Category: Essays

It’s all about **Oil!** today at MacPhoenix. There are three illogical and pandering ideas floating out in the [memesphere][1] today. Let’s approach them one at a time.

First, we have the [scary Iranians who won’t take good old dollar bills][2] for their tainted oil anymore! There is a long-standing fear when some company or supermodel won’t take money in US Dollars anymore, [but it’s irrational][3]. Iran is certainly using it as propaganda, however. It sounds very scary.

The only thing it reflects is that, since the dollar is falling, anyone who sells something by contract will want to minimize loss between the time that they sell something and the time that they get paid. So *Oil Producer* sold 1 barrel of oil on Monday for $100, but didn’t get paid until Friday. If the dollar fell .1% by Friday, *Oil Producer* lost 10 cents because the $100 was now worth $99.90. When the dollar falls, it makes sense for any international company to try to get paid in a stable currency.

But it doesn’t affect the price of oil or whether or not our currency is falling. There are several reasons for that, the biggest being that [our trade deficit is too high][4], but not because companies want to get paid in another currency. If oil were priced in [Quatloos][9], and our dollar was falling, it would still be more expensive for us to buy oil.

America is not permitted to do business with Iran, in any case. Iran, as the **CNN** article notes well after the scary lede, has been divesting itself of dollars for years. This makes sense. When you can’t buy something from the merchant, why keep the scrip?

On the second meme, CNN provides more laughs with an [interview with the head of **Shell Oil**][5]. Bet you thought that the $7.8 *billion* profit was excessive. Well not according to John Hofmeister:

>Look at our revenues and our income for the last quarter. If we had made $7.8 million on $114 million of revenue, nobody would call that excessive, because that’s 7.5 percent. We made $7.8 billion profit on $114 billion revenue — same 7.5 percent. So to me that is not an excessive number when banks and pharmaceuticals and IT companies earn a whole lot more.

Okay. For no reason in particular, I want to write out the zeros in 7.8 billion. Please indulge me. $7,800,000,000. Only eight zeros! Damn that .8! But Mr. Hofmeister is correct. In 2004, [Shell Oil was only the *5th* most profitable][6] company in the world, while banks like **Citigroup** and **HSBC**, IT companies like **General Electric**, and that famous pharmaceutical, **ExxonMobil** earned a whole lot more.

Anyway, the main thing here in the CNN article is the idea that America must drill more oil in order to meet the supply, and by implication, help lower or stabilize the cost of gas at the pump. [This is false.][7] Oil is sold on market that is worldwide. If oil is extracted in America, it is still sold on this worldwide market. We have something on the order of 4% of the known oil underneath us. If we extracted ALL OF IT, IMMEDIATELY, it would raise the amount of oil on the market by 4%. Since we consume about half the world’s oil, one can figure that it would save us about 2% to purchase that oil.

Of course, all things aren’t equal and there is a cost to extracting, refining, and shipping that oil or gasoline. It also actually can’t be extracted immediately. It would take years. Additionally, there is no reason to expect that any other oil producing nation won’t adjust it’s output to keep oil the same price, since that would be in its best interest to keep the price stable and it can sit on their reserves as long as necessary. However, once we extract all our oil, it’s gone forever, leaving us in a weaker position than before we drilled the oil.

What does it do for us then, if we drill for more oil? It makes money for companies like Shell Oil who make profits on drilling, refining, and shipping oil and gasoline. It isn’t so strange then that the president of Shell would advocate drilling for more oil. It isn’t so strange that President Bush would continue his call to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, as he has done for 8 years now.

Finally, the last meme is the political pandering calling for a summer of tax-free gasoline. [This is another bad idea.][8] The way that John McCain wants to do it, it would amount to a tax break for oil companies. You know, the same companies that earn around $7.8 *billion* dollars *EVERY THREE MONTHS*, because the supply of gas is maxxed out. We’re paying as much as we can because it is high demand, but the supply can’t be raised. If the tax rate is dropped, it will *raise demand*, but there is no more gasoline to be had, which will cause the price to shoot up! Hey presto! More money for Mr. Hofmeister.

Hillary Clinton’s plan sounds more palatable to your average socialist, since it would pay for the tax relief by increasing the tax on the oil companies. Except, hey! once again, remove the tax at the pump and increase demand which will drive up prices. It doesn’t help consumers one bit, and the increase in taxes that the oil companies pay would be offset by the huge run on the tax-free cost of gasoline.

So, OPEC may continue to accept dollars, we may open up protected parkland to oil drilling, and we may have a tax-free summer at our gas pumps, but not one bit of this will help consumers. The only thing that would seem to help our falling dollar and the price of gasoline is to reduce our demand for oil.

When is that meme going to start floating around our oil-slicked stream of consciousness?

