Happy Happy...

It's my friend Phoebe's 40th birthday today. 40 is a big number for a lot of people. For Amy's (10th pre-anniversary) of her 40th birthday we went to Switzerland and Italy. We drove up a mountain across from Mount Blanc with some friends who were living there and drank wine on the slopes of the mountain while listening to the carrilon-type music of the cowbells and watching the sunset cross MO-Blow, as our friends called it. Then we went up the mountain further and had Swiss fondue at a mountainside restaurant.

It's all just a number, and it has the power you give it. Live it up and celebrate, and many there be many more!

Of Buses and Nunneries

Muriel Spark's desk)

Sad news this morning- Muriel Spark, perhaps best known for writing "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", but also the author of many other slyly funny and satiric novels, died at age 88 in Italy. I've always loved "Loitering with Intent", "A Far Cry from Kensignton", and "The Takeover". An often-neglected Spark novel well worth reading is "The Abbess of Crew", a wickedly satiric resetting of the Watergate debacle in an English nunnery. Muriel Spark was in many ways the female Evelyn Waugh of the Vietnam generation. She died Thursday in Italy, where she had lived for the last 30 years in a little village in Tuscany.

Another death in the news today (gee, isn't this cheerful?) is that of retired Los Angeles bus driver Arthur Winston, who died this week at age 100. That would probably not have made the national news this morning, if not for the fact that Mr. Winston worked as a driver for 76 years. He finally retired in March, and a month later he dies.

Food for thought.

Dreaming

(Eric Bogle & "Dolly Parton")

Ever wake up late at night, or find yourself working or reading or just fucking off, with a song going around in your brain? I always do that. Especially the late-night or early-morning thing.

If it's a nice, peaceful song, fine. A couple that seem to recur in my brain are "Don't Walk Away, Renee", (or whatever the actual title is) and "Meet Me in September". But lately they've been, well, not depressing exactly, but not cheerful songs, by Scots-Australian folk singer Eric Bogle. Now I am a lifelong fan of Eric Bogle. Amy and I got to see him live in Northampton at the Iron Horse pub, with John Munro, late last year when he was on one of his infrequent American tours. For a very humorous synopsis of the tour, go here. But imagine waking in the middle of the night to hear this going around and around and around in your head-

I know I won't see peace again,
for what's left of my life.
I know you'll keep on blindly killing,
and that many more will die.
I grieve for all the innocents,
and feel anger at their fate,
but I must not, I can not, I will not-
-hate.

Oh I wish I could be there,
The day you go to meet your God,
when you hold up your bloody hands and cry-
'I did it all in your name, Lord!'
That age-old lie,
lifted upwards as a prayer,
when your God looks deep inside your soul,
Oh, I wish I could be there.

For thou shalt not make me hate.
Thou shalt not make me kill.
This mind is my own,
this heart, this soul, this will.

If I've learned anything at all,
it's that love, not hate endures.
I'd rather live just one day in my world,
than a thousand years in yours.

- -

whew!

I dunno. I haven't been sleeping well lately. Well, ok, since Bush got elected the first time... but especially badly the last few months. Actually, a late-night musing brought on today's Mulligrubbers post. I woke up last night, after reading the first half of Sy Hersh's piece in the latest New Yorker, with the vision of George Bush looking out over a vast, devastated, radioactive Middle-Eastern wasteland and saying to me, "Well, we showed them Iranians, anyway. I think it was worth it."

I'd just like a single good night's sleep...

No Irony Here...

Remember how the Internet was going to make our lives easier? Boy, I'll bet the Irony Fairy is having a big laugh about that one. Today I went on line to renew our Costco membership. Now Costco is a great company -unlike Walmart they actually treat their employees like humans, for instance. So, as I looked at the renewal card and saw the promise -"renew online -it's easy and fast!" I must have been lulled into some sort of alternate-universe hallucinatory state, because I actually believed it.

Somebody, quick, sell me a bridge.

I won't go into the various little things that kept popping up that made my experience less than celebratory; suffice it to say that after twenty-five minutes I was frothing at the mouth and screaming obscenities at the computer, and I never did get the membership renewed.

Interesting, I hear you say, but what's it got to do with bookselling? Well, it occurred to me, as I was ricocheting around an exceedingly badly-designed web process, that this is why a lot of people approach e-commerce as if it were a live bomb, just waiting to go off in their faces. Which brought my thought process, such as it is, inexorably around to the latest set of bookseller bitching about the new credit card policies at the Advanced Book Exchange. I won’t go back over the whole thing here, but for me the most important point is that the new policy, which is to have ABE charge the customer’s card for a purchase instead of the bookseller charging it, makes the whole process a little easier and more trustworthy from the buyer’s viewpoint, and that’s the name of the game, isn’t it?

