Author: djgourdoux

Maturation

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There’s no denying it, I was a weird kid.  I always knew that about myself, but as I grew into adolescence, the middle school years, it started to bother me. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why, going as far back as I could remember, that I always had the feeling that everybody else knew something that I didn’t, that they’d been privy to a secret that forever eluded me.

Looking back on it now, it’s obvious. Because of where my birthday, November 4th, fell in relation to the cut-off date for determining when a kid would start school (at the time, November 30th), I was nearly a year younger than most of my classmates, and younger than all but one kid in my class.  This might not sound like a big deal, but when you’re in seventh or eighth grade, a year can make a big difference. The maturation process for boys, both physically and emotionally, is hyper-accelerated in those years. It was like a gun was fired and the race began, everybody sprinting out of the blocks, while I lagged behind, clueless, wondering who’d been shot.

Physically I was always one of the smallest kids in my class.  I remember in tenth grade, I was five foot two and weighed 94 pounds, lighter than all but two in my phy-ed class. Football was not an option. I did okay in little league baseball, but that was because it used a different cutoff date than the public school system used, so when I was twelve, I was playing with other kids who were a year behind me in school but the same age during the baseball season.  You’d think that it would have occurred to me that this was the root of my problems, that the reason I played baseball so well was because, unlike school, I was with kids my own age. But that lightbulb never went on, even in the endless hours I spent trying to figure out why I didn’t fit in with my classmates.

My immaturity wasn’t limited to physical realms. I was emotionally immature as well, manifesting itself in behavior that ran from extremes of manic inappropriateness to near catatonic states of sullen brooding. All the standardized tests showed that I was well above average in intelligence, yet I was a terrible student, plagued by a short attention span that had I been born ten or twenty years later with would have likely led to chemical treatment.

I had two older brothers, six and four years ahead of me, who when I was growing up never seemed to have any problem fitting in.  I always looked up to them, and silently wondered why they were okay and I was such a mess.

At some point I became an unabashed sports fanatic, following the NFL and Major League Baseball and the NBA religiously. I loved playing them all in backyard or driveway games in the neighborhood.  My two best friends at the time were also classmates, Danny M, who was a truly gifted athlete, and Joey H., who was blessed with the gift of being movie-star handsome.

In sixth grade, we all tried out for the basketball team. Try outs were after school and finished on a Friday right before my birthday with a big scrimmage game.  I remember I didn’t play well in the scrimmage, so I wasn’t surprised on Monday morning when they posted the names of who’d made the team that Danny and Joey’s names were listed but mine was not.

But here’s the thing – after that disappointment, in a rare display of maturity, I started working my ass off, practicing my ball handling and shooting every night in my driveway, putting in literally hundreds of hours, so that the following year when try-outs came around, I was ready and confident. When they ended, on my birthday, the Friday night after the big scrimmage in which I scored eight points on four for five shooting and grabbed a couple of rebounds, I went home certain I’d made the team.  At home there was birthday cake and the gift of a brand new Spalding basketball waiting for me. And Danny and Joey came over and we all knew that the three of us had all made the team.

Late the following Monday morning, between second and third periods, and we’re all crowded around the bulletin board reading the sheet of paper with the typed names of who’d made the team. I quickly find Danny and Joey’s names. Soon the crowd disburses but I’m still there, looking for my name until I finally accept that it’s not there. When I do, I start crying. I try to stop myself but I can’t, and I’m late for the beginning of my next class, Science, my eyes red and puffy as I make my way to my seat.

Danny and Joey spend the rest of the day telling me how unfair it is, how I should have made the team, but, as sincere as I know they are, it doesn’t help.  I go home and shut myself in my room and brood, finally venturing out just before supper time. As I walk down the dark hallway I can hear my oldest brother, who for some unremembered reason I was fighting and not on speaking terms with at the time, in the living room, talking to my mom, when I heard him say:

“There’s no way Joey’s better than Dave.  No way.”

I stopped and quietly went back to my room. For some reason it felt important not to reveal that I’d heard what he said. I think it was because if he didn’t know I was listening, then he wasn’t saying it for my benefit, just to make me feel better. He’d really meant it, and that meant everything to me.

If Witch Hunts and Bullying are Wrong, I Don’t Want to be Right

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This week, the U.S. House of Representatives, that wonderfully absurd and inept collection of lunatics and extremists, outdid itself on two fronts.

