The Lenny Bruce Effect.

Years ago, I bought a copy of Lenny Bruce's autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. I was reminded of one episode the other day: Bruce was on trial -- in San Francisco, I think -- for using what was then considered an obscenity in his nightclub routine. When writing about the trial, Bruce noted that people in the court (judges, attorneys, etc.) were repeating the banned word with great glee every time it popped up in testimony.

Lenny was surely exaggerating a bit for dramatic purposes, but the same effect is easy to see in the Don Imus controversy.

If I was Imus (a frightening thought) I'd be sending thank-you notes to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Think about it: Imus probably thought he was broadcasting to his usual audience on radio -- a couple dozen, judging from his show's ratings -- plus another handful who happened to be watching him on MSNBC, when up popped the devil! (so to speak).

Have you ever heard Imus? How this guy has kept his job over the years is a total mystery. When he's not mumbling, his patter is full of unfinished sentences that make no sense and disjointed musings that make one wonder how many of his brain cells still function.

PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT-CUM-DISCLAIMER: Several years ago I was spending some time in the East and on several occasions had to drive from where I was staying into New York City. I caught Imus on the radio a couple of times and managed to stick with his show for maybe 10 minutes at a time before switching stations. That's my total experience as an Imus listener. People more familiar with him say he's worse now.

So here's this guy whose regular listeners wouldn't fill a city transit bus making headlines all over the country. You can't buy publicity like that!

And his incredibly stupid comment showed up in every news report and every commentary. No one was content to report that it was dumb and derogatory; no, all had to repeat it. How many of those critics were snickering to themselves as they typed/spoke his words?

A lot, I'll bet.

(As in Lenny Bruce's trial: "Did you hear him, your honor? He said blah-blah-blah." "Man, how could he say blah-blah-blah?" "He probably enjoys saying blah-blah-blah!" "Only a pervert would say blah-blah-blah." And so on.)

While we're on the subject, I suggest that Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton send thank-you notes to Imus as well. Without idiots like him, they wouldn't have any reason to jump into the spotlight again. And every Imus-type incident helps them distance themselves from their own racist remarks and questionable past actions.

It's a win-win situation.

The only real losers, to me, are the members of the Rutgers womens' basketball team who were the objects of Imus's cheap crack. For them to say their joy at playing in a national championship was "taken away" by a brain-dead guy sitting in a broadcasting studio talking to a double-digit-size audience is pretty lame. In a situation like this, one is a "victim" only if they choose to be.

And Imus? He gets two weeks off and then will (probably) be back in the same old chair. He can afford it.

The best way to deal with his brand of idiocy is to ignore it. Which is what the vast majority of the population was doing until Jesse, Al and every news outlet in the known universe jumped on it.

I had something to say...

...but I've decided against saying it.

In fact, I have decided to restrain myself from commenting about at least three things that really burn me up.

Yeah, one is Jorge Bush (and other Washington liars, greedheads and losers). Another is my own pitiful efforts at working today.

Never mind the third. It should be filed under Old Business and shouldn't bother me at all. It does bug me, though. It offends my sense of justice.

So instead of writing a political and/or personal rant (the second of which might make me look even dumber than some previous entries have, if possible), I think I'll just jack it in for the night.

I see no point in further exposure of my gullibility, whether related to the voting booth, clients or a pretty face.

Who knows? With luck the Big One might hit tomorrow, and I can post photos of it.

Ugh.

It's time once again for me to find a way to get my brain working. Maybe a cycle through the dishwasher would help, or perhaps a few squirts of WD-40. If all else fails, I might poke around in there with a screwdriver and see if I can find the non-working parts.

Gotta do something.

It's one of the usual complaints: a lot of work to do, all on pretty short deadlines, combined with a total lack of any creative impulses coming from thar mess inside my skull.

The reasons for the inspiration shortage are the usual ones as well.

For some reason, that makes me think of something that happened many, many years ago. I hit a slow point in my then-career and was feeling disgusted with the whole thing. The woman I would later marry noticed that the Postal Service was hiring. As it happened, I was offered a job in my line of work a few weeks later, and the Post Office thing was dropped.

If I had hired on there, I would be two years away from retirement, with a nice pension and a lot of bennies.

