Author: asitoughttobemagazine

Inactivism and the Movies

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INACTIVISM AND THE MOVIES

by Billee Sharp

I’m under-whelmed by the amount of worthy and righteous local events I’ve missed in the last month.  There was the anti-war demo downtown on March 20, marking seven years of war in Iraq, a Marin-side Palestinian benefit in memory of Rachel Corrie to raise $ for the Gaza Mental Health Organization and even Arundati Roy talking about tribal resistance in India to benefit the International Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights  in Indian-administered Kashmir. I was absent from all these events and my excuses range from having to attend the immensely important first game of the U-13 Spring soccer season, to a bout of chronic hypertension and that old chestnut – lack of funds.  As a permanent resident of the U.S., formerly and more exotically known as a ‘resident alien,’ I am actually verboten to participate in anything political, and of course I don’t get a vote locally or nationally. Basically though, not having enough surplus monthly wealth has been key: sliding scale admissions that start at twenty bucks and go upward haven’t been in the budget this month, AP exam fees, SAT tutorials, gym membership, music lessons and soccer fees – the basic stuff that supplements public education here in California, sucked up those few hundred bucks that were left after paying the rent and the bills. I  know that I should have made more lentil-based suppers to make a contribution to the Gazans. I should also have considered being more humble by going and offering the five bucks I had in hand (another theoretical six being dutifully paid for bridge-crossing). We did succeed in going to the Education Cuts demo though,  my middle-schooler, as you see, with a home-made banner reading ‘SCHOOLS NOT BOMBS YO!’ We rendezvoused with brother and his crew from SOTA and the Balboa High contingent and  all spent some happy moments chanting outside City Hall.

During this period of law-abiding political inactivism I do seem to have managed to have seen quite a lot of movies. While this is not necessarily a noble pursuit I feel sufficiently inspired to write about them. I don’t always get to watch a lot of movies, but I do have a weird attachment to having them in the house. I’ve been known to hang on to Netflix movies for many months, paying ridiculous sums to have obscure classics like Aguirre: The Wrath of God here, ready for viewing.

I feel that a household like ours has been a golden vein of revenue for the DVD delivery businesses, not being organized enough to actually watch and return discs makes the average cost of having a movie delivered to the house probs around twenty bucks. Then we still have to go to the video store because we only have Aguirre, and Waterworld which boys have long since  maxxed out on. The third delivered movie  has invariably  dematerialized sometimes leaving its insignificant little paper envelope behind, sometimes not. Our home collection of movie discs has diminished since the advent of  T.V. on the computer (so much for the years we spent feeling lofty while depriving the boys of brainwashing Cable) now they are sucking up episodes of Lost and The Office for free online.

Most of our DVDs are, predictably, the ones Blockbuster made us buy after we missed the return dates, if anybody wants that Miss Pettigrew flick, its languishes here, still unwatched, also Babel and something called Scotland P.A.

The DVD rental business has to be in significant decline: digital download technology, already utilized by i-tunes and Netflix must logically precede more empty vid stores in suburban malls, as even the movie–idiotic like us figure out that we are wasting money, gas and time getting our movies the old way.

So viewing  has been wider-ranging for me this month as I’ve attempted to view what I’d paid handsomely for. I’ve been rendered amused, inspired, heartbroken and informed as I  watched comfortably from my own sofa. As the Oscars swizzled in the headlines I caught up with some that were nominated but more that weren’t.

Favorites:  Bright Star (2009)– thanks Jane Campion for exquistite visions of Hampstead & early nineteenth century fashion, 10 out of 10 from me , nada from the boys “Mom, the music was fucking awful” they snorted, utterly unmoved by the tragic Keats.

Moon (2009), we all loved, brilliant story, ace clone by Sam Rockwell and pretty faultless everything:  direction,soundtrack & cinematography. I’m almost tempted not to return this to Blockie so it can sit in its rightfully place in our collection, next to BladeRunner.

The Hurt Locker (2009), not as gratuitous as I’d feared and functioning pretty well as an anti-war statement, I particularly liked how the good guys-bad guys dictum was absent at character level.

The Hangover (2009) culled by the offspring for hilarious dialogue  fully low-brow and guiltily enjoyed by me, cue husband head-shaking about banality, vulgarity etc.

Where the Wild things Are (2009), cool computer animation, but even my big kids were freaked with the dark interpretation of the beasties, I definitely wouldn’t show it to any smalls.

In The Loop (2009), British-made Office-like hilarious look at minions and cabinet ministers interacting with American counterparts in the build-up moments to the Iraqi war, it’s really funny, I say a must-see, and super impressive for a production budget of less than a million.

