The Magic Clause

I was reading the news today and came across a story about a woman who starved her kid to death.  She was charged with felony child abuse resulting in death, but her plea deal includes a clause that says her charges will be dropped if her kid is resurrected.

See, the Maryland woman (Ria Ramkissoon) is a member of a cult called One Mind Ministries, and her cult leader has convinced her that her kid will come back to life.  That is, after first convincing her that her kid was a demon.  Because he wouldn't say "Amen" after meals.  That's why they decided to starve him, and that's why he died.  He was one year old.

Anyway, the terms were agreed to.  I'm not sure why.  I guess they figure it's impossible for the kid to come back to life, so they might as well agree since it won't make any difference.  But, I think they should have turned it down anyway.  And here's why:

1.) Agreeing to such a plea allows for the implication that resurrection of the dead is actually possible, which it isn't.  I mean, sure, there are some pretty amazing last second saves on operating tables, etc, but this kid has been dead since 2006 and spent most of that time shoved into a suitcase in someone's storage shed.  

2.) Agreeing to such a plea also seemingly implies that the only crime here is that the starvation led to death.  So, if you starve your kid and you manage to keep him alive, that's not felony child abuse?

3.)  A condition of being resurrected is that you have to be dead in the first place.  So whether or not the kid comes back to life, his mom still killed him. 

4.) Ramkissoon's belief in resurrection is based on the idea that her kid's death is God's will and that God's plan is to bring him back to life.  But, if God exists, wouldn't all deaths be God's will?  Would that make all murderers similarly innocent?  Or, just the ones who are lucky enough to kill people who God has slated for resurrection?

Ramkissoon is agreeing to testify against the other cult members, who have a variety of charges against them including first degree murder.  So, her sentence is going to be suspended.  I guess unless she messes up probation, she'll go unpunished as if her kid had come back to life.

Only, he'll still be dead.

I Solve TV

If you're a TV executive, you're in luck, because here's a great premise for a show:

You know how the season finale is always the best episode of a season?  Loose ends get tied up, major characters die or get married or have kids, big sets get destroyed, people move out of town, cherished vehicles explode, heroes turn into villains, villains turn into heroes.  And it all ends in a glorious cliffhanger. 

Then, the resolution is never satisfying.

So, why bother with the rest of the season?  I propose an entire TV series of season finales!  Each episode is a season finale.  It starts as if you've seen the previous 22 episodes, and ends as if you're going to have to wait a year for the next episode.  But you don't have to wait a year.  You only have to wait one week.  But when that week's over, you don't get the following episode -- you get THE NEXT SEASON FINALE!

Guest stars show up, people leave the show, people make triumphant returns to the show, natural disasters strike, helicopters crash into things -- week after week after week!  Every time you tune in, you'd get an updated opening credits sequence featuring clips from episodes you've never seen, and a "Previously, on Season Finale..." update featuring even more stuff you haven't seen!

All the episodes would be Part I of a II parter, but we'd never see the second part!  The box set would look like this:

SEASON FINALE -- Season 1

Pilot -- To Thine Own Self Be True, Part I

101   --  Dead Men's Bones, Part I

102   -- An Idea Like a Ghost, Part I

And so on.

A special thank you to William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and God Himself for the pretentious episode titles.

Oh, and TV excecs, you're welcome. 

Never forget

I was at lunch with a couple friends the other day.  One of them had just returned from a trip to New York City.

"I didn't do that much touristy stuff," she said.

"Did you go to Ground Zero?" my other friend asked.

"Yeah," the first friend said.

"Why?"  I asked.  "There's nothing there anymore."

They pretended not to hear me and continued discussing the trip.  I ordered a refill on fries.

The Rise and Fall of Made By Humans

When I was in college, I was in a rock band called Made By Humans.  We never played any shows or recorded any albums, but we did change line ups a lot.

It started out as me and my buddy, Bucky.  He played guitar, I didn't play anything.  He had actually been in a real band before college called Suburban Empire, so he had the necessary experience and equipment needed to start a band.

We were walking down Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena trying to think of a good band name.  We were mostly reading signs we passed and seeing if they'd make good band names, but also dipping into our literary influences as well.

