death walkThe message is out.
If you have a death wish, visit Ithaca. If you're dead, you may already be there.
It's official. The city of Ithaca has declared open season on pedestrians. No fooling. Check out the headlines. Anybody with a SUV can hit and drag a pedestrian 50 feet to their death and simply drive away. Sure, you might end up with a ticket and a little damage to your car. But the next model year is out already so you can just hop down to Bill Cooke and pick up a brand new 2006 GM Tsunami. It weighs 42,000 lbs, has steel plated side panels, bullet proof glass, 8 ft high tires, a nice Ben Hur setup on the grill which allows you to spear your victim like a kebob. You can run over a small elephant without noticing much more than a slight vibation in the sound proof cab. Now you're heind the wheel and you can head over to Home Depot for the red light special. That what's this guy from Bersksire did after running over a 120 human being on Albany St. The da handed him a traffic violation. It was in the papers Friday, don't take Ezra's word for it.
Forget the art walk. Take a stroll down death alley. Cross the street when the light is green.
This could catch on. This has tbe potential to be bigger than the crow hunt in Auburn. Hunters invited in by the city blasted away, bagging nearly a 1,000 birds,
sending a strong signal to those little black suckers. This could bring folks in from as far away as LA. People are going to be taking the Ithaca ramp of the LA freeway. Cascadilla Creek is going to be running red.
In Ireland it is customary to mark the site of traffic fatalities with a little cross. At this rate Ithaca is going to resemble a big cemetery. .
Deadman walking. That's another term for pedestrian in Ithaca, New York. Stop to check out the metal horse on the Commons and get pancaked by someone driving some shiny monster that resembles a 21st century metal stage coach.
It's not funny. The only thing that's funny is how we all sit down and take what
gets heaped on our plate. The whole county is up in arms because a couple of demonstrators splatter blood on an American flag at the Triphammer recruiting station. The IPD and the DA give some guy a mere ticket for spilling the blood of our citizens and who says anything? Spilling innocent blood in Iraq is called patriotism.
Of all the sucky things Ez has seen in Ithaca, this takes the cake. Maybe you already had a suspicion something like this was going to happen. A huge parking garage going up between the library and the police station - a big new hotel. All these out of towners pouring into town. With their Jeep Crushers, GM Turbo Tanks, their Chevy Slayers, Nissan Threshers, Cadillac Doom Machines. You know, if you want to drive in from Jersey to visit Sean or Neil or Rachel on Parent's Weekend, you can probably kill a couple of pedestrians and still make the sale at the Bon Ton.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 3:24 PM
Buddha VoodooMondo Ithaca. That’s right - if you thought that the 12 Tribes and their over- the-top jungle juice café was a little bizarre, hold on to your bagels. Ezra has a scoop that will make your snow cones melt.
While the rest of Ithaca is digging out from the latest snow storm and losing their mufflers to the biggest potholes in upstate New York, a growing number of locals are sneaking off to South America to dabble in the forbidden rituals of Candomble.
Google it. We’re talking Macumba. Quimbanna. In Haiti they call it Santiera. In any language, it’s that old black magic and it’s pretty potent stuff. Brought to the New World by millions of African slaves, West African animism or spirit worship has survived into the 21st Century, probably because it offers a better explanation of the universe than Catholicism, Capitalism and Consumerism.
So, you ask, are there actually Ithacans out here practicing voodoo, cutting off the heads of chickens and sticking pins into little dolls? ( Actually, many Ithacans enjoy a few mcnuggets now and again but they let someone else butcher the bird and you don’t call it voodoo even if has ritualistic overtones.) Well, take if from Ez, the truth is stranger than any fiction. He’s uncovered the first known congregation of voodoo-practicing Buddhists. That’s right, Buddha Voodoo and this new mystery religion has all the potential to be the next new thing in Ithaca. For bored Ithacans who have worked their way through radical politics, communalism, Hara Khrishna joyfulness, Green Party joylessness, ecological evangelism., in addition to sex, drugs and rock n roll, Buddha Voodoo is comfort food for the fidgety soul. Besides, you can make soup out of the rest of the chicken, a bonus for that frugal Yankee in all of us.
Why Buddha Voodoo? Here’s the facts. Ten years ago, a bunch of Buddhists with cash to burn decided to go the Club Med route and lure rich Americans and Europeans to glitzy meditation centers located in lush, tropical settings like Cancun and Bahia. As most of you know, Buddhism is not one of those guilt-ridden, angst-driven religions that set up a conflict for its members between the things of this world and the joys of the next. As far as Buddhists are concerned, this world is an illusion, false consciousness, nothing but smoke and mirrors. If you meditate enough, you can learn to enjoy a good steak, some chocolate mousse for dessert and a few drinks at the bar without botching your chances to be reincarnated as Bill Gates or some higher consciousness. So Club Buddha provided just the right setting to mix tantra, mantra and moolah.