If a movie is likely to be disturbing I try and watch it during the day, its true what the Ayurvedic tradition says about not overstimulating the mind before bedtime with books or visuals: it does lead to troubled dreams. That’s why I held on to Sin Nombre (2009) for so long, I’d watched the first twenty minutes in bed and made an executive decision to continue during daylight hours. If I was going to recommend just one movie from recent viewing, it would be this one, directed by Oakland-born Carey Fukunaga, it tells a commonplace story of Central American migrants coming north and the everyday tragedy of young men caught up with gangs. There is an indisputable reality that glints in every frame, hugely talented understated performances from the main actors and the non- professional extras add pathos in the unmistakably genuine slump of their shoulders.

“I didn’t have to tell them [the extras] anything- they know how to sit on a train” said Fukunaga in an interview in the Socialist Review.

I’m haunted by Sin Nombre, and rightly so, beautiful and brutal, it has spurred my inactivism into at least a renewed effort to habla espanol , ‘501 Spanish Verbs’ is back on my bedside table.

–Billee Sharp

Undocumented and Unafraid

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My Name is Mohammad and I am Undocumented

“Get in line,” they like to say, without realizing that many of us were at some point in this infamous line. My family immigrated to the United States from Iran when I was three years old. At the time my dad was accepted to a university on a student visa to get his doctoral degree. After three years, he completed his studies and applied for something called Optional Practical Training, essentially allowing him to extend his stay for twelve months. During that time, he would be able to continue to work and study in the same field he received his PhD in.

While still under the OPT program, he secured sponsorship from a job and applied for a change of status from OPT to an H1b visa. Rather than do this themselves, my parents thought it would be better to put something this serious into the hands of an attorney. However, due to not knowing exactly where to go, they contacted the university and were referred to the international student center where there were immigration attorneys on hand. The school’s immigration attorney handled all of the paperwork, my parents paid the required fee, and they were told everything was set to go, or so they thought. Now mind you, up until this point, we all still had legal status; we were still “in line”.

Eventually a letter came from INS stating that the application was rejected because the fee enclosed was not the right amount. Apparently, INS had raised its fee the previous year, and it was now $20 more than we were instructed by the attorney to provide. Doing what any normal person would do, my parents immediately hired an attorney who was independent of the university. The new attorney, however, turned out to be no better than the free one provided by the school. Rather than file an appeal with INS and provide a check for the correct amount, the attorney chose to bicker back and forth with the school attorney as to why they were even advising students on such matters. The attorney failed to inform my parents that they had only 60 days to appeal the decision; the attorney failed to take any measures to protect our status or to inform us of what could be done to protect our status. And so we lost legal status.

If the immigration system doesn’t work for someone who tries to do everything the right way, then how does it treat those who were never even given the option of doing things the right way?

I now find myself in a constant state of limbo. I am currently enrolled in the social work program at school; I have always volunteered within the local community and have been offered several jobs I have had to unfortunately decline.

I can’t see myself living anywhere else other than America. All of my childhood memories are from America, and it is the only home I have known. Apart from that, I also happen to be gay, and if one is at all up to date on their current events, then I am sure you know how unfriendly a place Iran is for anyone who happens to be LGBTQ. Iran is one of the countries that not only punishes people for being gay but also kills them. Mahmoud Asgari, 16 and Ayaz Marhoni, 18 are two teenagers who were recently killed for no reason other than being gay.

“To execute people simply because they are gay or have had gay sex just isn’t acceptable in the 21st century,” he exclaimed. Their comments follow the public hangings of Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, on 19 July in Mashad, provincial capital of Iran’s northeastern Khorasan province, on charges of homosexuality.

In addition to the outright intolerance towards homosexuality, it is the view of the Iranian clerics that the cure to homosexuality is a sex-change operation.

“Approval of gender changes doesn’t mean approval of homosexuality. We’re against homosexuality,” says Mohammed Mahdi Kariminia, a cleric in the holy city of Qom and one of Iran’s foremost proponents of using hormones and surgery to change sex. “But we have said that if homosexuals want to change their gender, this way is open to them.”

Going back to Iran is not even an option for me, and honestly, the only difference I see between myself and the next American is $20, two strong cases of legal malpractice and a piece of paper.

~Mohammad, DREAMer from Michigan

We were so inspired by the DREAMers’ courage in coming out last week that we will continue to feature their stories through the end of March.  Please show your support by signing the petition to pass the DREAM Act.  Thank you.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DORIANNE LAUX

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DUST

by Dorianne Laux


Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor–
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes–
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.

