Author Archives: Frank Moraes

About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

Perfect Information

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A great deal of conservative economic theory depends upon the idea that people in an economy make decisions based upon “perfect information.” Along with this and the questionable assumption that all people are rational, economists on the right explain how the economy will be just fine if we simply let it be. This is obviously a big subject that is debated between people who are much smarter and well-educated than I am. But I do have serious doubts about this “perfect information” assumption.

Yesterday, I went to Amazon to see about getting Liars for Jesus by Chris Rodda. For now, I am not going to get it because I have spent a lot of money the last couple of days buying books for a play about Evariste Galois that I am working on. But I noticed an interesting thing (although I have seen similar things many times before): the cheapest used copy is $28.92, while a new copy is only $23.99. And the new copy qualifies for free shipping if you spend just $1.01 more! (The used copy will cost an extra $3.99 for shipping.)

Since the prices change over time (although it is two days now and it hasn’t), here is a screenshot to show you what I mean:

Liars for Jesus

I have long been suspect of this “perfect information” business, because I often find bargains simply because I will spend hours dismantling the shelves of book and electronics stores. But I’m a freak. Most people do not get the best price on an item, even when the best price is just next door. The situation is supposed to be much easier online. But if Amazon sellers don’t even know that their own items are over-priced compared to Amazon itself, how are consumers supposed to know who has the best price on the Internet generally, much less downtown or at the mall?

And Now a Few Words from a Dead Man

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I am too busy to write anything of much interest here, so I thought I would just provide a few quotes from the late, great John Maynard Keynes. My outside work took me to The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations (by Robert Andrews) to find for a quotation from Keynes. It was probably his most famous:

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

This is such a pithy antidote to the common economist’s bromide, “It will all work itself out in the long run.” One hears this sort of nonsense all the time and it is handy to know this quotation; one may respond sharply: “Is that right? Well, in the long run we are all dead, expletive!”

Many of Keynes quotations address the pretensions of economists and those who think them gods. I rather like the following, because it so nicely sums up many people I know—almost 75 years after Keynes wrote it:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

The emphasis is mine. It is hard to believe that Keynes was not writing this about the Chicago School of economic thought (e.g. Milton Friedman) and those very many politicians who follow it. Whenever I hear them speak about economics, I get the impression that they believe they have found The Truth. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their tenets, they are shocked: “But our models are perfect!”

And one more about roughly the same people:

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

That’s all for now, folks. Next up will most likely be a discussion of Janis Bell’s fun and helpful, Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences. As good as it is, I have a few bones to pick.

The Prologue of Don Quixote

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It may come as a surprise to many that Ingmar Bergman’s almost three-hour-long Scenes from a Marriage was a heavily edited theatrical release of what was originally a six-part mini-series that is five hours long. Five hours! It may also surprise many that a pretentious twat like me has never seen it. So when I got my hands on the Criterion Collection release, I had to make a decision: do I watch the three-hour movie or the five-hour mini-series. Following Peter Cowie‘s advice, I decided to watch the series, “as it was meant to be watched”: one “scene” every night for six nights. But even after making this decision, I was wary: am I really going to get much from this film when I don’t speak Swedish, and thus am left to subtitles—even if they are, “New and improved”?

Then, earlier today I watched Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville. It is also from the Criterion Collection. It also promises new (although strangely no claim to being improved) subtitles. And again, I had the same concerns. Recently, it seems I fret a good deal too much about translations. But the problem is very real—especially for films. There was a documentary on the three-disk Seven Samurai (also Criterion Collection—what can I say?) about creating subtitles. It is very interesting if not surprising, and I highly recommend watching it if you get the chance.

I am happy to report that one area of my translated art ingestion is going as well as I could possibly hope: reading Samuel Putnam’s translaion of Don Quixote. I just started and have only read the Prologue and Chapter I, but it is lovely—and funny as hell. For example, in the Prologue, he is complaining to friend about how he has decided not to publish the book at this time because (in part) he cannot list the authors to whom he is indebted. (Cervantes would have us believe that he is simply an ignorant dolt who happens to have a flair for spinning tall tales.) He continues that he is, “unable to follow the example of all the others by listing them alphabetically at the beginning, starting with Aristotle and closing with Xenophon, or, perhaps, with Zoilus or Zeuxis, not withstanding the fact that the former was a snarling critic, and the latter a painter.”

