A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
Last Chance

Ezra woke up this morning with the following mantra playing in his head.

It's the last chance to speak your mind in 2004. The last chance to get it off your chest. The last chance to rant and rave this year. The last chance to get it all out in the open. The last chance you'll have in 2004 to show those assholes that you don't like how they're running the show. The last chance to let them know you don't even like the frigging show to begin with. It's a lemon. It's a loser. It doesn't work, hasn't worked in 400 years. Maybe longer. Maybe it never worked. Only on paper. On scraps of paper that got bound into books, that filled entire libraries, then reels of microfilm, then forests of hard drives. The collected drivel of the ages. Dead white men speaking to you from beyond the grave. Scrap it all. Put it out on the curb along with five weeks of funnies and all those mutilated copies of National Geographic. Get rid of Plato, Socrates, St. Augustine, Filo (Ezra threw him in to see if you were awake. He's really a baker in Jersey City), Seneca, Cicero, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine. And the list goes on. And on.

Hey, we're not talking about book burning. Burning would turn them all into martyrs, heroes of free speech, champions of the republic of ideas. Keep the books. Dump the frigging ideas. Start over. Stop going to school. Stop digging in the graveyard of the past for inspiration. Or, at least, stop looking for inspiration in sources wrapped in the Great Books of Western Wisdom Seal of Approval. Sure, you say. These guys - yeah, always white guys, have produced thoughts that have survived the test of time. Bullshit. They've survived because somebody was in the business of producing content for millions of dodo factories called schools. These dead white guys are the Brand Names. They were branded and, over the course of hundreds and hundreds of years, won a top shelf position in the supermarket of ideas. Think of Plato as the Nabisco, Aristotle as the General Motors of the knowledge industry. Hegel as Smuckers.

Consider this. Over 120,000 people died in the disaster that only a few days ago swept the Indian Ocean basin. Over a third of these victims were children who never had the advantage of going to school. Innocent children. That's a disaster of biblical proportions. That's approximate to depopulating Tompkins County, New York. Think about that. Walking from one end of Tompkins to the other without encountering a living soul. Now, an hour or so before the quake, indications started to come in to scientists around the world who were drinking coffee from cute Nietzsche or Aristotle mugs in their air conditioned labs. Maybe they were walking around, sporting teeshirts with that daffy grandaddy of science, Albert Einstein. You know the guy who tipped off Rooselvelt to the A bomb. So when the shock hit, What did they do? They started parousing the data, crunching the numbers. They picked up their cell phones and starting calling their buddies in the scinetific community. Or they opened their lap tops and started sending emails to the same buddies or else they opened logs and recorded the information for use in future research. Then the seismograph went off the hook. 9.0 on the so called Richter Scale. Richter was probably one of the grand old men of geology. It's not important to remember who he is because he got his name pasted to posterity. Now all these university trained scientists knew that tsunamis follow oceanic earthquakes. Yeah, we've all seen the computer simulations on tv. We all know what a tsunami is. The bozos sitting around at their seismic station in Hawaii knew what a tsunami was. What did they do? What did they do to warn folks who lived in coastal areas around the Indian Ocean? Folks in Sri Lanka, India, Thailand? Folks who had time to evacuate their villages, the resorts, the coastal cities?

Nothing. No one was warned. No one who had a chance to survive survived. The scientists sipped coffee, checked out their machines, crunched the numbers and did nothing.

In the bible, that savage, seemingly heartless, aloof, curmudgeonly dude named Jehovah or Yahweh would occasionally destroy a city, send a pillar of fire, or a flood or whatever as a warning. He would slay the wicked, sometimes even the innocent but unfortunately guilty by association, to make his point.

Well, maybe this our last chance to get the point. Civilization as it's been run so far by white men with college degrees hasn't advanced us to the point where we can even call ourselves mensch.






Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:35 AM

 

Peace boutique

Really now. Where else on the frigging globe would you expect to find a peace boutique outside of Ithaca, New York?

Yessireehbob. Above the Autumn Leaves Bookstore on the lovely Ithaca Commons. The second floor of Ithaca's liberal Bloomingdale's. The Peace and Justice Gift Shop. That's right. Ezra's not making this up. He doesn't have to suck down absinthe cocktails with a straw to conjure this shit up. He doesn't have to smoke Mother Nature. Nosirreebob. In Ithaca, you don't even have to cross the street to encounter the remotest fringes of the liberal imagination.

If you missed an opportunity to shop at the Peace and Justice Gift Shop, here's another chance. You guessed it. They're having an after Christmas sale. Don't worry. All the proceeds still go to support the Living Wage Coalition. Not the shop's workers/employees. The Living Wage Coalition doesn't employ anyone. They don't have to pay a living wage. They don't have to pay anything. The Living Wage Coalition is operated entirely by volunteers. It's a non-workers workers advocacy group. That's right. One of those thousand points of light that George Bush Sr. talked about. They're doing something for the poor workers of the world even though the members don't have a frigging idea what it means to work for wages. Well, neither did Karl Marx, for that matter.

Anyway, back to the big blowout sale.

Here's a list of best buys Ezra's worked up to help you make your shopping experience more meaningful.

Catonsville Nine Coasters - $8.99. Marked down from $19.99 Yep, pictures of Dan and Phil and all the gang right there, depicted as they do their thing, pouring blood on all those draft records. So you never leave a beverage ring on your coffee table.

Hiroshima Door Mats - $7.95. Regularly $24.95. Save big on this handsome door mat with the striking image of a mushroom cloud.

Scottsboro Boys' Shower Curtains - only $12.95 while supplies last. It's nice to know that the boys didn't hang for a crime they never committed. But you can hang these lovely curtains in your bathroom and wow your friends and guests with the sheer breadth of your liberal sympathies.

And more!

Sacco and Vanzetti Coffee Mugs - $9.95 per set of 2.

Haymarket Martyrs Tea Cozies - $7.95 each. Matched Set $27.95

Rosenbergs Chair Cushions - $19.95 each.

Yep. Who says you can't find merchandise with social relevance these days?
Capitalism with a small "c" for caring.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:46 AM

 
Ezra's Last Minute Holiday Gift Ideas!

Santa's little elves up at the new Cornell Nano Center have been working overtime to come up with some dandy new stocking stuffers for the holidays.
If you order within the next minutes, you will be guaranteed delivery for Christmas. Don't delay!

Best Bet! SUV Mall Locator

- Attach this handy new navigational device to your SUV's Norstar system and never miss a chance to shop again! The SML tracking device locates the nearest mall, strip plaza or big box store anywhere in the United States, Canada or Guam. Simply activate the tracker and wait as our remote satellite wobbling around somewhere over New Jersey feeds you instant images and directions to retail establishments in your geographical area.
List Price $750.00/ You Pay $19.95

Visit all 2,756 Walmarts over the course of a year and win a free expense paid vacation to Arkansas!

Combo Cell Phone/Vibrator

-Spice up your conversations with our new CPV! Gives new meaning to 'phone sex! ' Our pocket size CPV is a handy way to stay in touch! Your CPV can go anywhere and doesn't rely on batteries. List Price $250/You Pay $9.95

Electric Tooth Brush/ Game Boy

-Have trouble getting Johnny to brush his teeth? As a parent, you know the importance of making everything fun for kids. Now you can promote good oral hygiene the Nano Way! Just slip a game cartridge into your new ETBGB and watch Johnny spend hours in the bathroom, brushing and zapping! Save thousands on dentist bills. List Price $475/You Pay $15.99

Virtual Reality Vacation Goggles

-Too busy with career and making money to pay for your kids' college education? Haven't taken a vacation for years? With the new VRVG, you can go anywhere in the world (restrictions may apply for Iraq, Syria, Palestine and South Yemen) and never leave the comfort of your living room! Take that vacation you've always wanted without the hassle of making reservations, waiting in airport lines, exhanging currency. Never have to worry about drinking the local water or being attacked by terrorists. Simply slip on the VRVG's and presto! you're on the beach in seconds, soaking up the virtual rays and watching the virtual tide roll in! List Price $3,750/You pay $199.50

Order any of these wonderful holiday gifts within minutes by going to the link for Ithacasucks.com. Have your credit card ready!

Nanotechnology brings small things to life.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:10 AM

 
Buy now!

Back issues of Ithaca Sucks = $15.00 a copy

New IthacaSucks lawn signs - Bush Can Stay! Cornell Must Go!
Bush Must Go! Leave the Tax Cuts!

Websurvey

Do you want to see new issues of Ithaca Sucks? Yes /No
Should Ezra Kidder stop targeting the progressive people of Ithaca? Yes/No


Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 11:23 AM

 

ecovillage of the dead

You can't turn around without hearing that someone cranked out another sequel to a blockbuster movie of yesteryear. Friday the 13th went into how many overtimes with the dude in the hockey mask killing successive generation after generation of dewey young teenagers, all parked in the same lover's lane or otherwise sneaking love in all the wrong places. You'd think that after a while there wouldn't be any teenagers left in town to get hacked into little pieces.

Ez doesn't want to trade movie chit chat. He has something better in mind. He wants to resurrect the movie industry in Ithaca. This is not as off the wall as it seems if you consider that Ithaca used to be the movie capital of the Finger Lakes. Mary Pickford and other greats shot films in and around Cayugawood back in the days before talkies and before the need for sequels.

