the bunny and it brings you great sadness, a sadness that knows no end, no..?.."

"Your only wish is to possess the bunny again, no?... To see the bunny flying through the air and under the bed... you love the bunny... do you not, you savage...?"


A throw from the front room into the bedroom, and the toy goes sliding underneath the bed. The dog will scurry to chase it, scampering in fevered pursuit, his hind legs pumping frantically to get underneath the bedframe and obtain his dark delights.

"Pursue the BUNNY...!!!!  PURSUE THE BUNNY...!!!!!  Make Haste YOU BEAST, MAKE HASTE...!!!!"

"Are you indulging your furry pleasures in obscurity once again?"

"Show yourself, you shameful and barbarous beast!"


Invariably I will start stalking the apartment chanting, "Fuck the bunny...Fuck the Bunny... FUCK THE BUNNY...!!!!"... transfixed with the illicit mantra until my wife quietly directs me to calm down and stop scaring the dog.


This is what I meant by obsessions.

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Traditional Fetish Objects

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." - Franz Kafka

Well, that was easy for Kafka to say. He died in relative obscurity as a mostly unrecognized genius.  It's not nearly as easy to make such wild claims when you are the author of a famous internet blog....

No, that's not exactly how I wanted to start off this morning.  

Let me try again: Franz Kafka was very "esque"... 

No, that's not it either. 

Well, I was going to write about obsessions and their effect.  It's interesting how some people seem to go through life without ever really having any obsessions to speak of. They might have interests but they do not have obsessions.  I'm not sure what the precise dividing line is between the two, but for myself I know that I can be obsessed with something without even really being interested in it, at least not in the normal sense. 

It is a difficult thing to discuss without giving examples, and who would ever risk that? Obsessions are meant to be cautiously guarded. Though they usually have a way of somehow revealing themselves  Perhaps that is the dividing line. Interests are things that you are able and willing to share and obsessions are far more singular, private to the point of mental malady.  I'll give that some thought as I am typing and see if that criteria holds. For now, it serves to say that an interest is something that occupies one's mind upon choosing, and an obsession is something that dominates one's mind entirely beyond reason and choice, it is more of a fixation.  A person can act persistently, while an obsession is persistence personified.

That's it, I think I'm getting closer. An obsession is more closely aligned to some fetishistic attachment to an idea or object or vision. Where an interest is a simple state of maintained curiosity. Those distinctions will hold for the purpose of this post, I hope.  I suppose what I am suggesting is that an obsession must always be somewhat sexual in its primary impulse, even if the object of the obsession offers no overt sexual meaning to anybody beyond the obsessor, the obsessed.

All obsessions are neurotic, of course, though some are rewarded. When an obsession is able to generate outside interest or (better yet) payment, when it is sellable, then it becomes applauded. If it can be commodified then it can be fetishized rewardingly. But when an obsession will not generate that sort of reward then it is denounced and discouraged, swept under the rug of civilization. As usual most people are as blind to their hypocrisies as they are to the usefulness of their obsessions.  How can an outsider ever convince someone else of the futility of their fixations?

I hear the term Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder tossed around quite often, especially by those who have had a long relationship with drugs and are unable to muster any greater explanation for their activities, or lack thereof. This terms suits their purposes as it is one broadly recognized by the psychiatric community.  These people are often self-diagnosed, or vaguely diagnosed by someone else who has read an article in Vanity Fair about this dreaded affliction that involves the unnecessary washing of one's hands..... It is such a common mental disorder that it forces question of the term disorder itself.  At what point does something achieve normalcy through its omnipresence?  

My name is Sean and I am a compulsively obsessed.....

While I was single, during an extended hiatus from my relationship with the woman who became my wife, Rachel, I was sitting in a bar on an autumn afternoon talking to a couple of girls from Australia.  They were on vacation and they were here to see what sort of trouble they could stir up, and they found me.  As we talked the girl that gravitated towards me the most confided that back home she was a working dominatrix.  I was quite understandably fascinated.  She didn't start right off telling me juicy details about her work, but she used a phrase in conversation that has bounced around in my head ever since: traditional fetish objects.  

Now, to a normal person this phrase just is what it is. But in my wildly imaginative mind I immediately began reducing the world down to traditional and non-traditional fetish objects and I was amazed to find how many traditional objects there are in the world around us. So some people (men, mostly) must walk through life in a state of nearly perpetual neurotic sexual frenzy. 

I sat and chatted with this young girl for some time.  I had her trot out a list of what she would consider non-traditional fetish objects. I won't go over all of them here as they make scant sense to me or anybody else. But it was an astonishing list I assure you... bridges, towers, trees, mountains, buildings, billboards, bookshelves, libraries, the sound of an air-conditioner, almost anything.  The sheer size of some of the objects was what surprised me as there seemed to me to be no way to interact with these objects sexually.  She assured me that was not the case at all.  That for some it is the sole focus of all of their sexual energies.

Though I was somewhat unsure of precisely what to do with this girl my impulses told me there must be some ulterior purpose for my sudden interest. Then it dawned on me.... My 40th birthday was rapidly approaching. I had deeply unsettled feelings about turning 40 and this young girl (about 21 or 22 yrs. old) was perfect. A dominatrix was exactly what I needed. How could I have not seen that before?

I explained the situation to her: that many of my friends would be gathered at a local bar, to celebrate, as is the custom. My proposal was simple: that she would walk me into the bar dressed just enough as a dominatrix that it would be clear what her function was and I , simple servant I, would be led around by her on a dog-collar and leash and only allowed to talk to the people that she approved of.  The concept was brilliance.  I had outdone myself, clearly.

Rage, rage against the dying of the laugh....