"Made By Humans," I suggested, reading the sign off of a nearby building.

"That's actually pretty good," Bucky said.

We quickly recruited a girl named Monica who also lived in our dorm.  She also played guitar.  Her talent was pretty impressive.  She could play pretty much anything you put in front of her by ear.  She was also fond of the Golden Girls, which endeared her to me.  

So, we had a two headed guitar monster and a guy who didn't do anything.  I wasn't a stranger to writing poetry, so I decided I'd write lyrics.  That, combined with the fact that I didn't have any musical talent, made me the de facto lead singer.

That first round, I never actually ended up writing anything.  We mostly just played a song Bucky had written before college.  At the time it was called "Thinking About Thinking."  It was catchy and had some clever, insightful and honest lyrics that I could relate to.  He also had another catchy tune called "Acorn Family" which had lyrics, but they didn't make much sense.

The first time we practiced together, we went through "Thinking About Thinking" once or twice then stopped to discuss.

"You should sing more," Monica said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, thinking I had been singing the whole time.

"I mean, you're mostly just talking," she said.

"You start out each line good," Bucky elaborated.  "But then it just becomes talking by the end of the line."

Although Bucky and Monica both played guitar, they had very different styles.  If you had to assign each of them a specific job, I'd say Monica was the lead guitarist and Bucky was the rhythm guitarist.  They both had a lot of the same influences -- they were metal fans.  But, Bucky had more punk, pop and grunge influences and Monica leaned more towards hair metal, glam rock and prog rock.  Bucky liked a catchy riff while Monica liked complex solos.

Some times Monica would complain about the simplicity of Bucky's songs.

"There is so much strumming," she'd say.  Then she'd suggest places where we could put solos.

This frustrated Bucky, because he was the one writing songs.  Maybe if she wrote songs, she could put in whatever she wanted.  But as long as he was writing songs, he'd write them the way he wanted them.  No one was stopping her from writing songs.  In fact, it would have been nice if she had written something so that we could have expanded our catalog.

Eventually word got to a cool guy named Scott who lived down the hall that we were trying to put a band together.  He played bass and joined up.  So, now we had a hot chick, a cool guy, a guy who wrote songs, and a guy who tried to sing but mostly talked.  I never actually went on to practice with the band, now that it had a bassist, and kind of just faded myself into the background, since I was basically useless.  If I remember correctly Scott hooked the band up with a drummer, and they practiced a few times with all the pieces in place.

In any case, at this point I wasn't really participating any more, so I kind of lost track of what was going on.  Somehow everyone one cooled down on the band and went their separate ways, and though we'd talk (and argue) about music all the time, we didn't try to do anything of our own again for a few years.

During my junior year of college I decided to take drum lessons.  Growing up, I had always wanted to play drums, but felt like I needed my own set to really learn.  My parents weren't interested in getting me a set, so the only time I got to play around with the drums when I was at my best friend's house where I could use his.  I picked up enough to carry a simple beat and developed an affinity for air drumming, but never really learned or had time to teach myself.  As my musical tastes changed through high school and college, I began to fall more and more in love with The Who, and especially Keith Moon's insane drumming style (and personality).

So, I finally took advantage of the fact that my school had a huge music department and started taking drum lessons.  The benefit of this was that it gave me full time access to the practice room in a building just a few steps from my dorm.  I could go in there any time it wasn't in use by someone else and play the drums.  I used it to practice for my lessons, but also loved taking a stereo in there and blasting songs I could play along with (or pretend to play along with).  One of my greatest achievements was the time I hit my knuckle on the edge of the snare drum and split the skin, sending blood gushing.  It was then that I felt like a true drummer.

My first semester taking drum lessons, Bucky was studying abroad in England.  When he returned to school, he brought his guitar and amp and suggested we go down to the practice room and try to play something together.

Thus, Made By Humans was reborn, with the two original members -- Bucky on guitar, me on drums.  Both of us on vocals.

We dragged our would-be hit single, "Thinking About Thinking," out of moth balls and gave it another shot.  By now it had been retitled, "Poster Child," which was a fitting and clever title that both referred to the first line ("Pattern my thoughts around the poster on the wall. . .") and to the fact that it was a kind of coming of age story.

