Stay away from Pate

An article in today's Slate magazine about swans dying of avian flu have put the issue into the forefront of my mind.  Last summer was the first I'd heard of it.  I ignored it.  My mind justified the ignorance by saying "it's a third-world problem..."  So racism helped me keep my head stuck in the sand. 

However, recent stories such as the one in Slate, and the stories that the virus has jumped to cats has me pulling up my sandy head and panicking. 

The danger for human beings is that we have no natural antibodies for this strain of flu.  In Indonesia, there have been 29 confirmed cases of avian flu, of which 22 have proven fatal. 

That's a very high percentage of fatality.  Likewise, if the flu begins to be passed from person to person, then it will quickly decimate the world's population.  Currently, all confirmed cases were contracted from infected birds, though there have been cases where it may have been contracted through proximity to an infected person--though the infection doesn't go beyond that. 

So it's still contained.  But I see a chained monster ready to be unleashed on a very vulnerable population. 

The CDC has the most current information, and from there you can link to the WHO and other government sites that can help you prepare.  But, they'll also scare your pants off.

In the meantime, I'm going to stay as far away from birds as I can, particularly ducks, which can carry the virus without dying of it themselves.  So, no more walks around Greenlake for the forseeable future.

Disney's Decline

The Shaggy Dog opens today.  I don't know about you, but it's a miss on my list.  Tim Allen is a talented guy and I'm sure that he and all the artists involved tried their best.  But when guys in Armani suits come knocking, bearing skads of filthy lucre, who can say no?  Thus we have this remake.  The Disney of yesterday made its reputation on clean, wholesome, family-oriented entertainment.  Let's be honest: Their movies were square even in the 60's and 70's when they were made.  The Disney of today makes its reputation snickering up its sleeve at its former reputation.  Their films have all the technical expertise one would expect from an A-list film, the timing is right, the images clear, the camera stable and firmly affixed to its tripod, which all cameras should aspire to.  But there's no soul.  These films are as pretty and empty as Seattle would be after a neutron bomb explosion.  The filmmakers have no conviction because they've got mixed motives.  They can't make quality family entertainment because their corporate managers have no desire to do that.  The only raison d'etre is the filling of bank accounts and to do that, they must be hip.  Everyone wants to be hip, don't they?  It is souless, bankrupt, bereft entertainment that is as sharp and unappetizing as aluminum foil.  That is because their people in charge of the company are souless, bankrupt, bereft of style, grace or substance.  The Disney Studio of the past has transformed into the Disney Corporation of today.

Booming Toward Bethlehem

I am a member of the Baby Boomer generation (1946-1964), as I was born in 1958.  Having spent a good deal of my youth recovering from a serious chemical dependency issue (successful) and then trying to find a career in the arts (not so much); I have reached the age of 48 without a robust retirement portfolio.  I paid into an IRA for several years before I qualified for a 401(k) plan through my work.  The best investment has been the 401(k) without any doubt.  After ten years it has grown exponentially, doubling itself, then tripling itself.  I now have, between my IRA and my 401(k) almost seventy-five grand saved. 

This ain't much from the standpoint of my parent's generation, who all went into retirement with three quarters of a million in their bank accounts and could also count on social security to provide for them.  The number crunchers in Washington realized that 75 million people would be entering the system roughly over a period of 20 years starting in 2008, when the first boomers turned 62.  They realized that social security would have a difficult time meeting the demand.  Thus George Bush's attempt to privatize or reform the program.  His attempt failed, but at some point so will the program. 

Although I have a rather modest nest-egg, I'm far better off than the vast majority of my 75 million fellows.  The US Department of Labor states that the median (not the statistical average, but the numerical mid-point of the number range) for boomer households is $2,000 in retirement savings.

The average is $46,000, but that takes into account people who have tens of millions of dollars in savings.  The super-rich bring the average up for everyone else.  Even the Dept. of Labor acknowledges that there are wildly varying amounts in retirement accounts among households with similar incomes and expenses. 

What does this mean, objectively, for me?  (This is, after all, a me blog written by a member of the me generation.) 

Retirment is going to be a beyatch.  I think the answer may be a kind of communal living situation, investing in property with friends that we then share.  I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot of Golden Girls arrangements in the future.  I thinkthat we boomers have got to find a new template upon which to base our golden years--that the template our parents created will not work for us.

