Intel

A few of you have noticed that I put this blog behind a firewall for several months. You probably wonder what secret required me to do this. Nothing nags at one's imagination like a locked door, I suppose. Or at least I like to believe that you think about it at all. Probably you don't. I'll tell you about it anyway.

It was October. In an idle moment, when I should have been either working on getting some freelance assignments or finding a regular job, I stopped by the CIA's website. You know how that goes. The Times online can only feed so many suspicions. The rest of the Internet presents a paranoia-stoking banquet. On the Web we may wander in and out of the offices of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA. Then we feel naughty and dangerous.

Tee-fucking-hee.

So I got to the CIA website. There I discovered the Terrorism Buster Logo. You remember the Terrorism Buster Logo.

I cringed for the dignity of beurocrats, intelligence officers and graphic designers and emailed it to my mostly uninterested friends.

I said, "Would you look at this? Aren't you embarrassed by this? As an American? As a taxpayer? As an aesthete?"

To a one they said, "No, no and no. So it’s a dumb logo made by a government agency, whatever man."

Fortunately, I had a blog.

I started this blog with grand ambitions a few years ago. But after months of trying, I realized that writing a compelling blog is both hard and pointless. Even the most widely read blogs are barely read at all. Rather, people react to headlines and then either idiotically curse or praise whatever half-formed notion they believe the author intended. This probably has a place and function in civil society, but it's ultimately not too interesting and it doesn't pay.

Now I was aware of this last October. But still I took the time to craft a clumsy notice about the Terrorism Buster Logo and link to the CIA website. Had I left it at that, everything probably would have been fine. But I wanted people to know that I had ferreted out this moronic logo. I wanted to bring it to light and shame the Central Intelligence Agency, or at least shame whoever designed it and stuck it on the web. So I emailed a link to the advertising website copyranter. That yielded a notice on copyranter. From there things really took off.


You know all about the "blogosphere.” It consists of a bunch of people much like myself, who crave attention but can't sing or dance or act and aren't very good looking. And they're not terribly smart or original either. So they cruise around the Internet, find things there and then write dumbshit about what they've found on their own blogs. A number of these people were alerted to the existence of my site by copyranter. They came around to morebetterlies.blogspot.com, had a peek, and then posted their own notices about the CIA terrorism buster. Some of these sites were pretty widely viewed.

So over the course of a day and a half, about 20,000 people came by to visit. My previous one-day traffic record was about 75 visitors. I thought this was pretty exciting. Especially since a few people poked around, seeing what they could see.

I was thrilled and ashamed at the same time. It must be how flashers feel. Oh, look what I did, world! I found a thing, an ugly thing, a clumsy product of someone else’s incompetence. It had gone ignored for so long, unheralded in its ineptitude. Now look. Look at it and think about how ugly it is. Instead of thinking about nice things, pretty things, kindness and light, consider the shittiness of the CIA. Get angry and write something on your blogs about it, quickly.

For the next day and a half I attempted to stay ahead of the newfound traffic. I tried to feed it. I went to the National Security Agency website and found some equally embarrassing, though better drawn graphic elements. I wrote awkward copy to go along with those bits. Already I felt like I was repeating myself. But I couldn’t stop.

At times like this strange anxieties pop up. Finally, after years of so much abject failure, mere mediocrity loomed. And in the degraded context of my life, it looked like success. I told myself: This could be it, right? I finally found my voice, my rhythm, my medium. I will be a guy who finds odd and funny things on the Internet and shares them with the world. I alone am qualified to do this, because I am special. Now that others realize this about me and my website, traffic will grow steadily. I’ll get some advertisers and the regular opportunity to write pieces for high-status publications. Then I’ll retire to an apple farm in upstate New York and periodically come down the Hudson on a jetski to deliver speeches at the Barnes and Nobles in Union Square.

Or will I screw up even this? Will I be unable to sustain the focus and attention of the few people whose lives are so empty they care about the graphic design capabilities of our nation’s intelligence agencies? I’d set the bar so low for myself. What few accomplishments I’d racked-up meant so little to anyone else. Maybe I could build something on this foundation.

I couldn’t sleep. I ate all my meals standing up, too diffuse in my own angst to organize a meal. I drank from dirty cups, didn't shave or wash my clothes. I lay in bed for hours on end with a laptop propped on my belly, scanning the Internet for something, anything, that might hold my attention for more than fifteen seconds or offer some promise of meaning. Of course it wasn't out there.

