"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."--David Foster Wallace

An interesting thing happened this morning. The lady of the house, in her daily preparations for work, likes to put on a radio in the bathroom so she'll have something to listen to whilst in the shower. At any rate, as she climbed in, I went outside to smoke a stoge. I couldn't tell you what station she managed to tune to this morning, but what I do know is that when I came back in the house I could hear the faint sounds of a perfectly hideous pop-country song emanating from the bathroom. Knowing full well she was probably going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs inside the shower stall, I went in to see about changing the station. We joked briefly about how terrible the song was as I adjusted the tuner on the radio, until finally I landed on a classical station. "Here you go," I said, "This'll do you good." To wit she replied, "What, are you trying to make me smarter or something?" Which, of course, translates from Woman Speak into English as, "Are you calling me stupid?" Even though we both agreed that the selection playing made us feel less cultured and more as though we were listening to a commercial for dish soap, I left the dial alone and exited the bathroom.

As I continued to listen to the music wafting in from the next room, I remembered a discussion I had in high school with my great friend, Ulf, an exchange student from Hamburg. For whatever reason, we were talking about classical music. The original impetus for the conversation now escapes me, but what I can recall went a little something like this:

Me: You know something? I kind of like classical music. How about you?

Ulf: Yeah, it's ok. Who's your favorite composer?

Me: If I had to pick, I'd say Rachmaninov.

Ulf: That's because you're a fuckin' communist, Nevin. Only fuckin' communists
listen to Rachmaninov.

Me: [Laughing] Well, who's your favorite?

Ulf: Wagner.

Me: Well, that figures. Because you're a fascist, and only goddamn fascists
listen to Wagner.

[Both Laughing]

Ulf was/is a great guy. I remember the day he introduced me to Guinness. I was forever banging on about my Irish heritage, so I suspect that had something to do with it. As he handed me my first bottle, he said things like, "This what we Germans call 'sweet beer,' because it has so much alcohol it tastes like wine," "This is a man's beer, Nevin. You have to be a man to drink this beer. If you're not a man, it will make you one," and, my personal favorite, "This is the beer of your people, Nevin. You have to like it." Fuckin' priceless. It took all I had to disguise my disgust for the black, frothy ale as I drank it and replied simply, "It's really good." What I really wanted to do was get as far away from the stuff as humanly possible. Who knew that, 15 years later, it would rate inside my top 10 favorite beers of all time? But, I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about was, despite our differences being both cultural and ideological, the truth that held us together was a universal one. That is to say, what kept us friends was the universal truth of music. You see, despite the fact that every time he played country music in his Jeep Wrangler I wanted to kill myself, and despite the fact that every time I played rap music in my parents' Ford Probe he probably wanted to kill me, we both shared a love of obnoxiously loud rock and roll.

As the morning progressed, I continued to think about the transcendent nature of music. I thought about Beethoven and his deafness. I thought about how, impassioned by his composition and the orchestra in his head which played it perfectly, he closed his eyes and flailed his arms, never seeing the musicians in front of him fumbling and failing to keep up. I mulled over how, as an amateur bassist myself, rewarding it is to hear a piece of music in your head that nobody else has heard before and then pick an instrument and release that music into the world. I also mused at Beethoven's ultimate irony. The poor bastard must have been traumatized by going deaf, and you can hear it in his music. In every movement of every symphony he produced after afterward he's all over the map, emotionally speaking. And, therein lies the crux of his greatness and it's irony. The thing is, had he not been a man whose sole passion in life was music who went deaf, experiencing trauma of epic proportions, would he still have produced his Ninth Symphony? I sincerely doubt it, and just the thought of it all still gets me a little misty eyed.

Think about it. If you look at small children, as young as a year or two in age, it's impossible for them to express an understanding of music and dance. But, even if they don't know what dance is, even if they've never seen it on TV, what happens when a song they like comes on the radio? Invariably, no matter what country they come from or what language they speak, they'll try to dance. Something about a pleasing melody and exciting rhythm just makes them want to move. Music is one of those rare things that is both unique and universal to the human experience. It's hardwired into our DNA. I once related that observation to the brother of a friend over beers at Fadó Irish Pub in Austin. His response was, "Wow, that's actually really insightful." I was flattered, but made sure to sound humble by replying, "Well, I'm sure somebody else noticed that before I did, but it's just something I've been thinking about lately."

"I ain't got no quarrel with the VietCong... No VietCong ever called me nigger."--Muhammad Ali

So yesterday I was sitting around watching obscure movies, as is my wont. This week's selection was an old documentary by the name of The War at Home (Brown and Silber, 1979). Admittedly, my feelings going into it were most aptly described as tepid considering that a good portion of the time older documentaries tend to be rather amateurish relative to their contemporary brethren. As it turns out, TWAH, with it's thorough examination of the anti-war protests on the microcosmic University of Wisconsin campus during the 1960s and 70s was anything but. As I so often do upon completion of movies of its ilk, I trotted off to see if I couldn't start a fight about it on the IMDb message boards. Much to my chagrin, it's board was only possessed of a solitary thread containing one lonely post. Well, two posts if you include my response to the original lonely post.

