A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
Summer Jobs for the Environment

Ezra has a summer job for the environment. He answered a classified ad in the Ithaca times. Only 7 other jobs were listed that day, 2 of them for long distance truck drivers and another for a travelling vegetarian concession. That intrigued Ezra but he was afraid that, if he left town, something would happen. Something important.

Like, let's say Common Council votes to arrest Dick Cheney for high crimes and misdeamnors (more than jaywalking) if he ever steps foot in I-town. Show your bald conservative war mongering ass in this town, mister, and you'll be doing hard time in the callaboose with Sherrif Pete.. The first city to impeach a standing vp. Ya think Ithaca's finest, the donut squad, would go along with that? Arrest ole Dick Cheney like that? Or would ya have to make a citizen's arrest? Come with me, Dick. You're taking a walk.

Maybe Fay Gougakis would have a melt down at city hall. She did that once. Had to hauled out shouting and screaming by the poe-lese. Fay was once voted Ithaca's favorite political activist. That's when Ez decided to bury his Che Guevera lapel button in the back yard. He had a little ceremony, read from the Little Red Book of Mao-tse-Tung and a selection from Regis Debray. Those were the days, the days when people actually knew who Regis Debray was.

Don't get the wrong impression. Ez wasn't a big activist or anything like that in his day... he never had an opportunity to join a really radical underground organization like the Weatherman or the SLA. His face never appeared in a grainy photograph on a wanted poster all over America. It's not something he's proud to admit but he was never clubbed or tear gassed by federales. But Ezra knew which way the wind blew --he figured out pretty early that all that playing at revolution was just posturing on the part of middle class kids who would eventually tire of the "'class struggle' and settle down to make money in bonds and derivatives.

Baudrilliard, one of those clarity-challenged modern French philosophes, talked about the "'third order of simulacra'(from a dog-earred copy of post modernism for dummies) whereby the copy has replaced the original. So watching Democracy Now or West Wing fulfills civic duty and political life has been reduced to talking about politics. There is a little guy in his 30's with a pot belly and a beard that Ez sees hanging out downtown. For some reason this dude always walks around with a perpetual catlike grin as if he knows something that is veiled to the less perfect. Ez has heard this guy rattle off on demand the latest in political discourse. I mean he knows what Dick Cheney eats for breakfast. At other times he can be found ingesting the New York Times like a line of blow. Can't get enough of this shit. News as drug. Here's a fool who, if knowledge was power, would head the CIA. Instead they used to put people like the current prez's dad in charge and we know he doesn't know that Rice Krispies comes from rice.

Talking about politics and the media... Ez caught part of Democracy Now this morning. Accidentally. He was switching over from Dr. Phil to the traffic report on Channel 10 when he found himself watching in awe as Amy Goodman browbeat a poor nun who had been tortured by Guatamelan paras. OK, sister, who tortured you? Was it Dick Cheney? Come on, we'll
get it out of you. We have ways. Was George Bush involved?

Suddenly Ez realized that Amy Goodman, except for a simple twist of fate. might have been that GI Jane whateverhername who was photographed with those prisoners at Abu Grav. (Spelling is optional in blogworld.)

So, you have to wonder why anyone would still think he or she could change the world. Are people. especially young people, still idealistic? Ez doesn't want to go near that question 'cause truth is that Ez himself is more idealistic than he was back when he was a whipper blogger. Some bigwig in Green politics, a guy who had graduated from college with a degree in Marxist labor theory and now works as a glorified bureaucrat for the State of NJ told Ez that maturity meant learning to compromise. Fuck that shit, Ez says.

Truth is, however, that most people today don't become activists, environmental, political, social, etc so as to be in a position to change the world.They become activists because a) they don't want to work a conventional job and don't have to, b) they want to acquire skills, experience and resume time so they can become bigwigs in the nonprofit industrial complex, bringing down 75K , running a foundation. Just like people never studied Marxist labor theory so they could do anything with a discipline that is as dry as a biscotti. You studied that shit to pick up women.

Back in Ez's day, nobody thought about becoming a professional revolutionary --well, no one Ez knew. No one planned a career in demonstrating -- or splattering blood on draft records for a living, or even deconstructing nuclear submarines as a trade. Hey, you wanted to change a rotten racist, imperialist system for cryingoutloud, not get a job. Things are different today. People are starting early, getting in on the ground floor of the transformative action industry.