But no. I went back to the job a lot of my friends envied. And later fell into this gig, which provokes the same response from people who don't know what it's really like.

Maybe I'll go stick my finger in a light socket, and see if 110 volts wakes up the gray matter.

GCotW

Cats and fences just seem to be made for each other...

The sun finally sets...

...on the United Kingdom. Not the "British Empire;" that has been dead for more than a half-century, but rather the pitiful island now led by a spineless prime minister who seems, along with his government and current military leaders, to take the French approach to international relations as a model: talk big, then surrender at the earliest opportunity.

Now comes word that the 15 marines and sailors captured by the Iranians have been given permission to sell their "stories" to tabloids and television, for which they may receive as much as $500,000.

If I was one of them, I wouldn't be so damn quick to take advantage of this offer.

Compare their behavior to that of many past hostages, some of whom eventually lost their lives at the hands of their captors. They, for the most part, made it clear from the moment of capture that such little "cooperation" as they might have displayed -- and the majority did not cooperate at all -- was forced. In contrast, most of the 15 wasted no time in taking the easy way out, appearing in videos that depicted them as happy in the hands of the Iranians, admitting "guilt" and, in the case of the one female hostage, writing letters home criticizing her nation's policies.

Yes, they have since said they were "forced," "tortured" and subjected to intense pressure. That's hard to accept when one considers the long tradition of POWs remaining true to their nations and military codes of honor in much worse situations.

This is real Jane Fonda stuff. One wonders if the North Vietnamese gave Hanoi Jane sweets and souvenirs as she left....

The shame of the British hostages must be shared with their leaders. None acted courageous; to a man -- and woman -- they let the Iranians play them like pianos. From Tony Blair to the top brass in the military, they displayed the kind of moral weakness that virtually guarantees future illegal acts by the Iranians and their ilk will not only happen, but will go unpunished.

I won't call the 15 -- or at least those among them who played the Iranians' game so well -- cowards. I have never been in their situation.* But it is no stretch to see the UK's official responses to Iran's actions as driven by moral cowardice.

Not that our nation serves as any kind of beacon for doing things right these days. Nancy Pelosi and her apologists have proven that sucking up to terrorists for political advantage at home is the way of the future as long as the lefty-loons are in power, and Bush's pathetic mishandling of the very real need to protect ourselves against enemies whose aim is to destroy us proves that we don't have the guts to stand up for what's right any longer.

One can only wonder what Horatio Nelson, Margaret Thatcher, Theodore Roosevelt or George Patton would think of those who are in charge now.

And one can only wish that those British soldiers who have died in service to their nation could tell us what they think of the marines and sailors who shook hands with a terrorist and are now free to cash in on it.


* Others who have endured similar captivity and worse, have used the "c-word," however.

I'll be spending Easter...

...sitting at this very desk, trying to get some work done.

I can only hope my ability to crank out salable work is resurrected tomorrow.

And I hope my miserable creep neighbors won't have their TVs, boomboxes and whatever cranked up tomorrow.

Yeah. Happy Easter.

Mine is going to lay a big fat egg, I'm afraid.

And it won't even be a painted one.

I can't buy a break...

...especially when I try to head out for a change of scene.

This morning, I decided to head for the desert in search of things to photograph and, with luck, a little sun. The typical gray spring/summer weather pattern has set in here; it doesn't do much for my spirits.

I hit the freeway, heading East. And got caught in a monstro traffic jam that resulted in my covering a whole ten miles in two hours. Once past that, there were other, shorter jam-ups.

So after four hours I gave up and turned around, never made the desert, never got out from under that depressing gray canopy.

I never even got away from hundreds of housing developments under construction or miles and miles of giant shopping malls.

Sadly, all this construction was taking place on what once was open land. Within my memory, in fact, there were miles of open space as the Los Angeles Basin gave way to open desert.

No more.

One of these days, I will learn not to go on drives like this, at least as long as I'm alone. When you don't even have someone to tell what was in, say, the little wide spot in the road known as Box Springs before the Wal-Mart/Target/Nordstrom centers sprouted, it's simply pointless to be there.

