john goliard's blog

Undeserved ignominious distinction

Now hold up a minute. My good friend Vicola has awarded her weekly wanker award to the doctor demanding his wife give his kidney back and I agree this guy sounds like a bit of a jackass. But wanker of the week? There are a lot of wankers out there and when part of the story reads…..

"Dawnell Batista, who took the new kidney for which he was a 1 in 700,000 match, and turned it into a new lease on life, was soon injured while trying to earn a black belt in karate and then repaid her husband's gesture by first sleeping with her physical therapist - and then denying him access to their three kids in an increasingly bitter divorce."

you can understand why the guy might feel a bit miffed.

An intriguing request and full of fun to debate legal issues but I'm fairly sure the guy doesn't actually expect them to cut his old kidney out of his wife’s nethers and reinstall it in his own but rather is making the divorce as messy as possible in the financial realm. And with Madoff bilking charities and pensioners out of their life savings and cops shooting unarmed youth and perennial wankers Dick Chaney and Tom Cruise running off at the mouth lately, I just can't believe that some vindictive doctor trying to lash out at his cheating wife is the biggest wanker out there. Surely if I open a London paper I could find plenty of other wanker candidates.... yep first pages  Met police 'shields staff from rape allegations and then Anti-violence campaigner Pat Regan killed in stabbing frenzy by psychotic grandson

The press jumped on this because they knew people would love discussing it around the water cooler (which is literally where I heard about it) but when I read the story my reaction was hardly that the guy must be the biggest ass to come down the pike. And I’m pretty sure if a woman donated a kidney in order to keep her husband alive and he  rewarded her by sleeping with the operating room nurse and she subsequently demanded it back, she’d be seen as nothing less than a hero who would soon be making the rounds on the late night talk shows.

Timely arrival

A “renewal discount voucher” just arrived in my mailbox containing the following salutation:

Dear Mr. Goliard,

Do not doubt your insignificance. It is merely the impending expiration of your subscription that compels me to sweep aside the diamond pen nibs, ivory snuff boxes, and blocks of precious ambergris littering my desk in order to draft you this note.

As I understand it, one of the paltry joys of the mud-daubing, fish trawling riffraff is to have our magazine delivered directly to your hovel. Consequently, I exhort you to renew your subscription at once, lest you get it in your head to travel to the Onion’s printing houses in person and befoul its ink-misted air with your gangrenous exhalations.

Your role in this affair is simply to grub in your tattered breeches pocket for a hunk of charcoal and fill out the requisite information above. Then return this form so that we may continue to capitalize on the penury of your mailbox and your boundless lust for brawny boys and bare bosoms.

As always, goddamn the lot of you.

H. Cuthbert Zweibel
Vice President of Client Relations
The Onion

The many layers of the Onion

Typical Onion reader

One of the life’s simple pleasures for me is that once a week or so, on my daily slog out to the mailbox, I find nestled in with the notices of plunging investment, various fare increases, and other epistolary bad news, my print edition of the Onion. It blends unassumingly with it's more pernicious brethren, seemingly innocuous and all folded in on itself so as not to offend the post person or spoil the shock of the headline. I avoid reading it online because I have it delivered and I don’t open it when I initially retrieve it from the box because I wouldn’t trade that moment of plopping down on the hopper or climbing into bed and finally opening it up for anything. Or not many things at least. One has to be careful at the initial unveiling as an uncontrolled guffaw or other release of air is likely to occur, and depending at what stage of ablutions one is enjoying or who else is in the immediate vicinity, this can lead to pulled muscles, nosebleeds, and other strains on the system. The sheer privilege of folding a publication open on a weekly basis however to find a headline along the lines of “Enormous Bra Found ” or “F$*k Everything, we’re doing five blades!  – Gillette CEO” is a quality of life enhancer well worth the fifty or so dollars a year it costs for home subscription.