Anyway Ez didn't get a job working for the environment this summer. He didn't qualify. The're only looking for 19 year old college students who want to ascend the ladder eventually to chair the executive committee at Greenpeace. Idealistic young people want to hang out with other attractive, Ipod -toting young people. Not old farts with challenged hairlines.

So Ez took a volunteer position, you know, in Ithaca that's still a job after all, working for the environment. He's a recycler. You can catch him any morning before he starts work at Satan's, going through the trash receptacles on the east side of the Commons. We all do our part.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:04 PM

 


Eyeless Nowhere Near Gaza

Ez had to miss the Global Warming Cafe last night at the Unitarian Church. He felt really bad about missing an opportunity to discuss the size of his carbon footprint with other concerned fans of the planet.

Truth was that he couldn't siphon enough gas out of his lawnmower to tank up his Japanese import to drive the 10 miles to the Unitarian Church to talk about all the interesting ways that he could reduce global warming like washing his clothes in Buttermilk Falls or refusing to buy toilet paper for a year.

You see, Ez is a little strapped for cash after paying taxes to the county that keeps the roads repaired so that country boys in their big Ford pickups or 18 wheelers can barrel ass their way down Rt 79 every day at 85 miles per hour, leaving a carbon imprint ten miles long from Richford to Ithaca. These good ole boys are lining up once a week at the pump to get their 50 gallon fix, which all goes to support more drilling to find even more natural gas and oil reserves in formerly pristine little places like the Arctic wilderness or the floors of the world's oceans. Of course, the oil companies are making record profits , some of which also trickles down via dividend checks into the pockets of shareholders, big and small, who then run out to the store in their late model SUV's to buy other products that also end up consuming more of the world's dwindling energy supply. And so on and so on but we all know that, don't we, and that's why we go to Global Warming Cafes in the first place to find out what we can do.

It's sad that more people out in the boonies don't use public transportation or Ez could have taken the bus to the Global Warming Cafe. The last bus from where Ez is living stops running at 6pm when the last Cornell employee is dropped off. Public transportation around Ithaca is pretty much subsidized by the colleges but, on the other hand, all those discount cards they hand out to students must reduce operating revenue, and, if you choose to look at it that way, limit the amount of funds available for reinvestment in fuel efficency. Not like anyone who can afford to go to Cornell or IC needs help with the bus fare.

Funny thing is that a lot of students and Cornell employees still drive to school or work as witnessed by all the cars in A lot. Cornell is the giant corporation, if you remember, that cut down Redbud Woods to build a parking lot. Hey, maybe all those folks who attended the Global Warming Cafe could write a letter to the guys on the Hill, even suggest that the colleges save fuel by not mowing all those massive lawns that are always kept so perfectly manicured. Buy a goat or tw0 or three hundred. Now that would be energy efficent. All that goat poop could be converted into renewable energy to run Day Hall.

Even though Ez missd the Global Warming Cafe, he's able to read all about in the Ithaca Journal which is delivered to his mailbox by.... Well, this could be an issue. How much nonrenewable energy does it cost to produce and deliver our homegrown newspaper? Oh, it's not homegrown?? (Nor is the NY Times, for that matter.) And how about all the wasted paper that goes into all the annoying advertising circulars and inserts from the big boxes you find in the Journal every week.? And how much fossil fuel could be saved if the recycling trucks didn't have to pick up those stacks of glossy underwear ads we put out by the curb?

Perhaps all those folks who did attend the GW Cafe and freely expressed their opinions to a reporter should have asked themselves how much energy alone would be saved if we didn't consume the Ithaca Journal.

But, lest we forget where it all started, you can visit scenic Richford, the place where it all started, the birthplace of John D. himself, just down the road from Ithaca. Incidentally, it's not within walking distance.

Richford is one of those small farming communities that lost its soul to the automobile. Nothing essential to community remains. Everything is elsewhere. You have to traverse that blacktop two lane somewhere over the horizon to find whatever it is. Anything and everything you want or think you need is at the mall, over at the next big box. Thanks John D.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:17 AM

 
E-men

"Subject approaching. Code blue. Repeat. Code Blue."

The voice crackled over the radio. The two men in the van had been discussing the merits of hummus over cream cheese as a bagel topping. Suddenly they came alive, senses finely honed by weeks on the trail. Quickly they scanned the dark deserted street for their target.

