A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
High Living Rogue Blogger

"There's a man who leads a life of danger To everyone he meets he stays a stranger With every move he makes another chance he takes Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow..."

These lyrics run through Ez's dreams. Maybe, in a previous life, he got them off a tv show. He can't get them out of his mind. "Danger Man..."

"Swingin' on the Riviera one day And then layin' in the Bombay alley next day Oh no, you let the wrong word slip While kissing persuasive lips The odds are you won't live to see tomorrow.."

Things are getting hairy. Ez has been holed up in a Gateway condo since last Wednesday. As far as he knows, he's the only one living up there. He only goes out at night and the only lights he sees are up there on six.

It's eerie up there all alone in an empty $3200 a month luxury pad overlooking Ithaca, New York. Enlightened City. Yeah, Ez can see the lights at night out there on the Commons. Enlightened, my ass... Ez says. What people don't know about enlightened little Ithaca.

"Beware of pretty faces that you find A pretty face can hide an evil mind Ah, be careful what you say Or you'll give yourself away Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow.."

The maid looks at Ez sort of funny. Maybe it's because of the empty Napoli pizza boxes that are stacking up around the large dining room. There's no furniture up here. Only pizza boxes and empty 40 oz bottles. Ez is too afraid to go to a restaurant anymore. The doorman brings up the beer, the nice people from Napoli are happy to keep the pies coming. Ez has living on pizza and beer for a week now. Paying off the delivery man, the maid, the doorman with fresh, crisp C-notes. A $100 buys a lot of friendship.

Where do those lyrics come from? They keep buzzing around Ez's head.

"The odds are you won't live to see tomorrow."

They have to be looking all over town for Ez. He's a wanted man with a price on his head. It wasn't considered polite to filch that Adidas bag filled with money from the Mayor's bag man. The poor guy left his table for only a minute to get a sprinkle of cinnamon for his latte. Maybe Her Honor needed the money. Not for her campaign. What campaign. For other things. She's worked hard for the big box boys, the developers in their slick Armani suits.

They won't look for Ez here. Who would think to look for him up here on the 6th floor of the Gateway Arms..whatever they call this swank brick shithouse. The last place they'd think to look.

"The odds are you won't live to see tomorrow."
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:48 PM

 

Lama Fever

Have you downloaded your Buddhism ringtones yet? You're gonna be one sorry ass if October rolls around and you're the only loser in your network who thinks Justin Timberlake is cool when all your friends are connecting to the soothing sutra sounds of the Monks of the Vinyldharma Monastary in West Palm Beach.

Maybe you think it's cool that you're the only freshman without an authentic campus store Thangka hanging in your dorm room? Hey, you'll be pretty embarrassed if the Dalai Lama knocks on your door to get directions to the lavatory and isn't greeted by the comforting fragrance of Smokeless Kokonoe incense wafting from your Big Red Buddha incense bowl. You might as well transfer to the University of Arkanasas right then and there.

Hey, loyal readers, if you haven't noticed, Ithaca is experiencing a bad case of Lama Fever and the Cornell Store and Wal-Mart are leading the charge. (Only kidding. To our knowledge the Dalai Lama, contrary to rumor, is not going to bless the shopping carts at Wal-Mart. The biggest box store of them all, however, will be offering lowball pricing on Wheel of Life seatcovers and Boddhivista baby bibs.)

Can you see where all this could lead? McCawber's might offer a Kharma and Coke drink special for the month of October, and Bill Cook Motors could push its new line of inventory under the slick guise of "Be reincarnated in a 2008 Ultima." Ad nauseam. (Latin for gag me with a spoon.)

You think Ez is kidding about this, don't you? Well, consider this, me bloggies. Cornell University occupies how many friggin' acres? You got Barton Hall, you got this building, you got that gym, you even got the Plantations, but where is the Dalai Lama scheduled to give, now get this, not one but four lectures during his upcoming tour? The Cornell Store. (Don't take Ez's word for this. Check out the Cornell website.) Get it, among the Big Red tote bags, stadium seats, sweatshirts, plastic mugs, and all the other sterile effluvia of college life in America, the Dalai Lama is going to discourse on Emptiness and Quantum Nonlocality. Are they for real? Empty out your wallets, right? Bet your buddhawuda, they're gonna have some knick knack or other stacked up by the door for His Holiness to sign or bless, whichever may be the case.