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memesphere
[2]: http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/04/30/iran.oil.ap/index.html
[3]: http://www.prospect.org/cs/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=oil_is_priced_in_dollars_it_do
[4]: http://www.prospect.org/cs/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=04&year=2008&base_name=the_falling_dollar_is_a_sympto
[5]: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/30/shell.qa/index.html
[6]: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_30/b3893142.htm
[7]: http://www.prospect.org/cs/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=04&year=2006&base_name=arctic_oil_nonsense
[8]: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/gas-tax-follies/
[9]: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Quatloo

I’ve always been interested in how issues are framed. Many political issues are framed in specific ways by their proponents, and eventually it becomes difficult to see the issue in anyway but how it’s been framed for so long. In the long-running abortion debate, abortion foes used “[partial birth][1]” as a way to frame the debate around the emotionally and mentally repugnant method of late period abortion. It is very difficult to argue with the image of a viable baby being killed by a doctor, just so a woman doesn’t have to have a child. It frames abortion-choice advocates as cold baby-killing monsters. It’s a very effective framing device that totally misses the core of the abortion issue, which is a patriarchal society that prevents women from making informed choices about sex and its myriad repercussions.

Framing, I thought, focused on a particularly narrow, and often anomalous, aspect of a larger issue, in order for its partisans or detractors to influence those who are not quite as informed or vested. But I’ve begun to change my view of framing. In very devious hands, framing can narrow a point of view in order to let thieves and scoundrels have their way with everything else that we’re no longer focusing on.

We have this in the “waterboarding” debate. It seems like a perfectly framed issue. Its defenders even coined “waterboarding,” since that sounds less like torture than, oh, let’s say, “water torture.” (As a less-PC child, I remember we called it “Chinese water torture.” Maybe kids in China are now calling it “American waterboarding” when they spray hoses and water guns at their friends during the summer.) People who are, rightfully, aghast at the thought of torture, argue that waterboarding should be banned, while defenders say it is barely a form of torture at all.

Meanwhile, we’ve lost sight of the greater issue, which is how America is conducting itself in matters of law and justice, both at home and abroad. This invariably happens when an issue is framed. Framing is not always a bad thing, because it helps people who are not totally vested to make some sense of a very large and complex issue. However, my argument here is that the defenders of waterboarding are not defending waterboarding at all; they are distracting and misdirecting us all specifically by framing the debate around waterboarding.

It’s simply this: Take an offensive, but not unthinkable, method of torture and put it into the public’s collective head. Sure, it simulates drowning, but no one actually drowns. We even subject our own military to it to train them against this effective interrogation technique. If it saves us from another terrorist attack like 9-11, it will be totally worth it.

But if America has actually waterboarded a dozen men, I would be surprised. Wait. Let me rephrase that. If America has actually waterboarded a dozen men *to gather intelligence during an interrogation*, I would be surprised. It is a non-issue to our government. However, by focusing on this, we continue to ignore the systematic destruction of laws that protect us from our own government. If the defenders of waterboarding succeed in convincing us as a nation that waterboarding is not torture and/or it is necessary for the security of our country, they have won a small victory, but the larger victory will be that the small, framed issue will be settled and obscured the real problem.

The active act in framing security and freedom in the time of terrorism into a debate on waterboarding was done solely to distract the public from the loss of *habeas corpus* and fourth-amendment rights, and the government hiring mercenary armies not subject to American or international law.

And thinking about this, I began to understand that framing isn’t specifically issue-centric. Because framing hyper-accentuates a point, it leaves everything else around it in shadow. Masters of framing can frame places and groups and people. They use framing as a test-bed to launch larger campaigns. And sometimes framing entails framing in another sense.

Tonight, CBS is “bravely” telling the story of disgraced Alabama governor, Don Siegelman. (Bravely, in quotes, because they are putting this story up against **The Oscars**, which means no one will see it until it repeats. If it repeats.) Siegelman was convicted of seven counts of public corruption in a trial that prompted [Scott Horton][3] to [write in Harper’s][2]:

>… I have spent over a month looking at this case. I have spoken with a number of journalists who covered the trial, pulled out and read the transcripts, talked to figures involved in the case. And I have received tips and messages from Alabamians who are trying feverishly to spin the case one way or the other. My conclusion: I have no idea whether in the end of the day, Mr. Siegelman is guilty or innocent of corruption. But that the prosecution was corruptly conceived and pursued and that the court proceedings were corrupted, almost from the outset: that is already extremely clear. This is not a prosecution of a political figure for corruption. It is a political vendetta, conceived, developed and pursued for a corrupt purpose.

