Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
(a month? really? wow, I gotta do this blog thing a little more often)
So the education is over.
For now.
In March, 2008, I began working on my Master’s. As of a few days ago, I finished it. Three and a half years, twelve classes, one thesis, and something like 1800 written pages later, I’m all smart.
I feel smart, too. Witty and wise.
And I’m sure the world is now at my feet. I’m sure I’ll get a gigantic raise and promotion, that young officers will flock to me to take advantage of my experience and knowledge.
hehehehe…haaaahhhaaa…bwaaaahhhaaaaaaaa….
Oh, stop, you’re making my side hurt.
I will get nothing practical out of this education and believe it or not, that’s perfectly okay. I love education for the sake of education. If I could, I’d be enrolled in one class or another every day for the rest of my life. And if I learned anything useful, great. If not, that’s fine, too.
Here’s the thing: while I make fun of having gotten a degree in a place that will never, ever reward me for that extra education, I do believe education is the silver bullet. I believe, without reservation, that education can solve most, if not all, of this country’s problems.
I don’t care if the education comes from an Ivy League university, a state college, a for profit place like Kaplan, or a technical school. Any place that puts knowledge in someone’s hands can only be a good thing. Any institution that teaches people how to think critically can only be a good thing.
A friend of mine recently finished snatching up an associate’s degree. She managed to do it while in a house with a husband, three youngish kids, three dogs, and a pile of other animals. She grew up in a tough household and wanted to move beyond her formative experiences. She took the hard road and managed to complete her education in spite of all kinds of people – including people close to her – telling her it was a waste of time or money or both. Now she’ll get a job in her chosen field and eventually will move far beyond those formative experiences.
Education is the silver bullet.
And I can’t figure out why there are people who disagree. I can’t figure out why there are people who think education is simply a waste of time…or money…or both.
Had a supervisor once. I asked him if I could go to a training class, one that was specific to my job and that would yield results within days. He looked me dead in the face and said, “I’m tired of people taking time off for training.”
I remember standing there, stunned speechless, and staring at him. He dared me to say something and then didn’t give me the days off.
At the other end of the spectrum is some training I’ve got coming up in Houston. The sheriff found something he thought I’d enjoy and would be good at, and he’s basically ordering me to go. It’s going to be amazing and interesting and I can’t wait to jump head first into it, though it makes me nervous because it’s a whole new set of skills; something I’ve never ever done before.
Something I’ve never done before is good. Paths not only not taken, but unknown to me until recently, are the most interesting paths. Find me the darkest forest…one with no trail, no light, no map at all. Then get the fuck outta the way because that’s where I’m going. I’ll find the trail and I’ll figure out the light. I’ll bring a flashlight or a box of matches. Or I’ll make some matches, or set a woodland creature on fire or something.
But that place where I’ve never been is where I’m going.
And hey, right now, that place I’ve never been is hiding down in Houston, where I have been. But Houston in February has got to be better – and much warmer – than Illinois in February, right?
Plus, it’s Texas! Barbeque…Tex-Mex…pick-up trucks with gun racks in the windows…. Ah, my homeland.
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Friday, October 28th, 2011
I’m a fairly well-educated guy. Not particularly smart, but I got a whole lotta receipts for a whole lotta dough spent on getting a whole lotta educated.
So when it comes to inanimate objects, I generally assume I’ve got ‘em licked.
Uh…no.
Let me back up a little.
I’ve got a yen for abandoned things. Barns, houses, corn cribs, cars, whatever as long as it’s been left to the vicissitudes of time and memory. To me, for whatever reason, abandoned places represent lost hearts and spirits; maybe searches for the solid in life that can never truly be found. I find myself melancholy and wandering through my own imagination about what once might have been.
When I find those places, if they show me their hidden selves, I spend hours with my camera trying capture what I think I see.
A few weeks ago I found a farmhouse. What I noticed first were the windows, broken and jagged things. They seemed, in that particular sunlight, like tears on a granite face…as hyperbolic as that sounds.
After getting permission from the owner, I scoped the place out, tramping through the rooms and across the piles and piles of broken and dead furniture, past the giant tractor tires stored in an interior room, on top of the long orange pipes stacked neatly in an upstairs bedroom, past the rusted child’s toy left in the other upstairs bedroom.
The two downstairs rooms were a jumble of old textbooks (the owner had been a teacher) that had long since decomposed into a sort of gray confetti that hid the condition of the floor. So when I stepped hard into a pile of confetti, I didn’t see that the floor was soft.
Sank a couple of inches. Broke just a bit of floorboard. I chuckled and thought about how lucky I was to have not gone through the floor into the unexplored, but completely pitch fucking dark, basement.
So on my next day off, I bundled up some water and extra batteries, memory cards, tripods, filters and lenses, all manner of bullshit and off I went, snapping photos off like .22 shells from a varmint gun. Then the inside. Up the stairs and into the bedrooms and out the upstairs windows. I banged out about a million and a half shots and was feeling really good.
And then, back downstairs, I found that soft floor.
Not the same spot, mind you, ’cause I’m smarter than that. Remember all that education? All those classes and tests and papers and projects and bullshit made me more than smart enough not to put my foot in the same damned place, right?
So I stepped a foot, maybe even two feet, beyond the soft spot.
Gotta tell ya, that soft spot was a damned sight bigger than I’d thought. Son of a bitch ran probably another foot beyond where I stepped!
And yeah, I went crashing through.
Left foot went through and my left leg followed. Right leg folded up like a card table and when I realized the toes of my right foot were just behind my right ear, I knew I was having a problem. Both arms came out flat and slammed against the part of the floor that didn’t collapse, thus insuring almost perfectly equal bruises on the insides of my biceps.
But mostly? My upper back jammed hard between two joists. Hard between them.
HARD!
My howl split that still afternoon air and pain rocketed up into my brain like somebody had heated up some piano wire and jabbed it straight into my eyeball.
And then I realized, as I sat there, that no one in the world – the world – had any friggin’ clue where I was.
Hehehe…see, when I go photograph, I just go. No place to be, no time to be there. Just me and where ever the winds take me.