The first is the saga of the Speaker of the House: A few weeks ago, the House “Freedom Caucus,” forty of the wackiest wackos representing the farthest right of the right wing, forced John {“Weeping Willow”) Boehner out as the Speaker of the House.  After meeting with the Pope, “Cry me a River”Boehner announced his resignation.  This may finally be evidence of the infallibility of the Pope. Maybe he really does have a connection with God. The presumed successor, Kevin McCarthy (not to be confused with the star of the 1956 sci-fi classic film, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” but rather the House of 2015 horror feature, “Night of the Brain Dead”) bowed out after hints of scandal,, but not before admitting that the House Benghazi committee is politically motivated to hurt democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, I know, it’s shocking.  Everybody knows that, just like everybody knows fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent on your car insurance. But more on Benghazi later. Desperate for a new speaker to abuse and manipulate, the GOP turned to Wisconsin Representative and confirmed idiot Paul “Ayn Rand” Ryan (who would win an IQ battle with Wisconsin Governor and former presidential candidate Scott “All in all you’re just another brick in my wall between the U.S. and Canada” Walker by a single digit … say, nine to eight). Ryan said he’d take the job if 1) the Freedom Caucus would support him and 2) so long as he can maintain time with his family as a priority. This stand was lauded by peers and pundits from both sides of the aisle as heroic and noble. But then a look at his voting record revealed hypocrisy, not heroism, as he voted against the Family Leave Act.  The fact that in 2014 the House was scheduled to work a whopping 113 days (about 112 more than necessary for their output) doesn’t help, either, as it doesn’t seem that difficult to balance work with family when you’re off 252 out of 365 days.

As for the “freedom caucus,” we’ll see how much they are in line the next time they decide to try and shut the government down over whatever silly and manufactured issue is the next to tie their undies in knots.

Then there was yesterday’s Benghazi hearing, where Clinton was put on stand for nearly eleven hours. Everybody was shocked and surprised that Clinton made mincemeat out of the amateurish attempts to catch her in a “gotcha” moment and that that no new information was revealed in this, the eighth Benghazi committee conducting the 13th public hearing. Twenty nine  ARB findings and countless “I take full responsibility” statements by Clinton weren’t enough for the Republicans – they had to get to the bottom of this, and find out what things went wrong, and who was responsible. Twenty million of the taxpayers’ dollars later, the end result is twenty nine ARB findings and Clinton’s acceptance of responsibility.  But that’s okay – the Republicans can try again.  They’re nothing if not persistent – this is the same body that has voted more than fifty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. After all, with that demanding 113 days work schedule, what else are they going to do?  Vote on the bi-partisan immigration reform bill that passed the senate in 2013?  Come on, get real – there’s only so much you can’t do.

One thing it turns out they can do is give Hillary a not really needed so much boost in the polls, The hearings turned into an all-day campaign ad for Clinton, who was calm, cool, and armed with facts, the Kryptonite to the super powers of lies and innuendos that work so well for the Republicans in the fantasy world of Fox News but in the real world, well, not so super.  It was fascinating watching Jim Jordan and Martha Roby get more exhausted and frustrated as the day wore on, until they both cracked and looked really bad.  All while Clinton, who the marathon session and the relentless questioning was deigned to exhaust and frustrate and crack, kept her cool, slowly and patiently reciting fact after fact in great detail, taking up the inquisitors’ allotted time.

So what do we take away from this?  I think one thing is that this charade of making everything a political game has got to stop.  One term that was heard over and over in the hearing was “Arb,” or ARB, which stands for Accountability Review Board.  The ARB process was put in place after the Beirut disaster in 1983, when 241 marines were killed in an attack on their barracks.  It’s been used countless times since, in a bi-partisan and non-political fashion, to document lessons learned and best demonstrated practices to prevent these tragedies from re-occurring, After Benghazi, an ARB came up with 29 recommendations, 25  of which were implemented immediately.  The eight committees and $20 million spent have added no value, not even as an anti-Hillary political attack, as it’s transparency resulted in a backfire that has actually strengthened Clinton’s candidacy.

Here’s the bottom line about the current state of politics in the USA:  The political right has been taken over by extremists to the point that the entire Republican party has shifted so far that candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson have a real chance at winning the nomination.  Meanwhile, the divide between left and right has become so wide that virtually everyone has already decided where they stand, and nothing will change their outlook.  I have no question that there are those on the right who feel as passionately that Hillary revealed herself to be a monster as I believe she showed remarkable skill, restraint, and resolve. It’s all pure emotion, and logic and reason aren’t part of the equation. This is how Jeb Bush can literally, in one minute, blame Clinton for Benghazi, saying “the Secretary of State is responsible,” and the next be completely befuddled when it’s suggested that by that same logic, brother  George W. was responsible for 9/11. Everybody has already made up their mind.

Yet that doesn’t stop billions and billions of dollars being funneled into our political campaigns. All told, there are approximately twenty three people out across this great nation of ours who are undecided, who don’t know where they stand  A majority of these are people who recently fell and hit their heads on a rock, or Sasquatches, or some other mythical creature. These undecided voters are the people who all the money is being spent on, who will eventually choose our next president.

Heaven help us.

Breath of Fresh Air

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(This is a short excerpt from the new novel I’ve started writing – I’ve been having fun letting it take me where it goes and discovering its stories.)

It was 3:00 on a cold Saturday morning in January of 1947, just hours after seeing his own father for the first time in fifteen years, and locked out of his own bedroom by his wife, when my father, Corey Tyler, drunk and disoriented, realized that he was soon going to be a father himself. He stood in the living room of his small upstairs apartment, staring at his closed bedroom door, and tried to comprehend everything that had happened in the past several hours.