His friend’s advice is just to fake it when possible and rip it off when necessary. He then goes on to make the most beautiful statement about artistic intent that I have ever read:

Let it be your aim that, by reading your story, the melancholy may be moved to laughter and the cheerful man made merrier still; let the simple not be bored, but may the clever admire your originality; let the grave ones not despise you, but let the prudent praise you.

Wow. I’m going to print that out and hang it on the wall next to me: right below my Mystery Science Theater 3000 mini-posters.

Reading Don Quixote, it is hard to believe that I am reading an English translation of a Spanish text written about the time of Hamlet. It is so modern: in style and content. Although I still hope to one day read the book in Spanish, I have little doubt that the experience I have now will be the superior, and dare I say it: more authentic. I fear that the original will be as far removed from modern Spanish as Shakespearean plays are from modern English. Thus I am glad for great men like Putnam.

When it comes to film subtitles, the situation is bleak for a number of reasons that I will not go into here. Nontheless, Alphaville is quite a good film. And the first scene from Scenes from a Marriage? Despite everything: it is amazing. I am looking forward to tonight’s scene.

More Don Quixote

Want to know more about Don Quixote and other 16th and 17th century literature? Check out my Don Quixote Page!

Our Mutual Friend

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Just to show that an evening spent with H W Fowler’s Modern English Usage can be dangerous, I am now going to spend a little time with the word mutual. Because I am a product of the United States where the only things that really matter are commodities, my first and most profound connection to this word is the Mutual of Omaha ad song, so familiar to viewers of Wild Kingdom:

Mutual of Omaha is people
You can count on when the going’s rough

Through force of will and years spent doing such uncool things as spending evenings with Fowler, I have a second, though less powerful, connection to the word: Charles Dickens‘ Our Mutual Friend. This is a more important connection, because I find more occasions to use “mutual” in a sentence than to break into a rendition of the Mutual of Omaha song.

I dare say that I learned everything I knew about how to use “mutual” in a sentence from Dickens’ title alone—until last night. What I found out last night was that using the word in this way is incorrect. And it isn’t just Fowler (dead almost 80 years) who says so. Only 58% of the most recent Usage Panel think that the construction “our mutual friend” is correct—a majority, but not a large one.

So what is the big deal? Let me quote Fowler:

The essence of its meaning is that it involves the relation x is or does to y as y to x, and not the relation x is as y to x, and not the relation x is or does to x as y to z.


This is, of course, useless; it sounds like a children’s rhyme. What he means is that mutual concerns two parties to each other and not two parties to a third. Thus, “They shared a mutual attraction” is okay; “Our mutual friend” is not.

The question obviously comes to mind: if Dickens uses “mutual” in this way, can it be all that wrong? It turns out that this use of the word was already quite common long before 1865, when Dickens wrote it. So we are talking some 200 years of this being common usage.

I think we should all make friends with this usage. Then it can be our mutual friend.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution

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I just read Terry Eagleton‘s Reason, Faith, and Revolution. It is largely an attack on the atheism books by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). In his typically sardonic manner, Eagleton refers to the two authors as a single entity he calls Ditchkins. The book is, like all of his “popular” writing, funny and insightful; but one would expect this regardless of his past work because almost no one would think Eagleton’s views about religion have anything to do with religion. Indeed, the book is mostly about politics. He seems to be fascinated with the Gospels because of the implicit and explicit political messages of Christ’s teachings. I must admit it is nearly enough to turn me into a Christian—albeit one that few would recognize.

Eagleton largely agrees with Ditchkins about religion. His complaint is that they do not argue against the best case that can be made for faith. In other words, they are committing the straw-man fallacy. However, it is hard to think too badly about Ditchkins when the vast majority of believers are nothing but fideists.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution comes down to an attack on liberal humanism, and as such, was helpful to me in seeing some of my own blind spots. I do tend to believe in the march of human progress without seeing that it is largely a matter of faith. (In my defense, there is a good rational argument in favor of it.) But I think Eagleton overstates how strictly rational liberal humanists are. I, for one, am well aware of the great amount of faith there is in my life; I have never wished for—or thought possible—a culture that was strictly rational. I’m afraid that he is at least as guilty of overstating the rationality of non-believers as Ditchkins is of overstating the irrationality of believers.

