Boo, Whom!

I do not understand why, once a year, I am expected to feed every kid in the neighborhood. And just try offering these vagabonds real food, some sliced ham or some ‘buffalo wings’ or, God forbid, a little rice pilaf, and see just how quickly your house gets egged. What this ‘Kinder Mafia” demand is pure extravagance; candy – mere empty calories. Their obsession with processed sugar is neither healthy nor logical. Oh, sure, they dress it up in fairy costumes and monster masks but as they go door to door they don’t chant, “Treat or trick”, oh no, because it isn’t about the treat. It’s about the trick, and it’s about the shakedown. This isn’t a holiday. It is income redistribution, socialism out of the barrel of a gummy bear.
*
The roots of Halloween were planted long before Christians had enough saints to celebrate the night before All Hallowed Saint’s Day. The Aztecs were celebrating Dia de los Muertos even before they were speaking Spanish., maybe 3,000 years ago, and the Druids in Ireland were celebrating “Samhain” by carving turnip Jack-o-lanterns 2,500 years before they saw their first pumpkin. ‘And how’, you may ask, ‘did offerings to Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec Goddess who was still born, become individually packaged bags of M&Ms’ left out for a skeleton named Catrina? And I will answer you, ‘Only in a world where the child of Salvador Dali and Ma Barker designs the holidays, that’s where.’
*
This is the night when the line between the dead and the not-yet-dead (also known as The Living) is supposed to become fuzzy, and everyone is concerned about ghosts, spooks and ghouls. But its common knowledge that ghosts can’t manipulate physical objects, so they can only harm you psychologically, meaning Scientologists are safe since they don’t believe in psychology. And nobody should be afraid of “spooks” because once you speak a spook’s name they are “spooken for” and rendered harmless; which is what happened to the spook Valerie Plame. Now Robert Novak, he’s a ghoul and every time you think they’re dead they come back to life again on Fox News. That whole network is staffed by zombies, and is a perfect example of how we are terrified of all the wrong things in this life and the afterlife.
*
But on October 31st, I too will be answering my door bearing a bowl filled with tribute, because I don’t want to spend half of November pulling toilet paper out of my rain gutters. Besides, this is also Reformation Day, when, in 1546, Martin Luther supposedly allegedly nailed his “95 Things I Hate About The Pope” to the front door of the Wittenberg Castle Church and was later arrested for deformation of church property. So, logically, children could be going door to door, calling, “Treat or I’ll nail your ass, you papist bastard, and have you got any Jews hiding in here?” So I guess we’re lucky we got the screwed up holiday we did get. It could have been far worse.
*
The truth (as if that ever mattered about holidays) is that Martin Luther defiantly nailing his arguments to the church door was probably as real as the legend of George Washington chopping down a cheery tree; not. And that may be yet another reason why you never see Martin Luther costumes. I did see a George Washington once, but that was so long ago the costume was probably made in the United States.
*
This year Americans will spend over $6 billion on this mish-mash of a holiday. Almost all of our black and orange fix, like cocaine, is provided by overseas suppliers who have no other connection to us, and although that kind of chump change would barely support the occupation of Iraq for a month it does work out to about $65 per family this year. About 4 million Americans will even be buying costumes for their dog, like PetSmart’s spider web dog collar for $12, or PetCo’s doggie Pumpkin dress up for $16. This canine costume capitalism is surprising considering that dogs and skeletons would seem to be a natural costume combo, popular with dogs as well as the humans, and with the advantage that once the holiday was over you wouldn’t have to store the costume, you just let Rover bury it!
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But we seem determined to spend as much as possible, to prove the depth of our emotional commitment to this “dead holiday thing”, putting 2 million pirates (mostly boys) on the streets Wednesday night, along with 4 million princesses (mostly girls) to look cute and threaten and harass adults, cowering in our homes with only a bowl of bite sized Three Musketeers for protection. It’s the sound that fills the night with horror and chills the bones; “Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something good to eat, or else.”