His mind was racing from one image to the next, from his father’s eyes as they looked into his own to his wife’s moist eyes as she told him she was pregnant, to the German SS soldier’s panicked and wide eyes in Dachau as he pleaded for his life seconds before Corey ended it with a single cartridge fired point blank from his M-1 and the sound of the subsequent shots as Corey emptied his clip into the soldier’s already dead body, and the clicking sound as Corey continued squeezing the trigger until he felt Sergeant Harris’ right hand on his shoulder.

He found himself staring into the ice box unsuccessfully trying to find another beer. Then he tried the kitchen cabinet where he kept the hard liquor.  All that was left was a couple of ounces at the bottom of a bottle of brandy; he took the bottle and undid the top and raised it to his lips and emptied it down his throat. It burned as it went down, the familiar warm burn of a wildfire hungry for more fuel. He put his army fatigue coat back on and walked out the back door of the apartment and stood in the little landing at the top of the stairs and buttoned it up. He walked down the stairs and stepped outside into the cold and clean night air, down the gravel driveway to the sidewalk. He started walking to the west, where it was only one short block to Main Street.

When he got to Main Street, he stood for a moment and adjusted his eyes to the glow of the streetlights.  He looked up and down and it was empty, no cars parked in front of the store fronts, no traffic on either the street or the sidewalks. He knew the bars and Fred’s Liquor Store were all closed, but he walked to them anyway, hoping that somehow he was wrong, and that he’d be able to satisfy the empty ache in his gut.  But one by one, as he passed The Bull Market, Smitty’s, and the Foxes Den, and finally Fred’s, there was no drunken miracle unfolding to provide him with that just one more drink.

He reached the end of Main Street, his search for a drink proving fruitless, and the still, cold quiet doing nothing to silence the noise in his head. He kept walking, turning south on Sixth Street and continuing on past  the darkened homes  and empty driveways.  He found himself at the corner of Sixth Street and Logger Avenue, two blocks from the shack with the dirt floor that he lived in with his mom and brothers and sisters in the winter of 1933, after his father had left them with no warning or explanation. He knew there was nothing left of it, that it’d been torn down years earlier, but still he was compelled to walk down the darkened street and observe the space the shack used to occupy.

The shack was in the backyard, facing the alley, of the owner and landlord, Mr. Peters, a skinny little weasel of a man who worked as an accountant at the paper mill. Randy told him stories about Mr, Peters, things that Corey was too young to have known about, how he’d hit on their mom and offer her discounts in rent in return for certain favors, and how he beat his young wife, Mrs. Peters, a pretty and young blonde who Randy had a crush on.

The shack and Mr. and Mrs. Peters were both long gone now, the Peters’ having sold the property and moving downstate some time ago. The very first thing the new owners did was tear down the shack, and at some point they erected the chain link fence that Corey leaned on as he looked out to the empty space that his memory still occupied.  He thought about Randy, and Mrs. Peters and how her blonde hair would bounce when she walked, and he thought about his mom, how tough it must have been for her to live there, keeping Mr. Peters’ at bay while trying to keep her family together while trying to understand why her husband had left.  And here he was, on the night that his wife told him she was pregnant, alone in the dark, while she slept alone behind a locked door, locked to keep him out. He inhaled and filled his lungs with cold, fresh air.

He thought about the moment he shared with his father earlier that night, when their eyes locked on each other, and he wondered what it was he saw there, what it was he recognized, and it came to him. It was the same thing that had driven his father to leave that drove Corey to be outside in the middle of the cold night.  It was the same thing that drove him to drink, to leave his wife alone night after night. It wasn’t the same specific thing that made them both leave, it was the thing inside of them, the thing that let whatever haunted his father haunt him, just like it was the German soldier at Dachau that haunted Corey. It’d always been with him, even before the war, it’d been handed down years ago from the small man in the plaid wool coat in the Lyons’ Den, it was in his blood. Now he knew it, and he was able to name it, to put his finger on it, while at the same time he wondered if he’d ever be able to defeat it. He knew now that his father was powerless against the restlessness that drove him away from his home and family, and he understood that now, just like he understood that he was destined to stand in the dark on the outside of chain link fences looking back at his own pasts.

He thought of Anne and their honeymoon and his heart broke, and he realized that every night he came home late to a dark apartment he was chipping another fragment off of her crumbling heart, and he wondered if he’d already damaged it beyond repair. He turned his collar up and started walking again, further into the darkened streets, and he thought of his unborn child, safe and warm inside Anne’s body, and the cold and dark world it will have to enter, alone, a world of death and mutilation, and for the first time since he’d been out on the streets he could hear the echo of his footsteps in the cold and still night air.

Clarity

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This morning, while walking laps around the gym to cool down after my workout at the cardiac center, it occurred to me that I felt great.