Actually Ez started thinking about how he could accomplish this when he heard that a studio was releasing Dawn of the Dead, yet another sequel to the gore classic Night of the Living Dead. George Romero, the original director, died so you might even see him in this flick. According to the publicity blurbs, Dawn brings the familiar cast of loveable zombies into the present day by introducing them to the joys of shopping at the mall.

Now that may be fine and well for some zombies. But not all zombies are braindead, jingle-whistling shopaholics. There are progressive zombies, Green zombies, zombies with a social conscience. Zombies who want to make a difference for the environment.

So Ez came up with the idea for yet another Dead sequence. Ecovillage of the Dead. Bring the suckers to Ithaca where they can plant organic vegetables, get their limbs caught in the blades of solar power windmills, drive rusted out Volvos, shop at the Farmer's market, play hackeysack on the Commons, listen to blue grass and sip wine coolers on the great lawn at Taughanock Park.

That's what's wrong with America. Some folks are sitting around a restaurant in Hollywood, throwing around ideas about a movie sequel. Hey, let's do a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Great idea! What do you want the zombies to do? Oh, I don't know. Why don't we put them on a Carnival Cruise Line? No, that's been done. Hey, how about sending them to Congress? No, too political. Let's do a shopping mall. Great idea!

Wrong. They're targeting some imaginary blob of humanity in the middle, feeding a monolthic mass zeitgeist and missing all the fun on the fringes. People want alternatives. Zombies want alternatives. Ithaca is all about alternatives. Besides it's got gorges. You can throw in these great shots of zombies falling off gorges. In addition, zombies can pump up the dwindling numbers at anti-war demonstrations. They can even vote for Ralph Nader and help to defeat George Bush. Hey, the dead used to be able to vote. That was called the graveyard vote. Really, all the dead want to do is to be useful again. Let's put them work, filling the potholes, planting the veggies, making the bagels, pouring the Gimme. We don't even have to pay them a living wage.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:46 PM

 
nonprofit babylon

Ever notice that ithaca is the non-profit capital of the universe? There are nonprofit movie theaters, nonprofit shrunken head and baskets marts, nonprofit banks, nonprofit hairstylists, nonprofit delis, nonprofit car washes. Nonprofit you name it. There are more nonprofits in Ithaca than Martha Stewart has teaspoons.

Recently, the folks that run the movie theater on the Commons, the local showcase for toney European art flicks, sensitive, heartwrenching, slightly grainy avante-garde psychodramas, etc complain that plans to introduce a first-run cinemax downtown will threaten their existence as a nonprofit. It's not a question of competition, they say. "We're a nonprofit. This is a community service. We make these films in our basement. The director is actually a volunteer from Cannes."

Sounds more like cultural red-lining. None of that Disney shit in our neighborhood.

Did you know that Ten Thousand Villages employs 52 itinerant Ecuadorian basketweavers to keep their shelves filled with high end baskets and handmade toilet seat covers just for the love of free trade? Like those 52 basketweavers all have health insurance plans and 401K's, send their kids to alternative schools and drive Volvos?

Ez has always had a problem with the concept of volunteers moving merchandise in a retail business. Yeah, go past the 10,000 Villages store and you see a sign asking for volunteers. It's sort like the Catholic Church recruiting stockbrokers to say Mass and administer the sacraments. They pick your pocket right after they give you the Last Rites.

Only in ithaca.

The local nonprofit pizza parlor claims to be donating 70% of sales to the San Giacometti Water Conservtion Project. Short for Marco's new heated outdoor swimming pool.

Ben and Jerry's spent years, giving back to the communities in which they did business. Mostly directed towards job training programs. Now dozens of lower income Ithaca youths know the secret of balancing two scoops of Rocky Road ice cream on top of a slender little sugar cone.

Basically the only thing in Ithaca that's for profit anymore is this blogspot.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:59 AM

 
the protest industry


Last Sunday night thousands gathered in Kennedy Hall on the Cornell campus to celebrate the Grady Awards. For those political shut-ins, Papist die-hards, right-wing dodos who don't know very much about the local protest scene, the Grady Awards happen to be Ithaca's equivilant of the Oscars, the Emmys and the People's Choice Awards all squeezed together in one glittering gala night of song, liberal chest-thumping and self-promotion.

Of course, the Grady Awards wouldn't be the Grady Awards without the Grady's. All 575 of them, to be exact, Ithaca's be-freckled, redhaired socially relevant hordes, filling the front rows, the back rows, the balconies, the restrooms, the parking lot. There were more freckles in Kennedy Hall that night than in all of Kilkenny. A couple of graduate students in the back rows were furiously scribbling equations on their programs, trying to calculate mathematically the number of freckles in attendance. Enough freckles to fill the Super Bowl. At some point you felt that you were really at a measles convention.

The truth is that your very own roving curmudgeon couldn't make it that night. Sunday night is autopsy night on tv. Ez wouldn't give up autopsy night even for a chance to marry Britney Spears. Anyway, all that liberal chest thumping gives him a bad case of shingles. So the information he's passing along is second hand.

On to the Awards. Clare Grady won for best performance in an anti-war demonstration, for her blood-hurdling, flag-defacing role at the Triphammer Recruiting Station. Oona O'Neill Grady won for best juvenile protestor at the same event. Dan Burns, the filmmaker who recently toured the Iraq war zone, won for best protest in a bell tower. Dan is not technically a member of the extended Grady clan, never having dated a Grady daughter and having few feckles, but his heart is in the right place. He showed a lot of film clips of himself ringing the bells atop Immaculate Conception, hugging Iraqi kids, marching in every demonstration going back to the Catonsville Nine when Dan was only a fetus. Some viewers thought that Dan was stumping for a Life Time Achievement Award.

The program notes for the evening were rather interesting in their own right. Besides the usual self-promoting, peace sign flashing advertisers like Autumn Leaves, you had to wonder why a Volvo repair shop and a massage studio would be advertising in the liner notes for a protest concert. Not to worry. The Grady's run businesses on the side.

Fact of the matter, the Ithaca protest industry doesn't pay all that well. This ain't Hollywood. Nicole Kidman doesn't have to give massages, Bruce Willis doesn't have to fix Hondas, but, then again, they don't have to get arrested and go to jail to get noticed.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:55 AM

 
the passion of the Ez

Last night Ezra had a visit from the ghost of Victor Mature.

For those who don't know, Victor was the Grade B actor with the mature lips who played the Roman centurion in the 1950's blockbuster film, The Robe. Victor's real name was probably Vittorini Machiastti but his agent didin't think that was marquee enough. One look at Vittorini's Charles Atlas build with those fleshy arms and hairy chest, those amazing, babe-bruising labia, his polysaturated locks, well, it was a wrap for Victor Mature.

Victor was wearing a toga. He was a little gray around the temples and that sybaritic 50's B epic face of his had matured to the ripeness a week old grape. Still, Victor was possessed of that certain rococo charm that had propelled him into movie idol status, the heart throb of suburban housewives back in the days before McDonald's when they still packed spam sandwiches and a pickle in their husband's lunch boxes.

Victor wasn't a happy camper. He had snuck into a showing of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. If you're a ghost you don't have to pay full admission. You don't even have to show your license to get a Senior discount. You just show up and take what ever empty seat you want. Victor had sat through the entire movie and he wasn't pleased.

If you recall, Victor played the manly centurion whose path intersected with that of Jesus Christ's. He ended up holding Christ's robe at the crucifixion, an experience that changed his life and allowed him to bond romantically and spiritually with Jean Simmons who played an early Christian babe.

On this particular Saturday night in February, Victor's Italian temper was boiling over like Vesuvius. Back in the 50's, the director hadn't shown all the blood and gore that Mel Gibson chose to portray. The whole crucifixion scene was done very tastefully. In fact, you never once saw Christ. All you saw was the light suffusing Victor's face as he stood there in that forlorn black & white landsape, holding the robe. You knew that it was only a studio spotlight shining on him but you still got the message. Victor was pissed that Gibson had turned the whole thing into a Friday the 13th gorefest. All you needed was to have Judas show up in a hockey mask.

So after Ez got Mr. Mature calmed down with a little cappuchino and few stale biscotti, Ezra decided he needed to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Gibson's film.

Some critics claim that the Passion offends Jews. Others claim that Gibson tampered with the already tenuous historicity of Christ's last days. So, Ezra, without even having seen the movie, has decided to turn the whole controversy on its head. He decided to write his own movie script, the Passion of the Ez, depicting Ezra's psychological and physical abuse at the hands of cruel, vicious nuns from 1st to 5th grades , his narrow escape from moral degradation in the clutches of pediophile priests, his academic crucifixion under the insidious tutelage of Fr. Rushmore, his theology prof in college, a gnomic Irish Jesuit trained to ferret out and crush the first stirrings of intellectual curiousity. In the final scene of Ezra's movie, Ez gets a C in Theology 101 and knows that he will be branded for life, unable to rise to a leadership position in the Knights of Columbus, unable to date ex-nuns, unable to grasp the subtleness of his faith. Left behind. A catechetical mediocrity. Virtually a pagan baby. Doomed to experience existential shame every time he stuck $5.00 in the offering basket passed around during Mass to support the Church's ever-needy legal fund.

