Cancer Sticks

The opening paragraphs for a new piece of fiction I'm working on.

 Cancer Sticks

            Marcus inhaled.  Completely.  Breath - succulent breath - slid across his pursed lips, cooled his throat and funneled through the narrow vortex of his esophagus.  The effect was immediate.  Pure.  Life affirming.  A particular imbalance in the universe was suddenly corrected.  The chambers of his lungs hollowed then expanded, pushing to the limits of his rib cage.  His chest lifted with the force, suspending his sternum until it was nearly weightless.  Along the inner surface of his lungs, a regiment of alveoli took action.  The tiny sacs stretched and inflated, extracted bits of precious cargo, then, with rapid efficiency, offered it to his heart.  To his bloodstream.  To the four corners of his body.

            With the breath came satisfaction.  The inhale belonged to Marcus, a keepsake of his own survival. He wanted to hang on to this breath, like every breath, enveloping it in a full-body embrace.  He did not want to let go.

            For nearly a lifetime, and an entire career, Marcus had engaged in a specific practice of inhaling.  His instrument, his vice, was cleverly packaged and contained a deadly efficient delivery system: nearly weightless, wholly sexy, marginally affordable, twenty to each convenient pack.  The practice had its own ritual.  Pull  the tab.  Tap the butt end.  Pinch the filter between thumb and forefinger.  Light it up.  The satisfaction came with the inhale.  The effect was sustained in the exhale.  Marcus knew this all too well.  He was not just a practitioner of smoking; Marcus had been an icon of the cigarette world.  The hot red glow of his tobacco, his long satisfied drags, the hazy remains of his exhale, all were shared with a captivated audience.  Marcus’ vice was his virtue.  But that was then.  At the moment there was no vice, Marcus only inhaled.  Perhaps that was all that was left for him.  His mind jostled with a slight ditty – could this be the new slogan for his life? - I have a breathing hole, and without it, I am not whole. He thought of this as he lay on a bed, attached to a machine via a tube, which gave him the oxygen to survive.

Fictional Restaurant of the Day

The People's Creperie:  Where the Peeps Meet the Crepes

The Pathology of Cancer

My mother had small-cell cancer, and it killed her.  Eventually.  The cancer left her body and went to her brain.  It took away everything she knew.

While she was alive there was a process.  She was never without dignity, but she was always curious.  She had to understand the particulars of the disease.  Down to the last cell, the last protein, the last bit of Latin terminology.

Unlike me, my mother was a nurse.  I have little interest in disease; I only care about what is lost.  But I listened because I thought it was expected of me.  I listened to pathology reports and lab results, and tried to understand what it meant about treatment options, quality of living options, life options.

The pathology was often confusing.  Ambiguous.  Confounding.  I accepted on faith that my mother had small-cell cancer, but when the cancer went to her brain they called it glioblastoma.  I only knew the term glioblastoma, because Ted Kennedy had glioblastoma.  It was in the news, part of the national dialogue.  However, when the opened my mother's brain, doctors realized her tumor was not glioblastoma, it had only looked the part.  There would have to be more tests.  Initially, the pathologist said she had spindle-cell carcinoma.  I was hopeful about this new pathology, this new term, but not for long.   Another doctor said it was, again, small-cell cancer.  Then another doctor said small-cell and spindle-cell were  identical.  Then there were additional diagnoses and names, and then, finally, someone told me she had large-cell cancer.  I knew that one had to be wrong, but it wasn't.  They were all correct.  I realized cancer could be many things, even large and small.   Indeed, that is the very nature of the disease:  cancer is about microscopic cells and large masses.

Life too is large and small.  After my mother died I kept thinking of her life as a whole, what it meant to exist over a span of decades.  Of course, as I considered her life, I was forced to recollect the moments.  Life is  dually comprised of nano-seconds and years, fleeting moments and eras, small tasks and meaningful careers, reactions and contemplations...and then, eventually, only memories.

Elvis!

Thank You Very Much

If Elvis was alive, he'd be dead by now.

Christmas Tree Cake

How Can it Be a Christmas Tree and a Cake?

