Watch it before you decide what it’s really about.

I do not speak ill of the dead.

Or at least not the newly dead.

Joseph McCarthy, for example, has been gone long enough (he died in 1957, a year before I was born) that I have no qualms about describing him as a foul drunkard who indulged a paranoid, psychotic need to persecute and bully by cloaking it in false patriotism. Nor do I have any qualms about asserting that this description is overly generous.

But William F. Buckley, Jr., who defended McCarthy in 1954′s McCarthy and His Enemies, died only yesterday (February 27, 2008).

So I’ll not speak ill of Mr. Buckley.

Instead, I’ll just describe one of the three instances in which Mr. Buckley’s life almost-but-not-quite-and-not-really intersected with mine – with no purpose other than to illustrate what a strange universe it must be that would allow even the slightest of connections between the right-wing, Ivy-League likes of Mr. Buckley and the labor-union-joining, State-School likes of me.

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National Review, the conservative magazine that Mr. Buckley founded, published an article by James Bowman in its October 18, 1993 issue entitled “The Uses of Abuse.” This article’s premise can be gleaned from the following two passages (the first from the article’s second paragraph, the second from its final paragraph):

. . . Now deviancy is taken to be the norm and everybody is a case history, or aspires to be. People carry, as if strapped to their backs, sacks full of traumas that they can take out and compare with those of their acquaintances. It is our equivalent of the eighteenth-century fad of carrying around snuff boxes. And so great is the craving for traumas and histories of abuse that literature has taken up the challenge of helping supply it. Ours is a more unhealthy habit than snuff-taking. For the thrill that we get from sniffing around child abuse, drunkenness, domestic violence, and so forth has an extra kick to it because so much of modern art and literature has taught us to see these things as the “reality” which all the amenities of life only serve to mask.

. . . Rubbish! We are not morally determined; sin is not reducible to sickness. . . . Even mystifiers of moral disorder like Fussell and L’Heureux [Paul Fussell and John L’Heureux, two of the novelists Mr. Bowman’s article excoriates] must recognize this in practice, since neither, so far as anyone knows, has been irresistibly tempted to gas or burn anyone. The only thing they are guilty of is the pretense of belief in their own, hidden Satanic qualities as a way of advancing the agenda of one sort or another of leftism and its assault on patriarchy, on tradition, on families, on free will, and on individual responsibility.

Got that? If an author writes a story in which abuse engenders further abuse, that author is a pandering Commie pornographer bent on destroying all that is good and pure. (This is a loose translation, but I think that’s the gist of it. Then again, I went to a state school, so what do I know?)

The connection to Yours Truly? Well, about three-quarters of the way through the article, Mr. Bowman dispatches me with a flick of his right wrist:

. . . Take, for example, Kathryn Harrison’s Exposure (Random House), which dwells upon the effects in later life of a girl’s being photographed in erotic dishabille by her highly artistic father (she becomes a junkie and a shoplifter), or Bradley Denton’s Blackburn (St. Martin’s), about a boy who becomes disillusioned with the entire adult world because of his father’s beating of himself and his mother (he becomes a serial killer). Again and again the same formula is repeated: real fictional characters are turned into psychological automata. The determinist subtext is another way of insisting on the generalization of violence and the diffusion of blame.

Needless to say, I am of the (admittedly biased) opinion that Mr. Bowman completely missed the point of my novel. But then, after reading “The Uses of Abuse,” I am also of the (admittedly biased) opinion that Mr. Bowman couldn’t read his way out of a wet Happy Meal bag.

And I feel confident that this is the only time the name “Bradley Denton” has ever appeared, or will ever appear, in the pages of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review.

Remodeling, even the “easy” kind we’re doing (replacing our old, animal-ravaged carpets with new hardwood floors and painting), is a nightmare. It’s particularly tough at Casa Spector because The Dude and I are packrats.  The only difference between the two of us is that I tend to collect small stuff like vintage jewelry and The Dude has kept every piece of paper, toy, game, and hang tag that has ever touched his fingers.  This can add up.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but trying to move the, hrummmm, stuff out of The Dude’s room was a week-long trial.  It involved much dust, whining, and several threats.

Dante had Nine Levels in Hell. 

He had obviously never remodeled.

Trust me, those lower levels reserved for heretics and traitors who are continually eaten by Lucifer and freezing forever in an icy lake — Ha! – that would be a frickin’ holiday compared to having to move all our crap.