It would accomplish two things at once.  It would give me a way out of dealing with turning 40 and not being together with the woman that I loved (I had asked Rachel not to come and not to call me) , and it would keep my friends at an uncomfortable distance from me so that I wouldn't have to deal with them dealing with me turning 40.  You see, I wouldn't have to deal with turning 40.

Was that two things or just one?  

But it was all for naught... the girl never called me and I had to attend my party sans leash, sans dog-collar. Just another 40 year old dude drinking beer with his friends. The dominatrix sleeps tonight...

Where have I run off to with this obsession piece.

  

I have read that a person has little control over the object of fetishistic choice. That it is something in early life that generally causes an attachment and it is difficult, if not impossible, to change that object. They can only work towards changing their behavior towards that object.  Much the same as the claim that an alcoholic remains an alcoholic even when they are not drinking, they have simply chosen not to aggravate their condition with the ingestion of the stuff, the poison. The fetishist must learn to navigate their way through life without spiraling into a frenzied attachment to the fetish object.

Well, I've lost my subject now.  I hadn't meant to address obsession through fetish alone. Somehow the Australian dominatrix sidetracked this whole post and I am running out of time. 

I leave you with the image of this very traditional fetish object. It is even a touch old-fashioned in its quaintness....

flight-or-flight-or-flight response

Anxiety. 

I hardly suspect I'll say anything new about it, or even clever.  It just is.  It moves through me like electricity.  What at other times I might have enjoyed, or perhaps even artificially induced, is now a rolling issue within me.  The days and nights of artificial pleasures are no more.  

I had to leave work yesterday to come home. There was an "emergency" and it had to be dealt with right away.  Each day I ride my bike to and from work as the weather permits and I can accomplish this simple task easily under most urban circumstances. This time there were several obstacles between work and home. I won't bother telling you about all of them right now but the short list includes: an outdated lock combination that had to be changed before I left, construction zones, a guy in an SUV pulling all the way across the bike lane (even though he saw me) to let somebody out of his car, forcing me off the road, a fresh and rather large uncrossable pot-hole that is in the bike path of one of the streets I take home, several people running red lights and either assuming bikes will stop for them or that they don't even see me, etc.  Then when I got home I realized that I had left the keys to my apartment at work, in my locker. So I called my wife and asked her if I could come pick up her keys. She said yes.

I rode to where she works, experiencing a set of similar difficulties.  The sidewalk that leads to the door where she works was wide open and as I rode towards it I passed, with at least 5 or 6 feet of clearance, a woman on foot dressed in curtains of black who yelled at me that she walks her dog on this sidewalk, and that I can not ride my bike on it.  

It is true that it is illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk in Manhattan, though she was not with her dog at the time, and I was as far away from her as I could be.  I could have been perhaps even farther from her if she would lose about 100 pounds, as this was the only modifiable impediment I saw to me passing her. I say this with some self-pity as I have gained about 25 pounds in the last two years. Though it hasn't affected my ability to maneuver a bicycle yet.

In any event, I went into where my wife works and she walked towards the front of the entrance and greeted me. We both knew we were having horrendously stressful days. She handed me the keys and we kissed, we began to talk and reassure one another. It was at this point that the leviathan in black fabric from the sidewalk opened the front door and started screaming at me about dog safety and the territories controlled by people like her.  I assumed that's why she was roaming them, foraging. But a woman screaming at me for being on a bike in the place where my wife works is something that can not be allowed.  I had to leave. I turned my bike and walked towards the door where she waited like a solar eclipse.  

Her screams and legal invectives continued.  I was doomed.

I said nothing. It is somewhat easy to show restraint when it is a requirement to do so, as this was.  It is only appropriate to boast of self-restraint when you have no other reason to exercise it. This was not one of those moments, though I desperately wished that it was. I simply walked out the door, with her moving the immense accretions of flesh out of the way just in time for me to pass.  My jaw was clenched though she might not have noticed as her massive head was bobbing and weaving and produced a steady stream of high-pitched and sharply directed clamor.  

She also seemed to be in a state of advanced anxiety.

As I was passing through the doorway she very briefly said nothing and moved with great effort out of the way. But once she saw me mount my bike to depart her stream of social projections and proclamations quickly resumed in full.  It faded into the distance as I glided onwards, elsewhere.  My wife later told me that she re-opened the door and continued her yelling until they assured her that few establishments known to man were as concerned about dog safety as we were, and that we have all signed oaths stating such, and they can be found within the office of public records.  

This is how New Yorkers deal with things. They are direct people, sometimes to a fault. They see little reason to let even the most minor and harmless infractions go. Because if it starts with people riding their bikes on the sidewalk it will end up with junkies raping the neighborhood pets, and then the children, and eventually us.  You must put your foot down somewhere. Even if pale ripples of flesh spill from each side of your open-topped shoe when you do so. Something must be done about it, and an overweight housewife is just the one to take charge in these matters.  It is either that or endless cat rape. There is no middle ground, especially on the sidewalks.

Let me be more clear.  I have nothing at all against short people (I mentioned one fondly yesterday in my blog), or heavier people (I am overweight myself), or anybody else for that matter, any "type" of person at all, etc.  It is merely a descriptive hook that can be used.  This woman's weight was her defining characteristic. That, and her yelling. 

By the time I got back to my apartment to deal with the initial dilemma I had broken out into a full blown panic attack.  I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing, my vision was pulsating, etc. It was as if my entire body was trembling with fluctuations of one kind or another. I took a cold shower and laid down. (Is it lied down?  I think it is.)  I took two of the pills the doctor gave me for just such an occasion and tried to breathe as naturally as I could with my eyes closed.  I entertained semi-violent visions about Mrs. Mountain Black and the dog that she has yet to eat. But told myself that no matter how much these inventions might amuse me they are counter-productive to my current situation. 

Anxiety is killer, they say.  My doctor has reminded me how dangerous it is.  It is not something to be flirted with.  I just realized that the words flirted and trifled are anagrammatical. 

