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not my recession
Thursday, June 14 2001
I remember when I first started using the web back in 1995 how amazed I was by the sheer volume of information available "at my finger tips" (or, if you prefer, "at the click of a mouse"). I immediately assumed that the web was far larger than it actually was, that all the world's literature was already there and that all the people putting pages on the web were celebrities drowning in their respective email deluges. You can imagine my amazement, then, when I'd write to someone like Jon Katz telling him his article in HotWired kicked ass and he'd actually write me back the same day. But that didn't amaze me nearly as much as that time back in 1997 when Grinder spontaneously emailed me to give me props for the shit I was stirring with Ellie.
Now of course, the web is just another aspect of the environment where I dwell. Though it's significantly bigger and noisier than it was back then, it's much less of a mystery. I know how it works both technologically and sociologically. It's a place, a medium, a junk drawer, a paper trail, even, perhaps, a form of afterlife. But it's no substitute for sitting around a smoky living room with some friends, drinking Milwaukee's Beast and waiting for the pizza to arrive.
I heard someone on the radio the other day saying that, in the present economic climate, there's a prevailing attitude of "it's not my recession." People might be nervous about their jobs and their mortgages, but real estate prices aren't dropping and people (with the possible exception of those in the remaining husk of the dotcom bubble) are still demanding the salaries they did during the height of the go-go 90s. In terms of what I'll accept for a job offer or the sale price of my condo, this definitely is not my recession. But in terms of my spending habits, I'm concerned about the future and I'm trying to be as thrifty as possible. I'm always running worst-case simulations through my mind. What if I lost my job and didn't find another for two months? Could I make my mortgage?
If the American Congress didn't have so much power, their antics would be hilarious. Ever since George W. Bush took office, the arch-conservatives have been advancing one ridiculous proposal after another. These ideas are so quaint and folksy, they take me back in a sort of fetishistic way to the folksy down-home traditional conservatism of my elementary school experience in Redneckistan. I'm talking about a time and place when children were semi-publicly spanked, when prayers preceded school days and lunchtimes, and when once a week the children were herded into "bible trailers" just off school grounds so they could be educated in the ways of the Christian Lord.
The way social conservatives think about children has always given me the willies. There seems to be a fetishizing aspect to their concern for the purity of children, especially since this concern is usually coupled with a desire to "get tough" on misbehaving children. The same conservatives who bring us mandatory internet filters and school prayer also bring us classroom spankings, ridiculous zero-tolerance policies, and death penalties for children and the retarded. Which do you think is really worse for a child?
- Being coerced into saying a prayer for a religion to which he does not belong.
- Being spanked by a teacher in front of his classmates for accidentally saying "damn."
- Being sent to an juvenile facility/adult prison for a drug offense.
- Seeing a picture of a naked lady with a shaved pussy.
Today I heard on the news that the Republicans were trying to get language added to Bush's education package that would require schools to punish all children equally for infractions, regardless of any disability. I can envision the world as these guys would like it, and it makes my skin crawl. Imagine, if you will, handicapped children being lifted out of their wheelchairs, spanked, and then placed in electric chairs to be dispatched. I sincerely believe that fantasizing about such things brings blissful erotic pleasure to the likes of Jesse Helms, especially if the handicapped children are black girls with suspected lesbian tendencies.
For some reason, my particular neighborhood is home to an unexpectedly large number of Jewish Persians, people who probably left Iran back when the Ayatollah was on a rollah. There's a Persian Jewish community/daycare center along my way to work and it puzzled me for a long time because its Arabic-script signage seemed at odds with its clearly Jewish features. My favorite thing about this community center is the sign in front that says "Do not Horn" (complete with a picture of a bugle).
The day was beautiful and sunny, with a summery kind of heat that doesn't happen too often in my part of Los Angeles. It was the sort of day that just made you want to say "fuck work, I'm going to the beach."
John and I hung out in the evening on the front stoop drinking beers and listening to loud mom-friendly alternative music. Above us hung bottle brush boughs and my nearly one-year-old tomato vine, which has climbed nearly up to my bedroom window.
We walked over to Wellesley briefly to look at a big hole in the ground where a new condo complex will soon be constructed. The hole, which was the size of the entire lot, had another hole at its base that reached maybe 15 feet into the ground. The entire cross section of the soil was uniform and brown, without a single rock or indication of strata. Such deep, uniform top soil would be an agricultural asset if it rained a little more (and there were fewer people) in this region. It's always good to note what free resources are available at nearby construction sites. Today, for example, we obtained a very comfortable lawn chair.
Eventually we were joined by Farley, whom John hadn't seen since his stint as Farley's tonsillectomy babysitter (only to be fired by Farley's gnomish billionaire father from his job as Farley's "life skills coach").
Farley told us that his acting career is really starting to take off; he's evidently found himself a gig on a game show of some sort, and it pays $450/show. Knowing Farley's father is good friends with George W. Bush, we asked if perhaps Farley could arrange to get the Bush daughters to visit us. "We promise to get beer!" John vowed. "I'll see what I can do," said Farley.
Farley told me he'd recently been to New Orleans and had eaten at Tujagues, the site of my first-ever successfully-completed ménage de trois. This sent me on a nostalgic walk down memory lane, so I dragged Farley upstairs and showed him the page where I cryptically documented my Tujagues experience. I went on to show him the McVeigh execution video that John and I had so obviously faked. We'd been talking about the video earlier, but Farley had already forgotten the conversation and kept asking, "Come on, is that real?"
In search of "something to do," we walked down to McCleans and challenged a couple skinny Asian guys to a round of pool. Somehow we won, only to lose a second round due to the premature sinking of the eight ball. There were no chicks in McCleans, so we headed further west down Wilshire to O'Brien's. Unexpectedly, Farley actually had some cash on him, and he was even being generous, buying us fish & chips and even a shot of expensive scotch. For a rich boy, though, he was sure being a martyr about it.
The pool table at O'Brien's was dominated by a tall Scottsman with an impenetrably thick accent. It turns out that he was something of an asshole, though it was hard for me to tell since I couldn't understand anything he was saying. John could, however, and the first indication of his assholism was his nitpickiness over the rules. I learned, for example, that I couldn't make shots by hitting the opponent's balls into my own. I'd never played with that rule before.
For a time Farley took a keen interest in the game, having told us that he was "really good" at pool. But he wasn't, as it turned out, any good at all, allowing the Scottsman to patronize him with detailed instructions and even postural guidance prior to his every shot. But after a few rounds of this, Farley grew bored of the game and went to chat up two girls at the bar. These girls must have been the absolutely ugliest chicks in the joint, I mean, they were painful to look at. Mind you, it wasn't even a weight thing; they just looked funny. But there was Farley, chatting them up like they were suitable specimens, clearly making their night. Suddenly we realized the gnarly reality behind all of Farley's bar cruising stories, which usually go something like this:
So I was like talking to this chick in this bar and she was like really hitting on me and I was just talking, you know? And then she said she wanted to go home with me and have sex with me. But I didn't really want to. But I got her phone number!
Obviously, if Farley always chats up the ugliest chicks in the bar, it's less likely he's going to want to do much more than talk to them. For his part, John's new rule is that he will only hit on the hottest chick in the bar, whether she has a boyfriend or not.
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