And may I confess here?  I am cat-like in my nature.  Most people think cats are capricious and unpredictable.  Ha!  I tell you, Ha!

Cats are more rigid and set-in-their-ways than you might imagine.  (Ask me sometime what happened when I moved George Frankenkitty’s favorite snooze bed.)

I, too, am set in my ways and, far as I’m concerned, I’ve had about as much fun as I can stand.  I want the floor guys done.  Done!  Dammit!  I want my bed back in its normal place!  I want to be able to get to the bathroom!  I want access to my closet!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Okay, I’m better now.  Except that all the detritus of my life is strewn all over the house.  I can’t find anything.  If someone came in here and held a gun to my head and said, “Find your heating pad or I’ll kill you,” I would be so dead.

I swear I’m finished with this crazy remodeling crap.  That is, until we get the kitchen underway.

Unfortunately, now that I’ve returned to Central Texas, Central Texas has also returned to me.  I have a truly outstanding case of cedar fever, and tonight I feel about as good as I did the last time I was worked over with a crowbar (which happens with greater frequency than you might imagine, considering how sweet I am).

As a result, this week’s post is of the same ilk as last week’s — that is, a photo from one of the high points of the Pilgrimage:

So.  Where did YOU spend Christmas?

Ike Turner died last week at the age of 76, and the news of his death made me ponder the fact that every artist’s life and work can be represented as a Venn diagram – two circles intersecting, separate yet inseparable.

It also made me ponder the fact that how an artist is perceived by everyone else depends on whether everyone else is looking at one circle or at the other . . . or at the place where they intersect.

In the case of Mr. Turner, the public at large knew too much about his life with Tina Turner, and his abuse of her, to ever judge him solely on the basis of his contribution to modern music. After all, a large part of that contribution was in collaboration with Tina herself – and there, where his life and art intersected, is where he’ll be forever remembered.

Ike bitterly denied Tina’s claims of abuse . . . but we read the book, and we saw the movie. We can’t forget.

And yet.

There was “Rocket 88,” widely considered to be the first rock’n’roll record. The first.

There was the incendiary music with Tina.

There was the pounding funk of his piano and the dive-bombing screams of his Strat – sounds that no one had made before Ike.

And just this year, in 2007, there was a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album: Risin’ with the Blues.

One of that album’s standout tracks is called “Jesus Loves Me” – and while the title evokes an old children’s song, Ike’s version is a grown-up 12-bar autobiography. It’s the musical equivalent of the fierce eyes on the album cover, and it says, in part:

I’m a bad boy

But Jesus loves me anyway.

I’m a bad boy

But Jesus loves me anyway.

As long as Jesus loves me

I don’t care what nobody say.

And while I have no way of knowing, I suspect that may well have been Ike Turner’s final thought last Wednesday, December 12.

For both his strength and his weakness, his shame and his greatness . . . I hope we never forget him.

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That was last week.

This week, on December 18, Keith Richards turned 64.

Happy Birthday, Keef.  Thanks for the songs, the riffs, the bad behavior, and the heart.

And thanks for proving that a Telecaster has a thousand uses.

We wouldn’t be the same without you.

Barb returned from another trip to Japan last weekend, and she brought back something wondrous for me:

BlackBlack Chewing Gum.

Now, if you’re like me (and I know I am), you’ll be asking, “What’s so wondrous about BlackBlack Chewing Gum? Does it have a unique, delicious flavor? Does that flavor last a long, long time? Do the packages contain decoder rings that enable one to discover Jessica Alba’s phone number hidden within the text of her Wikipedia entry?”

The answer to all of the above is “No, who needs that stuff? If I want a unique, delicious flavor, I’ll eat a nectarine. [Rory: A nectarine is a kind of fruit.] If I want flavor that lasts a long, long time, I’ll consume a clove of garlic. And if I want Jessica Alba’s phone number, I’ll look for it in my kitchen trash, which is where I threw it after hearing that she’s having a baby with another man.”

“So what’s the attraction?” you’ll ask. “If BlackBlack’s flavor isn’t especially unique, delicious, or long-lasting, and it’s no help in stalking starlets, then why all the BlackBlack love?”

One word, my poor, deprived Brainiacs:

Caffeine.