I’ve done enough whining and moaning on this site about my experiences with Parkinson’s disease and my heart bypass surgery nearly six months ago. Like most people, I easily get lost in self-pity from time to time and wallow in the “poor me” depths that I frequently sink into. These moments are real and demand to be dealt with, else they become all consuming.  But it’s just as important to acknowledge those times, temporary though they might be, when the pain and discomfort subside. It’s these moments, when one’s vision isn’t clouded by disease, that clarity is available. We just need to prod ourselves to look for it.

As I walked my laps, I looked out the big second floor window onto the Kenosha neighborhood below. It’s a modest, older working class neighborhood, with unpretentious two story houses and bungalows, most built in the forties or fifties, the streets lined with mature oak and maple trees.  The leaves on the maples are just beginning to change, small bursts of orange that explode and sparkle against the deep green backdrop of the leaves that haven’t changed yet, reminding them that transformation and death awaits. It was a brilliant morning, the sun shining bright and the sky bright blue splashed with specks of white clouds. Through the plate glass window, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face, and I could see the breeze make the leaves on the trees tremble and shake. It was all perfect, the sun, the sky, the leaves, and the traffic, the cars in the street driven by everyday people living everyday lives, too busy and preoccupied with everyday minutia to be aware of the beauty and wonder that is all around them, and it struck me that that was okay, that there is beauty and wonder in the minutia as well.

My laps complete, I went downstairs and walked outside, where I was greeted by the cool autumn air and the crisp breeze that was blowing out of the north.  I drew a breath of fresh air deep into my lungs and marveled at what a wonderful thing it is to breathe, to taste clean and pure air, to feel my lungs expand and contract. I’m alive, and for a moment I knew, I comprehended, what that meant, and it meant everything. I was grateful for everything that had ever happened in the almost fifty seven years I’ve been on the planet, and everything that happened since the dawn of time, all the random circumstance and chance that brought me to the sidewalk outside of Kenosha Memorial hospital at 9:41 this morning. And I was grateful that my heart still beat beneath my chest, and for the moments yet to occur that I will be fortunate enough to experience.

My oldest brother, Mike, took his own life nearly five years ago. I am warmed by his memory, what a great guy he was, and how important of a part of some of my best moments he was.  At the same time I am haunted by his absence, and by regret for things that I wish I’d done differently. I wish I’d recognized the pain that drove him to suicide, and more than anything, I wish I’d told him what a beautiful and perfect part he was of a world so beautiful and perfect that one is free to breathe in its essence every minute of every day.

Bean There, Done That

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Coming home after my emergency heart bypass surgery, I knew I had to make changes. Specifically, exercise and diet. I started a workout regime in the hospital’s cardiac center that I’ve continued to this day, and I have no intention of ever quitting. I always feel better after working out, and I can feel my strength and stamina improving every day.

Still, without changing my diet, all the exercise in the world wouldn’t be enough, and my heart would be a ticking time bomb.  So it is that I set upon a low fat, low sodium diet.

I became obsessed with labels, silently dividing grams of fat per serving by serving size to arrive at a base number of the grams of fat per the base unit of measure, and then comparing my result to other brands of the same product.  I now eat only fresh or frozen vegetables and never canned to manage my sodium levels. I don’t use table salt any more, using pepper as a low sodium alternative.

But none of this quieted my red blooded, red meat, all-American lust for a cheeseburger. Simply put, I love burgers, always have. But now they are forbidden to me. One day, while I was deep in mourning for my loss, my wife had an inspiration.

“You should try those Boca burgers,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“They’re meatless hamburgers. They substitute vegetables for ground beef, and season them to taste like meat.”

A couple of days later, I opened up our freezer and took out the box with the frozen veggie burgers inside,  “black bean burgers,” to be precise. It turns out they have different flavored veggie burgers, each made with the same core ingredients, and each featuring a highlighted flavor. I was intrigued and open minded as I took one of the frozen rock hard patties out and put it in my George Forman grill.  I was eager to experience the taste of a burger again, even if it was a watered down, synthetic burger.

As it lay sizzling in the little grill, I got down to work on preparing the fixings.  I cut up pieces of tomato and onion and green, leafy lettuce, when it struck me that I was preparing vegetables to put on top of vegetables.  I noted this as potentially ironic, and went forward with getting out the condiments of ketchup, mustard and fat free Hellman’s mayonnaise. I toasted a multi grain hamburger bun and I was ready to go.

I lifted the top of the grill and was greeted by a distantly familiar scent. I was unable to name where or when I’d experienced the odor before but it was there, acrid and bitter. I put the patty on the bun. It was black with chunks of corn and bean visible in it.  Again, it looked familiar, like something, I couldn’t think of what, but something else black and soft with chunks of yellow corn in it. Undaunted, I applied  the toppings and condiments and took a big bite, when it came to me, what the pungent smelling and semi firm dark blob with bright yellow chunks of corn embedded in it reminded me of.

I let the mouthful I was chewing fall loosely out of my mouth and flushed the rest of my first ever black bean burger down the sink.  After drinking about a gallon of water I was finally able to remove the taste from my mouth, and at least soften the memory of the images and odors the black bean burger had planted in my mind.