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YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY

I was doing seventy-two mph one morning, southbound on the 101 in Ventura County, when a small economy car came floating past me. The driver had both bare feet on the dash and was steering with her knees while she used the rear view mirror to apply eye make-up. I guess you could call that a story of the about to be blind being allowed to drive by the evidently blind California DMV. But a similar ‘feat’ landed Martin Veens, from Holland, in dutch while driving down the A55 in Wales, England this past summer. Police had received reports of a 40 ton truck driving “erratically” (meaning weaving) and a helicopter even caught it on video straddling lanes on the “dual carriageway” (meaning freeway). When they pulled him over police found Martin holding a saucepan in his left hand, a fork in his right, and he admitted he had been steering with his knees. Since he also admitted in court that it had been an “outstandingly stupid thing to do” the judge went easy on Martin. He was sentenced to a year in “goal” (jail), had his “permit banned” (license revoked), and before he is allowed to drive trucks again he must take an “extended examination” (bullshit).
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In Abbotsford, Wisconsin, 43 year old Harvey Miller decided that after a night of drinking at a local bar he was too loaded to drive his pick-up truck home. So he enlisted the help of his friend, 48 year old Ed Marzinske. And when they were pulled over by the cops Harvey argued that because he was just steering while Ed operated the gas and brake pedals, he wasn’t technically “driving” the truck. But the cops arrested both men for DUI noting that, one, they were both technically “driving” the truck, two, they were both drunk, three, neither man had a current valid license, four, this was Harvey’s third DUI arrest and Ed’s second, and five, Harvey has no legs. Well, at least they weren’t “blind drunk”.
*
That fete was accomplished by an unnamed 20 year old in Tartu, Estonia, early on a Sunday morning. Cops pulled him over for weaving and then noticed that he kept missing the tube on the breathalyzer, at which point his 16 year old unlicensed passenger (who was also drunk) admitted she had been providing him with directions. The 16 year old was released to her parents. The 20 year old was arrested. Still you have to figure he got off lightly when compared with all that Floyd P. Sincerbeaux, of Lyons, New York, was charged with; felony driving while intoxicated, misdemeanor first degree unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, operating an unregistered motor vehicle, operating an unlicensed and operating an uninsured motor vehicle. The vehicle in question was a cub cadet riding lawnmower. Floyd was released on $2,500 cash bail. I guess he gave the cops an attitude, because 41 year old Chris Guerrero, who was also riding his lawnmower home while drunk, was only charged with driving with a blood alcohol level above 0.08. Chris was even allowed to drive his mower home, followed by the ticketing officer. The difference must be that Chris didn’t give the arresting officer attitude…and he is a Sacramento Sheriff’s Sergeant assigned to the Sacramento County Jail
*
Attitude is often an important factor in determining whether a driver gets a traffic ticket or not, something clearly on the mind of a Moscow driver who this September ran into some roadwork, which damaged his Mercedes. So far it was simply a story of the collision between capitalism and the workers’ paradise, but when these particular workers refused to compensate this particular capitalist on the spot for the damage to his car, the driver, described only as a short man in his late twenties, pulled a pistol and shot dead one construction crewman and wounded a second. Since he didn’t stick around to finish off his second victim I guess that would make the still-at-large shooter a compassionate conservative.