Which also means that when I die in an abandoned farmhouse, nobody’s going to know until some kids looking to scronk find my desiccated bones.
So that sucks.
I take a long breath. Then a shitpile more, thank the Cosmos I’m not dead, and start to climb out.
When my phone goes insane.
Because less than two miles from where I’m standing over a big-ass hole in the floor, some mope is robbing a bank in one of my towns.
Literally at that second.
Everyone’s reaching out and touching me with the news. I figure I’m right there so maybe I can help. I jumped…okay, limp slowly…into my truck and race to town. I give the detectives a few minutes of help tracking down witnesses and video, and that was about all I could do.
‘Cause I hurt.
Like a mofo!
Ultimately, I ended up with the biggest bruises of my life. Huge one on my back, both biceps, my left ankle and foot, a few other smaller abrasions. And pain that lasted for three weeks in my left ankle and knee.
Plus, I got yelled at, if you can dig it.
A lot. By everybody. It generally went like this: “Are you stupid? You go wandering around and almost kill yourself and no one knows where the hell you are? What if you get hurt?”
But then one dear, dear friend said, “If you die, can I have your police gear?”
It was a lesson learned. I always want to appease my friends so in that day, I learned to let them know when I’m going to be somewhere.
Hah. Hehehehehehe! Haaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!! Bwaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, stop, my side hurts! Telling people where I’m going is not usually how I play.
Couple weeks later, photographing in an abandoned corn crib, about twenty or twenty-five feet off the ground, with my fetish model thirty feet away and handcuffed to the -
Hang on, wrong fantasy.
Standing on a joist that what? You got it, ladies and gentlemen, cracks beneath my very feet.
Got to another one safely but it scared the crap outta me.
And I’m up there, praying none of them break and I don’t go tumbling to the ground, and I’m thinking: son of a bitch, once again nobody knows where I am.
Why? ’Cause apparently all that fancy, expensive education didn’t take.
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Saturday, October 1st, 2011
Though I hopped out of journalism just about eight years ago, it is something I still love dearly and follow closely. But it also makes me tear my hair out.
The problem, from my lofty perch as commentator rather than working newsman, is two-fold. The first is corporate ownership, which is transforming the press into The Media. Newspapers and TV stations, radio, even internet platforms, are more and more group and corporate owned. Corporations are, damn near by definition, terrified of offending anyone.
When I worked at the Bureau County Republican, I had story after story, including one I wanted to write about the paper itself, shot down because it might offend someone. I never got pushed down by the publisher, it never went that far. I got pushed down by the editor because of what he thought the corporate office would or would not support. He never once tested those assumed boundaries and so our stories never addressed local problems nor offered local solutions.
The second problem is the individual journalist. The men and women of journalism are under great corporate pressure, and the fear of offending someone rolls downhill just as fast as a heaping pile of crap. Reporters can’t risk offending a source for fear that the source will cut off access. If the reporter exposes a problem at a local government agency, for example, they will find themselves no longer welcomed at that agency. Or worse, still able to visit the agency but with informational limits that are worse than being cut off.
That fear is strangling journalism and ability of reporters to make our society better just as surely as heart disease is strangling, and will one day kill, me.
Having said that, there are those who want to make journalism better. Jay Rosen’s blog PressThink.org works extremely hard to raise the bar. To that end, he recently posted the new reporter guidelines from the Voice of San Diego, which is a public-service, non-profit news gathering organization focusesing on investigative journalism. These guidelines are exactly how journalists should think and work. If all of them did our world would be a much better place.
Voice of San Diego: New Reporter Guidelines.
We only do something if we can do it better than anyone or if no one else is doing it.
* We must add value. We must be unique.
Three things to remember for each story:
* Context
* Authority
* Not just what is happening, but what it means
There is no such thing as objectivity.
* There is such thing as fairness.
* But everyone sees everything through their own filter. Acknowledge that, let it liberate you. Let it regulate you.
* We are not guided by political identification, by ideology or dogma. But every decision we make, from what to cover to how to cover it, is made through our own subjective judgments.
* We are guided by an ability to be transparent and independent, to clearly assess what’s going on in our community and have the courage to plainly state the truth.
Our bent: Reform. Things can always be better.
* We don’t have a dogmatic or ideological bent. But we do believe San Diego can and will do better.
* We can have better infrastructure, a healthier environment, a better education system, a responsive, efficient and transparent government, a better understanding of our neighborhoods’ challenges, a thriving economy and an ever-improving quality of life. If anything, this is our bias.
Be the expert.
* Write with authority. You earn the right to write with authority by reporting and working hard.
* No “he said, she said.”
* The day we write a headline that says: “Proposal has pros, cons” is the day we start dying.
* There is no such thing as 50/50 balance. There is a truth and we work our damndest to get there.
* Sometimes two viewpoints don’t deserve 50/50 treatment.
* Most of the time there aren’t two sides to something, anyways. There are 17. Who’s not being represented? If they’re not speaking up, how can you represent them?
* We don’t just “put things out there.” We’re not “only asking the question.”
* We don’t ask questions with our stories. We answer them.
* We don’t write question headlines, unless they’re so damn good that we can’t resist:
* We don’t do this: “Did City Official Take Bribe?”
* Or, to cite a recent example: “Did Wikileaks Hack Servers?”
* We’d maybe do this: “How Did a City Official Ended Up With Millions in Donations?”
* We’re not someone’s goddamn transcription service.
* They can relay their own news. In a world where leaders are able to communicate directly with their constituents very easily, we have to a.) make sense of what they say and b) find out the things they don’t want to say. It’s the only way to effectively use our limited resources.
Tell the truth.
* This means not being mealy mouthed and not being bias-bullied.
* Stand up to bias bullies. Tell them why you did something. Let them challenge you on it.
* If someone calls you biased, don’t be scared. Don’t dismiss it either. Reflect on it and answer with conviction.
* Don’t go quote-hunting for something you know to be true and can say yourself. Don’t hide your opinion in the last quote of a story.
* Take a stand when you know something to be true or wrong.
Care about your beat more than anyone else.
* It is your way to make San Diego a better place to live.