And as long as I’m on the topic, try this on for size- the latest bookseller’s gripe about ABE doing the credit card processing is along the lines of “well, how do we know that ABE will still be around a month from now to pay us our money? What if they all run off to Mexico or something?” Gimme a break- that’s a level of paranoia I have always had trouble dealing with. I find it especially amusing, though, when it comes from the same people who simply cannot understand that perhaps a customer might possibly be a little apprehensive about sending their credit card info to a third-party bookseller they’ve never heard of.

I suppose that brings us right back to our friend, the Irony Fairy. My, she’s a busy bee, isn’t she?

UPDATE: Last week I wrote about a new bookmark being issued by ABE that some folks construed as making fun of the President. The Freepers and others worked themselves into a lather over it, and when I tried to order some I got a message saying they were out of stock. I doubted it at the time, but apparently it was true- the bookmark was so popular that they did run out, but they're making more, and this time I'm gonna get me some!

C'mon Over!

I find it interesting that people get all hot and bothered about immigration. Call me stupid (you won't be the first, nor will you be alone), but I don't see the big deal. I say open our borders to whoever wants to come here. Open borders are, as far as I can see, much less of a threat to American's economy than so-called "Free-trade". All "Free-trade" means is that the big multi-nationals can use 10-year olds in Sri-Lanka, who work 12-hour days for a few pennies, to make sneakers that they can sell in America for a hundred bucks a pop, and not have to worry about paying an import tarif. We bitch that American jobs are going overseas and then go buy those sneakers. You cannot convice me that opening our borders to hard-working immigrants could be worse for our economy that that.

If you look back at our history, America's greatest economic booms and greatest expansion and innovation periods came during high-immigration eras. Chinese immigrants built our railways. European immigrants cut the stone and built our cities, and staffed the army that cleared the Great Plains (ok, they cleared them of the native Americans who were there at the time, but that's another issue). Immigrants worked the textile mills in New England and broke and tilled the sod in Nebraksa. Frankly, new blood is good for the country. You have folks who feel strongly enough about working hard to imrove their lives that they are ready to pack up and move themselves and their families to a foreign land? Send 'em here!

You also hear about the "security" issue from some folks who want to control immigration. I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me whatsoever. What are they worried about, that a bunch of Mexican immigrants are going to poison our tacos? Close the doors to immigrants and people who want to come here for evil purposes are going to get here some other way-we still allow tourists, don't we? Unless you want to become North Korea, you simply can't seal the borders to terrorists who are determined to get into the country.

So like it says on the Statue of Liberty- come on over!

It's Wednesday, so there's a new Mulligrubbers post up today. Ever wonder what would happen in George Bush went on American Idol? So did I.

What's Barbara Bush got to do with all this? Nothing good, that's for damn sure...

Just in Case-

apropos of absolutely nothing (swear to God...)

Useful Military Warnings

"Aim towards the Enemy." - Instruction printed on U.S. Rocket Launcher

"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend." - U.S. Army

"Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground." - U.S.A.F. Ammo Troop

"If the enemy is in range, so are you." - Infantry Journal

"A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit." - Army's magazine of preventive maintenance

"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed." - U.S. Air Force Manual

"Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo." - Infantry Journal

"Tracers work both ways." - U.S. Army Ordnance

"Five-second fuses only last three seconds." - Infantry Journal

"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid." - Col. David Hackworth

"If your attack is going too well, you're probably walking into an ambush." - Infantry Journal

"Any ship can be a minesweeper .. once." - Anonymous

"Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do." - Unknown Army Recruit

"Don't draw fire; it irritates the people around you." - Your Buddies

(And lastly)

"If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him." - U.S. Ammo Troop

Gin & Tulip

It's Spring, and time to worry about those droopy daffodils and too-tall tulips. A horticulturalist from New York has a new solution for the home gardener whose bulbs get leggy and fall over- invite them in for cocktails.

Or, as one newspaper put it, a jigger of gin makes your daffodils grin. Not too much now; you want to have some left over for yourself.

Whiskey, vodka, and tequila will also work. Actually, I'd use vodka -I've always thought it was better poured on plants than drunk anyway.

Ok, gotta go do some, uh, "gardening"...

Monday, Monday...

And You-all Have Nice Day Now!

from the archives-

[Prominent Economy Hotel Chain Name Deleted]

Dear Fukwad,

Thank you for letting us know about your experience at our property in [deleted], Pennsylvania. Please accept the fact that we don't really give a flying fuck whether or not your experience was less than satisfactory. We got your credit card number, and we will pound, incinerate and julienne your credit record if you attempt a chargeback. While it is our goal to give at least some of our guests an adequate lodging experience, what you were expecting for $24.99 is, quite frankly, a mystery to all of us here at the Main Headquarters. It is disappointing to learn that we fell short of your expectations in this instance, but hey, life sucks and then you die.

A copy of your comments and of our records will be kept on file here for the next twenty years, in case you try something like this again. I can assure you that corrective measures will be taken if you do. We are committed to making a profit, and even bothering to answer your stupid letter is cutting into our Chairman's beach time in Bimini. Neither his wife nor his mistress is especially appreciative of that either, so if you don't want a pair of screaming, deranged, coked-up blondes on your doorstep using language that would make a Marine Corps drill Sergeant blush, I suggest you drop the matter right now.