Dorianne Laux began writing poetry in earnest when she moved to Berkeley, California. Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. With a number of books to her credit, Laux is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon.

Editor’s Note: Dorianne Laux has been featured on As It Ought To Be before, but a good poet should be celebrated, and often. Some poems simply ring true to you in both their language and their message. I find this phenomenon occurring with acute regularity when I read through a book of Dorianne Laux’s poetry. I couldn’t get twenty pages into What We Carry without being strongly torn between two poems to feature on today’s series. The poem that competed with “Dust” is “Aphasia.” Read it here.

Want to read more by and about Dorianne Laux?
Poets.org
Web Del Sol
How a Poem Happens

The Democrats’ Health Care Bill

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DEFEAT IN VICTORY

by Shamus Cooke

What looks like a big victory for Obama and the Democrats may be their greatest undoing. It’s true that the passage of Obama’s health care bill represents a significant political victory for the Democrats. But sometimes a battle won could equal a lost war.

It’s telling that Obama had so much trouble in getting his own party to pass the bill on a simple majority basis: the bill was so blatantly watered down with the corporate hose that anyone with their name attached to it feared future electoral doom.

This kept the Democrat’s left wing — the so-called progressive wing — from initially giving their seal of approval. It must be remembered that some of the left Democrats initially claimed support for single payer health care. After being scolded by the Party leadership that this demand was “off the table,” the lefts moved to the right and demanded a “strong public option.”

The public option grew weaker and weaker as the health care bill evolved. The left Democrats pinned all their hopes on it; they ignored the rest of the health care bill, which slashed Medicare and taxed the “Cadillac” health care plans of union workers, all in the hopes that a miniscule public option would give the lefts some political cover.

It wasn’t meant to be. The final health care vision is the brainchild of the monopoly corporations who dominate health care in America. Their power will remain untouched. Indeed, it will only grow.

Dennis Kucinich, the most “radical” of the progressive Democrats, waited until the last round before he threw in the towel to the health care industry. His capitulation is especially symbolic, as many progressive activists around the country remained in the Democratic Party solely because he was there. His inglorious surrender signals what many progressives already knew: the Democrats are a corporate dominated party, where liberal ideas are tolerated so long as they have no actual effect on policy.

With Kucinich and the other left Democrats now fully discredited, the Democratic Party has further undermined its credibility — what little remained. Those who hoped that the party could be reformed— that the corporate wing could somehow be out-muscled— will be duped no longer.

Also, the bill’s taxing of “Cadillac” health care plans will further alienate organized labor from the Democrats. What little faith the unions had in the Democrats will be badly shaken.

More significantly, those millions of people who are soon to be mandated to buy shoddy, corporate insurance will vent their rage solely at the Democrats. Recent posts on OneSureInsurance.co.uk clearly show that, a significant portion of the currently uninsured will remain without insurance, and be penalized at tax time for not buying into the corporate healthcare scam. These millions will be never vote Democrat again.

The Democrats have a won a congressional battle against the Republicans, while sawing off the branches of support on which they are perched. The party that was once “the lesser of two evils” is now competing on equal footing with the Republicans.

With both political parties dominated by the big banks and corporations, there is ever growing political vacuum to the left (the vacuum to the right is being filled by the tea partiers).

There have been countless attempts to organize a mass third party. The numerous progressive political parties that currently exist do so on an insignificant scale.

What remains missing is the support of labor unions, which represent millions of working members. Labor is the only social force that currently exists on the left capable of creating a mass-based party with the resources capable of competing with the two parties of big business.

What the unions lack in funds they make up for with potentially millions of volunteers — door-knockers, phone bankers, fund raisers, community organizers, etc.

If labor were to finally declare its independence from the Democrats, and announce the drive to create an independent labor led party representing the majority of working people in this country, the “fractured left” would find instant cohesion.

If this labor based party were based on a progressive platform —including Jobs, Peace and Medicare for All — not only would the country’s millions of union members join and vote for it, but the tens of millions of working people disenfranchised by the Democrats would instantly jump on board.

The political void to the left needs to be filled quickly. Tea Partiers and Ron Paul Republicans are benefiting from this political black hole: many people who are progressive at heart are being tricked by these right-wing populists. A bold showing from America’s Labor Movement would stop this trend dead in its tracks and open the way for true majority rule.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action. He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

Thie piece first appeared March 23, 2010 in Counterpunch.