Siegelman is a Democrat and was literally framed by Karl Rove. Framed, in the sense that Siegelman faced up to 30 years in jail for [one count of bribery, one count of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud, four counts of honest services mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice][4]. (His sentence was 7+.) Framed, also, in the sense that Rove used this as an audacious test to see if his machinations were nimble enough to escape public scrutiny. It is, after all, just Alabama. Who would notice? It was a successful test of his power to eliminate political foes by any means. It was framed to seem innocuous. (What, another public official accused of bribery? Yawn.) But the larger issue was shaded underneath: Don’t mess with the Republicans.

Remember this when Democrats take the presidency in 2008. The machinery of Republican domination, started after Nixon, has been in place for a long time, and Clinton’s impeachment (another framed device–they knew they were going to lose, but it positioned [many][5] [operatives][6]) was just a test run, which succeeded in taking off impeachment for an extraordinarily corrupt administration.

[1]: http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-golden-mean-position-on-abortion.html
[2]: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/06/hbc-90000351
[3]: http://www.harpers.org/subjects/ScottHorton
[4]: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/June/06_crm_409.html
[5]: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/running-out-of-choices-by-digby-is-this.html
[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucianne_Goldberg

I’m an elitist populist. I believe democracy is the best form of government, but it’s insanely important to have checks in that government to protect (and even foster) minority opinions. This is because we are incredibly and eternally stupid, stupid people. We believe all sorts of very dumb things, no matter how smart and reasonable we are. I, for instance, believe that democracy is the best form of government despite it needing well-reasoned and intelligent people to make it work.

After a couple of hundred years, our leaders are doing their best to end our terrible experiment with democracy. The Senate passed an unnecessary bill granting the federal government ability to spy on us with no oversight. This bill also give telecom companies, like **AT&T**, immunity from prosecution for helping the federal government spy on us without oversight, while it was illegal. Kings are not ideal leaders for representative democracies, but a large portion of idiots in this country want one anyway. Currently, [the House of Representatives is holding back][4] the passage of this bill into law, but I’m sure it is just a matter of days until the King gets his bill passed and his 5 or 6 business buddies all sigh with relief.

It’s the cynic in me that sees commercials for products like the [Kinoki][1] footpad or the [Riddex][2] pest control system, and says, “we’re all doomed.” **Kinoki** is a pad soaked in vinegar that claims to rid the body of poisons and toxins. This makes sense as evolution has left the human body without a liver. **Riddex** keeps pests away through the miracle of *digital-pulse* technology. You plug it in, and it sends some sort of electric signal through your home’s electrical system. Apparently, bugs and rats are fine with 50-60 Hz, but send a *digital* pulse at some unknown frequency, and they go packing. It is all so reasonable. I’ve read reviews that said that the ultrasonic version of Riddex was crap, but the electric modulation one (that’s the less sci-fi term for digital-pulse) really works. Well, I’m convinced. Let me buy two, because, according to the ad, the pulses only work for about 2,000 sq ft, so each floor of your home should have one. How those digital-pulses can leap from circuit to circuit, but cannot go floor to floor, I can’t explain. Luckily, both Riddex and Kinoki will send me a second batch of their products ABSOLUTELY FREE. All I have to do is pay shipping and handling. Sounds like a deal.

But the parent company of Riddex made some [$2 million][3] last quarter selling their bunk. I’m sure Kinoki is experiencing similar success. It takes me a second or two to see the flaws in these ripoffs, but many people are taken in by them. Instead, I’m a sucker for sob-stories and emotional appeals. Luckily, all I have to do is shut off my compassion, and I won’t fall for scams based on them. That seems like a fair trade. I won’t care about my fellow men, so I don’t get taken, and my fellow men can continue to get suckered and feed my cynicism. It’s a great way to maintain the *status quo*, and eventually decay into ruin.

[1]: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_Kinoki_detox_foot_pads_work
[2]: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/01/15/riddex-plus-gets-rid-of-pests-the-easy-way-with-motorolla-tech/
[3]: http://www.pr-inside.com/dynamic-response-group-s-riddex-tops-r286791.htm
[4]: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_277.php

Pat Robertson endorses Rudy Giuliani. What a meeting of the weasels. A lot of coverage of this points out that Robertson says that [American gays and liberals caused the 9/11 attack][1], which goes against Giuliani’s message of “Terra Terra Terra! Muslims! [Only I can protect you! Even though I didn’t before!][2] Look over there! Brown people!” Missing from this coverage is what a dangerous, amoral, corrupt man Robertson is.