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Time, and overusage, appears to have stripped the definition of both conservative and compassionate of their traditional meanings, as articulated by Indiana State Trooper Al Martinez, who pulled over a Chicago man just trying to get home to his Mommy. A mere ten miles short of the Ohio line Al pulled over an SUV, after receiving calls from several truckers about the eastbound vehicle on the Indiana Toll Road (I-90). Al found the driver naked, with a Tee shirt thrown over his crotch and his hands coated with what appeared to be petroleum jelly. The driver insisted he was on his way to visit his mother in the Buckeye state, but the heartless cop charged the Momma’s boy with lewd conduct. Evidently the driver had handled his sport utility safely as he was not charged with any moiving offenses.
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Would that the same were true for the Jeff Kendell, who was stopped while driving the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, a 27 foot long, 11 foot tall, hot dog and bun shaped vehicle bearing the vanity license plate “Y-U-M-M-Y”. It seems that when Tucson, Arizona highway patrol officer Korey Lankow ran that plate on his computer, YUMMY came back as stolen. Ever vigilant and concerned that some terrorist might be trying to sneak a WMD into the country disguised as a giant wiener, Officer Lankow called for backup and pulled the wiener over. Wiener driver Jeff explained to the three officers who responded to the call for assistance with a giant weiner, that the plates had been stolen in Missouri last February and immediately replaced by the company. The alert on the stolen plates was supposed to carry the notation that if the plates were found on the actual giant wienermobile it was to be ignored, but somehow that notation never made it into the APB, which just proves why we need a Department of Homeland Security, to monopolize those kinds of screw ups in one place, rather than letting them be made by police departments all across the country.
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You might think that the solution to the problem of HBW – humans behind the wheel – would be modern technology, but you would be wrong, considering the determination and perseverance of humans. The classic proof of this "never-say-die" and "never-say-wait-a-minute-let’s-think-about-this" tendency of humans must be the story of Paula Ceely, a 20 year old student at Birmingham Collage who in February of this year decided to visit her boyfriend in the tiny Welsh village of Hebron, Carmarthenshire. And, since she had never been there before, Paula borrowed his SatNav unit, which is EuroSpeak for the Global Positioning System.
*
Speaking of the SatNav unit Paula said later, “I just followed the directions it was giving me”, which might well be the epitaph for future generations of humans. But as darkness and a blinding rain closed in on this night Paula dutifully followed the SatNav down a lonely and dark country lane, which ended at a white farm gate. At first she thought she had been directed to a dead end, but according to the SatNav this was the correct address. So Paula climbed out into the downpour, swung the gate open wide, drove through, and then stopped again and thoughtfully closed the gate behind her. Then to her surprise she noticed a second gate, so she pushed it open as well. And it was at this moment that Paula heard the approaching train.
*
It was the 8 pm express headed for Swansea, going 60 mph and Paula had just parked her car across its tracks. She had time to think about leaping into her car and driving it to safety, but luckily before she could try the several hundred ton express smashed into her Renault Clio, slicing off the engine block and sending the broken hulk spinning half a mile down the track as if it had been kicked by a pissed off King Kong. Paula said later, 'The crossing wasn't shown…there were no signs at all and it wasn't lit up to warn of an oncoming train.”