Please know that we don't give a rat's ass whether your bed was clean or there was soap, or even a few used condoms, in the bathtub. Turn on the fucking shower and wash it out. It's a TUB, get it? Thank you for giving us the opportunity to take your money, now please leave us alone.

Sincerely,

Guest Relations

Lesbian $$$?

I was going to post about something else, but while searching for an image I came across a very cool website. Mike Seery collects currency that has been altered by people with rubber stamps to send various kinds of messages. Check out the 'I Grew Hemp' bills... I was going to picture one of those, but the lesbian dollar seemed more in keeping with the theme Mike is running this week.

No Singing Here-

LONDON (April 5) - British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track (London Calling) by punk band The Clash, police said on Wednesday.

[with apologies to Arlo]

What if one person walked into an airport, sang a verse of 'London Calling' and walked out?

Why, they'd think he was a terrorist and they'd shoot him.

And what if two people walked into an airport, sang a verse of 'London Calling', in harmony, and walked out?

Well, they'd think they were faggot terrorists and they'd shoot both of them.

What if three people, three people, walked into an airport, sang a verse of 'London Calling' and walked out?

Why, they'd think it was a terrorist cell, and they'd call in the CIA and send them all to Gitmo.

And what if fifty people, fifty people a day, walked into an airport, sang a verse of 'London Calling' and walked out?

Friends, they'd think it was an invasion, and they'd shoot, and kill, and mutilate all of them, and their families and friends, and anyone else who has a Clash record.

Welcome to BushWorld, 2006.

ABE Fun

[Non-bookies keep reading, you're going to like this in the end.]

Advanced Book Exchange, the Canadian company which runs bookselling database www.abe.com, has run afoul of the Freepers, a bunch of ultra-Conservatives over at a website called Free Republic! How the heck did they manage that, I hear you ask?

Well for their 10th Anniversary they are doing promotional bookmarks featuring the slogan "If you can't find it here, it doesn't exist". One of the bookmarks features a mock up of a book titled "Making Marriage Work" by Henry VIII. And here's the other one-



Some folks have said that ABE is crossing a line with this, but I don't see it. If you can make fun of an Engish monarch, why not an American President? Democrats would find a bookmark with the book "Fidelity for Idiots" by Bill Clinton funny (well, I would), so Republicans can just go out and buy a sense of humor. Funny is funny, and if you can't laugh at yourself I feel really, really sorry for you.

UPDATE: Well, the Politically Correct have again won, and destroyed a good bit of fun. I tried to order some bookmarks and got a message saying they were all out. Yeah, right. A great pity. I mean, God forbid anyone should actually be forced to think about anything. Or maybe the Freepers phoned in a bomb threat or sumthin'. I dunno, but I do know that once again free expression takes a hit, and that sucks.
.

Monday, Monday...

And a gracious Good Monday Morning to all our office-bound compatriots with this cheery thought- however bad you job sucks, it could always be worse...

Silly Sunday...

From our archives, original origin unknown. This may help to explain the basic difference between men and women.

Let's say a guy named Rob is attracted to a woman named Carol. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Carol, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car. To Carol, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Rob is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Carol is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward...I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Rob is thinking: ...so that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Carol is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed--even before I sensed it--that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Rob is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a damn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Carol is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Rob is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna say, the scumballs.

And Carol is thinking: Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Rob is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a damn warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their....

"Rob," Carol says aloud.

"What?" says Rob, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have...Oh God, I feel so...." (She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Rob, thoroughly confused.

"I'm such a fool," Carol sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Rob, perplexed.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Carol says.

"No!" says Rob, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that... it's that I... I need some time," Carol says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Rob, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.) "Yes," he says.

(Carol, deeply moved, touches his hand.) "Oh, Rob, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" asks Rob.

"That way about time," says Carol.

"Oh," says Rob, "Yeah, sure."

(Carol turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Rob," she says.

"Thank you," says Rob, unsure what else to say.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Rob gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Estonians he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it. (This is also Rob's policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Carol will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Rob, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Carol's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: "Ross, did Carol ever own a horse?"

BREAKING NEWS: ABE Acquires Ebay

San Jose, CA: Internet auction site Ebay today announced that it was being acquired by Victoria, British Columbia internet bookselling database Advanced Book Exchange for 3 billion dollars in gift certificates.

Ebay spokesman Itsa H. Oax told reporters at the firm's San Jose headquarters, "we really think this sale makes sense from a financial standpoint. The folks at ABE called at 11:30 last night and made us an offer we couldn't refuse".

When asked if the fact that the entire sale is to be financed with gift certificates presented a risk, Ms. Oax said "well, why not? ABE is a stable company with a terrific relationship with its dealers. What could possibly go wrong?"

ABE officials were not available for comment, though one company spokesman did respond to an email by saying that ABE values its relationship with reporters and someone from the company would get back to us.