Carrying a Backpack of Sorrow….Soldiers on the Edge of Suicide

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Jack Hirschman, 2006 Poet Laureate of San Francisco, with Iraq War vet, Jon Michael Turner

By Nadya Williams

More of our young soldiers are now killing themselves than are being killed in our wars in the Middle East. The sad statistics are at the end of this article, but the following poem by a 24-year-old former Marine, who slashed his wrists twice after four years of duty and two tours of combat, tells it all.

You fell off the seat as the handlebars turned

sharp left, throwing your body onto

the hot coals of Ramadi pavement,

intertwining your legs within your bicycle.

Lifeless eyes looking to the sky,

your neck muscles twitched turning your head

directly towards us. Nothing escaped your

lips except for the blood in the left corner

of your mouth that briefly moistened them

until the sand and dust dried them out.

The blood trail went behind the stone wall

where your body was placed, weighed down

by your blue bicycle and we laughed.

I used to fall asleep to the pictures and now

I can’t even bear to get a glimpse.

Excerpted from “The Bicycle” by Jon Michael Turner

The military “broke me down into a not-good person, wearing a huge mask,” Turner told the audience at his poetry reading in San Francisco’s Beat Museum, in North Beach. The March 12 event – on the birthday of ‘Beatnik’ literary icon Jack Kerouac – was organized by the venerable Jack Hirschman, San Francisco’s 2006 Poet Laureate, and by the local IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War). Jon read from his small, self-published book “Eat the Apple” and from several large pages of dark green hand-made paper – the product of The Combat Paper Book Project, where 125 vets, ranging from World War II through Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, shredded their uniforms to make books for their poetry.  “Poetry saved my life,” he said more than once.

The Burlington, Vermont native was accompanied by his father and step-mother on a coast to coast series of readings from the little book whose name comes from a play on the word “core.” The flyer for the evening reading stated:

“There’s a term ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine,’” Turner says, ripping his medals off and flinging them to the ground. As the room explodes in applause he adds, “But there’s also the expression:

‘Eat the apple, f*ck the corps.

I don’t work for you no more!’”

Jon walks with a cane and was physically injured in battle, but only his poetry reveals his invisible wounds, as in these excerpts from “A Night in the Mind of Me – part 1”

The train hits you head on when you hear of another

friend whose life was just taken.

Pulling his cold lifeless body from the cooler,

unzipping the bag and seeing his forehead,

caved in like a cereal bowl from the sniper’s bullet

that touched his brain.

His skin was pale and cold.

It becomes difficult to sleep even after being

physically drained from patrols, post,

overwatches and carrying five hundred

sandbags up eighty feet of stairs after

each post cycle.

The psychiatrists still wonder why we

drink so heavy when we get home.

We need something to take us away

from the gunfire, explosions,

sand, nightmares and screams……….

I still can’t cry.

The tears build up but no weight is shed.

Anger kicks in and something else

becomes broken.

A cabinet

An empty bottle of liquor

A heart

A soul.

People still look away as we submit ourselves

to drugs and alcohol to suppress these

feelings of loneliness and sadness,

leading to self mutilation and

self destruction on the gift of a human body.

The ditch that we dug starts to cave in.


And from “A Night in the Mind of Me part 2:”

Laughter pours out from the house as if nothing

were the matter, when outside in a chair, underneath

a tree, next to the chickens, I sit,

engulfed in my own sorrows………

Resting on the ground is my glass,

half filled with water but I don’t have

enough courage to pick it up and smash it against

my skull so that everyone can watch blood

pool in the pockets where my collar

bones meet my dead weighted shoulders,…

Every time I’m up, something pulls me down,

whenever I relax, something stresses me out,

every time a smile tugs on my heart, an

iron fist crushes it, and I sit outside in a chair,

underneath a tree, next to the chickens,

away from the ones that I love so

that my disease won’t infect them.

Sorrow and self-pity should be detained,

thrown into an empty bottle and given to the

ocean so that the waves can wash away the pain.

One wonders why this slightly-built, sensitive young man joined the Marines in 2004 at the age of 18 (he was sent first to Haiti at the time of the US-backed February coup that ousted the populist and democratic President Jean-Bertrand Aristide). Jon explained that he came from a military family whose participation in every American conflict stretches back to the Revolutionary War. His father is clearly too young to have gone to Vietnam, but could have easily been in one or both of the Bushes’ wars. Jon’s big brother is also a soldier, ironically now in Haiti after the earthquake. Of the American military, Jon now writes in ”What May Come”:

tap, tap

That’s the sound of the man at your door,

I’m sorry but you won’t see your son alive anymore,

my name is Uncle Sam and I made your boy a whore.

