Innocent Abroad

Some people speak badly of racial profiling as though it were some intrinsically racist thing.  Face it– the human mind naturally groups people together, and sometimes those groups are imperfect, but without some kind of system in place, chaos reigns.  What’s more, racial profiling is efficient, and needs to extend even further than airport security and traffic stops.

Let’s go back 150 years, to one of the most traumatic events in U.S. history— to April 14, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  His shooter?  John Wilkes Booth, a white guy with a vendetta against the President.  Fast forward 15 years to a train station in Baltimore where Charles Guiteau, fellow white man, shoots and kills President Garfield.  Just 20 years later, President McKinley is assassinated.  The shooter?  Caucasian; male.  Then, on that fateful day in 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in broad daylight.  His shooter was never identified, but the prime suspect was a white male, who was himself murdered by another white male.  Are we seeing a pattern?

In fact, throughout history, no American president has ever been shot by anyone other than a white male.  So why, why why, when attending an event where the President is appearing, does every single man, woman, and child get searched by the Secret Service?  This is criminally inefficient—history clearly shows that black women do not shoot Presidents; old Asian men do not shoot Presidents; little Johnny Boy Scout does not shoot Presidents.  If we can all agree that Presidential Security is of paramount importance, why are we focusing attention on people that don’t shoot presidents, thereby taking valuable energy away from scrutinizing those who do?

Some hippies and ACLosers will argue that it’s unfair to single out white males.  They’ll cry into their granola about plots uncovered by foreign nationals, and others of various backgrounds, to assassinate a president.  At the very least, those beatniks must accept that the odds are overwhelmingly against them: if anyone is going to shoot the President, it’s far more likely to be a white male.  Why shouldn’t white men be subject to further security measures, no matter how “racist” it may seem?  It’s just smart.

What would be even smarter is looking at the events which Presidents typically attend— they’re chock full of white guys.  It’s a powder-keg just waiting to blow and if the Secret Service really cared about Presidential Security, they’d fill the first few rows with women and minorities and keep all the middle-aged white men locked up in back.  (And while we’re at it—who the hell thought it was a good idea to fill the Secret Service with white males?  That’s like hiring Arabs to work security at our airports– insanity perpetrated by liberals to keep our country in a state of imminent danger.)

This trend of personal violence against politicians extends even beyond Presidents.  The white supremacist George Wallace was shot by a white man– who saw that coming? In 1978, the mayor of San Francisco was murdered by Dan White.  Just guess what color he was!  It’s obvious that white males must be regarded as a specific threat when it comes to political figures in general, but especially Presidents.  Of course they aren’t bad people and don’t need to singled out all the time, just in places where they might be dangerous—political rallies, poll stations, public speeches, and any time they’re within a square mile of the President.  It’s time we cared more about safety than fairness; maybe some ‘rights’ will get trampled on, but what’s more important, America—‘civil liberties’ or the safety of our great nation’s leaders?

And for the love of God, stop searching old women in wheelchairs—my tax dollars shouldn’t go to protecting the President from non-threats while a WASP strolls in calmly behind her with a gun.

Adam

I loved you once, when I was seven and you were just that faceless redhead with the sculpted mullet opposite Fred Savage in The Wizard. Twelve years later, a little trick of fate via the internet brought you back into my awareness and I realized that I still loved you, albeit for different reasons. In those days it was “The Frug” and “Papillon” and “Glendora” that made me clap and smile and find excuses to put Rilo Kiley songs on mixtapes. Part of the appeal then was a girlfriend who hates you; my passive-aggressive nature and the papier mache foundation of our relationship dictated that I could only love you more as her and I loved each other less.

Later came a girlfriend who worships you: looks like you, sings like you, and does many other good things that I imagine you would do just as well. Then the double whammy of More Adventurous and your stunning solo album with the creepy twins made you a permanent part of my psychic landscape. Meanwhile, Blake was stepping his shit up with The Elected, and Me First ranked right up with More Adventurous in my Best o’ 2004 list, alongside The Dresden Dolls’ debut, The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free and, of course, the ever-amazing-Tim’s Album of The Year.

Fast forward to mid-2007 and I’m dangling off a cliff at the far edge of this exhaustive planet when word of a new Rilo album reaches my ears. That news sparked in me a unique and peculiar joy, which I could only describe as being struck by lightning only to find electricity made of cotton candy and orgasms. But then I saw this and my heart tried to flush itself down the toilet.

