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April 28, 2005
before.after
before.
o.k. i'm here at halcyon, having a harp, as i so often do, but now, straight. no rose's sweetened lime juice tonight! no need for supplemental sweetness.
it's before, and there'll be an after, but it won't be a study in contrast; rather of expectation and anticipation had, and met, probably exceeded.
you see, i've picked up a second job. something to counterbalance, hopefully, to in some way overwhelm my mistaken life as a lawyer.
you've heard it all from me before - law the wrong path, maybe the worst for me. how the best parts of me might make me a uniquely gifted attorney, but how still, those best parts are wasted on it. they're better applied to art than to the artifice of law, better, i'd like to think, to truly seeking and presenting truth, and not merely manufacturing something to pass for it.
this life of mine also imparts maybe not a certain taste, but expression. suits and ties and pleats... i'm not opposed to getting dressed up, but i've always pushed against it. like saying "i'm sorry," or "i love you," done too often and too mindlessly, it loses meaning. it should be saved for when the statement must truly be made. the rest of the time, the statement should be, "here i am."
so, here i sit, watching the friends here work their regular job. i finish my beer, comfortable in my jeans, but wishing my new black t-shirt fit better.
in 30 minutes, i'll join my friends behind the counter, learn to make this coffee thing in all its seemingly baffling varieties, and i'll smile broadly, genuinely, when i ask, "what can i get for you?"
after.
expectation, as expected, met, and yeah, exceeded.
properly frothing/foaming the milk is still, after many tries, a bit intimidating to me. it's very much like the law - i read the helpful manual halcyon provided me. but the baristas there operate by touch and experience, and i'm like a fresh newbie lawyer, citing rules but having no feel for how to really make it all work.
my friends came in, harassed me a bit, successfully baffled me. "dry" cappucino? i'm sorry, that wasn't in the book. but they also said this was a good thing, that i was grinning like an idiot all night, and i think they meant "idiot" in the kindest way.
people of all sorts flowed in and out. i begin to learn the regulars, will hopefully come to know what they want. people were generally kind, though i think in a couple of instances i was able to defuse people's impatience with me. i do bring some skills to this, i think.
music all night, jazz, johnny cash, funk, some stuff i didn't know. it's work - there's an endless flow of dirty dishes, spurts of customers - and this was a "slow" night.
i don't drink coffee, but tonight, i sampled, and sipped... a double shot of espresso, some chai, a charmingly flubbed attempt at a mocha latte, later enriched by more milk and some moroccan roast (crap, i know that's not the right name - amelia?). i drank more coffee tonight than in my entire life. crystal meth would probably bring me down right now.
i know myself well enough to recognize when i'm happy with the newness and novelty of something. i will be tired and annoyed at times, my knee will swell on some days, my feet will hurt, i'll burn myself on the steaming wand, i'll feel bad when a coworker gets annoyed with me.
but what hours i spend there, in any form, will balance the hours spent at my desk at The Other Job, mired in its essential elements of complaint and conflict.
leora kept offering to let me go early, but i wanted to stay, couldn't seem to stop moving. i finally knocked off a little before midnight, and she made me a cosmonaut - vodka, espresso, some other stuff. i sat and drank, chatted with my new coworkers. leora came out of the back and slapped down a twenty - "trainees don't usually get tips, but we like you."
i left, eventually, went across the street to my Other Workplace, hopped on my bike, spun down through the warehouse district, the bands threatening to overpower the U2 in my headphones. across the bridge, and home.
a run at dawn, a bike ride to work, lunch outside at thundercloud, my new job, a night ride to my home in the city.
i'm getting there, and here is pretty good.
Posted by Rob at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2005
things that are useless
online maps.
i decided last night that i'd get up and run congress (the street i live on, now) to the capitol, turn around, go back up congress to oltorf, then back down to my place.