We also tried out "Acorn Family," which grew on me to the point where I almost liked it better than "Poster Child" -- it was just more fun to play, like a more up-tempo version of the same song.  And, we fooled around a lot, building songs out of improvisations.  Bucky would come up with tunes, I'd play along, we'd mess around for a while, then either he or I would take a crack at lyrics, and then come back and see how it worked.

This time I actually worked on writing some stuff.  During class when I was supposed to be learning, I'd scribble lyrics in my notebook.  Or, I'd take poems I had written over the last few years of college (I had transformed into a writing major since our first band attempt) and try to simplify them and move the lines around to make them more fitting material for songs.  I'd give Bucky what I had worked on, he'd rework it so that it would fit into a song structure he'd been putting together, and then we'd try it out.  Bucky eventually even brought a microphone and a separate amp so that when we sang along we could hear ourselves.

I was lazy, though.  I was getting towards the end of my poetry writing phase and it was hard for me to produce anything that I thought was worth while.  So, I'd try to cut corners and Bucky would catch me.

"The first verse is good," he said one time, as he was reading a rough draft of a song I had titled "Puddle of Loneliness" or something similarly angsty.  Maybe it was "Puddle of Emptiness."  In any case, he said, "The first verse is good -- but the second verse is just the opposite of the first verse."

"Really?" I asked.  I took a look at the song and he was right.  The second verse was just stating the exact opposite position of the first verse.

"In fact," Bucky said, "it seems like you do that in your songs a lot."

He was right.  He had caught me.

Aside from my creative laziness, we had another problem.  Bucky's amp.  Every day when it was time to practice, he'd have to carry his gigantic amp down the hall, down a couple flights of stairs, about a block away to the building that housed the practice room.  At first this was a minor annoyance, but after several days in a row, it became a little ridiculous.  Unfortunately there wasn't much else we could do -- we couldn't bring the drum set up to the dorm, I couldn't get my own drum set, it wasn't fun to practice without the amp.

Still, we had some minor successes.  Words cannot describe how satisfying it is to be able to get to the point where Bucky and I could both go into the chorus at the exact same time, or go into and come out of the rocking break down at the same time, or -- this was the best one -- end the song at the exact same time.  I know, it sounds stupid, but being a complete amateur, sometimes it was hard to know where I was in a song, so it was always great when we were both on the same page and able to really nail something we had been working on.

We covered "Can't Explain," by The Who, at my suggestion and we were supposed to cover a song by one of Bucky's favorite bands but never got around to it.  We also planned on covering something by Everclear, since Bucky and I had first met bonding over our mutual fondness for the band.

Aside from the greatness of "Poster Child" and "Acorn Family," and the obvious and pretentiousness of the angsty "Puddle of Loneliness," we co-wrote a few other gems that were actually surprisingly good, considering one half of the band was a complete rookie.

"White Plastic" was a slow, thoughtful, quiet song about the superficial qualities of modern life.  "Pleased to Meet You" was a more complex rocker with both slow and fast parts, including an epic rocking break down and a chorus so catchy that it would often be stuck in my head all day.  The lyrics of "Pleased to Meet You" were conventional love song lyrics but from the point of view of the singer never having met the chick he was apparently in love with.

We invited a couple friends down to the practice room to watch us do our thing, and I think for the most part they had to admit they were more impressed than they thought they would be.  We started talking about eventually recording our songs so we'd have a record of what we'd done together, recruiting some friends and equipment from Bucky's Suburban Empire days in an attempt to get a halfway professional sound, but we lost interest before that came together.  All that exists as a record of our songs is the lyrics I can dig up in notebooks, and one micro tape in a tiny tape recorder that we used to record a few of our practices.  I played that tape for a girl I was dating at the time, and some friends, and the tinny quality didn't do Made By Humans justice.  All I could do was assure anyone who listed that we weren't actually that bad.

Eventually the amp defeated us.  It was just too much of a pain in the ass to drag it down there all the time.  That, combined with the fact that our school schedules became more complicated the closer we got to the end of the year, spelled the end for Made By Humans.