And, from “Just Thoughts”

…………I often wonder

if this will be the rest of my life.

Schizophrenic, paranoid, anxious.

That guy that walks around the city center that

people steer their children away from.

“Mommy, who’s that man walking next

to the crazy guy?”

“Oh that’s just Uncle Sam sweetheart, he takes

the souls from young men so that

they have trouble sleeping at night”

“It takes the Courage and Strength of a Warrior to ask for Help” – we’ve all seen the ads, on billboards and busses, with the silhouette of a down-cast soldier against a back drop of the stars and stripes, and a 1-800 Help Line just for vets, provided by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. But “The Surge” in self-inflicted deaths continues, with 350 suicides of active duty personnel in 2009, compared to 340 combat deaths in Afghanistan, and 160 in Iraq during the same year – the highest active duty military suicide numbers since records began to be kept in 1980. And for every death, at least five serving personnel are hospitalized for attempting to take their life, according to the military’s own studies.

But these statistics do not include the far larger number of post-active duty veterans who kill themselves after discharge, or, like Jon Michael Turner, who make the attempt. A CBS study put the suicide rate among male veterans aged 20 to 24 at four times the national average. According to CNN, total combat deaths since 2001 (8+ years) in Afghanistan are now 1,016; since 2003 (7 years) in Iraq 4,390 – totaling 5,406 as of March 21, 2010. However the Veteran’s Administration estimates that 6,400 veterans take their own lives each year – an ever growing proportion of them from the recent Mid-East wars – with this figure widely disputed as being way too low. Multiply 6,400 by seven or eight years to compare the numbers of our young soldiers that are now killing themselves, to those being killed in our wars and occupations.

________

To buy “Eat the Apple,” contact Jon M. Turner, Seven Star Press, 4 Howard Street Suite 12, Burlington, VT 05401; E-mail: JT@greendoorstudio.net See also: www.IVAW.org (Iraq Veterans Against the War)

Nadya Williams is a free-lance journalist and a former study-tour coordinator for Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights and peace non-profit.  She is an active associate member of Veterans for Peace, San Francisco chapter, and is on the national board of the New York-based Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

ANDREAS ECONOMAKIS

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MUSSOLINI ON THE BAY BRIDGE

by Andreas Economakis

Spring, 1992.

Friday night.  I sit on the couch, swigging a beer and packing bong hits.  It’s the quickest way I know to unwind.  My brown VW Bug sits directly outside my Yosemite Ave. apartment, next to the Rasta’s Audi.

I hate the Rasta.  He’s been breaking my balls ever since I moved into the apartment. Dancing and swatting his legs, he constantly bitches about the fleas at the building’s entrance. Rasta blames my cats.  I argue with him that it’s an Oakland problem, that there’s no way my cats could accommodate so many fleas on their backs.

“It’s a Biblical plague, dude,” I keep telling him, “not the cats’ fault.”

“Rasclat!” he replies, annoyed.

The phone rings.  It’s my girlfriend.  She’s just finished her shift at UCSF’s hospital, in the city.  “You want to go to Katie’s party?” she asks.  I’m game.  I’m always game to get out of Oakland and back into San Francisco.

I drain the rest of my beer and get up.  I slide the bag of weed and my pipe into my leather jacket.  The door slams and I’m outside.  It’s a cool night, my breath visible in front of me.  I unlock the brown Bug.  She’s a good-looking Beetle.  She turns over on the second try and I start down Yosemite Avenue.

Not 20 meters from the apartment, the car totally dies.  Just like that.  Lights, motor, everything.  Dead as a doornail.  I peer out the window, down the dark, sleepy street.  I wait for the nuclear blast.  I’ve just seen a film where there is a nuclear war and all the electronic equipment the city dies, just like my car.  No.  There is no nuclear war in the Bay Area.  I get out and fiddle with the battery.  Nothing!  Shit!

I push the car into a parking space and stomp back home, my anger level rising, brewing. The fucking car is a lemon.  Of this I am now sure.   I first suspected the Bug was a dud right after buying it, on it’s maiden voyage over the Bay Bridge.  The exhaust fumes were so thick in the cabin that my girlfriend and I had to dangle our heads out the window, like a couple of German Shepherds.  I fixed the exhaust, but it somehow still leaked into the heating system.   We had to drive around without heat, frozen in our good-looking Beetle.  Now this.  I feel like pumping a bullet into the Bug.  But what good would that do?  The car is already dead.