"hmm... how far might this little run be," i wondered aloud to myself. my cats looked up briefly, then continued to lick themselves. they have long resided on the ever-growing list of things that are useless.
so, i put the same question to several web sites on the home computer contraption, which at the time was already being helpful filling my room with "the postal service," which i have been digging a lot lately. a stupid promotional sticker on its cover, if written by me, might read, "beautiful, quirky poeticism, put to nintendo music."
mapquest declined to simply tell me how far it is from the intersection of Congress and Oltorf to 1200 Congress. instead, it felt it would be better for me to run out oltorf for .8 miles out to the interstate, run up the highway for 2.4 miles, exit on 15th street, run down it for half a mile, before arriving, exhausted, reeking of carbon monoxide, and possibly, well, dead, at the capitol building. all for a one-way total of 4.49 miles, and a grand total just shy of 9 miles.
out of curiosity, i asked it how best to go from my apartment on congress, to the capitol building, which looms unmistakably at the end of my street. again, the mapquest god clearly has a mysterious plan for us all. i should head straight for my visible desitnation, drawing closer, closer, then, when i've gotten within six blocks of it, turn left on 6th street. wander down for .6 of a mile to lavaca, then turn north again, all the way to 15th street. then double back.
then i remembered - this was the same mapquest that billy used to make maps to his rehearsal dinner back in 1997. maps that took us not the few miles to the restaurant, but over the border into louisiana, through hamlets in east texas that don't cotton kindly to an asian boy and a hippie mezcan driving through lost.
microsoft's expedia was a bit more helpful. it isn't trying to kill me. it agrees that if i can see where i want to go down the street, that i should just head straight for it. but expedia reports the distance from oltorf to the capitol as 3.4 miles, which means i ran 6.8 miles in just under 56 minutes this morning. possible, flattering, but probably unlikely.
granted, at 7am this morning, it didn't really matter much. it was cool out, i had the postal service bopping along nicely in my head. kids played ball down by the school. people groggily clutched their coffee outside jo's coffee house. 1 mile, 3 miles, 10 - maybe it just doesn't matter.
still, i wonder how long it would take me using my tape measure...
Posted by Rob at 09:17 AM | Comments (2)
April 26, 2005
balance
mine is off. my balance, i mean. the move, as good as it is, and recent events, promising though they are, have changed the flow, the rhythm of the game. i miss writing. i still have several entries in the notebook that i just have yet to transcribe. i have a few friends that are pissed that i haven't been in touch. at this point, so be it - if they don't read what little i've writtent and understand, if they don't trust me, then nothing else i can say really matters.
i do miss writing, though. i had my little meltdown a month or so ago. the past few days, some of the factors recurred - a bit of fatigue, the running out of meds (whaddya mean, no refills left?). but this time, different.
it started setting in on saturday, i think. irritability, tapering into that old, pointless feeling.
still, yesterday (ok, sunday), i woke up, walked down to auditorium shores, signed up for the bun run 5K, and ran it. i knew i was not in shape for it, still not physically right, between the lingering fatigue from the move, and the persistent cough that's been pulling me down for weeks now. but the course ran downtown, which i love, and it seemed to be a fast course, and i thought i had a chance to p.r. (personal record) it.
i started near the front, and everybody and their dog passed me. i mean, literally. i was being passed by people with their dogs. children were dodging around me. i ran the first mile in 8:09, even though my body felt really all wrong. mile two really sucked, coming up that same stretch of cesar chavez where i tanked so badly in the capitol 10K. that long hill and the headwind sucked it out of me.
on top of that, i think it hurt not having my teammate katie there pushing me, because i really didn't push myself anywhere near as much as i used to. even coming over the bridge, knowing i was almost done, i sped things up, but wasn't quite peaking.
turning the corner onto riverside and into the finish stretch, i started getting a good sprint on. some people started cheering, and i
kicked it into another gear and was flying past people, then my left
hamstring just exploded.
i finished in 26:26, 21 seconds slower than in my previous effort on march 5. i was annoyed, but i knew going in that i wasn't well prepared. the shirt is pretty cool, though.
i came home, ate the rest of my oatmeal (note to self - no need to eat oatmeal, even just a little, before a 5K) and laid down, and slept for quite a while. i was a little lost afterwards. i was also, amazingly, 10 pounds heavier than i had been just 4 days previous. you see why weight loss is such a trying issue for me.