In the end, Reason, Faith, and Revolution leaves me where The Meaning of Life did: more committed to living a good life and working toward a culture that is just, forgiving, and above all, humane. Although I may quibble with Eagleton about some details, his book is a welcome reminder that my belief in the existence of this more perfect self and society is a matter of rational faith. This might be something that Eagleton, Ditchkins, and I could all agree upon.

Two War Films in One Day

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When I was in high school, I was in speech club. In fact, hard as it is to believe, I was president of the club. One year, I competed in the “programmed reading” category, which I was apparently rather good at because I went to the state championship—a feat I accomplished that one time only. My presentation was about war and the highlight of it was part of Joe’s speech at the end of Dalton Trumbo‘s great novel Johnny Got His Gun, where Joe is begging to be killed. I still remember the excitement of doing that. It is great writing and I was at the right age to be doing it.

I just picked up the film version of the book when I was at the library. I was curious to see if Trumbo had written the screenplay, because he was blacklisted in the late 1940s. To my delight, far from just being the writer, he also directed it. (I didn’t know that Trumbo ever directed anything—and in fact, this was his first and only directing gig.) Wow. The movie is wonderful. It is life-affirming at the same time that it is the ultimate condemnation of war. The print used to create the DVD is not that good, but it doesn’t too much matter—the movie is so gripping that it is likely that only film geeks will notice. However, it is sad that such a great film hasn’t been restored.

My extremely positive reaction to Johnny Got His Gun may have something to do with having spent the afternoon watching Iron Man 2 with my brother. In general, I will watch anything with my brother because I haven’t spent that much time with him over the past couple of decades. He likes these kinds of films, so fine. But this film was really too much. I’m getting to the point where I can’t watch a film like this without seeing it in a larger context.

Hitler oversaw the genocide of six million “sub-humans” and we rightly call him evil. Andrew Jackson oversaw the genocide a large group of “sub-humans” (Native or First Americans) and we put him on our $20 bill. (Admittedly, the numbers are smaller and no Final Solution was ever attained; but the smaller numbers are due to the far lower population density of all people in the United States at that time; the early Nazi solution to the “Jew Problem” was the same as the Jackson solution to the Indian Problem.) As a country, we are frighteningly ignorant of just how evil we have been and continue to be. As a nation it seems that the more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians killed by us is nothing compared to the slightly more than 4,000 American professional soldiers who have died. (Even the left-leaning Antiwar.com seems to think American lives matter more than Iraqi lives.) Seeing Iron Man 2 within this context is a real problem because the film demands the context that Americans never abuse power—it is just those horrible foreigners who do that.

Even if you take away this evil aspect of the film, Iron Man 2 sucks. It has a few laughs and Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell put in good performances as one would expect. But that’s about as far as the good goes. Robert Downey is really starting to look his (my!) age, and his performance is not up to par. In the first film, Pepper Potts (the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow) was smart enough not to become romantically involved with the narcissistic Tony Stark, but she’s not smart in this film. Jon Favreau shows yet again that he is no better at directing than he is at acting. (And he is a terrible actor, if my sarcasm is not screaming off your computer screen.) The story is totally ridiculous. The only believable character was the villain who also has the only true human scene in the film (at the start where he watches his father die). He has a reason to be angry. And our hero? I guess we’re just supposed to know that arms manufacturers who are implicitly guilty of millions of deaths are the good guys. And boy is the film long! Most movies do not have more than 45 minutes of material in them; this one surely didn’t—unless you think “Oh! Let’s put Tony Stark in a race car!” is content; it lasted two hours and ten minutes! I was so bored with the film, I got out my notebook after a half-hour. Unfortunately, much of the film takes place at night, so I was limited as to how much I could write.