I remember when I was in junior high, watching TV with my grandmother.   A commercial came on for RCA televisions.  We had an MGA set.  My grandmother was perplexed.  She asked me why RCA could advertise on our MGA television.  I tried to explain, but she didn't get it.  She was confused about the mechanics of the TV world.  She understood what the TV was, but not its relationship to its own content.  She realized that the television content was created somewhere else, but, somehow, she believed the television was more than just a receiver that transforms a signal, it was a special box with its own powers and its own agenda.  Curious. 

I don't think I am as unhip as my grandma was in the 70's.  I understand how to use most electronic devices.  I also know how they work.  I know how the content arrives.  However, I don't always understand its value.  I am not ready to herald the importance of hand-held devices.  I still want to live in a world of human contact.  It is ironic that I blog this, but it is true.  When people go out in public places and stare at their smart phones, I am as perplexed as my grandmother was.   I'm pretty sure I am not the naive party in this discussion though.  The phone, the internet, Google, Youtube are not magic.  There is no app to make your life whole.  There is no online game that will make you a better person.  The virtual you is not you.

I'm not suggesting anyone go cold turkey.  Obviously not, I'm on my computer right now.  But I firmly believe that you should never let an electronic device be something you can't live without.  Or something that makes demands upon you.  What are your priorities?  Photos aside, will you remember texting on your smartphone twenty years from now?  Could anything be more vapid?  More pedestrian?  The world burns brighter than a liquid crystal display.  It even burns brighter than a plasma screen.  And, yes, it tastes better than plastic.

Movember

Befor

After

You heard it here first.  This month I plan to grow out my back hair in order to raise awareness for the McRib sandwich.  This is altogether appropriate since the McRib's binding agent is comprised of back hair.  I've heard this from incredible sources.  Incredible!

I know I co-opted the Movember name.  I considered waiting till next month, calling my movement Backember.  But that was a painful name.  It reminded me too much of Conflagebruary, the month of self-immolation.

Hairnuary was a consideration, but that's 2012 and I'm hoping to make a fresh start.

Devices

 I wrote this piece today for a job proposal.  The proposal required 3-5 paragraphs of prose loosely about artificial intelligence.  The piece was supposed to be set in a fictitious South America where warring packs of  animals fight for dominance.  There may have been more to the description, but this is what I got out of it

November 15:  Now that I reread this, I realize why I never heard back from these guys.  Although I wish I could find their original proposal, which was the oddly written and confusing, probably why I didn't put much into this.

Devices

Ibis crawled beneath the dense foliage that clung to the boundary fence.  He knew there was a gap.  A way to get in.   He stayed close to the ground, smelling the damp, loamy soil.  His nose could identify small organisms beneath the ground.  Worms had a certain sweetness to them, the beetles were, perhaps, acrid or bitter.  There was also a bit of dried scat – probably from a coyote – that had an earthy, almost woodsy odor.  His nose was designed to detect, his innate ability.  What wasn’t innate is that he could identify the genus, phylum, order and class of every organism he encountered.  That ability was given to him.  Given to him by a force beyond nature.

At a slight clearing, Ibis found the gap he needed.  He slid his forepaws underneath the fence, then pulled his body through the tight space.  The raw metal edges of the fencing combed through his fur.  Once he was clear of the fence, he could see the building.  It looked dark and unoccupied, just as he had hoped.

Hours earlier, he had heard a familiar yelping.  Another pack had been rounded up, pulled aside and slaughtered.  The simians could detect the enhanced dogs, Ibis didn’t know how.  Even with all his improbable intelligence, Ibis knew nothing of his creation story.  One day he awoke in a kennel and had this particular clarity.  The other dogs behaved differently as well.  Something had happened.  After two days in the kennel they were trucked away, they didn’t know where, but all the dogs could smell the damp air. Then everything changed, the truck was attacked on a dark, moonless night.  Ibis was thrown free when the truck spun off the road.  He never saw the other dogs, he just ran wild through the dark tendrils of the undergrowth.  That’s where he had lived for the last months – surviving on a diet of subterranean delights, always keeping an eye for the simians.