but it was ok. i rode it out. i drank tons of water, tried to get my diet back on track. i meant to work out this morning, and failed that, but will return to it tomorrow. i made the necessary calls to doctor and pharmacy.
and tonight, i had a job interview, at halcyon. yeah, that's right, my favorite little coffee shop/bar. i'll expound on that later, but suffice it to say that i see, at least, some counterbalance possible in my life to this thing of doing lawyer.
tonight, i drank a bit, again for the first time in a while, and it was alright. between the waning meds and the alcohol, i got to check in on that part of myself that is still down there, somewhere, that i miss sometimes, in a way, not for the pain or sorrow, but simply because it is a part of me. tomorrow i'll resume the course, scatter the leaves to conceal it all again, until i can find the time and space and control to bring it out and keep it in balance.
please stand by...
Posted by Rob at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
maybe it was scott tenorman's mom's
ok, i am reconnected to the real virtual world. i've missed a lot.
the whole bit with the fingertip in that woman's wendy's chili has gotten weirder - first, the allegation that it was a finger bitten off by a spotted leopard
Sandy Allman, 59, lost a ¾-inch fingertip Feb. 23 in the attack by a spotted leopard being kept at her home in rural Pahrump, about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
apparently it couldn't be reconnected, and was disposed of by the hospital.
imagine 2 homeless guys digging through the hospital's biorefuse:
"Whoa - Do you see what I see, Pahrumpapan Bum?"
yeah. that punch line is the only reason for this entry, and for that, i am deeply, deeply sorry. please, go about your business. we will speak of this no more.
Posted by Rob at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
back to center
my mom often speaks of how she pictured a dream life in america, watching american movies and television. as a young girl in a huge city surrounded by mountains, the images of being a housewife on some clean and well-appointed estate in the country were idyllic to her.
for me, with my early years in apartments and later isolated in the country, everything from newhart to the mary tyler moore show pointed me to the city, to where everything was a short walk or bike ride away, to the local diner or coffee shop with friends, to a de-lux apartment in the sky.
when i was in the seventh grade, my family finally moved to the suburbs. after leaving home, i lived in a series of locations that were nice, but never quite lived up to the sense of nearness and activity that i had always wanted.
in late july 2003, the collapse that had begun months before with a lay-off continued. i left a major relationship, and found myself without a job, without many of the friends i had pulled away from during that relationship, without my health or a decent self-image (at nearly 240 lbs), and now, without a home.
mom suggested a new apartment complex a couple of miles from my parents' house, a good 15 miles out of town, out on a scenic but somewhat lonely road, at the highest point in the city limits. i balked, continued my search, but one day, i got a voicemail from my stepfather suggesting that i needed to move home until i get everything straightened out. that afternoon, i signed a lease at that remote complex.
over the next two years, i spent a lot of time alone, but slowly, began to rebuild. i found a job, reconnected with friends, lost weight, started playing basketball on a regular basis again, started meeting people, dating again, started writing again.
carl jung spoke a lot about the persistent archetype in human myth and fiction of individuals becoming lost, and retreating by choice or chance back to the margins of society. whether it's 40 days in the desert or the forest in a midsummer night's dream, it's out there, freer of the distractions and denials of civilized and profane life, out there in the reality of nature and isolation that characters learn and transform into more whole individuals, eventually returning to the mandalic center of society better prepared to take on it's demands.
for me, the apartment on 2222 was my margin, my hermitage, the medium in which i healed and grew again. but eventually, characters have to make a choice, and i decided it was time to return.
early monday morning, i grabbed the last items from the apartment, and looked around. i remembered how it was once before that empty, as empty as my life when i first moved there. i remembered moving in, how daryl and chris helped me move in, brought me a bag full of food, how for the next couple of years, they made the long trip to my house, where we'd watch movies and eat pizza and illegally cookout on the patio.
i remembered how the gatherings grew - parties and movie nights, a room full of friends laughing together.
so in those last moments there, i spoke to walls and doors, thanked them for sheltering a weakened soul, for absorbing yells and cries and silence and the occasional impacts of flying objects.
this morning, i woke up in my new home. i left for work on my bike at 8:16am. i coasted down congress avenue, past jo's coffee shop, past freebirds, ego's, the statesman building, across riverside, across barton springs and past the giant windvane bat. i passed walkers and runners, pedaled slowly across the bridge over town lake, the pink granite capitol building growing slowly larger ahead of me. i looked out over the still water, felt the wind easy in my face, heard peter gabriel in my headphones, and i felt alright. maybe not all that self-actualized, not without my problems but... yeah, i told myself - you're going to make it, after all.
