death smog day, 25 years later

The New York Times reported today that an Indian court finally issued a warrant on Friday for the arrest of the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a pesticide gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people and sickened more than half a million.

In response to a recent appeal by a victims’ group, the court ordered the arrest of Warren M. Anderson, who was the chief executive of Union Carbide when its pesticide factory in Bhopal leaked 40 tons of poisonous gas on Dec. 3, 1984, the world’s worst industrial disaster. Mr. Anderson was arrested immediately afterward, but he soon left India.

www.rediff.com/news/2004/dec/01sld2.htm

please support health care reform

No discrimination for pre-existing conditions
No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays
No cost-sharing for preventive care
No dropping of coverage if you become seriously ill
No gender discrimination
No annual or lifetime caps on coverage
Extended coverage for young adults
Guaranteed insurance renewal so long as premiums are paid

Please see the following for more information:
www.whitehouse.gov/health-i...tections/

My employer provides medical insurance via Blue Cross, but I also pay $265/month for the privilege.

In June I sprained my ankle. I thought it was broken, so I went to the ER. While there I saw a Physician's Assitant (not a doctor) for ten minutes and had two X-rays. The cost? $2,600, and my co-pay was $650. In July I needed emergency medical treatment and a procedure called Cardioversion. This was all done on an outpatient basis - I was not admitted to the hospital. The cost for this treatment was $14,700.... so far (the bills are still coming in). My co-pay for this event is about $3,000.

To sum it all up, in a single 30-day period I incurred a $4,000 medical bill. And people: I'm not even actually really SICK. These charges would break people in the lower middle and low income brackets.

When I was a kid, in the interest of public health, the government gave out free polio vaccines. My mother took me to a local elementary school, and we all stood in line, and got a sugar cube with a pink dot of medicine on it. Imagine a world in which the government was, now, distributing Tamiflu to everyone, in advance, in case it's needed. It's not an unreasonable idea.

Please, please support healthcare reform, and urge your friends to do the same.

Thank you.

ephemera electronica

Last week Amazon started selling George Orwell's novels, including 1984, for the Kindle, their proprietary ebook hardware device. Many people bought it. But then, Oh noes! it turned out that the publisher didn't have rights on the novels after all. So Amazon silently went into everyone's ebook account and deleted the files.

More fodder for the ash heap of history.... ebooks down the memory hole.... the irony is not lost.

"In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building."

mensa, dixieland jazz, and easy cheese

For an optimal sensurround experience, play the following over and over again at maximum volume while reading the material below.
www.youtube.com/watch

Last weekend we went to San Diego. Well, technically speaking, we didn't quite make it all the way down to San Diego - we stopped short in Carlsbad. Carlsbad is a peculiar name. It's the German-bastardized-pronunciation of the name of a city in the Czech Republic named Karlovy Vary (similar to the incomprehensible pronunciation of Ellas as "Greece"), which is located on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá - two rivers I have never heard of before - approximately 80 miles west of Prague. The foresty-mountainy area is riddled with natural hot springs and grandly overdecorated hyperblocky 19th century spa hotels that look like they belong in Casino Royale (which they do - it was filmed there). Let's visit it someday.

We kinda-sorta missed our flight to LAX. This is the second time in my life I have missed a flight. Missing a flight feels like something serious - like not showing up for your appointment with the IRS auditor. The airlines are responsible creating this aura of gravitas - if you miss your bus, nobody cares. Both of my flight-misses occurred within the past five years. Of course, I'm traveling more now so the odds are higher. And while I could ignore one miss, two misses could be an indication that mental shit-togetherness is slipping. Fortunately, technically speaking, we didn't actually miss the flight - we missed the Baggage Cutoff. By the new rule of Baggage Cutoff, you can be blocked from getting on your flight even though you are at the airport 40 minutes before they start to let people onto the plane. This is a painful insult-to-injury scenario, since the day before your flight, as you were using the modern miracle of the internet to check in and avoid all those long, tedious lines, you learned that checking a bag will cost an extra $15, but only if you buy the rights to check it Right Farking Now; if you wait until you are at the airport, it will cost $20. Let me spell this out: I paid $15 extra so that United could block me from boarding my plane. By the way, would you like an extra three inches of room for your knees for just $25 more? How about the right to board the plane with the premium elite group for only $46 more? All of the time I am learning more and more ways the internet is improving my snappy, modern lifestyle.