Much of the genius of the Onion of course is that, often, if you weren’t reading it right out of the paper itself but had bumped across a story online somewhere, it wouldn’t be entirely clear as to whether it was satire or real news. And even if one is aware that it’s satire from the get go, the writing is often more spot on than the stories on the same topics in traditional papers. I was browsing through an old edition this morning when I noticed a story I’d missed the first time entitled Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years.  The second paragraph…

"I'd always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-crazed deviants was just a destructive myth," said mother of four Hannah Jarrett, 41, mortified at the sight of 17 tanned and oiled boys cavorting in jock straps to a throbbing techno beat on a float shaped like an enormous phallus. "Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong."

It continues….

”Among the parade sights and sounds that did inestimable harm to the gay-rights cause: a group of obese women in leather biker outfits passing out clitoris-shaped lollipops to horrified onlookers; a man in military uniform leading a submissive masochist, clad in diapers and a baby bonnet, around on a dog leash; several Hispanic dancers in rainbow wigs and miniskirts performing "humping" motions on a mannequin dressed as the Pope; and a dozen gyrating drag queens in see-through dresses holding penis-shaped beer bottles that appeared to spurt ejaculation-like foam when shaken and poured onto passersby.”

Bleeding hilarious! And like most good humor it is so because the tale told is close enough to the truth to be plausible and, in this case, is written in a straight forward journalistic style that makes it seem like it could be completely legit. The fact that the Onion angle is often likely closer to reality than the mainstream coverage of the same event just drives the hilarity home. Every now and then of course, an Onion story gets mistaken by some foreign dignitary as depicting the truth and it’s easy to see why. I don’t remember the exact details but I recall the Chinese government releasing some form of statement when they were amazed to learn that we Americans had moved the whole white house to Tennessee. Their information was based on an Onion story. What is also funny is when a story comes across the wires which one assumes immediately can only be from the Onion until it turns out to be from a paper not purposefully marketing humor.

Example below:

WATERBURY, Vt.—Mooove over, Holsteins. PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking the ice cream maker to begin using breast milk in its products instead of cow's milk, saying it would reduce the suffering of cows and calves and give ice cream lovers a healthier product.

The idea got a cool reception Thursday from Ben & Jerry's officials, the company's customers and even La Leche League International, the world's oldest breast-feeding support organization, which promotes the practice -- for babies, anyway.

"We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child," spokesman Sean Greenwood said in an e-mail. He didn't respond to requests for an interview.

"It's kind of creepy," said Jeff Waugh, 42, of Dayton, Ohio.

"I think it's a little nutty," said the Rev. Roger Wooton, 83, of Malden, Mass., finishing up a cup of Heath Bar Crunch.

"How would they get all that milk?" said his wife, Jane Wooton, 77.

Jen Wahlbrink, 34, of Phoenix, who breast-fed her 11-month-old son, Cameron, said she wouldn't touch ice cream made from mother's milk. She remembers her nursing days -- and not that fondly.

"The (breast) pumps just weren't that much fun. You really do feel like a cow," she said, cradling her son in her hands.

I have a friend involved loosely with La Leche League and even she was shocked by this article. And I'm sure that more than a few people assumed that America's Finest News Source was behind it.

Green Chili Dreams

Winston - such as he was

Had another disturbingly vivid dream, this one involving some logistical miasma with four roommates (all female) and sleeping arrangements and school schedules and people eating each other’s food from the common icebox. A girl from work made an appearance as one cohabitant but otherwise the characters were complete strangers to my real life. All these unknown personages that keep appearing nocturnally confuse me with the only explanation being that I've been traveling alone quite a bit lately and I've eaten almost an entire 2 lb. bag of Hatch extra hot roasted green chilies in the last few days. They say spicy food can lead to nightmares so I figure severe heat peppering all three daily repasts might begin having a cumulative affect on nightly visions.  I realize also that dreams are in the category of fantasy sports and vacation pictures in that they are only interesting to the person directly involved and make sorry conversation points for others in any format at any time.