Posted by Rob at 08:40 AM | Comments (2)
April 14, 2005
"your" book? whatevah.
ok, i thought i was too self-promotional, but this dude takes it to new heights.
i've enjoyed saying that i'm 1/127th of the best writer in austin, following the austin chronicle's critics' annointment of the 127 authors of writing austin's lives as the best local writer of 2004.
i was honored to read my story at the 2004 texas book festival, but realized that the book's editors were just spreading the love.
but this mother fcuker claims it's his book, and claims he's "one of the best live performers they have as a contributor to the book."
damn him and me both for reducing me to the level of piggish prima donna, but while he can claim two stories in the book, his shit is no better than anyone else's. seriously. there's better stuff from some of the elementary school kids.
there's a better story from rhea fernandes about how she and her siblings had a donkey they used to ride to barton springs. one page. simple, unpretentious. she and her siblings had a donkey. they used to ride it to the school for the deaf on congress, and to barton springs. they built a cart to give rides to the other kids in the hood. they sold the donkey to some other kid and split the money, which was cool with their mom. end of story.
hell, even my little story got the last word, and when i had the good fortune to read it at the texas book festival with three other authors, i had folks rolling, bitch. bladow. punk-ass. i really do hate myself for bein' like that, but that little bitch gotta recognize, yo? and it's not just for me - i've been privileged to meet some of the other authors, from the very young to the very old, and they've all been bad-asses, and modest ones, at that.
the most important thing is, the book has been selected by the mayor as the 2005 mayor's book club selection. punk-ass doesn't even link you to that. a lot more people will be reading this beautiful collection of stories. no matter where you are, it's worth reading. it's an unusual collection of stories about a community from it's members, bridging history with current experience and perspective from the entrenched to the marginalized. it's about austin, and it's about humanity, where they've been, where they are, where they're going, and where they dream of being.
screw me, screw this bankston dude - get the book and read it. you'll enjoy it. if you live here, you'll better appreciate where you're at. if you're somewhere else, you'll be curious about austin, and you'll think a little more about what it means to live where you do.
Posted by Rob at 02:04 AM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2005
update
yes, i'm a big geek.
this entry written with the ink and love from the pen given to me by jana, on my b-day
o.k., it's not really fair for me to publish my deepest, darkest whinings without also recognizing the resolution of despair.
following the last post, i did go running. i swapped out the loud, hard and fast tunes i usually associate with working out, and filled the iPod instead with things a little quieterm a little more meaningful than "hell's bells", that would drive me with a different sort of intensity, that would burn with a different color flame.
i rolled out to congress avenue a little after dawn, set out to run four miles fast, pounding out the anger and frustration on pavement, while compassion, peace, and a sort of redemption poured in through the headphones.
compassion, peace, and redemption did break down briefly when a capitol metro bus driver slammed shut his door behind a boarding passenger, and gunned the engine to cut me off on a crosswalk so he could force a quick right turn on a red light.
i actually had to pull up quickly to avoid running into the side of the bus. i glanced at the crosswalk signal, saw the little guy, or woman with short hair and no univeral-graphic skirt glowing white, doing the little walking thing.
without a second thought, i cut away to the right, running to the rear of the bus, and as i did, i slammed my hand full-force into the side of the bus. passengers jumped. driver heard it and looked into my eyes in the side-mirror.
my life-approval rating immediately jumped by a good 58%.