BlackBlack tastes just fine, but I’d chew it even if it tasted like (and were made of) recycled road-grader tires. Because it’s loaded with my favorite legal drug: Sweet Mistress Caffeine.

Ah, legal, schmegal. I might as well come clean. Caffeine isn’t just my favorite legal drug. It’s my favorite drug, period. And if it ever becomes illegal, I’ll be buying small party balloons and/or Trojans by the boxcar so I can launch the largest smuggling operation the world has ever seen.

(And I know for a fact that there’ll be no shortage of mules.)

Yes, I’m a stone junkie, and I know it. But I didn’t used to be like this.

Hand to God, I was virtually caffeine-free until I was in my early thirties. That was when Ben & Jerry introduced their “Coffee Heath Bar Crunch” ice cream flavor.

For me, devouring that first pint was like Navin Johnson hearing his first Mantovani record. “If I like this so much,” I thought, scouring the empty cardboard shell with my tongue while hanging upside-down from a streetlight, “how much more might be out there?”

So it began, and so it progressed: Ben & Jerry. Hot cocoa. Milk chocolate. Dark chocolate. Constant Comment. Red Bull. Ovaltine.

And, especially, always and forever, coffee.

I mean, Sweet Merciful Jesus, if You had really loved Your people, You wouldn’t have turned that water into wine. You’d have turned it into a nice, balanced, medium-roast Kona with a shot of Half & Half.

Sadly, I can’t drink coffee all day long. That first morning pot of black gold gets me up and working . . . but if I kept making more as the day progressed, I’d have to move my office to the little room down the hall. You know, the one with all the porcelain.

Now, though – thanks to my lovely spouse, hereafter known to history as The Enabler – I have BlackBlack. So when the afternoon drowsies hit me, I can hit back.

This is in keeping with BlackBlack’s clearly intended purpose: To help its consumers get more work done. The large box of Chiclet-style BlackBlack even comes with a tiny green Post-It-style notepad in a special slot inside, just in case you have to write a memo while digging for your next hit.

In fact, I’ve already scribbled on the first tiny Post-It from my BlackBlack pad and have stuck it on my computer monitor. That way, I’ll be sure to see it every day between now and next March . . . when Barb and I will both be taking another trip to Japan.

The note says:

BUY MORE BLACKBLACK!

As if a junkie would ever forget.

This is Jesus.  He is a teddy bear.  He is warm, fuzzy, cuddly, and stuffed with straw (on account of He was born in a manger).

Everybody loves Jesus.  After all, He’s a teddy bear.  And who doesn’t like teddy bears?

However, I must emphasize that I did not name him Jesus.  He came with that name.  So if you don’t like it, don’t blame me.

I guess, though, that you do have to blame me for this: 

Well, somebody had to do it.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t be Saved, now, would you?

(I confess that I got carried away and scourged most of the stuffing out of Him first.  Which was probably excessive.)

Now, I only know Jesus Bear as well as I do because I grew up with Him.  My elders gave me that scruffy ol’ bear when I was still in my crib, and I dragged Him around for years. 

Or maybe He was dragging me.  Who the hell knows? 

(Probably when there was only one set of drag marks on the beach, that’s when He was dragging me.)

Anyway, my point is that other folks in other places grew up with other bears.  So, in the interests of equal time, here’s:

                            Rabbi Bear . . .

And –

             (Name Withheld) Bear . . .

And –

                                           Zombie Bear!

Aren’t they cute?  And look at how well all these different bears coexist:

I’m not sure what the grasshopper’s* doing there.  Maybe they’re going to eat it.  (Is grasshopper kosher?)

Anyway, my (new) point is –  Let’s be like the bears! 

Or, as Rodney King asked in 1992, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Then again, Rodney King was peppered by a shotgun blast yesterday. 

So the answer, apparently, is “No.”

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(Which reminds me:  Does anyone know where Dick Cheney was yesterday?)

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*Whoops!  My mistake.  That’s no grasshopper. 

  It’s a praying mantis, of course.

  (But I still think they’re going to eat it.)

It records where it has been and when. This is its only purpose. You can’t use it to rescue someone–it doesn’t transmit where they are. You can’t use it to give someone directions. It won’t tell the carrier where they are. Only after you’ve retrieved it (from a car, from a purse, from a briefcase, from the lining of someone’s coat) can you get the information.

So, why are you using this?

To spy on a person’s movements and, from physical locations, their associates.