Roasted Poblano Chilies

They do serve to remind one of past debacles, adventures, and discomforts however and this particular episode gave me occasion to recall an apartment I shared in Hawaii with about five or nine other people. Rentals had been scarce when one of us snagged the three bedroom that ended up housing a motley crew of comers and goers who mostly worked together as cooks and waitresses and bartenders at this health food set up called Greenthings over the Ocean. The times being as they were, it was often unclear who was seeing who and sleeping where and paying what for rent but the waves, cheap aussie beer, and weather made it all good. This one guy Winston from Texas who didn’t work with the rest of us had staked out a permanent sleeping spot in the living room, paid his share on time and, since he was always crewing on boats or surfing, didn’t demand much except that he be allowed to keep his clothes and other meager belongings in this locking ottoman that also served as the common coffee table. One afternoon a gathering of folks were lounging in said living room just hanging out when Winston announced that the time had come for him to go work a dinner cruise. Nobody moved or paid any attention to this statement since half of those present were these demure Russian girls who worked in a jewelry store abutting the restaurant and had finally agreed to come over and socialize. They quite possibly had no idea as to the actual meaning of the announcement (if they even understood the English with twang in the first place) but what Winston meant of course was that, since the bedrooms and bathrooms were occupied, this was his living space such as it was and he was about to use it to dress for work regardless of what else was going on.

Winston repeated the warning one more time although only I and two other girls, one of whom was passed out anyway, could have known what was coming. ”Well, I don’t mind if ya’ll don’t” he finally said in that matter of fact drawl of his and promptly stripped naked and proceeded to set about climbing into his work garb, which happened to be this silly first mate’s uniform. The sight of the Russian girls staring at his startlingly white bottom is not one I’ll ever forget. One of them must have liked what she saw however since the last I heard she and Winston, who is now the captain of his own boat, were living together somewhere in Alaska.

Seems like old times

Todays prices

Wake not for the memories

Coverage

I blinked myself conscious from an especially vivid dream early this morning and dwelt thereon which is odd in itself in that I normally tend to not remember much about my dreams once I’m awake and am certainly not typically all atitter over them. You’ll see what I mean by atitter in a minute. It seems that I took a trip during the night to a beach somewhere although it was more of a town with a beach interspersed that just kept going and going and I was bopping around from dune to shop to pier the way one does in dreams generally having a gay old time. This wouldn't have been memorable in itself except that I was doing so in the company of an unidentified woman who kept removing her top. We’d be standing there enjoying the view or whatever when she’d take off her tee shirt and tuck it into some sort of batik sarong skirt thing. Soon a couple other women would assume that the beach was topless and remove their tops and then lifeguards would come over and everyone would have to redress and then we’d move on to a deck for drinks and she’d take off her top again in a perfectly natural way as if this was an option to be more comfortable and soon people would be staring and dad’s would be covering their boy’s eyes and a manager of some kind would come over and ask that my friend (I guess that’s what she was) redon some coverage. No more or less bizarre than most dreams I guess except that I, or my character as it were, was so obviously taking the whole thing in stride as if it was an unaccepting society and ogling public that were misbehaving and making things inconvenient for everybody and not my associate who was attractive and small breasted in a young Andie McDowell sort of way except with blonde kinky hair, freckles, and a cute turned up nose. She also had some sort of large mole just off the top of her left nipple.

