A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
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