It’s only 200 bucks after all. 2.5 meter accuracy. On board USB 2.0 port. 1Mb programmable flash memory. Weatherproof ABS housing.

Why wouldn’t you?

Probably because money isn’t the only cost of betraying trust.

My Dearest Colleagues in the Struggle,

Like all good little hippie boys, I got politically radicalized in the Sixties. I realized that our wonderful, God-ordained, perfect U.S. of A. consistently fell short of its aspirations. It was a gut-level awakening, not the result of some sophisticated research and development on my part. It broke my heart.

Actually, I made the mistake of watching what the politicians did, instead of what they said, and that was fatal. Yeah. As it always has been.

There are no mainstream political parties that I feel at home with. I find even the most moderate (WTF? What is a ‘moderate’?) Republicans repugnant on a genetic level. Democrats at least mouth the words I want to hear. Then they sell out or chicken out. I don’t know or care anymore whether they actually ever meant the things they said while trying to get their own room in the palace at Versailles-on-the-Potomac.

The real system we have in place is deliberately designed to run off, destroy, or corrupt anyone who wants to actually further the ideals enshrined in our Constitution.

I bailed out. I didn’t vote, not once, until the 2002 elections. All I saw was a lose/lose game, and I decided early on to not play it. I watched things crumble around me with a certain narcissistic smugness.

Then Caroline and Jessica made me feel all guilty and citizen-y and responsible and politically aware again. They’re both hot babes, and I’ve always been compliant with the hot babes.

I started surfing the netroots blogs. It was a comfort at first. I realized that I wasn’t merely insane – things were indeed getting incredibly worse incredibly quickly. And I wasn’t the only one who saw it. I wasn’t alone.

I now read political news and blogs on the webs for at least two hours a day. I can discourse in detail on damn near every scandal, outrage, cop-out, conspiracy, treasonous act, fuck-up, and smear campaign perpetrated by the assholes on both the Left and the Right — mostly the Right — since about 1990.

It’s a rolling carnival of unending horrors. We’ve officially disowned damn near all of the paperwork our Founding Fathers signed off on to try to keep us from becoming Caligula’s Rome. You won’t sneer at my comparing us with that particular decadent empire, after we’ve had another generation of the two-tier economy in place, the one where there are the wealthy, and there are the peasants, and no one else between, and nobody gives a shit what happens to the peasants.

I’ve vibrated between Wrath at the spoilers, and Despair for my country, for almost all of this new century.

I’m tired of it, and I’m done with it.

:

:

All of my outrage, all of my writings, and public and private spewings, on the subject haven’t made any noticeable difference, and it’s made me sick.

I’ve quit reading the political blogs, with a very few relapses, for the past two weeks. I can feel mental health seeping back into my skull.

I’m not burnt out. You burn out when you refuse to quit doing the thing that burns you out. I’ve been there in my work life, more than once, and this isn’t that.

I haven’t quit caring. But the kind of caring I’ve been doing (and maybe that you’ve been doing?) hasn’t been sane.

I’m going to be as blissfully ignorant of the latest and newest monstrosities as I can.

I’m going to quit fucking my head up and just do the things that might actually make a tiny bit of difference. I don’t have much money to spare, but I’m going to keep giving to Act Blue.

I’m going to vote as often and as long as I’m allowed to, for the rest of my life. Always for Democrats, unless something changes radically. Some of them are idiots and criminals, but Rach and I have a better chance of staying out of the gulags if they get some power and manage to hold onto it. I may even do some volunteering again next year, something to do with the Brazos County Dems.

I’m going to write some stories and make some music and love my daughter and take care of myself, using the new time and emotional energy that I’m acquiring.

I’m not going to do any more politically-oriented posts here at EOB. This is the last one, if can hold to my plan. When you mention to me that the Bush administration has finally declared martial law and suspended elections, and the tanks are rolling down Main Street, I plan to be surprised. Sorry, guys.

Please don’t take this as me being judgmental or trying to talk you into doing the same thing or devaluing your care and attention to things worldly.

I’ve just decided that I’d rather spend my time loving the people I love, rather than hating the people I hate.