So it was in the midst of all this, subsequent to my little smart-ass CIA post that I got a late-night phone call from [Redacted].

"John," he said when I answered the call. "What are you doing right now? You watching MSNBC?"

"No, [Redacted]. I don't even have cable. Even if I did, why would I be watching MSNBC? Are you watching MSNBC?"

"Yeah. I'm watching it,” he said. “I'm surprised you're not off somewhere watching it yourself, 'cause you're on it."

"What do you mean, I'm 'on it?'"

"You're on the TV right now."

"No I'm not. I'm standing in my living room looking out the window, watching sillouttes of leaves blow by in the dark and thinking bleak thoughts. How could I be on TV?"

"I dunno Johnny, but you're on there right now. Your blog was just mentioned on The Countdown and now it's on the scrolly thing at the bottom of the screen."

"Huh. That's interesting. So am I famous now that I'm being featured on a show I can't view? I feel like a tree falling in an unpopulated forest all of a sudden. Oh, hey! Why are you watching cable news?”

"I'm in a hotel room."

"That's cool. Where?"

"Durango, Colorado."

"Durango? What are you doing there?"

"Watching Keith Olberman go on and on about how great you are on his unwatchable TV show. You know that."

"Har har. But I mean, what sent you to Durango."

"Oh, Someone hired me to drive his car here. I'm going to hang around for a day or two and then head back east."

"What kind?"

"What kind what? Back East? You know, East, where the people who don't own guns live."

"No, I meant what kind of car."

"I think it was a Mercedes, but I can hardly tell one apart from a Dodge now. Maybe it was a Saab."

"You are a monk [Redacted]."

"No. You're the monk Johnny. I bet you've spent the last three days shuffling around your apartment in your bedroom slippers sniffing your own B.O. Since you quit smoking I bet you don't even leave the apartment to grocery shop."

We continued talking for a while. I kept on staring out the window. If I pressed my cheek against the glass and looked off to my left I could see the spire of the Chrystler Building peeking over the new condos near Greenpoint, Avenue. When I first moved into this apartment I could see the whole skyline from my living room. That alone made the apartment an absurd bargain at $650 a month. Now nearly a decade had elapsed. The rent had gone up a mere two hundred bucks but a thicket of soviet-style residential skyscrapers sprouted and blocked my view of the city. I could smell the glass pressed against my face. I thought about moving to Durango. Then I thought about moving to Wyoming.

Interrupting [Redacted] I said, "Hey, let's go to Wyoming and get jobs in a natural gas field."

"Nah."

"What do you mean 'nah.'"

"That's hard work. I don't like hard work and neither do you."

"Yeah. You're right. I hate hard work. God." I pressed my nose against the window and smelled the glass again. How can glass have a smell? Is it sublimating into the air? Why can't you smell it from a few feet away?

"So what are you going to do Johnny?

"What do you mean [Redacted?]"

"I mean what are you going to do. You can't keep on doing whatever it is you've been doing. I been hearing things."

"What things?"

"Things."

"What things? About me?"

"Why do you think I called?"

"Because you saw my blog on the Countdown and you're worried that the flood of visitors to the site will bring scrutiny to you somehow because I keep on writing about you in this oblique way?"

"I thought I told you to cut that out."

"You did. I don't listen. I'm egocentric. Remember. You learned that when you were working for me."

"God. I can't believe you were my boss."

"I know. Amazing isn't it? I couldn't lead a crackhead to a crackhouse."

"It's true. Man. Johnny. You have no leadership skills whatsoever."

"So what have you been hearing [Redacted]?"

"When was the last time you went outside?"

I thought about it for a minute. Was it two days or five? What would I have gone out for? I had peanut butter and a little bread left. Milk, coffee, some books and a poached wireless connection, what else could I possibly need? I walked through the apartment and into the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror I realized that I hadn’t left the apartment for a week and a half. Autumn had peaked and waned in the meanwhile. My skin started to feel oily. I said to [Redacted], “I went for a 2 mile run this morning before my meetings. Always on the go. You know that, [Redacted].” The limp irony of the lie fell flat in my own ears.

“What are you doing Johnny?” [Redacted] said, half laughing at me.

I sat down on the toilet, my ass cheek perched on the lip of the seat. I thought about hanging up the phone. My lower guts ached.

