the blog for all things Vernonistic
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Chocolate water land has rainbow
trees
And it’s very far away
So nobody can see
It’s a long, long country where
my grandma lives
There are flat boats with flat people
— everything is flat
Their hair is flat and
their crayons are flat
There are special sparkles
from the rainbow trees
— Gabriela Cloé 17-March-2007
When I ask my 3-year-old
to dictate another poem,
she says “Write your own.
That’s a good way to do it.”
So I grasp a purple crayon
and begin.
Zen teaches us
there is no secret
nothing is hidden
everything is It.
This moment in the neighborhood pub
The butter this child smears on her bread
This table, this paper, this crayon
is It.
— Professor B. 18-March-2007
Today it was a winter day
It was a lot of snow outside
And tomorrow
It was another winter day
And then
This is the story
Begin.
And yesterday
It wasn’t a winter day
And then Mami
Just picked a flower
Please: it was another day
And tomorrow
It was another morning day
— Gabriela Cloé, February 19, 2007
just after the roar
of the Superbowl is gone:
pitchers and catchers
If you give me too much love
it could turn pink
and this is part of the poem
I’m going to give you more love
Otherwise
I’m going to give you
nice lollipops for you
If you be good
I’m going to give you
fresh chocolate milk
If you be good
and have fun in your house
I’m going to give you
another special present
I’ll give you fresh water
And then
If you be good
I’ll give you
a new shirt
I’ll give you
more Chapstick
new Chapstick
You know which flavor it’s going to be?
Cherry cream
Cherry watermelon
—
Gabriela 21-Jan-2007
I got an email from TheNation.com saying “in his address to the nation last week, President Bush accused Iran of ‘providing material support for attacks on American troops,’ and added ‘we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.'” OK.
I also read in El Diario/La Prensa an AP story that stated that middlemen had acquired, on behalf of Iran, parts for the F-14 Tomcat fighter. That was illegal, so Customs agents seized the parts and returned them to the Pentagon. Which turned around and sold them off again, this time to another buyer who also turned out to be “suspected of” working on behalf of Iran. Close enough.
Therefore, the White House must be planning to seek out and destroy the Pentagon.
This is all fucked up, don’t you think? Look at what’s happening: the Bush administration is driving the country into the ditch as fast as it can. It launched an illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq — true, with the support of most of the cowards in Congress — and now flatly refuses to listen to anyone about how to mitigate the horrible bloody clusterfuck it has created. Not the Congress, nor the Iraq Study Group, nor the generals on the proverbial ground. Fuck all a y’all, George is saying. I’m gonna escalate. But I ain’t gonna call it an escalation, see. I’m gonna a call it a surge. Gonna do a surge.
Fuck that. It’s time for the Pentagon to launch a pre-emptive strike on its own — against the White House. Generals, call him on the phone and say, you have three hours to get the fuck out. Resign. Beat it. Step down. If he says no, negotiate a little. Give him four hours. Oh what the hell, make it five! Be reasonable. And if he still refuses, then let the tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue and set shit off. Coup d’état. We’ve tried democracy for over 200 years and it’s been a partial success, but it is in grave danger now, so grave we have to destroy it in order to save it. Overthrow the Bush regime, establish a military government. Dissolve the Congress, govern for a few months until things stabilize, then hold free and fair elections and start over. Why not?
I swear the following incident is true: I am not making any of this up.
A few months ago I joined Match.com. From time to time I have tweaked the little introductory text that they let you post, where you’re supposed to describe yourself and what you’re looking for. Whenever you submit a new draft, they save it separate and apart from your existing, live copy, and they review it “manually” for approval. In a day or two they send you an email saying your “portrait” has been deemed acceptable, in accordance with their policies; it is said to be “approved” and goes live, and the earlier version apparently gets overwritten.
Wiseass that I am, I have a satirical opening: “Fun-despising yet unstable, stupid, fat, ugly, lazy, inarticulate […] unsuccessful nonprofessional seeks diametric opposite for a lifetime of mutual torture.” Then I say sorry, I couldn’t resist mocking the generic match.com profile, let me try to get serious, and I proceed to enumerate my many virtues. Elsewhere in my “portrait” under “education,” I say that I got some, and admit to occasionally enjoying using words like “perspicacious.” Elsewhere I mention that I have a 3.5-year-old daughter who means more to me than words can say.
Last time I submitted a new draft for approval, I edited a couple things, but I did not touch any of the above parts of the text. Instead of the customary approval message, I got a boilerplate email that said there was an “issue” and reminded me of their guidelines: no offensive vile nasty racist et cetera stuff allowed. So I wrote back to them: what is it in my draft that you have a problem with? Answer: they sent back the same boilerplate. So I wrote back again: yes, but in order to answer my question, you’re going to have to read it.
Meanwhile, I discovered that instead of leaving the previously accepted version of my “portrait” published, they had censored it outright. When you tried to access it, you got “We’re sorry, the Portrait you’re looking for could not be found. Please try another Portrait.” My, that will certainly give me a competitive edge over the rest of the Match dudes, don’t you think? But I was not amused, so I sent a nastygram through their web interface saying, inter alia, “if this is payback for questioning your unthinking overzealous misguided prudishness and political correctness, it seems a bit heavy-handed. Please make this right immediately, or refund my money pro rata as of the day you suppressed my profile. Your choice. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.”
Answer: call customer service during their business hours to address my “issue.” This was on a holiday weekend, so I had to wait a couple days to call them.
