Supermasterpiece presents: The Marmaduke Project

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It’s hard to be outraged these days. It’s hard to stay angry. Not that there’s not stuff to be angry and outraged about.. To the contrary! There’s so much stuff, most of the time it’s just easier to give up, look the other way, turn on the television… After all, who wants to be angry all the time? That will just make you upset! However, being the guy I am, I like getting mad, I like knowing that life is not fair and reminding myself that everything is not hunky dory in my plastic suburban cocoon. To that end, I’ve been reading and listening to:

1) TALK TALK by T.C. Boyle. This is another great book by T.C., about a deaf woman pulled over for a traffic infraction who ends up in jail because of a case of identity theft. This book, which I am “reading” on my iPod on the way to work, just makes my blood boil! The things that happen to this poor woman should not happen to anybody! Isn’t it tough enough just being deaf, without having to spend the weekend in jail on a case of mistaken identity because the courts are closed, and the lawyers are playing tennis or asking for a $50,000 retainer for something that is not even your fault!” I literally felt like jumping through my car system and beating somebody up. So far this is a great book, totally interesting, very compelling, and a real reminder of how unfair things can be if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2) IN PERSUASION NATION by George Saunders. This is the 3rd book of GS short stories, and he just keeps getting better and better and stranger and stranger. He previous themes of theme parks in decline and alienation have gotten weirder (the title story is front the point of view of a bag of Doritos) and more emotionally affecting even in their strangeness (the best story is about a man who keeps his dead parents in a state of suspended-life in his house without informing them that they are actually dead, just because he misses them so much). The outrage is these books is the way they directly confront what’s going on in our daily lives today and take it to it’s logical conclusion–such as the story where a man is forced, under penalty of bodily harm, to watch holographic television commercials he would have otherwise been exposed to if he hadn’t been hurrying to get his grandson to to theater on time. It makes you sick!

3) Graham Parker is one the crankiest rock and roll singers of all time. He knows what’s wrong with world and he’s not afraid to say it and he’s not afraid to keep saying it until you get it through your thick skull. And he’s catchy, and he’s soulful, and he’s funny, and he’s romantic–and he’s angry! And he can’t understand why you’re not mad about it, too. Like he says “Soul Corruption” — “They want you to trust in the power they’re wielding/You might as well jump from the top of a building” His most recent CD is SONGS OF NO CONSEQUENCE, and he’s got a lot of excellent points to make about the media, and the shallowness and superficiality of a world where people just take exploitation and corruption as business as usual. He has one particular quatrain that sticks in my head when I’m doing the dishes:

If you wanna make the deadline
Make sure your line is dead
If you’ve got any bright ideas
Keep them in your head

It’s an outrage!, I tell you.

This is an embarassing admission to make, but I am terrible at remembering people’s names. And I mean really terrible. I mean I can barely remember the names of my own children. I mean, if I were to meet you and you were to shake my hand any say “HI, I’m Bud” and I were to smile and say “Pleased to meet you, Bud”, and we were to laugh and talk about our families and our jobs and our favorite TV shows, and then you were to turn around and catch your bus, that 10 minutes later I would say “What was his name again? Bud? Schmud? M’Lud?” So unless you have a horrible facial disfigurement or huge bazongas, I am not going to be able to remember. (And even then, I am much more likely to say “Wasn’t that the horribly disfigured guy next to the one with the huge bazongas?”) I am the reason “Hey Guy!” was invented..

I envy my spouse the schoolteacher, who has four classes of twenty-five students each and can remember each and every name even years later when she passes them on the street. It’s not that I don’t care–I do care! Honest! It’s not that I have Alzheimers, though believe me the thought has occurred to me. The odd thing is, I can probably tell you the names, stars and directors of any movie for the past 50 years, or the original members of the Clash (shout out to Terry Chimes!), or even that thing you did on vacation when you were 12 that you have forgotten about but I remind you of and you go “Man, I had forgotten all about that!”, but the nice woman joining the PTA who just gave me $5 for a membership and who asked about my daughter whom she knew by name? Forget it! I just can’t. I am trying, honestly, but I fail more than I succeed.

Signed,

Nominally Disfigured Guy With Anatomically Minimal Bazongas

As if life is not stressful enough, yesterday afternoon (according to my neighbor, who watched the whole thing from his front porch, probably with a bucket on his head), our entire block was hit with a lightning storm, and lightning either hit my house or came very close to it. As a result, we:

1) lost our phone service
2) fried our cable modem
3) possibly fried my beautiful Shuttle PC
4) f-ed my wife’s beside alarm clock

Though I am initially very stressed out by such things, I find such “Act of God” events actually end up relaxing me, mostly because Hey–what can you do? Go into the sky with an aluminum plane and divert the lightning? It aso makes you take a step back and say, hey, I sure have wasted a lot of time using my PC and the Internet and dwonloading and uploading and iPod-ing and what have you–and for what? What did it get me? Did I really do anything? So I spent some more time with my family, some more time reading, chatting with the woman I’ll be spending my life with, et cetera et cetera…

Not that I was not excited to get back to work today to look up how to fix my PC, though! Life’s funny that way…

I gave blood today. I actually gave double blood, which is called apheresis. I was hooked up to machine that takes your blood, spins it, keeps the plasma, then injects the red blood cells back in your body, then does the whole process again. This way you can give double the amount of blood in about the same amount of time.

Does it hurt to give blood? Not really. I mean, there’s the pinch when the needle goes in. You feel flush when they put the saline solution to clear out your vein for this new procedure. But that’s it. The people are friendly. It takes an hour, maximum. You get to read a magazine.

I urge you to do this, even if it takes time out of your busy day watching television, surfing the web, and talking about nothing on your cell phone. Why should give blood? Because people need it. Because someday you might need it. I do it because my family members and friends have been in the hospital and needed blood. You should do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Here’s a link to the Red Cross in your area. And since you asked — I’m Type O+. Which you might be into if you lived in Japan.

We came. We saw. We ate elephant ears and rode the water ride. Our digital camera broke and takes pictures like we’re at the 1920 World’s Fair. I guess this means summer’s over! Well, you can’t say we didn’t have fun!