Focus on big problems
* David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has a quote that can be paraphrased this way: Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems.
* It’s easy as a journalist to take a stand against a six-figure salary. It’s easy to take a stand against an expensive meal on an expense report.
* Why do we take stands on those things and why are we afraid to take stands on bigger issues?
If you can’t find a good answer any of these three questions, drop the story:
* Why did I choose this story?
* Why will people care? (Not why should they care, but why will they care.)
* Why will people remember this story?
Avoid ‘churnalism’
* It’s not your job to have everything on your beat. It’s your job to have the best things.
* Don’t worry about getting scooped. Worry about not consistently making an impact.
* Love the title of this Columbia Journalism Review story: “The Hamster Wheel: Why running as fast as we can is getting us nowhere.”
* A quote: “The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s motion for motion’s sake. The Hamster Wheel is volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no.”
* Another: “You say, ‘Why not have it?’ I say, ‘Because it isn’t free.’ The most underused words in the news business today: let’s pass on that.”
* We are a small group with limited resource. Everything we do must [pay off for the users.]
* We can learn a lot from sports journalism. (That’s for a different day.) But here’s one great quote to always keep in mind from sportsjournalism.org: “Nobody cares who’s first with the commodity news, but being first with what the news means still has value – in fact, it has more value than it ever has, given today’s torrent of information. Readers will gravitate to such stories, share them and remember them.”
Avoid the news voice whenever possible.
* Sometimes it’s necessary.
* But you should never write a story [the way] you think journalists are supposed to write it. Write like you would if you were trying to get your friends interested in an email. Lighten up. Be creative. Have fun. Be conversational.
Bring us in the implications, not the event.
* So it’s not “Booze Ban Voted Through Council Committee.”
* It’s “Booze Ban Has One Final Hurdle Left.”
Don’t be boring. People don’t spend their free time on boring things.
* That’s it.
Don’t tell me stories about “critics” or “some”
* I don’t have a clue who “critics” or “some” are. But they managed to be the most quoted people on the planet.
* I need to know who they are for that viewpoint to carry any validity.
* And I need to know what, if any, financial stake they have in the issue. Honestly. (Just a sample of headlines in the news in a five-minute search this fall: “Some say Escondido police union’s flier crosses the line…” “Some say new constitution would solve state’s woes…” “Critics say Washing Oily Birds Is Wasteful…” “Observers Say Time Right for Santander IPO…”
* I’ve read stories that use blanket “critics” in different spots to describe people on the opposite ends of the arguments. It was so confusing.
Have fun! Be creative! Push the envelope!
* You don’t do this for the money. So let’s have some fun.
* Try something that’s never been tried before. Or try something that someone else did somewhere else. Don’t do a story just to do it. Or because it’s an interesting exercise.
* Think about what will impact people or policy makers. What will they want to read or what will force them to make a change?
* Be a student of today’s great journalistic innovations.
* Be a leader of today’s great journalistic innovations.
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Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
A short update.
Went to my doc the other day. He wanted to see how things were going twelve days hence. Poked. Prodded. Listened. Laughed at what I’d said to the heart doc.
Then said, sort of out of nowhere, “I’m glad we did the stress test.”
“Uh…me, too?”
“Finding that blockage in your stent was a good catch.”
“Sure.”
“If we’d gone any longer, and if we’d had an event…I’m not sure you would have made it.”
Notice how it was ‘we’ up until the part where I die?
Of all the things I wanted the doctor to say, that was so not on the list.
The blockage had been minor, but it was in a stent and apparently that concerned him. So he told me I could have died.
I love this doc, really I do. He does not varnish anything. When I had cancer, he didn’t really even tell me. He started with who my oncologist was going to be. I’m good with that. Don’t screw around, don’t dip it in powdered sugar, just give it to me.
But this time?
“…not sure you would have made it.”
I coulda used some varnish. Just a little.
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Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
And they’re pumping those fluids….
So there’s this tech: John. Yacks and yacks and yacks. No doubt trying to put me at ease. Admirable enough goal, I guess, considering I’m about to get all kinds of medical crap jammed up my femoral and into my black little heart. But, dude, shut the hell up. Take your goatee’d face and zip it. I’m fine drowning in my own self-induced mental drama.
He was nice enough, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t respond well to the standard pitch. It was the same way at the police academy during my physical fitness test. A pile of young pups started running with me, “You can do it,” “Keep working it,” and “We have faith in you.”
Yap yap freakin’ yap. They got on my nerves so bad I actually slowed down…hoping they’d decide I had no chance and they’d leave me alone. Eventually, they moved on to some other hapless recruit, I got back into my head, my comfort zone, and beat the required time by better than a minute.
So I dig the sentiment, but I prefer a little edge, such as the text I got before surgery from Officer Friendly: “I get first dibs on all your police gear.”
Now that’s motivation, baby! Damn sure gonna survive…if for no other reason than to keep his grubby fingers off my stuff.
And still they’re pumping and pumping those damned fluids into me….
So John babbles babbles babbles. He took me into the room, which was, just like during the heart attack, fucking polar cold, and he told me that when the doctor arrives, I needed to announce my name and birthdate in a loud voice. It’s a security check to make sure they’ve got the correct patient.
We wait and wait and wait. Finally the doc came in and I said, “Dude, you were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
The doctor’s support staff gasped. The doctor, without missing a beat, said, “Damn cops. Pulled me over. One mile over the limit! They’re never eating donuts when you want them to.”
Had I not been restrained and drugged, I would have laughed my ass off. Obviously, this is the right doctor for me.
So Goatee John nudges me and I announce my name: “Johnny Rocket, here for an amputation, sir!”
“Shaddup,” the Doc says, and immediately gets to carving.
Pump pump pump, more and more fluids, endless fluids, an ocean’s worth of fluids…starting to be a problem….
“Trey,” John said, “Look over here.”
I half expected a magic show, maybe some wall puppets of a beating heart or something. Instead, it was a giant screen TV. But instead of, I don’t know, a Dirty Harry flick, it’s of what the doc is doing to me.
I thought: wow, that could be a torture device. “If you don’t anzer de qvestions, ve vill do zis to you!”