Ibis jumped through a window in the one-room building.  The stench was awful.  When his eyes adjusted he could see the carnage, what remained of the pack.  Their heads were gnawed open.  Yes, it was the work of coyotes.  But it wasn’t typical coyote behavior – the bodies - the food - was left untouched.  These coyotes were soldiers of the simians.  Simians who knew to look for one thing…devices.  Ibis crawled along the floor, pawing through the bloody fur, examining the gnawed skulls of the dogs.  It was a messy scene, perhaps they could have left one device behind – even a piece of an implant.  Ibis needed to see it.  He needed just a piece of the puzzle.  He wanted to understand what he had become.

Downfall

Recently I watched Downfall, the harrowing and disturbing account of the last twelve days of the Nazi regime.  Set in Hitler's bunker in Berlin, and told mostly partially from the perspective of the Nazi ruler's young secretary, Traudl Junge,  the film features an amazing performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler.  Ganz brings a stirring intensity to the role as well as an amazing range of emotions, capturing the megalomaniac's mannerisms - ticks, stoop, gait, nervous habits - in all their inglorious glory.  I highly recommend the film, and I think, unfortunately, that more people know it from Youtube parodies than from viewing the actual film.

I recommend Downfall because it is great drama and somehow pertinent.  The phrase "History repeats itself" may be hackneyed, but it always seems to ring true.  As I was watching the film, I kept thinking of another megalomaniac, Moammar Khaddafi, holed up in a bunker, spouting lies about a lost cause, a lost war, a lost regime, to any true believers who might listen.  History repeats itself, sorry.

Impossible Me.  Implausible you.

Imagine that standards could erode away like a sand dune in a sirocco.  (The plastic perfect mentality of our barbie-doll lives could dissolve, and the multitude of means and standards made up by Madison Avenue gurus, their denizens, their true believers, and their financial dervishes, could be aired out like so much dirty laundry. The rules - rules of thumb, rules of engagement, rules to rule by -  each and every one of them designed to make a more perfect world, and a more complacent citizenry - a citizenry sedated by principle and belief and easy-to-understand mythology - could evaporate).  Imagine that none of the so-called truths were held true.  Imagine people thinking for themselves, always thinking, not just saying.  People on a collision course with the established network of truths, and half-truths and quarter-truths.  People leaving the message behind.  People finding a new language.  Old slogans, old saws, and half-assed aphorisms could be left out to dry.  We don't have to say what is said before:  There are atheists in fox holes.  There are other places like home.  There is rest for the weary.  When you look at the forest, you see the trees.  There are men living as islands.  Many bad deeds go unpunished.  The meek don't inherit much. Inspiration is a lot more than perspiration.

Imagine that you can just make this shit up.

How Not to Hit Your Head

This is an update of an old post, rewritten for the McSweeney's blog competition. It is best when read aloud.

How Not To Hit Your Head On Doorways

First of all, if you do hit your head, and you will, pound your fist into the doorjamb. Pound it hard. Let the doorframe know who’s in charge. Pound again. Yell at the doorframe, spewing the following sophomoric insults: “You’re absolutely wooden.” “Homely.” “Unhinged.” When the doorframe can take no more, give it an ultimatum: “Leave my head alone, you big bully.”

As a rule, you must always duck. Bow your head. Pretend the Emperor of Japan is continually waiting in the next room, but, in general, avoid Asian countries where structures tend to be built for smaller people.

Avoid caves because stalactites hurt and rocks are difficult to insult. Avoid ancient castles and always say no to catacombs. Remember that sepulchers were not designed for the upright.

Avoid beach cottages. Stay away from these structures even if you desire to engage in a Bette Midler Beaches fantasy. This type of role-playing may wound you. Rickety coastal cottages don’t conform to modern building codes. They have been “grandfathered” in. Your grandfather was probably much shorter than you are.

Avoid trailer homes. Avoid cozy lofts. Avoid mountain cabins with angled rooflines.

Be vigilant when wearing a cap. The cap will not protect your head. The bill will impair your vision. The little button atop the cap will tattoo your pate.