That's got to be on the same league as walking into a McDonald's and finding Jesus Saves on the side of your 16oz. dixiecup.

Ez recognizes that shopping is much more central to American life than spirituality but, ultimately, you reach a point where you just push the boundaries too far. Which American sage was it that fittingly summed up our way of life , the business of America is business? Lama Calvin {Coolidge}?

You can build stupas up and down Rt 13, have how many countless saffron robed monks strolling up and down your shopping district, invite the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the Ayotollah Khamenei, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a busload of Naga Sadhu's from Calcutta to a summit in Anabel Taylor Hall, but you are not going to move the center of spiritual gravity in I-town one iota. When all is said and done, it's all about merchandising. You think?

In honor of the Dala Lama's impending visit, one of our brave readers suggested that IS sponsor a competition to come up with the Dalai Lama's first words entering Ithaca. The winner who comes up with the funniest, most hysterically satirical and most topical Lama quip will receive an Ithaca Sucks canvas tote bag and have her/his picture taken with Ezra Kidder. (Only kidding.)

"Can you break a 100 Ithaca Hours? (Gotta buy some chewing gum.)"

"Where's 3-D Light? (I want to check out the chainmail.) "

"Who are you kidding? Is this really the most enlightened town in America?"

Anyway, you get the point. Let's hear from you, Lama Lovers.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:33 AM

 
Kidder Tower

Here's a no brainer quiz -- what do these two images have in common?

Ok. So that wasn't as easy as you thought. (Yes, and no, if you said that they were both googled using an image search.) Ez isn't surprised, however, because student test scores have been falling lately and if it doesn't have to do with Harry Potter, Super Mario, PlayStation or some Nintendo shit, you might as well be talking in Ukrainian or something.

So, here's the answer. Both represent objects that were named after famous people. That's right. The Oscar Meyer Weiner and Llenroc. If Oscar, like Ezra Cornell, had decided to use the reverse spelling of his last name, you'd be eating a Reyem Weiner. With mustard please and to go. Fortunately, he was only interested in selling hotdogs, not a university.

Ez wants to have something named after him. His little touch of immortality, ok? Can you blame him? After all, walking around Ithaca and the colleges, can you honestly say that you can go one block without bumping into some one's colossal ego? Fane Tower, Clinton Hall, McGraw Hall, Boldt Tower, A.D/ White this, A.D. White that, Goldwyn Smith, etcetera, etcetera. Did you know that Bill Mennen, the deodorant king, donated a dorm to Cornell? Originally he wanted it built in the shape of a speed stick but the architects in those days were still stuck in Gothic Revival mode.

Of course, it takes money, big money, to endow a building. Unfortunately, after working for Satan Industries for all these years, Ez can't even afford to endow a bike rack. He did another google search, out of curiosity, and discovered that there is a Kidder Building (shown here) and that it's home to Milton Community Schools (another example of an eponym.) Maybe Ez could sneak out there to Milton, MA and, under the cloak of darkness, install a phony name plate or corner stone.

The Kidder Building
Donated by Ezra Kidder, Blogger,
Philanthropist, All Around Nice Guy.

Ez would prefer not to have a disease named after him but. if that's the only option, make it a cognitive disease, ok? Not some kind of debilitating form of leprosy or acne, right?

