Happy Holidays from Moo

MMC has not made an entry for quite some time. You, dear reader/viewer/cybernaut, have probably been wondering, "Will Western Civilization continue in the absence of the pithy observations by Moo Moo Camus?" Your inner voice quickly responded, " Sure, No Sweat!"

Of course when Ghandi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he replied, "I think it would be a good idea."

Alas, the season of mass consumption, or more accurately, even more mass consumption is upon us, and the hospitals are filled with overdosed shoppers and depressed in-laws who, despite their wildest dreams of lavish gifts, received only a new tie or knit socks.

But Fret not.

Santa is Dead.

Long live Santa!

Winner of Moo Moo Camus Caption Contest #2

Bush to Putin: "Did you have to give a, you know, a 'sample' too?"

Pneumonia in August

Just returned from 8 days in sunny California. Ahh, the sun, the surf, the wall-to-wall built environment. Nothing quite like it "under the sun"!

The day after our return, MMC finds himself in the Emergency Room. 103 Temp and shakes like a withdrawing heroine addict. Not good.

So what's the diagnosis?

Pneumonia.

Ahh, nothing like Pneumonia in August.

I now feel like my body is like one of those old fashioned deep diving suits with the metal helmets. Thick and creaky and barely able to move. Additionally, it's astonishing how many varieties of discomfort and pain our bodies of capable of producing. If I wasn't so darn uncomfortable, it would be interesting to enumerate all the ways that I feel bad. It feels like a kind of symphony of aches and groans and pains.

Glub, Glub, Glub

A Matter of Trust--The Beginning of a Story

Karen had been driving nearly all night, with the heater turned way up. She’d forgotten how cold the desert could be at this time of year. The smell of Yucca, Saguaro, and Sage pushed in through the dashboard vents. In the back seat, her small suitcase, pile of manila file folders, and tiny black PDA, slumped over in a mound, like an unconscious body. Whenever she left like this, which was only every few years, or so, she found that she had to remind herself of the route west. The turns seemed foreign, almost the reverse of the way they should be, and the Interstate looked different than she remembered, as she passed strip malls and fast food palaces that, the last time she fled this way, had not yet blossomed in the flat vacant terrain, where no one really wanted to live. She found herself clenching her teeth, locked in some inner debate that seemed simultaneously important and trivial, “Was it a mirage or was it a delusion?” She grew more irritated with herself, “What difference did it make, now?”

The car headlights illuminated the white lines that stretched out ahead. The lines were intended to keep the vehicles and their occupants in their designated places. But now, in the early morning cold, just a few minutes before dawn, there were no other cars, no other drivers. Nothing on either side of her, but the blur of desert brush. Nothing behind, but the first half-glow of dawn. Nothing ahead, but some kind of future.

At their apartment, Rory was dreaming he was awake. The sunlight filtered in through the cheap drapes and he had the same recurring feeling he had every morning. Slight disappointment with a trace of regret. He was once again back in the unfamiliar routine that was his life. As if he belonged somewhere else. Same thing, every day. How could it be light so soon? He rolled over and pulled the blanket over his shoulders and wondered why the air felt so cold. Just then, the smell of burnt toast drifted in from the kitchen and seared his nostrils. He let out a sigh and was annoyed at her for being careless again. Why did it bother him? He tried to call out to her but the effort was too much. Why couldn't he find his voice? He thought he heard water running, but his mind couldn't focus on what was happening. Something didn't feel right. His thoughts dulled over and he felt his mind slip over the dark void into deep sleep when he suddenly jerked awake. The room was brightly lit and he had trouble opening his eyes, like someone had ground sand into them and added lead to his eyelids. Eyelids, he thought to himself. Stupid. It hurt to squint at the clock. 2:00 a.m. Shit. He'd fallen asleep with the light on. Again. The window was wide open. That was odd. He leaned over to reach for Karen at the same time he glanced over, but she wasn't there. Frowning, he tried to put the pieces of last night together...but nothing came. He tried to pull himself more awake. Then came a sinking feeling, a gnawing grip at his stomach that got stronger. A wave of disgust that preceded what he dreaded to remember. He instantly tried to suppress the thought, but that made him instantly clear headed and wide awake, unable to fend off the memory of last night.