i ripped through the miles, up and down congress, to and away from the capitol, the state troopers sitting in their car on the capitol building's inner drive eyeing me warily on each lap. i glared at the legislative haven every time, wanting to flip off its contents for the stupid republican and other political games it's been playing, some of which have denied me the increase in pay that would bring me to par with my otherwise-equivalent counterparts statewide.
i ran sprint intervals through the last mile, just the balls of my feet making contact with the sidewalk on each long, swift stride. i sat on a bench at a bus stop when i finished, letting my breath slow, watching the growing pool of sweat on the sidewalk beneath me, appreciating, loving the morning, the growing day, the feeling of life in me.
a day started well.
the list of issues, like the festivus airing of grievances, defined and compartmentalized everything, painting big targets on each of them.
i began, that morning, to attack each and every one of the problems, thoughtfully, methodically. i gained ground, felt that even if no victory was certain, that i was fighting the best i could.
no solution is complete, but again, there is hope, and momentum in my favor.
i ran 10 miles saturday, could have gone longer had i started earlier than at 2:00pm, without the extra heat and direct sunlight.
i'm waking early again, for no apparent reason.
i'm getting to the gym on a regular basis again. my strength is returning.
i feel the almost addictive need to run every day, and i want to run further and faster all the time.
how did you read the last entry? as mere desperation? no, i have too much pride, too much support around me. for every reaction, there is an action, some kind of action, even if it's not quite equal.
faced with despair, trapped in desert lands, there are only two options - give up, or believe in the sea.
Posted by Rob at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2005
there is no sleep
you don't want to read this, and i'm not going to apologize for it.
4:43am, and i've given up. a little shy of four hours of sleep, i woke up a few minutes after 4:00am. my stomach and throat are burned, my brain was wide awake and inescapably loud inside.
i tried to ignore the burning and quiet the mind, but it wasn't happening. my brain locked onto the threatening voice mail i got yesterday from the cross-sounding woman at the state office of administrative hearings, then it got caught in the loop, replaying over and over what my response today would be, beginning with the frustration and loss of control i'm feeling right now, forecasting the anger that i'd feel and probably communicate.
everywhere, men and women are waking up, rising quietly to not wake their sleeping children. they tiptoe through homes barely held together by their hard work, fix themselves something to eat, maybe a lunch to take with them, and they leave before daybreak to do real work, backbreaking work, menial work. they will gather in the early morning cold or in quiet and empty buildings with others like themselves. they will clean up after the people of the day, they will wait for day labor, they will work in a kitchen spraying the remainders of other people's meals off of plates. they may complain about the minutiae of the day. they may spend moments of quiet regret. they may not. but they do what they have to, because there is nothing else.
i know this, and it makes me ashamed for how i feel, for my dislike of my work, for my inability to keep afloat, for my increasing inability to keep up with what happens in my life, and with what i've brought on myself.
it's all tangled in my head, the mass of things i'm juggling right now. i'm writing it out so i can look at it with some sort of clarity:
the money i need to come up with right now;
the money i need to come up with next week for deposit and rent at the new apartment;
the vague threat of some sort of sanctions against my agency from the cross-sounding woman, because i took on and docketed too many cases to keep up with, in response to unthinking and ignorant pressure from our governing board;
the continuing, constant burning in my stomach;
the divorce case for a friend of a friend that i'm behind on;
the probate matter i'm handling for another friend;
a piece of work i was asked to do for a customer of kanton's used car lot. why? because the client probably can't afford to get another lawyer to deal with insurance company;
the various things i'm seriously behind on at work;
the depositions i'll have to take in a couple of weeks in a case of alleged rape, the evidence in which makes the kobe case look solid by comparison;
the other litigation i'm having to do, that i despise and am ill-prepared for;
the friend i had to help out today;
worrying about having left work to do so when i was already out sick on monday and tuesday;
the insurance company not even offering enough on my hail-totalled car to pay it off, which the bank will likely require me to do, much less yield some extra money as i hoped it might;
the insurance company's discovery that the car's title still has not been processed out of the name of some person in north carolina...
this is a lot, but i'm ashamed that it's all driving me a bit mad. how can it compare to what my friend is going through, or what the woman i'm doing the divorce for is going through, with a baby that less than two months old (the sonofabitch cheated on her while she was pregnant). i met a woman the other night who was going through a divorce. her husband committed suicide last week.