[Redacted]: “Johnny?”

“Yeah [Redacted].” My mouth tasted sour.

“You’re 35. Is this it?”

“I’m not 35!” I said, reflexively. Then I paused and did the math (’88, ‘89 ‘90. . .) How simultaneously egocentric and estranged from myself am I, that I don’t even know how old I am any more?

Jim sniggered on the other end of the phone line. “Man, I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself, but it sure is a humdinger.

The doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anyone and normally that’s enough of a reason to ignore the bell. But I wanted out of this conversation with Jim. And whoever was ringing the bell seemed insistent. He rang the bell metronomically, every five seconds. Ding ( 2. . . 3. . . 4. . . .) ding. “I gotta go Jim,” I said. “Someone is at the door.”

“Man, no one is at the door. I spoke to Jean and Abby. No one has seen you in months. They’re afraid to go to your apartment.”

“Sorry man. I gotta get the door. I’ll call back.” And I hung up.

The First thing We Do

Lawyering is the only career my father asked me not to enter. He said that he'd prefer I became a ditch digger. Now I'm very close to living up to his high hopes and a recent story about a "legal letter"* Bill Clinton's attorney sent to a restaurant has crystalized why The Old Man felt this way.

Osso Buco is a swankyish Italian restaurant in the Village. Like a lot of joints in NYC it features a rogues gallery of low and high grade celebrity diners who have posed for photos with the owner. According to a couple of news sources a photograph of Chelsea Clinton has hung in Osso Buco for five years. The other day Clinton's lawyer sent a grouchy letter to the restaurant asking that it be removed. He said Chelsea didn't consent to this use of her photo. The lawyer implies that he's going to sue the pants off Osso Buco if the picture is not removed from display, saying, "We reserve the right to exercise any and all legal options available to us if you refuse to comply." Oh really? What legal options are available to you Perry Mason?

Osso Buco's management should tell Clinton's lawyer to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut on a gravel driveway.

Chelsea Clinton gave her implicit approval for the display of the photograph when she posed for it. On these grounds any self-respecting judge would throw a "rights of publicity" or other nonsensical lawsuit straight out of court. Chelsea Clinton is not a dumb woman. The pictures of celebrities and politicians on the walls of Osso Buco should have tipped her off that the photo would be mounted on the wall. And she posed, said cheese and waited for the flash. That's consent.

The lawyer is probably acting without the input or consent of the President or his wife or their daughter. This is what must be stopped. Lawyers all over the world walk around inventing laws and legal threats on behalf of clients who don't really want the lawyer to do what they're doing. Do you think Bill Clinton, famous lover of food, really cares that his daughter's picture hangs in an Italian restaurant? No. No, he doesn't. If he knew that picture was up there, he'd probably hop in his limo and roll down there for a free meal. Then he'd have his own picture snapped. Avuncular old Bill doesn't want press about mean lawyers writing nasty letters to restauranteurs. He wants some good food to eat. This lawyer is doing what almost all lawyers do best: he's making work for himself. At the end of each week he sits down and tallies all the bullshit letters he's mailed off and pats himself on the back for doing such good work.

This case probably stikes a lot of lay folks as just another funny news story about the ridiculous excesses of celebrities, politicians and lawyers. It is all that. But it's a signifier of how certain lawyers have gotten completely out of hand. Like I said above, if Osso Buco goes to the mat the case will be tossed, when it gets to court. The shit of it is that in the meanwhile, Osso Buco will have to hire another lawyer to prepare the case. At $400 per billable hour, minimum, fighting the stupid request will add up to real dough, very fast.

With that in mind Osso Buco will take the picture down. Kudos to them for generating some PR for themselves. But in the meanwhile, this shitheel lawyer has shown the world that bullying letters get things done, and that we need all the lawyers we can get. Yay rule of law!

* The term "legal letter" drives me nuts. You're supposed to shudder when you get a "legal letter"--like, from a real lawyer--in your mail box. Don't. Lawyers are just like accountants, except instead of playing with numbers they play with words. They have no more power when they write letter than you or I do. They should chill the fuck out. I don't care how much money they spent on school.

The Kingdom = Team America Part II?

Jim Surowiecki Does it Again!

Two weeks ago the New Yorker's Jim Surowiecki took on a question for the ages: why do airlines suck?

I'll give you the short answer. For the same reason dogs lick their balls: because they can. How else are you gonna get from New York to Chicago? On the train?