And even less so for generations to come.  I predict that in a hundred years retirement as we know it will cease to exist; that the only individuals who will be able to retire before they are no longer physically able to work are those who work for the goverment.  That can be avoided, of course, if present young people get smart and begin to save as soon as they can, even if it's just a handful of dollars a week.

The Oscars

No, I didn't watch.  The televised Academy Awards always fill me with a mixture of dread, revulsion and panic.  They are never funny enough and always too embarrassing.  I fall for cheezy "in Memoriam" moments, tears moistening my banal cheeks, as though these were people who actually meant something in my life--rather than being refracted light through tinted celluloid--or in the alternative, millions upon millions of eight-digit sequences of microscopic pits, read by a laser and transformed into imagery upon a cathode-ray tube. 

I did see some of the films.  Capote was especially good.  I thought Brokeback Mountain was beautiful, but I was more taken with The Mysterious Skin, which was far too extreme to find popular appeal.  My friend Jack wept copious tears at Brokeback Mountain, but I did not share his emotional experience.  However, an emotional experience was there to be had, judging from his reaction.  That's why it's always good to go with someone else to a movie.

My friend Robert is my favorite person to go to a movie with.  He can make sense of things in a way that really impresses me.  For example, he summed up Capote beautifully by saying, here was was a writer who exploited these killers for his own ends, and ironically, they wind up knowing that, and forgiving him anyway.  When you're facing death, nobody has time for a grudge, believe me.  Again, when Robert and I went to see Napola (AKA Before the Fall), he succinctly described the Napola as a school that trained killers.  That the filmmakers were presenting a society wherein there was no room for anyone who could not kill.  His description encapsulated the theme of the film beautifully and right on target.

I wish I could be so astute.  But my emotions get in the way.  It all becomes a blur of suffering and desire. 

Speaking of suffering and desire, what did I do instead of watch the Oscars?  I watched the Sci-Fi marathon of all five Hellraiser movies after Hellraiser 4--in other words, all the Hellraisers that went straight to video.  Now there's suffering and desire! 

I have to say that I was quite moved by Hellraiser 5--Inferno.  I was quite taken by the themes in the movie.  My suspicion with these five Hellraisers wasthat they were written as standalones, and reworked to fit into the Hellraiser universe.  So Pinhead makes an appearance in each of them.  Inferno worked as a kind of variant on Jacob's Ladder and Angel Heart.  It was an excellent story, though it does not fit into Clive Barker's thematic core--the Cenobites are almost Lovecraftian in their pitiless need to make human beings suffer the most excruciating pain in their flesh and their souls.  Pinhead almost becomes a moralistic figure in this film.  I've read that Barker hates this film--but be that as it may, the film works and is worth watching and even owning.  I cannot say that for the rest of them.  The thing, of course that connects the Hellraiser series is not only Pinhead, but the Lament Configuration: a puzzle box, one of three hundred created by a French toymaker.  When you solve the puzzle, the box opens a gateway to a dimension where the Cenobites exist, a kind of hell.  Cenobites are human beings transformed by pain and desire into otherworldy creatures who give such agony that it ceases to have any relevance at all, and becomes indistinguishable from pleasure.

It is a remarkable creation.  If Barker had created this alone he could be considered a genius.  But that he's created half a dozen other alternate realities, as fully imagined and detailed as this one makes him a paragon.

Holocause Celebre

David Irving has been dragged ignominiously off to jail for his crime of publicly denying the holocaust in Austria.  He was given a three-year sentence, which seems to me to be somewhat strict, but Austria has the right to make such laws as she sees fit.  In a country which saw the building of the most feared concentration camp ever to exist (Mauthausen) the citizens want no minimalization of the horror that national socialism brought to the world and themselves.  Austria wants to deal firmly with those who would deny the truth.  Challenging accepted truth is one thing--pathological repudiation of accepted truth is quite another.  What is the aim of such an assertion anyway?  To outrage and annoy others.  While such speech is fully protected in the United States, we don't share the awful history of Austria.  It is ironic however, that Austria has made denying the holocaust a crime, but to say that the holocaust didn't go far enough is apparently legal.  This is the kind of capricious censorship that I find troubling. 

