Mr. President ... ?

In just a few short days the 44th president of the United States will be sworn in and told to protect America and to do whatever he can to serve this country and its institutions. He will be charged with fighting the "Frozen War," the secret war that America has been involved with since the "end" of the Cold War. The new president will be told that not only do aliens exist, but they live in Amish Country, and they walk among us everyday and hate to have their picture taken. The president will be told the truth behind the Kennedy assassination. Actually, no. The American government, as it turns out, really thinks Oswald was their guy. The newest President will of course be Barack Obama, the people's hope for a change.

Some of those people may have noticed that the future Mr. President is black, I know I did. Though I'm not sure who is responsible for the security and/or planning for this event, I love their attention to detail. I don't know how I ought to be feeling about these pictures, but they make me laugh, should I be laughing? I decided that I needed to investigate further, so I checked out the article that goes with these pictures and let me tell you, it did not disappoint.

Pictured to the left are the two Obama children stand-ins with the faux Mrs. Obama seated next to them. Behind and to the right is what I can only hope is the bizarro doppelganger of the future Mrs. V.P. If they went with any criteria for casting the stand-ins besides "skin color" then I can look forward to four years of Biden's wife mean-mugging television cameras, senators and assorted dignitaries from around the world. Of course, if the faux important people were carefully chosen for their likenesses, we can all look forward to Conan O'Brien representin' at the inauguration (he's standing to the far right in the first photo.)

Last January I made a bet with my Granddad concerning the 2008 presidential election. At the time, it was still unclear who the candidates would be, but I said "Old Man, I bet you a hundred dollars that McCain beats Obama in November." My information came from a very reliable source, and he's never been wrong before. The challenge was accepted and I lost. You probably knew that though, from looking at the above pictures. So it was, on the fifth of November, right after I was done rolling all those pennies to pay my Granddad, I did some research on this new president. As it turns out, he's not a bad guy, I just hope he doesn't get us into any quagmires.

County Executive Onorato, think of the children!

I've read in two different places that Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County Executive famous for the whole drink tax debacle, is going to run for Governor in 2010. I first heard of this nonsense earlier this morning, more an instance of "stumbling upon" the information while I was searching through to see where they'd hidden the crossword puzzle. Imagine my confusion when I saw that the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an article from the future! Granted, it only had a small portion of the front page (the vast majority being given to Steelers coverage) but I still laughed a little, if only because this little blurb served to remind me that schemers will always try and do what they do best: scheme. Onorato already has $4 Million dollars lined up for his campaign running up to an election that's almost TWO YEARS in the future. My question to Mr. Onorato is this: Where did you get all these paper stacks? You weren't using drink tax money to line your golden pockets, were you?

With the surplus from this past year's drink tax not being used for anything but the Port Authority, maybe Onorato thought to himself "Hey, if I ran for Governator, I could tax every drink in Pennsylvania!" The surplus from a state-wide drink tax could then be used for a new monorail, like they did in that one Simpsons episode. Now if that's the case, perhaps Onorato's Machiavellian scheming for drink taxes could actually benefit Pennsylvania. At least we could sing that catchy song, and we're twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville anyhow.

It says in his wikipedia entry that Onorato was an Accounting major at Penn State and then he went on to get his law degree a couple years later at the University of Pittsburgh. During all those years of schooling I hope that Onorato went through a couple of history courses, but I guess he never heard about a little thing called the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1791 a drink tax was put into place with the hope that it would help pay for the debt accrued over the course of the Revolutionary War. By 1795, the first shots of the uprising were fired in South Park Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Onorato's probably never heard of this because he lives all the way in the Brighton Heights section of Pittsburgh, almost 15 miles away.