But I’ve got a better idea for torture.
“Uh…John?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“So this fluid thing you guys are doing? And the fact that it’s about ten fucking degrees in here? Pretty quick, it’s going to be a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Getting a little floaty, John.”
“I – uh – sorry, I don’t get you.”
“In a very few minutes, I’m going to start raining a nice, warm, spring rain on everyone.”
He started at me a second, and then I saw a glimmer of understanding. “Oh, no problem. Hang on.” He turned to the entire team. “Doc, he’s got to piss, that all right?”
Here’s the thing. I’d said it to him quietly to preserve some last shred of dignity, since everyone had already seen my junk and shaved around it and used a truly small piece of cloth to cover it (told you, it was reeeeeeaally cold in there). So I didn’t really need him announcing to the team I needed to pee.
“Pee all you want,” the doctor fairly shouted, interrupting the completely unrecognizable song he’d been singing.
So John, confidante that he’d become, grabbed my manjack and moved it all around to get me set up in a urinal. (Gotta tell ya: that’s an excruciatingly odd sensation, a guy helping you piss.)
And then?
Absolutely nothing.
A bit of performance anxiety. Couldn’t squeeze a drop.
Lots of people watching, plus it’s just weird to be told to piss when you’re on your back and you have no idea where the hose is pointed. Goes against every bit of toilet training and social reinforcement I’ve had for my entire life.
Nothing happens and nothing happens and now it’s starting to hurt and still I can’t get any action.
Still fluids are pumping, like a freakin’ pressure pump, blasting into me….
And so finally, after I’ve begun shaking from the need so badly that the doctor has actually put pressure on my bladder, I let go.
It explodes and I feel oh so much better.
And…somehow…warmer.
“John, dude,” I said.
“Oooops, sorry. Didn’t get you lined up right.”
Are you kidding me with this? This is exactly – exactly – what happened during the heart attack in February, 2001. Pissed all over myself then, too. Lots of fluids, an extremely cold room, that time a stainless steel table, and a tech who will probably never have kids because he has a problem getting the hose in the hole.
Either the team was really good with poker faces, or they didn’t care, or didn’t notice. Exactly none of which helped my sense of humiliation. John moved me around some, and the next time it was all in the cup.
What’s the Meat Loaf line? One out of two ain’t bad?
That was about it for excitement. The team murmured to themselves frequently, pulled some seriously long bits of equipment out of a nearby cabinet, did their thing, and then just stopped.
“That’s it, boy,” the doc said. “We’re done.”
I raised my head, looked down the length of my body, and yelled, “Where the hell are my tits? I came in for breast augmentation.”
“Best of luck with that, then,” Doc said as he left the room.
They took me to recovery, I fell asleep and, in fact, am sleeping still.
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Friday, June 17th, 2011
So I had a stress test a few days ago.
I figure what the hell, it’s been ten years since the heart attack and it’s probably time to get in there and do some mopping, maybe a bit of window washing, some bush trimming…whatever.
Honestly, it’s something that’s bugged me (read: worried me) for a while and lately, when I exercise, there’s been a bit more chest pressure than normal. The pressure’s always been there, like an annoying uncle who usually just quietly drinks his Thunderbird at family get-togethers.
Lately, though, crazy unc has been drinking more. It hasn’t progressed to the ‘Wow, Uncle Slobodon’s grabbing that woman’s ass again. He shouldn’t have his tongue in her ear, should he? Does he even know her name?” stage, but I can see it coming.
The pressure, when I’m exercising, has been there since the heart attack. Never pain, never anything scary, just a constant, gentle reminder than it’s probably not going to be a bad guy who kills me, or my wife, but rather the inexorable build of heart disease.
So I’m sitting with my Doc last week and I mention it, just to be on the safe side, and next thing I know, that son of a bitch has me hooked up to wheels and pulleys and bells and shit that you know – KNOW – is going to cost me the better part of half my annual salary.
I got a call from the hospital scheduler. In a surprisingly nasal, and pissy tone of voice, she says, “We schedule them on Wednesdays.”
“That’s going to be tough,” I said. “I work the night before and that night and it’s going to be tough.”
“Oh, well…in that case, let me explain something: we schedule them on Wednesdays.”
Ah, got it. As flexible as the highway between Midland and Odessa. Like Henry Ford famously said, any color you want as long as it’s black.
“You’ll need to be here at 7 a.m.”
“Yeah, but I don’t get off work until – ”
“You’ll need to be here at 7 a.m.”
There was a looooonng silence and in it, I heard – clearly – the threat of Nurse Ratched.
So of course I deferred to her. Because I always do exactly what the authority types tell me.
But then she hit me up for money. She demanded that I bring the entire co-pay…up front.
“Well, I’ll pay as much of it as I can.”
“You’ll need to have the entire co-pay.”
Now I’m getting pissed. What she’s saying, without speaking, is that if I don’t have the entire co-pay, I’ll not be allowed to take the stress test. In other words, the test is extremely important…unless I don’t have the money.
I mention that and it moves her not at all. She couldn’t possibly give a crap. She wanted her money and that was that, like a really militant street whore. ‘I get mine or you don’t get yours.’
I have no problem paying the entire co-pay, and eventually I will, but this is an expensive damned test. My part of the bill was something like $358,265.97 and she wanted it all right then. Part of me, the really sassy part, wanted to march straight up to her the morning of and, with great flourish and flamboyance, write her a check for a million dollars. A check that would, by the way, be just as worthless as one for $358,265.97.
The test itself wasn’t too bad. I got there early, got my IV full of thalium or thumpium or something…coulda been thermin or all I know…hehehe, a little musical joke. Then sat around for a half-hour while it coursed through my veins, no doubt radiating me like the water around Fukashima. Then the tech took 15 minutes worth of pictures to see what my baseline circulation was.
A nurse shaved me – which wasn’t anywhere near as fun as I’d hoped! – and attached all kinds of freakin’ cyborg bullshit to me, then they put me on the treadmill and let fly.
And we flew at exactly 1.7 miles an hour.
Dude, come on. My great-grandmother could walk faster than that and she’s been dead for a quarter-century.