After the film, I was sitting with my brother waiting for his bus. A guy came by and heard us talking about Marvel Comics and the movies that it has spawned. The guy asked us with some enthusiasm if we had seen Iron Man 2. We said that we had just seen it. He began to gush about the film and told us he had seen it twice. A teenager, you ask? Oh, no. This guy must have been in his mid-fifties. And he wasn’t crazy, in the drooling sense of the word. But of course he liked it. What’s not to like? It tells Americans just what they want to hear. It is just the kind of entertainment that a culture creates while it is disintegrating.

Perhaps I grabbed Johnny Got His Gun as a kind of antidote to the two-hour propaganda poisoning I had just suffered. I can’t say. If so, it worked. If you are forced to suffer through Iron Man 2 or any of the many films just like it, I highly recommend Johnny Got His Gun; it’s better than the suicide hotline.

Pow Wow Theater

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Wayne Poehlman is a singer/guitarist that I recently discovered on You Tube. To me, he’s the kind of performer who you listen to when you tire of the glitz and the posing and the pitch-correction of what is today called music. Of course, this goes along with my recent submersion into music of the past such as Geeshie Wiley and Mississippi John Hurt (the “Mississippi” to distinguish him from the guy who has the creature burst through his chest in Alien). Poehlman calls his online solo act “Pow Wow Theater.”

I first discovered him performing a minor song off the first Jules and the Polar Bears album: Following Every Finger. The tune stands out for a number of reasons. First, he changes the chords to make them more traditional (Shear can get a little weird) and he sings the song in a more melodic manner that works better and allows the listener to understand all of the words. I highly recommend listening to it.

He performs a number of other notable songs. In particular, he performs Michael Peter Smith’s The Dutchman. If you aren’t familiar with this song, it seems to be about an old man with dementia and his wife who takes care of him. The chorus is:

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee
Long ago I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me

Poehlman manages to interpret the song just perfectly—like he really understands what this man and woman are going through. He also performs Them Dance Hall Girls by Allan Fraser (although I think it might be based upon a traditional tune) that is very good. His All Time Woman is not as good as John Stewart’s—plus there is some distortion when he belts out the chorus; but it’s still good. There is a nice cover of Del Amitri’s Driving with the Brakes on; Poehlman has a rather similar voice to Amitri’s, so it isn’t surprising. The cover of Good Old War’s Coney Island is probably the weakest of what Poehlman has to offer. The Amazing Rhythm Ace’s song 3rd Rate Romance is covered in an unusual manner with a drum machine; on it, he sounds like he is channeling Jules Shear at times. Finally, there is another drum machine tune: Red Ball Texas Flyer by Jerry Riopelle. It is good enough; I’m not that fond of the original song.

At 59 years-old, Wayne Poehlman (or “Pow Wow” as he goes by) is what you might call a “late bloomer.” He tells me that it was less than 15 years ago that he finally learned how to write a proper song. Although he plays professionally at bars and events where he is expected to perform a lot of covers, he sees himself primarily as a songwriter. And a fine one he is too.

I have two free MP3 files of his original songs. The first is Looking for Juliet. Of this song, he writes “One night, I saw Juliette Binoche in [Krzysztof] Kieslowski‘s Bleu and I was reminded of an artist-friend, Julie who loved Paul Klee. Beyond the similarity in their names, I think I made a connection between both women being artists and my unrequited love for both that prompted me to reference some of the Romeo and Juliet imagery. And of course, if you use either of those two names it’s going to come up, like it or not.”

Looking for Juliet

The second is Desperate People. This song is a little more produced than Juliet and a little more “pop.” As with anything that Pow Wow does, his take on it is intelligent and knowledgeable.
He says it is “[c]omedy with poignancy. [It is d]etermination evidenced by surreal behavior in an effort to fulfill ones destiny.”

Desperate People

In the end, what I most like about Poehlman is that he creates simple music that is intelligent (often witty) and beautiful. Check him out.