Victor Mature appeared to be in better spirits, no pun intended, when he snuck off to resume roaming the backlots of Hollywood. He was even noticed to be chuckling, those meaty lips curled in a satisfied smile. Balance had been restored. Here, he must have thought, was finally an epic story that not only told the gut-wrenching truth but also offended Catholics at the same time.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:12 AM

 
Politicos

Words slip in and out of usage like neckties, consigned for decades to a forgotten corner of the language closet , only to be retrieved and matched improbably with some new outfit. The retrofit is often tenuous at best. Like a Gen Z'er showing up in public wearing a tie with a black, heavy metal Goth-style, death head t-shirt or whatever. You get the picture. Ez has no idea what Gen Z'ers wear.

Take for example the expression "populism" which has mysteriously crept back into vogue for the 2004 political season. Populism conjures up the America of the 1890's, William Jennings Bryan, free silver, the excitement of massive outdoor political gatherings. Read Vachel Lindsey's poem "Bryan" for a time machine trip back to a more innocent era before tv and the internet.

Ezra just doesn't see what the pundits are talking about when they describe a sharp-tongued, stiff-necked former pill pusher from Vermont as a populist. Or, for that matter, a well-coiffed, old money Senator from Mass who's been riding the congressional golf cart to and from lunches with lobbyists for 15 years Who's the populist? Dennis Kucinich - who looks rather uncomfortable and not a little wooden in that ill-fitting hair piece, hobnobbing with Shirley Maclaine and the California incense and Roll Royce set? Do you know why Kucinich won the Hawaii primary? Because all the old hippies who made a fortune peddling tofu pups or natural ice cream at Grateful Dead concerts moved there so they could smoke a little weed out on the beach as the big sun goes down over the Pacific Ocean. Kucinich is a Ben & Jerry Democrat and now he can be a force at the convention with his 8 Aloha delegates.

It takes $120 million to be prez of these United States and no populist could raise that much money without kissing 1.2 million babies or shaking the same amount of hands and ending up in a full body cast with a bad case of diaper rash or muscular dystrophy.

Let's face it, the term populist doesn't fit anymore. According to Francis Fukuyama, we're at the end of history. The Cold War is over, the titanic struggle between Marxism and Capitalism for the hearts and souls of the masses is finito benito, the little guy doesn't matter anymore and everyone is plugged into some kind of electronic interface or other to get their marching orders from Wall St. or Hollywood.

It doesn't matter who you vote for. The election has already been decided and, quite frankly, no cares what you think about the issues. Chances are that if you're 40 or even 50 now, you won't be able to count on Social Security, no - you're have to work as a security guard at Wal-mart until the day you croak, or worse, you'll be picking cans and bottles out of dumpsters to afford your heart medication, or even worse, they'll just let you die because in the great Malthusian scheme of things, access to health care is the great population reducer. Retirement is going to be a luxury in 20 years. You should enjoy life now while you're still working. Take longer coffee breaks. Slack off. Take the week off.

So, be Era's guest. Get out there on your street corners, Ithacans, waving your little signs and banners at motorists. The Democratic primary in NY is Tuesday. Make a difference.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:28 AM

 
Walking mad cow blues

Ithaca knows how to throw a party. Yippie yi yeh, or something approximate, as Roy would say. Roy Rogers, that is.

If you were down on the Commons Saturday for the 7th Annual Chili Cook off, you saw Ithacans of all stripes and persuasions having fun. Giving the finger to the old bogeyman, Winter, turning up their collars against the vicissitudes of climate, shrugging off months of melatonin deprivation, turning the heat up a couple of btu by consuming gallons of fiery Ithaca style chili , hot enough to burn the whiskers off of a prarie dog.

Not.

Ez ran into a dude from New Mexico Saturday who complained that the lines in front of the concessions were too long.

"Having lived in the Southwest, I don't think I'd be impressed by the chili in Ithaca."

He opted for the Tofu stir fry at the Wok Hut or some similarly named establishment in Center Ithaca. You know, authentic Chinese cuisine. Served up in styrofoam containers by a girl from Tibet.

Why would an ice-locked town in upstate New York, a thousand miles away from the nearest poblano patch, famed more for its consumption of tofu than any particular love of heat seeking peppers, have a chili fesival? Does Potsdam have a lo mein festival? Does Syracuse have a taco bake-off? Have you ever heard of Albequerue celebrating Baked Potato Day? So, the idea of having a chili fest with a mechanical bull that looks like it was assembled from rusted Volvo parts , in the middle of February with snow still covering the benches on the Commons, seems like a bit of a disconnect, doesn't it?

And what about Mad Cow Disease?

From what Ez could tell, most of the folks on the Commons Saturday , migrating happily from concession to concession , were not particularily interested in checking out the ingredients of what was being slopped into their styrofoam cups. Hey, it's 30 degrees out here, every ten minutes it starts hailing, and there's beef in some of that chili, folks. You know, beef shipped in from parts unknown, like - Washington State; beef that might have been stored in some deep hoary freezer from before the FDA started clamping down. Do you know where your beef has been?

Oops. But look on the bright side, Ithacans. At least, we don't have a Chicken Barbeque Festival. So, no one's going to be coming down with bird flu anytime soon.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:40 AM

 
Authority figure


Ez has spent more time than anyone, possibly more than any other single individual in the whole of human history, pondering the eternal question...

What makes Ithaca suck?

Do you know anyone else who's spent $200 of his own beer money to register a domain name and develop a web site titled Ithacasucks,com, a site that has been visited by a total of 4 people in 12 months, two of whom took a wrong turn trying to reach a porn site crammed with naked teenage sluts performing fellatio on viagra engorged NASCar drivers.

Do you know anyone else who has experienced hair loss, waking up at 5 am every day for 6 months to write a daily blog named thacasucks.blogspot.com? No, you don't. So please give Ezra his due. He's an authority on what makes Ithaca suck. These are the days when folks lie about their credentials all the time, claiming to have been in the Alabama Air National Guard when they they were in fact campaigning for fat cat cotton barons or pork belly moguls running for Congress in Tuskegee.

You know where Ez has been. Connecting the dots. Doing the math. Experiencing the pain. Figuring out why Ithaca sucks. Like any self-respecting authority who's ever hung out his shingle or stuck a diploma on the wall, Ez has even developed a lingo of his own, to befuddle and bedazzle the customer. Here's a brief glossary of terms.

Suck-dom - the state of sucking or alternately the place where sucking occurs.

Suck-hood -the feeling of being in the state of suck-dom, looking from the inside out , sort of like being encased in jello.

Suck-iness - the quality of sucking.

Suck-ination - the total gestalt of sucking, the whole enchilada as it were, rhymes with alienation .

Suck-erama a place where you can go to immerse yourself three -dimensionally in suck-dom- like standing on the Commons.

Suck-meter - a tool developed by Ezra to measure suck-hood.

Suck theory - the critical and analytical assumptions underlying the study
of suck-hood.

So why does Ithaca suck?


There is no easy answer to the question, no single explanation - no one theory that can explain the existential experience of suck-dom, the depths of suck-iness, the inevitability of suck-hood, the torment of suck-ritude, the anguish of suck-rioasis that one experiences spending time in Ithaca.

Ez has even tried to deconstruct the question. What is Ithaca? Is it a small college town in upstate New York living off of 40,000 college students? Is Ithaca a state of mind, a mode of being, that state of being-without, or is it being within? The experience of being -within the state of being-without? Cavafy believes that ithaka is the journey, not the destination. The journey that shouldn't be rushed ; in the poem of that name, ithaka is a metaphor for life. But did he ever live in Ithaca, New York?

And, anyway, what do we mean by the word suck? We suck our mothers' milk, we suck milkshakes through a straw, we suck-up to our bosses to get a raise. How does this pleasurable experience translate into something totally opposite , the horrible experience of gagging, choking, gasping for air, the feeling of being stuck like a bottle fly on a flypaper runway?

These are all very deep questions. Like any self-respecting authority on anything that's worth knowing, Ez charges by the hour. Send your checks to ithacasucks.com.

He doesn't take credit cards.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:59 AM

 
Your father's politics

Hey, man, what's to become with "Generation Dean" when the Doctor throws in the proverbial towel next week and goes back to making skads of cash, prescribing little purple pills? Hell, with his newly won name brand recognition, he'll be endorsing those little purple pills on tv, for christsakes. Maybe start a diet craze, manufacture dietetic donuts, sign a big fat contract with KFC to push Dr. Dean's heart-friendly chicken wings.

But what's to happen to all those college students who got suckered into believing for a brief shining momnet that they could actually 'take back the White House' or 'make a difference'? You know, cyberdemocracy, teen populism, rah,rah. They swarmed over Iowa and New Hampshire, made signs, attended rallies, worked the phones, e-mailed until their brains fell out, networking far into the wee hours of the morning. No time even for downloading MP3 files let alone for sex. They propelled the Doctor into front runner status, got him on the cover of Time, turned Dr, Dean into an instant American icon.

