Magical thinking
 We are in a transitional period wherein TAARG and I are debating whether to buy a new car or to continue sinking money into the old one, which is now so unpleasant to drive that I go out of my way to ride my bike or try to shoehorn my schedule into L.A.'s afterthought of a public transportation system.
I want one of those decommissioned Aeroflot hovercrafts. They're solid and no one would mess with me on the road.
The other day I needed to get from the Glendale area to Chatsworth, about 27 miles on the freeway. It was Saturday, I had a little time, and I wanted to see if I could be a non-polluting member of society (I already burn no fossil fuels in the completion of my job and only cut down trees out of spite).
So I rode my bike from Glendale to North Hollywood, then loaded my bike on an articulated bus that crossed the San Fernando Valley, and biked northwest to my destination. It took me about 2.5 hours. I reversed the process on the way home, but it was dark so I elected to add a subway and an extra bus in Hollywood. It was when I got to Hollywood that things started going south (though I myself was headed east).
The city buses have a contraption on the front to hold bicycles. When my bus came, I had trouble following the simple-looking three-part directions (meanwhile everyone else had boarded). I kept trying to pull a handle that wasn't there. Meanwhile the bus driver, separated from my by a windshield and about three feet, would beep the horn and thrust his finger downward, pointing to directions that I clearly couldn't understand. It was embarrassing. I could tell he was also commenting on it to the other passengers.
After the third time he beeped, I was more angry than frustrated. I walked around to the side of the bus where he refused to open his window to talk to me.
"Instead of beeping the horn, you could help me," I said.
"Read the directions," he said through the window.
"You'd better come out and help me," I said. "I'm not as smart as you." (I shouldn't have said that; I used to be a bus driver.)
With a great show of indignation he came outside and made as if to do everything effortlessly that I'd missed. I meet people like this all the time.
"Step 3: Lift the handle above the wheel," he recited.
It turns out there was no handle, thus negating step 3. He didn't apologize so I said something rude and demeaning, got his badge number and name, and later complained to the MTA. In retrospect, I think I should have leaned into the bus and shouted, "your driver is drunk" but it had been a long day. The next bus came and everything worked fine.
I had to go to Chatsworth again two days ago and, since it was a weekday, there were trains running. I pedaled down to the Spanish-style train station, paid $12.50 at a kiosk, and waited until my train rolled in, right on time. There were four cars and I think I was one of five people on board.
I chatted with a woman who told me that she felt blessed because the same $3 pass that lets people ride the buses and subways in Los Angeles also allows them to ride the trains from Oxnard to San Diego. I wondered aloud why I had just paid $12.50 for a ticket.
"They'll give you a refund!" she said, and told me all about how she had called the MTA and had received a refund one time. I still didn't know how the MTA could get away with charging the same population $3 or $12.50, but I was happy to hear that I could make riding the train part of a regular routine.
"It really is a blessing," the lady said.
It turns out the woman was out of her mind. One minute after we'd finished talking, the conductor came by to look at our tickets. I flashed mine and the lady flashed hers, which was the $3 pass she'd mentioned earlier. The conductor told her that was the wrong pass. She protested. The conductor patiently explained that she had never had the right pass. She said she'd been taking this train for six months. He said, "Yes, we heard about you."
He let her stay on the train. She was silent and avoided eye contact throughout the rest of the trip.
Had she not received her comeuppance, I would have purchased a $3 ticket somewhere and proceeded to be fined and arrested, as is the LAPD's custom when dealing with ticket fraud, and as is my wont.
I believe that a bus driver would not have beeped at that lady as she tried to load her bike, either.
I need to cultivate an air of incapacity and dodderitude.
I learned about the concept of Magical Thinking when I was a park ranger. A fellow federal employee, who had once been an orderly at a V.A. hospital, told me that, like Tom Petty says, people believe what they want to believe.
He said that his charges repeatedly walked off the roof of the hospital, expecting someone to catch them.
This guy was often sued for sexual harrassment though, being a federal employee, he was never removed from his job. I think the people most enamored of the idea of magical thinking are the ones who really like the idea of getting away with it.
That's why I believe I need a new car.
 Everything happens for a reason.