Doc said he wanted my heart rate up to about 150.
“Doc? This 1.7 crap ain’t gonna get it.”
“Yes, yes, it will,” he said.
“I don’t think so, babe, I do 4 miles an hour on a 5% grade at home.”
“Don’t you worry, I’ve done this a few times before.”
I shut up and just kept walking. And walking. And walking. Slowly, the thing sped up, which I’d expected, and moved to a steeper grade, which I’d also expected. After seven or eight hours – or maybe just 12 minutes – the thing stopped.
But it stopped at 4.2 miles an hour and on a nearly 20% grade.
Holy balls, my legs are still screaming.
When I was done, they gave me a towel for all my Manly Sweat, and then put me in some sort of SUV-sized chair and rolled me back to waiting so I could get a second set of pictures.
Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like being rolled around a hospital by two older woman in a giant SUV-chair.
I kind of dug it. ‘Cause I’m a bad man.
Two days later Doc calls and says there are some abnormalities in the results but he’s not sure if that’s from the damage ten years ago or some new blockage.
So he casually mentions an angiogram.
He said it nicely, but it had the same undercurrent as, “We schedule them on Wednesdays.”
That, then, is the story of how I found myself talking to all manner of hospital registration people in preparation for Monday.
And what did she say to me? This scheduler woman at a hospital an hour south of here?
“You’ll need to be here at 6 a.m.”
“Yeah, but…I can’t – ”
“You’ll need to be here at 6 a.m.”
Any color you want, baby, as long as it’s black.
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
A few months ago, journalist Jay Rosen wrote about James O’Keefe’s take down of NPR.
For those who don’t remember, O’Keefe (a cheap performance artist who’s sloppy editing somehow manages to fool everyone just long enough to create massive cheering from the right and hiding-under-the-bed-holding-their-balls-in-fear on the left) set up a ‘sting’ whereby he had people pose as potential NPR donors. The donations were going to be dubiously large and from donors of whom no one had ever heard.
[As an aside, huge gifts from new people should be automatically suspect...and a simple Google search shows the donors to be bogus...hello...anybody out there?]
So O’Keefe sets up this sting and he manages to get an NPR fundraiser on tape trashing Republicans and wondering if NPR needs federal dollars.
[And another aside, federal dollars account for less than 2% of NPR's budget. Fuck it, get it rid of that money. Take that bullet out of the culture warriors' gun.]
Within a few days of O’Keefe’s hackery, the NPR board realized their balls had been stolen one night long ago and thus yipped and caterwauled and fired the CEO. Rosen does an amazing job of laying out why that cowardice will actually hurt both the press generally and NPR specifically. It’s a long piece, but well worth reading.
http://pressthink.org/2011/03/they-brought-a-tote-bag-to-a-knife-fight-the-resignation-of-nprs-ceo-vivian-schiller/#more-1022
Aside from explaining why firing the CEO was a disaster, Rosen also takes Andrew Breitbart, as notorious a liar and media manipulator as O’Keefe, to task for calling for the destruction of the “old media guard.”
As a former journalist, I believe in journalism. I believe in plucky, independent journalism, the kind that was a service to citizens rather than politicians or celebrities. Journalism that shone a light not only on the darkest corners of our society, but also the most boring corners of our society: school board meetings and zoning board meetings and county board meetings where endemic corruption is, sadly, more ineptitude than maliciousness.
That kind of pro-societal journalism is infrequent anymore. Instead, we have what Breitbart calls “the old media guard.”
I say: burn the old guard down. Brutally, violently, with much gnashing of teeth and yanking of hair…all said metaphorically. I don’t want anyone getting physically hurt…even dumbasses like O’Keefe and Breitbart.
[And yes, I get that he's using the term significantly differently than I am. My point here is that the phrase got me thinking.]
Anymore, Americans have a double-headed Hydra journalism serpent that does society few favors.
First, Americans get their ‘big’ news from a media elite in Washington. It is a permanent community, though the asses in the chairs change every once in a while. This community is built upon the White House reporters, the Pentagon reporters, those who participate in the Sunday morning shows, the political analysts who spend their days and nights appearing on all the news channels, frequently espousing completely contradictory positions within minutes simply be virtue of what network is giving them face time at that moment.
These media-wonks are desperate to keep their cushy beats and to protect their sources. They have a fear, at least in my limited experience with Washington reporters, as well as Austin (TX) political reporters, that they’ll lose their access. So they keep their sources happy by framing the questions exactly as those sources want.
Therefore, ‘torture’ becomes ‘harsh interrogation’ because we don’t want to offend the Bush administration. David Kay, the leader of the Iraqi Survey Group, charged with finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, is cast as an idiot who can’t even find the country of Iraq, much less the weapons, because to believe his findings – which were that Iraq had no WMD – plays against the narrative the politicians of both stripes wanted at the time. That narrative, you’ll remember, was that we had to go to war to keep the mushroom cloud from exploding over Washington.
[Which was ironic because just a few years later, as both sides became more and more frustrated with Washington, there were calls to level the nation's capital and be done with it.]
The second branch of non-journalism is Watergate. This style of journalism is mostly practiced by people who came along after Watergate and were told Nixon’s resignation was the ultimate moment of journalism. Most young journalists today want that moment for themselves. They want to bring down a president. Or, barring that, a governor or mayor or police chief or school executive. And yes, it is partly the government’s fault we’re at this point. After all, Watergate, Vietnam, the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, and how many smaller incidents, taught us to distrust the government.
The logical extension of that is the moment when a reporter has confirmation of some fact that a power broker continually denies. When the reporter shoves that fact – be it video or pictures or crying witnesses – into the face of the power broker, it is a collective, journalistic orgasm.
And then the journalist, prodded and forced by the editor and publisher, moves on to the next gotcha moment.
Reporters are rarely given the time or space to offer context or understanding of the larger, underlying issues.
Now, I have no problem with shoving a fact in the face of a liar. I believe in it whole-heartedly. When I was a journalist, I wanted to catch the politicians in a lie or a scam or whatever. But my wants were to make the system better, not necessarily to create a great resume to move on to the next market. I am not holding myself up as some sort of Golden Angel of journalism, but I am saying that when the last editor I worked for told me straight up he was going after a politician because it would help him hop to the next, bigger-market newspaper, I was severely uncomfortable.