Since then, there hasn't been a reunion.  Neither of us have moved on to do any solo work.  Maybe if video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band had existed back then, we never would have gotten together at all, and would have just lived out our fantasies in front of the TV.

As has always been the case throughout my life, among the people I hang out with there are a few people in a few bands.  So, on occasion, I get to go to their shows and live vicariously.  If I'm not on stage, at least I know the people on stage.  And, I half-jokingly got one of the bands to name a song after me.  Half-joking means I pretended to be joking so that they wouldn't think I was weird even though deep down inside I really, really, really wanted a song to be named after me.  So, there's my ticket to rock and roll immortality, assuming they get rich and famous.

Please, do me a favor.  Get rich and famous.

Have fun Lynching

The other day, at work, I was getting ready to leave for lunch when a woman I work with walked by.  I was in the process of slinging my man purse over my shoulder when she said:

"Have fun lynching."

Then, she kept walking.

I went into the restroom to take a piss before I left for lunch.  As I pissed, I wondered what she meant by, "Have fun lynching."

The first thing that came to mind when thinking of the word "lynching" was the infamous and tragic lynching mobs in the south that were responsible for the deaths of so many innocent African Americans.

So, I wondered, does this woman think I'm racist?  If so, why?  I mean, just moments before we had been bonding over how hilarious the film version of the board game "Clue" is, and now suddenly I'm a racist?

As I washed my hands, I tried to figure out what might cause her to think I'm racist.  I thought -- what was I doing when she said it?  Well, I had been in the process of slinging my man purse over my shoulder.

That's when I realized: much to my chagrin, my man purse has a Union Jack pattern on the outside of the front flap.  Normally I wear it backwards so that just the faux leather of the back side shows, thus preserving the Indiana Jones look I seek in my man purses.  But, in the process of slinging it over my shoulder, the Union Jack must have been visible.

At the time I bought the man purse, it had 2 selling points.

1.) It was the cheapest one in the store.

2.) It looked kind of like leather.

As I initially examined it before purchase, I did note the Union Jack design, but figured it was appropriate.  After all, I was buying the man purse partially in anticipation of a trip to England.  On top of that, the greates rock and roll band of all time, The Who, is heavily identified with the Union Jack, so it had that going for it.  Which was nice.

The drawbacks: I didn't want a symbol of any kind on my man purse.  I prefer to have things as plain as possible.  Additionally, the punk movement had also claimed then Union Jack, and I didn't want anyone thinking I was trying to be punk, since I was not only not trying to be punk but was also decidedly not punk anyway.

God forbid anyone think I should be posing.

But, I bought it anyway, wore it backwards, and didn't think twice.

Now, this lynching nonsense.

You may wonder, what does the Union Jack have to do with lynching?

Well, as I went about my pre-lunch toiletries, my warped mind told me this:  This woman had glanced the Union Jack, had mistaken it for a Confederate Flag, and had decided I was racist.  Then, to commemorate the moment, she had said, "Have fun lynching."

It seemed reasonable to me.  The Union Jack does have a passing resemblance to the Confederate Flag.  The only difference is, I'll begrudgingly wear a Union Jack man purse while I would never be caught dead in a Confederate Flag man purse.  That, and all the other differences.  Still, if you're not a student of these things, I could see where if some dude was quickly slinging his Union Jacked man purse over his shoulder and you just caught a passing glance, you might assume it was the Confederate Flag.

So, for the next few hours, I thought about the implications.  Could I live with a chick at work thinking I had a Confederate Flag man purse?  Could I live with her thinking I was an unforgivable racist?  Could I allow her to go through the rest of her life confusing the Union Jack with the Confederate Flag?

Finally towards the end of the day I decided to ask her just what the hell she meant.

"Hey," I said, leaning on the wall of her cubicle.  "What did you mean, earlier today, when you said have fun lynching?"

"What?" she asked, clearly confused.

"Earlier," I said, "when I was leaving for lunch.  You said, 'Have fun lynching.'  What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh," she said.  "You were leaving for lunch.  So I said 'have fun LUNCHING.'"

Suddenly it all made sense.  So, we spent the rest of the afternoon quoting "Clue."