From [Wikipedia][3]:

> Robertson repeatedly supported former President of Liberia [Charles Taylor][4] in various episodes of his *700 Club* program during the United States’ involvement in the Liberian Civil War in June and July of 2003. [Robertson accuses][5] the U.S. State Department of giving President Bush bad advice in supporting Taylor’s ouster as president, and of trying “as hard as they can to destabilize Liberia.”
>
> Robertson was criticized for failing to mention in his broadcasts his $8,000,000 (USD) investment in a Liberian gold mine. Taylor had been indicted by the United Nations for war crimes at the time of Robertson’s support.
and:
> Robertson has also been accused of using his tax-exempt, nonprofit organization, Operation Blessing, as a front for his own financial gain, and then using his influence in the Republican Party to cover his tracks. After making emotional pleas in 1994 on *The 700 Club* for cash donations to Operation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from Rwanda to Zaire, it was later discovered, by a reporter from *The Virginian-Pilot*, that Operation Blessing’s planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the Robertson-owned African Development Corporation, a venture Robertson had established in cooperation with Zaire’s dictator, [Mobutu Sese Seko][6], whom Robertson had befriended earlier in 1993. According to Operation Blessing documents, Robertson personally owned the planes used for Operation Blessing airlifts….
>
> An [investigation by the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Office of Consumer Affairs][7] determined that Robertson “willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements and other implications” and called for a criminal prosecution against Robertson in 1999. However, Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican whose largest campaign contributor two years earlier was Robertson himself, intervened, accepting that Robertson had made deceptive appeals but overruling the recommendation for his prosecution. No charges were ever brought against Robertson. “Two years earlier, while Virginia’s investigation was gathering steam, Robertson donated $35,000 to Earley’s campaign — Earley’s largest contribution.”

So Robertson went from supporting Charles Taylor to Mobutu Sese Seko to Rudy Giuliani. Hey, color me impressed by that endorsement.

But Giuliani is a Republican. That whole field is filled with [crazy][12], [amoral][13] [losers][14]. The best there is [Huckabee][11], who is a [Dominionist][10]. How’s the Democratic field then?

Well, I had high-hopes for Barack Obama, who, like Kerry and Gore before him, is showing us how not to run a campaign. [Social Security crisis][8]? [Mining rights][9]? Really? This is the best you’ve got, Obama? Hillary Clinton has all the baggage of a Clinton, and she’s a supporter of the status-quo in Iraq, a saber-rattler for Iran, and friend to the corporation. She would be immeasurably better at running the country than Bush, but it’s still a Hobson’s choice, Clinton or no-one. I’m hoping that Dodd or Edwards gets some momentum, but it is unlikely. My sincerest hope is that Clinton doesn’t pick someone like Joe Lieberman as her running-mate. 2008 looks like a fun year of bad choices.

[1]: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/058296.php
[2]: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13499.html
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson#Charles_Taylor.2C_gold.2C_diamonds_and_racehorse_controversy
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_G._Taylor
[5]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A35786-2003Jul9
[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko
[7]: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/blumenthal
[8]: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=11&year=2007&base_name=obama_caves_to_the_special_int
[9]: http://alterdestiny.blogspot.com/2007/11/obama-panders-to-nevada-voters.html
[10]: http://revcom.us/a/033/dominionism-be-very-afraid.htm
[11]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Huckabee#Political_positions
[12]: http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2007/10/ron-paul-still-.html
[13]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1638065,00.html
[14]: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/056506.php

My older, fatter cat, Jinx, likes to play this game where she gets under the bed-sheets and turns over onto her back, with all four paws sticking up, making a deadly tent of cat fury. She waits for a hand to “attack” her in this position, and she grabs it with her front paws, rakes with her back claws, and bites and growls and twists. Katherine cuts Jinx’s nails regularly, so she usually does very little damage to me or the sheets until she gets a little worked up. When she does, it’s usually her biting that threatens to injure.

She’s not really trying to hurt me; although, I doubt my cat-hostile friends, like Jim, would agree with me. Jim’s a dog person and would take Jinx’s actions as the just the typical thing a vicious nasty ol’ cat would do. I, however, think of it the same way as playing “tug-o’-war” with a dog. While the dog is holding on to the end of whatever, the dog will begin to growl and threaten and make those bug-eyes, snapping its jaw to get a better grip, and it gets more aggressive the longer its playing. It’s the nature of the particular beast.

So really, I usually don’t overreact when Jinx gets a good bite or scratch on me during the game. She hardly plays anymore, anyway, since she’s a bit more mature, and she lets the younger cat do all the dominating.

But a few weeks ago, she jumped up on the bed, got under the sheets, and flipped over. Her nails had just been cut a couple days before. I reached down into the cauldron of death, and Jinx swiped at just the right moment and… Bing! a single claw sunk into my right pinky. I yelped and pulled my hand away. Jinx flipped back over immediately, knowing something was wrong, and got out, back on top of the sheets. Her ears were back, and she walked a bit away from me, as if trying to convince me that she wasn’t the cat that just did that thing that made me react like that.