Don’t grow so tall. Refuse milk as a child. Take up smoking before you reach puberty. Avoid hanging from ledges. Live in a cold climate. Malnourish yourself. Tell your parents you want inferior genes.

Don’t wear heels. Even when such shoes are fashionable during disco and glam rock periods, insist on flats. Express your fashion sense with large belt buckles and jade jewelry.

Under no circumstances should you ever let your friends convince you to wear a Mohawk.

Frequent train stations, but never, under any circumstances, board trains. Avoid planes. Insist on traveling by chariot.

Insist on living in Wilt Chamberlain’s house. Vacation in Norway. Walk through the midline of archways. Visit monumental structures, buildings whose entranceways represent the apotheosis in headroom – the Greeks got it right with the Parthenon.

Visit museums. Visit cathedrals. Stay outdoors.

Always Chasing Rainbows

It was nearly sunset. Long shadows crept across the icy landscape, edging toward the shoulder of the highway. Mariah sped south on I-25. She kept her eyes focused on the road, trying not to think about the cold or the evaporating daylight. She knew she would not reach Santa Fe, not on schedule, not before dark. It would be difficult to locate the rendezvous point at night.

The red needle of the speedometer pegged at seventy-five. Mariah wanted to go faster, she needed to go faster, but she knew eighty was too fast. State Troopers would not stand for eighty. Mariah held steady as the highway bent westward and sunlight filtered through her windshield. She watched the sun as it trailed behind her on the horizon, hopskotching along the snow-capped peaks. The view reminded her of a film she had watched in college.

She often thought about the film. It was during her freshman year; she was young, excited to be in her first psyche class. The screening was in a small, box-shaped classroom with squeaky tile flooring. The film featured a woman interviewee with a shaved head and a hippie-sounding name. Mariah remembered the woman’s name as Shanti. The bald woman, Shanti, had stood beneath the harsh, documentary-style lights. As the projector clicked forward, she confidently explained how the sun followed her everywhere. Everywhere! This, she remarked, was why she was the daughter of Jesus Christ himself. The class had laughed when Shanti referred to Jesus as “Dad.”

After the film ran out, the professor explained how the documentary subject had misinterpreted a simple law of perception, and she used this “error” to suspend a remarkable delusion.

The word “delusion” provoked Mariah. She raised her hand. “How do we know exactly what she sees?”

The Professor quickly explained the phenomena of the parallax view. This didn’t satisfy Mariah. She raised her hand again. “I understand all that. But how do we really know what she sees? Like, the path of the sun might appear different to her.”

“Do you think she is the daughter of Jesus?” the Professor said. Several of the students laughed.

When Mariah raised her hand again, there were more snickers. It was too much; she let her arm drop and did not bring up the point again.

The memory was crystal clear yet difficult to process. Mariah knew she had had a point when she raised her hand, but she was afraid to express it. She relented when faced with the snickers. Relenting had been a weakness. Mariah no longer relented.

The sun dropped behind the westward range, leaving a fleeting orange glow in its wake. Soon it would be dark and the details of the landscape would disappear. Mariah’s mind pulsed. Who cared about a parallax view when there was nothing to see? Who cared about perception when everything was awash in blackness? The darkness was her enemy. She was going to be late. She would not be able to see. The rendezvous would not happen.

After the long drive, the uncertainty of her destination was troubling. It was impossible for Mariah to avoid the negative thoughts, but she could not let them consume her. Mariah reached deep into herself to find something positive. She was moving toward her destination. She would get there. Positive thinking delivered positive results. This was Mariah’s mantra, part of her new outlook on life. She believed in herself. When she had signed up for Rainbow Pura Vida™ there were plenty of naysayers. Her father had warned her against multi-level marketing. But what did he know? He made a living out of helping people cheat on their taxes.

Mariah had gone to her mother for the $500. It seemed like a lot of money, but this was not just about getting a foot in the door. This was starting anew. Mariah told her mother that she needed emergency dental work. She never would have come up with this idea on her own, she got it from her advisor at Rainbow Pura Vida™. The RPV people really wanted her to become a part of the team.