Imagine if Ez had lived in places like Soviet Russia or 50's America, where having a bad attitude might get you labelled as diseased and stuck in a hospital, he might have lent his name to a particular diagnosis -- Kidder Disease. Defined as being out of step with the upbeat, smiley face, mamby pamby Zeitgeist of one's contemporaries; overly cynical, sardonic, picky and critical, likely to write underground blogs poking fun at cultural or political icons in one's community.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:43 AM

 

blog envy
99 years ago almost to the day, Sigmund Freud pissed off a lot of women with what we now know is pure bunk -- the theory of penis envy. Let's face it, for one thing, transgender stats just don't support Siggie's claim. More individuals who were assigned male genders at birth feel they were incorrectly pegged (pun intended) than the other way around. Ez is totally uncomfortable with the whole issue of gender, to tell you the truth. Could it be because he was abused by a troupe of brutish, semi-bearded nuns through 6th grade? Talk about gender problems. Why would you starch your underwear if you felt all that cozy in your own skin?

No, that's not Ez's problem. He has a bad case of blog envy. It's confession time. Let's put our cards out on the table.

Why should a 14 year old still struggling with pimples, someone who wears braces and can't be detached from her cell phone or iPod have a better blog site than Ez? That's a rhetorical question because Ez doesn't have a particular 14 year old in mind: he just knows that every 14 year old on the planet owns a blog that has more bells and whistles , more tags, more links, more facebooks, more graphics, than Ithaca Sucks. Hell, Ez doesn't even have video! Talk about hooking up with U Tube, most of the time Ez feels he's going down the tubes.

Does the pathetic state of Ez's blog say something about his prospects for long term survival in an accelerating technological age? Who ever told Ez that he had to learn HTML, XML or Linux by the time he was 12? At the age of 12, for christsakes, Ez believed he was destined for a career in vaudeville. What's this about being a web designer? How is Ez going to deal with the fact that he lacks vital skills, can't design web graphics, can't write scripts, and definitely doesn't know what an angle bracelet is . Maybe he should go out to Eugene and hook up with John Zerzan and the anti-civilization forces? Ez Kidder, primitivist, big hunter gatherer, me make fire now.

The truth is, just like people used to talk about a missile gap, Ez is experiencing a blog gap. Any self-respecting blog that can be googled by typing Ithaca in the search engine has more features than Ithaca Sucks. IthacaSucks sucks!

Ez is pleased, however, to acknowledge that other bloggers mention his name from time to time, or even link up. Sometimes, however, he wishes they'd give him a few pointers.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 8:30 AM

 
Everybody loves a dirty campaign

Ez has been working on a campaign poster. First he thought of a poster design incorporating a giant prune with a bold red line through it, you know, like the no smoking signs, but instead the message would be "No More Prunes." Whatcha think? Well, not everyone would get the message, you think. (Ez is not implying that Carolyn Peterson is a pruneface, or that her administration has been rather geriatric, and Ithacans won’t put up with laxative politics.

Then Ez came up with a poster design that symbolized his support for the environment. In the background you see happy cows grazing in the sun and, in the foreground a very large green tree. The line of reasoning here was – cows will bring in the farm vote ---wait a minute, to begin with, does Ithaca even have a farm belt. We know, Ithaca has a Farmer’s Market and a Byrnes Dairy. No matter, the tree is what would really suck the voters in. Everyone loves trees. Even Cornell says they love trees even though they cut down a gorgeous stand of trees in Redbud Woods. Every tree hugger in Ithaca came out to fight the good fight, chaining themselves to trunks of trees, maintaining round the clock vigils, but, que lastima, Munich repeats itself in every generation. You know, the Munich Agreement. Appeasement. 1938. Joseph Chamberlain. Get the picture.

Ez has been looking into ways he could get in front of the issue of the environment. Maybe get his picture taken by the Inlet, dredging up shopping carts and condoms.

Or, how about if Ez has his picture taken wearing a black ski mask and an ELF button as he brandishes a gasoline outside the parking lot of Home Depot. No, that wouldn’t work. People would think Ez had just come out of the store after buying the sucker. And we all know that Ithacans don’t shop at big box stores. It’s those nasty consumers from Watkins Glen and Elmira that pollute the air, lay their rubber on Rt 13 as they pile into their gas guzzling SUV’s to shop for bargains at retail outlets that don’t pay their employees a livable or even a living wage.

