For The Record

Bear with me, I gotta get this off my chest. I'll try to keep it short.
   I've seen lately a strong streak of 'not my fault' breaking out among people who count themselves as our political leaders, or who desperately want to be seen that way, at any rate. They'll espouse a position or advocate a course of action using inflammatory rhetoric and dangerous imagery, and then try to completely disavow any responsibility for what happens when someone heeds that message a little too well. I'm seeing this from both the left and the right. Well, mostly the right.
   Let me make this clear: even if you have no direct legal responsibility for what someone does when they take your message too far, you absolutely, positively, without a doubt have moral responsibility. And if you count yourself a God-fearing person - as many on the right claim - the idea of moral culpability should terrify you far more than any temporal legal entanglements.
   Words are weapons, and once you hear something you can't un-hear it. You can put down the knife or the gun, you can dismantle the atom bomb, but words stay. And poisonous words keep spreading their sickness. Quietly. When vulnerable people are at their lowest they'll latch onto something they heard, something vitriolic and hostile, and cling to the hate like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. Hateful words can lead to deadly consequences, and the person who delivered the message stands accountable for what happens afterward.
   Still have your doubts? Think of it this way: would you hold your child responsible if the neighbor kids beat up someone because she said that person was a terrorist, even if she didn't actually participate in the beating? Of course you would, your girl would be as liable for the bruises and scrapes as the kids who threw the punches. And if you denied your child was responsible, the parents of the other kids and the one who got beat up would definitely have a different opinion.
   When someone in a position of power, authority or influence advocates a violent course of action - even when the message is symbolic or thinly veiled - they bear moral responsibility for any violence that follows when people heed that message. End of story.

Odd Coincidence Or Sinister Gathering?

I drove down to the OC last night to see my older niece's soccer game. Her school - Mills College - had come down to play Soka University, and since I'm in the neighborhood I wanted to show my support.
   Game results: Mills lost 0-3, but not for lack of trying. Some good players, lots of good ball-handling but a few bad breaks. And I got to spend some quality time with my niece, one of the few players who had family close enough to show up. It was a good time and I'm glad I went.
   HOWEVER... you ever have one of those times where you see something and then you see a lot of that same something over and over again? Like maybe you see an ad for mousetraps (which aren't really advertised all that much) and then over the next few days you see lots of mousetraps in places you wouldn't usually see them?
   Yesterday it was men with casts on their arms. I saw the first one when I was walking from the parking lot to the game, a guy who was probably a student at the school with his arm in a sling. Too bad for him, I thought.
   Then as I was sitting in the metal bleachers I saw another man, a player's parent, with his arm in a cast and two fingers immobilized. An odd coincidence, I thought, and kind of amusing.
   Then during the second half I saw another man, probably another player's parent, with TWO casts, one on each arm. Now I was getting suspicious, and I started looking around for the hidden cameras, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to punk me (does he still do that, or is that reference old and tired now?).
   After the game there were snacks - it was one of the girl's birthday - and I took my leave of my niece and her soccer team. I pulled into a Chevron there in Aliso Viejo, still mildly amused/ concerned about the excessive cast-wearing I'd seen. I filled the truck with gasoline and as I was ready to leave I saw little red sports car pulled over by two AV police officers. I watched from my truck as the officers approached the driver, and then I noticed cast on the driver's arm.
   I escaped the Chevron as fast as I dared and sped back to Pasadena. I didn't know what the hell was going on the OC with men and casts on their arms, and I didn't want to join them.
   Seriously freaky.

World War II Was Just Yesterday

An old lady gave me a gift today.
   I was flying back from San Antonio and we were seated next to each other. We said hello when I sat down, and then I got to work revising one of my books. About an hour or so into the almost-three-hour flight she started making conversation, asking me how I could read the small type I use to conserve paper when I print things out to edit. We got to talking and I could tell she was originally from somewhere else, so I asked. Belgium, though she'd been in Texas for sixty-five years, far longer than she'd ever lived where she was born. She's 88 now.
   We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from the Cowboys (she's despairing) to maximum tax rates to how she doesn't remember words in Flemish to Hawaii (her destination) to how her departed husband was vertically integrated into the West Texas cotton business. I even found out that she lived in Sherman, TX for a while, which is where I went to school (go Roos!).
   As the plane was making its approach into Burbank, somehow the conversation turned to her brother. Her voice got very quiet as she said 'the Germans got him. For two years we didn't know where he was, then we found out he was in an Unknown grave in Holland.'
   She was right back there, aged fifteen when the Nazis invaded Belgium and they took her brother to work as slave labor since all the German boys were fighting. She told me how the Gestapo came to their house and told her brother he'd better be on the train Monday, or they would come back for the rest of the family. So he went. And he died.
   Her tears were fresh and real and I could see the fear and outrage and terror in this 88-year-old woman's eyes as if she were seeing the Nazi men in black in front of her at that very moment. It was a humbling experience, and suddenly I understood why she would have left Belgium 65 years ago and never looked back.
   We had discussed my writing - it's how the conversation started - and as she dabbed at her tears she told me 'you should write about that. It's something you never forget.'
   I gave her one of my old cards, back from when I worked at Countrywide, with my cell number and a brief reminder of where we'd met. I want to get her story, even though I know it will cause her pain. And I think she wants to tell it, even though it will cause her pain. These things need to be recorded and people need to remember how inhumane human beings can get.