I have tried to relay my experiences from yesterday with some humor.  I assure you that none of this was nearly as much fun as I've made it sound. If you've ever drank too much coffee on an empty stomach it is like a concentrated version of that feeling.  It is awful.  It collapses an unseeable future into an ever heightened present. It is very difficult to see or feel beyond the experience itself. In that regard it is like an underside of the "pleasant drug experience" but with all of the pleasure removed.  It is where there ceases to be the anxious anticipation of something and it is the moment when it becomes the unstoppable thing itself: sudden anticipatory overload. 

A portion of  the central nervous system turns against itself and induces a state of panic.

panic -noun - Sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, with or without cause, often causing wildly unthinking behavior.

It was like that.  It was like what I assume dying to be.

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Duties of a Super

(Trey Speegle)

I went and worked-out this morning. Don't worry, I didn't do this on my own.  My wife asked me if I wanted to go work out while I was still falling asleep last night, then again all night as I was dreaming, then again as I awoke. She's like an aerobic-exercise-succubi.  I have been having very mundane dreams lately, they are easy to interrupt, they practically invite it.  

In any event.... working out is not at all what I remember it to be.  

Self-motivation is an interesting thing.  I once heard somebody say, "You'll never work out if you don't want to. No amount of tricks to get you to the gym will make you workout. You have to enjoy doing it."  I believe this to be true.  I also believe that I have not yet re-achieved that stage by returning to the gym after a prolonged absence.  The stage where I'm enjoying it is still far off.  

I did some light cardio this morning.  Or, what would normally be "light" for me when I was exercising on a regular basis.  I write this now from the hospital bed where I am resting gently.  

No, but hospitalization is never far off.   I overdo all things.

I have begun to examine further the things that I will miss about New York, if we leave.  That is yet another entertaining way to spend my mornings when I'm not in a battle to the death with a stairclimber machine. 

The superintendent of our building is not one of the things that I will necessarily miss about New York but he does offer us a unique experience.  Every morning he walks from building to building (he is the "super" of several buildings here on this street) and he screams instructions to his other friends that help him with the various duties of a super.  He has lived in America for about 45 years now but the impulse to learn English has never quite taken him. Which is well enough as we are still able to communicate as needed and we don't spend much nonessential time doing so.  So he walks from building to building screaming his various instructions, clarifications, questions, and assorted comments concerning organizational behavior and local activities to anybody and everybody within listening distance in a voluble stream of clear, distinct, and unbroken Spanish.   

There are approximately 200 people spread throughout about 120 apartments within his shouting range. This is a modest assessment of his abilities. Research might reveal an even greater affect. My wife and I guessed that each of these apartments rents for somewhere between $1500 and $2500, so we took $2000 to be an average rental price.  That means that he is disturbing the living environment of almost a quarter of a million dollars worth of monthly renters each and every morning, except when it's cold. For some inexplicable reason he is quiet in the wintertime. Yet the work still gets done.  It is a local mystery.

I thought that maybe we should record him a few mornings and make an audio loop of it that we could use in our clock radio to wake up wherever else we might go.  His informative Spanish is something that we might not be graced with in another place that we choose to live. We might miss it.  Who knows, we might not be able to wake up without it, such has our morning dependency upon it grown.  

Better yet: we might be able to market it and sell it... "Short, Puerto-Rican, man screaming about trash pickup times in authentic New York neighborhood...."  Yes, I said it, he is short.  We assume that he is stricken with this short-person's affliction that causes people to over-project.  He does so with a flavorful bravado each and every morning, predictably as they say, like miniature clockwork.  

Ok, I've got other stuff to do this morning. Strike that last paragraph from the records. Just like they do in Congress.....

Oh, remind me to be a nicer person.

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Monday

Today is my Monday.  It is the way the work week works at my job.  It is very rare that any other person's day is the same as mine.  We get two days off each week, like most others, but those two days can be spread anywhere across the week, or separated.  So the last day we work before a day off is our "Friday" and the day we return is our "Monday"... Often I have two Fridays and two Mondays during one week, and then I am used to addressing other people's Fridays and Mondays, which are rarely mine, as I said.  Though somehow each day always feels like a Tuesday or a Wednesday.

Again, today is my Monday. It is a boredom hardly worth entertaining with more words. It makes me want to eat candy bars.

There are many things that I love about my job. The people that I work with most of all. But it is the feeling of lost time that haunts me.  I doubt that I'll regret having met many of the people that I've met. But the time slipping away, that is another thing.  

Well, I suppose many must regret lost time, especially towards the end. I already have begun to question the loss, and there has been much of it.  

Another day lost forever, and then a week, then another year.  

The days creep by, the years fly.

Nothing else to say today.

"Talking to myself and feeling old, Sometimes I'd like to quit, Nothing ever seems to fit, Hanging around, nothing left to do but frown... Rainy days and Mondays always get me down"

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OUT OF NEW YORK

When I reflect on the things that I might miss about New York I think mostly of the extraordinary edginess of the city. Though that quality has softened much over the years that I've lived here. It remains a very interesting place to live.

Ignore what Madonna has to say about things for now, and perhaps for good.

Apparently Berlin is the new place for eccentrics to live cheaply.

We discussed living in Berlin. My wife lived in Berlin once before.  She loved it, though she seemed less eager to go back there than to go west.

I romanticize living in Berlin somewhat, as I do many cities in Europe.  Prague, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin... those names still evoke many literary dreams for me.