When you miss a Baggage Cutoff on United, they do not give you a replacement seat on a later flight. Instead, you become an Airport Zombie Extra, also known as a 'standby passenger'. Airport Zombie Extras never actually get on planes - they are just force-marched from gate to gate all weekend long, where they take up space and moan and get in the real passengers' way, and watch helplessly as their name trickles further and further down the Standby Lists displayed on the snappy, modern flat-screen displays, from slot 8 to slot 12 to slot Not Now, Not Ever In Your Zombified Life, while wondering if the checked bag is on its way to United's transportation hub in Wildhowl, Rangaloon.

In order to leave the netherterminal of the Airport Zombie Extra and become a Real Passenger, you have to get 'firm' with the gate attendant. This is a more delicate process than you might think, because it's a fine line between 'firm' and 'shrill', or even 'firm' and a regrettable misdiagnosis of 'schizophrenic'. If you overdo it, security personnel who have successfully completed a four hour certification course in Tazer 'safety' will be called to 'assist' you, and you will end up in indefinite airport detention, wearing a straightjacket and shoved in an economy class Airbus lavatory where you will not be allowed to shave your legs and you will breathe jet fuel fumes for a few years, and while there, you will miss the beverage and snack cart every time it passes, so No Peanuts for You, Security Threat Level Orange Crazy Lady. I must have done an ok job of getting firm with Supervisor Edward Tse and Ms. Hidemyfirstnamewithmyfingers Chan at standby attempt #4, because just as I started taking down their names and requesting badge numbers, we magically skyrocketed from standby positions 23 and 24 straight into a first class and window seat, and were up and away into the friendly skies before we could say Fuck You really, really politely. Doctor Turvy says when you fly United you're not a customer, you're a mark. I couldn't have said it any better.

Next, we drove south from LAX, through the circling-the-drain area of the LA basin, which is full of oil refineries and boutique airports like John Wayne Snacksize and Orange County Hyperpseudonational. When eating dinner on the road, I'm happy with the Moons Over My Hammy plate minus the ham from Denny's, but Vajra hates Denny's, so we stopped at a Cheesecake Factory, which is really inaptly named, as there are no nubile and/or scantily dressed women anywhere - just squeaky clean robots wearing polo shirts and khaki pants and impressive telecommunications head gear. I would have named the restaurant the Super-Managed Up-With-People Dining Experience, with a second tag line "all the upsell and twice the calories". The interior is an admixture of Damanhur and Pompeii as interpreted by Disney. I could talk about the Republican ooze, or the endless procession of tight-skinned and lacquered-haired customers in identical four inch tall espadrilles, or the flavor-enhanced portions concocted by chemists in New Jersey served on plates the size of boogie boards, or the intrusive muzak, or the gloppy, manufactured weird-science 'food' products that were obviously dispensed from handy, single-serving reheat-pouches - I'll bet you $20 there isn't a real stove in the kitchen - but it would take too long. Just don't go there.

Vajra and I have different ideas of what constitutes a hotel. My view, is, technically speaking, if it costs more than $150 a night but there's no room service, I don't know what it *is*, but it definitely isn't a hotel. Vajra, on the other hand, was *almost* satisfied with our $59 room at the Red Roof in in Virginia - which instead of room service and a mint on the fluffy down pillow, came with blood and semen-stained polyester bedding (not kidding) and when I went to the laundry room to ask for a clean bedspread, I was informed that there were none, because the bedspreads did not fit in the onsite washing machines (just as Mother had always warned us). In any event, the hotel in Carlsbad, CA was nowhere near as bad as the Red Roof in Virginia, but nowhere near as nice as the Russian Mafia-run hotels in Karlovy Vary. But other than being within a quarter mile of a big, scary gas power plant with a 300 foot tall smokestack, and the name of the facility, which was Inns of America Suites, which rolls off the tongue like a car that has lost a wheel and is scraping along on the axle, it was ok. I guess.

In the morning we drove north. First we stopped at a playground that was literally right under the natural gas power plant so we could take some pictures to prove it existed, then we went to the beach. Playing in clear-ish sea water that does not require environmental protection gear is as close to heaven as I am likely to ever get. There were four and five foot waves to dive under and bodysurf on; the sun was glittering on the turquoise water, I could see my feet and therefore visually scan and confirm that they were not being eaten by sharks every five to ten seconds, and the tide kept coming up so high that the beach would disappear entirely and the nearby bikini-and-baseball-cap people kept shrieking and running up into the rocks and leaving. See? Heaven.

Following the beachness and my photo shoot as the spokesmodel for Easy Cheese, we had lunch at a Cuban restaurant in Oceanside. The concept of Cuban cuisine was better than the execution, and Evita was singing emotively at maximum volume throughout the meal (she kept her promise, but I could not maintain adequate distance), but the waiter was very nice, even if he did lead us astray by suggesting the methane-producing crushed-plantain-and-meat spheres. Because it was Oceanside on a Saturday, all the shiny-headed military recruits were out cruising in their uberly groovy hot rods and vintage autos that they would be paying for over the next five years. Sparkle plenty! Vroom!