:

If you want to keep up with the stuff that I’m not keeping up with any more, here are the places I used to go. They’re great at what they do, and I know a hell of a lot more on some subjects than I ever wanted to:

Buzzflash

MyDD

Daily Kos

Crooks and Liars

AmericaBlog

Booman Tribune

Eschaton

FireDog Lake

Huffington Post

New York Times Ed Page

Digby – Hullabaloo

TPM Cafe

Burnt Orange Report

The writing at these blogs is often informative and revealing, sometimes brilliant. You’ll be a much better informed citizen if you read some or all of them regularly.

I’ve probably missed some important ones. But, right now, I don’t mind that. Feel free to add them in your comments, if you wish.

Hugs to you all,

Rory

:

Advertising Week, the largest and most prestigious annual gathering of advertising and media industry leaders in North America, has named the United States Marine Corps an inductee to the “Walk of Fame” for advertising slogans. Voting took place via the World Wide Web Aug. 28 through Sept. 25.

“This slogan [The Few, the Proud, the Marines] reflects the unique character of the Marine Corps and underscores the high caliber of those who join and serve their country as Marines,” said Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tryon, commanding general, Marine Corps Recruiting Command. “Such recognition reaffirms the special relationship we have with the American public.”

All right. The above examples are not meant to, in any way, reflect negatively upon the Marine Corps, Barbie, or Barbies who may be serving in the Marine Corps. I want to talk about Pride.

“You should be proud of yourself!”

“Gay Pride!”

“Black Pride!”

Leviticus 26:19,

King James Version: And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:

Latin Vulgate: et conteram superbiam duritiae vestrae daboque caelum vobis desuper sicut ferrum et terram aeneam

Obviously we have a disconnect here. Pride, as a word, is currently more positive than it used to be. Oddly enough, this is also how it started. The Norman knights who conquered Britain were, in Old French, prude “brave, valiant,” but the English who eventually adopted this word thought the Normans were “stuck-up and arrogant.” So pride and proud came into our language with a taint. When the Bible was translated from Latin, the word was superbia, a root I’m sure we all recognize and, again, one that doesn’t currently have a negative taint. “Dawling, that was superb!”

In this century we have a thing about esteem, particularly self-esteem. We tell kids they are special, each and every one. We worry about damaged self-esteem. This is probably not a completely new concept in history but it is one that goes in waves. After all, how could you love thy neighbor as thyself if you really despised yourself? Maybe that’s what was happening with a lot of those wars. Maybe they were visiting their own self-revulsion on their fellow man?

However, in many of the listings of the Big Seven, Vanity is the Sin.

The words that are often listed with Pride are vanity, arrogance, narcissism, and hubris. Now we’re getting into the tainted words. We don’t usually associate these with positive attributes. Yet, in all of them, is an element of a virtue that has been changed, usually through exaggeration.

Vanity is an appreciation of ones own appearance, after all, but an extreme version, a valuing of appearance over personality and ability.

We certainly don’t say of someone, what a nice, arrogant guy! This is someone with a degree of confidence in his abilities or place in the world that goes way over the top–usually where their perception of their abilities is quite in excess of their actual abilities or status.

Narcissism is just self-esteem, right? Steaming esteem. Love thyself because you’re way more lovable than your neighbor.

And hubris.

Remember hubris?

Well, lest I go down that path myself, let’s talk about MY sins.

Egomaniac. That about describes it. I was a newly published author attending my first WorldCon (Denver, I believe). I had access to the SFWA suite (cough, cough, cough–”No, there isn’t a non-smoking section.”) and I was on my first WorldCon panel. And I hung out with WRITERS! (At least I wasn’t like the newly published author who explained to his friends at NESFA that now that he was a writer he must put fannish things behind him…right before Isaac Asimov came out of the back room and said, “Hey, we’re all out of page eight! Can we get some more?”)

Then there were the women. I won’t go into details but the nickname was, “Red Herring of Romance.” Why no, I don’t think it was because herrings are, uh, limp. Perhaps, “inability to commit” had something to do with it.

It’s waves. From the peak of arrogance, to the trough of humility, I go up and down as my fortunes change. This is probably not unlike the peaks and lows of depression, but in my case I’ve been generally happy. Just more or less arrogant. Presumptuous. Proud.

And I’m still proud. I’m enormously proud of my daughters. I’m moderately proud of my writing career. I am happy that they’re making the movie, but of this I’m not particularly proud, just glad. The movie will succeed or fail on so many factors and only a bit of that is the original material. It’s a giant collaborative project, the Hollywood Blockbuster thingy. I’m proud that various librarians tell me they use Jumper as their first recommendation when they want kids to trust their later recommendations.