Some years ago, when I first moved to New York, I was walking towards the apartment that I was staying in on the far west side of 43rd St.  I was watching the place for a friend, caring for his siamese cats.  The person walking in front of me was staggering. They did not seem healthy or sober. My pace slowed as I awaited a good moment to pass, to move on, to go home.  There was yet another person in front of them who had made a sudden turn and went up the outside steps of a building. They were getting their keys out to go home.  The person in front of me collapsed on the pavement in front of the building. He was crying.  He was a young man. He attempted to curl up into a fetal position.  His clothes were tattered and he was bruised with sores on his face. He appeared to be stricken with AIDS. It was clear that he was dying, and soon.

The man on the steps turned and addressed the situation and me.  I hoped that in being a more experienced New Yorker he would perhaps offer some insight into what to do.  He looked at the person on the ground with disgust and he said, "Why does this have to happen in front of my building?" He turned and went inside. The man on the ground begged for help.  I walked by looking at all of it as it was happening, as if none of it was happening to me.


I had always been told that I should move to New York, that the city suited my pace of living, that I talk much too fast for a southerner, and people would be able to understand me more easily in New York.

These pictures were all taken in the gallery district in Chelsea. They all suggest sex and something else, death, I guess it's called. If it is not death then it is the suggestion of wrongdoing. Death is maybe only the evidence of the thing being suggested rather than the actual subject itself.

These posters were all printed in black and white. My pictures of them were shot in color though.

One morning very early I was up and reading a book on the couch in the front room in the twilight of the coming day.  I detected some movement out of the corner of my eye through the window and across the street. There on the roof of the adjacent building was a girl giving a guy a blow-job against the wall of another building. They were partially dressed in outfits, as if they had been to some sort of costume ball, though there was no holiday or occasion that I could relate to an event.  They were there for some time. They did other things while up there also. But it started with the first part that I mentioned.

Later my wife was disappointed that I did not wake her up to tell her, to bring her to the front window so that she could see.  She had to work that day and I thought only of her sleep.

I still love to return to the city from the airport by way of cab. To see the skyline emerge from behind the buildings of Brooklyn. To see them, as if in motion as well, along with me. To see them moving as part of one great island of light. Some buildings glowing as if they were crystals, like in Superman's ice palace home. They give off the last energy of a perverted new age, while also telling the tales of ages passed, like the neon of Miami, but sick with an upwards overgrowth, the most organized tumors ever known, famous in their arrangements.

The experiences I've had here have been often shocking. Though as time passes I am shocked by less and less. I have finally become a New Yorker.  Somehow I invite hugs of greeting far less than I used to.  New Yorkers create a space around them, a rigid personal space, that is somehow less inviting, or less breach-able than other people that I know elsewhere. You can detect their desire to not be touched, even in friendship. They are hard and brittle and prepared to break, though never breaking.  

They do not invite but rather silently reject open affections.

My friend studying therapeutic yoga techniques talks to me of people dying, trying to help them, touching their faces and heads and shoulders. Some of them have not been touched in months.

The way that I talk about things has changed.  I have become even more caustic.  More like the buildings of the city and less like a person that is building a person.  

The growth rate has slowed to a crawl.  

I've never read Emile Zola.  J'accuse....

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Blue Windmills

Well, I got yet another new computer.  A more powerful one, with two new "Thunderbolt" ports. It is really something. I will have to wait until Thunderbolt accessories are made to make use of the new protocol. But that should happen right about the time that I can afford something new anyway.  So the world appears to be perfectly arranged in its own way. I just looked at a stats program and nothing that I am doing by using Safari to type this post, the dictionary, text-edit, or the address book, or any process that is being run by the operating system is causing it to even show any usage at all.  It reflects a 0% usage of the cpu. But to be fair, I haven't had my morning coffee yet...

Yes, I am a nerd. I often console myself with the idea that I am not as much of a nerd as many others around me, but that really changes nothing.  I am heading towards being one of those middle-aged men that tries to brag to others like him how quickly I am able to rip dvds and send them back to Netflix now.  As if it is foolish of Netflix to even trifle with a man like me. That I am a towering force of processor nerdom to be reckoned with when it comes to computing power and knowledge of local USPS pickup times.  But it is partially true. For the uber-nerds out there... I got the new 3.1 ghz quad core Sandy Bridge i5.  I could have put in an extra $200 and gotten the i7 processor, which supports Hyper Threading.... But at the end of the day.... I'm a nerd, why celebrate it any more than I already have?  

I have begun dreaming of another life, one that might unfold in a more pastoral place, one where I often awake to relative silence and peace.  Sonoma.  It is a big leap and we are still in the negotiation stage of what it means for us. But the thought is a recurring and appealing one. We have lived too long in New York.  It is difficult to imagine living in another city that would entice us as much as this one, though there are many that are worth considering. So we are thinking that we will soon abandon this city life.  We want to live in a place that encourages and enables a much healthier way of living.  It is a big leap.  That is the main consideration we seem to be having.  Are we ready to leap so far?

It would, of course, mean that we would need to buy cars.  Neither of us is very excited about the prospect of having to own a car. But it is a thing that must happen if we are to move.  Soon I will stop discussing relative power comparisons of computers and I will dive into the various merits of power tools and which brands are to be proud of in terms of design and build.  I will discuss the longevity of one brand over another and I will take pride in the slowly growing but reasonably meager tool collection that I will develop. I will lose most of my current readers and hopefully attract a new sort, one that will not just giggle at my many neurotic tendencies but one that will draw me out in argument with phrases like: "Black and Decker drills aren't qualified to drill hooks to even hang a Dewalt on!"  

And on and on.

You will see.

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Bellevue

I was trying to chat with my wife around 8am this morning.  It was difficult as I had been up late last night, drinking wine, playing with the spell-check feature on my computer, challenging it in various competitions.  I answered the phone because I thought that somebody out in this great vast world wanted to reach me. There must be a reason for it. Perhaps there was money involved, fame, or something even better than both of those things.