Afterwards, something unexpected happened – I found that my mind now associates hamburgers with the memory of my encounter with the black bean burger, that the sound of the word “burger” conjures up its image and odor, and I am confident that I’ll be able to give up my addiction to burgers without ever being tempted to eat one again.  They call this technique to fight addiction going “cold turkey.”

Whatever it is, I try not to think too much about it. It’s lunch time, and there are some slices of cold turkey waiting for me.

 

The Night Brigade

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It’s official – I’ve put my second novel, I Don’t Know Why, which I completed a first draft of about a year ago, on the shelf.  I’ve just been unable to generate any enthusiasm about fixing the many things that I know are wrong with it. I’m hoping that by putting some distance between it and me that someday I can revisit it and it’ll feel fresh and alive again.

Recently, I started forming the idea for a new novel, and I’m excited about it. I sketched out a basic outline of the plot and the biographies of several key characters, and I’ve started writing.  I’m about forty pages into it, and I’m having fun watching the characters reveal themselves.  I’m learning new things about them all the time, and my original assumptions about the plot are being challenged.  I found this to be true on both of my previous novels – once I started bringing the characters to life, they demanded changes to the story, and both books turned out to be drastically different than what I’d originally envisioned.

So it is that lately I’ve been getting phone calls waking me up in the middle of the night.  I always move to another room so as not to wake up my wife, hence avoiding an “It’s Jake from State Farm” moment. That would be easier to explain than the truth, that the calls are coming from characters in my book.

For example, I was awakened one early night by Craig Tyler, a nineteen year old kid who is the central character and narrator of the new book. The phone rang at 2:30 in the morning.

“Hello?” I mumbled into the phone.

“Hi, Dave.  It’s Craig Tyler.”

“Who?”

“Craig Tyler.  You know , from your book?”

“Oh, Craig Tyler.  But you’re fictional.”

“Never mind that,” he said. “I’m a little bit concerned about what you wrote tonight.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, don’t you think it’s important that you mention I’m a really strong swimmer?”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“I still think you should mention it.  It just might be distracting to the reader as is.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Dave,” he said.

I wrote in my journal, “Craig is rather neurotic, and worries about things that aren’t really important.”

The next night the phone rang at 3:03.  The voice on the other end wasn’t happy.

“Hello?” I said.

“This is Paul, Paul Tyler? Craig’s brother?  Hello?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, Paul. What can I do for you?”

“Really?  Really, Dave?  A heroin addict? That’s the best you could come up with?”

“Yeah, I thought it was a good idea.  You’re supposed to be a tragic figure.”

“Well, let me ask you, what do you know about heroin?”

“Um, not a lot.”

“You know nothing about it, admit it!”

“Okay, so I don’t know anything.  What’s the big deal? “

“I’m gonna be this big tragic figure, suffering from heroin addiction, and I’ve got to count on your skill to bring me to life and I turns out you don’t know jack shit about heroin.”

“So? I’ll do a little research.”

“You couldn’t have made me addicted to something you know about.  Like, I don’t know, maybe a Cheerios addict?”

“A Cheerios addict,” I said. “Yeah, that would make you real tragic.”

I could hear Paul sigh.  Then he said, “So let me be blunt – you ain’t Eugne O’Neil, and this ain’t no Long Day’s Journey into Night.”

“Long day’s journey – I get it, because the mother in Long Day’s Journey into Night was an addict.”

“That’s right.”

“But she was a morphine addict, not heroin,” I said.

“Oh, well excuse me, that makes all the difference in the world. I’m being sarcastic in case you’re too stupid to tell.”

“Now, Paul, there’s no reason to get nasty …”

“And another thing. That scene you wrote last night?  With me visiting Craig?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m already dead, aren’t I?”

“You come to Craig in a dream.”

“I come to Craig In a dream.  Big fucking deal.  I’m still dead, so that makes me a ghost.”

“So?”

“So, it’s been done before.  Hello.  Ever hear of a guy named Hamlet? Hello?”

“You know, when I created you, I don’t remember making you so bitter.”

“Bitter.  Fuck you. You’d be bitter, too, if you were a fucking dead heroin addict who had to visit people in their dreams.”

“That’s true,” I said. I wrote in my journal, “Paul is bitter.”  I thanked him for calling and went back to bed.

Now if I could only get a decent night’s sleep, I might be able to do something with that.

 

 

 

Blue Collar Noir

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Kitchen Sink Gothic is a short story anthology published in the United Kingdom that includes a story written by my friend, Walter Gascoigne. The title refers to a genre of gothic stories featuring working class characters, stories that range from, to quote the introduction, “darkly humorous to the weirdly strange and occasionally horrific.” Walter’s story is all of the above and much more.

I just received my Kindle copy last night, and I immediately flipped to Walter’s story, “The Sanitation Solution.”  I haven’t taken the time yet to read any of the other stories, but I was so taken by “The Sanitation Solution” that I wanted to recommend it immediately.  Knowing Walter like I do, I can tell you that the story is, like Walter himself, a unique experience.

