With a girl as fine as she was then: The Psychopathological narrative in "Raspberry Beret"
Nearly a quarter century after she "walked in through the out door (out door)," the woman wearing the title garment of Prince's 1985 song "Raspberry Beret" continues to puzzle and intrigue scholars.
But it is the narrator who has emerged as a dangerous and unstable sociopath.
"I was working part-time in a five-and-dime ," the narrator begins, telling us that his employer, a Mr. McGee, had to repeatedly tell him that the narrator's "leisurely" attitude toward work engendered feelings of dislike in his employer for not only the narrator but also the narrator's social, ethnic, racial, political, or religious group, i.e. "kind."
People with developmental disorders often need to be told several times to complete tasks such as those required in the type of retail establishments where the learning-disabled may find work.
We introduce the notion of the narrator's own mental impairment as the basis for his attraction to the beret-wearing girl. While there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that "opposites attract," it is more often the case that interpersonal relationships are founded on shared values and interests.
If the narrator is autistic, however, he is high-functioning, as demonstrated by his ability to vary his menial tasks in order to hold his own interest:
"It seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing," he says, "but different than the day before."
It is then that he sees the subject of the song, as "she walked in through the out door." Consistent with Persistent Developmental Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified), he repeats "out door."
"She wore a raspberry beret," he tells us, "The kind you’d find in a second hand store."
Researchers disagree on whether the narrator's choice to speculate where the girl might have found her beret is Asperger's Syndrome-style "Information Bombardment" or a genuine attempt to connect with the listener.
In any case, and appearing to validate PDD-NOS theorists, he compulsively, almost fetishistically repeats her headwear throughout the song, adding that, were the temperature appropriate, the probable group home resident might not "wear much more."
Up to this point in the interview, students and professionals have been inclined to agree that the narrator, whether a stroke or head trauma victim or otherwise mentally compromised, was basically an amiable and harmless person, even if he might have proven a minor management problem to his employer.
But alarm bells sound in the next set of lyrics.
The narrator, based on the girl's inappropriate entrance to the five-and-dime as well as her hat (and his opinions about whether or not she would wear nothing but the hat should the weather become "warm"), makes a compulsive and staggering logical leap:
"I think I love her," he says.
While condemnation of the narrator's premature profession of love is unanimous in university and medical circles, the following lines divide scholars:
"Built like she was, she had the nerve to ask me if I planned to do her any harm," he says.
Does this mean she was attractive to the narrator and, knowing this, that she would flout a reasonable person's fear of being harmed by him?
Or was she unattractive to the narrator ("Built like she was, she had the nerve to ask me...") and therefore unworthy of questioning his malicious intent?
Either way, it is clear that she recognized the danger; when does it come up unless someone is in danger the question of whether they are to be harmed?
The American Psychiatric Association recommends a simple Appropriateness Test, which it calls the Cocktail Metric:
"Go to a cocktail party and approach a friendly-seeming stranger with the statement in question," its literature suggests. Would you approach an amiable stranger and ask him/her if he/she planned to do you any harm?
It gets worse:
"So look here, " the narrator challenges us, "I put her on the back of my bike and we went riding down by Old Man Johnson's farm."
Not "she got on the bike willingly and of her own volition" but "I put her on the back of my bike" like a wounded or trophy animal.
Perhaps due to abuse, trauma, or the schizoid belief that he is a being that draws power from celestial bodies, the narrator then observes that his ability to perform sexually is influenced by the visibility of the sun or the moon.
"Overcast days never turned me on," he says, and then for the first time openly derides the girl by comparing her to noxious smog:
"But something about the clouds and her mixed."
The narrator then savagely beats the girl with his feet, attempting to make the listener believe that she was not only the aggressor but also that she wanted him to beat her with his feet.
"She wasn't too bright, but I could tell when she kissed me," he says, " - she knew how to get her kicks."
Having dragged her into some kind of stable, silo, or manger, the narrator feels an almost lycanthropic connection to nature.
"Rain sounds so cool when it hits the barn roof," he says, and researchers concede that he's right: Rain does sound cool that way. But we shouldn't let the sociopath charm us with his studied behaviors of normal human interaction.
Because then, as if denying his own humanity (and the responsibility of his crime) by attributing human characteristics to animals, he attempts to divert listeners' attention to his temporary stablemates.
"...And the horses wonder who you are."