Those gotcha moments have to be done with maturity and explanation. Don’t leave us with the gotcha and nothing else. That way lies growing public distrust of journalists because all the public sees is the surprise moment. Therefore, it becomes easy to believe that’s the only thing journalism is. It becomes easy to ignore the media and anything they say, which means understanding of our world and society gets lost. No one really understands the machinations that spin around us.
Those two ways of practicing journalism – cuddling sources for access or exploiting sources for a bigger market – are what need to be burned down. Because as long as that’s how it’s done, the less people will trust journalists with anything.
Don’t believe me? Then Google trust levels for journalists. Last I checked? It was lower than for politicians.
*****
To my reporter friends and former professors: before you burn my house down, I am not talking about you personally. I’m talking about the institutional limitations, placed on you by editors and corporate overseers, under which you have to work.
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Sunday, May 15th, 2011
So my dreams have been excruciatingly odd lately. The last few months, anyway.
But really in the last handful of weeks. Full of violence and that strange all-encompassing melancholy you find in dreams (which always manifests, for me, with the knowledge that I’m dreaming and that it’s bad but with an inability to get myself out of it).
Two nights ago, I’m back in Denver, at Montview Avenue and Monaco Parkway. Monaco is a street with a giant, almost park-like median in between the two roadways. Lush with trees and modest homes set back off the road. Take it north and you hit Interestate 70 after a few blocks. South and you’ll get to the longest commercial road in America: Colfax.
(I prefer to think of Colfax as the Avenue of Strumpets. Quite the portable-sex asphalt jungle is it.)
Anyway, I’m in uniform but I’m a good quarter mile from my squad car. Something happens – one of those vague things in dreams that gives you a feeling, but not an incident. This feeling was adrenaline. Pure “balls-to-the-wall-man” (ah…I love when I can get in an 80′s German-metal band reference) adrenaline.
Because I hear gunfire. Then the car speeds away, hammering down Colfax Avenue.
I run to my squad, jump in, and fire that bastard up. I’m flying after them but it’s not like the car chase in ‘Bullitt.’ This is fuzzy. It’s amorphic. In fact, I don’t even see the chase.
It’s one of those dream sequences where I just know what’s happening. I know I’m catching him, though I see nothing. I know we’re shooting at each other, that bullets are tearing our cars apart, though I see nothing.
Most importantly: I know I’m going to catch him. There is zero chance he’ll get away from me. Sadly, before I can actually put the habeas grabbus on him, I wake up.
There is no trick ending here. I actually am going to catch him and that makes it a great dream. He’s the bad guy, after all.
However, last night….
I’m a mid-level lackey in a mob-style family and I am getting absolutely yelled at by the don. Straight up vicious, man. Not only is everything I’ve done for him wrong, it’s monstrously wrong. So this fucker is yelling and yelling and every time I try to defend or explain myself, he slaps me.
I do not hit back. I do not step out of the way. I do not dodge the blows.
Instead, I learn the lesson. Don’t talk back and you won’t get hit. Everything becomes ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘no, sir.’
It doesn’t work.
Instead, it drives the don completely insane. He immediately begins punching me.
Then knifing me.
And finally he shoots me.
Bad, right? Sure. Getting shot in the head can be a problem.
The larger problem is that the dream never ended.
After getting shot, I woke up. A little freaked out, but thinking: wow, at least it’s over. Now I can sleep.
Yet as soon as I slipped away again, it started again: same sequence, same punishment, same inability to figure out how to defend myself.
Ultimately, I woke up four or five times, each time after the head shot. After four hours, I gave up. It was pointless to sleep. With that crap slipping around every corner, there was no where to go.
I climbed out of bed angry. Seriously angry. Not at losing sleep, it was Saturday and I had no agenda for the day so who cares, but because what I took from the dream was that there was no way to stand up for myself; that everything led to some kind of violence against me (not in a martyr-complex sort of way, but in a ‘What the hell kind of situation is this?’ sort of way).
Yes, I was angry that this asshole wouldn’t shut up long enough for me to explain, or didn’t make sense enough for me to follow his perverse and twisted logic. But mostly I was I was angry that I couldn’t figure out how to defend myself. I should have been smarter than this man who couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him.
Big deal, right? Just a dream, right?
Hardly. It colored most of my Saturday. I couldn’t quite find a good groove, couldn’t get my head up to speed. I damn sure couldn’t let go of the overwhelming sadness the dream shot through me.
So, later, exhausted from dying all night, I napped.
And dreamt.
I was at a skanky old blues club. Dirty and dingy and filled with questionable folk. Exactly the kind of place I love. Great food, cheap beer and cheaper whiskey, great music sung by dented and broken people.
This random guy accosts me, spews attitude, gases me with profane verbiage.
So, cop that I am, I shot him.
And no one in the joint had problem one with it. In fact, no one seemed to notice.
Then I left and headed for some kind of pick up point. Not sure, now that I’m awake, exactly what it was, but I had that magical dream knowledge that that was where I needed to be next.
So I’m walking to that place, suddenly carrying my uniform because it’s soaking wet and covered in sand…which makes it incredibly heavy. I’ve got my duty belt draped across my other arm, along with pistols and shotguns…and…chains.
Yeah, seriously. Have no clue where the chains came from…but it sure as shit seems like they should mean something, huh?
So I walk and walk. Then walk some more. And when I’m done with that, I walk even more. Carrying all this shit. Getting heavier and heavier.
And still I walk.
And I never get there.
So even though I’ve done a good thing, and taken care of the bad guy (which I think is related to a current case I can’t tell you about yet…and no, I didn’t actually shoot anyone), I can’t get to where to go.
Sort of a copped-up version of running endlessly for that door, I guess.
So that’s it…for now. I’m not sure why my dreams have gotten so bizarre lately, though I have an idea or two. I’m not sure what, if anything I can do about them (without winning the lottery and changing everything) but they’ve been interesting to watch.
At the same time, though? Enough.
I’m tired.