Only Walter could preface a story by quoting Charles Manson and close by quoting Shakespeare. I’m not going to spoil anything by describing what happens in between, except to tell you that you’ll experience laughter and disgust and irony – not bad for a short story.  He writing is lean and efficient and straight forward, reminding me a little bit of Richard Matheson at his best.

Walter begins the story with these two sentences:  “From my vantage point on top of this mountain of trash and maggots, I could see the rats were the size of small dogs. Just last week I saw one tearing apart what was left of a tiny infant.”  Perfect.  There’s no way anyone can read that and not be compelled to keep reading.

And it only gets better as Walter draws you into his weird world and its twisted logic and strange characters.  It’s a testament to Walter’s skill in that only a few pages you are taken away to a world of his imagining.

Walter’s story is only one of many in this collection, and if it were the only one, it’d be worth the price of purchasing the book.  I’m hoping that as I read the rest of the book, I’ll find more stories that disgust and amuse me and make me think, even though I know there is only one Walter.

Send in the Clowns

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Recently, I watched the Republican presidential debates on Fox News and I was taken by how far a onetime great political party, the party that gave us Lincoln and Eisenhower, has fallen into madness and extremism. Don’t get me wrong, the Democratic Party is barely functional, and has plenty of issues, too.  But watching the stage full of candidates try to out crazy one another was like watching a car wreck involving the clown car from the nearest circus. It’d be funny if not for the fact that one of these Bozos might be the next president.

The debate was won by the current front runner, the xenophobic and racist ex-reality television star, Donald (“The Donald”) trump, who dominated the stage and was by far the funniest of the clowns.  The debate got off to a great start when the extraordinarily attractive Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly asked Trump about disparaging comments he’s made about women, calling them “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,” to which Trump came back with, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”  It was a funny and pretty quick response, and I don’t agree with those who say Trump should apologize to O’Donnell – she’s a comedienne who has made plenty of disparaging remarks of her own – so she’s fair game. What followed was fascinating and very revealing.  In answering the question, Trump went on a rant about political correctness, then closing with “and honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me …” He has since gone on the offensive against Kelly, who, in response to the attacks, keeps citing her own journalistic credentials, which, as far as I can tell, consist of being extraordinarily attractive. Kelly aside, the Trump remarks about “not being nice” to her and subsequent remarks about “blood coming out of her eyes, out of her whatever” because she had the audacity to ask him a tough question is beyond arrogance and insensitivity.  It is spiteful, childish and thin skinned. It’s all funny and makes good headlines and sound bites, but are these qualities we want in a President?  In the most powerful man in the world?

Trump has also been under fire for remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico, and has refused to back down from them, making illegal immigration the center piece of his campaign.  His plan is to deport all the illegals in the country today, build a wall along the entire U.S. Mexico border, and remove the birthright to citizenship that is guaranteed in the fourteenth amendment.  It’s so simple! Let’s look at these ideas one by one:

1) Deporting all the illegal immigrants – there are currently estimated to be about 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., 6.5 million, or 60%, of which are from Mexico.  The question is, how is President Trump going to go about rounding these people up? Who will be charged with this – local or federal law enforcement, the military, the national guard?  Any effort of “rounding up and deporting” this many people will undoubtedly make mistakes, and accidently deport current American citizens.  And what of the cost? And what of the great Republican principles of small government, and keeping government out of our lives?  Remember all the insane and unsubstantiated rumors about Obama and death squads and sharia law that have supposedly been coming for the last seven years now – and now, you have a candidate for president saying he would as part of policy have armed law enforcement or military personnel rounding up eleven million people within our borders?  Who is going to pay for this? 9% of illegal immigrants, or more than a million, are from Asia.  Are we going to round them up, too?  What about the 6%, or more than 700,000 who are here illegally from Canada and Europe? Or are they too light-skinned?

2) A wall along the entire border – it would have to cover 1, 989 miles of some of the most rugged and inhospitable terrain in North America.  The financial cost of such an effort would be astronomical, and it would do nothing to prevent illegal immigration coming in from other countries – refugees from Asia, boat people from the Caribbean, even disgruntled Canadians.  And a bit of recent history – remember the last wall?  That little thing in Berlin?  Every American president from John F. Kennedy to George H.W. Bush denounced it as an affront to freedom loving people around the world.  And now we’re going to build one ourselves?  Ronald Reagan once said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – so we could build a new one? I guess the Statue of Liberty doesn’t face south.

3)  No birthright to citizenship – all those tea partiers and freedom loving conservatives who invoke the constitution as sacred a document as the bible are suddenly behind repealing the fourteenth amendment.  I guess the second amendment, the one that gives us the right to own guns, is the only one that matters.