Let’s hear it for a bit of quiet pride, a bit of honest humility, and some moments of quiet satisfaction. Let’s hope for good things and prepare for bad. Treat other as you would be treated.

Anything else is hubris.

And that’ll bite you on the ass.

(Sorry this is late, plane landed after 11:00pm last night.)

I was thirty and working as a temp in the military industrial complex. I was the office help for a huge lawsuit, working sixty or more hours a week. The company had taken on a project for the government—that’s what defense contractors do, of course—and in those innocent days before Halliburton, they had accepted specs that were beyond the capabilities of any company to produce. The government knew that. But the idea was to make the goals impossible with the hope that the company would come up with unexpected ways to fulfill some of them. Then the political wind shifted and suddenly those specs became not goals, but hard and fast specifications. Much nastiness.

Me, I typed. Like I said, I was an office temp. I worked with a manager and two lawyers from a bit Washington DC law firm. One of the guys billed at $210 and hour. (I billed at $7.50 an hour.) One day, he took one of my floppy discs that contained all of the latest versions of the incredibly huge legal document I was typing. He said he didn’t have it. And I got mad.

My nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree and all the tiredness from the crazy hours I was working burned out of me and I explained to the $210 an hour guy just exactly how I felt. I felt empowered. I felt pretty good. I liked being angry. It was a lot better than a lot of other ways I normally felt—like anxious. Righteous anger. Adrenaline.
I went back to my desk and half an hour later found the disc.

I went crawling back to the lawyer and apologized. (He, of course, had forgotten it. You don’t make partner in a powerful Washington DC law firm if having somebody yell at you bothers you.) But I didn’t forget.

Wrath. If envy, as Unca Buzzkill says, is the marijuana of the seven deadly sins, the gateway to resentment, then wrath is the methamphetamine. It hits you hard. It feels good. And it burns you out. It’s fight or flight. Anger is the flip side of the same coin as fear. Scary, powerful stuff in the human animal, a endocrinological and neurological cascade of stuff like catecholamines, adrenaline and noradrenaline. It can focus you, make you impervious to pain, make you physically stronger. It can be a rush. It can make you feel good.

It’s a lot more fun than fear. Fear is no fun at all. Anger jacks you up. Fear makes you feel paralyzed. We don’t want our enemies to be angry at us, we want them to fear us. Because fear feels bad. Fear of someone having control over us. Fear of someone making our lives harder. Fear of someone embarrassing us. A lot of violence can come out of that last one. Men commit most of the violent crimes in this country, and as was pointed out to me, when men size up a woman for a possible date, they worry about whether she’ll turn them down. They worry about being embarrassed. When a woman gets asked out, she has to ask herself, among other things, is this guy not going to take ‘no’ for an answer? Is this guy going to rape me?

Of course, anger doesn’t really always feel good. I really try to avoid the big, fun, veins bulging anger, which leaves me with just the little, passive aggressive stuff. The insidious stuff. I seethe at people in the twelve item line who have thirteen items. (Yes, I count.) I get secretly hateful about people on airplanes who bring two large pieces of carry-on luggage. If you’ve got that much stuff, I screech at them silently, in my mind, check you goddamn bag. Seething isn’t as fun a full blown anger. It mostly bathes my system in a mildly toxic soup of adrenaline and corticosteriods. It tastes bitter.

If fear is the flipside of anger, then it’s interesting to ask, why am I so angry at some guy with a rolling suitcase and a second small suitcase getting on the plane in front of me? Because I’m afraid that there won’t be room for my backpack. And my backpack has my computer in it, so I don’t want to have them tag it and put it in luggage. Because if I lose my computer, my life will become a living hell. My novel in progress, my freelance work, all my email addresses. I will be forced to acknowledge that I am the kind of person who never gets around to backing up her hard drive. I will be faced with my own stupid failings as a human being. The guy with two suitcases is guilty of not worrying about me.

I’d love, love, love to attain a zenlike calm. I’d also like to be thinner, younger, and more talented.

I think I’ll just sit here and seethe.

 

UNCA BUZZKILL SEZ . . .

I got your Envy right here. Too bad YOU don’t get any.