Waiting for Beckett

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I continue to wrestle with the contextualization of art—especially my art—even though I am getting better at not caring. If I were to create a beautiful table, there would be a shared context for that table: it’s a table. No one would question the rounded corners or intricately designed legs. No one would wonder why I created this specific table. Everyone would simply appreciate it for what it was to them—even if it was simply something to set things on. Art, on the other hand, is purely symbolic. A book is paper, glue, ink; but unless one understands the symbols represented inside it, it is roughly the same as a rock. Unfortunately, it is not enough just to understand the words as signifiers of things. One could easily read and understand every word in a book and gleem not a single idea from it. Thusly came my idea for a kind of theater that coddles the audience—that teaches it enough to enjoy what it is watching. People want to find meaning in art, but it stands alone—without context. This is why artists of all kinds need to produce a critical mass of work; it usually takes time for others to contextualize the work.

Consider this: Fifty years from now, Tom Stoppard will not be considered the great artist Samuel Beckett is today. This is not to say that Stoppard is not a great writer—I think he is; I am reading Rock’N’Roll right now—I don’t have time to read plays by hacks. But let’s look at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for a moment.It is basically Vladimir (as Guildenstern) and Estrgon (as Rosencrantz) from Waiting for Godot thrown into the middle of Hamlet. There is nothing new here. Admittedly, it is wonderfully creative and great fun; but it is just a variation (and a minor one at that) on Godot. In fact, I would say that Stoppard is ripping off Godot more than Beckett ever did after he wrote it. Endgame? Happy Day? These plays are in no way variations on the theme of Godot.

Under ordinary circumstances, Waiting for Godot would have been a flop; it would have taken years for it to be seen for its greatness. But it had two things going for it. First, Beckett was James Joyce‘s assistant and I think most people thought he was going to take up where Joyce left off. (Thankfully, he did not; I would love to discuss this, but it doesn’t matter and it is getting off track.) But he was already a respected writer and scholar when he wrote Godot. Second, there is something about the nature of the play—the stripping away of what was still (is still) largely Victorian theater that made the fact of meaning in the play obvious to even the most ossified audience. I specifically mean that the audience could not help but understand that there was meaning in the play—maybe important meaning; I am most certainly not saying that they knew what that meaning was.

Barring the part about getting to work with Joyce, I would prefer to have the life of Stoppard; but oh, how I wish I could create like Beckett!

First Draft Fear

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Kristen McHenry has made a list of her fears. One of them is fear of someone reading my first draft. By this, I must assume that either her second drafts are final, or she is not afraid of someone reading her second drafts, or—and most troubling, she simply forgot to list the drafts that she fears someone reading. This last one bothers me so much because, other than this blog, I write many drafts of my work—upwards of 100 drafts for a piece of work. I don’t know about Ms. McHenry; maybe it’s plop, spell check, publish. But I doubt this. Thus, I wonder: does she fear someone reading any draft other than her final draft? Is it just certain drafts—say, 2,3 5, and 11? Or perhaps just the even drafts? Perhaps the prime numbers? Maybe it is even a mathematical sequence, like: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. Perhaps it is a more interesting sequence? One that I couldn’t even figure out and I am rather good at these kinds of things.

I understand the desire to withhold a work of art until it is finished. I have, for example, never let anyone read my first novel Kamping on Asphalt—not that people were tripping over themselves to get a copy. The truth is that the very idea of a draft is not clear to me in the sense that it usually takes an enormous amount of writing to get to something that one might call a first draft. I find the process goes something like this: crap, crap, crap, crap, crap with an interesting idea, crap, crap, crap with that interesting idea turned into a major dorky part of it, dorky crap, dorky, dorky, something readable but bad. The final result: the “first” draft.

Let me explain with the current draft of the first chapter of my second novel Treading Asphalt. I decided that because KOA was written in limited third-person, I would like to do TA in first person. That’s what Joseph Heller did, so how hard could it be? It was a bitch. It took me two years to find the voice of the narrator (and he was a major character in KOA, so I had a running start at it). And so here is what I would call my first draft of the first chapter of TA (note my fearlessness):

Waking up with your head on a steel toilet seat isn’t that bad—not any worse than waking up at all. My head feels like a million pins are sticking into it. Or maybe that it’s on fire, but just a little. Then I notice the rest of my body—it all feels that way. I push myself up using the toilet: no lid, no seat; less to clean; no assholes shitting on the lid. The blanket I’ve been wrapped in, falls away. My right foot gets tangled in it; I fall, but catch myself on the sink. Right next to the toilet—same steel. And the steel mirror—all I see are ribs; amazing what a couple weeks not eating does. I press the single metal fixture, and sort of cold water comes out; I drink it and it feels good; and that feels weird. I release the fixture, wipe my mouth with my arm, and stumble backwards onto the cot. It’s over. But only like a play—one you’ll perform tomorrow or next season or sometime. You know you’ve got one more performance in you.