*

Well, true, but there six signs at the crossing, including the instructions “STOP”, and “Phone Before Crossing”, which appeared on two separate signs. But, I guess Paula was expecting her borrowed SatNav unit to scream in an alarmed voice, “Paula, what the hell are you doing? There’s a train coming! Get the hell out of the way!”

*
And until some human invents something that does that, we humans are going to be on our own, God help us.
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WHATS EATING YOU

I love Halloween. But as I hand out gobs of goodies to little monsters who ring my doorbell I know my door is already open to a truly terrifying creature, a monster that would give the new “The Bionic Woman” with her magnifying eyeball a nervous breakdown, because she could see the eight legged little ladies affectionately called Dermatophagoisdes pteronyssinus, the mighty dust mite (actually some 15 species). Compared to these arthropods, super villains are a mere annoyance, because a couple of hundred thousand of these miniature aliens are scurrying across your flesh right now, like massive minuscule buffalo herds. Feel the sudden urge to scratch? Don’t bother; scratching just creates tiny Alps of dead skin for these buggies to feast upon. The truth is we don’t merely live on this planet; this planet also lives on us. Louis Pasture had it right; even fleas have fleas. And so do we, and so do our fleas and so do the fleas on Jamie Sommers, even if she is now from England.
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Despite their small size (three of them could fit in the period at the end of a sentence and about 42,000 of them live in every once of dust) these driven little arthropods have a massive impact because the Dust Mite does not eat dust – ah, would that dusting had such a dedicated helpmate. Rather they feast on the 50 million flakes (about 1 ½ grams) of skin we shed each and every day. About 80 % of the “dust” you can see floating in a beam of sunlight is your own dead skin, and fodder for these microscopic herbivores. And our mighty mite companions also enjoy munching on hair, pollen grains, fungal spores and bacteria, as well as cigarette ash and tobacco, clothing fibers, fingernail clippings and filings, food crumbs, glue, insect parts, paint chips, salt and sugar crystals and even graphite; in short everything and anything we are, use or touch, they eat and regurgitate and re-eat and re-regurgitate, etc., etc. (Dust mites have no digestive tracts). When you sleep (we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed) your body and bedding is transformed into an Acaroliocal Park (acarology being the study of dust mites) which makes Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Park" look like it had been stepped on by an Apatasaurous. As much as half the weight in your ten year old mattress could be the 10 million mites who live there and depend on you for their dinner each time you lay you down and go to sleep.
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Mites don’t like sunlight and they love high humidity, meaning when you climb into bed tonight they will be there to welcome you, waiting for you to exhale. They also love rugs and carpets, dusty bookshelves and dusty books and nooks and crannies on fabric covered furniture. And they are completely harmless – except that their poop and their desiccated corpses are a source of human allergies and likely a cause of asthma. During a mite’s lifetime of 3 to 4 weeks she can produce 200 times her own weight in mighty pop and leave 300 cream colored mighty mite eggs, all capable of taking your breath away. A dehumidifier helps with the allergies (dust mite populations drop at anything below 50% humidity) and regular vacuuming can help keep their populations under control. But there are studies showing that carpet or mattress shampooing or even using a Hepafilter on your vacuum cleaner merely increases the resident population because it moistens it and scatters it. These tiny bugs have evolved so closely with us that there are no conditions or chemicals that will kill them without doing the same thing to us. So basically, the best we can hope for in our war with dust mites is a draw, because the world of the dust mite is a familiar yet strange place where air behaves more like water and a each human hair supports an isolated ethos.
*
And as every Ying has its Yang, and every Jamie Sommers has her Sarah Corvus, the herbivore dust mite has engendered the family Cheyletidae, the micro-predatory dust mite, which can be 6 – 8% of the total mighty mite population. These minuscule lions and tigers and bears stalk their prey every night, even migrating with them onto and off your body, unseen and largely unfelt, pouncing with vicious crushing microscopic jaws. They are no less heartless for their lack of a need for a heart. Some digest their food inside its own shell (something to think about the next time you eat crab) by injecting masticating juices, and some of these tiny predators even consume the shell, reducing their meals to a tiny pile of mush before consuming it.
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There is a hint that the mighty mites are the survivors of a once more varied population of “guest workers”, as was attested to by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, just before vespers on December 29, 1170. What was amazing was what happened to the Archbishop’s corpse, as described in Hans Zinsser’s 1935 epic book, “Rats, Lice and History”, beginning with Zinsser’s description of the dead Archbishop’s robes of office. When he was murdered Becket was wearing, “…a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, …robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen.” As Becket’s corpse grew cold the successive layers of robes also cooled, and all the little creatures that had been living within the folds and pleats started looking for a new home. Wave after wave of various fleas, ticks, spiders, pincher bugs, and other creatures flowed out from the corpse, “…like water in a simmering cauldron” producing in the hushed mourners gathered in the dim cathedral, “…alternate weeping and laughter…’”. Those Saxons; they sure knew humor when they saw it, skittering across the blood stained marble floor.
*
Not only did the dead Becket popularize the hair shirt, but his corpse offered an abject lesson in the realty of life before the invention of the water heater. Without easy access to warm water people tended not to bathe. And that made them much more intimate with their pests and parasites than we of the hygienic era. But despite our best efforts we still live with the mighty Dust Mite. In fact, if you listen very carefully, you can probably hear them marching across your skin right now, looking for a snack.

*

Sleep tight, and don't let the dust mites bite. And Trick or Treat, bon appetit.