The shock of it, at first, was all I felt. It hurt, but no more than other lucky shots she’s given me. I looked at the puncture, and it was a slight blue mark right below the fleshy part of the fingertip. Then wave after wave of throbbing pain overloaded my senses. Suddenly, this motherfucker hurt! It was a pain I felt once before, when I got my blood-gasses checked and the pulmonary doctor stuck a needle into an artery in my wrist. He warned me that it would hurt, but I still wanted to punch the guy to get him off of me. If I hadn’t been watching him, I would have sworn he was stepping on my wrist with spiked boots. It was an intense pain.

Now, with this good hit from Jinx, the blood began to flow, seemingly more than should come from a wound that I could barely see. The blood was dark and steady. I’m pretty sure she nicked my vein. For about 10 minutes, I paced from the bedroom to the bathroom and back while holding my hand above my head, pressing a tissue into my pinky. It may have looked like I was trying to staunch the blood flow, and that was indeed what happened, but really, my hand was over my head because I was in a decent amount of blinding pain, and it was the only place that I could hold my hand where I couldn’t look at it. It felt *better* not to look at it. I kept saying, “Wow,” and “Whoa,” under my breath. I became clammy, sweaty and pale.

Eventually, I washed my finger off, and marveled again at the tiniest of wounds. I put a bandage on it, and it didn’t bleed much again during the night. The pain went away a day later. I thanked Jinx for withdrawing as soon as she hit me, because if she had stayed hooked as I pulled my hand away, there would have been stitches involved that night. Instead, there’s just the tiniest trace of smoothed skin on my finger, three weeks later. Jinx has long forgotten the incident, but we haven’t played the game since. Next time, gloves, for both me and the cat.

Last night, I heard “Run Like Hell,” by **Pink Floyd**, on the radio. This, sadly, is not an uncommon occurrence. Applying the [pop-poseur rule][1], “Run Like Hell” is a *poseur*’s song on *The Wall*. It is a step above the crowd-pleasing “Comfortably Numb,” but not quite at the true-fan level of “In the Flesh?” let’s say, or “The Trial.” What I find ironic, though, is that the song used to be a secret fan-favorite and never heard on the classic rock stations, but now is in heavy rotation, seemingly replacing the used-to-be-ubiquitous “Mother.” I remember my friend Joe and I discussing the song twenty years ago, perplexed at it’s absence from the airwaves, and calling our local rock station, requesting it played. Inevitably, they’d play “Mother” or “Comfortably Numb.”

At least it was from the same album. If we were feeling arrogant and punkish, which was quite often, we’d ask them to play “If” or “Free Four,” and they’d play “Mother; or “Comfortably Numb.”

> *On the radio*: “This goes out to Deer Park for showing the world they love rock-and-roll.”
>
> *Music begins: “Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody IN there?…”*
>
> *Me*: “Wait, is that us? Are we Deer Park? We didn’t ask for [expletive-deleted] *Comfortably* [expletive-deleted] *Numb*! [Expletive-deleted]!!”

Joe and I were heavy Floyd-heads. In 1986, we saw [Water’s Radio KAOS tour][2] at the Garden. We were both way too young to do that unaccompanied, but we did we know? We spent the next four years acquiring the back-catalog, reading fanzines, debating the extent of Syd Barrett’s legacy. We drifted apart for various, awkward, teen-aged reasons, but then, when I was 22, we started hanging out again.

I remember, specifically, I was 22, despite my hazy memory, because that’s when I started my drinking career. I was the only one of my peers to start drinking after turning 21. Previously, I hated beer and I couldn’t abide by drug use. I was pretty uptight.

Joe, Erick (my best man), and I were in the City, at a place called **The Slaughtered Lamb**, which had gas lamps and unvarnished wood–very olde-English tavern-style. Joe, always the show-off, got himself a $12 bottle of Belgian beer. The stuff poured like maple syrup into his mug. I had to try it. It was, frankly and surprisingly, delicious. That was something I could get into. Luckily, I was poor, so I didn’t get myself a bottle. My love of beer would have to wait until that summer.

Where Joe and I went to some loud bar in Bay Shore. Did we know the band–was there some specific reason we went to that place? I don’t remember. Joe got himself a [Sam Adams][3], and I was intrigued. I had never heard of it. It smelt like pine needles. I got myself a bottle. Oh, sweet nectar of the gods! What was this world that I was missing? To that point the only beers that I had tried were the watery, funky domestics and **Heineken**. No offense to the legion of **Bud** drinkers out there, but your beer sucks. And Heineken* is worse. My first beer was exceptional, and I haven’t been able to settle for less since then.