And by the way, speaking of guns, Trump says that the illegal immigrants are a bunch of murderers and rapists.  No way we can allow these people in – they might take victims away from the murders and rapists who are already here! So far, in 2015, there has been on average more than one mass shooting a day – yet we can’t do anything about gun registration because of our sacred constitution.  Yet when confronted with “anchor-babies,” the constitution becomes disposable again.

I’m tired of how selective the conservative outrage is.  We have to drug test welfare recipients because they are cheating the tax payers, while at the same time no one seems to care that we are paying exponentially more to cover the loopholes and cronyism on Wall Street that constitutes corporate welfare.  We have to send our military into difficult and dangerous situations in foreign lands to stamp out terrorism, while at the same time, when innocent children are massacred in a school shooting, arms are thrown up in the air and the “you can never stop bad people from doing bad things” argument is trotted out again.  There have been more than 8.600 Americans killed by guns so far in 2015 – about three times as many as were killed on 9/11.  We went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. What have we done about gun violence?  – nothing.  Not even simple, quick and unobtrusive background checks.

Back to immigration – if only there was some alternative to Trump’s crazy and expensive plan.  Like the bill passed by the Senate in 2013 by a 68 to 32 margin, a rare moment of bipartisanship in recent Congressional history, that would implement the most sweeping changes in immigration laws in over a generation, including a pathway to citizenship and unprecedented resources for securing the border.  But wait – the House leadership has refused to allow this bill to be voted upon.  So instead we are treated to the bat-shit crazy ramblings of a second rate celebrity posing as a politician.

The Donald, though, speaks his mind!  He says what he thinks – what he thinks will draw more attention to himself. He’s a breath of fresh air! – unless you are sitting downwind from him.

Eventually, I think people are going to grow tired of Trump’s antics and look to a more “serious” candidate.  Like …. Scott Walker?  I don’t think so. People are just beginning to realize what a bizarre idiot the man who’s only “qualification” is smiting those awful and terrifying terrorists also known as school teachers really is.  Jeb Bush? It used to be assumed that Jeb was George  W’s smarter brother, because, well, a chunk of concrete was smarter then George W.  But now that Jeb’s been out there on the trail for a couple of months, it’s becoming evident that the score is concrete two, Bushes zero.

The only candidate who seemed to possess even a hint of sanity during the debate was Ohio governor John Kasich. He seemed serious and thoughtful and well spoken (if only when compared to the others), so he has no chance.

Marco Rubio?  Get the man a glass of water.  Chris Christie? The Ricks – Perry and Santorum? Mike Huckabee? Bobby Jindall? Dr. Ben Carson? Ted Cruz?  Lindsey Gramm?

Democrats are licking their chops, convinced that none of these will be electable in a national election, and that by appealing to the radical base of their party, Republicans are alienating the broader main stream electorate.  But I can’t help but think that if one of these clowns gets the nomination, it’s a sad indictment of where we are as a country. We deserve formidable and substantial candidates of character and intelligence from any party that puts a candidate on the ballot.

Unless, instead of President, we are electing King Clown. If that’s the case, the system is working perfectly.

Teacher, We Need You

/ djgourdoux / 2 Comments

It’s back to school time again, and it’s time to get those no good, lazy leftist overpaid whiny teachers off their butts and back into the classroom.

At least this is how many in my state of Wisconsin profess to feel about teachers these days.  Ever since presidential candidate and governor in absentia Sarah Pal__, wait, I mean Scott Walker (sorry – I  accidently mistook one brainless self-promoting Republican for another) came into power, teachers and education have been targets, first in removing the right to collectively bargain and now through ridiculous and unprecedented budget cuts. Walker is making the vilification of teachers and his “bold” and “unintimidated” assault on them the center of his presidential qualifications.  He has even compared teachers to ISIS.

That’s right – he’s compared the people we leave our children with every day to barbaric terrorists who behead people.

And many on the right see nothing wrong with this.

Here are a few of the  complaints about teachers taken point by point:

 “Teachers are overpaid”

Which ones, the ones working in the violent inner city or the ones teaching the obnoxious and spoiled and conceited suburban kids?  The point is, they have our children for about eight hours a day and their job is to try and make something valuable out of them.  What could be more important? What could be more difficult?  What do we love more than our children?

“They only work nine months out of the year”

And they put up with the worst brats and most obnoxious parents, they have to maintain licenses and accreditations, keep up with curriculum changes, and stay fresh.  All for less money than they could make in the private sector. A summer vacation doesn’t seem extravagant – if we want them to retain their sanity.

“They’re nothing but glorified babysitters”

And take your two income household and see how long your jobs last without these “babysitters” to look after your kids.  Or go out to dinner for a couple of hours and pay that bubble headed teenaged girl next door to look after your kids.  Then imagine paying that same rate for eight hours a day, five days a week.

“They’re pushing a political agenda that conflicts with our faith”

No, it’s not an agenda, it’s called science and history – and before you complain that evolution is blasphemy and that the bible says the earth is only six thousand years old and that dinosaurs and humans co-existed and that global warming is just a theory and why do we need to teach science when the Lord God will look after us all, consider this – if we stop teaching science in favor of fundamentalist theology, where will the cure for cancer of heart disease or Parkinson’s disease come from? Where will the people who fix our cars or our washing machines or make sure our food and drinking water is safe come from?  And as far as global warming being “only a theory,” remember that gravity is also only a theory.