And my little foray contributed to my growing hatred of driving in Southern California. That's bad, because it's the place where I'm more-or-less forced to drive most of the time. During the last decade, any trip of more than five miles has become a white-knuckle exercise in accident avoidance.

A substantial part of the problem, to be frank, are the hordes of aging cars and fullsize vans, filled with more people than they were meant to carry, clogging the roads. Many of these have little stickers depicting red-white-green flags or bearing words such as "Guadalajara" on them, and their drivers clearly have no clue about the rudiments of safe driving. They know nothing about such basics as using turn signals, staying more than 10 feet behind the car ahead or making turns from the appropriate lane.

Call me racist if you like, but come out here and spend a day on the highway with me before you do.

So I sat in traffic, managed to avoid getting caught up in two full-on and maybe a dozen almost-accidents.

Yeah. Great, great fun.

Happy Saturday, y'all.

A little honesty would be nice...

...when Jorge Bush "visits" part of the border between Arizona and Mexico on Monday.

I'm absolutely certain he'll be babbling about "comprehensive immigration reform," telling us "family values don't stop at the border" and all the other no-borders crap he's been dishing out for years.

And, of course, he'll tell us how well his "enforcement" plans are working, even as the total number of illegals in this country edges up to the 21,000,000 mark.

What I'd like to see is some honesty for a change. I can imagine several photo-ops that would be far more appropriate than what we'll get thrown in our faces:

First, the picture of Jorge helping an illegal load bales of marijuana in his van for the trip into the heartland;

After that, we should see him picking up his envelope full of cash from some corrupt Mexican politician;

Then, he could personally arrest a few more Border Patrol agents;

Finally, he could sit at a table next to the remnants of the border fence, handing out green cards and welfare applications to the illegals as they cross into the USA. Hell, he could even offer some of them rides to Phoenix in his fleet of air-conditioned Chevy Suburbans.

Why not just come clean with the voters, Jorge? Stand up, face the cameras and say: "screw all you American citizens. Mah corporate friends need slave labor, mah Mexican pals need ta git the poor people out of their country, and they're gonna git what they want. Y'all don't like me, but they do, and ah'm gonna stick with mah friends."

In fact, better still, why not just step across that line and keep on heading South?

Too pooped to rant.

Yeah, I'm too worn out and dispirited to wrap my mind around Big Issues.

It's not that I have no opinions. I do. And of course I think I'm right 99% of the time.

Rather, the avalanche of idiocy has simply become overwhelming, and gets more so with each passing day.

I'll probably try again, but I'm afraid many of the rants will end up the way today's two attempts did: with me clicking the "delete" icon. I'm no big-time pundit, you know; there aren't many people eagerly awaiting each new blast.

Certainly, the people at whom they are aimed don't even know I exist.

This would be the perfect time to have some good personal news to write about, or interesting pictures to post.

Sorry, don't have either.

Maybe later.

Prejudiced!

I can't believe it: I'm prejudiced, and I have the egregious-but-hilarious (or hilarious-but-egregious, if you prefer) radio yakker, Bill Handel to thank for that.

Against whom, you may ask, am I prejudiced?

Gays, that's who.

This is unbelievable. I have been around, been friends with, liked and even loved gay people all through my adult years. And before, too. We're talking the whole wide wonderful world of gay-itude here, Jim: male, female and various stages in between.

But now, they're off my list.

This morning, Handel was interviewing the authors of a new book, Queens in the Kingdom: The Ultimate Gay and Lesbian Guide to Disney Theme Parks. I was smiling along with the discussion of "Gay Days" at the parks and all the rest. And why not? I've been to group events at Mouse-Land, and it's always more fun with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Then it all went sour.

One of them mentioned that a "Gay Day" fixture is selecting a particular ride on which singles can meet. Okay, that's cool, too.

And then he mentioned the chosen ride:

It's a Small World.

Seeya, gay-peeps. How am I supposed to respect anyone who voluntarily goes on that ride? Especially if, as I fear, a lot of them will be singing along....

If you're a believer in Political Correctness...

...you probably ought to skip this post.

I confess that, despite all my efforts to be tolerant, inclusive, understanding and non-confrontational, I burst into laughter when I saw this headline on a Reuters story today:

Disney opens Fairy Tale Weddings to gay couples

I'm sorry. I really am.