Across the street an alley cat, teetering on the edge of a dumpster, was checking out the prospects for a late night snack. Then a figure came into view, walking briskly, a brief case or large package shoved under one arm.

"Subject has come into view. Repeat. Subject sighted. " One of the trackers whispered into the radio. He glanced over at his partner sitting on the passenger side, half immersed in shadow, and waiting for a signal that the mission was a go. Just at that moment a car swung into the street, it's headlights reflecting for a brief second the faces of the two men in the van. Then, just as quickly, they were both plunged back into darkness.

"Do you think he saw us?" As he waited for a situation report, the driver couldn't help musing to himself about how his boss always reminded him of a cross between Robert Oppenheimer and Dick Tracy. Yeah, he thought, you know what it is.... it's the intensity of the scientist overlaid with the tough, no nonsense street smarts of the detective. This guy is at the top of his game. -- tactical commander for an elite unit of covert operatives that made Nixon's plumbers look like the Hardy Boys. The E-men.

The E-men had been around two years already and carried out 25-30 missions. Inspired by a State of the University speech in which Cornell's Hunter Rawlings had gone off in a half hour tirade against the dangers of intelligent design, the unit had been formed to combat the growing tide of creationsism and the myth of Intelligent Design. Highly mobile squads of E-men would travel the country, targeting the most recalcitrant creationists and IntelD spokespeople for a little friendly persuasion, read involuntary detention and deprogramming. It was no coincidence that the project director, a behavioral scientist and veteran of countless cult rescues, had watched The Manchurian Candidate twelve times. The budget for the project came from funds hobbled together from Cornell departmental slush funds and an undocumented cash grant from the Soros people.

"Yeah. It's ok. He didn't see us." The subject of their surveillance was coming up quickly, oblivious to the two men pressed into the shadows of the van interior.

As he waited for his boss to give the green light, the driver replayed in his mind the usual scenario that would unfold with clockword precision in a couple of seconds. First they would grab the guy off the street, blind fold and bundle him into the back of the van, if necessary using a hypodermic filled with a quick acting sedative to induce cooperation. Within fifteen minutes they would be back at an undisclosed location. Once the subject recovered or calmed down, they would trundle him into a well lit room equipped with sophisticated monitoring and recording devices and attach him to an ECG. Then it was time for the earthworm video. Yeah the earthworms usually softened them up a bit.

After watching earthworms squiggle around in the slime for 18 hours, most intelligent design freaks would buckle and show an interest in reading the Origin of Species at least during bathroom breaks. Every fifteen seconds or so throughout the video, a message would flash across the screen --"Not only does God play dice, but he also shoots pool and throws darts." Once that message began to sink in, the subjects would warm up to the whole randomness deal. Those that refused to wave the white flag, however, would be subjected to another 18 hour film, documenting chimpazees in a classroom, taking the GRE's. Finally, if all else failed, the deprogrammers would resort to looping video clips of George Bush's press conferences. That was the brainstorm of the project director, a person known around the office to have no less than three Bush Must Go lawn signs.

It was tough work. But someone had to do it. Intelligent Design was the proverbial fly in the ointment. As long as the nation's energy and attention was diverted for that kind of nonsense, the future of science and research funding was in question. That's why you had to call in the E-men from time to time. Guardians of Evolution, the scientific way of life, and all that was sacred. Mr. Darwin would be proud.

"Go, go, go." Show time.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:43 AM

 
Greetings from the land of Disconnect

The person who came up with the bumper sticker, Ithaca 10 sq miles surrounded by reality, had it right. And wrong.

At different times Ez has chalked this sense of permanent disconnect up to the drinking water. Or some substance in the drinking water like Aldous Huxley's Soma in Brave New World, "All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." ...

When you start adding up the list of contradictions that abound, well, it doesn't add up. Yo, man! Wassup! Like you arrive in Ithaca, having been lured by rumors of incredible natural beauty, a lost world populated by far out hippies and progressive minded activists and dreamers-- and you realize there are no jobs. Home to a world class university but no economy. All these BA's, MA's, PhD's schlepping around, hanging out at the library to use the free internet, eating at the soup kitchen, hoping that a help wanted sign will miraculously appear in the window of a downtown bookstore. Rush down there and 5 Sinologists, 14 social anthropologists and 26 computer graphics majors have already applied, including someone who ran a chain of bookstores in Milwaukee.

"It don't pay squat but at least it's respectable."