Good Night, Moon: I'll see you in Hell
 ACI is very fond of Margaret Wise Brown's book "Good Night, Moon" and will often request in her delightful way that I read it to her.
As much as I love my daughter, I cannot help but point out the book's many lapses in logic, judgment, and reality.
First off, there is a baby who has to say "good night" to every goddamn thing in the fucking world before he goes to bed. That's bullshit.
The baby and its lazy and emotionally distant caregiver are portrayed by rabbits. Did you think you could justify your nihilistic worldview by making this book an allegory? Who are you, Karl Marx? Jesus? What can a child learn from dead people?
There is a grandmotherly woman saying "Hush." Shut the fuck up, old woman. Where are the parents? At a rave? I can guarantee that neither of Marisol's grandmothers would get away with saying "Hush". We'd slap the taste out of their mouths.
A bowl of mush is left on the night-table to rot. I don't work at this fucking computer all day just so you can waste your oatmeal.
There are some kittens playing on the floor with a pair of mittens. What kind of Christless world is that where rabbits are given dominion over cats? Only if the kittens rise up and mutilate the rabbits could justice be done.
There is a cow jumping over the moon. Way to teach my daughter about plagiarism, ya douchebag!
Near the end, there is a blank page with the caption "Good night, nobody." I am assuming that the artist, Clement Hurd, was too drunk to draw that day. That Brown compensates by identifying a yawning void that provides my daughter precious seedlings of an inevitable despair is just irresponsible. Thanks a fucking lot. Now we don't have to read "The Stranger" until she's in kindergarten.
All in all, "Good Night, Moon" is a very satisfying work, save for those minor issues that I hope will be addressed in later editions.
I think it's important, also, not to indulge a tot's vanity by providing a choice between a brush and a comb - choices available to the spoiled little rabbit who is really asking for it by the end of the book.
I use a comb. That should be good enough for anybody.
 I met David Coleman in Boston in 1993. He is a keyboard player and we did several shows together. Each time I go back to Boston, I endeavor to find some way to get him on stage again. When I host my talk show, he will be the band leader. I think he's a genius.
Here's some music Coleman wrote for a show called "The Spirit of December 27". Dave Bellenoit is singing.
David Coleman now has a blog on which he holds forth about subjects like African-American fatherhood, which just goes to show you he has always copied me.
 It looks like Al Jazeera is trying to make us feel better about those murders committed by the Virgin Mary in the Book of Leon.
Tom Paine:::Google
 Despite vague misgivings about anything that happens in northern California (my PowerBook battery died today, too), Google's decision to not only fight the Bush Administration's efforts to subpoena search engine records but also be snarky about it can be traced right back to the founding patriots' civil disobedience and common sense.
Google's extra-curricular meta-blog the Outer Court has put together the Patriot Search, which allows users to state whether or not they are terrorists before searching.
The Triumph of Death
 The Reaper visited with the skunk that has been plaguing the neighborhood recently.
Sources speculate that the skunk was hit by a car and its body flung directly into one of our five parking spaces, which we call Position 3.
The victory was Pyrrhic, alas, because it gave residents an opportunity to park even more irresponsibly for the few hours it took the L.A. County Skunk Task Force to allocate resources to remove the corpse.
Let this be some kind of lesson to someone.
A short guide to eating in other places
 I am returned from my travels and have learned Much. One thing I'd like to share concerns the food one can get in two states adjoining California.
I was in Las Vegas two weeks ago and spent a great deal of money on food whenever I had the chance to eat some. The $120 my brother and I spent for dinner at Margaritaville on the Strip (chairs are forced to face big screens with Jimmy Buffett or Jimmy Buffett-approved music videos on them, then characters vaguely dressed in nautical attire on stilts walk by and attempt to interact with diners) wasn't something that surprised me.
Before I'd ever visited Las Vegas I was impressed to hear that casinos would subsidize food in the hope of luring gamblers. Since I don't gamble anything but my affections, Las Vegas to me seemed to be a place I could happily live and die fat on just pennies a day.
Unfortunately, now that the desert paradise has so much more to offer a visitor than just gambling (being hit by a car, for example), the casinos no longer see the need to price dinner cheaply to attract customers.