“My God, Karen, what took you so long? We had just about given you up for dead. I mean…” Her sister’s voice hesitated for a moment. “You know what I mean,” she looked both embarrassed and annoyed.

Whitney stood in the blanched, cement driveway of her home. The sun was warm and the Valley air was already smoggy, well before noon. Although a year and one-half older, her sister looked like her twin, but in the two years since the sisters had seen one another, Whitney seemed thicker, everywhere, like the retraced outline of a child’s crayon drawing.

Karen slid out of the car’s front seat, and the two sister’s perfunctorily embraced for second, a bit like a shrug of the shoulders. Karen opened the driver’s side rear door of her car, as her sister stood to one side, waiting for her to unload her belongings from the back seat.

“We got your e-mail four days ago. I thought you’d be here by Tuesday. You didn’t call. I thought maybe you had an accident.” Whitney seemed more put-off than alarmed.

“I did,” muttered Karen, half-smiling and hoping her sister would get the sarcasm that she never seemed to fully appreciate.” She must have understood this time, because Whitney didn’t inquire any further.

The two sisters walked to the imposing front door, and into the house. Whitney’s kid’s were at school and the place looked astonishingly neat for the home of two elementary-aged children. Karen noticed that the walls had been newly painted a faint peach color that was now thought to mean sleekness and enlightenment in the post-modern suburbs, where her sister had come to rest after a tumultuous decade of trying to succeed as an actress in an unyielding and unwelcoming Hollywood. Multiple parental loans, an occasional appearance in locally shot TV commercials, and periodic parts in community theaters, had dimmed her Vassar-acquired expectations for the dramatic arts in contemporary America.

Her husband, Jack, was gone; at work in one of the exurban financial brokerage companies that helped retirees and well-heeled suburbanites shuttle their money into Eastern establishment, WASPy sounding mutual funds, based in the Bahamas. Karen was relieved that Jack was gone, although in a small, furtive way, barely conscious to her, she always looked forward to seeing him.

Karen dropped her luggage in the hall, and the two sisters settled into the cool air- conditioned light of the house’s large kitchen.

“So what did he do this time?” Whitney asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“No… I mean, yes, but not that way.” Karen set her coffee mug down on the chrome and glass kitchen table. She was dressed in an elegant gray business suit that much belied the swiftness of her flight and the disheveled origins of that first night of escape. Her straight dark hair offset her blue eyes. “He’s too smart to be violent, at least towards me. No, it’s about the money, ‘our’ money. Shit, all of it is gone. Gone.”

“How much was it?” Whitney asked.

“More than Jack will make in ten year’s of trading,” Karen said with a slightly indignant sneer at her sister’s question.

“Where, for God’s sake, did Rory get that kind of cash?”

“Look, you know what he does. He’s paid very well for his work, if you want to call it ‘work’.

Just then, Karen’s cell phone chirped. She paused, reached into her gray suit coat. She knew who it was without looking at the screen. She decided that enough time had passed since her escape—and anyway, Rory knew exactly where she would be. She answered the phone with a curt, “Yes.”

Rory’s voice sounded …….