And Joe was there the next time my beer horizons expanded. That summer of Sam was packed full of amazing experiences, only some fueled by that amazing elixir known as alcohol, but that fall, Joe and I lose touch again for a couple years, I don’t remember why. But I do remember one cold winter’s night in Huntington. Joe and I walk into bar, mostly to get out of the cold. We were headed some place specific, and that wasn’t the place. But to take the chill off, we both order a beer.

> *Me*: I’ll have a Sam Adams.
>
> *Bartender*: Want a Winter Lager?
>
> *Me*: Um. Sure?

Why anyone would deny anyone a **Samuel Adams Winter Lager**, I can’t imagine. That first sip was bliss from my chilled nose to my chilled toes. I warmed up immediately. I swear I have never taken a more pleasurable sip than that. When November comes around, I begin my perennial quest to find bars that have Winter Lager on tap. It helps, too, if they keep their screens clean. Winter Lager poured through a skunky screen turns into a bland brew. No one wants that. (Apparently, I’m still pretty arrogant. I’ve lost a bit of the punkiness, though.)
So hearing “Run Like Hell” on the radio for the zillionth time still brings a smile to face. It reminds me of good beer, and great concerts, and Fourth-of-July fireworks from the rooftop of a restaurant at the marina. It reminds me of my friend Joe, and our crazy relationship. This next pints for you Joe–may you continue to run like hell.

*There is a story behind Heineken’s green bottles, which is marketing. In Holland, the bottles are brown. Why? Ever have it on tap? It tastes completely different. Green bottles don’t prevent skunk. Every bottle of Heinie that you’ve had has been skunky. **Corona**, too. That weird shaped neck on a Corona bottle? It prevents you from smelling the skunk. The lime? It’s to prevent you from tasting the skunk. **Don’t drink beer from clear or green bottles.** This has been a public service message from the Arrogant Beer Connoisseurs of America (ABC-USA).

[1]: http://www.macphoenix.com/creative/blog/archives/2005/07/the_popposeur_r.html
[2]: http://www.macphoenix.com/creative/blog/archives/2006/09/roger_waters_live_at_the_garden.html
[3]: http://www.samueladams.com/ “Warning: age verification ahead.”

This isn’t a line drawn in the sand. I like when people are helpful, so the last thing I want to do is discourage helpfulness. But sometimes, being too helpful becomes a burden.
Recently, I had a print job that I handed off to a company through an online uploader. The uploader had a preview feature that showed how the final print would look, but when I picked up the job, my prints were not correct. There was a big white square where an image should have been. I was very willing to admit the error was my fault, until I realized that the person who ran the job saw the same preview as I did. They ran all the prints, even though they were significantly different than the preview. So I went home and called the corporate headquarters, and they agreed to run the print job again. A very helpful representative made sure that the prints would go through this time with everything in place.
Now I had set this print job up with crop marks, meaning that the final size of the job was less than the paper size it was printed on. This is fairly standard in printing. But what I did not do was ask for the prints to be cut down to the final size. I just wanted the prints; however, going above and beyond, the very helpful representative cut my job for me, I assume, to make up for the job not printing right in the first place.
I’m willing to forgive, for an example, the fact that the job was cut incorrectly, because it amounted to about a ¼" difference, but I had to print on the back of this particular job, and this instance of helpfulness made me spend extra time on something that had a looming deadline. I was able to get the job out, but there was a sinking feeling when I pulled those cut prints out of the bag when I went to pick them up.
Again, no names are mentioned here, because I don’t want to discourage helpfulness. The person who helped me with those prints really came through when I needed it. But going beyond what I needed created its own set of problems.
Sometimes, acts of charity come from strange sources. Yesterday, I was working on a bit of web code for a job. I tested the code on **Safari**, the **Apple** browser, and everything was working well. I uploaded the job to the test server, and told my client to check it, and sure enough, it didn’t work for him.
I checked it again, on the server, using Safari, and it worked fine. Now there are several browsers, and they all tend to display web pages slightly differently, but the code that I was writing had to do with a form, and that’s all server-side standards that shouldn’t be affected by what browser sends the data.
And yet, when I tried the same form that was working fine in Safari, it failed in **Firefox** and **Internet Explorer**. I was mightily confused, and it took me about two hours to discover that I had made a spelling mistake. There is an attribute to the form called *enctype*, which stands for encoding type. It helps the browser send data to the server in the proper format. The enctype that I wanted to send was “multipart/form-data,” essentially meaning that I wanted it to send different types of data at once, text and files. Unfortunately, what I typed was “mutlipart/form-data.” I’m willing to bet that many people, at least at first glance, wouldn’t see the difference. It took me quite some time. But when I did find the dyslexic typo, the stress that was building up in me squeezed out like an undone balloon.
And then I thought, Hey! Why did Safari allow the form to go through?
Safari was being helpful. Very helpful. Too helpful. If the form didn’t work when I first typed it, I would have looked for a spelling mistake right away. It’s part of my workflow. I expect to have plenty of spelling errors in my documents, so I would have had to scrutinize my code. I would have caught it at the beginning of my scripting, and not sent it to the client, who’s wondering why I would deem a job finished when it’s throwing errors all over the place.
There is a balance, then, but I guess I’m glad that there are people who err on the side of too helpful. The world would be a genuinely frustrating place if it were filled with those who are too helpful, because we’d all have to backtrack a bit before we could get on with what we were supposed to be doing, but it’d probably be a whole lot better than this selfish, do-unto-others-*before*-they-do-unto-you world.