Shorts 'N Boots

I know it's been hot here in SoCal lately, and I want to be understanding. Really, I do. The AC in my apartment works only halfway at best, and the AC in my truck doesn't hardly work at all. I can sympathize with someone who's just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
   But seriously... shorts with boots? In Pasadena? In 2010?
   This is never, ever, EVER a good fashion choice, not even back in 1978 when the world was young and people didn't know any better and certainly not now. And keep in mind this proclamation is coming from a guy who proudly owns five Hawaiian shirts, one for each day of the work week.
   If you're a female and you strut down the street in boots and shorts the best you can hope for is that you look like an awkward fashion disaster. Like someone who dressed in the darkness of an early morning. Pity from strangers is better than the other option, which is that you just look like a hooker. And not a high-class hooker, more like a truck-stop hooker with a meth habit to feed.
   If you're a guy wearing shorts and boots you'd better be covered in paint or sawdust, otherwise you look like a moron. And if you're a fat dude, don't wear a wife-beater because that just exposes your man-boobs. And, for God's sake, don't wear a cowboy hat to complete the ensemble, you're just begging to get beat up. Yes, man at the corner of Lake and Del Mar at 5:15 PM today, I'm talking directly to you here.
   If only doofuses who wore boots with shorts read this blog, the world would be safe from their monkeyshines.

Tales From My Past - Hulk Smash

Back in the heady days of 2007, when the nation was just beginning to understand that the prosperity of the previous five years was a lie based on a false assumption driven by misguided optimism, at Countrywide the people in charge realized there was no hiding how bad the situation was from the rank and file.
   So, like any corporation trying to seem like it was doing something, we had a meeting.
   It was an all-hands HR meeting, and I got there late. The room had filled up from the back, and the only seat left - literally - was up front right next to our Chief Leadership Officer. The guy was a tool, a complete jackass from the word go, and I had to take the bullet nobody else would. I said 'hi' as I sat down, though of course he didn't respond. I don't want to put down the dipshit's real name, but it sounded like Bichael Binston.
   The meeting started and it was the head of HR demonstrating her lack of compassion at the same time she was betraying her ignorance of finance and the mortgage business the company was founded on. A whole lot of nothing. She asked if there were any questions and Mr. Winston - oh, sorry, Binston - actually raised his hand even though he and the head of HR were practically touching knees.
   "What does the next fiscal quarter portend?"
   Say what? Did he actually use the word 'portend' in a sentence? I wasn't certain I had heard properly, but my natural hatred for this poser kicked in right then. I felt my hand clenching into a fist.
   The head of HR gave her non-answer, and then Michael - sorry, Bichael - nodded sagely, as if he understood the nonsense she was spewing.
   "That augurs well."
   Ooooooh... I actually felt my blood boil. Augur and portend? Within a minute of each other? And sitting right next to me? You have got to be out of your mind...
   I had to stop myself from hitting him. It was one of those moments where someone you hate just pushes your buttons so thoroughly that there's no other response but the physical. I had to sit on my hands.
   Later, when the monkey-spank was well and done, some of my colleagues asked me how I managed to sit next to that walking turd without hulking out. I almost didn't.

COMMUTE - there - 75 minutes - seriously, it was insane today      back - 55 minutes, like I said, insane in the membrane
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 53 days

Two Things To Fix

The elevator has been out in my building for going on three months now, and while I appreciate the owner showing concern for my cardiac health by forcing me to use the stairs every day, it is getting kind of old. I know it costs a lot to fix an elevator, but there are unavoidable expenses when you're a landlord, and this is one of them.
   And then there are expenses incurred that are completely avoidable, if, as a landlord, you'd just fixed the first problem.
   To wit: another tenant moved out this weekend, a third-floor tenant. Seeing as how there was no elevator in service, the tenants had to muscle their belongings down three flights of stairs. This meant rolling a dolly loaded with a couple hundred pounds of stuff down the stairs - thump, thump, thump - over and over again. This, of course, chewed up the stairs. Not that it's any fault of the tenants', they were just moving out. Probably because the elevator doesn't work.
   So now, by having put off fixing the first thing, now the building owner has two things to fix.
   Isn't this a lesson most of us learned when we were in middle school? If you let a problem go too long, it generates new problems. Why does it seem the people who should know this the most practice it the least?
   Let's see how long she takes to fix the stairs now.

"Doesn't Hitler Look Handsome?"

So I went to Burbank for lunch today, Lord knows I have the time, and I was walking around their downtown - which really should be "Downtown" since it's more of a shopping district than a business district. Anyhoo... I came across a used bookstore that's an Aristotelian model of what a used bookstore should be. Small from side-to-side, it extends back for what seems like 100 yards, with books everywhere. Literally. The bookshelves are stacked two deep with paperbacks, not arranged vertically like they would be in a library rather piled one on top of the other, on seven-foot-tall racks. The shelves are full, of course, and so books are piled on top of the racks, and then stacked at your feet. So the tiny walkways between stacks are made tinier because you only have half the room to walk that you expect. Even the checkout counter is disguised under a thick layer of books, making it seem like just another shelf. Unlike most used bookstores I've been in, this one didn't smell like a musty attic. It's called, deceptively enough, Movie World, and because it's in Burbank the store carries movie scripts for the discerning actor, as well as books on writing and acting. It's worth a visit if you're in the area.
   It's a bibliophile's paradise, and probably a good place to spend a rainy afternoon, if we had rainy afternoons in LA. For example, I counted ten different copies of the exact same edition of Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451.'
   I bought: a $3 copy of 'Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone.' I've never read any Harry Potter books. Really. I figured I could risk $3 to see if they suck or not.
   Overheard in the stacks: 'Oh, doesn't Hitler look handsome?' From someone in the European History section. Don't know if they were being sarcastic or sincere.