It was my dr.'s office, wanting to schedule a follow-up appointment.   My wife had called about 90 seconds before this and cancelled the appointment I had because I had left her a note asking her to do so the night before. I didn't know any of this because I was still submerged in sleep only a minute previous to any of this. They waste no time with this thing, health.  They were quite interested in when I would be coming back into the office for a "follow-up."  I asked what was it that they had not done the last time I was there?  The woman on the other end of the phone, who had a voice like an angel, though I'm sure it concealed the eyes of an anemic rat, told me that a follow-up appointment is customary.  I said, What if I've just lost my insurance? She asked if I had and I said, No.  But I said, Look... I don't care if you guys rape the ass off of my insurance company, but why do you always need me to do it? 

I then went on to suggest that I didn't even much mind the idea of coming back in but it just bothered me that I had to pay a co-payment.  The co-pay is there to prevent me from going nuts and running completely amok with my insurance, the way that the doctors offices do.  I've seen the enormous cost/price/service differential involved and we all know what's happening here.  So I again suggested that they could either charge my insurance company as if I had come in and we'd split the profits. Or, I would actually come in and they would look at my paperwork, charge my insurance company, but at least have the decency to forego the co-payment, as an incentive, to sweeten the deal for me a little bit, etc.

None of this reasoning worked.  I explained that after taxes and deductions for things like insurance I end up walking with about $3.12 an hour.  Now that might sound like a lot because you're automatically calculating it based on an 80 hour work week, multiplied by 54 weeks a year, and you then end up with something like $13,000. A figure of fortune in anybody's mind, right?  But I call in sick a lot.  I had to qualify this right away because I didn't want her getting excited.  I said that I call in sick a lot. I didn't say that I was sick a lot.  If I made anywhere what their office was making from being sick then you can rest easy that I would be calling in sick even more, perhaps hourly. But in this topsy-turvy arrangement they actually punish me for being sick, financially that is. 

This must have come as quite a shock to somebody who is accustomed to handling and procuring large sums of money based on people presumably being sick.  Yes, I said. It sure is a crazy, twisted world, but it's the only one we've got.

I went on to tell her that I would even be willing to leave my job duties altogether if I could just find a way of guaranteeing some of my insurance money would head towards me rather than away from me and towards them.  A deal that benefitted both involved parties. She explained that going on disability required that I was sick, then she asked me if I was sick.  Make sure you've read that last line carefully. She asked me if I was sick.  I said that I have gotten a reasonable amount of raw and rotten deals in my life, but for the amount of cash their office is getting for the monitoring of my health, they really should possess a much clearer idea of my health status. No, I am not sick, and you know it...!!!

But it did occur to me that maybe I should come in for a follow-up, and arguing in this way was probably raising my blood pressure.

I said that enough money was getting paid out to them to justify some sort of sickness, right?  She breathlessly exclaimed something about fraud and it simply not being possible, something along those lines.  I said that I have seen the financial breakdown of what they do... and if my walking into the office, paying $30 at the desk to do so, and sitting across another desk from a doctor for 5 minutes nets them $400 from my insurance company then they probably know everything there is to know about fraud, and I will trust them on this matter.  My mistake.  I'm still a beginner in this game.

I used to not have a job, sort of.  I didn't do anything that provided me with the benefit of health care.  So I was considered an indigent and I went to an indigent hospital.  It is a famous one, Bellevue.  It used to be a madhouse here in Manhattan. I believe that's the term, madhouse.  It is where they would bring the crazies and the drunks and drug addicts to keep the prisoners in jail safe and far away from them.  But they loved me there and they didn't charge me for any of the services they performed, pretty much.  Every now and then I would have a big spot of red cancerous cells growing on my chest or back or eyeball and they would get excited about slicing it all off and, not wanting to disappoint them, I would let them.  Things worked out pretty well between us.  But then I got a job.  It was for a big company and they had exactly what you would expect, a big set of choices when it comes to big insurance plans. I chose the very best one.  I looked at all of them and I thought... I deserve it.  I've earned it.  

Well, I got what I deserved.  I have never had so many ill-defined bills in my life.  I go into the dr.'s office, oftentimes because they've called me and invited me in, whether it is for them to look at my eyes, or watch me breathing, or check my weight, etc.  I pay the amount they ask me to, for coming in, which is enough to keep me from wanting to be there very much, or coming back very often. They wave and say goodbye and give me the type of gracious and friendly smiles that make me feel that my health is pretty much a guarantee, and is in the best hands available for such a thing.

Then a few weeks later I will get a bill in the mail from them, explaining that insurance is a confusing operation that involves many layers of approval and special codes that denote one thing or another, and attached is a request for much more money. Recently I sat down and looked at all of it and it turns out that I have been paying a larger share of the dr.'s bill than my insurance company has. Because, and this is where it gets really strange: They give my insurance company a break on what they charge them, but then they try to get the difference from me. This is considered standard procedure, I'm told.  It is the way that these things work.  

So, now I'm sitting here typing this post rather than calling my dr. and rescheduling this follow-up visit.  It should be called a finish-up visit because that is what they've done to me.  I think I just want to be a poor indigent again but I'm not sure if they'll let you go back. Maybe if I grow a fresh new spot of cancer on my good eye they'll let me come in for a visit, for old times, or before it's too late.

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Oliver Stone has a funnily shaped face

A funny coincidence.  Last night when I got home from work I wrote a post about my various disappointments with the shift-of-powers and loss-of-rights that I've experienced in my lifetime... When I got home tonight I found my wife watching "JFK" by Oliver Stone.  Now, I want to be very clear on this matter: I do not think about Oliver Stone after I have stopped watching any of his films, and likewise resist thinking of him as an auteur or anything else during the film-watching process.