Stewing, I wheel my 1981 Honda motorcycle out of the yard and fire her up.  The insurance has lapsed and my NY registration has just ended.  I will get all the paperwork squared away soon, once my girlfriend learns to drive and takes over the Bug.  Damn Bug.  I wonder if it’s a good idea to drive the bike without proper paperwork.  Just a quick jaunt into the city, I think.  Surely no one will see the tags.  Not tonight of all nights.

At the onramp to the Bridge, I’m still stewing about the Beetle: “I can’t believe that guy sold me a lemon, I can’t believe how gullible I was, I can’t believe….” My brain is boiling.   I’ve just passed Treasure Island when I notice the blue and red lights of a Highway Patrol car directly behind me.  The patrol car chirps and flashes.  Fuck!  My heart starts pounding.   I slow down.  How fast was I going?  I’m not sure.  The light on the speedometer is broken.  Shit!

I signal to pull over to the emergency lane.  The cop barks through his loudspeaker to not pull over, to continue to the first exit and pull off there.  This guy is a barker!

I slow down to about 30 miles per hour, and inch my way to the exit.  Surely the cop has seen my expired NY tags by now.  I’m sure he’s going to frisk me and find the weed and pipe.  I have to ditch my stash.  But how?  This Nazi is all over me.  Oh, man!

My breath smells like beer.  Why didn’t I eat a mint before leaving?  I’m going to get Breathalyzed.  This is it.  I’m going to jail.  Guaranteed….  My girlfriend will be left standing all alone in front of the hospital, my cats will starve to death in their flea-shack in Oakland, frantically scratching their backs as Rasta-dude dances and swats his legs out front.  This is all shaping up to be a lousy episode of “Cops.”

I pull off at the first exit, an abandoned little road in the industrial bayside district of downtown San Francisco, the Embarcadero.  Yikes!  This place is totally desolate.  The cop will kick my ass down here.  Or violate me.  Oh God, I just can’t handle dropping to all fours, 9mm cocked and pressed against the side of my head.  I’ll bite down if it comes to that.  He can shoot me for all I care.  I’ll bite down before he splatters my brains against the sidewalk, Hemingway style.  I’d like to see Officer John Wayne Bobbit explain that to his supervisors?   No, I won’t let this fascist debase me.

I pull over to the side of the abandoned street.  There is no one in sight.  I kick out the bike’s side-stand and get off, placing my helmet on the gas tank.  I’m trembling.  Assuming my most innocent look, I stick my hands in my jacket pockets.  I nervously finger the bag of weed and pipe, wondering if I should try and ditch them.  The cop will probably see me.  Maybe I should run. Just hightail it out of here.  No.  They always catch runners.

The cop sits in his patrol car, lights on, blinding me.  He’s probably running my plates.  Or maybe he’s unbuttoning his fly.

“Take your hands out of your pockets and keep them where I can see them!” he barks.

Swallowing stale spittle, I quickly comply.  This dude’s obviously into bondage.  Oh God… I try and calm myself by wondering what the slammer in San Francisco looks like.  I bet it’s filled with pothead filmmakers who got busted just like me.  If I’m lucky, I’ll soon be finding out.  Better the slammer with a bunch of baked Fellini experts than the Hemingway-meets-John Wayne Bobbit scenario.

I bounce back and forth on my legs, tense, waiting for the impending doom.  The patrol car door opens and the cop gets out.  Oh… my… God!  It’s Benito Mussolini!  The cop is a big, heavy, shaved-headed Italian-looking dude with leather boots that go up to his knees.  He’s wearing a shiny leather jacket and a pointy Gestapo hat.  This guy’s into leather!  He probably shaves his penis.

Hand on a huge black 9mm semi-automatic pistol, he practically goose-steps up to me.  I shrivel into my boxers.  Mussolini looks me up and down.  I stare at Il Duce, eyes wide with terror.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asks (don’t ever answer these or any other self incriminating questions).

“Um… Don’t really know….  65?” I cringe in reply.

“You were doing 93 on the Bridge. The speed limit is posted at 55.  License, registration and insurance,” he says.

“Oh, man,” I murmur, fishing my wallet out of my jean pocket.