Johnny Z, or How I Learned not to Gay Bash

For a brief time, when I was around 13 or 14 years old, I'm not proud to admit that a lot of my interactions with my fellow male 13 or 14-year-old friends involved us accusing each other of being homosexual.  Of course, we used euphamisms.

Looking back, I'm not sure why, except to say that I guess that's the way society taught us to be.  My parents certainly didn't raise me to have any kind of problem with homosexuality.  I suppose there might be something to be said for the fact that we were all striving so desperately to try to get some kind of recognition from chicks, while also not getting any recognition at all, that it reduced us to accusing each other of being gay in an attempt to assert our own heterosexuality in the absence of any actual proof, barring athletic prowess (of which I had none).

But all of that is over thinking it and possibly making excuses where there isn't necessarily room for them.  Sure, boys will be boys, but every boy eventually becomes a man, and every man eventually learns that gay bashing is wrong -- that's when he decides to either keep doing it, or knock it off.  Or, continue to do it in an ironic way with friends who are equally liberal and would never actually prevent any gay people from having rights.  Whatever.

Point is, when I was 13 or 14, my friends and I deemed a lot of people and things to be gay.

Two examples, one real life, the other pretend:

Pretend Example:

In the popular video games "Mortal Kombat" and "Mortal Kombat II" there was a character called Johnny Cage.  This character was a Hollywood star who was known for his vanity -- sporting sun glasses, combing his hair, giving out 8x10 glossies.  His special move consisted of suddenly dropping into the splits formation and punching his nemesis in the balls.  This both suggested that he had no balls of his own and that he didn't mind touching other characters' balls.  He was also among the weakest characters in "Mortal Kombat II" and became somewhat of a joke to my friend, David, and I, so we decided he was gay.

Real Life Example:

My 8th grade Algebra teacher.  I hated math and wasn't any good at it, so that was one strike against him from the get go.  But, he was a character in his own right.  My same buddy, David, and I made the following observations about him:

1.) He had a strange voice that would wobble high and low seemingly uncontrollably.

2.) He mispronounced complicated mathematical terms like "polynomial."

3.) He always called us "Mr." and our last initial.  Because of his voice wobble, this always made the "Mr." extremely high, and the last initial extremely low.

4.) He wore turquoise pants with a tucked in turquoise polo shirt, 2 sizes too small, belt tight enough so the pants bunch up above the waist line.  The pants were always faded, as if left in the sun too long.

5.) His wife also taught at our school and had a name that was traditionally identified as male.

All of these things might seem innocent enough, but to me and David they were all sure signs that this guy was gay.  He had a complicated last name starting with a "Z" and like many teachers with complicated last names, simply had us call him "Mr." last initial, or, "Mr. Z."

Johnny Cage and Mr. Z melded in our minds and Johnny Z was born.  We'd insult Cage by calling him Johnny Z, and insult Mr. Z by calling him Johnny Z as well.

So, one day I was innocently writing a note in class when I should have been learning.  I was not in Mr. Z's class, which was at the end of the day, but in an earlier class in which the teacher was cool and liked me and didn't care what we did.  So, as I was writing the note I saw fit to make an observation along the lines of:

"Dude, Mr. Z. is so gay."

I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but it was something like that.  At the end of the period, I folded the note up, went into the hall to head to my next class, and passed it off to the girl who it was intended for.  She took it to her next class while I headed for mine.

This is where things go wrong.  I don't know all the details, but somehow the girl was caught reading the note by her teacher, and her teacher confiscated it.  The teacher read the note, saw the part about Mr. Z being totally gay, and decided to show it to Mr. Z.

Now, I don't know what the deal is.  I don't know if the teacher had a good sense of humor and just wanted to bust Mr. Z's balls, or if the teacher was a complete child and wanted to get me in trouble even though I was 13 and she was a grown woman.  Either way, she showed it to Mr. Z and Mr. Z flipped.

This was all unbeknownst to me, however, until I got to Algebra and was immediately called up to Mr. Z's desk.