I barely even think of him as a filmmaker. Tonight I am making a special exception for the purpose of this site. I feel like there should be a special word for somebody like him, but not "filmmaker"....  I prefer to reserve that word for people who have created works that I often do think about after the film is over.  Werner Herzog, for example. That is an artist that I consider highly and on pleasant and frequent occasion.  

Auteur is not right word either, even though it has sufficient pomposity.

But tonight all that we had was "JFK", and us....

My wife fell asleep from the effects of a long day at work and I sat in bed quietly watching the end of the film, drinking slowly (by my standards), glass after transparent glass of lovely red wine.

There is a montage/monologue at the end of the film. It is quite famous, and it is quite stirring.  I realized that I have wanted, for perhaps my whole adult life, to be somebody like Jim Garrison (not Kevin Costner), and yet I know nothing about him beyond this film, Garrison I mean.  

I am probably far more like Oliver Stone and I can not stand that.  I detest looking at the sentence on the screen in front of me, knowing that I wrote it, and will probably post it, out of patriotic duty to my readers, etc. Many might see a statement comparing myself to Oliver Stone as one of arrogance. I see it much more as shameless self-pity, even pathetic defeat. Which others must also see as a sign of advanced arrogance, and on and on. It never ends.

I just think that he stirs only certain emotions, and mostly in others. Ones that I am ashamed of, but also ones that I sometimes respond to.  It is like admitting that you hate sweetened chocolate. Hershey's kisses... not even real chocolate... It is only sweetened feces.

But to speak out.... !!!!!

It feels good to be righteous. Even when you are high like old Oliver.  In these unstoppably self-conscious times there is scarce opportunity for what others would call acts of "righteousness." There is only self-righteousness. We have been told and told (and then shown) that this after-thought of self is wrong, very wrong.  Because to act heroically is honorable, but to think about acting heroically is a shameful embarrassment.  To talk about arranging and doing complicated noble things is a nearly unforgivable social offense.  Anyone can discuss how satisfying it is to work hard at a thankless job and feed your family, that is agreeably brave. But if you try to enlist the minds of others into a pattern of structured goodness, or an open refusal of corruption, then you have just entered the world of the con... conspiracy. con-man. confidence trick. con-edison. conference. convict. condom, come-on. cocaine addict... constantness.

To openly discuss wanting the world to be better, and with standards by which you think this noble task might be achieved, is among the worst shames one can commit, conversely. 

...

Recently I read an interview in GQ magazine.  Don't worry, I don't normally read GQ magazine, and I have never had a subscription, it was merely on the table at my dentist's office.  Admitting that you avidly read GQ... as a straight man, is akin to claiming that you read Playboy for the interviews.  It just seems suspiciously gay or frustratedly straight, respectively.  

GQ is dedicated primarily to regarding men's styles and Playboy to revering women's pussies, et al. 

There are good articles in lots of other magazines, etc.

The discussion in GQ was with Werner Herzog, and very oddly, and somewhat coincidentally for me and this site, touched upon the subject of Oliver Stone.  He was mentioned in the interview through the list of reading Herzog did for his film school. Among the various books Herzog was asked to read was a list that started with the Greeks and ended with, but also included, The Warren Commission Report.  Which he gladly read.  He also highly suggested it as a publication of interest for others to read. Something I've never done.  Nor, apparently, has Oliver Stone... He took some perverse German-esque joy in pointing this out during the interview.  Herzog recounted the experience of meeting Stone and asking him about certain points of the report and Stone revealed he had not read it.  It was a Teutonic shift for him, it seemed. 

Now, how is this even possible, and at what point do we cry foul?  At what point do we stone?

How the fuck has Olive Stone not read The Warren Commission Report?

I've heard O.S. speak, and have read enough of his interviews, to know that he does not encourage actual thought as much as he suggests suspicion and fear. Paranoia is the dialectical opposite of thought, masquerading as contemplation itself.  Not all introspection qualifies as thought. Some of it is just self-hypnotizing fear and assumption.  Suspicion fools most of the people I meet into a feeling similar to thought and is often the only requirement they need to suspend genuine consideration and examination. 

It satisfies the "shadow of a doubt" criteria..... a task easily done, but a quality that can also be advanced beyond, and even dismissed with, further inquiry. Paranoia induces in many an intoxicating sense of wonder, much as the sound and motion of a vacuum cleaner does to a puppy, or the light from a flashlight against a wall, or floor, does to a cat.   

Stone's a pothead-burnout that has always found his audience (without much surprise) exactly where he left them. They've hardly even left where they were last sitting.  Such is the deep commitment of his fan base to the ritual of confident inaction.  I seem to be surrounded, in zombiesque formation, by people who think that he is simply brilliant.  They couldn't be more right, quite simply.  

But this is again all of my fault, of course... and it is not the first admission of guilt that I have made tonight, nor hopefully the last. 

I'm going to go admit my further misdeeds to another glass of wine.

I give up for the night...

.... here is a picture of his audience, in rapt bemusement and wonderment:

While writing this column my spell check did not correct the term "elf-righteousness"...  So, I suppose with elves, and very noble ones, there really is no need for correction, or perhaps only little need, very little need.

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Don't Even Think Of Barking Here

(issued by the nypd, thought division)

There is much to listen to already with the death of bin Laden.  Much of it is just amplified nonsense.  There are those who argue that torture was clearly justified and that it was this unquestionable practice that led to his assassination.  There are others that rightly point out that there is no way of knowing that legal means of intelligence gathering might have been equal or even more effective, as it might have persuaded others to aid us even more in his legal capture.  Both claims are unverifiable. We will simply never know.  We can not logically conclude the present from a non-existent past. Alternately, assuming the complete condition of the present from singular instances in the past is a logical assumption that also can not be made. Though this second form of reasoning is much more easily sold to the willing. Doubly so in fact, it is done without their reflection in mind and relies on this lack of consideration for the transaction to be complete.