The only problem is that several of these Club Buddhas were located near the cradle of Voudon or Voodoo. That’s like locating an ice cream parlor next to a candy store. You stop by for a scoop of Rocky Road and, by the time you make it back to the van, you ‘ve wound up with a box of chocolates.
And that’s how it happened that a couple of Ithacans wandered off the zen garden path to the seedier side of a little town named Comba de Santos or Comb of the Saints and found themselves communing with the orishas, praying to Exu or Oxcala, depending on what babalia or voodoo priest you meet. It was a little mysterious, a little outlandish, a little dangerous, sitting in a lotus position in a darkened room with dozens of candles flickering on the floor with strangers all around them, the sound of spooked chickens clucking in the next room, listening to the strange, foreign sounding words being chanted by the wild-eyed priest clutching a statue. But that’s why they had become a Buddhist in the first place. The way the words dharma and karma rolled off their tongues. Their restless spirit had already taken them to India and Tibet. They were the young and syncretic.
Besides, as mix and match goes, Buddha Voodoo wasn’t a contradiction in terms. It wasn’t like you had converted back to monotheism. There were all these spirits and it was fun to learn their names, to hang their pics on the fridge. Like Yemanji, the water goddess. And, if you found the very thing the orishas liked the most, a tasty rooster, or some small mammal, the spirits would reward you just like your credit card company. Help you improve your golf score, win the new bid, pick the next big stock. Not to mention the dolls. Yes, the dolls. Remember the prof who gave you a C in Chaucer. Well, all you had to do is run out to JoAnn’s Fabric, buy some material, clip, sew, clip and then stick in a pin. Instant payback! The guy who threw off your grade point average would be flopping around up there in the faculty lounge like a Macumba chicken.
Ez is giving out some free advice now. Listen up. If your boss or your neighbor, your mother in law, whoever, has just returned from Brazil sporting a deep tan, just keep your chickens indoors. And don’t mess with them whatever you do. They’re probably beheading chickens under a statue of Buddha in their rec rooms. And you really don’t want to mess with them.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:30 PM
eighth wonder
During the day Carl and Enzo attend classes up at the School of Architecture; they appear to be just another couple of nerdy looking grad students toting laptops and backpacks filled with 30 lb textbooks.
But Carl and Enzo are not your ordinary architecture students destined to design the next generation of Arby's and Bed Bath and Beyond. They want to build the city of the future. A city unlike any other city, housing thousands of low income families, perhaps somewhere in South America. Their city will be built totally of recycled materials, using stuff that people in the United States throw away everyday. Carl and Enzo have collected at last count 431,276 empty cigarette fliptop boxes. Their apartment downtown is overflowing. Karl and Enzo sleep on the floor in the living room because their bedroom is crammed with neatly stacked white and gold Camel Light boxes, red and white Marlboro boxes, blue Newport boxes. The bathroom is 75% filled to capacity, the closets are brimming. Carl and Enzo rent a garage in Dryden that houses 32,752 empty cigarette packs. Another storage unit in Danby is packed floor to ceiling with 24, 524 precisely stacked red and white 1 ½” x 1” x .3 inch boxes all donated by a smoker named Dave Jacobs. Once a month Carl and Enzo make a pilgrimage to Dave Jacob's grave site in Holy Name cemetery. They promised Dave before he passed away from a combination of cancer, heart disease and asthma that they would name a street in their city after him. The Dave Jacobs Blvd. Dave would have liked to think that his life counted for something.
Smokers all over Tompkins are knowingly or unknowingly contributing to the city of the future. Carl and Enzo approach people on the Commons, huddled in doorways, stamping their feet to keep warm as they puff away. The two wannabe city planners talk with mounting excitement, and will occasionally yank out a cardboard tube from their backpacks and roll out a detailed plan of the a city they plan to build for the poor, a city that recycles, built entirely of those annoying little cardboard boxes that you never know what to do with after you’ve finished the pack. 25% of the folks Carl and Enzo talk to have tried to recycle those suckers themselves, using them to house anything from paperclips to discarded razor blades. A farmer out in Groton actually shredded his empty Camel boxes into chicken snacks. Carl and Enzo gladly accept donations. They’ll come out to your house in their rusty VW bus and collect your contributions to the city of the future. Neither Carl or Enzo smoke. They exchange knowing smiles as they load the empties into the van. Maybe they're hip to the fact that most smokers won't live to the city of the future.
You can call them at this cell phone number to arrange a pickup. (315)472-9875.
Carl and Enzo estimate that they will need in the neighborhood of 4 billion packs to get the ball rolling, another 50 billion to complete the square mile wide project. Carl and Enzo have done the math. They're saving up to go to China next year to visit another wonder of the world, the Great Wall, and start canvassing for donations.
Carl and Enzo. Thinking outside the box. That's what they train you to do up there on the hill.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:52 AM