Lemme sleep.
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Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
I got the original notice so long ago I’d forgotten about it. A note from the court clerk’s office calling me to jury duty. Understand, I believe in jury duty and I would love to be on a jury. But my job in law enforcement precludes most juries with the possible exception of civil.
So I filled out the clerk’s form, checked off that I’m law enforcement, mailed it in, and forgot about it.
Until I got a nasty call from the clerk’s assistant yesterday morning. She demanded to know where I was. I explained I was law enforcement. She said she didn’t care and ordered me to be in court in ten minutes.
I damn near choked on my mouthful of Eggo waffle, but I made it to court in the ten-minute window I’d been given. Turns out I got there only about twenty-minutes after everyone else.
And together we then sat for an hour and a half.
See…the attorneys were arguing in front of the Judge. Motions and such. All of which is a plaintiff or defendant’s right…except I’m not sure it should be done while 50 people sit for hours wondering what’s up. Those motions happened at the last second? Neither of the attorneys thought them up until just before jury selection, thereby forcing the potential jury to wait?
It is the arrogance that I have the problem with. The sense that the time of 50 potential jurors doesn’t mean dick squat, that those people – many of whom have taken time off from work – can wait as long as need be because, hey, they’re going to be here all day anyway so what’s it matter?
Eventually, we went to the courtroom and the Judge started. Instructions and a primer on how the legal system works, what he expects, etc. Then the attorneys started voir dire and it took me about 2.83 seconds to realize I wasn’t going to be on this jury.
The case was a personal injury accident.
That my department handled.
While I was on duty.
The main witness? The person who handled the accident?
My sergeant at the time.
I was dumbfounded. The woman who’d been such a nasty piece of work on the phone had known exactly what the case was, exactly what the witness list was, and – knowing I worked at that department – had demanded I come in anyway.
Look, I understand that there are procedures and policies, and chances are that many times, a deputy clerk cannot decide who is dismissed and who isn’t. But if that’s the case, then why tell potential jurors to fill out a form explaining why they should be dismissed? Either someone reads those questionnaires and makes a decision or those questionnaires are a waste of time.
Once I realized a bit about the case, I hoped my name was near the top of the list so that they’d call me early, I could explain the obvious conflict of interest, and get sent home.
Alas, number 49 of 50.
So it was my duty to sit for the better part of six hours, and hear the same questions repeated in infinite variations by three different lawyers and if there’d ever been a reason to smoke up a doobievich and get numb, that was it. Are you kidding me? Three lawyers? Asking the same question until your ears bled?
However, my elitism aside, there turned out to be an unexpected silver lining.
As I listened to how the questions got asked, rather than what was asked, I began to realize what had happened in this particular accident. I realized how the plaintiff’s attorney was going to go after the defendant, and how the defendant was going to ward off the blows.
That was wildly more interesting than I thought it’d be. I had expected the entire day to be boring as whale shit. I was thoroughly wrong.
But the problem with knowing just a touch of what happened is that it made me start asking questions. Defendant had been driving, plaintiffs were passengers. They were on a twisty bottom road. Came around a corner and a deer was standing in the road. Swerved to miss the deer. Crashed into a tree.
Then kicks in Mr. Cop Traffic Investigator. I’m looking at these three guys and my first thing is: why are these three hanging out? They didn’t feel ‘together,’ if that makes any sense. Usually, but not always, there is some obvious commonality to groups. Same age, same job, same hobby, same church, etc.
These guys had no apparent commonality. Different ages, different bearing, different attitude toward the Judge and jurors. All surface-level observations, admittedly, but just enough of a tell to get me wondering.
As the morning burned away, the plaintiffs’ attorney continually asked potential jurors what they thought of people who brought lawsuits for monetary damages, and what they thought of the right to choose their own doctor, and what they thought about going to a chiropractor rather than a medical doctor.
Which was an interesting pivot (we are in control of ourselves) away from his questions about the driver of a car being the “Captain” or “Commander” of the car (we are not in control of ourselves).
So my guess was that this crash took the two passengers to the insurance company’s doctor, who pronounced them fine. They then, over the objection of the insurance company, went to a chiropractic doctor, who diagnosed soft tissue injuries. They then went to a lawyer, who diagnosed probable monetary damages.
Now…I’ve handled numerous accidents where someone actually swerved to miss a deer. But I’ve also handled accidents where a deer was simply the reason give me for the crash because the truth would be more…uh…incriminating.
So I’m watching these three guys, and their limited interplay between each other, and I’m listening to the attorneys’ questions and the conclusions those point up, and thinking about that particular road and the time of the accident and by the lunch break, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it sussed out.
I’m pretty sure I know which bar they were coming from. I’m pretty sure I know which one was the drunkest.
I could be wrong about it all. Could be absolutely legitimate. They were driving, swerved around a deer, hit a tree.
Uh…yeah…don’t think so.
Ultimately, by three in the afternoon, the jury was selected and I never made it to the box. Had I, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have made the cut.
See, the plaintiffs’ attorney kept asking if the potential jurors had a problem with this or that or the next thing. I would have loved the opportunity to say, “Well…I have a problem with drunk drivers,” just to see their reactions.
Just guessing, but I’m pretty sure that would have gotten me booted from the jury.
Judge might have yelled at me, too.
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Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
It started with one of my Facebook posts.
“Hmmmm, the Bristol Palin ‘memoir’ is now official: ‘Not Afraid of Life.’ And for some reason, the second half of Socrates’ famous quote comes to mind: the unlived life is not worth examining.”
Then there was a comment or two declaring the book not worth reading. Those posts understood the asshattery of having a girl barely twenty tell us about her years of wisdom, not to mention that there are brilliant writers having trouble getting books published while this is passed off as literature.
Then this: “Agree or disagree with her politics, she has given more ‘hope’ for families that have kids with Down syndrome than anyone in the past few decades.”
It came from a high school chum. While we passed a pleasant word or two in the hallways, we were never friends, never drank beer or got busted, never trolled for chicks.
I remember he was a monster athlete and a decent human being (not as in half-assed good, but in that he seemed to have a decent soul and tried to treat people decently).