The Post-Gazette article I initially looked at (similar to this one, but I can't find the actual article online) covered the democratic candidates at a meet and greet with some farmers out in Harrisburg. Onorato reminded everyone there that he had not raised property taxes during his term in office when he was asked how the drink tax debacle was going ... That's right, he's an artful dodger. I would have to agree with his wariness to tackle this hot-button issue head-on, though. I remember boasting on more than one boring Friday afternoon in college that I planned on "getting drunk like a farmer" that weekend. I mean this as no slight against the farmers of the world, it's just that I hated the phrase "drunk like a sailor" and I really enjoy making up rumors. So if that rumor I made up is true, I would hate to explain to a bunch of sober farmers why they have to pay more for their medicine.

Unless he traveled by plane to Harrisburg that day, which he quite possibly did, Onorato would have driven past some signs pointing out the way to a little place called Johnstown. It just so happens that Johnstown is another reason alcohol is taxed here in Pennsylvania. In 1889, a Great Flood warshed over the land of Johnstown. The result was devastation and despair, but it took a couple more floods over the years plus another big one in 1936 for the state to pass the "Johnstown Flood Tax." It was supposed to be a "temporary" 10% tax on alcohol sales in order to help out the citizens of this flood prone region, but over the years it was never repealed and has in fact increased twice to it's current level of 18%, which is calculated into the price before the new drink tax is added on top.

All these taxes are enough to make me call "Shenanigans!!!" But it doesn't matter how vigorously I shout that out, the downtrodden drinker will forever be the brunt of senseless taxation. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that alcohol is starting to get the same treatment as cigarettes, but I know that it's been getting pushed around for a lot longer than cigarettes have. The saddest part about all of this is the poor teenagers, they're going to have this tax on all the alcohol they ever buy. They will never know the world of 50 cent drafts or penny pitchers. I think of my little brother when I think of these new taxes, I think of how he'll probably never be able to buy a pack of cigarettes for less than $5. He'll never know the glory that comes with purchasing a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon here in Pennsylvania that doesn't cost more than $10 and if that's not a crime, I don't know what is.

Tharrr Be Pirates!

The other day on my Google home page, right next to a recipe for tangerine sorbet, I saw a news article that gave me a "wait a second... " moment. I have those often, a moment of curiosity mixed with skepticism that inevitably results in me clicking on just about anything I come across. I was giddy when I read the title of the article: "Pirates hijack oil supertanker off east Africa."

Amazing. My childhood dream was to become a pirate, really any kind of romanticized criminal-type person but for the sake of this example, a pirate. In this day and age with the wonders of science giving us gifts like GPS and Google Maps, I thought that being a pirate was one of those careers that you just couldn't do anymore. If I had known being a pirate wasn't an obsolete profession then I wouldn't have gone to a liberal arts school, I'd have gone to the University of Buccaneer State or whatever it's called. Clearly there is a school out there somewhere (probably floating on the seven seas) because the supertanker that was hijacked was "three times the size of an aircraft carrier" in the kind of move that would make Captain Jack Sparrow himself absolutely green with envy.

This high-seas tom-foolery has apparently been going on for some time. The Sirius Star (the hijacked supertanker) had a crew that was being paid double so that they would brave the pirate threat. I realize that I live in what most people would call a "fantasy world," but since when are pirates a threat? I saw the 2003 documentary Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and they were generally unthreatening people. At least that's how it came off to me, they seemed really friendly and warm. But since the crew of the Sirius Star was being paid twice as much as they usually get when the ship was stolen, that means at least someone doesn't have the same idea of pirates that I do, that or the crew found a way to get double their hours like I did at the pizza shop I was working at a couple summers ago.

In a not very astonishing turn of events, the supertanker carrying $100 Million in crude oil was bought back for the paltry ransom of $3 Million in what I can only assume was to be left in the trunk of a car down by the docks in the form of small, non-sequential unmarked bills in a black duffel bag. After all, if pirates are sailing around the ocean stealing ships three times the size of aircraft carriers and successfully ransoming them off, then everything in real life must happen like it does in the movies.