When the next business day came around, I called them and spoke to someone who identified herself as Teowon. She said that the self-deprecatory humor in the beginning had to go because someone might find it offensive. Really, said I? Do you know of any actual complaints that you’ve received about it? No, but that’s our policy. I said, well, I have gotten several positive comments about it and zero negative ones; it’s been complimented as “funny” and “refreshingly hilarious.” She said, that’s our policy. I said, you are gutting my “portrait,” this is the essence of who I am: funny. A funny guy. Get it? No one has complained, indeed people have said they like it. What’s the problem?
She put me on hold.
A few minutes later she comes back and says the line “I couldn’t resist mocking the generic match.com profile” has to go. No mocking match.com. Against policy. I protest again.
She put me on hold.
Next she comes back and says what does perspicacious mean? I explained it to her, then said, do you have a dictionary there by any chance? Why take my word for it? She said that was what they were investigating while I was on hold. I suggested she try using the Google define keyword and look it up.
She put me on hold.
Then Teowon came back and said, you can’t publish your daughter’s age. That’s against policy.
By now I knew for sure I was dealing with a semi-moron, so I said, OK, I will do your bidding, and you will provide me with the full name, title and mailing address of the highest-ranking executive in charge of customer relations at this company so I can address a letter to her or him and appeal my case.
She put me on hold.
A few minutes later she came back and declared that the entire text was now deemed acceptable and would be approved. This came as a surprise. I was pleased to have wasted only about half an hour, much of it wildly amusing. So I thanked her for seeing things my way and said goodbye.
The very next thing that happened was another email from someone named Ivan S., saying please call Customer Service. Savvy consumer that I am, I hypothesized that Ivan was responding to the complaint that I posted through the website, and of course the left hand has no clue what the right is doing, so just wait and see. Sure enough, soon thereafter I got the customary Your Profile Has Been Approved message, and all is well.
In the course of this conversation Teowon told me that she herself had been the one who evaluated my text and found it unacceptable. I suspect she had simply flagged it as no good, without specifying why, and could not remember why, so she had to search. Hence the long hold periods. Something had to be amiss, because she was objecting to parts that had been published for months and said nothing about the changes that had most recently been introduced. It would seem they aren’t — or at least Teowon wasn’t — running anything analogous to the Unix utility diff to examine only what what has changed since the last revision; every review is a de novo review.
Or maybe poor Teowon is just undertrained, or overworked, or just plain dumb, or some combination of the above.
Update: Fast forward to almost two years later. I don’t want or need Match any longer, being completely satisfied with my girlfriend — let’s call her Amy, to protect the innocent — whom I met on… match dot com, of all places! So I contact them and say I want my profile deleted. You can’t do that. You have to log in and turn off a boolean signifying “display” or “do not display” your profile. I refuse. My position is no, I want to withdraw totally and completely, I want to leave, walk, depart, exit, disappear. Get it? No, you can’t do that. It’s like a street gang. Once you wear the tatto motherfucker you are one of us for life.
I have kisses all over you
So you can butter them
And turn them to food.
If you want to try them,
Ask your house.
If you change your mind,
You do it tomorrow.
If it’s too late,
You do it tomorrow.
Woa, excuse me! I spoke too soon about there being three celebrity deaths in this month of December. Now they’ve hung Saddam, that makes four.
Nice to know that his execution is such an important step towards establishing democracy in Iraq, according to Mr. Bush’s handlers. Yeah right.
I heard some think tank wonk holding forth on NPR, telling us that some people oppose capital punishment on principle, but it is appropriate in “extraordinary circumstances” such as these. You know, like when there is incontrovertible proof that you’re responsible for the death of thousands of innocents. If that’s so, it would be only fitting to apply that same logic here at home. I oppose the death penalty, but I have to admit it might be kind of cool to watch the hangings of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush on Fox. Over and over again.
(1) Augusto Pinochet. You are dancing in the street. It’s a pity that he died too comfortably, and that we did not get “closure” through the criminal process, but my, it’s great that he’s dead. Let the champagne corks fly.
(2) James Brown. You feel rather sad and wistful, especially if you grew up with that DC Sound in your ears. He had soul, and he was super bad. He may have had a fucked up personal life, but the man was one hell of a performer and his contribution was major. Let us raise our glasses and drink to his bad self.
Here’s a quick James Brown/LSD anecdote. Once upon a time a buddy and I were doing acid. As the drug’s effects were coming on, we listened to the Greatist Hits CD on which the second track is Sex Machine (Get Up). It begins with James Brown proudly proclaiming how he intends to do his thing. Then the music kicks in, — a-pampampampampampampam Get Up, Get On Up — and suddenly you’re in this exquisitely transparent and open texture, a perfect balance between the instrumental parts, with just enough space between the notes, and a bad-ass groove that defies description. Then come the self-referential lyrics about taking it to the bridge, threatening to take it to the bridge, building up an immense tension… it is music that celebrates itself, boasts and braggs about itself, revels in itself. I remember listening, incredulous, astonished at the genius of this achievement. I decided then and there that this was one of the greatest songs in the history of recorded music.
This is, by the way, an example of the Acidmaster’s Paradox. It often happens that tripping on LSD takes you not farther from but closer to the true nature of reality. You may be fucked up beyond reason, yet you are seeing things revealed as they are. I knew Get Up was great, but I didn’t fully appreciate its magnificence until I heard it while tripping.
But I digress.
(3) Gerald Ford. You don’t really give a shit one way or the other. You dismiss the mainstream media bullshit about how heroically he healed the Watergate-traumatized nation by letting Trickie Dick slide. There was a deal, so he dealt. He played the game. Now we are hearing about how he told Bob Woodward — gasp! — that the Iraq invasion was a mistake! Oh, what genuis, what vision! By the way, it was no “mistake.” It was a major crime against humanity for which its authors deserve to hang, not unlike the above-mentioned General, come to think of it.
If you went three for three above, high five.