Once she became an associate at RPV, things really did change for her. The owner, Max Hardwell, put her through an intensive training. She became a valuable asset to the company. Max rewarded her dedication, Mariah spent weekends at his house in Vail, and Max took her to restaurants – expensive restaurants that even her parents had not been to. Mariah learned every detail of the RPV story. It seemed everyone was against the company. The FDA had suspended the company’s first product shipment. There was some rumor about mercury. But it was only a rumor. Max had explained to Mariah how big corporations were afraid of new competition. RPV was a life changer. Everyone who started drinking it would no longer need vitamins, or even aspirin. It was that amazing. Max had found the recipe while traveling in the Amazon. It was ancient. One tribe had been drinking it for centuries and they were the fittest, healthiest people on the continent. The food and drug conglomerates did not want RPV to reach the general market. The conglomerates knew RPV would impact their market share. Who would use normal health drinks, or even eat normal food, once they realized the power of RPV? The giant companies bribed the FDA to keep Max’s product out of the country.

On the highway, the last remnants of dusk gave way to nightfall. The darkness seemed heavy, pushing down below the horizon. Mariah could only see what was in the focus of her headlamps: the striped white line and the dull black pavement. She was still thirty minutes from Santa Fe and no one had phoned. She kept looking at her phone, waiting for the screen to light up. The plan was that the man – the man at the rendesvous point - would call her if she did not make it by dark. Mariah had never met the man, but Max said he could be trusted. Mariah trusted Max. She was supposed to hand over the duffel bg and then check into a motel room. That was it. Max would call her when things were straightened out.

Things had not gone well for Max in the previous week and Mariah knew that she was his escape plan. Even through all the difficulties, she still believed in Max. If you were going to change the world, there would always be obstacles.

You need money if you are going to go head-to-head with the big corporations. Max became depressed when the FDA waylaid the second shipment of RPV as well. Suddenly, there were no more weekends in Vail or fancy dinners. When the RPV associates started quitting, Mariah held strong. She had faith in Max. She understood the importance of RPV, it was too valuable to keep out of the hands of consumers. But, Mariah was also a realist, she knew they would have to sell some of the product before they could make their money back.

It was her idea to go to Max. She explained to him that if they knew the product was coming, that if nothing could stop it from coming, and it was a sure thing, then they should be able to sell it.

“But it hasn’t come yet,” he said.

“But it will be coming,” she said.

This was the stroke of genius that put their plan back on the map. Max found a print ad from one of the big vitamin companies. He scanned the image and put his own banner on it. Mariah thought they should have their very own advertisement, but Max explained that they had neither the time nor the money to generate copy from scratch. “The greatest changes result from the smallest indiscretions,” he said.

They would also have to come up a new name for the company, since RPV was under some sort of investigation. The new company would be Rainbow Health Products. RHP. Max finished the ad and put it out on the Internet. He told Mariah that it was important to sell the product at a good price, in order to get momentum. They priced it lower than the acai drinks, lower than even most vitamins, and RHP was a really amazing product.

Orders flooded in. How could they not? Max and Mariah collected the assets as quickly as possible. Mariah knew that, because they had money, it would not be long until they could get their product into the United States. Success was inevitable.

Mariah reached Santa Fe and exited the highway. She followed a frontage road until she reached a row of concrete buildings. She did not know the town, but Max had told her that rendezvous spot was close to the railroad yard. When she crossed the first set of tracks, she stopped the car. She waited for the phone to ring. Max had told her that the man would call her. She trusted Max.

Within two weeks RHP had amassed $60,000 worth of orders. Max said they needed $100,000. That would be enough to afford the legal team, so they could fight off their detractors and get their shipment released to the U.S. They were so close. Mariah knew success was just around the corner. Max left her in charge when he had to go out of town for a few days. She was happy that Max trusted her, but she was nervous about being in charge. Max consoled her. “Just keep the operation running. We’re going to make it,” he said.