Suddenly, their father's politics roared out of the garage like a turbo-charged 2004
Cadillac DeVille. The big haired Democratic senator from Mass, swimming in a tidal wave of catsup money, flush with all the political credit earned from 18 years of smoozing with lobbyists, doing favors for insurance companies and corporate interests. Hell, look at the skyline of Boston. How many billions of dollars worth of bacon did Sen. Kerry bring back to his home state, transforming Bean Town into a yuppie Shang-ri-la? Compare that to the Doc's record as guv of the Ben & Jerry state. Signing the nation's first civil union legislation may have helped the justice of the peace industry, filled up some motel rooms now and again with honeymooners, but we're not talking about bringing home Big Macs with Bacon here. We're talking about a lousy pint of Rocky Road ice cream. The $40 million Doc Dean collected from small donors on the internet wouldn't even fill up one of the bathrooms in John Kerry's political mansion.

Hey, don't feel so bad. Generation Dean. Every generation gets lied to. All the new kids on the block start out by chasing cardboard heroes, pop icons, instant -whipped Messiahs from the Cracker Jack box of history. Look at the 60's generation, for christsakes. Your father's generation. They worshipped at the shrines of big haired millionaire Democats, muttering the mantras of 'ask not what your country can do for you.' and 'you can make a difference.' A couple of assassin's bullets later, they eventually did fall into line and accept the status quo. The guys who dominated the scene back then, during this period of so-called political adulthood, were all old fogies from their dads' generations - guys who had served in WW2, gone to Washington as political freshmen back in the McCarthy era, paid their dues in the CIA, or in Hollywood - you know, guys who had worked the ropes.

So, Generation Dean, Ez's advice is to go home, hit the books, get well-paying jobs and settle down until you can afford a real presidential candidate of your own.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:52 AM

 
StarPigeon's journey to the land of shadows

He listened to the distant rumble of steam shovels from afar. The crisp, cold air of the forest amplified every sound, even the careless dropping of a redeemable can in the woods, or that particular crunching noise that a $175.00 pair of Nikes made on dry leaves. StarPigeon was perfectly attuned to everything that was happening around him; his senses tingled with the sharpness of the hunter, fused with the lingering warmth of a container of Gimme coffee that he had downed prior to adjusting his head dress and entering the sacred domain of the Ancients.

They were digging in the place of the Elders, constructing a new 100,000 sq ft. Home Depot. StarPigeon glared in the direction of the machines whose metal claws were tearing at the hard pine-needle flecked ground once traversed by the Seers, the Gatherers and the legendary delivery men of the Cayuga Nation. His heart ached at the plunder and despoliation of this natural paradise, at the rapacity of the developers , the politicans and Chinese Buffet builders. Just that moment, he heard the familiar chirp of his cell phone going off. StarPigeon had programmed the ring to resemble the sound of a whippoorwill so as not to disturb the placid stillness of the forest.

"Pidgey, is that you?"

"Yes." His eyes followed the journey of a hawk as it glided above the tree line.

"Don't forget that you have to take the Explorer in for a brake alignment."

StarPigeon scowled. He was upset that StarSparrow would choose this time, knowing that he was communicating with the Spirits of the Old Ones, to bother him over something as mundane as the brakes on the Explorer.

"Ok. Anything else?"

"You've got an appointment with the acupuncturist at 2. "

"Ok."

"Honey?"

"Yes?" StarPigeon was fighting back the annoyance that he sensed was creeping into his voice.

"Don't forget to pick up the Tofu Lasagna at Greenstar. And a bottle of wine. The Reiks's are coming over tonight."

StarPigeon snapped his cell phone shut and shoved it deep into the pocket of his synthetic buckskin jacket. He glanced around the stand of trees dully. The moment of deep communion with the Ancients was gone. It was time to re-enter the fallen world of man again, the world of laptops, fax machines, dentist drills, SUV's teeming down Rt 13 towards the mall, nanotechnology, dinners with boring colleagues who knew nothing of the secret world he shared with the spirits of the forest.

He was StarPigeon. He lived in two worlds. One day he would turn his back on the world of brake alignments and office cubicles. He would allow his hair to grow longer, throw his cell phone into Cayuga Lake, exchange the ho hum life of a financial analyst at Smith Barney for the more alluring path of a seeker.

Then again, maybe he'd cash in his 401K and open up a canoe rental.


More later on the adventures of StarPigeon, alternative Ithacan, exclusively at Ithacasucks. Blogspot.com
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:37 PM

 
Greenstar

(To be sung to the tune of Downtown)

When you're progressive
shopping makes you obsessive
you can always head to Green -star,
there the veggies are fresher
and you don't feel the pressure
At Green-star.

Just listen to the banter of the workers at the deli,
you'll be loading up on goodies to fill your belly,
how can you go wrong?

The chicken's' are happier there.
part of the family there , so forget all your cares,
Green -star, get it organic there
Green -star, it's all natural there.
Greenstar, you belong there now.
Greenstar,
Greenstar.

Shopping at Tops
ya' get genetically altered crops,
you wouldn't get- at greenstar
too many preservatives,
too many conservatives,
You'll never get at green-star/
They'll remember
you're a member, never have to doubt it.
Everyone will want to know
you shop at Greenstar market.
Greenstar.


find different ways - to make yummie greens,
oh, you'll never get tired of eating beans,
at green-star
you can visit the salad bar.
At Green-star.

Tofu's much more inviting,
buying in bulk is just more exciting
greenstar, you never see a national brand.
greenstar, you can lend a helping hand,
greenstar, it's more like a way of life now.
Greenstar, greenstar. greenstar
Greenstar. Fade out.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:55 AM

 
Ithaca Sucks The Board Game

What people are saying about Ithaca's new board game -

"Finally there's something more exciting than shopping on the Commons. "
Ali Ali Kahn, Father of the Pakistani Atomic Bomb

"A game the whole family can play! Even dysfunctional families like ours" Michael Jackson, entertainer and alleged child molester.

"Recommended by 6 out of 8 acupuncturists and Reiki instructors! " Suhill Karma Smith, Holistic Healer

Are you ready to play? Put on your best game face, a Dennis Kucinich button, grab a fistful of Ecstasy cigarettes, some organic potato chips and a liter of bottled water and let's play Ithaca Sucks.

Imagine this! You've picked the blue Volvo as your game piece. Now you're at Start, itching to roll the dice and begin your personal adventure through the byways and crawl spaces of I -town. You roll a double 3 and land on the Seneca St. Parking garage. Oops! You have to shell out $15 to park. Tough luck. Try again.

You roll again, this time a 4 and a 6. Now you're moving! You land on See-Spot Gallery on the Commons and have to pick a card. You're informed that you're a struggling Gen-Y artist, living in a roach infested apartment with 17 other struggling Gen-T artists. The apartment is owned by Jason Fane who owns hundreds of other roach infested apartments rented by struggling Gen-Y artists and dishwashers. Before you can play again, you have to produce artwork priced under $15.00 that appeals to welfare recipients and other Gen-Y artists. Hey, that's life! Not fazed in the slightest, you start doodling furiously, trying to reproduce a sunrise in Hell on the back of a Nine's poster.

Ready to play again, you roll a 3 and a 2, which lands you in Parking Court. Ouch! You have to fork out $4,500 to pay for all your old parking tickets going back to 1972. What the fuck! You elect to do Community Service for a year, hosing down the sidewalks in front of Simeon's where all the college students practice precision puking after loading up on Captain Myer's and coke.

When you roll again, you shoot a pair of 5's and zig-zag around the board until you land on - no, not the Mate Factor. Anything but the Mate Factor! The little pink card reads, " You've been indoctrinated into a cult started by an Arkansas con artist who, incidentally, is not Bill Clinton. You have to let your hair grow, sleep on the hardwood floor of a racket ball court and work 15 hours a day at one of the cult's restaurants, busing tables and squeezing limes. At night, you have to copy passages from Jeremiah on to place mat settings.

Finally, you roll a 7, lucky 7. Whow. You've just won $75,000 in Ithaca Hours. Your luck has finally turned. Then you figure out that absolutely no business in Ithaca accepts more than $5.00 in Ithaca Hours for any given purchase. You can buy 15,000 tofu salads at Greenstar on 15,000 separate occasions or you can use your funny money to patch the holes in your car's upholstery.

Having fun yet?

Learn how you can help Ez design this exciting new entry in the world of board games. E-mail him now with your ideas and suggestions. He's getting lonely!

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:12 AM

 
her honor

Ez has some free advice for Ithaca's first woman mayor as she begins her second month in office. Free, because no one is stupid or politically suicidal enough to hire Ez as a paid political advisor - the equivalent of hiring the Taliban to run security for the Super Bowl. Maybe Ez should volunteer his services to the Howard Dean campaign The media is now writing poor Howard off after he's spent $40 million of someone else's money to collect how many delegates?? At this point, he's running neck to neck with Al Sharpeton and Dennis Kucinich and they've been carpooling in a big blue Baptist van with "Jesus Saves" stencilled on the side, eating at Subway's along the campaign route. Al saves a lot of money on sit down meals because, even though it's 2004, a black man still can't get served at Denny's. Together Al and Dennis have spent around $175.00 including pocket comb replacements. On to Wisconsin.