As if shaking his fist at a universe only half-complicit in his offenses, the narrator goes on to accuses Nature that "thunder drowns out what the lightning sees (and) you feel like a movie star," (possibly Hannibal Lecter, the Son of Sam, Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," or even Satan, as depicted in several films).
The narrator invokes this pandemonium of murderers as "They": "They say the first time ain't the greatest," he says.
Boldly addressing us again and bragging of his lack of remorse: "But I'll tell you, if I had the chance to do it all again, I wouldn't change a stroke."
The narrator's megalomania at its zenith, he taunts listeners by referring to them collectively as an infant, hinting that the girl is no longer alive:
"Baby, I'm the most," he says, "with a girl as fine as she was then."
Despite acknowledgment by Prince that the song was about ex-girlfriend Susan Moonsie and documentation that her intelligence is within normal limits, and that Prince himself is not criminally insane, I'm still hoping to use this abstract to get my license to practice Psychiatry in the State of California. Wish me luck!
Matches come in a box, tobacco in a pouch, milk in a carton or bottle. Perhaps the scariest part of "The Omen" is that knives were transported in a towel.
"State law requires I ask you a couple of questions," the guy said.
Recently I went to have knives sharpened. While hacking at a carcass with heavy, dull blades provides a satisfaction of its own, time is tight and my family needs its food cut with efficiency and precision. And we can't afford lasers.
So there I was, with a cleaver and several other knives wrapped in a dishrag, and the sharpenist was quizzing me.
"Do you now, or have you ever belonged to a religion that demands blood sacrifice?" he said.
"Yes, but only symbolically," I said.
"Do you believe you or a loved one is harboring the AntiChrist?" he said.
"Harboring is a strong word," I said. "But I'm driving by and he's waiting for the bus in the rain, I'm gonna pick him up."
"Do you intend to use these knives for any activity other than meal preparation?" he said.
"No."
"Not even opening boxes?"
"No."
"I had to ask," he said. "The End Times are coming."
So I was not surprised to see my knives returned with instructions.
As you know, Ambassador Robert Thorne, who had the misfortune of being the earthly caregiver to the AntiChrist, received the Daggers of Megiddo in similar inappropriate packaging. It's like carrying your golf clubs in an omelette.
"You want me to kill Damien with these?" he asks Bugenhagen. "Preventing the reign of Satan's son is surely worth a Coach bag."
"We give you a coupon later," Bugenhagen says.
Thorne, played by Gregory Peck, also killed Audrey Hepburn by this method in "Roman Holiday."
For centuries, the blade has been the preferred method of slaughter for sons on either side of the theological fence. Commanded by God, Abraham was to sacrifice his son, Isaac, with an axe.
"Sorry it didn't work out," Abraham tells Isaac.
Leonard Cohen uses "The Story of Isaac" as an allegorical war protest. Why "sacrifice these children" when [governments] "never have been tempted by a demon or a god"?
When my son learns to talk, he will doubtless ask me if I would ever run him through with a consecrated kitchen or garden implement on orders from the almighty.
"Jem," I'll say, tousling his hair while checking for Beast-related birthmarks, "My father once told me that I could stab all the AntiChrists I wanted, but it was a sin to kill a mockingbird."
The leader of the Istari says, "It reminds me of the foothills of cruel Caradhras, under which dwells the Balrog of Moria. Hesperia is a town of shadow and flame" while the scourge of Yukon Cornelius calls the San Bernardino County hotspot "the Glendale of the high desert."
Like you, I often feel uncertain. Finances, politics, whether or not to eat bread; each of these things is an opportunity for Doubt.
That is why as Halloween approaches our family is trying to play the angles.
Even though we're fairly sure the Virgin Mary rides around on her broom collecting souls, there is also a possibility that corpses rise from the grave as skeletons, or ghosts demand Atonement and fasting. I just don't want to be wrong. That's why one kid is going trick-or-treating as Young Jesus and the other is going as Fat Jesus.
I don't know if I am getting away with something or if what I am doing is really a victimless crime:
Dear Starbucks Customer Relations,
Please tell me what governs my use of Starbucks couches and chairs in its common areas. If I want to sit and read a book for two hours, must I 1.) have purchased in that visit a Starbucks product that is visible 2.) have proof that at one time I purchased a Starbucks product or 3.) none of these? May I read a book at your facility if I am drinking from a non-Starbucks vessel?