Reading about these movie script shenanigans off the coast of Africa got me thinking of something else that shouldn't exist anymore, but for whatever reason is still around. Allow me to explain: a couple nights ago I was listening to AM talk radio (it's not something I do all the time) and the topic was "Selling Organs." These aren't the kind of organs that the church is involved with, these are the kind from inside of people. I thought that it probably existed in some form or another, but I hoped at least the black-market organ trade didn't exist here in America. The caller insisted that it did and not only was there a niche for black-market organs in America, but it was thriving! Thriving to the point of a need for regulation.

In a truly astonishing turn of events, the caller went on to compare the buying and selling of stolen kidneys to the buying and selling of marijuana. The host thought this was a good comparison! Allow that to sink in, allow it to sink in slowly. It was a seemingly innocent comparison using the argument that people will do whatever they want to do/need to do anyways, so why not just tax it? But buying a stolen liver is a far cry from buying an illegal plant, I was amazed that this was the first connection the caller made in his head. With this type of thinking, I'm the kind of person that wouldn't think twice about buying a dime bag of kidney off some guy I met at the gas station.

I think about pirates and the black-market and I think of cartoons or Hollywood, I don't think of Saudi executives paying off pirates or the guy down the street being a major player in a world where an organ can be a commodity. I'm starting to think that the new coffee maker I got is going to choke me one of these days because it's actually a Decepticon. That would be bad, but worst bit of fiction that could turn to fact for me would be zombies. I live right next to a cemetery and I'm just glad that there's no lab full of scientists nearby ... that I know of.

Prime Minister Putin on Ukraine: It's a gas

Many Americans are undoubtedly more concerned about their own flow of gas this winter, but there are some unlucky folks over in Europe that have been on the receiving end of a stiff pimp-slap from Russia when they woke up New Year's day and heard that their country's gas supplies had been shut off.

This wasn't the first New Year's that the Ukrainians heard about this gas problem. Over the past three years, the Russian company Gazprom has turned off the faucet more than once and even turned it down to half for a little while, more on that here, an informative little timeline showcasing the Gazprom/Ukrainian natural gas dispute. You see, Russia is a major supplier of natural gas to Europe, the fifth largest, in fact. They pump a great deal of this gas through Ukraine and let them buy a little while it's on the way.

Some problems arose with this situation back in 2004 when Ukraine voted in a new President. You might remember this guy, he's the one that WAS POISONED!!!. He got real sick and went through all kinds of tests to determine what was wrong with him, but it turned out he was dying because he was poisoned! It's like the beginning of a murder-mystery dinner: "Who Poisoned the President?" Since then, Yushchenko has had 24 operations to regain his health. In some ways it's admirable how much of a gangster Vladimir Putin is. When he found out that this new guy, Yushchenko, was going to take over next door Putin probably called him right away. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Putin: Ahhh, Mr. Yushchenko. I'm glad you decided to call me.
Yushchenko: I didn't call you. You called me, and it's the middle of the night! Who are you? How did you get this number?
Putin: It's your oldest friend, Vladimir! I called to let you know we'll be increasing the price you pay for gas.
Yushchenko: ... Putin?! Ugh, what? Why are you telling me this no-
Putin: Price is going from 50 Euro to 230 Euro next year. It's just the cost of doing business, you understand, comrade?
Yushchenko: Th- That's outrageous! You still didn't explain why you called in the middle of the night. Th-That's an outrageous price increase, what the hell man? I'm going to fight this! Ukraine is strong!

Now to answer your question: Yes, in my imagination they were both speaking English with Russian accents. The point is that Putin wouldn't stand for a strong Ukraine. President Yushchenko was poisoned because he quoted Vladimir Putin's least favorite Seinfeld episode ... and because Putin is a gangster. [Ed. Note: This fact is unverified]

This New Year's gas-pimp-slap had a different twist than the others. It was more like a gas-pistol-whip because not only was the flow shut off to Ukraine, the flow was shut off through Ukraine. The history of this gas dispute involves arguments over just about everything that can be agrued about, including whether or not Ukraine was siphoning off gas. Which is the reason that the flow was shut off this year through Ukraine as well as to it.