©B. Rose 2006

Treatment -- Working Draft

The Story

Karen leaves Rory, because Rory has committed some unforgivable sin. On the surface, its appears to be about money, but it is deeper than that. Maybe? He betrays something, maybe a promise that he made to a corporate boss. A promise not to tell something, or to use some information. Now, the boss is after Rory, but its bigger than the boss, too. The boss is just the first and closest level. Rory has sinned against some corporate code of silence--maybe he's a kind of whistle blower or a spy. (Whatever he is, he is inept) Anyway, Karen is tough and sleek, and when she learns that Rory has made a fatal mistake and ruined any chances that they may have had together for a normal life, she decides to leave. Quick. Where does she go? To her sister. Why? Because she really is in love with her brother-in-law, or at least once was. (Haven't figured out that part of the story yet, but I like the twist.) Before her sister got married, Karen and (Jack) had some kind of affair. Later, Jack gets an MBA, Karen goes to Europe for art school--they grow apart. Karen, a few years later, meets Rory. Rory's handsome, has some talent, appears to have the makings of a future in the art world, and most importantly, is relatively harmless. Karen is unable to get her own art career going, so she marries him---hoping that she will be happy as a wife of a struggling artist. They move to New Mexico. Santa Fe. Of course Rory is unable to make it, so eventually, he goes to work for the Really Big Corporation (RBC) and is able, over a few years, to make it at a low level career working on a secret project that RBC is hatching to make a billion dollars. Anyway, Rory gets a brilliant idea: he thinks he can make his own billion, if he sells or tells the secret of RBC's secret project. But Rory isn't too bright. He sells/betrays the secret project to someone--the wrong person-- that, in turn, rats on him to RBC (Why??? disappointment, incomplete information??) Rory is now up the creek. He has no money, he's being hunted (by thugs hired by RBC), his wife leaves him. He's at rock bottom. (That's when we meet him in the opening paragraph.)

Karen can't stay long with her sister, Whitney. They don’t like each other, really. And it’s way too tense, too much sexual energy between Karen and Jack. Moreover, Whitney knows that Karen has a thing for Jack, even though she doesn’t have the complete story—she just senses it. (Karen has never told Whitney about her affair with Jack. Neither has Jack told Whitney.)

Karen is the key character.

Karen decides that she will have to make a living on her own. What will she do? Karen leaves her sister's house and sets up living somewhere in LA. Somewhere cheesy and low-brow. Jack surreptitiously connects her to some friends and a job. (Jack has to do this on the sly, or Whitney will leave him too.) He acts out of loyalty to their now long-ago romance. He has a ember of a thing for Karen. Karen begins to work for some financial corporation (Later, it turns out, it’s a division of RBC, the company that is now out to kill her estranged husband).

Rory, although not too bright, has realized that he better get out of town. He goes “on the lamb” or “underground” or something. RBC thugs continue peruse him, but he stays just one step ahead. He’s lucky. At least for now.

Meanwhile, time passes—Karen gets up and goes to work, every day. It’s a hum drum life, but she’s got to make a living. The scenes cut back and forth between Karen’s hum drum, workaday existence, and Rory's flight to international locations (He goes first to Mexico, then somewhere else, far more obscure, to elude his pursuers. He is, of course, using their joint credit card, at least at first.) Eventually Rory ends up in some back water where he is safe for a while, or so he thinks. Somewhere in Africa, French Africa, where it is not entirely impossible for a white guy to stand out. (Or maybe South Africa—good location for surfing while making the movie. Though too many sharks in the water.)

Once in a while, Rory checks in with Karen. He calls her every couple of months. During those calls, Karen berates him for being stupid and thinking he could make money through a betrayal of RBC. She tells him that she’s sold his last painting of her. The one that Rory thought was so important and innovative.

Karen continues to work at RBC’s subdivision (Hereafter,” The Subdivision Corporation”) She manages to get ahead a bit, and starts working for their security division. (During this period, she sleeps with Jack a few times, but this doesn’t go anywhere—Jack actually loves Whitney, the kids, the Valley.) Eventually Karen stumbles onto Subdivision’s on-going plans to eliminate her husband. (Subdivision is really pissed. It turns out that Rory had got paid by Subdivision, but didn’t deliver the secret) OK. Karen hates her husband and thinks that he’s inept, but she doesn’t want to see him dead. So she waits for his next call from (somewhere in Africa) When they speak, she tells Rory that she knows what RBC is up to. She’s seen some of the plan to kill him. She has information that can save his life. At least some information. She wants to meet him. But where? Rory resists this idea at first, but he still loves Karen and is eager to reunite. He thinks he can restore himself to her good graces. Little does he know that Karen has become an employee of the Subdivision Corporation and that she has told Subdivision that she can help track down her husband. For a price! (Karen wants the money—she’s tough. No more living in an apartment in a one-bedroom in Palms for her!)