Yours, Martin Barrett (dec.)
You don't care about my life and you don't deserve to know about it, but suffice to say for reasons of delivering an offspring to school and not wanting to drive to my office 15.1 miles away and then back three hours later to pick aforementioned offspring up, I once holed up in a public library with an excellent Internet connection and a thermos of coffee to do some work on school days.
But no longer.
Budget cuts have forced the library to shorten its hours and have driven me, along with my car, which I also drive, to a Starbuck's in a mini-mall. For the past couple of weeks I have brought my truckstop thermos of imported Dunkin' Donuts coffee to this Starbucks and have sat and worked for several hours in its shaded patio (this is California) filled with comfortable frat house furniture.
I keep expecting a barista to approach and ask to sniff my thermos. The conversation would go like this.
BARISTA
Sir, I -
ME
What the hell do you want?
BARISTA
I just -
ME
You just what? Some people have to work. Are you working now?
BARISTA
Yes, actually, I wanted to check if -
ME
You're saying you're working right now? Do I look like a bowl of milk that needs air blown through me?
BARISTA
What? I -
ME
Do I look like a goddamn bowl of milk that needs air blown through me?
BARISTA
I -
ME
Say it!
BARISTA
I -
ME
Say it or so help me I'll choke you with these Diana Krall and Jack Johnson CDs. Jack Johnson I can understand, but Diana Krall - what was she thinking?
BARISTA
I WANT TO SNIFF YOUR THERMOS.
ME
You mean Edward James Thermos, the name I've given my thermos?
BARISTA
Yes
ME
For what reason do you want to sniff my thermos?
BARISTA
There's a mandate from Seattle that I smell-check any vessels I can't get a visual confirmation on
ME
And you like this part of your job?
BARISTA
Well Yes. Yes, I love it.
ME
Well, for every time you've subjected me to post-"Blue" Joni Mitchell, I'm going to deny you the privilege of sniffing my thermos. It's Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
BARISTA
Can I still sniff it?
Not enough that I used their comfy furniture I also, after downing my thermos, needed to use their bathroom. On the wall was a poster that read: "Behind every cup of coffee is a barista and a good story."
At this point I remembered the words of my friend Michelle, a former Starbuck's manager, who said that the whole transaction of ordering a coffee through receiving it had to take less than three minutes and, since the majority of those three minutes is spent after one has paid for the coffee and the line has moved on, there really is no time for the story.
So is the story allegedly possessed by each barista one that the customer has to take on faith, because there is no way he/she has time to bend my ear with personal anecdotes and even if he/she could could not guarantee that the story is good by my exacting standards, as an internationally recognized poet, filmmaker, commentator, thespian, playwright, musician, and aphakic lens wearer?
What I'm saying is that, if challenged, I will say that I'll believe the 17-year-old thermos-sniffing barista has a good story if she will believe my thermos has Starbucks coffee in it.
In a duffel bag at the bottom of the Missouri River, just above Oahe. It's that simple.
I wait for you into the big castle of Loneliness and I want you to break its strong walls.
You sound like a lot of fun. How did you know I liked depressive women?
I am impatient, because I have been waiting for you for many years, for many thousand lonely years.
And you're just now getting impatient?
I am young and pretty, but I am old inside without love and tenderness.
That's cool because I am cheap and shallow, but I am rich inside with mineral deposits.
My heart is crying every minute, every second without your love.
Yes, yes. Tell me more about your wet, thousand-year-old heart.
I can't find it here, and everything I meet is lonely echo of my crying heart.
You really should move out of either North Adams, Massachusetts, or the Ukraine.
I wrote this romantic letter to you, because I think that such romantic person like you will understand my wishes and desires and will get the reply to me very soon http://www.meetlovegirls.net/8120/
Then the joke's on you, because my brain is the size of a philbert.
I hope that you will write to me about your life, that you will share with me your feelings.
Well, I make and eat wax sculptures, I enjoy leaving soaps on people's pillows and mints in their tubs, I believe some dogs and cats are just bad, I know this guy whose breath smells awful and I am afraid to tell him except by way of oblique references on my websites, I once had a crush on Laurette Spang, I think Fritos smell like animal feet, and I feel that people who like Radiohead can't possibly like them as much as they say they do.