We do know that we have all entered a new world where the due process of law plays much less of a role.  Concepts of justice have changed from era to era and there has never been a universally agreed upon meaning of, or strict definition for, the concept of justice.  We are taught to believe in the importance of the process above almost all else but then we see it perverted under circumstances when our leaders deem it justified, without apology or correction.  In my lifetime it has been much more rare that the process publicly corrects itself rather than instances in which it is perverted; publicly, privately or otherwise. It seems to drift further and further off course in some of the most fundamental ways.  One has to pay very careful attention to the decisions of the Supreme Court to ever get much of a sense of the legal system being self-correcting in any way whatsoever.  Even then the victories are scant and unnoticed by most, or somewhat obtuse to a layperson's understanding of constitutional law. Mine, I mean...

It has always been my belief that the police are given far too much power and they abuse it even farther beyond what is actually granted them. Justice seems rare in the instances of police misconduct.  That is only one way that I have noticed recognizable changes in the use of power and the loss of personal rights in my lifetime.

I was told that no one was allowed to search me or enter my home without a warrant when I was growing up. The former has never been true and the latter becomes less and less so with each new definition of "threat" devised by any law enforcement agency given even the vague responsibility to freshly define the term. I found out some time ago that the U.S. Border Patrol can perform legal and warrantless searches on anybody within 100 miles of a border, including American citizens.  

Approximately 2/3rds of all Americans live in that area.  I have never once lived outside of that area in my life. 

So, a massive Fourth Amendment protection has never even applied to me. This special branch of the Department of Homeland Security has more sworn and armed officers than any other branch of the U.S. Government.  This has all happened in the last 10 years, mind you. It is a reasonably small step to deputize state and then local police officers into this agency so that they assume the same powers granted therein.  

Many people reading this might say that I am being paranoid in the same way that I have accused others of being in the past, and on this very site.  But remember that roadside car searches were birthed tangentially from the government changing the laws governing the rights of airline passengers. Those traveling openly in public became routinely searched. They were no longer secure in "their persons." These searches were non-judicially sanctioned and without probable cause, they were instead merely a ubiquitous shift in policy and procedure for travelers.  

To even leave the search area of an airport now, un-searched, constitutes a special new crime. To enter the area is to forego constitutional rights and establishes a silent unknown-to-most admission of complicity in this act of constitutional relinquishing.  At an airport security check it is no longer legal to say to yourself or others, No thank-you, I prefer to keep my privacy and dignity intact. I will find another means of travel, and then leave. They can, and just might, arrest you for simply denying a bodily search and trying to leave.

So, back to our cars... Eventually they maintained that a car is not a personal space either and people should expect a reduced sense of privacy there as it is not generally a storehouse of personal belongings.  You see, when you are in a car it is best to imagine a police or customs officer there in the car with you, a legal co-pilot if you will, guiding you into a safer future. Anybody who appears threatened to this idea is perhaps a danger to the very same society we are all committed to protect and defend.  These people who question authority are like bombs waiting to explode, you see.  They could have already infiltrated your stereo, your glovebox, even your trunk... they function in a cellular way, you see.

Probable Cause only means that you've probably got something to hide.  'Cause why else would you be nervous...

This is all true... trust me.   This was the very reasoning that allowed for car searches.  I have never met anybody that did not feel that their car was not a personal space, nor ever befriended someone that did not use it extensively as a reservoir for personal belongings, some much more so than others.  

I've known people that have even lived in cars for a time... 

Now if that isn't a reason to ball up the whole damned Constitution and throw it out the window onto the interstate highway then what in the hell is?  If an honest taxpayer can't expect some prison-tramp to clean up roadside trash then where does all that money go? 

It becomes easier and easier for a government, whether local or federal, to justify the misuse of power simply by doing so.  Over time nobody remembers, or is willing to fight for, what was initially created and put there to protect them.  It is only a matter of time before the ones who want to fight for their guaranteed rights seem as if they have something to hide. I mean, who would resist safety at a time like this, right?  There are vast highways out there to be cleaned of un-recycled paper.

"We reserve the right to search all bags" is a funny sign that I see posted almost everywhere I go in New York. It is near the doorways of many shops and bodegas.  They have no such right, of course, but most people that I ask about it either don't know this or they question my plain objection to it.   I want to make a t-shirt and wear it and sell it around all of New York that looks like a normal blue and yellow NYPD shirt, bought by tourists everywhere on the streets, that simply says:  "NYPD We reserve the right to search all homes and houses"

One day we will all be millionaires running for our lives.

When Obama won the presidency I was in a roomful of people who were quite cheered by the victory, as was I.  But as part of the revelry I pointed out that Obama would do nothing to restore the balance of powers that George Bush dangerously offset while in office. My future wife was in that room and no one attacked my statement, or me, with more poison and hostility.  It was a difficult time for me because I knew that I was right. Both about my estranged love for her and my opinion that a person in power does not relinquish that power easily, especially when they are not perceived to be the one that wrongfully assumed it.  It is an unfortunate downside of successive presidencies.  Why correct the mistakes of the past in that way? That would be truly poor politics; to give away power. The goal is to assume even more power but make it appear as if that is a necessary part of correcting the abuses of the past. 

Because the danger's not really back there in the past, it's been out in front of us all along, out there in the future,  and it's out there now even more than ever.... 

(the best possible grammar for the cause)

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Hank

I often bring a book with me to to work, to read on my lunch break.  A friend had been sending me quotes from a collection of interviews of Charles Bukowski called "Sunlight Here I Am."  I had the book sitting on my shelf along with a few others that I hadn't read that I had bought on a late night amazon.com frenzy. So I brought it with me yesterday. This is not the the type book you should be reading at work.  It is perhaps not even the type book you should be reading if you have a job.  