I was speechless for one hot minute, completely numb from the tongue down. Then what words did come could only be directed towards you: Don’t do it to us, Jenny. Don’t do it to the people who have stood by you for years, paid to see you in shit clubs with shit bands and tried to convince everyone we knew that you and Blake were geniuses who deserved all the fame and accolades of every MTV-ready singer-songwriter put together. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t a case of ‘I loved them first’ fame-jealousy, and before you label me as some indie-elitist who’s always whining about Bright Eyes and Sony and ‘selling out’, let me say this: I could give a fuck about that. Sign to whatever label you like. Let Satan distribute your records to Wal-Mart and Starbucks. Tour with Christina Aguilera and Metallica. By all means, run your music career as you fit, but I humbly entreat you to not do it at the expense of everything that was so refreshing about you. Don’t trade in subdued anonymity and beautifully crafted songs for a hot video and lyrics such as:

“You are the money maker
She is yours for the taking
You know you wanna make her
Show her your money maker”

followed by about a thousand sexy moans, over and over for 4 minutes. In terms of lyricism this song ranks somewhere between Eiffel 65’s coma-inducing “Blue” and Raffi’s timeless power-ballad “Bananaphone”. Rilo Kiley has never seemed or professed to be all about writing bland songs, filming hot videos, and making them singles. Jenny, the world has enough so-so songs sung by pretty mouths. You’ve proven dozens of times that you can do more. Why aren’t you doing more?

(**This is the point in any argument where I sigh and begin to capitulate…**)

Maybe you’re just going in a ‘new direction’. Maybe you’re writing exactly what you want to write and presenting it exactly as you want to, which is all any of us can do as artists. If this is the case then I grudgingly applaud you for having the courage to do so. And if this is the case I can only wish you the best of possible luck. But you must understand that this confuses and enrages we who have known you for the better part of a decade as anything but the girl in this video, singing lyrics that a nine year old could jot down on a napkin between courses at The Sizzler. If Joanna Newsom suddenly ditched the harp, discovered make-up, added a Neptunes beat and sang as something other than a Muppet crack-baby, I would be just as confused and suspicious. If I wrote a series of books about a girl wizard named ‘Sally Cotter’ and changed my initials to include a K, I would expect everyone I know to be just as miffed.

Yet despite all my reservations, I really look forward to the new album. I hope you absolutely smash my expectations and expose me for the cynical, raving snob that I am. I hope your album is worthy of selling a million copies, and then I hope it sells ten million. But if “The Moneymaker” is what you’ve permanently traded in “The Absence of God” for—I’d rather just convert to the Cult Of Green Day now and save myself the pain of watching you fill arenas with pre-pubescent boys desperate to say you “showed them your money”, as you so aptly put it.

Yours, Shakily,

A.K. Finley

Not even touching the ludicrous idea that it’s illegal to sell what is perfectly legal to give away, in light of recent events I feel the need to call the basic concept of prostitution into question. Generally it’s described as ‘sex for money’, but this model becomes breaks down immediately; what if no ‘knowing’, in the biblical sense, occurs? What if someone is simply being paid to dress in stilettos and smack a little booty with a belt? Does that count as prostitution, or just interactive theater with a side-order of erection? What if the whole exchange happens over the phone? The ‘prostitute’ in that scenario is merely verbally inciting a fantasy, which Jenny Lewis did for me after I bought her CD (okay, downloaded it, but if you call her a whore I will gouge your fucking eyes out). If paying someone to talk on the phone counts as prostitution, then Miss Cleo is fucked! If Kait talks potty-words to me via Vodafone it’s fine, but if I slip her $20 for it this winter, we’re both criminals?

I bring this up not only in the hopes of inciting a little long-distance dirtiness, but because of the recent “revelation” in said D.C. Madam scandal that many of her clients were well-respected, high-ranking individuals. I would hope that rather than feign outrage and resurrect Jerry Falwell’s ghost for a long rant about Morality with a capital M, we might take this opportunity to ask some real questions, namely: why is prostitution still illegal? Is it because of some neo-Victorian belief in the impropriety of sex? Is it a belief that sex is sacred and therefore not a sellable commodity on par with, say, a Lite-Brite or pack of Big Red? Or is it a belief that prostitution cannot be considered a ‘victimless crime’ because society itself is the victim? It’s not called ‘the world’s oldest profession’ for nothing, and so far as I can tell, human society has somehow managed to survive and even thrive, marching bravely onward despite the presence of flappers, snappers, and ‘down-ass chicks’ in every society throughout every epoch of human history. So why do we continue to kid ourselves? Is it because only by keeping prostitution marginalized do we have any chance of controlling the terrible damage it does? Or is it because, were such activities legal, part of its appeal would disappear alongside all the time, money, and manpower spent fighting it? Maybe whores are like swear words—we need them to be forbidden in order to not taint the satisfaction of using them.