 

I lay awake in the aftermath with the woman’s unabashed toplessness emblazoned in my brain trying to make sense of it all and figure out if I knew her or if she was someone I’d seen recently but I just couldn’t place her. I know dream analysis is a fools errand anyway but since I couldn’t shake the image and I had nothing else to do at that particular moment I got to thinking about similar unexpected topless situations I’d witnessed over the years that may have planted the seed and came up with the following reveries:

 

I picked up a Danish hitchhiker in Maui once who ended up sleeping on our floor for a few weeks and recalled the morning I had showed her how to sneak into the pool at the Hyatt and blend in with the paying guests, a feat we had successfully pulled off until she casually removed her top and opened a paperback. I chose not to say anything (not solely because of the language barrier) but also didn’t want to draw attention to myself and end up blackballed either so I left her there and slipped off through the shrubbery down to the beach. When I returned poolside, her top was back on and I managed to gather from her later when we became better acquainted that a shy pool boy had come over and draped a towel over her, which had allowed her to ascertain the lay of the land clothing wise. She had a cute turned up nose I recall that got frecklier as she spent the next few weeks in the sun.

 

In another incident that began when I was sitting at a bar the night before I was planning to drive to the Dead shows in Vegas, I was chatting with a local high school English teacher who was lamenting more as the night went on that she wished she could bring herself to do something like pile into a car with a stranger and his dog and drive off across the desert just to see a band. She claimed to be recently separated from her accountant husband and, long story short, the next afternoon said teacher, my dog, and I were crossing the Hoover Dam into Nevada. It was hot as the bejesus of course and the dog, a Newfoundland who had been down that road before, started whining from the back in anticipation the minute the lake on the other side of the dam came into view. We’d driven down onto the sand and hopped out intending to get cooled off when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the teacher had stripped completely naked and was walking slowly into the lake as doing the closing scene from the Awakening. I guess she felt that since she was going to a Dead show and finally doing something crazy and spur of the moment that she might as well go all out. The line of fisherman with poles in the water and RV guys sitting in the shade nearby were clearly enjoying the spectacle and I didn’t act like anything out of the ordinary had occurred when she came back to the car. I ended up losing her in the crowd at the second show and came to find out that she had hitched a ride with two friends and kept going with the Dead up the coast before costing one of them his marriage and the two their friendship. She eventually returned to the same bar where it all started quite a bit the worse for wear but all bright eyed about the experience and admitted that she hadn’t actually been separated at the time of her departure and in fact hadn’t mentioned to her accountant husband that she was going anywhere more interesting than the mall. The image I have of her torso as she walked methodically into the water that day like Edna Pontellier exactly matches some of the scenes from the dream.

 

I also lived in this apartment in Seattle once that had an odd boarded up shaft next to the bathroom so that it was completely black outside the only window even though fresh air would come down somehow from above. The glass was frosted and we would crack the window often to air the place out. One day I was tending to my morning business when I was suddenly startled by voices that were as clear as if someone had come in to speak with me on the hopper. I quickly traced the sound out into the black of the shaft and found that the inner shaft wasn't black anymore but instead illuminated by a swath of light coming from an adjacent window about four feet away, identical to ours, that also had been opened. The apartment had been vacant until then apparently but what struck me at the time was the pair of perfect breasts that were featured in the four or five inches of light. They were ample and round in steamy profile and would have been beautifully surreal if not accompanied by a voice that was shrilly admonishing someone above the noise of running water about wasting so much “goddamned money on cigars and comic books.” I had many occasions to observe the breasts over the next several months since the owner was given to extended ablutions and all I had to do was peer across any time I heard the squawking commence at her ne’er do well cohabitant who, by the smell of things, would fire up a cigar while sitting on the toilet as soon as she left for work each morning. Never having seen her face, I thought of my neighbor as simply "the breasts" and was perfectly content with the anonymity of the relationship until I was strolling down a back street on Capital Hill on a fine summer day when a front that could only belong to my mystery neighbor came bouncing towards me along the sidewalk. The woman didn’t look at all like I pictured her from the neck up or the waist down having very short hair and a somewhat birdlike appearance to go with a struthious gate and carriage. Her breasts remained perfectly shaped however and I would have thought of them as flawless had I not known about the large mole above the left nipple.