The book does two things at once.  Firstly it reminds you that whatever job you have is very likely an unrewarding series of ever-increasing bullshit dished out to you by people who seem to actually believe that bullshit makes things grow, a natural sort of fertilizer for the mind. Secondly it makes you believe that you too could be a writer, subsisting on income from writing, without any unrewarding and menial job at all.  These two things combined can be very dangerous.  Bukowski makes it seem easy.  I have had to talk myself out of quitting several times since lunchtime yesterday.

It is easy to do, of course, quitting your job.  It is what comes after that is difficult.  Redefining your life.  Finding some other way of paying your bills and surviving that isn't equally demeaning, dispiriting, and for even less pay.  I have gotten used to paying my bills. I have told myself the lie for so long that I believe it: that it is rewarding to pay my bills.  It feels good, etc.  None of this is true, obviously. What feels good is to have no bills at all, to live a life of relative leisure and peace.  I am a very long way off from that.  

A friend came over the other night to talk to my wife and she told us that she is now debt free. After a few years of focusing on paying back her enormous credit card bills she has finally gotten out from under the burden of debt. She is a bartender at a nice restaurant and I can only assume that she does well there.  But that is not really the point. The point is that she is freer now than she was then, less constrained by obligations.  I am uncertain if I will ever get there.  There is less money left over from each paycheck than I currently need. I am never happy to look at my checking account.  I am always sinking, sometimes slower than at other times.  So, there is little chance of me ever getting to a point in which I will feel free of debt.  Even if I were to get there then I am confident that I would buy some unnecessary device that would submerge me further back into financial obligation. It is a sickness of sorts.

Perhaps today I will bring a different book with me to work.  I recently got a technical manual explaining in fine detail how to use my new camera, the Nikon D7000.  I still owe (what to me is) quite a bit of money on the camera. I was smart enough to take out a loan to get it, you see.  I have tried to convince myself that if I am going to work a job that I should reap the rewards of doing so and buy things that I want, things that will make me happy. But then I am unhappy because I owe and I feel obligated, and even worse: I feel that I am not able to fairly bitch about my situation because I myself caused it.  

It is like drinking too much, knowing at the time that you are drinking too much.  Being in debt is similar to having a hangover in your sleep. It greets you when you awake.  It is always waiting there for you.  It is a very lazy strain of social cancer. Only a few rare souls are ever able to stomach the treatment. Most eventually succumb to the illness.  It is slowly debilitating but only terminal over the course of a lifetime.  It is of a rare class of diseases that knows how to keep its host barely alive and always working. 

Tonight when I depart from work I will drink a bottle of red wine and ponder the further significance of its symptoms.

"There are only two things wrong with money: too much or too little." -Charles Bukowski

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I am the Walmart

Well, my opium addiction did not turn out the way that I had hoped.  It will be that much more difficult with Osama Bin Bogeyman gone now. But who knows. With crisis comes opportunity...

Facebook really is the place to spend the hours after this sort of breaking news.  There really is no other source where you can experience the democracy of opinion in this way.  Everybody gets to trot out their jingoism and veiled bigotry either for or against one group or another.  It is fascinating.  I wish it were possible to relay some of the conversation threads that I was involved in last night but the timing of responses is lost when trying to relay it.  It simply is something that can not be reconstructed.  I was like a crazed addict last night, up to all hours of the early morning, sweating in a frenzy of digital interactions. My wife went out on the couch to sleep because I was twitching with internet excitement.  I have been on an anti-anxiety medication and I swear to you it fueled these feelings far more than it medicated them.  

When I went back and looked at the the conversations again this morning some of the more absurd statements had been deleted.  Not mine of course. All of my ridiculousness was there in full. Except for one rather lengthy conversation about the relative intellectual merits of the armed forces.  I had really hoped to look through that one but the entire thing was gone.  The doubled up anti-anxiety medication I was taking had finally taken complete control of my mind and body and I seem to remember signing off from the conversation pleasantly but perhaps that was the anxiety medication telling me late night untruths. 

I am convinced that Bin Laden died of old-age and boredom. Though I haven't bothered looking at the news reports to get the full details.  Why should I?  It's much easier to make up my own version of the truth. One that fits into my various feelings of elated paranoia at the moment. It's been almost 10 years since his most well-known attack on the United States and he hasn't followed up to that attack very well since then.

Ok, so I just went and looked at it, apparently it was an elite team of imaginary super heroes, operating outside of international law, that is claiming credit for the strike. Team 6 they are called. I think it would be funny if other nation's elite special-ops task forces start taking credit for the strike in the press also.  A sort of media terrorism turned on its head. 

Here are some Facebook highlights for those of you who are underprivileged and can not afford an account. Be careful some of these are meant to be jokes. They can be dangerous and confusing otherwise:

- I only wish Saddam had lived to see this day

- Today will be celebrated as Hitlerrific

- What an awful parade of misguided confusion. The very thing we would accuse the enemy of... Osama's death is no more meaningful than Geraldo Rivera's entire career. It is cause for neither surprise nor celebration. Pull yourselves together free world...  It's not as if we'll go out burning deserts on tv in celebration.

- By tomorrow morning our enemies will be vanquished and the world will awake to an unending feast.

- Oddly Christ's death is the most celebrated death of all of history, and no single name has caused as much joy or death since.

- We are a lost world of story listeners

- America passed away from natural causes. On this day its definition and symbol of terrorism died of old age. Once the Soviet Union dissolved then America was never the same. It could be said that loneliness was  the cause. Without an enemy then what is an empire? Truly, power is meant to match power. We have lost the power to empower our enemies. Only satire will amuse us now... long live sarcasm.

- I am the Walmart

- At least we can rest comfortably knowing that it wasn't Dick Cheney that blew his cover... Dick Cheney only blows people's faces off.

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