Carolyn Peterson has so far avoided some of the pitfalls of the previous administration. She hasn't tried to shut down any African American businesses downtown and she hasn't been caught living in the basement apartment of a waterfront saloon owner trying to get a zoning waiver from the city. She's spent all her time in meetings - the one thing Carolyn really excels at. She was elected because she has more experience at meetings than all the other candidates.

Incidentally, this blog is pure filler, absolute fluff, intellectual dandruff, mental hamburger helper because Ez is experiencing temporary writer's block. It's hard to bounce off things when there's nothing to bounce off of. How does the ithaca urinal do it? Can you imagine filling a whole newspaper 6 days a week in a place like ithaca? A couple of days ago they scraped rock bottom with a feature on the local pizza industry. A reporter even accompanied a couple of clueless pizza delivery guys up to collegetown on their appointed Super Bowl rounds. We only delivered 4 pizzas, dude. What the fuck is going on? What's next? A day in the life of a UPS driver?

So, look, Carolyn. Here's a couple of do and do not's to chomp on, call it meddling, call it sage advice, call it whatever you will but know that, despite your strong authoritarian bent and otherwise nasty disposition, there are people out there who want you to succeed despite yourself.

So, first - avoid ribbon cuttings at establishments run by cults that depend on child labor. Your appearance at the Mate Factor's gala opening will come back to haunt you when the first teenager from a nice Cayuga Heights family with money gets brainwashed, changes his name to Moses and goes to work, busing tables at Home Dairy.

Second, avoid getting your picture taken with Syracuse gangsters qua contractors like Cimminelli. One day, the hotel he's building downtown may collapse because he cut too many corners with the concrete. Or people may get tired of gorges and start jumping off the roof. Anyway, you don't look so great in a construction hard hat or holding a shovel, for that matter. It would help at least if you turn the shovel around.

Three, this no politiican left behind thing of yours is a little bit too clubby. You hired Marty Luster to work part-time for $40,000 a year but you didn't bother to throw a crumb Beau Saul's way. You trounced the poor guy thoroughly in the election but he is still a police lieutenant and you may find a ticket on your car every time you try to park in Ithaca.

Finally, it would help if you were seen downtown once and a while. Buying something. You know, a bong pipe or second hand blouse or what have you. Maybe you're afraid you'll slip on the ice left over from the last storm. Well, it's probably a safer bet to shop at the Mall. You'll run into more Ithaca voters, won't get a parking ticket, and don't need ice skates to get around.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:43 AM

 
Teradactyl day

It's Groundhog Day, for crying out loud.

Well, we should be crying out loud, or maybe crying in our beer or just softly weeping for that matter, because, fact is, Ithaca doesn't have a groundhog of its own. We also don't have caravans of buses and cars loaded with tourists, all carrying credit cards and ready cash, clogging Rts 96, 79 and 13. flocking to town to see a cute, fuzzy, world famous meteorological mammal.

That means we'll have six or sixty or 600 hundred more years of empty store fronts, a flagging retail economy, a deserted Commons, rising property taxes. You name it. Depending on whether you're an inborn pessimist or just in denial.

No groundhog, no tourist bucks. Simple as that. Gorges don't cut it. Only retired people from Iowa, who are suffering from post-primary depression, would travel 500 miles to see a gorge. And a lot of them simply stay home because they're afraid of slipping and falling off the cliff face of one of 'em cute little gorges.

Let's face it. Punxsutawney hires better consultants than Ithaca. There's a consultant gap. Ithacans paid how much to a consulting firm last year only to be told that we needed a winter festival to stimulate the local economy. So what do we get? The Festival of Light. Do you know anyone who actually attended the Festival of Light? The first mistake that was made was putting Barbara Mink, former country executive, in charge of planning for the event. In an earlier time, Barbara Mink would have worn a pink pillbox Oleg Cassini hat. Just like Jackie Kennedy. We're talking high brow now. We're talking high priestess of culture.
Arbiter of taste. We're not talking about the kind of person likely to schedule wet tee shirt contests, tractor pulls or the kind of stuff likely to draw crowds.

Ez has scoured all the local newspapers for details of the much touted Light in Winter festival to find that the highbrows managed to keep the entire affair so hushed that only a single news feature appeared, describing a chamber music concert at PRI. You know, up at dinosaur land. Imagine that. The general population, meaning us lowbrows, were kept completely in the dark about the Festival of Light. Does that smack of cultural elitism or what?

What Ithaca needs is another Cardiff Giant. Back in 1869, a couple of workmen digging a well in Cardiff, New York, 10 miles north of Syracuse, uncovered a ten foot, 2 ½ inch gypsum statue. The discovery sparked a frenzy of interest, not to mention, controversy. Visitors from all over the country flocked to Cardiff to view this either priceless artifact of prehistoric American civilization, or fossilized remans of a race of a giants, depending on who you listened to. Theologians used the occasion as a pulpit to to rail against the evils of Darwinism. A syndicate of businessmen from Syracuse raised $50,000 to promote the colossus as a tourist attraction. It was uncovered three months later than the statue was a hoax planted by a Binghamton cigar maker to revive his dwindling fortunes. A copy of the Cardiff Giant ended up in P.T. Barnum's museum of oddities. Andrew White, first president of Cornell and known high brow, looking back at the whole episode in his memoirs, decried the hoax as a symptom of American civilization gone awry. He hoped that newly established citadels of institutional and scientific authority, read Cornell, would provide a corrective to the money making Big Top huskterism of the Gilded Age.

What the Cardiff Giant did for that tiny hamlet in upstate New York, what the beguiling marmot does annually for Punxsutawney, a well-placed teradactyl or other Saurian beauty could easily do for Ithaca. Forget the light wands and the chamber music. Plant a tantalizing fossil or two, or better, a full sized, extant, meat eating, specimen, roaming the wilds of Dryden, feeding on squirrels and poodles. Even a turkey in a dinosaur costume would suffice for the more gullible.

Then find out if it sees its shadow.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:23 PM

 
Mars on Earth

What do you think about all this Mars crap? Do you really care a gnat's ass that NASA sent two, not one, we're talking two mega-million dollar probes to the red planet? Are we talking redundancy here or we talking sex? Is NASA planning an eventual linkup? Will Rover find Opportunity, will they wag mechanical tails in recognition, sniff each other's after burners, fall in love? Machine sex has long been on the drawing board, the Mount Everest of cybernetics, ever since scientists first slapped a mechanical arm together with a DieHard battery. That's why robots have male and female parts, dummy.

Really now, can you explain why a president who has shown no interest to date in advancing science, beyond accelerating the process of global warming, embraced this bizarre dream of landing a man on Mars? To divert attention from a $400 billion budget deficit? To draw attention away from the spiraling body count in Iraq? Or to steal the Dem's thunder during primary season? (After all, it was a big hair Democrat who kicked off the US space program in the first place, got Americans excited about moon rockets and re-entry vehicles.)

Hell, there's no oil on Mars, is there?

Our very own Cornell scientists are puffing their chests, basking in the media attention over their part in the Mars mania. Go Cornell. We're not just ag tech, you know. Hey, why would folks living in one of the most inhospitable spots on this planet want to explore a place as forbidding as Mars? They could just walk out their door and find more ice than you could possibly ever find on Pluto or Uranus or wherever you'd travel in the universe, more forlorn, desolate, lunar-looking landscapes, more space cadets per square foot, more people living under rocks, more alien intelligences than you could pack into a Stephen Spielberg film. After all, Carl Sagan probably got the idea for Contact in Ithaca, Rod Serling moved here to embrace the weirdness of it all. Planet Ithaca.

So what is Rover supposed to be doing on Mars? Looking for water on the Red Planet, right? First, Cornell scientists figure out how to suck Cayuga Lake up to campus in a giant straw, now they're looking for even more H2O. What gives?

If you really stop to think about it., this Mars thing has potentially deep psychological overtones. Buried somewhere in the American subconscious is a profound fear, a deep-seated mistrust of the Red Planet. How many times in books and movies has America been invaded by little silly putty-shaped , green men from Mars? First, they landed in New Jersey back in the 30's. Then, in Mars Attacks, they had the audacity to zap the President and First Lady.

Hey, not to worry. George Bush believes in pre-emptive strikes. He'll fix their sorry butts, America. Maybe Osama bin Ladin's been hanging in a cave on Mars. They got Al-Quaeda, WMD, Martian fundamentalists, little green men who look like Saddam Hussein, the whole works. Now you know why George sees Red. Charge!
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:37 AM

 
Primary

The New Hampshire primary is tomorrow. Ez has his concession speech prepared.

Wait a minute. What's going on here, you ask? When did Ez announce that he was running for President in the first place? How can he throw in the towel for a race he's never entered?

Well, you're right. Nonetheless, Ez appears to be the undisclosed loser of the New Hampshire primary. He has a whopping sum of $42.35 in his checking account so he can't even afford to buy a bus ticket to New Hampshire let alone run in the primary against fat cat millionaires the likes of John Kerry, John Edwards or Howard Dean.

Ez concedes that, even though he is bored to death of politics, voted once in 30 years (not including the time he wrote his stuffed mouse in on the ballot) , is technically an anarchist, he is insanely jealous of guys who write political blogs and get 45,000 hits. Ez concedes that he has failed miserably to alter public opinion one iota about the inherent rottenness of the American political system and is ready to rush into the breach. So here's Ez's political blog.