Talking about our favorite seat of higher learning, happy b'day, Ezra C, our Ez's namesake. We know you're cooling your heels in some ice cube up on the hill, waiting for your second coming or is that second helping of dessert. Hope they got a surge protector, baby! (Maybe, when the lights go out, Ezra talks to Ruloff's brain. )

So Mr. C starts an 'institution where any person can find instruction in any study..' Right, hope you have at least $40G saved in your penny jar for the first year. It costs $30 a month just to take a book out at the college library. So much for Ez's dream of studying to be a dystopiologist.

Wearing out your last good pair of interview Birkenstocks, traipsing between the soup kitchen and the employment office, you notice folks tabling on the Commons for a Worker's Rights Center. Woa, man, there have to be jobs in this town! Can't have workers' rights without workers, right? Then you realize that no one is picketing outside Starbuck's. Yeah, like all over the country, --well, all over the progressive parts of the country, that is -- the Wobblies are picketing Starbucks. In Ithaca, not only are baristas not recognized as part of the international proletariat, but folks tolerate the Matte Factor with their unpaid baristas

"we grind and pour for Yahweh"

competing against other coffee shops who do pay their workers.

In your travels around our little workers' paradise, you might have also noticed that 10,000 Villages, the local fair trade store, is looking for volunteers.

While you're searching for work, you'll have plenty of time to read the local newspapers, possibly picking up on the doings at EcoVillage, the gated community for the well heeled environmentally-minded. Condos start at what, $125K? Not cheap on a barista's pay scale.

EcoVillage was started with support from Cornell University. That's right, the same Cornell that sent a goon squad in to arrest a bunch of tree huggers at Red Bud Woods, a gorgeous grove of trees that stood in the way of a future parking lot.

And why, speaking of demonstrations, do folks around here scoot back and forth to protest marches against the war in Iraq in gas guzzling SUV's? Can you say 'bicycle?' But, then again, people who ride bikes in Ithaca don't own front lawns where they can post Bush Must Go signs.

Ez can go on and on. Hey, but look, no place on the planet is perfect. Ez sometimes wonders whether Ithaca with its hippies, Mary Jane subculture, its permaculturalists, organic capitalists,protest professionals, and the lot, is not a quintessentially American city. After all, America is the land of disconnect where imperialist wars are fought to spread democracy, a land of boundless opportunity and fair play for giant corporations like Cornell University, this land is made for you and Ez.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 3:48 AM

 

Board of Ed

It's gotta be kind of embarrassing. Say you are this small upstate community and folks have sung your virtues as this liberal paradise, as one of the most enlightened towns in America. You boast a world renown vegetarian restaurant, a natural foods coop, an ivy league university, and have practically beat out Detroit as the social work capital of the US. You have volunteers swarming around like an ant colony at a picnic, trying to help out here, making a difference there.

Then the shit hits the proverbial fan. (Ez likes to use earthy language, if you haven't noticed, because it helps him to stay connected with the masses, lets him temporarily forget that he has 5 doctorates.) A well known African American community leader and activist, frustrated that the city has equivocated endlessly over renaming the main thoroughfare after Dr. King, uses the 'R' word in a guest editorial. Soon after, if that embarrassment wasn't enough, the Human Rights Commission, backed up by NY State. describes the behavior of your Board of Ed in responding to a parent's complaint as racist. Apparently, members of the board failed to respond to the mother's email detailing how her child was threatened and harassed at school. The problem doesn't go away. The mother goes on to organize a rally, Board members crash it; the mother writes a guest editorial claiming that not only are Board members racist but hypocritical as well.
Circle the wagons, bang the tocsin.

We got 'racism' in Ithaca City, which starts with R, which doesn't rhyme with T , which stands for trouble, folks. We have trouble right here in Ithaca City. Whatcha gonna do about it, Ithaca?
Let's stay calm. Let's beat our chests, write letters to the Editor, form subcommittees which then split off into small study groups which then report back to the whole subcommittee which then writes a report which then gets excerpted in the daily rag which then gets recycled and forgotten.

In the old days we'd have scapegoats. Tar and feather parades. Break out the pillows.

Witch hunts. Build a good old fashioned integrated punishment system on the Commons --pillory, stocks, gibbet, you know, the works. Maybe the same guy who does those wooden playground structures could design one for us.

Forget Webster's, you can go right to Answers.com for a definition of scapegoat.