Max’s trip did not happen though. Those were his words to Mariah, “It did not happen.” There were rumors about some problem with his passport. There were also rumors that the police were involved. Max phoned Mariah because he knew she was worried. This is when they hatched the Santa Fe plan. He asked her to meet him at his Vail house the next morning. She followed his instructions, but Max did not arrive in the morning. Uncharacteristically, he was several hours late. She waited until he arrived with the duffel bag. It was so late. She knew then that she would not reach Santa Fe on time, but Max told her to go anyway. “Things will work out,” he said.

Mariah idled on the dark street. Her phone remained quiet, but Mariah could not sit still. She rolled slowly across the second set of railroad tracks. She had to be close to her destination, but it was too dark to tell exactly where she was. She crept forward, studying the shadowy outline of the concrete buildings. Then, she got her signal. A set of headlights clicked on and off. It seemed that Max was right, things would work out. She headed toward the rendezvous spot.

There was a certain comfort in the cloak of darkness. Mariah was invisible and anonymous in the darkness. She was moving toward her destination unfettered by obstacles or distractions. The flashing red lights cut through the night like the wail of an ornery child. Mariah came to a full stop as the patrol car pulled up behind her. The officer exited the car, silhouetted by a flood of white light. Mariah kept her eyes forward and her hands gripped firmly to the wheel. She would not relent.

Betty Only Needs One

I grew up on a wide tree-lined street. Every home had a matching lawn - spacious and fertilized, water and mowed. Every home had a two car garage.

There were several families on the block, and the neighborhood children often convened on the street. It was our street: Glenwood Drive. Our street was a great place to kick balls, ride bikes and play tag. Cars slowed and waved when they passed. Our parents knew each other, and the neighborhood kids knew to go inside when the street lights came on.

Below our street were smaller tree-lined streets with older structures and older cars parked curbside. These houses and apartments were mostly rentals - younger couples, roommates, short timers - people we didn't know. For the most part, these streets seemed safe, and only seemed to lack the polished suburban veneer of Glenwood Drive. Not every lawn was green. Not every garage door was left close. And while most of the residences on the "other" streets were well kept, there always seemed to be at least one anomaly. One house that would stick out - an eyesore with with broken screens, chipping paint and rusty cars out front. Sometimes the cars even overflowed onto the lawn. This was, according to our parents, where the hippies lived.

I doubt my parents, or most of the neighborhood parents, had much of a concept of what hippies were. They probably took their profile from the Seven O' Clock news: Hippies took drugs, lived in communes, had naked babies, and rarely, if ever, took showers. Sounds pretty awful. As a child I took this all at face value. My world consisted of dirt clods, kickball and riding my bike. I didn't have much time to learn about free love. So when I passed a house with too many cars out front, with music blaring or with incense burning, I kept walking - Glenwood Drive was where I idled my time. Nothing below my street really sparked my interest. I wasn't an elitist; I was just a bike riding, tag playing, ball kicker. I never gave any thought to the hippies until the chalk board showed up.

Now, to be fair, I don't even know if the chalkboard was in front of one of the so-called hippie houses. I do remember exactly were the chalkboard stood (for those of you keeping track on Google, it was on the corner of 11th and Pine in Riverside, CA), but I don't know who the occupants of the house were. We never met them. We never saw them. We just drove by their yard and saw their daily message.

At first the messages were pretty innocuous - "170 Days to Christmas" on a hot July day, perhaps, or other slightly funny remarks about pop culture, about life in Southern California, about what it meant to place a chalkboard on a suburban street corner. I'm not certain, but it seemed no one minded the messages in the beginning.

I always looked forward to the messages. They seemed to be a window on a world I knew nothing about. My father also admired the chalkboard. He was never one to stray from a joke or a witty remark. Our family car trips always seemed to bring us past that corner. Dad would often read the messages aloud, just to make sure we were all privy to the quip.