I would have been ORed five days ago, but I was already sick when they picked me up. And now that I’m better, they’ll probably kick me out today. Multnomah County doesn’t have the space to spend much time on junkies—even repeat offenders like me. Even though they know I won’t likely show up to court. And I won’t. Even though they know that I won’t likely live a good clean life. And I won’t. They just don’t care. They have real crime to deal with—the violent, the evil, the psychotic; there’s no room for the merely pathetic. Hopefully it’s that way in Las Vegas and that I’m not the only person who cares who murdered Rachel.

Okay. Okay. It is genre crap, but I’m trying to make a living here. I would show you my second draft, but I fear people reading my second drafts. No, just kidding. But I won’t show you my second draft anyway—I can’t find it. Here’s my third (or maybe fourth), however:

This is Rachel’s fault.
I’m huddled next to the steel toilet, with my blanket wrapped around me and between me—I’m well enough to notice that I can’t stand touching my own body. Occasionally, I place my chin on the rim of the toilet and vomit. But nothing comes. I just kind of gag and drool. Past the worst of it—I managed to eat a baloney sandwich earlier. Just threw it back up, but it’s better than the dry heaves. I still have the sweats and the chills; and my ass feels like it’s on fire from the diarrhea. Just like the vomiting though, little comes. And what does come is pure acid—it’s a lot worse down there. Getting better, though; that’s all that matters—in detox or in life, right?
It’s all Rachel’s fault, because she’s dead. And because she was Rachel, which is why she’s dead, I guess.
I push myself up using the toilet—the blanket drops away. My right foot gets tangled in it; I fall, but catch myself on the sink. Right next to the toilet—same steel. And the mirror—steel. It reflects no one I recognize; all I see are ribs, beneath near transparent skin—amazed at what a couple weeks not eating does. My Jack Lord hair—a point of vanity and ridicule, is mushed down with sweat and puke. I look away: down. I press the single metal fixture, and lukewarm water comes out; I drink it and it tastes good; and that feels weird. I release the fixture, wipe my mouth with my arm, and stumble backwards onto the cot. It’s pretty much over. But only like a play—one you’ll perform tomorrow or next season or sometime. You know you’ve got one more performance in you—if you don’t die first.
I hate Rachel, and where I am, every thing’s her fault. But I’m not in the can because of her—because they think I killed her. Nobody cares that she’s dead, much less who killed her. Except me. I care. It’s the only thing I care about. And that’s why I got strung out again. And that’s why I got popped. Or maybe I just don’t have the stomach for it any more; maybe I’m not as good I used to be; the life is too fucking hard. But I always thought Rachel made it okay—worth it all. But maybe I was just a fucking idiot. Maybe I still am.
They would have ORed me the day I got arrested, if I hadn’t vomited all over their fingerprint machine. So instead of getting released, they put me in a cell alone so the detox could run its course. “Run its course!” That’s kind of funny. It wasn’t a bad thing though; I’ve done it a bunch; and I don’t know what I would have done if I’d gone free. Rachel was always paranoid of going cold turkey. Of course, she never had to; I always did the dangerous stuff. She died without a record.
They’ll throw me out tomorrow, probably—maybe even tonight. It doesn’t much matter. They send a medic a couple times a day to make sure I’m not dead, but that’s it; no meds, just tepid encouragement. I’m just taking up space—space for two, and Multnomah County doesn’t have the space to waste on junkies and shoplifters—even repeat offenders like me. They know I won’t likely show up to court; and I won’t. They know that I won’t likely live a good clean life; and I won’t, whatever the fuck that might mean. They just don’t care. They have real crime to deal with—the violent, the evil, the psychotic; there’s no room for the merely pathetic. It ain’t that way in Vegas; they don’t even believe Rachel was murdered, but if she were alive they’d arrest her for drugs.
The door to the cell buzzes open and startles me. I jump back and bash my head against the concrete wall behind the cot. It’s not bad; I don’t have the strength to move quickly, forcefully. I look to the door and Stu is standing there in his blue scrubs, hold the door half open. He’s a kid, maybe twenty-two—the caring type—one of those big guys who never got in a fight because everyone was afraid of his size. He’s apologized that he couldn’t get me any medicine, although he did give me some Advil; that was nice, even though I could still see the partly dissolved pills when I vomited them back up.
“How you holding up, Brian?” he asks kind of sad.
“Better,” I say. “You know.”
“You wanna take a shower? It’ll help; really.”
“Maybe,” I say. “In an hour? I’ve got to work up to it.”
“Sure,” he says. “I’ll come back; and I’ll help you.”
He leaves and the door slams shut. They’re pressuring him to get me out.