There’s a silly public access program that’s repeated often late night on cable. The title of the series is **The (Not So) Hidden Agenda**. I’ve watched snippets of two different episodes, but both the episodes are repeated over and over again, so I assume that this series is mad up entirely of two hour-long episodes. Both episodes are noted for their lack of clarity and confusing visuals. They take stock footage and overlay it with simplistic graphics or filters that turn everything negative or [solarise][1] images or whatever. Then there is narration and often a backtrack of heavy metal music.
I’m not clear on why the producers of this series decided that heavy metal music was appropriate for the show. I guess to make everything more exciting. At any rate, the two episodes that I have seen both deal with the hidden connections of everything. I have a soft-spot in my logic center for [holistic][2] histories, so the episode that deals with the earth-goddess and phallic symbols and triple-headed gods is all fine and good, if too new-agey and trippy. That episode has plenty of conspiracy theories in it and assumes that we all hate the Freemasons, but the other episode I’ve seen is entirely about the Freemasons and their plot to control our lives.
It’s very silly. There is a part where they go on about **The Simpsons** episode with the *Stonecutters* that is mind-bogglingly puerile, but that’s not important right now.
What got me though, and still bothers me, weeks after I’ve seen it, was tortured logic and bad history about the founding of America. Yes, it’s true. America was founded by Freemasons, which is like saying that Corporate America is run by Ivy League graduates. It proves that elites run in small circles, but nothing more.
Anyway, the fear-mongering about Masons running the government isn’t the *really* crazy part. It was this: The show talked about England being run by the Masons in Colonial times. France, however was not. The Masons in France were middle-class, but were not in the nobility, so their machinations were limited by their lack of power. So they set up the French Revolution, which pitted the poor against the rich. See? The Masons, who were in the middle, could just sit back and let the poor do their dirty work. Brilliant! And it worked really well, too. The king was beheaded, and France looked like it was going to fall in control of the Masons.
But the Masons miscalculated. The show is not clear on how exactly. It really ignored the [Reign of Terror][3], so it wasn’t that the poor got fed up with the autocratic and capricious rule of their new masters. Instead, the show says that the Masons screwed up by not counting on Napoleon taking over. Napoleon, the show assures us, was not a Mason. Of course not, since England (ruled by Masons, remember) worked so hard to defeat Napoleon. The Masons were determined to not make this same mistake in America.
So the middle-class American Masons, who did not have power in Colonial America, overthrew the government, and installed themselves into power, thus preventing a Napoleon-like figure from taking over.
The narration strained over this amazing bit of misinformation. The show had spent the last 10 minutes talking about how the Masons controlled England. So it was a teensy-tiny bit illogical to say that the Americans overthrew the English Masons to install American Masons. But, the show stressed, that’s how clever the Masons are. What they were really doing was preventing a Napoleon-type strong-arm from taking the Colonies away from their control.
I was floored. Luckily, I was in bed, and my fiancée was asleep next to me. I wanted to yell out, “What the hell?” but instead whispered curses to myself. It’s bad enough that conspiracy theories screw with logic so badly that it can be difficult to cut through all the bullcrap. Most of us end up saying, “Huh, that could be true,” and let it seep into our subconscious, poisoning our reasoning. Once we accept that there are huge structures of control around us that we can’t even see, let alone access, we begin to assume that we are powerless to decide anything. Nothing means anything anymore.
And it is a poison. Let’s ignore for a moment the idea that there is a shadow organization that means to enslave us by some crazy-assed means. Let’s ignore the idea that a single group, hellbent on world domination, would pit two nations, *that were already under its control*, against each other in order to further its agenda. Instead, let’s look at the dates:
* The French Revolution: 1789–1799.
* *Napoleon* stages the coup leading to his installation as emperor: 1799
* The American Revolution: 1775–1783
* *George Washington*, a [Freemason][4], is elected first President of the United States: 1789
So the Masons were so sophisticated that they knew the revolution, which would not occur in France for 6 more years, would end in bad tidings for them, so they labored to get the very unpopular George Washington into office, which would prevent a Napoleon-like leader (Napoleon himself keeping busy, but out of history, for a further 10 years) from taking over America.
Brilliant.
To be fair, I realize that what the program was actually saying was that the writers and producers don’t know shit about history. I understand that their ignorance is the very thing that feeds their paranoia about Freemasons. It’s really easy to connect the dots when we don’t actually connect them in any particular order. No doubt, when we do, it always comes out shaped like a pentagon or pentagram or crescent moon, or whatever else we feel like being scared about.
Freemasons. I snort in their general direction. They couldn’t rule a city block. But so what? The vast majority of Freemasons are just interested in having a beer with some buddies. They’re as powerful as volunteer fire departments and the Elk Lodge. Unless you’re [Ed Brown][5], who convinced me that even idyllic New Hampshire can have it’s share of paranoid, militia-forming nutjobs. I have a huge amount of respect for New Hampshire’s motto, *Live Free or Die*. (I believe that to my core. In that way, I, too, am a nutjob.) But Ed Brown gives us patriots a bad name. See, he’s convinced that his taxes are going to pay for evil [Freemason plots][6].
> Brown, who asserts that the federal government has no jurisdiction in New Hampshire and no authority to charge him under a non-existent law, said the activity surrounding his properties in Plainfield and West Lebanon yesterday was a “Zionist, Illuminati, Free Mason movement.”
Or maybe he just wants justification to not pay his taxes. Maybe that’s the real genesis of conspiracy theories. If we don’t like something or the man is keeping us down, why not just say that the Oogey-boogeys are zapping all of us with Depresso-rays (and I’m particularly sensitive to those damned rays). It’s a lot easier than admitting failure. Hell, maybe we could even get a book deal out if it. Or produce a really crappy public access show with a kick-ass metal track. Yeah! That’ll show them Oogey-boogeys.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_Effect
[2]: http://dirkgently.podomatic.com/ “Not a Wikipedia link!”
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_terror
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Religious_beliefs
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lewis_Brown
[6]: http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Ed+Brown+says+feds+have+no+jurisdiction+in+New+Hampshire&articleId=844a9c5f-5475-4d71-a149-102ea693ee4b