Over time the tone of the messages seemed to change. What was once innocuous became satirical and pointed, and perhaps a bit controversial. This was the post-Watergate era, and politicians were ripe for skewering (as they still are today, but in the 70's there were no blogs, no twitter and no TV chalking Glenn Beck for that matter.). The keepers of the chalkboard had positions and beliefs. They had a voice, and it often countered the official "party line" of the time. Gerald Ford was in office and our country was involved in sloganeering. Perhaps this is what Nixon had learned by going to China. We had new slogans for every new cause: we were "Whipping Inflation Now," "Beating the Energy Crisis" and doing something or another to the Vietnamese. The chalkboard had it's own less-traveled propaganda, seemingly made up by the chalkboard proprietors. I can't remember much about the anti-slogans, I was only eleven, but I know they were subversive, because people started talking and people started complaining. Apparently, making fun of the weather was covered under the 1st Amendment, but posting political messages on the street corner broke some sort of zoning laws.

I do have a clear memory of one particularly pointed chalkboard headline. It was posted on a sunny summer day. We drove by it as we went to church. The chalkboard read: "Betty Only Needs One." I did not get the joke until my sister explained - Betty Ford had just had a mastectomy. My mother complained. She thought the message was mean spirited. When I tried to defend the chalkboard (I always sided with the chalkboard), she wouldn't hear it. Mom was firm in her belief that such matters weren't to be taken lightly. She was particularly sensitive about the issue because her mother had just had a mastectomy as well. She knew the truth up close and personal: Breast cancer is ridiculously awful. The mastectomy is a painful operation (probably even worse then) for any woman - trading a chunk of your body to save your life. As a child I did not fully understand these consequences, but I knew one thing. Beside my grandmother, Betty Ford was the only woman I knew who had had the surgery. Betty Ford's was all over the news. We watched updates every night during the dinner hour.

Betty Ford may have had the first public mastectomy. I'm sure that wasn't easy for her, and I understand my mother's inclination to decry the "easy" humor of the chalkboard. However, I'm not sure the message was mean spirited. It didn't say, "Betty Only Has One," it said "Needs." In the pageantry of the public eye, all players must somehow be perfect, and whole. It is hard to be perfect when surgeons just ripped off part of your body. Betty kept going, she went public and she stayed strong. She kept up her end of the bargain even after fate gave her a difficult choice. I'd like to think the keepers of the chalkboard were celebrating Betty. Even though they decried the politics of Nixon, and satirized the stultifying slogans of the Ford administration, I hope they could still find a bit of sympathy for Betty.

The chalkboard did not survive the summer, let alone the Ford administration. Betty Ford did survive. She survived cancer and addiction (and who knows what else) until she died last week at the age of 94.

Raid On Osama

Tonight at the Ali Baba hotel in Costa Mesa, my crew will re-enact the raid on Osama's Abbottabad compound. Since we were unable to secure a stealth Blackhawk helicopter, we will be using a not-so-stealth 2001 Subaru and eleven packages of G.I. Joe dolls ( complete with parachute accessories). The Ali Baba, for those who don't know, has roughly the same dimensions as Osama's compound. It also has a vaguely similar architectural style. By mere coincidence, the hotel was rated the #1 vacation spot in Orange County for the infidel-hating tourist.

Our mission will be simple: secure the perimeter and then extract any danishes that are left over from the continental breakfast. No Swedes will be hurt in the process.

Robo

The following is an excerpt from my novella, Robo. This is the second chapter of the story.

Robo knew who he was as well. His father, Alistair McAllister, came from a long line of Scottish sheepherders. Robo’s mother was an orphan, raised by a rare sect of Episcopalians who championed procreation. Alistair married Fiona, joined her church, took a vow of fecundity, and abided by his wife’s wish to leave the only place he’d ever known.

Alistair and Fiona McAllister left Scotland to procreate in the green fields of New Zealand. The Bay of Plenty. They managed a son in their first southern-hemisphere winter. Alistair insisted on naming the boy Atlas. Fiona, who scorned hubris, reluctantly agreed. Alistair found the boy perfect in every sense, a son who could bear the burden of their new world beneath the equator.

Atlas died in his second New Zealand winter, his strength and perfection undermined by a rare allergy to wool.