So I say, free yourself Ms. McHenry! Free yourself from this first draft fear! I have never met a writer whose work didn’t suck 99% of the time. Hell, I can show you writers whose published work sucks 99% of the time! Embrace your ineptitude; accept your ignorance; relish your double commas and similar typos; proudly right, “Theirs know perphection end da whirled.”

Leak

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I have so much to do, especially finish my article and interview with Pow Wow (Wayne Poehlman), but I just ran into an old friend Yana Bogosian who I wrote a song with about eleven years ago. Actually, we didn’t write it together. She had written a little nursery rhyme about a pipe that was leaking behind the wall in her apartment. She wrote more than I’m going to quote, but I don’t remember the rest, because I didn’t rip that part off. Here’s what I remember:

There’s a leak, but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it

I was struck with this. For her it was a poem/song that was concrete: it was about her life. But it started in me a creative explosion. And never being one to shy away from ripping off other people’s lives (and I gave her lead songwriting credit even though I wrote all of it except for those two line), I went with it. I thought it would be really surreal if a leaky pipe caused a whole town to flood. Hence the song.

I will get my little studio hooked up shortly and provide an MP3, but for now, here are the lyrics:

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it
And it’s spraying you can’t hind
Turning indoors to outside.

And my friendly next door neighbor
Turning angry into labor
He knows something isn’t clear
In my house it’s very queer.

The Police come, they’re not grinning
‘Though my friends are now all swimming
There’s a beach ball flying high
Hits a cop right in the eye.

Now it’s seeping out the doorway
And I’m mute ’cause no more to say
And the streets are filling up
Watch the floating coffee cups.

So the ‘copters come to save us
And we try hard to behave, must
Tell them all we didn’t know
‘Bout the pipe before it broke.

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it
And it’s spraying you can’t hind
Turning indoors to outside.

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a leak.

Great art? Perhaps not. But the songs that I have written like this tend to be among my favorites. Things like: “My Suitcase and a Clown” and “You Make me Want to be a Meat Inspector”; things that share much with Shel Silverstein, but which are far more adult in content—silly on the surface, but troubling below (e.g. “My Suitcase and a Clown” is explicitly about a violent contract negotiation between a ventriloquist and his “dummy” but is implicitly about the American class system). And musically far more adventurous than the late great Mr. Silverstein.

But it was great to see Yana again.

Film POV

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POV stands for point-of-view. For an article in which the author utterly misunderstands how POV applies to film, check out this page (in his defense, film is not his thing). POV in film is a little complex. Originally, POV was developed for a story told or read. To extend this idea directly to a movie would make the POV the camera lens. Thus we would be turning a concept used to describe the persepctive of a story into one used to describe a purely technical aspect of the story telling. Thus film POV tells us what book POV tells us, but it does it differently. If we follow a cop as he tries to solve a crime, he is always there; the film is from his POV; it is not necessary for the camera lens to literally be his eyes. However, I do want to point out that there are many more options regarding POV in film than there are in books. And in general, this is a bad thing. Most of the time, the only reasons POV changes or some odd kind of POV is used is that the filmmaker can’t make it work otherwise.