Now to answer your next question: You probably shouldn't care too much about any of this, but I want to illustrate a fact that I've known for years. That fact is simple. Vladimir Putin is a gangster, and not the kind that you ever want to deal with. He's the scary kind. The Kaiser Soze (The Usual Suspects, 1994) "greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist" kind of gangster. Putin is an old school, feeding his enemies to 16 starving pigs like Brick Top (Snatch, 2000) only Putin has more sense, he's more sneaky than Brick Top, smarter too. Putin is the guy that went from being President of Russia one year to Prime Minister the next and no one had any "whaaaaaa ... ?" moments. His grandfather was Uncle Joe Stalin and Vladimir Lenin's personal cook (it's true! wikipedia says so!) and I'm sure that with such close ties to such democratic leaders, Granddad Putin was able to impart upon his young grandson the wonders of a world without totalitarian rule.

musings on a new year's day

"Fin De Siecle" is French for "end of the century" but I've only ever known the phrase to refer to one century in particular, the 19th. The reason for this is because in a boring subject like history, the historians themselves need to dramatize things sometimes. The hope is that these poetic epithets will make it all seem more interesting so that people will actually read the history books. Everyone can relate to the high school teacher that tries to get the students engaged in the material by involving them in it, well these pretty phrases scattered throughout history books are just the writer's attempt at engaging the reader. A phrase like "fin de siecle" also makes for a cute and easy to swallow title for a class. It's eye catching enough to get a student looking over the class schedule to take a second look, maybe even read the synopsis underneath. I was once such a student and fell in love with the idea of reading such tales as "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "Dracula" as class text books. It's every young historian's dream to be able to read something interesting in a field where the majority of texts are a mixed bag, some might be easy to read for a while and then get so bogged down in trivialities that the reader throws the book down in disgust because he doesn't care what color of dress was popular in Boston in the 1760s. Other books might start off densely boring and then halfway through shout out "Got you!" and launch into some extremely intelligent and well thought out arguments. Others are garbage, they offer no new insights and all the facts contained therein could have been written just as easily in a half-page encyclopedia entry somewhere.

Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of..." was one of those books that actually got me excited to read. I even started it before the semester began, I remember reading the first couple pages over winter break. It was a popular trick (and still is) in my family to buy gifts for people for holidays or birthdays (or whatever) that they needed. It's a nice gesture, but some of the meaning of the "gift" is lost when you get a book that isn't for you, really, it's for a class. It always made me feel old for whatever reason. A gift, to me, implies some sort of decadence not present in anything that would fall into a "need" category. I almost felt like I got a set of tires, while it is a nice gesture, it's kind of a hollow gift. Anyway, these are the thoughts that were going through my head as I was reading those first couple pages of "The Strange Case of..." and the book lost its appeal. I didn't finish it and I sold it back at the end of the semester for a couple dollars that I undoubtedly consumed through my lungs or through my liver.

After watching a British television mini-series entitled "Jekyll" I feel that I've now come to fully understand the book. If the reader will remain with me for a moment, I'll explain. I don't mean that I fully comprehend everything that the book and Mr. Stevenson have to say on the subject of dualities in Man, just that I understand enough. The book was written at a time when things were, to put it as simply as possible, crazy. The world was just getting used to the idea of "Science" and finally shaking those last yokes of oppression hung round its neck. Of course, there's still oppression in the world but it's no longer quite as systemic, not quite as world-widespread. This might help you to understand what this time in history was like: "The Strange Case of..." was written in 1886, I won't get into the Edison/a bunch of other people debate, but the incandescent light bulb was invented and "perfected" in or around 1880. By 1886 in London, magic glass bulbs were replacing candles. 10,000 years of humanity (genetically close enough) and the best way to light your way through the dark was with fire, now electricity runs through a wire and lights a glass bulb. Strange, indeed.