Then, remarkably, something clicks.  Maybe it’s my survival instinct.  Or maybe it’s the cop’s 9mm pistol.  I start yammering, like Roberto Benigni on speed.  My yammer goes a little like this:

“Officer, my car just broke down in Oakland and I’m really late picking up my girlfriend at the hospital, and I couldn’t see the odometer on my bike, a bike that, believe you me, I would never had ridden because I don’t have current tags or insurance, I was just getting ready to do all that, but my car just broke down, and I’m really late to pick up my girlfriend, did I say she works in the emergency room at UCSF(?), and that damn lemon of a Beetle, isn’t there a lemon law(?), I’m really sorry and I’m just about having the lousiest day of my life and man-oh-man is my girlfriend going to be upset, did I mention that she works at the hospital (?), and that Bug, I got ripped off and…”

Il Duce stares at me, flashlight pointed at my face.  He has a grave expression.  He glances down at my license and chuckles the way cops chuckle when they have you by the balls and are toying with booking you or letting you go.  Or maybe it’s the “I’m getting ready to violate you with my baton” chuckle.  He’s probably heard my routine before.  He examines my license with his flashlight.  He’s stalling.  He’s obviously into terrorizing his victims before the S&M shit begins.

My heart is pounding like a jackhammer.  I flash forward and see my brains splattered on the sidewalk, leather-clad Il Duce curled up in a bloody fetal position next to his dismembered member, screaming into his radio for backup.  Serves him right, damn rapist of the people!

There’s an awkward silence.  The cop hands me back my license.  Amazingly, he tells me to slow down, get the bike registered and for God’s sake, update my insurance tomorrow.  I nod, speechlessly.  Mussolini swivels in his boots, walks back to his patrol car, gets in and squeals off. I stand in the dark, abandoned street, unbelieving.  Who would have thought that Mussolini is such a nice guy?

–Andreas Economakis

This piece is part of a collection of stories on blindness entitled: The Blindness of Life.

Andreas Economakis is a film director, writer and father of a curly-haired girl named after Anaïs Nin and Melina Mercouri. He considers Los Angeles, Athens and Nisyros his “home.”  Greek when in the USA and American when in Greece, Andreas regularly calls on his past as a bicycle messenger, cabinet resurfacer, maintenance mechanic,  airport shuttle driver,  alumni development fundraising researcher and  film production manager to avoid typical office jobs and the odd redneck spitball.

Copyright © 2010, Andreas Economakis. All rights reserved.

For more stories by Andreas Economakis click on the author’s name below.

GABRIELA BARRAGAN

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

VALENTINE’S DAY

by Gabriela Barragan

A good friend of mine is a kindergarten teacher. Her stories on the kids are fascinating — their antics, their parents, their obsession with stickers, and most of all, their truth zingers. There’s no honesty more brutal, or deft, than the kind of skinned truth delivered by a 5-year-old not yet conditioned by social graces.

My friend, who loves her job and wouldn’t want any other, also hates Valentine’s Day with the kind of passion that, if harnessed, would be enough to shift a pair of tectonic plates. It’s the only holiday she wishes were banned from the school calendar. Not because of the holiday’s high sugar content, but because it always, always involves pain. She walks away from the day cursing Hallmark and drenched in pathos.

She’s explained it to me this way: 5-year-olds are in some ways exactly like adults. They may be smaller and wear cartoons on their clothes, and have an unnatural fondness for apple juice, but they still have feelings and emotions like grownups. They just aren’t as equipped or accustomed to managing their feelings and emotions like their more jaded adult counterparts.

[Quick side note. We all know grownups who never developed the emotional fiber to tackle any feeling more profound than fear, which might explain the mind-bending support for Sarah Palin. Could we also blame a case of stunted emotional growth on a long-ago Valentine’s Day involving a metaphorical heart stomped to metaphorical gore right over glitter-strewn carpet? My friend would answer with a resounding “Yes”.]

This is why when a 5-year-old has a crush, and the crush does not respond in kind (which, arguably can happen on any day of the year, but let’s face it: the likelihood skyrockets like a motherfracker* on February 14), said 5-year-old experiences the exact same kind of shattered-to-the-core heartbreak adults get drunk over, and adult poets get really drunk over. But, a heartbroken 5-year-old obviously can’t choose alcoholic obliteration, or a myriad of other vices drawing on the over-hyped Seven Deadly Sins, and sugar cookies don’t just make it all better. At least not right away.

So every year, among the paper hearts and associated craft provisions, my friend is on high alert for code red heartbreak: the kindergarten version. All she can do is offer kind words, a hug, and pray that any trauma profoundly felt is washed away by the pebbly sands of time. She knows, though, that kids can hold on to the memories of early heartbreak with a fierce tenacity that outlives childhood, roosts comfortably in adulthood, and then occasionally leaks out in one form or another after a few cocktails.