Here’s logic I’ll never understand: When a horrific crime is reported, the media ask, “Are our laws tough enough?” This is one of those knee-jerk reactions that fall apart on any amount of scrutiny.
In particular, I’m thinking of [Karen Fisher][1] who was arrested for killing Monsignor William Costello, last July, while driving drunk. There was a round of “Are our DWI laws tough enough?” with the easy, but unjustified, answer being, “No.”
It was Karen Fisher’s third arrest for drunk driving, and, while this had been the first time she killed someone, her second arrest had been made while she was driving her two children. Obviously, this is a woman with a problem. And Newsday was filled with letters asking why she still had a license. That’s a fair question, but it doesn’t get to the root of the matter.
The woman is a drunk.
License or no, she’s got a problem. In the above linked article, after she made a plea agreement, which pivots on a successful alcohol treatment program, Fisher’s bail had been revoked because she was kicked out of the program for drinking.
Shall we ask, “Are our alcohol treatment programs tough enough?”
This is an inherent conundrum when it comes to the law: Those people who break it don’t care about it. They don’t care what the penalties are. They don’t care how it will ruin the lives of their loved ones. They don’t care.
But those of us who are law abiding seem to gladly make stronger and stricter laws that will eventually swallow up people who make single mistakes or are wrongly accused or do things that were once socially acceptable. You’re next smokers.
This isn’t to say that drunk driving shouldn’t be illegal. It should. It’s assault with a deadly weapon with intent to harm. But Karen Fisher wouldn’t be stopped by the severest laws on the books, because she is beyond alcoholic. She’s psychologically unable to not drink until she’s drunk. This doesn’t portend the break down of society. She’s got a problem that only she will be able to stop, no matter what the law says.
Knee-jerk reactions to this are worse for our society, however. Shortly after Fisher’s crime, and not too long after an equally horrific case where a driver, going the wrong way on a major parkway, killed a man and a child in a limousine, Newsday had a letter that shocked the hell out of me.
I’m paraphrasing, but this was really the message:
>Drunk drivers, like the guy going the wrong way and careening into a limousine, are obviously drunk. Why bother with a trial? The police know someone is drunk right away. It costs money to try these people, and there is always a chance that some stupid jury or shark lawyer can get them off scott-free. Let the police decide, then and there, the severity of the crime.
Now, if that doesn’t scare the fucking piss out of you, then you can stop reading anything else I ever write.
[1]: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lifish0302,0,7551760.story?coll=ny-li-bigpix