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AN IDIOT FOR A CLIENT

I tell you that hiring an attorney to sue somebody is like hiring your own flesh eating bacteria, and now another lawsuit arrives to prove my point. Greg Calvino is an idiot as validated by the $100,000 check he wrote to prove his sincerity to Miss Elisa Kwon. They were in a two year relationship at the time (2005), and she says Calvino said she could cash the check if he ever tried to shove another strip club prostitute up his nose. And Miss Kwan says she believed him; silly girl. Evidently Ms. Kwan was unfamiliar with basic boiler room technique (a variation on the Nigerian lottery scam) in which the sucker is offered something later of alleged value in exchange for their cash right now. Of course the thing of value turns out to be worthless, but by the time the mark figures that out their cash is gone, as is the con artist. Scams like this are invented not by devious criminal geniuses but by opportunists who, in their struggle against their own demons rob their victims almost as an unintended consequence. In this specific case, the thing Calvino wanted was Miss Kwan’s honor and the worthless thing of alleged value he promised was the $100,000 check. OR maybe she was familiar with the scam, since the idiot actually signed the check and gave it to her to hold. And it was good!
*
Mr. Calvino is a stock broker and the boy clearly has no respect for money or for Miss Kwan, either, because in July this year Calvino filed a claim demanding his money back, alleging that Miss Kwan was actually blackmailing him by threatening to go to his bosses with allegations of his boozing and whoring and drug use unless he wrote her the check. (Like his bosses didn’t know already know he was an idiot.) But, at the end of September, Miss Kwan filed her response, replete with copies of an instant message exchange in which Calvino apologized to her for boozing it up at “Flashdancers”, and Kwan reminds him that he also failed a “Rite-Aid” urine drug test for cocaine. Calvino then admits, “If you want to keep the money it’s yours to start anew”, because, “I didn’t hold up my part of the bargain.”
*
We’ll just pass over the problematic idea of dating an idiot whose urine you feel the need to test (after all she did get the idiot to write her the check) and proceed directly to the question of what the hell was this idiot thinking? First he wrote her the check and then after she cashed it, like Oscar Wilde before him, Greg Calvino sued, an act of stupidity presumably justified as “defending his honor”. He’s a stock broker. He has no honor. And he’s already in the hole for the hundred grand (and the cash for the cocaine, the booze and the prostitutes) and now he’s also paying a lawyer! What an idiot!
*
Did you hear about the $67 million pair of trousers? The media and the blogs portrayed the dry cleaners, the Chungs, as hard working immigrants almost driven from their new country by a legal lunatic, Judge Roy Pearson, who sued because the Chungs lost his $20 trousers. But until he sued the Chungs couldn’t find his pants. Then they did, answering the question, if anybody had asked it, what do you have to do to get a little service in this life? But more to the point, what kind of an idiot expects to be treated fairly by a Dry Clearners? People do not open dry cleaning business because they like the smell of dry cleaning fluid. The whole business is a fraud, as proven by the very phrase “dry cleaning fluid”. The only way a dry cleaner makes money is in volume, and customer service, like keeping track of individual items of clothing, wastes their time. And the only way owning clothing that requires ‘dry cleaning’ could make your life worse is if you get lawyers involved.
*
In the end, Mr. Pearson’s lack of legal perspective on the case cost him his appointed position as an Administrative law judge, which had paid him over $100,000 a year. And the Chungs lost their store – but they still own two others. Maybe some of those who sent them money would like to sue them for a refund. Face it; the American Judicial system provides all the justice we are willing to pay for, and we are a nation of cheap bastards.
*
Like when hedge fund manager Stuart Sugarman was pedaling his little heart out in ‘Spin Class’ at the Equinox Gym in Upper East Side of Manhattan, grunting like Tim Allen in a testicle clamp and shouting things like “You go girl!” This pissed off stock broker Chistopher Carter who was struggling to burn off carbs a bike or two away (In fact, some who witnessed the pedal-by-assault say Sugarman was working so enthusiastically he kept bumping into Carter’s cycle). After politely asking Sugarman to “shut the fuck up” a couple of times and being told, “This is spin class; Grow up”, Carter dismounted his bike and shoved Sugarman and his bike into the wall, thus proving the admonition to “grow up” was not taken by either of these idiots. Carter then returned to his pedaling…and so did Sugarman - for another 45 minutes, but presumably with his big fat mouth shut this time. And it all happened because Sugarman was too cheap to pay for a private class.
*
But a few minutes after class Sugarman says he started to feel neck pain and called for an ambulance (on his own cell phone). Should I think it odd the gym, filled with trainers, didn’t offer to help or call or him? In any case, during his two week stay at Lenox Hill Hospital (during which he allegedly required a 3 hour operation on his spine) Sugarman was informed (by phone) that his gym membership had been cancelled. Insult to injury, I guess. Sugarman’s lawyer (ah, you knew he had one!) came out swinging, calling the assault a case of “spin rage”, and Carter’s lawyer (and you knew he had one, too) called the publicity generated an attempt to build a civil suit. The New York Post headlined the story, “Gym Victim Is Wheely Angry”, along with a picture of Sugarman in wheel chair and neck brace as if made up for a remake of “The Fortune Cookie”. But the Manhattan D.A. would only charge Carter with a misdemeanor assault, and I predict that at least one of these idiots is going to end up suing his lawyer.
*
As probably will another lower Manhattan denizen, the new Mrs. Elana Glatt, who has decided to sue the florist for her wedding, because the flowers provided “…had a significant impact on the look of the room…” which was “…entirely inconsistent with the vision the plaintiffs had bargained for…”. So she’s suing them for $400,000. We shall just pretend that anybody selfish enough to spend that kind of money on a one time event like a wedding while George Bush can cancel health care for millions of children is the very definition of a bitch. And I’m willing to bet you that the lawsuit over the flowers lasts longer than the marriage, because if all this twit wants to remember from her wedding is that the centerpieces did not meet her personal standards for hue then God help her husband if he should ever get caught stuffing a prostitute up his nose at strip club, because she’ll kill him in the divorce
- 30 -