Did you ever consider how much voter turnout would improve if everyone voted on Super Bowl Sunday? Yeah. Right after the Superbowl and Survivor Superstars when 50 million American homes are lit up by the flickering shadows of their tv sets. This is how it works. Right after the last raw lizard was consumed and the torches were lit on Survivor, your tv screen would go blank. As a giant American flag appeared on the screen, everyone would reach for their remote and flip to the channel paid for by the candidate of their choice. This totally simple and uncomplicated democratic process, practiced by millions of Americans every night, would constitute voting. The candidate with the largest market share for that particular hour would become President of the United States with the runner-up selected as vice president. The inauguration would follow Raymond the very next evening.

No more confusing ballots. No more hanging chads. No more Supreme Court decisions. Channel surfing is as American as Taco Bell. It's so fucking simple why didn't Congress think of it?

Ez is just trying to be helpful, you know. If you're thinking about reaching for the phone and calling Homeland Security, settle down. Don't take things so seriously

Incidentally, Ez has been storing up some other insightful observations about the presidential race.

What the country really needs is a ticket of national reconciliation to heal the wounds of Iraq, 9/11 , not to mention 228 years of inequity, racial and social division, plus other growing pains America has experienced. Ez proposes that Al Sharpeton team up with Joe Lieberman to bring African Americans and Jews together. Can you see it now? Blacks and Jews finally brought into the political maoistream after 200 years of exclusion. Tell me that Ez isn't thinking outside of the box?

Why would voting for John Kerry not be such a good idea? This goes out to all the conspiracy buffs around the country. Consider that Kerry is married to Theresa Heinz, the catsup heiress, who was formerly married to Senator John Heinz who died in office. Do we have a black widow here? Both named John, both politically prominent? Ok. Anyone who's watched the Xfiles doesn't need the smoking man to appear to be able to sniff out a conspiracy.

Why would voting for Howard Dean not be such a good idea? Have you ever waited 2 hours in a doctor's office only to have your physican listen to a list of your symptoms, check you out perfunctorily, then recommend a dozen or more expensive tests designed to promote the financial well being of the radiological and blood serum communities? What's with all the tests? You need a person at the helm of the most successful democracy in history who's decisive, able to act in a heartbeat to save America from its growing list of enemies. Not someone who's going to recommend a test and keep the nation waiting two hours. Think about it.

Let's face it. America has always been a nation that's turned to the legal profession for leadership. Sure, occasionally we've picked a peanut farmer, an actor or two. But usually we've stuck with lawyers. If we suddenly decide to switch in midstream and elect a doctor, who's to say that next we won't elect a shrink?

America doesn't need any more couch time. We're already a nation of couch potatoes.

Oh, by the way, tell your friends about ithacasucks.blogspot.com. It's your democratic duty.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 10:02 AM

 
Letters from Ithaca


Dear Ying:
(translated from the Chinese)

How are you and Uncle Zhang? Hope you are well and enjoying the view from the new Swiss chalet you built next to the Great Wall. The photographs I downloaded are great! I particularily enjoyed the one of Cousin Cho on board his new SnoCat!

I sure miss you all. Ithaca sucks and it snows most of the time. Nobody shovels their sidewalks and we slip and slide down Buffalo St. The Americans don't have a good system of slave labor. Nobody is willing to do the dirty jobs over here. The peasants from the countryside would rather collect disposable cans and bottles from trashcans than do any heavy work like digging ditches and removing snow.

Life here really sucks. My fellow students just dream of the weekend when they can party and get drunk. Haha! There is no Party discipline. That's an American style joke. The food here is terrible; the restaurants only serve Americanized Chinese dishes like lo mein and chow mein. How I miss Aunt Liu's civit cat stir fry with bamboo shoots!

Things are going well however. I am downloading useful material all the time from the University's central computer and removing bit and pieces from the Plasma Lab that you will find helpful in building your Proton Retractor. I can't believe it! People at Cornell are really careless about security. They leave stuff lying around all the time! We'll be zillionaires!

Regards to Uncle, Cousin Cho and Auntie Liu. Your faithful cousin,

Zeng Wiu.

Dear Mohammed:
(translated from the Arabic)

Praise be to Allah! Death to the Infidels!

Sorry I could not be with you at Ramadan. The Americans have tightened up airport security and I could not take a chance of being crosschecked in their computers. I will continue sending messages the usual way through Ali.

Ithaca sucks. It is very cold and snows all the time here. Wish I was in the desert now, drilling with the mujhadeen and breaking down my AK47. These decadent American students party all the time, fornicate and consume alcoholic beverages. They are worse than the Saudis!

I don't know why I'm here. Do you? Has somone made a mistake? Have they looked at a map? Would you ask the Leadership again why they sent me to this God forsesaken place in upstate New York?

May the day of the Great Islamic Revolution draw ever closer! Maybe I can get out of Ithaca then. Yours in Allah,

Yossef.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:33 PM

 
None of the above

Unimpressed by the hullabaloo over the Iowa Caucuses? Bored beyond tears by news coverage of all those paunchy white bread, cornfed Iowans shuffling through the halls of the local high school At a glance, Iowa is reported to be home to 16 million pigs and just 3 million people. A disproportionality that entitles Iowa to be considered as a shooting backdrop for the next film remake of Animal Farm. Simply another media circus? The society of the spectacle gone haywire? Or should Ez have said hayseed? What do you expect from a civilization that has made the SUV a national fetish?

No, this isn't a blog about national politics. What could be said or will be said about politics has been said endlessly and then repeated on the 11 o'clock news, only to resurface in the headlines of the Ithaca Journal.

Ez wants to talk about none of the above. Literally.

Remember taking a mutiple choice quiz back in school? Ez's favorite answer was always d) none of the above. For example: Who was the first president to have driven in an SUV? a)Martin Van Buren b)Calvin Coolidge c)HWilliam Howard Taft, or d)none of the above. Ez invariably chose d). Regardless of the question. D was always a safe answer. Having d) there meant that a possibility existed that a) the author of the test might have a sense of humor, b) that there might well be people sitting in the same room with you stupid enough to choose a,b or c or; c) that the truth might lie somewhere else, unseen, untouched. lurking somewhere out there, off the page: or d)none of the above.

Needless to say, this test strategy didn't get Ez into Harvard. But that was back in the 60's. People were just starting to talk about 'thinking outside the box.' Truth is, you didn't think outside of the box in the 50's. Suddenly folks began to question the conventional wisdom about society, politics, life. But, look where it got them? What ever happened to Woodstock Nation? Most 60's kids eventually drifted back into the mainstream, took their places in the office towers, the muffler shops, the state houses. Those that didn't moved to places like Ithaca, opened up boutiques and headshops. They not only fooled themselvces into thinking that they were really outside the box, they also did a good job keeping the big boxes out of Ithaca for 25 years.

Now they all support Dennis Kucinich.

But is that really thinking outside the box? Nowadays thinking outside the box is generally associated with making money. Does anyone anymore think outside the box? We're talking about 2004. The damn box has been implanted in our brains for christsakes. You can't see the sides of the box anymore - you can't even read the label - it's like code embedded into our cerebral cortex.

Who's Dennis Kucinich anyway? Maybe there's something a little suspicious about a guy who takes money from Shirley Maclaine to finance his presidential campaign. After all, here's a person who thinks she's been reincarnated a dozen times. Maybe she was Herbert Hoover in another life. Or even Boss Tweed. Benedict Arnold. Who knows? Maybe , if he became president, Kucinich would burn incense in the Lincoln Bedroom, deliver the State of the Union adress in the lotus position. Replace the Washington Monument with a giant crystal. Pretty scarey. Eh?

Ez sticks with his original choice. d)none of the above.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:28 PM

 
Jinglemeister

Ever think about working from home? Seriously, have you? Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to hand over $15 a day to the City of Ithaca to park at the Seneca Street garage? Where does all that money go anyway? To pay Ithaca's share of the bill for Homeland Security? Do you really think there's really an Al-Qaeda cell operating in Tompkins County? Or does it go to buy those shiny new police hot rods that look so sharp parked outside of Mr. Donut, collecting slush? If you worked out of your home, you wouldn't have to walk the 15 blocks in 10 below weather to take advantage of the free parking in Fall Creek? You'd never have to bob and weave along nasty, potholed streets, dodging craters the size of Luxewmborg and SUV's that look more outrageously futuristic with each model year, driven by Cornell students on their way to their morning Genetic Engineering 101 classes. There you are, driving down Ithaca's State Street hill behind a fiberglass replica of a Buck Roger's raygun, being steered by someone who's learning to how to genetically engineer a cow who actually enjoys the taste of fiberglass and might one day with a few design modifications actually resemble an SUV. Hey, wouldn't you rather work from home?

The guy who lives next to Ez works at home. Rumor is that he writes for the PennySaver. What the fuck is that all about? Does he actually compose the chain saw ads? Ez really isn't sure what the deal is there since no one talks to their neighbors in upstate New York - at least not for the first 20 years. After 20 years living next to someone, you can be pretty sure that they don't belong to an Al-Quaeda cell. At least you haven't seen any FBI surveillance vehicles parked outside and haven't seen anyone wearing what resembles a towel on their heads, sporting a beard and toting an AK47, coming and going all those years. Ez's neighbor has an SUV parked outside so he must make pretty good money writing for the PennsSaver.