Eventually Karen travels to Africa for the rendezvous with Rory. She is, of course, accompanied, by a Subdivision hit man. (Does she know this?? Probably not.) She leads the hit man to Rory. She shows up at the appointed meeting place. The hit man follows her. (He’s African American, of course, he looks right at home in Africa) Rory and Karen meet. The hit man breaks in. What does Karen do? She wants the money, she needs the money. She wants a new life, and God knows it’s no fun to work for Subdivision . Additionally, she is afraid that if she doesn’t help Subdivision now, to eliminate Rory, the hit man, or some subsequent henchman from Subdivision , will “eliminate” her.

Rory is cute, but he’s incompetent. Besides, Karen still has a thing—however unrequited-- for Whitney’s husband, Jack. Plus she has big plans for that money she will receive from Subdivision. Maybe she'll beome an artist again. Karen once loved Roary, but does she love him enough now to risk her life, and to try to stop the hit man from “rubbing out” Rory? And what about the money? What will happen to her if she does prevent the hit? What will happen to her if she doesn’t?

© B. Rose 2006

The History of Night

Cumulus closing
The ragged pupil of our sky.
The stars now curtained,
Their glittering throng interrupted.
Then, the wind levers open,
A small, perfect aperture.
We peer up, squinting
Into the glimmering past.
It’s light issued from
As far back
As we will ever know.

Ocean View in Kansas City

I saw the Al Gore movie the other night (An Inconvenient Truth), and it looks like we may all be in a lot of hot sea water in a few years, with the tides rising, due to global warming. It is not entirely clear to me, but it looks like we should be setting our sites on buying some seaside, ocean front property for our retirement years, somewhere in the vicinity of Kansas City. I propose that we change the state's motto, which is now "ad astra per aspera" which is Latin for "To the stars through hardship" to something like, "Kansas, the other 'ocean state'".

My Consciousness, or Yours?

One of the problems of being human is what I will term the problem of, ‘my consciousness,’ or ‘narcissistic consciousness.’ I suffer from this. Others may also. I haven’t noticed.

As a result of this malady, one thinks that what one thinks is really interesting and meaningful. (Why there is human subjectivity and individual consciousness at all, totally escapes me. Couldn’t the forces of nature, evolution, Zeus, dare I say, God, just as well have shaped living beings without consciousness—you know, kind of efficient bacteria, only prettier?? Gee, I guess it/they did! Just turn on any ‘reality’ TV show.) Anyway, I really think that what I really think is interesting—at least I experience it as interesting and novel. But is it?? Let’s review a bit of a day’s thinking---kind of a list of topics from my stream of consciousness, to see if it really is that interesting, shall we?)

OK. I get up and unload the dishwasher and feed the dog. I reflect that, on the one hand, life should be more that this. Emptying the dishwasher and feeding the dog are inane activities, but on the other hand, I at least have a dishwasher and dishes and a dog. These are good things. Right? While emptying the dishwasher and feeding the dog, I think to myself, “Must get kid to school. When will she be old enough to be self-regulating, so that I don’t have to tell her to brush her teeth before we leave? When will she just automatically go in there and brush her teeth without my prompting her to do so? Geez, she is almost old enough, I think, and she is growing up way too fast. Soon she will be 30 (in fact she is just 11) and I will be dead, or what’s worse, I will be living a life of lonely poverty, forgotten in some nursing home, tortured by my regrets about my life’s failures (including having a dog and emptying the dishwasher 439,786 times.) Back to the thought at hand. My daughter is growing up and I am going to die. Shit! Change course. Think happy and pleasant thoughts. Life is sweet, and ‘being,’ if one takes time to appreciate it, is a miraculous thing. Drive kid to school. Be nice to dog!”

On the way back from dropping the kid off at school, I stop at my hair cutters and get my haircut. I like my haircutter, she is very sweet and nice and she’s been cutting my hair for 15 years, and I like her. She’s Italian-American. She is also pregnant and is scheduled to have a baby in March. (OK, maybe she’s not exactly ‘scheduled.’) As she cuts my hair, I enquire about her health, the progress of the pregnancy, her plans…it’s all very pleasant chit chat. As I do this, however, I am thinking, variously, “When H was born I was old, but a lot younger than I am now. Was I 42? Chriisst. I was! Life is short. Mortality is inescapable. I will not live forever. Me, me, me, me, me. Death = no more me.” I notice myself thinking about life and death and the looming disaster of my own mortality. This is not good. By ‘not good,’ I mean both my thinking about my mortality, and the fact of my mortality are not good. It’s dreadful.