 

I got out of bed finally and marveled at the complete pointlessness of the exercise but was still unsatisfied that I'd tracked the dream to it's very roots. Later that day however, I recalled an incident of breast-feeding I'd noticed at a café the day before - a feeding nonchalantly and unapologetically performed by a woman with blonde kinky hair. 

Roots, copes and topes

Bob Dobbs Bar and Grill

Habitation wise, I’ve been feeling in a bit of a rut lately given that I have resided where I currently reside longer than I’d resided in any one other spot previously (save the spot where I grew up back in Vermont.) And since my father was a geologist who thought of the world as his laboratory and tended to take us gallivanting to all it’s corners every summer, it didn’t really seem like I was in Vermont as long as I was. Kid years don’t count anyway since you can’t control anything and time tends to not seem real.  Anyway, as I was sitting at the corner tavern the other night discussing said rut with other rutters, the topic turned to the past ruts some of us had been in and the other corner taverns that made those ruts possible and even prolonged them in some cases. These days, as layoffs and relocation become more and more of a possibility, we were making lists of places we’d already rutted out and places we wouldn’t mind ending up should we need to rut down again somewhere else.
Transcribed from back of bar mat:

 

Past Habitations	Former Ibibations
Tucson, AZ	Bob Dobbs - (current)
Seattle, WA	Depending on the neighborhood... The Attic, College Inn, Coopers, The Roanoke, Latona
Telluride, CO Juneau, AK	The House - A Tavern, Howie's Floradora The Alaskan Bar, Red Dog Saloon (free beer from eventual wife)
San Francisco, CA	Vesuvio
Lahaina, HI	Water Works
Ann Arbor, MI	Blind Pig
Boulder, CO	James Pub
Keystone, CO	Pug Ryan’s
Future Destinations?	Further Inebriations
Portland, OR	The Horsebrass
Bellingham, WA	Boundary Bay Brewing
Washington, DC	Brickskeller
San Diego, CA	La Jolla Brew House
Galway, Ireland	Tig Coili
Fairbanks, AK	The Malamute Saloon (free beer from next wife?)

There is more to life obviously than having a good corner drinking establishment but not much more perhaps and a comfortable spot to call your own or at least to share with a bunch of like-minded folks who enjoy a pint and a conversation seems essential to any sort of mental well being. Tucson has damnably few of them actually and if I didn’t happen to live down the street from one of them I might have been out of here long ago. Places like Seattle and Portland are the other extreme in that there is a corner pub on nearly every corner. Small towns usually have at least two with clienteles that don't get along with each other making it necessary for one to choose their camp soon after arrival. There are no shortage of comfortable watering holes in most college towns of course which is why so many gradual students have trouble leaving for the real world. The Mormon town were I currently spend half my time is an absolute disgrace as far as corner pubs are concerned with nary a one.

 

Hopefully, when the axe falls, and I'm forced to scurry like the rest of the rats for the corporate exit I’ll be able to keep myself together long enough to rut out a new existence in some other sector of the globe. And if I have any say in the matter it will be in a place with plenty of pubs on plenty of corners that I can walk to.

Alt Country

Who's Country?

I was crafting for a buddy a mixed CD the other day and thought I’d cap off the last spot in the rotation with the old time tested classic “If that ain’t country… I’ll kiss your ass” by David Allan Coe. I used to have the song on a tape somewhere that I pirated off the radio as a kid but couldn’t find it and don’t have the technology to get it onto the computer anyhow so I paid my 99 cents and downloaded it from I-Tunes. There were several versions and I selected the most popular one off a greatest hits collection, added it to the playlist, and hit the burn button. I thought my pal might appreciate the song since he dropped out of med school and now works for a cement company at a plant where he dons a hardhat everyday and often marvels at the tobacco spitting habits of some of his co-workers. I was chuckling when I dropped the CD off in his mailbox (we do this periodically for each other since we both have long commutes) but wasn't laughing awhile later when, while listening to the copy I made for myself as I drove around running some errands with a friend, the line “working like a nigger for my room and board” came through the speakers loud and clear. WTF?