Ez just had to take a call from a telemarketer. "Hello, is Mr. Or Mrs. Kidder home?" Slam. That could be one of the drawbacks working from home. You'd spend all day fielding calls from idiots who couldn't find a better job than selling vacations to Loch Ness. Maybe they're working from home too. Ez read an article once that reported that the folks who send all those millions of Viagra and organ enhancing offers work out of mobile homes in Florida. What's that like?

Well, Ez has been looking into this cottage industry angle for some time now. He just hasn't found anything he could possibly do from his home except drink beer and watch tv. It's not like he has any marketable skills otuside of working for SATAN. Yeah, if you've been poking around in the Ithaca Sucks archives, you'd know that Satan is Ez's boss. Ez can't tell you the date of that particular blog because all blogs just sort of swosh together in one vitreous pool of unhappy consciousness.

Anyway, Ez doesn't have any computer skills outside of using the lookups at the Library. He can't edit worth a bean as you can probably tell. Doing any research beyond typing a few words into the Google Search Engine is unthinkable. No, telemarketing is simply out of the question. So what is Ez to do?

Well, Ez is convinced that he does have a certain way with words. Well, don't you think? Come on now, tell the truth! Don't take that away from him! Please!

So, couldn't Ez write advertising copy for local business. You know, jingles.

Remember the Golden Age of the Jingle? "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should."

"Double you flavor, double your fun."

"Nestles makes the very best ......Chocolate."

If you're over 30, you've got at least a couple of jingles tucked away in your subconscious. Jingles used to sell products. You'd be walking down the supermarket aises, passing the cocoa mixes and suddenly you'd find yourself humming "Nestles makes....."

What ever happened to the advertising jingle? Television. Everything is visual now. A nubile Britney Spears bobbing in a centrifugal frenzy as the image of a Coke can oscllates on the screen. That's what passes for advertising these days. Some things are gained, some things are lost. But,as the guy from the Fuciello Auto Mall can attest, words still have magic. HUGEEEEEEEEEE!

If you don't watch tv, don't have any interest in deconstructing pop culture, or are too snooty to admit it, if you're not over 30, don't have a clue what Ez is talking about, this would be a good time to pop in a video game.

So, Ez is launching a new business. From the comfort of home. Creating cutting edge jingles for local area businesses.

He's really excited. Hot to trot. Here he goes.

"10,000 Villages, we don't plunder,
the treasures from down under."

Not bad, eh?

Autumn Leaves
"buy a ticket for a rally,
buy a book for your aunt Sally,
she won't notice it's not new,
She's got a radical point of view."

Ok. That's stretching it. This isn't as easy as it looks.

Salvation Army

"It's not only a place for the poor,
At the Army you get so much more"

or

"Stop in and find the perfect bowl,
You'll be helping to save a soul."

Or for a local watering hole.

"Come in and enjoy a beer,
at the lovely downtown Chanticleer."

12 Tribes/Mate Factor

"Where Jesus saves and Moses bakes,
you can get the finest cakes,
If you happen to be a fairy,
Just walk on past the Home Dairy."

Time for a nap. The best thing about working at home.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:33 PM

 
PDD

When the temperature dips down to the minus digits, the earth seems permanently encased in a jello mold of dirty snow, when the Farmers Almanac is more depressing than the headlines of the the New York Times, Ezra slips into a philosphical mode. He finds solace in Wordsworthian musings. He wanders lonely as a cloud, trailing Glad bags filled with Budweiser empties. Haha! Private joke. It's all a fucking private joke.

Let's face it. Billions of people have at one time or another sucked up the oxygen of this planet, chewed a couple dozen cows,gulped down how many gallons of carbonated beverages , visited the Golden Arches how many times in their lifetime, spent how many hours staring at a computer screen, how many years in a Motor Vehicle Registration renewal line. What have they left behind? 99.9% don't even leave a headstone . Those that do often find their tombstone replaeed with the foundations of a 100,000 sq. ft. Walmart. Imagine that. Spending your eternity under the Automotive Section of a Walmart.

No, Ez isn't depressed. Calling your finely honed existential malaise a depression is a cop out, tantamount to selling out to the pop psychology mavens that write columns for the Ithaca Journal. You've spent years refining your gloom in faraway places like Trenton, New Jersey, the Bronx, Oneonta, Ithaca. You've gone through the 70's, the 80's. the 90's. You remember the Vietnam War, Lebanon, Somalia, Granada, Panama, 2 Gulf Wars, lived through the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bush League, new Democrats, old Republicans, born again bohunks, babe-crazy backwoodsman; have watched 2,000 hours of Nightly News. You've read two John Updike stories - not by choice, either; a good share of Paradise Lost, definitely not by choice. The number of books you've wanted to read far exceeds the quantity of books read. You've watched how many cars rust out, owned how many wrist watches that you've misplaced, accumulated enough ATM receipts to have been able to copy out the complete King James version of the Bible. You've seen the best minds of your generation eat Pop Tarts. You've survived the millenenium, the go go years, the Disco Duck craze, the Age of Aquarius, the new Age, the new New Age and now you're working on old age.

You've earned the right to be gloomy. Don't let them take it away from you.

If you look out the window, find that the snow is topping off just below the level of your gutters, that your car looks like an Eskimo Pie, that the ice hanging off the telephone wires resembles an Afro pik, don't be sad. It's only temporary. Think of centuries of snow slowly piling on top of your grave, Think of all the wars yet to be fought. Think of all the aeons of pain and suffering the human race has and will have to endure until we wise up to the experts, the politicans, the talking heads, the corporations, the priests, the columnists, the messiahs past and future.

Picture how Britney Spears will look 45 years from now. If that has the opposite effect of cheering you up, think of the $2,000 a day it will cost you to live in a nursing home. Or how much a gallon of gasoline will cost ten years from now. Imagine the day your boss walks in and informs you that your job has been moved to mainland China. Go one step further. Consider a day in the distant future when you get an email advising you that, in point of fact, you have not been chosen to leave for Mars with the rest of the human race. You're left standing in a cloud of swirling carbon monoxide as the last shuttle leaves for the red planet.

Embrace the sadness, cultivate it, cherish the gloom. Maybe what you have is not Seasonal Affective Disorder. You might be lucky enough to have contracted PDD. Permanent Disaffective Disorder.

Maybe Ez will leave something behind after all. He's coined a new name for an old feeling, repackaged what used to be called melancholia and launched a new acronymn for the 21st Century. That counts for something, doesn't it? Do you think I can get that etched on my tombstone? Here lies Ezra Kidder, Discoverer of PDD, May he RIP.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:39 AM

 
the Grady bunch

Here's a story
of a family
always in the news;
At recruiting stations,
at defense plants they protested
Oh, those Gradys
How they loved to get arrested.

Here's a story
of a clan named Grady,
They were all brought up
reading Trotsky,
Most kids like to run and play,
But the Grady's,
up and joined the IRA.

Here's a story
of a lovely lady,
You've heard tales of Mother Jones, and
sure t' know a thing or two
about Red Emma,
Well, you see , truth is
that Mrs. Grady
makes them all look like
Cinderella.

Put the PLO together,
with the Weather
Underground, you'd have the Grady Bunch.
Oh, the Grady Bunch.
The Grady Bunch.
Yeah, the Red Brigade
is much too staid
for the Grady Bunch.
The Grady Bunch.
Oh, the Grady Bunch.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:44 AM

 
Yuppies Paradise

Ithaca, Ithaca -
home of People's Popery,
David's Soapery, Faddish Potpourri;
Mecca on the Lake
for those on the make-
Ezra, Ezra, you did so much;
Ezra, Ezra, with your golden touch.
You chopped down the trees,
to build a factory for Phd's
Yes, you put us on the map,
Now it's up to us to close the gap,
To stick a Walmart in the woods,
and import more consumer goods.

Ithaca, Ithaca, your shining waters
have found new quarters,
pumped up to the Cornell gym
that's quite an uphill swim.
Our 24 hour banking machines,
our lively cafe scenes
make Ithaca an American dream.
Our intellectual cream
makes us oh so proud,
yes, with culture we're endowed.
Ithaca, Ithaca, home to galleries,
museums and bagelries.
Home of Greenstar, Moosewood,
and all white neighborhoods.
Utne rated you superior,
were their motives ulterior?

Ithaca, ithaca, a yuppie's paradise,
for those who pay the price.
You can live ecologically,
in your own gated community.
Up in ecovillage buy a home,
with a working solar dome.
You can get all you need retail,
and still work to save the whale.
Ain't it gorges, ain't it grand?
This is your land, this is my land.
Let's tear down the regime,
then stop for pistachio ice cream.
We can make a little money,
in this land of milk and honey.