All That Jaws is languishing while its music director tours Italy, but today is June 29, a very significant day in Jaws folklore, even if it shouldn't be.
The true test of my USB broadband connection was when I triumphantly returned to my stomping grounds at Zzyzx Road on the way to this week's Consumer Electronics Show, took a picture, and uploaded it live two minutes thereafter.
The only reason the transfer from camera to Internet was not instantaneous was because I had to fight and disembowel an attacking bear. Then I had to look up the correct spelling of tauntaun so I could make up a joke about using its steaming entrails for heat in the high desert cold and not get it confused with the city on the road to Cape Cod. Then I decided not to use the joke.
This technological breakthrough will seem like nothing when, in three to six months, I will be able to hook a GPS and a T3 connection into my spinal column, but it sure was exciting in these pioneer days.
Another country heard from - Inland Empire edition
I got my wife an iPod Touch (the iPhone without the useless phone) for Christmas. She has so far refused to pick it up, look at it, or even sniff it when I thrust it at her (we're still talking about the iPod).
Here, David Lynch talks about watching movies in a manner signifying the depth of feeling people have about technology.
★Do they say God instead of Gods? ★Have you seen them before, but you know it's not the same person?
For Christmas I was given two seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD and now am scheduling a month to neglect my family to watch the series. I will have to take a break from my regularly-scheduled family-neglecting time.
Sometimes it is poignant and touching, in a way that makes me want to go off and write an independent screenplay, to see my family's hollow faces and eyes big with hunger and need. Other times it is funny because they look like anime characters.
In time-honored science fiction tradition, BSG's Cylons are human-made machines that have become sentient and spiritually aware and, unlike the show's humans, they are monotheistic. In addition to better hygiene, there is a lot to recommend the Cylons, including their hot-swappable souls.
I traveled 55.2 miles to the wastes of Ventura this evening to see a sneak preview of "Razor", an interstitial Battlestar Galactica episode.
Why did I consume 3.5 gallons of expensive gasoline to see a TV show on a movie screen when I could have watched it on television on November 24? Because I cancelled cable after The Sopranos ended. Most days I don't regret it.
I and about 300 other educated, thoughtful people gathered for this special screening at a movie theatre. None of us was dressed as a Cylon. No one quoted BSG dialogue in line. None of us appeared to be living with our parents. Most of us were drinking.
The two-hour episode, which fills in certain gaps in the story and sets up Season Four of the Sci Fi Network show, dealt with events on the Battlestar Pegasus following the Cylon obliteration of the 12 colonies.
I am pushing my glasses up my nose.
Told with flashbacks and centered around the story of Kiwi colonist Kendra Shaw, "Razor" details the methods of the knife-wielding and ruthless Admiral Cain and how being unlucky in love is a really bad thing in space. We are reunited with the vintage Cylons familiar to people who watched the 80/20 hokey/thought-provoking 70's TV show and are treated to a significant scene featuring a being lying in a lighted tub of goop.
The episode was fantastic. People cheered. But Sci Fi has apparently sold its soul to the Xbox game "Mass Effect", and several commercials placed in and around the movie effectively torpedoed any interest this audience would have had in the game.
More than anything, "Razor" was a "Mists of Avalon" to Battlestar Galactica's Knights of the Round Table story; the actions of the lesbian battlestar commander and the sad fate of herself and the woman who loved her seemed like the producers' commentary on the perils of that lifestyle. At one point, Commander Adama mused that he might have made similarly brutal decisions as his counterpart but he "had a family".
That the treacherous Caprica Six enters the series as a network administrator also shines a light on where the producers' prejudices lie.
Without knowing there was a movie coming out, I started reading Phillip Pullman's brilliant "His Dark Materials" trilogy, the first book of which, "The Golden Compass", has been adapted for film.
My education in fantasy stories has been limited by my dislike of most people who like fantasy stories. It is an ancient prejudice. But I've been lucky; I've enjoyed the "Harry Potter" books, think "The Lord of the Rings" is a masterpiece, and am very impressed with "His Dark Materials", which takes its title from this area of "Paradise Lost":
Into this wilde Abyss, The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave, Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more Worlds, Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while, Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross.
My brief exposure to fantasy stories has revealed that they all have things in common:
1. Children with dead or compromised parents 2. Guys in robes 3. A weapon to be used for good or evil 4. Betrayal
Based on this, I have written my own short fantasy story. It is called The Wondrous Bathrobe Tool by Marty Barrett
Hugh Hefner approached Gary.