I take it back. I'm not sorry at all.

Just insensitive.

It's over!

Well, almost.

I had one more pile of dung to work my way through after the last entry here. I was called -- at the last minute -- to a meeting concerning a project I have been trying to put together for years. Like all previous meetings on the subject, it was inconclusive and incredibly frustrating. I feel as if I'm still at Square One with this situation. I'm almost out of patience with all involved.

Oh, well.

If you're looking for a reason to remember April 4th (something I never have trouble doing), the New York Times provided one today:

Nina Wang, reported to be the richest woman in Asia, who won control of her husband’s Hong Kong real-estate empire after a tumultuous legal melodrama that featured a vanishing tycoon, a presumed death, charges of forgery and adultery, opium and impossibly short skirts, died on Tuesday in Hong Kong. She was 69 and had lived in Hong Kong for many years.

Mrs. Wang’s spokesman, Ringo Wong, announced the death, giving no cause, The Associated Press reported yesterday.

Now, at last, I understand why I am an abject failure.

In all my 57 years, I have never been involved with vanishing tycoons or opium. Nor has my name been associated with forgery, and only peripherally with adultery.*

Or maybe I screwed up because I didn't hire Ringo Wong to be my mouthpiece.

That must be it. I'm putting in a call to ol' Ringo ASAP.

At least it's almost April 5th, and all the crap is over for another year.


* Impossibly short skirts have messed me up a time or two, I admit. Especially when the wearer chose to lift them for someone else as well as me....

Soft landings...

...can be less than pleasant, as this story from Reuters makes all too clear:

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese woman survived a plunge from a sixth-floor balcony thanks to a convenient pile of excrement which broke her fall, local media said.

The accident happened when the woman was hanging out laundry on Monday in Nanjing, capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu, the Kuaibao tabloid said on its Web site (www.kuaibao.net).

"Workers happened to be emptying the building's septic tank, which had not been tended for a long time and had regularly blocked sewage pipes," the newspaper said.

"She probably stretched out too far and fell ... right on to a 20 cm-thick heap of excrement."

The woman suffered only slight injuries, the newspaper said.

Having landed in deep excreta more times than I care to think about, I know how she must have felt....

Almost through...

...the most difficult day of the year.

If I could have followed through on my ambitious plans to work, work, work -- I was being sarcastic in the previous mention of early-morning boozing -- today might not have been so unpleasant. But it didn't work out that way.

I've deleted the next six paragraphs of this. So let's leave it at that.

I'm not handling my annual numerological readjustment very well.

Numerology

Today's number:

57.

Jesus, that's awful. Even the lottery numbers don't go that high.

Wonder if anyone would notice if I started drinking right now?

Relaxing...

...and, if only briefly, allowing myself to be distracted from, well, damn near everything else.

I decided to buy myself a present today, and so trotted down to the nearest music emporium to pick up two Diana Krall CDs to add to my collection.

The Girl in the Other Room is sensational. From This Moment On is sheer magic.

Damn, that woman can sing.

Tomorrow is not going to be much fun from what I can tell. But I don't care as much as I might. If things bug me too much, I'll throw From This Moment On in the changer, crank the volume way up and enjoy some of my favorite songs being performed by a musical goddess.

If you have only two discs in your music collection, one of them should be hers.

76 days and counting...

...since Quislings operating under Jorge Bush's orders threw Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in jail.

Unfortunately, most people seem to have forgotten this hideous abuse of power. The majority seem to feel that seeing our government kissing the asses of corrupt Mexican politicians and doing the bidding of drug cartels isn't very important.

CNN's Lou Dobbs cares, thank God.

Yesterday, he devoted his show to the case. You can read the transcript here. It is nauseating.

Worst, but not unexpected, is the continuing stream of lies and fabrications from Johnny Sutton who, with persecutor Debra Kanof, made sure an illegal-alien drug smuggler went free -- more than free -- while two American citizens doing their job were punished for crimes they did not commit.

In any kind of honest government, Sutton would be in jail. Of course it wouldn't be a problem for him; the illegals he'd meet in jail would treat him like a king.