Holocaust denial is a somewhat antiquated tactic on the part of the far right neo-nazi movement.  They've moved on.  Rather than deny the fact, they now celebrate it.  As we see from the leadership in Iran.  While I shed no tears for David Irving, I appreciate what he has done to publicize yet another free speech issue.  If Austria wants to criminalize this brand of speech, so be it.  It's their business.  Nobody forced Irving to travel to Austria 15 years after his "crime" and risk arrest.  But they ought to be intellectually fair.  If denying the holocaust is a crime, celebrating it and lamenting its premature conclusion ought to be, too.

Cartoonish Islam

The Islamic world has been ignited into high dudgeon by some Danish cartoonists.  I did not know what to think about this matter.  After reading about it for a week and not seeing the cartoons published in the American press, I had to go searching for them in the one place where freedom of expression still exists: the Internet. 

There I found them.  The Wikipedia site is a good place to start, though the cartoons are so reduced one cannot see them very clearly.   One can see them clearly enough, however, to come to the rational conclusion that they are NOT objectively offensive.  They are not hate speech, but rather a sardonic expression of the cartoonists' reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. 

That the Muslim world has now vindicated the cartoonists' original point, that the Western press is prevented by cowardice or political correctness from criticizing Islam, seems to have been lost on everyone.  This cowardice or political correctness has the effect of granting special status to Islam.  Though everyone else who wants a place at the world banquet has to endure criticism and sometimes ridicule in a civilized way, Islam apparently, feels it has a special status and can just skip that little hazing ritual. 

The Vatican has weighed in: taking this opportunity to offer a self-serving diktat that freedom of expression should not extend to challenging others' religious beliefs.  That would make it a perfect world for priests and mullahs alike, wouldn't it?

I however, come from a proud tradition of challenging religious tyranny: Lutheranism.

An objectively offensive, vile and hateful expression, such as superimposing the prophet's face on a urinal, (which Andres Serrano essentially did in 1987 by immersing a crucifix into a beaker of his own piss and taking a photograph of it) should spark outrage.  Nobody ever said that free speech should be free of consequences: we merely ask that we be free from prior restraint by the government, and the government's agency, Religion.

However, the world is shrinking.  The Internet, our 20th Century equivalent to moveable type will permit the most egregious freedom of thought, and the priests and mullahs will not be able to control it.  Their efforts to impose restraint will fail. 

Sympathy for the Devil

I've just come from a very interesting website.  For some reason, I got fixated today on Jayne Mansfield, the sex-kitten of the late-50's/early-60's who is widely believed to be an active participant in the Satanic Church begun by Anton Szandor LaVey.  However, this website takes a different tack.  Their view is that LaVey was little more than a circus charlaton, a con-man, a reprobate huckster who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and gave the American public what it wanted: the delicious thrill that somewhere, someone was behaving in completely depraved ways.  Personally, I've always believed that rumors of sexual profligacy should be taken with a grain or two of salt.  But something about this website rings true to me.  Hollywood is about making a buck.  A further argument for its credibility is its source: the Church of Satan itself.  Perhaps by distancing itself from its carnival-like founder, it hopes to make itself seem respectible. 

It wouldn't be the first time a religion was created solely to cash in on a fad and to make buckets of lucre for its founder.  LaVey wasn't as successful, apparently, as L. Ron Hubbard, as he died in poverty on public assistance.  Hubbard died in a schizophrenic free-fall somewhere in the California desert, forbidden to obtain, by the tenants of his own church, the psychiatric treatment he so desperately needed.

The interesting part of the CoS site is its absolution of Jayne Mansfield's participation as a CoS "high priestess," which CoS avers is a deliciously vile rumor,  That rather than being powerful magi bent on emancipating America from the idea that sex was sinful, it was little more than a photo-opportunity designed to grab newspaper space, free publicity and the cash sent to them by the lunatic fringe. 

But then, I read another website, this time from a Christian perspective which not only believes these stories, but casts Anton Szandor LaVey as the incarnation of evil, and points to him as some kind of anti-pontiff bent on the destruction of the Christian church, with Hollywood as his unindicted co-conspirator.  And then I realized: LaVey's chicanery works equally well as a money-grab for the Evangelical lunatics as for his own church.  Ironic, ain't it?