 

The reason I'd thought to include the song was that I’d heard it on a jukebox somewhere recently and, although I wasn’t paying that close attention, I’m pretty sure that line was not included in the version playing at the bar since the rowdy sing along crowd included quite a few that wouldn't have appreciated it. My friend in the car looked at me askance (she’s not really a country music fan in the first place and also happens to have an African American grandmother) and I apologized and said that I’d never heard that line before and must have downloaded some alternate cut. “Don’t apologize to me,” she said. “If that’s what the song says that’s what it says. Freedom of speech right? If the guys got a yard full of hogs and tires stacked all over he’s probably not too worried about my feelings anyway. In fact, it sounds like he might have lived next door to my grandmother back in the day.”

 

Still though it wasn’t really something I wanted booming from my speakers while I waited for folks to clear a crosswalk even if it would probably qualify as some of the tamer stuff you hear thumping out of people's rides these days. After further investigation however, not to mention three more 99 cents spent, I still haven’t found a version without the N word. There’s a track called “If that ain’t country” part 2 which has alternate lyrics in other places but that particular line is unchanged. There’s a You Tube video of the song that doesn’t have that particular line but that doesn’t do me much good. I guess I’ll just take it out of the rotation since who knows when it might rear its head in the middle of a party mix at a point when an impromptu debate on free speech and race relations would not improve the gathering.

 

Too bad though since it paints a colorful scene with a catchy tune. Maybe Mr. Coe should release an updated version to acknowledge the president elect and the hard work that got him where he is. I was just reading the other day how he worked like a redneck in college and grad school and lived like a monk devoted to his studies.

 

And if that ain't this country I'll kiss your ass.

Another list of Top Ten Novels

Inspired by Kitty. Not ranked (although Catch 22 is where it would be if they were)

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Waterland - Graham Swift

The River Why - David James Duncan

A Widow for One Year - John Irving

The Sot Weed Factor - John Barth

Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

All the Kings Men - Robert Penn Warren

Jernigan - David Gates

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

 The complete and utter maleness of the list not intended but noticed and under current analysis

What am I missing about this gay marriage thing?

Why are people so worried that homosexuals are demanding the right to be allowed by law to be as miserable as the rest of us are allowed to be? If one believes that sexual orientation is not a choice (and why would someone consciously choose a lifestyle likely to subject them to bigotry, familial discord, adoption only option, and limitations in potential partners to a tenth of the population) then why shouldn’t committed couples of any stripe be permitted to share each others legal benefits, pleasures and pain? And how does it affect anyone else anyway?

 

I work with a bunch of Mormons. Hard working, friendly people mostly but very insular and smug when it comes to matters such as this. One of them told me that the higher ups in the LDS church sent out a letter to the entire flock encouraging them to vote for the props banning gay marriage. She said the last time they heard from on high about anything voting related was during prohibition. It is also well known that they pumped a bunch of money into the California ban. You’d think a group with a history of being oppressed and run out of places would be more sympathetic to other groups fighting for fair treatment especially since Joseph Smith, their founder, was a known philanderer and teen skirt chaser and the church has their own history of "alternative lifestyles" regarding marriage. Read Jon Krakauer's excellent book Under the Banner of Heaven for more info on that saga. 

Attempting to explain her yes vote, my coworker said that she believes that marriage should be sacred between a man and a woman so they can procreate under god.” Aren’t gays the only group that we can be sure will not be procreating under god or anyone else? And since I also happen to be privy to the fact that this particular young lady is married to a lay about atheist drunk who she is reluctant to have children with due to her fear that she won't be able to raise them properly with him around I guess I don't see why she should be in a postion to dictate the legality of anyone else's cohabitation circumstances. And besides aren't church and state supposed to be separate anyways?

I remain confused.