At any rate, that post contained some things that started me thinking about the current state of race relations in America. The thing is, TWAH contained some pretty graphic scenes of police brutalizing some rather peaceful sit-in participants. Truth be told, I've been privy to so many books, movies, and documentaries about that era that no amount of police violence contained therein really affects me. Further, having grown up in a Deep South backwater, I've personally known a good many people who've been on the wrong end of such violence. Frankly, the only thing that's still shocking about police brutality, as I told the naive sod on IMDb, is that anyone is still shocked by it. To make a long story not so long, I could tell immediately by his horror that he was white.

And that's the rub. Within the documentary, on the one hand you had a bunch of white middle-class folks talking about how affected they were by the Kent State Killings (and I use the word 'killings' because to this day I maintain that the more common nomenclature 'massacre' is a misnomer; there were only actually four deaths, hardly qualifying as a massacre in my mind). That reaction was contrasted by two interviewees who were a pair of African-Americans, Wahid Rashad and his wife, who described feeling far less than visceral about Kent. The fact was, they said, between the murders of Martin Luther King and racist pig cops they were hardly surprised.

Unfortunately, to this day the distinction between white and minority thinking on issues like this persists. I say unfortunately because that difference in thinking is more or less exemplary of the latent racism so pervasive in the white community, a latent racism which indirectly in turn contributes to the persistence of problems like police brutality. Take for instance the Battle of Seattle and the popular reactions to it at the time. Why was it so hard for people to believe that the police there actually caused the violence despite the assertions of the protesters? Between Rodney King, Abner Louima, and Amadou Diallo, you would have thought people would have gotten the idea that the police were/are a rather untidy little group of jack-booted fascists. Why didn't they? I'll tell you why. The one thing King, Louima, and Diallo all had in common was the color of their skin: black.

I'm reminded of a conversation between two of a good buddy's co-workers after a company softball game. They were discussing the virtues and drawbacks of various parts of California when the discussion turned to Orange County. One extolled the area's virtues, the other expressed his disdain by saying, 'The police over there are fucked up!' The former just wouldn't buy it no matter how much the latter tried to convince him. I'll let you to work out for yourself which one was black and which one white. The difference of opinion, which could only stem from the difference in the way people of various races get treated by the cops, betrays a subtle racism in and of itself. Sadly, that conversation took place only two years ago, and given the recent murder of Oscar Grant by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, it appears as though things (despite the election of a mixed race president) haven't changed all that much since the days of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

"Tell old Pharoah, Let my people go."--American Negro Spiritual

While I'm sure somewhere right now there's a religo-fascist fundamentalist Christian preacher attempting to cast this latest group of nominees for the stupid white man hall of fame as some type of neo-Babylonian Captivity, let me just say this in reference to those missionaries cum child smugglers: You got no less than you deserved.

For those living under a rock for the past week or so, a story out of Port-au-Prince last week came to the fore in which it was disclosed that ten white American missionaries had been jailed in Haiti for attempting to cross the border into the Dominican Republic with a busload of 33 Haitian children, all victims of the recent earthquake. Initially, major news outlets north of the Caribbean described the children as 'orphans,' but as more tidbits filter up from the tragedy stricken nation, it is becoming clear that a number of them were anything but. Truth be told, at least 22 of the 33 had living parents, but the Christian confidence men dangled the carrot of 'better life elsewhere' in front of them.

Further, this was not the first time Laura Silsby, the head Pied Piper of Hamelin in charge, and zealous henchmen attempted such actions. And, despite claims by she and her cohorts that they believed all their paperwork was in order (they actually received permission to cross the border from the DR), Dominican authorities reportedly warned them that they needed additional permission from the Haitian government. I am of the mind that Silsby knew she didn't have the proper authorization and that her subordinates probably knew it as well.

In any event, this is all strangely reminiscent of another incident I recall from my high school days some 16 years ago. Back in 1994, some insolent little son of a diplomat twit was arrested for vandalism in Singapore. Subsequently convicted and sentenced to caning, termed barbaric by a good number of my classmates at the time, the talk was that then president Bill Clinton should entreat on his behalf. In discussions with my fellow pupils, most were shocked to discover that my response amounted to the following, 'Well, if I could give the guy charged with executing the sentence one piece of advice, it'd be the same advice my baseball coach gives me every time I step in the batter's box, "Swing hard in case you hit it."' Not that I agreed then, or do now for that matter, with corporal punishment, but the little turd broke the law. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime and all that. My attitude hasn't changed all that much.