And, insofar as Carolyn's predecessor basically gave a good chunk of the environment of Ithaca away to developers, that's pretty much relieves Carolyn of much responsibility for preserving the ecology of Ithaca. Not that Carolyn wasn't on City Council during the Great Ithaca Fire Sale, otherwise known as the Cohen administration so she would know a think or two about runaway development.

For the uninitiated, which basically refers to everyone in Ithaca except the 15 people who voted in the last election, Carolyn Peterson is the Democratic mayor of Ithaca. So, the next time you have to replace your front axle on a pothole, take it up with her. She is the middle aged woman with the bun who bears an uncanny resemblance to everyone's 3rd grade home room teacher which can be rather unnerving because, in third grade, Ez spent so much time in the coat room, people thought he'd either become a tailor or turn out to be a tortured Kafkawannabe blogger. Carolyn’s claim to high electoral office, besides the fact that she can endure 16 hour committee meetings 4 times a week, is that she ran a senior center. There are reports that she was partial to black leather dominatrix costumes as she patrolled the halls there for seniors who didn’t eat their prunes and milk, or who showed up late to knitting bees. Oh yes, she served a couple of terms on City Council where she earned the nickname, The Rubber Stamp. Fortunate for Carolyn, the video record of some her most compromising committee votes burned up in a suspicious fire.

Wait a minute, it's September and have you seen any signs that Carolyn is even running a campaign? Does she even know who she's running against? Will they have to bring in a polyester Republican opponent from Elmira to run against her? Someone who ran an insurance agency and headed the local Kiwanis? Hell, before she faces any token Republican opposition, she still has to get through the primaries first and that means she'll be facing off against Ez.

Yep, you recall Ez threw his blog into the ring last May. Since then, he's been busy picking up cans and bottles to build up his war chest. The thing is, though, that the economy of Ithaca is so brisk right now that a quarter of the men in Ithaca over 40 without a MA are also picking cans and bottles. On a given day, you can see an army of the unemployed or marginally employed scouring the trash cans around the Commons. Then we all retire to the soup kitchen to talk politics.

But, perhaps, Carolyn Peterson doesn’t know there's a soup kitchen in Ithaca nor does she know that the local paper ran a series of articles on poverty in Ithaca. And how all the bums that loaf on the Commons --oops, that's politically incorrect, the economically challenged occupying all the benches? Yeah, tell us, what the f---k, pardon the French, is little Carolyn doing about job creation anyway? How many doormen, maids, shopping cart attendants, checkout people, barristas, bus boys, pizza delivery men can you have in one town? But Carolyn doesn’t depend on the ‘little people’ of Ithaca to get re-elected, does she?

The bald faced truth is that Carolyn doesn’t need to campaign, doesn’t need to hang posters, kiss babies, shake hands outside supermarkets, because the job of Mayor of Ithaca is an appointed position. Ain’t that so, baby? It’s all decided in a backroom behind Green Star. Mind you now, not a smoke filled backroom as in days of yore but a backroom filled with the delicious aroma of deluxe cappuccino. Do you see what Ez is getting at? Do you really see? It’s the friggin’ organic produce cartel and the bozos on the hill that run Ithaca!!!!!!!! A bunch of Daddy Warbuck organic millionaires! It’s out, it’s finally out. Ez has blown the cover off the compost.

Hey, you can choose to believe him or not but Ez knows, Ez knows. And he has pictures!

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 4:18 AM

 
They Shoot Environmentalists, Don't They

One of Ez's favorite all-time movies, and we're going back, way back on this one
to the time when Ez was young enough to wish he had a pony tail but never had enough hair to tie it back in a tail let alone a stalk, is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? with Jane Fonda, Red Buttons and Gig Young. If you remember who any of these actors are, you are probably getting nasty annoying junk mail from AARP. No, Ez is not imitating a seal. That's the American Association of Retired Persons.