Ithaca, Ithaca, a true utopia,
now don't you be a dope ya,
buy a farm and go organic,
people won't catch the trick
if you clone a carrot with a duck,
call it natural and charge a buck,
We've got scholars up on the hill,
working overtime on a pill
to make you oh so much smaller,
or equip you with a coat of fur.
Yes, the future is plain to see,
in our most enlightened community.
It won't come as no surprise,
when you see the new high rise.
They're going to bring it all downtown,
and wrap us up in a big red gown.
We're all be happy as mice someday,
thanks to the miracle of DNA.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:09 AM

 
Zen capitalism

"if snow is falling on a bank, you don't say - look, snowflakes are settling on the roof of an institution where rich people put their money so that other rich people can borrow it to make even more money by buying up foreclosed mortgages , leaving other less fortunate people to stand out in the cold snow, selling apples and huddling next to a grate. You say, look how beautiful the snow is, how myriad are the flakes, how precise and unpredictable is the trajectory of each flake." Chungka Thorndike Bass, 11th descendant of the Lama Real Estate Trust.

Everything is ok. It's ok to be rich, to make money. Money is impermanence, transcience, illusion. Just like ice cream. You put ice, cream, sugar, food coloring together, then freeze it again. It becomes Ben & Jerry's. Solidity, cash flow, little trucks trudging through the snow, bringing a high ticket product to yuppies all over the world. It employs teenagers from low income families, making minimum wage, scooping little balls of pistachio mint goodness into $3.75 cones. They can't afford to treat their palsied old grandmothers to a single pint, even if they work 4 hours a day for 48 weeks. But it's ok. Then the ice cream melts, merges, becomes part of Sealtest, General Food, whatever, flows back into the great river of capital. Illusion, impermanence, transcience. It's all goodness. It's ok.

Think of a matrix. In electronics lingo, a matrix is a process in which several signals are combined for transmission or recording and then separated for reception or playback. One signal may be more powerful than the others, more capable of projecting to distant places, reaching as far away as LA or Monte Carlo. Other signals are small, weak, incapable of being transmitted much further than Groton. But they are all contained in the matrix, the womb of life. Some signals go up to the highest peak. They go up to East Hill, where they accumulate the wisdom and technogical smarts to make money, to launch IPO's, build research parks in the beautiful woods. Some signals stay downtown and get night jobs, making or delivering pizzas. But it's ok. Because the pizza dough is goodness, whether you produce it or consume it. It feeds into the matrix. Think of the dharma as a matrix. Nothing is intrinsically bad. Nothing is nothing. Everything is nothing. Be at peace. If you own a $60,000 car, go to an expensive ivy league school, have 75 pairs of dockers in your closet, you should try to happy, If you own a rusted out 1986 Honda with the bumper wired on with a coathanger, you should also try to be happy. It is your lot. Be content with what life serves you because if the sky falls tomorrow like a big blue Denny's pancake, it will fall on the head of the guy with the $60K BMW as well as the head of the guy who has to take the bus now because his bumper finally fell off. Wealth is an illusion. Poverty is an illusion. Don't get worked up because someone has a bigger, more expensive illusion than you. It's ok.

More of the teachings of the Dalai Kidder later. In the next installment, we will ponder the koan of Cohen, as well as the concept of the Buddhist Millionaire, drawing on the example of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Shambala Industries.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:44 AM

 
in god we trust

Ez hasn't always been an atheist. In fact, he grew up Catholic. Which meant that Ez spent his formative years ducking pediophile priests and death's head nuns. He had a chance to be an altar boy but he was afraid that the priest would slip some spanish fly into the communion wine. In those days no one knew what a pediophile was. You knew, however, that something was up when the priest opened the grate in the confessional and tried to stick his tongue in your ear. You just didn't know what to call it.

Lately, though, something has been missing in Ez's life. Besides all the things that he gave up when he moved to Ithaca. Like the excitement, a sense of being on some kind of career track, of even having a career. for that matter; friends, a feeling of community with all the Puerto Ricans that lived behind the plaster-thin walls that separated you from your neighbors. A lot went out of Ez's life when he moved to nadaland. Nature abhors a vaccuum so it's not surprising that he started thinking recently about rejoining a church. It's important to believe in something bigger than yourself. You know. Besides corporations, the US Government, SUV's.

Ithaca sure has a lot of churches. A lot of them are clumped together around Dewitt Park. that corner of Ithaca should be renamed Redemption Row The founding fathers obviously wanted people to think that Ithaca was a decent, upright kind of place to settle. Window dresssing, as it were. Otherwise, DeWitt Park would have been full of muffler repair shops and fast food franchises. Which would sure have helped the tax base.

So Ez decided to sample the spiritual life around Ithaca. Instead of wasting perfectly good Sunday mornings visiting each church, Ez opted to check them out in the newspapers. After all, you can tell a lot about a church by the choice of weekly sermon topics. Sermonizing is like blogging. Every week you've got to come up with a different homily. You can bore some of the parishoners some of the time, you can bore all the parishioners some of the time but, if you bore all the parishoners all of the time, eventually you'll miss their envelopes in the basket. Look at Ithaca Sucks. Who reads IS? Not even its godfather, the poor slob who spent hours designing our website, reads it anymoe.

Ez went to the Ithaca Journal and scoped out the local church roundup. Here's what he found.

St Paul's Methodist Church - The sermon topic was "Jesus and the Money Changers - a new appraisal." Ok, a little revisionistic, but interesting.

St. John's Episcipal - "No Gay Priests Here!" Hey, at least they're honest.

First Baptist Church of Ithaca - "Does Jesus Want You to Open a 401K?" I beg your pardon?

First Prebysterian Church - "The Loaves and Fishes - A Parable of Wealth."

Immaculate Conception RC - "Let Bygones be Bygone." In other words, don't join the suit against Father So and So. He didn't mean to hurt those altar boys.

Oh, well. Ez decided to watch Mass on cable tv.from Lyon, France. At least, they don't come around with the baskets and they still recite the Mass in Latin. Good chance to brush up on his dead languages.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:07 AM

 
adult content


About a week ago, Ez's old bud, DZ, was back in town for a quickie holiday tour of nadaland. DZ fled nadaland for parts of the country that can best be described as Middle Hell. It's good to be reminded that there are worse places than ithaca even though the very idea taxes credulity. Ez and DZ were hanging out at the Chanticleer between forays into the cold night for frequent smoke breaks and a trek to the Chinese restaurant down the street.

DZ is connected to a lot of people in Ithaca. During his three year tenure, he befriended most of the clerks at the A plus, waitresses at Mexican restaurants,
bookstore clerks wide and far, cooks at the ABC, narcissistically disturbed graduate students. DZ is, in other words, a social democrat, the opposite of a snob, the garden variety of whom seems to populate nadaland. The fact that he often whips out a notebook and jots down quotes and notes betrays the fact that he is also a writer chipping away at the next great american novel. But that doesn't detract from his ability to connect with a lot of folks who ordinarily get marginalized, like convenience store clerks and adult bookstore attendants.

Speaking of whom, DZ happened that night to run into a dude who had formerly worked at A Plus but was now holding down the lonely fort at ithaca's one and only adult bookstore. The guy was standing in front of the garish, pink facade on State St., enjoying a smoke. As DZ chitchatted about old times, Ez snuck a peep inside at pegboards filled with rows of adult accessories. The wonderful world of american packaging. Dildos in plastic molded packages. Imagine that. Stocking stuffers. God knows what else people buy these days to enhance foreplay but it's sure to be found neatly shrinkwrapped on a shelf somewhere like this. conjuring up a vast network of factories, loading docks, stacks and stacks of brown boxes with asian lettering stencilled on the side, greasy salesmen with order books, the willie lomans of porn, billing clerks, packagers, marketeers, showrooms in places like Cleveland and Boca Raton, corporate board rooms, company logos, "we've been in the dildo business for 25 years", sales conventions, company picnics, mergers, acquisitions, Nafta, WTO, globalization, dildo sweatshops, the latex jungle.

Ez used to do anthropological field studies in Times Square, touring the porn shops that line the streets around Port Authority. What a sad universe. One six foot high rack of glossy genitalia after another, a smorgasbord of orifices, seedy Pakistanis eying you from behind high counters with glass cases filled with latex sex toys. Hey, if you want to discover amerika, wander into an adult bookstore near the Port. The soulless heartland of america. The merchandise mart of wet dreams. The walmart of sex. The final stop in the commodification of all life. Except for visiting your doctor's office.

So Ez was pretty excited when he found a great blog this morning. The adventures of a 30 year old female video store clerk in some place like LA.
It's hillarious! Read it - http://www.improvisation.ws/mb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4475. This young woman spent a year gathering material; she's also a great writer. Life on the other side of the counter.

Working in an adult bookstore in a small town. What's that like? What do you say when Al Cohen walks in one night? Everybody knows everybody in places like nadaland. First of all, you're right on Main Street. What stories those porn clerks must have about the dark corners of the soul where the sun rarely shines. Could they have picked a less salacious pink? Reminds Ez of a pimple. Think about it now. Al Cohen got rid of the African American-owned barber shop to make way for the State St Theater restoration. Why, in this ever yuppifying community, do the town fathers tolerate an adult bookstore that mocks their illusion of a progressive utopia ? Are they too liberal to mess with the first ammendent holy cow of porn? Or does its very existence hint at a money trail leading right to the democratic machine strongbox? Some guy named Leonardo owns the building. Is he a heavy contributor to the Party? Or do sex shops serve a socially useful function? Ok, readers write in now. This is an interactive site. Oops, Ez forgot there are no readers

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:46 AM