I drive home right after the hair cut. The haircut has taken about 3 minutes to complete because I don’t have much hair, much has fallen out---another sign of my mortality and impending demise. I think to myself, “I should get ready for a work meeting I have later today , but I have plenty of time. Relax. Why not just sit down for a few minutes and have some fun. Maybe visit the NY Times website, and maybe later write about my consciousness. But wait! I don’t have that much time. Time is short. Tempest Fugit. I don’t ’know Latin—although I studied it for two years in high school—I still don’t know any Latin—I’m terrible with languages—I should have learned Spanish. I should study Spanish, now. I should take piano lessons—why haven’t I learned how to play the piano? Time is running out. Maybe I won’t learn Latin before I expire. Or the piano. I am a failure. My life is nearly ending, and I am a failure.”

Wait a minute. Get a hold of yourself, Moo!

The Schmootie Song

'Schmootie' is a lovely word
Tho, all too seldom is 'schmootie' heard
Schmootie by day and schmootie by dark
Schmootie in town, schmootie in the park
If ever I were asked to be king
At the coronation, the gathered would sing
Schmootie, schmootie, schmootie
Schmootie for oney and schmootie for twoie
Schmootie for me-ee and schmootie for youie.

Little House on the Prarie?

The average American home grew from 983 square feet in 1950, to 2,349 square feet in 2004 -- a 140% increase. Yet the American household shrank by 18% between 1970 and 2003, from 3.14 people to 2.57, on average.

"Louie, Louie" Redux

Thank the gods for the Kingsmen. Yes, the Kingsmen, popularizers, in 1963, of such unforgettable musical achievements as “Louie, Louie,” and “The Jolly Green Giant.” (They actually did a version of “Mustang Sally” and “Money --That’s What I Want--” too) These predecessors of today’s garage bands had few pretensions to greatness, but challenged, in their own unwitting way and only a few years after the witch hunts of McCarthy (see Good night and Good Luck), the cultural torpor of late 1950’s mid-America. Today, I find that this music also makes great laundry-folding background music, as I sort through the whites and the darks. (For some activities, one desperately needs something in the background.)

Apparently, “Louie, Louie,” was presumed by many to have objectionable (read, pornographic) lyrics and was, at one point, condemned by such defenders of air-wave decency as the Governor of Indiana, Matthew Welsh. (I recall that the kids in my 7^th grade class sure were convinced that the lyrics were “dirty”. Although it was a complete mystery to me how anyone knew what the Kingsmen were singing.) When the Federal Communications Commission conducted an investigation into the lyrics of “Louie, Louie,” they concluded that, “The record is unintelligible at any speed we played it.” This, I think, speaks volumes about, on the one hand, the genius of the Kingsmen (literally creating a tabula rasa on to which anyone could project what they wanted) and on the other hand, the antipathy that seethed in early 1960s America for what was then a blossoming youth culture that would soon lay siege to the staid sensibilities of America, with a triumvirate of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. The “Establishment” was convinced that the kids were being corrupted by dirty music. And, of course, they were right. But certainly not by lyrics of “Louie, Louie.” Essentially “Louis, Louis” had no lyrics.

The uproar over “Louie, Louie” was a long, long, long, time ago. But, time, of course, has a way of both slipping away and lingering around, simultaneously. Time is both slippery and sticky. It is evanescent and unending. Now you see it, now you don’t. Here today, gone tomorrow. Etcetera, etcetera. “Louie, Louie,” hit the airwaves over 40 years ago and yet, it seems like only a moment ago. A brief pulse in the great stream of time.

Ahh, “the great stream of time.” It’s very much like the great stream of consciousness. Only, in my case, it’s not exactly a “stream.” More like a “rivulet.” Or maybe even just a few drips. Yes, “drips” of consciousness. That’s it.