I value ideas and debate and thrashing out what I believe and why I believe it. So I question everything and want to be questioned. I want to defend my ideas, to make them logical and sound.
The next post was his: “Sorry, wrong Palin. You’re right she hasn’t even lived a life yet.”
I did not see that post when I responded. Had I, I wouldn’t have taken him to task for confusing Sarah with Bristol, but I still would have asked the other questions.
My response: “ First of all, Bristol’s child doesn’t have Down Syndrome…unless you believe Sarah didn’t actually bear that child and Bristol did. Secondly, hope for what? How does simply having a child with Down’s Syndrome give anyone hope? Thirdly, Trig is nothing more than a prop the Mama Grizzly waves around at rallies and speeches.”
Understand that I have no experience with Down’s Syndrome. I’ve never known anyone who had it and if I’ve known family members of those with DS, it’s never been made clear to me.
I posted again immediately: “And I wonder if maybe the kid on the show ‘My So Called Life,’ which was about a kid with Down’s Syndrome, maybe gave more hope in the last few decades than any third rate talking head…seeing as how he actually had Down’ Syndrome and proved you could be a productive member of society rather than spending your time quitting jobs before blathering on and on at 100 grand per speech.”
Another high school chum posted this: “I would say the actress who plays the character, Becky, on Glee has given more hope to children with Down Syndrome than ANYTHING Mrs. Palin has done to date. As a matter of fact, when she defended Rush after he used the word, retarded, she pretty much took that train backwards a couple of decades!”
The response: “Well I guess since I have an older child with Down Syndrome I would have a different perspective. I’ve met Chris Burke and he is awesome, but only so many kids with DS are going to grow up to be actors. Me and my wife have been on our local board for DS for quite some time and been to National events as well. Palin has given the common family a voice that hadn’t been there since the Shriver family. The Liberal elite and wealthy just don’t have kids with Down Syndrome very often, because they usually get aborted, so there is not much support among this class. I’ve heard first hand how she has spent hours meeting and talking with families with kids. I know the liberal media never showed this side of her, but you can use the word ‘prop’ if you like, but that just shows where your mind is. There is more to people than just politics, but some people can’t get past that. I’m sorry some can’t get past that, but I guess it takes a little more than watching the news.”
Wow. A jolt of electricity, anyone?
So let’s take a look at his accusation. With the exception of me calling her a third-rate talking head, there was no name calling. What we posted was fact. Palin has, in fact, quit jobs. Palin does pull down, in fact, about $100,000 per speech. Palin did, in fact, defend Rush Limbaugh when he called a huge swath of America retarded. Those are facts, not hate.
(I will admit the bit about Trig being a prop is not a provable fact….)
So how did he respond to facts? With the notion of a liberal elite that aborts most of their babies because they might be stricken with DS. And then the idea that I am a lesser human than he and SP because I used the word ‘prop.’ “…just shows where your mind is.” Honestly, I don’t even know what that means.
He follows with this: “(name), thanks for sharing, I didn’t know there was an actress on Glee with Down Syndrome, I guess I should try and watch a show. I also enjoy how people that don’t have kids with Down Syndrome know what drives our train. I know other groups that don’t like outsiders telling how to live their lives. I wonder why people that preach tolerance are some of the most intolerant!”
Again, I have no clue what he’s talking about. When he writes that people without children with DS don’t know what drives his train, I haven’t any idea what that means. Obviously I can’t know his life, I never said I did. I never told him how to live his life or gave him direction on a course of action for his family. I would never do that because I’m not on his train.
What I did do was ask a question.
One of the things I hate most in debates are people who hide behind broad brush arguments, as he does here. “I wonder why people that preach tolerance….” Using the generic and collective ‘people’ rather than calling me out. If you’re talking to me, then talk to me. I’m a big boy, I can take it.
Plus, come on, no one has ever heard me preach this dog whistle concept of ‘tolerance.’ In fact, I’m not particularly tolerant. I think idiots ought to be called out for their idiocy, just as I would expect to be called out for mine.
But he’s not done. There is one more post: “Well I’m pretty sure I said that politics aside she has offered ‘hope’ to families with kids with DS. The (sic) I said sorry, wrong Palin, and then you spouted off quite a bit of hate. So I guess that’s how it got started.”
Then he and the other poster had a short, pleasant discussion of the DS characters on Glee and the politics and name-calling were left behind.
But his last post points up most of why I wanted to write.
First and foremost, as I said at the beginning, I’m all for debate. I am not for name-calling in the stead of debate. I hate avoiding questions or answers by dropping a bunch of nasty names and making broad brush statements.
Ultimately, I asked a question which he refused to answer.
Instead, he filled the air with obfuscations, hitting the money-word ‘aborts,’ and twice using the oh-so-scary ‘liberal,’ once as part of a supposed elite and once as part of the media. What was truly odd about that name calling was that he lumped the wealthy in with the liberal elite. Those are two very different bits of class warfare and I’ve never heard them put together before so kudos for the mash-up!
But here’s the thing: he never answered the question. He referenced the question in his later post, declaring again that she’s given hope to families with kids with DS, but never explained what that hope was. Has she pushed for more research funding? Has she pushed for greater understanding of DS? Has she pushed for greater public acceptance of people with DS?
If so, then she’s done it damned quietly. All I ever see her talking about is how Obama has fucked up everything and how FLOTUS should quit forcing us to eat healthy.
I want him to answer the question. I want to know what she’s done. I want to be proven wrong. I want to know, since I have little to no understanding of this condition, that there is someone pushing America on it. I want to know that she’s doing what Michael J. Fox has done for Parkinson’s, which is push and push and push for more research and better funding, and what Betty Ford has done for addiction since 1982, which is bring it front of mind for the average American.
Has she done all that? Has she done any of that? Tell me she has. I’m begging to know she has.
Fundamentally, I guess I’m disappointed the debate went south so quickly; that I was accused of spewing hateful rhetoric even as he told the world that am part of a liberal elite that routinely aborts its babies.
Silly me, wanting actual debate in my debates, wanting actual facts in my debates.
As useless as it may seem, I will never stop hoping to one day discover exactly that.
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