But not only do we cling to the notion that prostitution is some grave social ill, we also conceive of it as a dirty, debased activity engaged in by dirty, debased individuals. Interesting how the Madam’s phone records include a long list of federal employees, lawyers, doctors, contractors, lobbyists, and even a high-ranking official or two. These are the “cream of the crop” so to speak, the tip-top of the social pyramid, and they don’t seem to mind the occasional dubious contact, and this is just one organization out of hundreds like it. I, for one, am nowhere near shocked– why the hell are so many people appalled? Europeans don’t find it particularly surprising or distressing when their leaders enjoy a little tryst, nor do many other nations around the globe, including those pesky pseudo-Americans riding our jockstrap to the north. It would seem that the rest of the world has this shocking belief that privacy— wait for it— is private, and therefore none of your god damn business, or mine. We seem to be the only fools who pretend that prostitution is a huge social ill and trust our leaders to protect us from it, only to find that they engage in it as much, if not more, than everyone else. All of this, and a frightening number of Americans still think that access to hookers is going to bring the sky crashing down.

Apparently, in descending order of severity, the greatest threats to American society are:

1) Al Qaeda
2) Universal Healthcare
3) Prostitution
4) Gay Rights
5) Reparations For Slavery

Nowhere on that list is Hubris, or Ignorance, or Apathy. But gays? Hoe-bags? Infants and retirees who can’t pay artificially-inflated prices for their medication?

Fuck them shits.

Never mind that most studies show regulated prostitution actually curtails the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Never mind that every nation with regulated prostitution nets untold millions annually from the practice. In a nation so strapped for cash that it’s considering cutting funding for public broadcasting to pay for a war half of us never wanted and almost no one wants now, why are we still pursing our lips at the idea and sweeping it back under the rug? Because it should be there? Or because under the rug is a much more satisfying place to fuck on the sly?

I don’t know… why don’t we ask Congress?

I finally read A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, the ex-addict who wrote a memoir about his struggle with drugs and alcohol and time spent in rehab. It was very good if a little overly dramatic and predictable– but I’m sick as hell of people badmouthing him for fictionalizing his account and calling him a fraud. That’s some bullshit.

Gore Vidal said it best in his own memoir Palimpsest, “a memoir is how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.” So what if James Frey remembers his past differently—a decade spent stumbling around in a drug and alcohol induced haze is guaranteed to fuzz your memory. So what if, in the interests of brevity or good-storytelling or protecting an identity, he changes details, embellishes his arrest record, or alters the fate of his love interest? That was a fucked up love story between two very broken people and he actually pulled it off by making you believe in it. What the fuck difference does it make if she committed suicide by hanging in the book and slitting her wrists in real life?

It is pretty shoddy that he shopped the book around as fiction originally, was rejected 20-something times, resubmitted it as a memoir and it was snatched up. But I see that as less a poor reflection on his character (who doesn’t want to sell a book that they lived 90% of and spent years writing?) and more a statement on our voyeuristic tendencies as a culture— that a gripping story isn’t as gripping unless we know for a fact that it actually happened to someone. That’s sad, and indicative of another aspect of our culture: we’ve lost our ability to universally empathize. We can coo and say ‘poor, brave man’ to James Frey if we imagine him in the narrative driver’s seat, but for the book to be about no one in particular doesn’t pique our interest the same way. We, as a culture, tend to believe that fictional truth can never be as real, and certainly not more so, than “real” truth. If you believe this, read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, in particular the section called “How To Tell A True War Story”. Maybe James Frey didn’t really do all those exact things to that exact extent. That doesn’t mean thousands of other people haven’t or couldn’t or won’t. It makes his story less accurate, but it doesn’t make his story any less true. As a society, we disregard that thought: if we can’t attach that story to one good-looking personality, deify them on Oprah, and see them as a shining example to the rest of us, then we just couldn’t be bothered, could we?

Sure, James Frey (and Doubleday) made some big mistakes in how they approached and marketed this book, but I call it equally the fault of a book-selling community and a book-reading community with fundamental flaws in their understanding of what a memoir is. And telling Oprah that the same “demons” that led him to drinking and drugs also led him to make up parts of the book was a cowardly, placating move. Of course it should be public knowledge for anyone who really wants to know that he fictionalized isolated aspects of his book, but:

1) If you are upset that the story has been embellished and his ‘memoir’ isn’t a journalistic text, then you are an idiot.