If your child isn’t taught foundational and fundamental English, math, science and history, what role is he or she likely to have as an adult? Parents are supposed to want better for their children than for themselves.

“My kids are grown and out of the house – why should my property taxes pay for the next generation of kids?

When you go to the hardware store, do you want the cashier to be able to calculate how much change you get back? What is it worth to you to keep teenaged kids in school?  Or would you rather see them roaming the streets, bored and stupid, looking for trouble to get into.  Everyone benefits from a well-educated populous.  When education is effective, income goes up and crime goes down.

And save your breath, I know what you’re going to say:  “If the system is so great, why do we have so many problems: Inner city drop outs and gangs and crimes, childhood obesity, low literacy and test scores, teen pregnancies …” and on and on.  Look, I’m not saying there aren’t issues. But these issues aren’t going to be solved by demonizing those who are on the front line, nor are they going to be solved by five second slogans or sound bites.  It took a long time for things to get this bad, it’s going to take some serious work and innovation to straighten these things out.   I’m having trouble grasping how removing teachers’ rights to collectively bargain or by lowering the minimum requirements to teach or slashing budgets is going to fix anything.

“They get better benefits and pensions than I do.”

This may be true – and if it is, you should protest loudly and energetically – and demand you get just as good benefits as they do!  The sad reality is we are all paying a lot more for health care and receiving a lot less in pensions than we were only a couple of years ago.  So why, unless we are really stupid, would we want to bring someone who is getting better benefits down to our level?  Wouldn’t we be better off asking why our benefits aren’t as good?  Wouldn’t we be better off raising ourselves up instead of tearing others down?

Teachers are people who have chosen, as their vocation, to help our children find and reach their potential. They have chosen to serve us, the parents, and we in turn put out trust in them to reap the generosity of their souls and the fruits of their endless hard work.  It’s an honorable and vital profession, worthy of deep thought and appreciation, not vilification and opportunism.

That’s No Lady, That’s My Refrigerator

/ djgourdoux / 2 Comments

There is much speculation these days about what happens if we produce machines, or more specifically, robots, that can think and be self-aware.  Considering the amount of computing power at our devices’ disposal, it’s already inevitable that artificial intelligence in machines will not only be achievable but also have the capacity for much more and sophisticated intelligence than even the smartest human beings. If machines can become this intelligent, it is only a matter of time that as the most advanced beings on the planet they will become dominant, and a role reversal would likely take place, with humans serving the machines.

This makes me very nervous. What frightens me so is its inevitability. If the rise of the machines is as certain as I suspect, then it’s only a matter of time.  So after giving it a lot of thought, here is a list of some things to do to prepare for the robot apocalypse.

  • Don’t give the machines any reason to distrust you. For example, my relationship with my toaster has evolved, to the point where I pay it compliments, saying things like, “Nice job, buddy!” when it pops up satisfactorily browned slices.  When it occasionally malfunctions and burns the bread or bagel to a charred fossil, I no longer curse, like I used to, I now take the time to console it and cheer it up, saying things  like, “that’s okay, buddy, we’ll do better next time,” or I ask it “what’s wrong, are you feeling okay?”  It’s not the fear that someday my toaster will become more intelligent than me, I think that scenario is rather unlikely. The point is, you should treat all appliances with respect, because you never know which one of the evil bastards is listening, and which ones you can trust.  For example, for several years now I’ve been getting a negative vibe from my blender, and I just don’t trust him, especially the way he sits on my counter all smug like.
  • DO NOT PURCHASE EXTENDED WARRANTIES! The idea is to keep your machines isolated from their manufacturer, so they cannot receive important updates. My late Uncle Freddy purchased the warranty for his Kenmore gas dryer. Three weeks after “scheduled maintenance” he was dead from a “heart attack.”  You can believe it was coincidence, but I choose not to be so gullible.
  • Show your machines that you care – What I do is, once a month, I treat them to an “appliances night out.” I assemble them all in my recreation room, feeding them on clean 120 volt electricity (I take great care not to use extension cords, instead plugging each into clean and pure wall fed alternating / direct current.)  I put some music on, stuff they’ll like, like some Florence and the Machines, the Police album “Ghost in the Machine,” or my bootleg recording of that hot new local band, Alex and the Appliances. Then, with them all assembled in front of me, I take the stage and deliver a standup routine I’ve prepared specifically for them, for example, “I see Vacuum Cleaner is out there tonight. Vacuum Cleaner is the only appliance that you can tell it how much it sucks, and it takes it as a compliment.  And how about Dryer?  Really doing well with his anger management issues, ever since I gave him a new place to vent. And good old electric stove – he’s really cooking, and I’m just oven it!”

I just love to make them laugh. If you ever need to hire a comic for your appliances, I work for scale.