1. One that is made to bear the blame of others.
2. Bible. A live goat over whose head Aaron confessed all the sins of the children of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The goat, symbolically bearing their sins, was then sent into the wilderness.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Or is that a sheep?
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:41 AM

 


Creep Watch

Howard Altendork has a photograph of Robert Mitchum in his office. Few people know that Bob Mitchum, the 50's actor who played a creepy minister in the classic film Night of the Hunter, was, at one time, a proctologist in the Army. Howard is actually what you would call a forensic proctologist -- the only one in Ithaca, one of only 5 in New York State. Ez would prefer not to delve into the details of what Howard does for a living but, let's say that most of Howard's patients are themselves no longer living -- a fact which accounts for why they seldom object to Howard's ministrations. In fact, they seldom fidget during an examination or, for that matter, even make a stab at small talk before or after the exam. -- a good thing because Howard really isn't very good at talking to patients. Like Dr. Kervorkian, Howard lacks bedside manner.

Anyone who's ever watched CSI - Miami, Cold Case, NCIS or any of a dozen autopsy shows that span the dials on tv, knows that the dead can talk. Under the skillful forceps of the average photogenic young medical examiner on one of these shows, they yield up the secrets of their not so pleasant ends, how they died, at what time, what they had for a midnight snack, etc. etc. Remember the guy who played second string to Robert Vaughan in The Man From UNCLE? Yep, the handsome chap with the Russian accent - Illyya somethingorother, that's who. (Ez logged 75 hours of tv a week when he was growing up. He can run down the plot summaries for the entire second season of Maverick.) Anyway, David McCallum, the dude from UNCLE, now plays a medical examiner in NCIS. Howard isn't quite as camera friendly as David McCallum. In fact the photo up at very top left corner --well, that's not Howard. Ez had to 'google' proctologist to find a stock image to use because no known photographs of Howard exist.

Howard is a short, squat, duck-like human with a face that resembles a cross between Warren G Harding's mother and Buster Keaton. Ez is talking major humorless -- sans effect, dead pan. He invariably waddles around town in a running suit and blue visored cap.It's been said that Howard is one of the cheapest people in Ithaca. He's the kind of shopper who goes into the Dollar Store looking for defective merchandise so he can weasel a discount. Howard has also been known to leave a nickle tip at a restaurant and cruise laundromats, scouting for abandoned socks.

Sad to say, Howard seldom gets an opportunity to ply his trade or testify in court for that matter because, while Howard is particularily adept at finessing secrets from the dead, few victims of violent crime have been known to bury their secrets in the places that Howard tends to look. Occasionally, someone will try to conceal a baggie filled with some kind of contraband or other up the you know where and Howard will be called in to perform proctology magic. In one of Howard's textbook cases, an elderly Binghamton man was knocked off by his housekeeper using a poison suppository. Howard described the time he spent working on that case as the 'crowning achievement 'of his career in law enforcement.

To his credit, Howard has managed to channel his tenuous law and order background towards serving the community. He sits on the board of a nonprofit, or PADDLE as it's known --one of a million nonprofits in Nonprofit Babylon --Ithaca, New York. (For years Ez has railed against the nonprofit industrial complex in I-town -- you know, the shady bric-a-brac shoppes that exploit third world knitters (Two Thousand Pillages), not to mention nonprofit movie theaters that reinforce the image of the foreigner as someone who is less absorbed in shopping for the latest model SUV or High Def.). You might not think so at first but PADDLE does perform useful work, coordinating the efforts of a volunteer staff who donate their time and energies teaching former junkies to canoe.

PADDLE has come a long way from the early days before life preservers were added to the budget. Well, let's say there were a few casualties --- you know, those things happen-- someone does a little blow, falls out of the boat, forgets how to swim or maybe the guy grew up in the hood, never learned how -- those problems are all in the past. On a nice day, you can see a flotilla of ex-cokers rhythmically dipping their oars into the flourescent waters of the Inlet, zigzagging around the floating shopping carts.

"Right, left ----left!!!! Yo man, you want to drown us? *******!! Ya think I want to get my sneakers wet?! What are ya, some kind of ........ "

If it wasn't for PADDLE and people like Howard, those guys would be out on Plain St, trying to score their next dime. It's all about making Ithaca a better community, right?

(This is first in a series of profiles celebrating those unsung heroes of our community who seldom step out into the limelight --or is it the light of day??? -- you know, the folks who really make a difference.)

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:50 AM