That is why I was shocked when a friend invited three of us to dinner at the Ellis Island Casino.
The Ellis Island is a one-story casino/karaoke bar/restaurant way off the Strip that looks like a truck stop. It is patronized by locals and I and my friends had fun making the overweight security guards run around trying to capture strips of bacon.
Each of us ordered a drink or two and some variant of the steak special. I got a filet, mashed potatoes, and green beans. All were very good, and definitely better than any dinner I'd yet had in my several trips to Las Vegas.
Then the bill came.
My friend passed around the check and we thought there had to be some mistake. The total came to just over $28. We left a generous tip.
I can't imagine that place will be there, or the prices intact, the next time I go to Las Vegas. I feel I lucked out. But I'll even drop some money in the slot machines there if by so doing I can still get a steak for five bucks.
Last week I went to Arizona to visit my in-laws.
I gave my mother in-law a computer almost two years ago and she is taking small steps to taking advantage of its many uses. She has not yet ordered Internet service, for example, because there is something to do with moving some disused furniture from one uninhabited part of the house to another. I'm still not clear on it.
Anyway, she said that the town of Tempe now offered two hours of free wireless service a day, so I suggested we go to the Apple Store to pick up a wireless card and find out the real news. The Apple Store was a bust because the clerks didn't know what I was talking about regarding the rumor of free wireless services in Tempe and furthermore scoffed at the idea of selling a piece of equipment for a computer more than three months old.
But that's not the real story.
On the ride to the store, I asked, casually, "Babs (I call her Babs; it took her a while to adjust to this, as her name is Audrey), what part of Arizona do you like the most?"
She has lived in AZ for 33 years. "None, really," she said. She repeated the question to me.
"None, really," I said. I believe that the presence of New Mexico makes Arizona redundant, and that the government should just move the Grand Canyon to another state, like they did in Poltergeist.
 It was in this dark mood that TAARG, ACI, and I traveled out past the GM Proving Grounds to the Mesa home of Mike and Lora Powers and our friend Ken.
"This was all unincorporated when I was growing up," TAARG said, but now there were little planned communities stretching toward the Superstition Mountains. I was afraid.
The Powers home was low and large, like the Ellis Island casino but with a much better audio/visual setup (He sells real estate and each major sale he accompanies with a huge purchase for his own home. One time it was a wall-length television, the next it was a weapons-grade barbecue, and next time it will be the Los Angeles Clippers). Drinks were deployed immediately and food followed, like a version of the Book of Genesis in a church I wouldn't distrust.
We had steaks and potatoes and vegetables and portobello mushrooms (which combine all three) and, if ACI weren't jet-lagged and in need of sleep, we would have stayed for s'mores.
In the onslaught of such food, the only gift I could provide was to teach Meghan, the delightful eighth grade daughter of Ken's girlfriend, to say "You're dead to me" to her teachers (variant: "I'm talking to a dead man.")
Anyway, I'd made my own plans, but Mike Powers saved Arizona that night.
Deport
 January is named for Janus, the Roman god of gates and doors. He is often depicted as having two faces facing in opposite directions, as we reflect on where we're going and from whence we came. That is why ironic people are often called "Janus-faced". 2006 for me is going to be a year in which I say "from whence" a lot more than "thereof".
We had a small Christmas and New Year's week, hosting a little group of people and then joining one. At home we straightened out the leaves of the table. My friend Alicia said, "This table is so long that it's like when you spend the night at Dracula's Castle and he's all the way at the other end of the table from you."
It's good to know people who say things like this in any year. It is a pity she is fleeing the country.
I'm going to Las Vegas in a few days to go to some conventions with a friend of mine. For a while it seeemed like I would have a more objective time than a subjective one because various and sundry clients have not paid up. I got a check the other night, brought it home, and said, "X saved Vegas," to which TAARG replied, "but didn't X also ruin Christmas?"
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We are in a transitional period wherein TAARG and I are debating whether to buy a new car or to continue sinking money into the old one, which is now so unpleasant to drive that I go out of my way to ride my bike or try to shoehorn my schedule into L.A.'s afterthought of a public transportation system.