After lunch we went to a thrift store in Encinitas that had a magnificent supersize poster of Spock that was done in the style of Chuck Close, which I really really wanted, but I knew that United would require me to purchase it its own seat in order to get it home, and a 1950s era hat that was made of mesh stitched into curlicues so that it looked like oversized black and green brain matter from Mars Attacks (I really should have bought it - it looked fantastic). We also browsed a flea market with grotesquely lumpy papier mache and scissor-clipped palm-frond deep-sea fish with needle-teeth, and bizarre lights and lures hanging off their fishy earlobes, and polka dots all over. And after that we went to dinner with Vajra's family, at a Chinese restaurant that had recently moved from one abandoned strip mall to another with all the same anchor businesses selling the same petrochemical based products, where we ate potstickers filled with unidentifiable and disturbingly-flavored meat, and drank Jasmine tea that was the consistency of motor oil that had been left in an engine for 14,542 miles, 14 years, or both.

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Cafe 101, where you can order things like Chicken Fried Bacon and Gravy (fat, double-coated in fat, fried in more fat, served with a side order of fat) and "Roadkill Scramble: possum or squirrel, when available, with grits or toast". They didn't fool me with that "when available" disclaimer though: everyone knows possums are born dead by the side of the road, and are therefore always available.

On Sunday afternoon I went to a party that mixed Mensa people over the age of 65 up with live Dixieland Jazz. There are some number of years I would trade off the end of my life to never hear dueling trumpets play Candy Lips and Washboard Wiggle ever again. As for being asked whether I am "a Mensan" every thirty minutes, I hereby officially solicit your suggestions for how to best respond to that question.

An elderly but fairly perky band in garish Hawaiian print shirts took the 'stage', which was really a small section of concrete patio under a poorly pruned elm tree with a dangerous looking tree fort angling wildly overhead. One of the younger adult party-goers heckled the band about their shirts, yelling, "The Honolulu morgue called - they want their shirts back." Even I was offended.

After politely listening to the first song, which I believe was called When The Cochlear Nerve Damage Goes Marching and Marching and Marching and Marching and Marching In, I retreated to the farthest corner of the lanai and played with my camera and thought deep thoughts about mortality and acute hearing loss.

Near the end of the band's classically-Dixieland wobbly, cacophonous set, there was a small but enthusiastic parade. It was impossible not to draw parallels between this Senior Citizens of Mensa Parade and the Grand Oceania Parade up at Turtle Creek. Parades, also called Marchpasts, Processions, and Trooping the Colors, are an interesting human behavior. I love how effortlessly paraders create their own little temporary world, with their own customs, attire, and even their own temporary royals, and how the audience enthusiastically adopts it own role, watching and crowning and applauding the self-anointed. I'm mystified by my own desire to dress up and parade about, since I don't think of myself as any kind of exhibitionist - the best I can do is to chalk it up to repressed silliness. I wonder if paraders would look lemming-like to an alien observer. I wonder if parading is a redirected predatory urge to chase things. And I wonder how close to Heaven's Gate and the Order of the Solar Temple our marching takes us. Fun, though.

In any event, when not overcome by the auditory assault, I had a pretty good time watching the elderly folks on their day out - dancing, parading, sitting for hours under their festive straw hats, drinking and eating and talking, some unable to stand up on their own, others dancing sprightly with sexy hip undulations that invoked Mick Jagger and / or Showgirls. The odd lumpy bulges of varicose and spidery veins on their faces, hands, and legs frightened and upset me; the gentle sweetness of their smiles, and their self-awareness of themselves as both survivors and short-timers, well, if you think too much about those things, it'll break your heart. By the way, the image above is of Wayne, husband of Dorothy for 58 years. Dorothy is a friend of Vajra's mother's - they met during their freshman year at high school. I liked Wayne - even that shirt, which you should inspect closely.

After that, we drove back to LAX, stopping briefly to gawk at the blue metal pyramid building on the CSU Long Beach campus, and made it to the airport two hours before the all-important Baggage Cutoff. This should make me happy, but all it does is make me resent United even more. Anger is so energizing!

All in all, a good trip. By the way, did I ever tell you that I like to travel?

if you never see me again....

...now you know why.

www.quantumjumping.com

Universe hopping utopian beings. Yeah!

as pragmatic as a toothache

Who has the awesomest dentist in the SF bay area? I have a bad toothache, and expect the treatment is going to be a nightmare. Shmanks.