i know my list doesn't compare to those burdens, or the realities of those people who are awake with me now, or who are already working deep in a night shift.
but their my realities and my burdens. many, maybe most of them, are my own fault. again, don't judge. if you do, i don't want to hear about it, because that's already been well-covered. i've been trying really hard. i've been trying to get things done, and done right. but i'm worn out. every day, several times a day, i am moved too easily to tears by some slight bit of nostalgia or news item or random thought.
i feel like i'm back in the last half marathon. there's so much at stake, and it all seems so simple, and so many other people are doing it, persevering through their own hardships, many of them passing me. i feel strong to have come this far, but i feel weak to be struggling. my body's become leaden, and i feel the panic of not being able to breathe, like i gotta stop, somehow.
so i'm up. i write it down because that's what i have. i try not to add to the list the fact that i have no arms to take at least a little refuge in right now, because that's probably my fault, too, and because some of my friends lack that, as well.
i'm about to put on my running clothes and shoes and leave. ironically, all morning, the only thing i can think of to do is to run. run fast, run far, punish my body and my heart, and maybe free them both, if only for a little while.
Posted by Rob at 04:41 AM | Comments (2)
April 07, 2005
3,345th
ok, we've got to move back in time. after years of rightfully claiming i never got sick, the past few months have seen two of the top four worst bouts of illness of my life, the most recent landing me low and/or in bed for the past few days. some have pointed out the strong link to the running thing. point well taken. i think the issue is not so much the running itself, but the fact i'm still ill-prepared for the harder runs.
so, first, let's go back to... sunday... an account mostly written shortly before i passed out, only to wake up to over two days of... well, intestinal issues, among other things. let's just say it was great for weight loss.
oh, how far we've come!
i ran my first capitol 10,000, which is also my first competitive 10K, with friend and teammate katie. katie, of course, kicked ass again, finishing in 55:23.8, which put her, holy crap, 84th in her age group (30-34)! she averaged 8:56 minutes per mile. but i ain't jealous - she just rolls like that.
and me, i kept up with katie for a little over 2 miles, and finished, eventually, and i, it was about, um, 1:02, which, made me... 3,345th overall. i mean, woohoo! apparently, this was good enough to be, um, 394th in my age group. meaning i got beat by a lot of people my age, as well as a lot of older and younger people.
ok, i kid, but i averaged a 9:57, which finally gets me below the cursed 10 minute per mile mark. and that's what this is all about - competing against oneself, not against others.
but the results are on the web, so let's take a look, anyway, and see how i compared...
let's see... um... 45 men over 60 beat me... well, that'll happen, 60 is the new 40...
two men 75-78 were faster... ok, there's always those freaks - good for them... a 78 year-old beat me...
aha! no woman over 65 beat me. what's more, 94 year-old Sidney Smith, a, uh... woman, of Austin totally ate my dust. out of the fast lane, grandma! i got places to be! like, the finish line!
and, hey - 76 year-old Omer Allard traveled all the way from san antonio just to finish a couple of minutes behind me. a couple of minutes? two minutes? why that's long enough to make two nice, soft bowls of quaker one-minute oats for both you and wilford freakin' brimley, Omer. yeah, be careful driving home through the tears of bitter, humiliating defeat, Mr. Al-loser-o!
and, hey, i ain't agist, i was droppin' bitches on both ends of life - like... wait, three nine year-olds beat me? a ten year-old girl? son of a...
ok, let's just fcuking drop it, ok? but mary mccord of bulverde, tx, we may have "tied" this year, but you better buy some faster shoes with that aarp visa card - next year, it's on.
oh, and those kids are totally on 'roids. huge kids. huge, freaky-big noggins.