All of that being said, the core of the matter is that this is not only one further demonstration of contempt for both law and social mores which the Religious Right is possessed of, but also demonstrative of a certain culture of arrogance and hypocrisy. To find instances exemplary of the first assertion is easy; one need look no further than fundamentalist's tendency towards homicidal mania or their appearance at the funerals of service men and women with tact laden protest signs exclaiming things like 'God hates fags' or the ever popular 'Thank God for dead soldiers.'

Personally, I like the argument that Donald Faison made on the Wanda Sykes Show last Saturday night to address the latter of the above assertions. Suppose some missionaries came to the US from El Salvador and tried to smuggle a bunch of white kids across the border to a better life in Mexico. The American people would be apoplectic, and rightfully so. In fact, wars have been started for less. I couldn't agree more, and would personally add my own observation concerning the height of arrogance and assuredness in their own cultural superiority to which the religious right have now climbed. So confident in their own sanctity are these people that they've now claimed kidnapping as a divine right. My only hope is that they're left to rot in a Haitian jail cell for the next 15 to 20. Maybe that will teach them a lesson, but I doubt it.

And don't even get me started on the Jehovah's Witnesses that banged on my door to interrupt me writing this very post...

"Now go away, or I will be forced to taunt you a second time!"--Monty Python and the Holy Grail

So I was sitting around last night wondering what I was going to write today when the ingrown hair that is the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine-autism link reared its querulous head on the nightly news. Only this time, it wasn't some New Age fuzzhead talking vast medical community conspiracy. Instead, it was a story about how The Lancet, the British medical journal which in 1998 produced the keystone study over the arch that is the argument against the MMR vaccine, had issued a retraction of said study.

To quote Surendra Kumar of Britain's General Medical Council in reference to Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who headed the study back in 1998, he was "dishonest," "irresponsible," and "contrary to the clinical interests" of children.

Through the mist and shade of long term memory came a conversation I had with an uncommonly intellectually malleable friend of mine a few years back. He had recently had a son, and at 18 months old his boy was nearing the requisite age for reception of the MMR vaccine. Apparently, however, his mother (a woman of such staggering intellectual accomplishments such as becoming a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi because The Beatles told her to, as well as achieving the vertigo inducing pinnacle of medical training known as a dental hygenist's certification) insisted that the MMR caused autism. Despite my best efforts, I had neither the expertise nor the familiarity with the research to change his mind. Suffice to say the conversation ended with me saying simply, 'Well, good luck getting him into public schools.'

In the ensuing years since, I have had the good fortune to read such elucidating works as Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Wierd Things. Therein Shermer discusses a study oft cited, but never detailed, by the anti-MMR vaccine donkies in which the sagely researchers basically asked parents of autistic children when their progeny first displayed symptoms and when they received the MMR vaccine. And then, you guessed it, passed this off as a causal relationship due to the chronological proximity of the two events. It all sounded to myself and Mikey S. like a post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy of the highest order, and we'd be right, and that's all without saying anything of the unscientific monkeyshines being played with the lives of innocents.

Frankly, yesterday's news had me wondering what then could possibly convince these yahoos that there was no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. I'd love to believe that the story would be the final nail in the coffin of this debate, but a casual look around will reveal the scads of stubborn lemmings willing to believe in everything from ghosts to the God the Huckster explanation for the fossil record to the lost continent of Atlantis.

Why is it so hard to believe that it's a gumbo addiction or effed up genes which caused their kids' predicaments? Probably because it would mean that on some psycho-emotional level they would have to accept that the Western medicine isn't the boogeyman these people think it is and culpability for their children's problems is alot closer to home. In other words, they'd have to blame themselves.

Oh well. Won't stop me from saying, 'Boo-yah! In your face you Birkenstock shod rubes!'

"Are you restless like me?"--Tom Gabel

As I sit, chilled and moistened by a Northern California atmosphere engorged with the dampness of a late January evening, the metronomic ticking of a cheap wall clock my only soundtrack, I become vaguely aware of something deep seeded. Quietly seething, I reflect on something buried within my Id: a certain repressed ebullition, a subsumed magma seeking a passage through the Earth's tectonic plates.

Names like Haymarket, Watts, El Mozote, Bogside, and Rosewood come and go, reminding me of a political phlacidity. They echo off the insides of this body, still aching from an anesthetic made of India pale ale and Irish wiskey imbibed some two days ago. That anesthesia, which at the time seemed, and in ways still does seem, so necessary to annihilate this sense of economic and political eunuchism stewed in a pot under which burns the fire of a past that I am far less than comfortable with.

Hence, an effluence of verbage which I flush out a pipe, leading only to an endless cybernetic ocean in a vain, narcissistic attempt at personal validation. In other words: Anti.