But all the same, I enjoyed each of the 958 words Jim took to say the same thing.

And Now a Word from the Tiny Little Andy Rooney that Lives in My Sinuses

This is an ad that ran on Salon.com today. It's a back-to-school ad that touts unheard of bargains on iPods. I like my iPod. I don't have children, but I like them too. But in what freaking world does an iPod have anything to do with education? I'm not against them, or against kids having them, but why use school as a reason to discount them? If you're going to have back-to-school sales on iPods, why stop there? Why not run back-to-school sales on meat? Or drywall. How about a nice back-to-school sale on Geritol?

Plans that You Know Won't Work

296 Mt Hope Street, my childhood home, the nest of all my pre-adolescent happiness and my now-embarrasing adolescent rage has been purchased by a developer. This developer plans to move the structure on the property so that he can build a second house on the property. I call bullshit. The house is impossibly old, haunted (it's true) and like many New England houses it was built in sections over the course of centuries. It is not a modular home that can be jacked off its foundation, loaded onto a truck and carted off to another less valuable locale. The plaster inside is brittle horsehair over lathe. The joists don't all connect with one another. Legions of inept plumbers and electricians have laid hands on the pipes and wires over the years. It's a creaky, sensitive old house and it needs to be left alone.

The developer made this promise because the town fathers like to keep old houses around. In New York and New Jersey it's a common practice to level a 1,500 sq foot house and replace it with a 10,000 sq foot abomination, replete with a frigging Great Room. (I will eat baby's feet before I buy, build or rent a home with a Great Room.) In Massachusetts it's practically a capital offense to flatten an old farm house. So now the developer will try oh so very hard to move it, and when my rickety old homestead collapses in a heap of kindling, at least he can say he tried. Call it the architectural preservation version of due dilligence.

So this makes me a little sad. By the time my parents were preparing to move from the home I was grateful they were leaving. I was sick of the place. Over the preceeding years I had entertained the notion of burning the building to the ground. Its walls were so steeped in bitterness and interfamilial fighting, just crossing the threshold was enough to put my teeth on edge. But I'm an old man now. And as an old man I'm obliged to get a little nostalgic for the back stair case-- which due to the structural ammendments built over the years was basically a stairway to nowhere--and there was an odd little door beneath the front staircase that covered a hollow spot in the core of the house--was it a dumbwaiter? But then where did the shaft go? We never found its terminating point in the basement. It was a pointless mystery and I liked it.

By the end of September it'll all be gone. The building that replaces it will be new and straight. It won't sag and shutter during a blizzard. Squirrels won't live in the attic. There will be 2.5 bathrooms instead of just the one. And some dull little kids will grow up there. Oh well.

Performance Enhancement

So a second team was expelled from the Tour de France today because one of its riders tested positive for artificial testosterone.

Earlier this week Alexander Vinokourov, one of the strongest contenders on the tour, got bounced when he tested positive for foreign blood in his system. This is an indication that he was engaging in blood packing, a practice where an athlete tops off his normal blood levels with a little extra, you know for the added oomph only surplus hemoglobin can provide.

A third rider, Michael Rasmussen, is under suspicion because he dodged some drug tests earlier this year.

The scandal in France is unfolding at the same time that Barry Bonds creeps inexorably towards breaking the home run record.

And at this point I go out on a limb and say something largely unprovable. Every major athlete who has played, run, swam, ridden or thrown in the last decade probably has used some kind of banned performance enhancement. To pretend otherwise is childish.

And who do you blame for this? Blame yourselves. Blame yourselves and the business men who make money off sports. You want to see baseball players smash balls to atoms every night. You want to watch football players crush each other into bloody pulps. You buy the tickets and the t-shirts and the cable TV packages that let you watch every home and away game. You're getting what you pay for. It's your fault.

The ballplayers and the riders are nearly as innocent as the bread-thief in a Victor Hugo novel. Each of them faces a choice: use performance enhancing drugs and earn millions and millions of dollars a year or don't use the drugs and go work at a Home Depot stacking two-by-fours. What would you do?

So far as I know, George Steinbrenner loses no money if one of his players tests postive for banned substances. Vodofone and the Discovery Channel do not face a fine if the riders on their Tour de France team piss dirty or fail a blood test. But if a Yankees player fails to perform at the league standard, he gets fired in a hot second. The same goes for riders on the tour.