Posted by Rob at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2005
the whole world
Posted by Rob at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)
bother and delay
ok, i hate tom deLay. with a passion. like, no way i could be civil if i met the man. i have very little regard for his existence at all. i'm not saying i want to see the guy dead. i mean, i don't actually have to see him dead, as long as... no, just joking, that's horrible.
let's say this - if, heaven forbid (and i don't see why it would), something happened to the guy that rendered him, err... less alive, that i personally wouldn't expend the energy to go outside to lower any flags to half-mast.
i can say that it's a genuine shame he'd never see the inside of a proper prison, where he'd suddenly give new meaning to the term "majority whip."
friend heather points out that he's relatively young, and she has faith that he can yet accomplish something that will land him in prison and make him somebody's bitch.
unfortunately, heather was just trying to cheer me up, but i know that political and social reality will dictate that the best we could ever hope for is that he'll become some mafia don's espresso runner.
with all that said, some of the headlines regarding the payment of $500,000 to members of his family by the nouveau-fascist "americans for a republican majority" are a bit misleading. for example, there's an admittedly funny one from the bbc. "sleaze allegations." sounds so british.
the problem is, see, that these aren't really "allegations"; they're not smoking guns, or even hardly-used water guns still in bubble wrap, unearthed through a haze of deadly intrigue and denial.
they were self-reported by the committee itself.
so, you wanna feel like woodward and bernstein? just point your browser to http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/disclosure_data_search.shtml. it's actually quite fun, although the closest you'll get to "deep throat" is via some internet sites dealing in vintage porn. (it is interesting to see the campaign donations to delay from planned parenthood, though...)
while i generally like the bbc's reporting, this article, like a few others, never really gets around to mentioning the self-reporting thing. it insinuatingly points up the lack of job descriptions for the his paid family members, but doesn't indicate that not only is the lack of detail not unusual, but probably not even requested by the required forms (also available for your politico-masturbatory viewing on the FEC website)
the article, like most others i've seen, doesn't mention that these kind of expenditures are, sadly, probably perfectly legal in our system of "fair and equal political representation" (note: quotes often denote sarcasm).
it also doesn't mention similar scandals involving even prominent democrats like barbara boxer ($15,000 to her son's "consulting firm", which I'm sure is run out of the BMW 7-series the 15 large was probably a down payment for), and, well, probably just about everyone in congress. granted, at half a million bucks, he's bound to have set a new record, and it still makes him all the more sleazy. most articles only mention these things as vague defensive accusations on deLay's part.
the level of, um, fairness and balance in reporting does cover the spectrum, from the minority that discuss and explain these issues openly, to those many more that disclose them almost parenthetically or not at all. but i still have yet to see a headline that says "delay reported $500,000 paid to family," and you can see why. dry. too factual. won't sell. why do that when you can say "delay's wife, children, paid $500,000" to imply to the casual headline reader that a great scandal has been unearthed? and if you question the percentage of americans who are, unlike yourself, of course, "casual headline readers," take bush's percentage of votes last election and add, say, 20%. that's a lot.
as usual, my point is, i want to see this guy get the crap beat out of him, but i want to see it done the right way. let it be straight-up, unshady, a classy and just ass-kicking. as with so many things these days, the truth is bad enough - we don't need to weaken it with lies and exaggeration, we don't need to fuel his weasly cries of "wah, wah, the liberal homosexual jew-run media hates me, wahhh..."
what delay himself has reported is a good thing to hit him with, and we should thank him for being so honest about his arrogance, and then smite not only him, but the whole american campaign system with it. the public needs to know about it, but we can still be fair and clear and do plenty of damage with it. it's just another very subtle way for the media to get more mileage out of a misrepresentation.
ok, i'm done now. thank you.
on another news note - it was interesting to see the list of superstars at johnnie cochran's funeral. granted, the guy was an important figure and did some good for some good people, and even if he did some good for some not-so-good people, overall, he gave a lot of people a little more hope for their place in our "legal system".
still, oh, to be a fly on the memorial wreath:
OJ: what's up, mj?
MJ: hey, juice.
OJ: hell of a guy, huh?
MJ: yeah.
(silence)
MJ: i mean, he totally... i mean, you did...
OJ: oh, yeah.
MJ: wow. hell of a guy.
OJ: yup.
MJ: yup.
DIDDY: word.
SNOOP: i know that's right.
Posted by Rob at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)