After Atlas’s death, Fiona renounced her oath of fecundity and refused sex to her husband. Chaste behavior was, at that time, strictly forbidden by the Sexually Inclined Order of Episcopalians. Alistair pleaded with the parish elders. He needed help with his predicament. Instead of help, the elders provided only harsh judgment. Alistair faced a mandate to cure his wife of her “affliction.” There were laws – a man must keep his betrothed in a family way. Failure to do so would result in excommunication. The decision was final.

Alistair set about his duty. Initially, the broad-boned Scotsman tried to win over Fiona with romance. He failed miserably. A man who spent his life amongst sheep had few skills to seduce a woman. He was too clumsy to dance, unable to sing, and lacked the knowledge and ambition to recite poetry. Furthermore, he was never versed in the ways of etiquette, and his oafish mannerisms seemed at odds with the fairer sex.

So Alistair appealed to Fiona on religious grounds. On a damp night, after a meal of warm porridge and mutton, he showed his bride the Book of Fecundity. The hallowed volume belonged to the local parish. Alistair paged through the book’s images, hazy black-and-white photos taken in the dim light of the baptismal chamber. In each, proud parents posed with their offspring behind the local Bishop. These were good churchgoers. The bishop always held a heavy wooden scepter. The shaft was said to be carved from single strand of myrtle, its deep-hued grain diligently polished with linseed oil. Alistair pointed out the scepter, noting its weight and the firm, muscular grip of the Bishop. Fiona found the scepter unnecessary.

Robo’s father appealed to his wife’s love of nature. On a brisk, blustery afternoon he took Fiona out for a “spring picnic.” He wrapped her in a woolen blanket and walked her out to the lea where the sheep were feeding. As if on cue, one feisty ram mounted a seemingly unsuspecting ewe, their two mounds of plush hide becoming one. Alistair smiled and ran his hands around the thick woolen pile that enveloped his wife. Fiona was not impressed.

There seemed to be no chance at seducing the woman. Alistair’s last sexual act was born out of complete desperation. He put a dose of sheep tranquilizer in Fiona’s mutton. When she complained of the bitter flavor, he insisted that her chaste behavior had tarnished her taste. In an hour she was completely unconscious. At this point he had his way with Fiona McAllister, her lifeless body unable to refuse him.

This was how Robo was conceived.

“The Act,” as it became known, had immediate reverberations within the local parish. Alistair McAllister, who initially said nothing in his defense, was discharged from his post on the church council. Fiona was sent off to live with another family, and then, for a short time, life in the Bay of Plenty plodded quietly forward. The local parishioners only spoke of “The Act” in hushed tones or behind closed doors. The church elders hoped that time would heal the wounds. Unfortunately, they couldn’t ignore the increasing girth of Fiona’s belly. Neither could Alistair.

On a bright Sunday morning, as Fiona approached her third trimester, Alistair stood tall in his pew. The congregation was seated, having just completed a recitation of the Beatitudes. Alistair spoke loudly and abruptly. “I was only acting as directed.” Murmurs ran through the crowd. “The elders told me that Fiona must bear another child. It was their wish.” The priest immediately silenced Alistair, and he spoke no more. But the damage was done.

A parish forum convened later that night. The Elders attempted to cast a different light on the instructions they had given Alistair. This did not appease the women in the audience, who responded angrily. The Elders had never heard such voices of dissent. They claimed they had never considered that the expectant father would resort to drugging his wife. Yet, in their final statement, they held strong by their decision. Chaste behavior could not be tolerated, and it was Alistair’s duty to break his wife’s vow of chastity by every means possible. This final admission proved extremely unpopular. The women of the parish reacted with riotous indignation. Church law could not stand up to the weight of their scorn. The wives banded together and made a pact, deciding to withhold sex from their husbands. They maintained the pact for an impossibly long time. Impossibly long even for Episcopalians. So began what would later be known as the great chastity movement of the Sexually Inclined Order of Episcopalians in the Bay of Plenty.

Robert Allison McAllister arrived in the world, kicking and screaming, on a soggy winter night. He was the last child born in the community for seven years. His mother insisted on the somewhat feminine middle name. His father allowed it, since his son’s initials would appropriately spell RAM. As a teen, Robert was nicknamed Robo after a particularly inspired gig at a punk club in Wellington. The name stuck.