The AARP is some baby boomer's great idea to do what the Germans, Napoleon, the ancient Romans, Alexander the Great, and quite possibly Genghis Khan, but we can't possibly know because he didn't leave a diary, only fantasized about doing and that is to rule the world. Every American, and very shortly, everyone else on the planet, gets an invitation to join AAPR as soon as they reach, say 55. But, with enough people on junk food diets, swilling Pepsi and Coca Cola, and being exposed to microwave bombardment from cell phones, the average life expectancy assigned to humans may drop to 55, so AARP will have to send those invitations out when folks reach 45.

But, say you decide to tear up your invitation and chuck it? No matter, AARP will not give up on you. There is no way that you can ever get off the AARP mailing list. You might think that the AARP and the Social Security Administration were in league with eachother the same way that EBAY is now linked to the US Post Office. These alliances are happening all over the place now. The Pentagon is a subsidiary of Exxon, NASA's made an exclusive deal with McDonalds to run the food service on the international space station, and who knows but far beyond, where no restaurant chain has dared to go.

AARP will keep hounding you and hounding you. And, if you hold out and resist, no big deal. They simply won't let you croak until you join. You see, AARP is gobbling up all the funeral parlors in the US and Mexico.

There were a fair number of AARP members a few Sundays back on the Commons at the big Green Party rally. In fact, 5 out of the 8 people attending the rally might have been old enough to see They Shoot Horses, Don't They? when it first came in 1969. How gray was my party, eh? Or maybe it was too early in the morning for anyone under 25 to be expected to discuss wind power?

Could it be that, even in this bastion of progressivism, this Ecotopia we call Ithaca, membership in the Green Party is declining? Are people still pissed about Nader in 2000? After 8 years of Republicans raping the environment, promoting global warming, spending billions building up the infrastructure of control and domination rather than infrastructure like bridges and cities, well you'd think more people would be a little forgiving and sign up on the Green dotted line.

Ez was a little surprised, to say the least, about the turnout. Not that he was there for the rally himself. On that given Sunday morning he was waiting for the Dollar Store to open up so he could purchase something produced by folks in Burma being paid $5 a year. If you want to get down to specifics, Ez was buying a package of corn grippers. That's right, those little yellow things you stick in either end of your corn on the cob so you don't burn your fingers or have butter dripping down your wrists. It seems like no one in America produces those thingees anymore. And, incidentally, no one in Burma eats corn on the cob.

Anyway, Ez was curious so he followed one of these aging GP activists back to where the dude had parked his car. Holy shit. Ez couldn't believe his eyes. This guy was in the process of getting some literature out of the bed of his brand new Ford Silverado. You know, bronco tough. Big enough wheel span to take n entire family of possums out on the straightaway. Hey, remember, speaking of which, that road kill movie Ez produced some years back. Well, it just won top honors at the Tallahassee Film Festival.

Speaking of movies, let's get back to They Shoot Horses. First, a simple plot summary. This couple played by Jane Fonda and Michael Sarandon sign up for a dance marathon during the Depression to make a little cash which was rather scarce in those days. Gig Young plays the cynical, world weary emcee at the event. After being in how many Doris Day movies, you'd be cynical too. Anyway, a week into the contest or after some agonizingly long time these folks had to be on their feet, dancing to Fats Waller tunes, these characters, who by that time were dripping with sweat, bone tired and sorely in need of some gatorade, which, by the way. wasn't being bottled at that time, were ready to give it up. One says to his partner, 'they shoot horses, don't they?" The film doesn't have a happy ending.

Great movie. You really ought to see it. But, now let's get back to those environmentalists on the Commons. Those poor folks could have been sleeping in or doing laps on their treadmills,but here they were, out this early in the morning to preach to the choir, to evangelize for wind power and solar energy that is still so unaffordable most people in Richford or Newfield wouldn't be able to afford a single solar panel for their lean to'. Nor could the average resident of either of those communities afford to buy a parking space let alone a condo at EcoVillage.

This is their last hurrah, after all. It's not like they'll ever have another banner year like 2000, do you think? Oh, where is the visionary gleam? What did the poet say, you can never bring back the splendor in the grass, the glory and the dream.

They shoot environmentalists, don't they?






Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 11:44 AM

 




Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:15 AM