I don’t remember feeling wrecked as a kid by Valentine’s Day or unrequited love. I was one of the lucky ones; I was never heartbroken before I had braces. And if I broke some kid’s heart back in the day, I don’t remember. I do remember the heart-shaped, pastel-colored candies that tasted like a combination of mild, mint toothpaste and envelope glue. I remember red-foiled chocolate kisses, sugar cookies, heavily frosted cupcakes, the omnipresent red punch, and that washing baked goods down with that red punch resulted in a weird, unsavory aftertaste.

These days, my Mom is my standing Valentine. She has given me a card and chocolate ever since I could talk, even when I was in college, and even when I railed against the corporate greed of retailers. These days I also conveniently use the day to polish off a box of chocolates, generally in one sitting, and justify my sweet gluttony on the fact that I achieved it on a holiday.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

–Gabriela Barragan

*I don’t endorse use of the word “frack”; it’s just plain leotarded. But, my Mom might be reading this.

This piece first appeared at Gabriela Barragan’s blog, House of G, on Valentine’s Day, 2010.

Mad as Hell

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

Peter Finch as Howard Beale, from the 1976 movie, "Network."

Mad as Hell
By John Unger Zussman

I wrote this essay in mid-2009 in a writing group where the day’s prompt was “anger.” In it I tried to capture the despair I felt about the state of the union and our lives. I wasn’t the only one.

Now, as we experience elation over the passage of the health care bill, and Democrats seem to have found their spine, I think it’s important to remember and respect that despair. The world has not fundamentally changed, and our momentary victory will only inflame those who believe that government’s sole job is to protect the privileged. So I post it now (with a few updates) to remind readers, and myself, that the battle is not won, but only just begun.

We are all Howard Beale these days, mad as hell and determined not to take it anymore. The pundits and politicians know this, they fan the flames, blowing our fury first this way, then that, like wheat before the wind. But my rage is constant. I am angry at arrogant Republicans who obstruct governance as though they were still in the majority, and at pathetic Democrats who govern as though they were still in the minority, who give away the store before they even start negotiating, and think passage of a watered-down health care bill, a massive giveaway to Big Pharma and Big Insurance, ought to earn them a Nobel Prize. I am furious at the “patriots” and teabaggers who value the flag over the Constitution, at the neocons who turned the country into a bankrupt war-mongering torturing cesspool of toxic waste and carbon emissions, from which only they and their cronies walked away unscathed, their pockets lined. And I am incensed at the cancers that those toxic wastes create, killing and maiming the people I love, and at the medical establishment that still offers no better solution than to cut, burn, and poison them. I fume at passing time and aging bodies and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and cholesterol. I am outraged at willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism and sanctimonious creationism; irate at commercials and reality shows and movies based on comic books; livid at unemployment and the stock market meltdown and real estate you can’t sell. And most of all I am angry that I have nowhere to put all this anger. Howard Beale was a goddamned prophet.

Copyright © 2010, John Unger Zussman. All rights reserved.

The End of Bipartisanship

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

President Obama signs the health care bill on Tuesday. Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images.

The End of Bipartisanship

If you listen to the Republican talking heads on cable news, bipartisanship just died. But the end of bipartisanship wasn’t last Sunday, or last week, or last month, or even last year. It was in 1991.

“In the spring of 1991, more than a year before the Democrats nominated Clinton, [House minority leader Newt] Gingrich was discussing long-term political strategy with a friend as they strolled around the Washington Monument at about six o’clock one morning. In a moment that he recalled vividly, Gingrich was seized by the conviction that the ‘next great offensive of the Left,’ as he put it, would be ‘socializing health care,’ because the Left, as he put it, was ‘gradually losing power on all other fronts, and they had to have an increase in the resources they controlled. We had to position ourselves in the fight before they got there or they might win….’

“Killing the Clinton reform was a critical means to achieving [control of Congress]. Had any part of the Clinton plan passed that Congress in any form, Gingrich and his closest conservative allies believed, their dreams for forging a militantly conservative future would ‘have been cooked,’ as a key Gingrich strategist later explained.”

— Haynes Johnson & David S. Broder, The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point. Little, Brown, 1996.

In other words, Gingrich decided he was against the Clinton health care plan in 1991 — more than two years before he knew what it would contain, and 18 months before Clinton even became president.  He foresaw that Clinton would be elected, that he would try to put forward a plan for reforming health care, and that, if passed, it would be popular enough to derail for years his goal of Republican control of government.  And he set himself to defeat it on that day, whatever its actual policies, because of partisan politics.

So Newt, please don’t whine to us that Obama should have been more bipartisan.  You closed the door on that option nineteen years ago.

–John Unger Zussman