"It's a shame your parents are dead," he said, "but these witches want you to be their leader."
"May I take my magic toothbrush?" asked Gary.
"That's not any toothbrush," replied Hef.
"His Dark Materials" is ambitious and uncondescending to young readers. It also has some bold things to say about organized religion and God, something I think "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" deal with obliquely, but Pullman puts right out there.
"But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one; you can never see any concrete proof that it exists but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of thibngs that couldn't be imagined without it."
If the movie trailer is any indication, "The Golden Compass" gets dumbed down in the adaptation, but I'll still see it; it still looks fun. Gandalf plays a bear, for example.
You'd think that the Geek Squad wouldn't have to resort to stealing porn since they already get to keep those cool Beetles.
The comments on Consumerist's story about how the Gawker Media website used a program like Remote Desktop or Timbuktu to catch a Geek Squad employee downloading a client's personal photos - that included porn - onto his own hard drive were less about how interesting this story was than they were about how computer technicians stealing or at least snooping on personal files isn't news.
The Geek Squad tech was supposed to be installing iTunes, which he did, in addition to poking around a folder invitingly titled "Honey Pot". His invoice recommended a memory upgrade (to increase porn transfer speed) and mentioned that the computer needed "protection". You think?
Since I am a Profiler and an Empath, I know that the Geek Squad employee was confident that a person who couldn't even install iTunes would never be able to figure out that his porn was copied.
It's a sad world.
Full disclosure: In 2002 I was thisclose to being one of the first ten people the Geek Squad hired in Los Angeles. I really wanted the free car. Their official arrival was delayed and I got another job instead. Among the things I learned in the interview was that Geek Squadders had to drive their VWs away from the rest of traffic so that the vehicle would be more distinctive.
H.P. Lovecraft: Still rocking eldritch non-Euclidean geometries from beyond Time
The writer H.P. Lovecraft died 70 years ago last Thursday (the Ides of March), becoming more famous posthumously than he was in life. This is tragic, because I know a lot of people who would have given him their spare bedroom and taken him out to lunch every day of the week, were he still alive, because that is the way Hollywood is.
His native Providence, by contrast, is cold and heartless; just look at its strip clubs.
Lovecraft, like his contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, created an immense body of work about a vividly-realized world, using language removed from the time their books were written. Tolkien lived to see his fame, whereas Lovecraft's fans saved up to buy him a headstone 40 years after his death (the epitaph reads "I am Providence.")
Among my prized possessions is a memento from my friend Paul's wedding. For services rendered (it wasn't Prima Nocta, sadly) he gave me a Swiss Army Knife from Miskatonic University.
One of America's greatest art forms is the Jack Chick tract parody. Here is one detailing what to do when Cthulhu comes back:
In the cold grey wastes of madness In the putrid depths of time I will study evil Beings Until I go insane
Behold the sentient rhombus Behold the lum’nous gas Of all that is unwholesome Until I go insane
I'm in Love with an Incomprehensibly Evil Being It's allright It's allright I'm in Love with an Incomprehensibly Evil Being It's all I need tonight, yeah
When the fires scorch the chimneys When the maggots eat my brain In the realm of undead children Until I go insane
Behold the crumbling altars Of elder gods and cruel I will quaff the nasty goblet Until I go insane
I'm in Love with an Incomprehensibly Evil Being It's allright It's allright I'm in Love with an Incomprehensibly Evil Being It's all I need tonight, yeah
We do our best to remember H.P. Lovecraft around our house. Our daughter keeps Cthulhu as a pet, and her favorite doll is named Brown Jenkin (read about Brown Jenkin and "The Rats in the Walls" here thanks to public domain-loving Australia).
I wonder if I will ever hate Los Angeles; I know a lot of people who came here for one thing, didn't get to do it, and had no affection for the city to fall back on. I came here to be a jockey but my dreams were crushed. Luckily, six years in, I still get random opportunities to be reminded what a great place this is, despite its lack of snow, worthwhile public transportation, and Puerto Ricans.
Here is Highland Avenue just after midnight this morning. I took the picture while I was driving.
Nearly a quarter century after she "walked in through the out door (out door)," the woman wearing the title garment of Prince's 1985 song "Raspberry Beret" continues to puzzle and intrigue scholars. 