But let me first observe that consciousness, or perhaps more accurately, my consciousness, is a weird tangle of impressions and sensations and autobiographical memories and associations. It’s composed as much of the little things that skulk around in the background, as it is the big things that lumber, like locomotives, in the foreground. I’m as consciousness of the feel of this keyboard at which I’m now typing, as I am of my abstract and fuzzy ideas about the vast expanse of time.

Of course, consciousness has some relationship to identity, and as, mentioned, memory—autobiographical memory. (Speaking of identity, let me also observe that it seems to me that who we are, and what we are, is comprised as much by the things that we avoid (steer clear of) as the things that we embrace, whole hog. We are comprised by what we aren’t (or won’t allow ourselves to be) as much as by what we “are.”) So anyway, like I was saying, we conscious beings—even we of little, tiny ideas---are physical things, embedded in a specific point in time and history and nature. Connected to our genetic ancestors and our specific culture. Oh yes, and our given ecology and language (the latter an inheritance form the past that we recreate and innovate, simultaneously.) We are not ethereal and immaterial “souls” afloat in some perfect ether. We are blood and flesh and the composite of our experiences and our place of birth, plus some genetic stuff that gets factored in, that we don’t get any vote in.

But enough of this digression, let’s get back to what’s really important: “Louie, Louie.”

“Just what were the lyrics to Louie, Louie, anyway??” The Kingsmen spent 35 dollars to record their song, and the quality of the recording accords with this magnitude of their investment. Who can tell what the lyrics are by listening? So I looked them up.

Louie Louie, oh no
Me gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Louie Louie, oh baby
Me gotta go

Fine little girl waits for me
Catch a ship across the sea
Sail that ship about, all alone
Never know if I make it home

CHORUS

Three nights and days I sail the sea
Think of girl, constantly
On that ship, I dream she's there
I smell the rose in her hair.

CHORUS

Okay, let's give it to 'em, right now!

GUITAR SOLO

See Jamaica, the moon above
It won't be long, me see me love
Take her in my arms again
Tell her I'll never leave again

CHORUS

Let's take it on outa here now
Let's go!!

If the governor of Indiana thought that Louie, Louie was suggestive, what do you think he would have made of these lyrics, from the song, “Gone Dead Train” which, as you will recall, appeared some years later, in the movie Performance, starring Mr. Mick Jagger. The song was sung by Randy Newman:

[Words and music by Jack Nitzsche & Russ Titelman.]

My engine was pumpin' steam and I was grindin' at you hard and fast
I was burnin' down the rail tryin' to heat the way
Haulin' ass and ridin' up the track
And I laughed at the conductor who was tellin' me my coal would never last
When the fire in my boiler up and quit before I came
Now ain't no empty cellar need a gone dead train

Once was at a time when I could Mama shave 'em dry
And raise a fever on ice-down chill
Waiting at the station with a heavy loaded sack
Savin' up and holdin' just to spill
Shootin' the supply from my demon's eye
'Stead of waitin' for a time, I hope I will
When the fire in my boiler up and quit before I came
Now ain't no empty cellar need a gone dead train

Yeah it's a gone dead train
You got to help it to burn
You know it's a gone dead train
You got to teach it to learn

There ain't no easy way when the daily run a downhill pull
And there ain't no easy day, wishin' for some jelly roll
There ain't no switch been made to let a juicy lemon find
A spring to run a dry well full
Then the fire in my boiler up and quit before I came
Ain't no empty cellar need a gone dead train

Yeah it's a gone dead train
You got to help it to burn
You know it's a gone dead train
You got to teach it to learn
You know it's a gone dead train
You got to help it to burn
You know it's a gone dead train
You got to help it to learn
Baby, it's a gone dead train
It's a gone dead train

“Louie, Louie” was really just “Little Bo Peep,” by comparison to, “Gone Dead Train.”

Ah, but both “Louie, Louie” and “Gone Dead Train” were a long time ago.

Now, I must get back to the laundry-folding. Back to the quiet zen-like, stillness of a blank consciousness.

Back to the lyrics of “Louie, Louie.”