There's another phrase that I learned in that freshman class, "Belle Epoque" which is more French, meaning "beautiful age/era". The idea here is that these wonderful new inventions and gadgets that were making life easier, combined with advancements in the scientific understanding of the world, would never end. It was beautiful because there was hope that the darkest times were behind humanity. These new advancements would propel us past suffering and pain as the medical community was coming up with new ways of curing the sick and healing the wounded. As I have personally come to understand the idea, "belle epoque" is a misnomer. I think of the first part of the 20th century as an extension of the 19th, the "belle epoque" is the twilight of the 19th century before the innocence of hope was lost with World War I. With this understanding, the "fin de siecle" never happened until almost 30 years after 1886, when war broke out in Europe over the murder of an Archduke. There were a lot of high hopes around this time, but also fear of taking things too far. "The Strange Case of..." and many other books about science gone awry, penned then and since, deal with this interplay of hope and fear. I would even make the argument that L.L. Cool J's flagship movie "Deep Blue Sea" is merely an inheritor of the strange and simple truths found in the legacy of the works by people like Mr. Stevenson and Bram Stoker and Jules Verne and Mary Shelley and others, the list could go on indefinitely with books about Man versus himself, ultimately what Man is capable of whether through his actions or works.

Dr. Jekyll is just some guy, he wanted to see where he could take things, how far he could go. Mr. Hyde is merely Dr. Jekyll's own demon that he created in the pursuit of perfection. Dr. Jekyll was pursuing happiness when he slipped up and made a mistake. Something went wrong in his potion, and forever after he had to deal with it. Forever after the 20th century, we have to deal with what happened. When the Archduke was shot and the powder keg in Europe blew up, the "belle epoque" faded to night and the entire world could never go back. If there were a moment when the modern age was born, where innocence was gone, it'd be the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, as if the virginity of the world were lost. In that analogy, WWII would be the birth of the bad son and then the father started drinking and was never home during the cold-war and just general shitty things happen to the maiden until she dies young. Apparently, it was the cancer. Then, when Dr. Jekyll drank his potion, he too, could never go back.

My favorite author/thinker, Kahlil Gibran, said "He who would share your pleasure but not your pain shall lose the key to one of the seven gates of Paradise." The past, including every one of everyone's demons, is an integral part of who they are. A person is like a diamond, at first they're rough and unsure and then, as they go through the whole process of life, start to shine and the many facets find definition. At the end of the ordeal, though some cuts aren't perfect and the shine on the one side is duller than the other, it's beautiful when taken in its entirety. Mr. Hyde is a stylized and fictionalized facet on the face of the diamond of everyone. The cold and serious events of the 20th century is the factual gritty facet of the history of the world. Stepping back, looking at the diamond as a whole, that's what everything is about. It's important to take the good with the bad. Seeing the beauty in the entirety, not a specific set of individual sides to the whole story, is what I've been driving at. In order to embrace Mr. Stevenson's character fully, I say, you need to embrace both sides. The twisted Mr. Hyde and the good Dr. Jekyll are part of each and every person.

In this new year I think it's important to embrace the dark side. It's good to be conscious of the darker aspects of reality and exercise what needs exercised. There's a difference between the decadent and grotesque evil of heads rolling in the streets and the simpler dark side that might be as innocent as giving in to a craving. In the new year I want to be conscious of my past, of where I've come from and where my world has come from. I know who I am, it's merely a matter of recognition, of actually acknowledging that person and tipping my hat.

Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is just some guy, polarized in fiction, illustrating the simple truth in life that we're all just animals. Those base needs and desires can be pushed aside but they're never going to go away. It's important to give in to some desires so that the pressure doesn't get too great, so that Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde doesn't become some guy, polarized in real life, illustrating the need for a slice of decadence every now and then. I think of myself as a bit of a libertine because I know that some hedonism is necessary to keep the elasticity in life needed to prevent a snap, to keep myself whole so that I don't split like Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. A snap is violent, elasticity prevents that violent backlash that leads to war and pain and suffering. The elasticity will help keep the diamond intact, and who knows, maybe exercising some of those vices will lead to a more polished whole some time in the future.