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Hi, kids, and welcome to this week’s edition of “Unca Buzzkill Sez.” Your boy Denton was supposed to occupy this space with a few words about the Deadly Sin of Envy – but he’s off washing the feet of impoverished former Enron executives or petting fluffy bunnies or something. The guy claims to have no experience with Envy, and instead swears that he’s grateful for everything in his life and rejoices in all good things that come to others.*

Yeah, it sounds like a load to Unca Buzzkill, too. But don’t worry. Unca B. has plans to fix Mr. HappyPants’s little red tent-show wagon soon enough. In the meantime, it falls to Unca to help the rest of you explore this nasty little spot of pustulence eating away at your hearts.

To be honest, Unca Buzzkill wishes he could explicate Despair for you instead. You see, Unca knows all about Despair, having socked away his entire 401(k) in Zeppelin stocks on May 5, 1937.

Besides, Despair is usually described (as Joyce Carol Oates explains) as the only sin God CANNOT forgive. So even though it isn’t one of the traditional Seven Deadlies (except on a few Orthodox lists), there’s actually far more juicy badness to be found in simple Despair than in any of those splashy (yet forgivable) sins like fornication or taking-the-name-of-the-Lord-in-vain. Seriously. F*** me. I mean, Jesus.

Yet it occurs to Unca Buzzkill that Envy, if indulged, must inevitably lead to Despair. Envy, then, is a sort of Gateway Sin to the hardcore damnation of Despair in much the same way that Marijuana is a Gateway Drug to the hardcore consumption of Chips Ahoy.

And since Unca Buzzkill doesn’t want to hang out in Hell with a bunch of strangers, all moaning and grasping for bags of storebought cookies that invisible demons are holding just out of reach, he’s going to help his friends at Eat Our Brains get in touch with their inner Enviousness. Then we can all slide down to the Pit together, Envying those who slid down first before the razor got icky.

Because we’ve all got it. We got Envy, yes we do. We got Envy, how ‘bout you? (And on the opposing sidelines, Pride’s cheerleaders reply, “WE GOT MORE!!!”)

Of course you do. You got Envy in your soul like cows got grass in their dookie. And right along with Envy, like a Harperesque hot lesbian babe in a mud-rasslin’ match, you’ve also got Resentment. Because it’s just not possible to Envy without Resenting. (Any time you want what Someone Else has, it’s at least partly because Someone Else doesn’t deserve it even half as much as you do.)

Feel free to deny it. You can pull that Dentonian “Mr. HappyPants” crap if you like. But Unca B. doesn’t think you’ll be able to keep that up after browsing through –

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UNCA BUZZKILL’S UNIVERSAL FIVE-POINT ENVY-O-METER (Now With Extra Resentment!)

We Envy and Resent others for at least as many reasons as there are aspects to the human condition: Money, power, class, gender, race, sex, career, talent, looks, health, luck, love, and ability-to-digest-dairy. To name only a few.

But no matter what your numerous transitory Envies and Resentments may be, Unca Buzzkill is confident that most of your lifelong Envies and Resentments will juggle themselves in and out of the following five embittered categories:

If you’re Young: You Envy the Old, because all of the new artery-clearing and hardon-enhancing drugs are made for them. Not to mention the fact that the Old have breathed all the good air, pissed in all the good water, and eaten all the non-piss-contaminated fish. They’ve had long, exciting, happy lives, while the future prospects for your own lives are looking pretty scabrous. In fact, modern medicine is in the process of extending the ancient bastards’ fabulous lifespans just long enough so they’ll die ten seconds before the Earth’s entire ecosystem collapses around your still-supple ankles. Also, you’re paying for their Social Security . . . even though they’re the ones with the bank accounts, the stock portfolios, and that musty junk in the attic that all turns out to be “a national treasure” on Antiques Roadshow.

If you’re Old: You Envy the Young, because they’re strong and healthy and are free to boink hither and yon without requiring either artery-clearing or hardon-enhancing drugs. Not to mention the fact that they’ve wiped all the good music off the radio, ruined the movies with their spastic edits, and cut you off in traffic. Besides which, they’re reproducing like sea monkeys – which means more and more public money for schools, which means higher and higher property taxes, which means you’ll eventually be driven from your home and forced to live in a Dumpster in the shadow of one of the towering condos where the Young do their boinking. In the meantime, their self-indulgent lifestyles have jacked up your auto, health, and homeowner’s insurance rates. Also, their butt tattoos still look like the things they’re supposed to represent. Unlike yours.