"MISTER A," he said, waving me up, the "mister" distrubingly high and the "A" disturbingly low.  I went up to his desk, not knowing what was going on, while the rest of the class descended into chaos during what would end up being a 15 or 20 minute interrogation.

"Go get the dictionary," Mr. Z requested of me, voice as wobbly as ever.  I did as I was told.  For some reason there were dictionaries in the Algebra room.

"Now, look up HECterosexual," Mr. Z said.

In case you're wondering if you read that correctly, you did.  He said hecterosexual, with a "c" which is not a word.  But, I was nervous.  I was beginning to think something was up here.  I was not a stranger to being in minor trouble with Mr. Z, since I was a poor math student and goofed around all the time, but I was starting to get the feeling he might know something I didn't know, which was cause for concern.  I normally didn't get into serious trouble, so my heart had dropped into my stomach, and was now beating quickly, which made me a little nauseous. 

So, I pretended to look up hecterosexual, with a "c," even though I knew the mission was doomed to failure.

When I came up with nothing, Mr. Z let out a profound, "Hmmm."

I waited a moment and then summoned up the courage to suggest, "Maybe heterosexual?"

"YES," Mr. Z said, "Yes, that's it, try HETerosexual."

So, I looked that one up, and sure enough, it was there, with the expected definition:  dudes who like to bone chicks.  Okay, it was a little more clinical than that, but I think everyone knows what it means.

"Now," Mr. Z said, satisfied after having forced me to read the definition.  "Look up -- HOMOsexual."

So, I did.  And sure enough, there it was in the dictionary.  And sure enough, the definition said something like, "Dudes who like to bang other dudes."  Only, more classy.

After making me read that one aloud, Mr. Z posed the burning question that he had been leading up to all this time: 

"Now.  I'm male.  I'm married.  My wife works here.  You've seen her around.  Which one of those definitions would you say I am?"

"Heterosexual?" I guessed.

"Yes," Mr. Z said.  "So, why would you write -- THIS!"

With that he slammed my note down in front of me and I finally realized what was going on.  My own words screamed back at me:  "Dude, Mr. Z is totally gay."  I was caught red-handed.  So, I tried to explain.

"Well," I said, trying to keep my cool, "it's not like I literally think you're gay -- I'm just -- you know -- sometimes -- people. . . SAY people are gay. . ."

Mr. Z, showing some uncharacteristic mercy, interrupted to ask what I thought my parents would say if he showed them the note.  I told him my parents probably would not be very happy, and it was a pretty good threat since they were in fairly regular communication with Mr. Z due to my terrible Algebra grades.

I can't remember exactly what happened after that except to say the interrogation ended and class went back to normal.  Mr. Z never told my parents, to his credit, which makes him cooler than the teacher who ratted me out to him in the first place.  In fact, over the last few months of school, if I didn't know any better, I would have though Mr. Z was growing a little fond of me and even said one time during a field trip, "You know, you're charming.  Has anyone ever told you that?"  Which they hadn't.

But, even after all of those trips through the dictionary and the semi-public humiliation with Mr. Z, I wasn't totally cured.  It took a guy I actually respected to cure me.

At the end of 8th grade, I made the mistake of writing the following message in a friend of mine's yearbook:

"I'd say I love you, but I'm not gay."

What I really meant to say was, "I love you."  But hey, I was 13.

In any case, this guy's dad, who I had always thought was a cool guy, mentioned in passing:

"Hey, I saw your message in the year book.  I was disappointed.  I thought you were smarter than that.  You know, it is possible for two guys to love each other in a platonic way without being gay."

They key there?  He was disappointed in me.  He thought I was smarter than that.  And he explained where I was coming from.  He wasn't personally threatened by it.  He didn't respond like a child.  He talked to a child, me, as if I was an adult.  And it made sense.

So, I laid off all the gay stuff for a while.  And, I didn't miss it.  Everyone else seemed to lay off it, as well.  Maybe because by the time we got to high school we were finally able to seal the deal with chicks and we didn't care any more.  Or, maybe just because we were growing up.  Either way, I wanted to be smart and I didn't want to disappoint people I respected.

Incidentally, the dad who told me that turned out to be gay in the end.  The jury is still out on Johnny Z, as far as I know.