If, as Sutton keeps saying, "the American people knew the facts" of the case, with all the double-dealing, lies and perversions of justice committed by the government, if they knew the laws broken by Sutton, Kanof and the rest, if they knew about the crooked agent, friend of the illegal-alien drug smuggler who dropped the dime on Compean and Ramos, if they really understood the government's hidden agenda, there would be mass demands for arrests and impeachments.

And Compean and Ramos would be free, would never have served so much as a minute in jail.

I can't say I'm surprised by the stench of corruption that hangs over Washington. But I am disappointed that the general public can't be bothered to take to the streets over the continuing injustices done to our citizens by the shitweasels in Washington.

It was a mistake...

...for me to have taken the weekend off.

I didn't do any work, didn't think about work, and now that Monday's here -- and almost gone -- I haven't been able to muster up any enthusiasm or creative ability. Sleeping through the day would have been more productive.

Part of this I blame on the first item on the agenda. My friend D., the photographer, has long had a habit of shooting assignments no one asked for. From time to time, he sends off piles of old photo-shoots to editors, who generally just send 'em right back. Last Friday, he made a sale, and it turns out these were photos for which I had written the accompanying article. I went through all my available files and couldn't find a copy*, so the editor sent me a Xerox of the manuscript. It arrived today.

I wrote it almost 15 years ago.

My writing style has changed a bit since then (for the better, I hope), and I felt a mild headache coming on as I read through this piece. It was dashed off in a hurry for a client who didn't pay much -- not that the current re-do will add perceptibly to my bank account, either -- and, worse, it left out some important facts on the subject I have learned in later years.

So instead of a near-freebie consisting of a shiny new lede and a few reworded phrases here and there, I'm basically doing the whole damn thing over from Ground Zero. And the editor wants it this week.

To tell the truth, I simply don't feel like writing this story. Or, for that matter, any of those waiting their turn for completion. There are a lot of minor reasons -- such as checks I'm still waiting on, months after they were due, and so on -- but I'm beginning to think the real deal-breaker is this:

My first foray into magazine pages hit the newsstands in July, 1986**. With over a thousand stories -- ranging from roughly 400-500 words to ten times as long -- in print, I've said every damn thing I'm going to be able to say about my subject area at least once. Or, in some cases, dozens of times.

I'm feeling a bit like Frank Sinatra, who had to have gotten tired of walking into gigs and always having some drunk call out "sing 'New York, New York,' Frank!"

I have to find some kind of distraction to get my head working right, Jim.

After all, I'm not getting any younger.

At least I'm not getting any older for another couple of days.


* My computer doesn't have a floppy drive, and thus I can't load the DOS-based writing program I used in those long-ago days. If I can't do that, I can't read my old stuff and, sadly, I am missing several dozen copies of magazines that have carried my stories over the years. Or, if I actually do have a copy of this particular piece, it's lost among the hundreds of magazines I did save.

** Just out of curiosity, I took a break from writing this, dragged it off the shelf and re-read it. Not bad at all.

A photo I wish I'd taken...

...can be seen here.

Of course I wish I'd taken a lot of the photos Joan posts.

But this one is a classic. Look carefully before you read the text.

Where did the weekend go?

It's Sunday evening and I feel as if Saturday morning was mere moments ago.

Not that I buried my nose in work or anything like that. I have a great deal of writing to do in the week ahead, but will confess I didn't give it a thought during the past two days. Shouldn't have done that, but I didn't feel like dealing with it. So I didn't.

All I did was walk 11 miles (in three separate walks, one quite short) while letting my mind idle along in neutral, read a book, pay some attention to the cat and wash dishes.

That kind of life would drive me nuts if it lasted any longer than a weekend, but it felt pretty good.

Tonight I will make a list of everything I need to do in the week ahead. I'll do that right before I fall asleep so it doesn't mess up my mood.

Said mood is, if not particularly happy, at least not bad.

Don't tell me that's a good sign. It would be a better sign if I was actually optimistic, but there's not much evidence I should be, at least as of now.

Time to give the cat his dinner. None of which contains wheat gluten, thank God. Despite none of his victuals being on the recall list, I checked the ingredients immediately.