If you’re Middle-Aged: You Envy both the Young and the Old – because you’re too old to have any real fun anymore, and you’re too young for senior-citizen discounts. The Young get to party; the Old get to relax; and the Middle-Aged get to work like goddamn sled dogs. Also, the Young look at you and blame you for George W. Bush. Whereas the Old look at you and blame you for George W. Bush.

If you’re a Non-Parent: You Envy Parents, because they experience an unconditional love that is powerful beyond your comprehension. You have passed up one of the fundamental joys of Life, and you will never know what it is to feel pure, unselfish, unsinful pride in the accomplishments of another human being. There is a hole in your psyche that could only be filled by the presence of a child, but you’ve missed your chance. Besides which, children sometimes go away to summer camp and construct useful lanyards and potholders which they then bestow upon their Parents. But there’ll be none of those for you.

If you’re a Parent: You Envy Non-Parents, because they never wake up in the night with the terrifying certainty that the kid is dead in a ditch somewhere. Also, Non-Parents can pop in a naughty DVD any time they like. They can buy entire bags of Chips Ahoy just for themselves and have sex in the kitchen if they want. They don’t have to read through stacks of Consumer Reports to find out which brand of car seat is least likely to launch itself through the windshield. Plus, they don’t have drawers full of useless lanyards and potholders that make them weep every time they run across them because the kid has grown up and moved away to boink in a towering condo on the other side of the world. And never writes; never calls.

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That should do it. In the unlikely event that anyone out there harbors an Envy that somehow hasn’t been covered herein, just let Unca Buzzkill know . . . and he’ll either add a new Category just for you, or he’ll explain how your own particular Envy really does fit into the above system.

And how that means you ain’t really all that special.

So long for now, kids. If anything Unca Buzzkill has said this week has touched a nerve or made you feel less than good about yourselves . . . just remember that once you stop reading this post, Unca Buzzkill no longer exists for you. He’s right out of your head, and you don’t have to pay any more attention to him.

Unca Buzzkill really Envies that.

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Unca Buzzkill reminds you that if you share what you have, no one can Envy you.

This is why Unca Buzzkill doesn’t share.

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*(Except Celine Dion.)

Our Sin today is sloth. Frankly, I thought about putting off this column, but that’s procrastination, and it is not a sin, it’s a vice. Vices are merely hazardous to your health; sins are hazardous to your soul (so: smoking, drinking, unprotected sex are vices; it’s the impulse to smoke, drink, or have unprotected sex that is sinful). Procrastination is often a product of sloth, but it’s sloth itself that we are here to discuss today. So, no more putting it off.

Sloth noun: reluctance to work or make an effort.

That’s a little half-hearted, isn’t it? Sloth isn’t mere indolence or laziness. Sloth is something greater and more sinister: the total disinclination to bestir oneself, even on one’s own account (which makes you not only slothful, but a drag on the people around you who have to pick up the slack). My favorite illustration of Sloth is from Norman Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my Holy Texts (see No Religious Training, above). When the hero, Milo, wanders into the Doldrums, he encounters the Lethargarians, who outline their day:

“At 8 o’clock we get up, and then we spend
“From 8 to 9 daydreaming.
“From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.
“From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.
“From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.
“From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.
“From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.
“From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.
“From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.
“From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.
“From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.
“From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.
“From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

It’s a full schedule, as you can see. When Milo protests that they never get anything done that way, they point out that they don’t want to get anything done. They want to get nothing done.

Isn’t that what sloth is all about? The total avoidance of accomplishment? Have you considered how hard it is to achieve real sloth? Look: most of us drag ourselves out of bed in the morning and go on with the business of living, luxuriating in those occasional opportunities to sleep in and let the world take care of itself. After a while you get used to getting up at half past God to get the kids to school, to shower and head off to work, whatever your responsibilities require of you. However much you want to stay in your warm, cozy bed, or in that Barcalounger in front of the widescreen, you know there are some things that really have to get done. In fact, it’s hard work succumbing to the allure of sloth because of its opposite number, that force for reluctant good, Guilt.

Guilt! The pebble in Sloth’s shoe, the thorn in Sloth’s paw. Guilt! It’s what’s for breakfast. And for walking the dog and going to work and getting your homework done.

So pause a moment before you go on to check your email and get back to that really important project, and give props to Sloth and its practitioners. They’re working hard at hardly working.