2) If you read this book, or any book, and believe every word of it without question, then you are also an idiot.

I’m sick of this fucking crucifixion, as if every other memoir on your shelf right now doesn’t contain a handful of embellishments, omissions and outright lies. No one seems to care or call them frauds—but then again, they haven’t sold a million copies and been interviewed by The O. Granted, most memoir embellishments are not so severe, but that’s just an argument of degree. It’s damn near impossible to write a good memoir that is accurate down to the last detail. Not only would that be incredibly boring, but you also have to worry about length, and pace, and protecting the real-life identities of your characters (you know, being a writer). Memoirs are to literature what “historical” movies are to film—some are fairly accurate with minor flaws (Saving Private Ryan), while others focus on getting the half-dozen biggest facts right and then make the rest of that shit up (Pearl Harbor). Andrew Pham’s Cafish and Mandala falls more on the factual side, A Million Little Pieces slides pretty far toward a ready-made adaptation that Colin Farrell could star in (or Matt Damn if he lost 20 pounds). But it doesn’t fucking matter. It’s just a book. It’s not the news. You’re not supposed to be able to trust it.

Memoirs shouldn’t even be considered non-fiction, and I hope this controversy leads to a reclassification of the literary memoir. Journalism is (ideally) non-fiction. Scholarly tomes that painstakingly cite their sources are non-fiction. Autobiographies need to be fact-checked, otherwise they’re not reliable, but a memoir is based on memories, impressions, feelings, and a highly personal point of view—by its very nature, a memoir has to be unreliable.

So get off his fucking back. He wrote a gripping book that should touch you whether or not his arrest record is factually accurate. Quit being dicks and start being glad he’s sober. That’s more than a lot of us can say.

Adam

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
–Bill of Rights

“I only wish the NRA… would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well regulated militia.”
–Kurt Vonnegut

Tragedy brings debate, and the events at Virginia Tech on April 16 have certainly done that for gun control. It only took about three days for the shock to subside, and then everyone got on their political hobby horse and started riding hard.

The pro-gun agenda loudly decries that in a society where anyone can carry a gun anywhere, tragedies such as this will be avoided. A gunman walks onto a campus and opens fire. Some heroic citizen calmly pulls their own gun and saves the day. Disaster averted. Everything is fine. Right?

Apparently, the people who envision a society of perfect balance through the cunning use of firearms have absolutely no understanding of psychology, mob mentality, or the deeper currents of racial and socioeconomic tension that run through this country.

Maybe the above scenario works if every single man, woman and child is well trained, fair, unbiased, a good shot, has a stationary target, is calm and composed, and knows precisely what the situation is. But what happens when an angry man in a diner makes a scene and reaches into his jacket—how many guns would be pulled, aimed, and possibly fired? (Does that number change if it’s a black man, or if it’s a woman reaching into her purse? You bet your ass it does.) Even if there’s a legitimate threat and good citizens start shooting, how many of their well-intentioned shots miss the mark and hit coffee pots, pantsuits, waitresses, business-owners on their lunch breaks, little girls emerging from the bathroom? Who pays for the damages to property and person? Will Good Samaritan laws in the future stretch to cover people who shoot and kill someone while trying to shoot someone else entirely? Will killing not count as killing if your intent was to kill someone who you think might have been trying to kill someone else? Does anyone else see that as a potentially complicated, as well as exceedingly dangerous, situation?

In a society already on edge and paranoid about terrorism, what would happen if three Muslims in full religious garb walked into an office building in Dallas carrying guns? They may be American citizens, and it may be their ‘god-given right’ to do so, but don’t believe for a fucking second that everyone around would wipe teary eyes and proclaim “Thank GOD everyone in this country is free to carry guns!”

You can theorize all you want that if everyone on VA Tech had a firearm, very few people would have died. But you don’t know that. It’s also possible that once the firing started and panic set in, people would have been firing wildly and when the real police arrived, they would be powerless to help or even identify the actual perpetrator. You can argue that someone will think twice about robbing you at gunpoint if they know you’re probably armed too. But you can also say that the mugger has every reason to shoot first and rob later—desperation is desperation, and someone who needs the money you carry is going to find a way to get it, right? You can neither prove nor disprove the likelihood of any of these scenarios, so using them as fodder for pro-gun rhetoric is pointless.

All these arguments aside, what the pro-gun idea basically boils down to is the old principle of Mutually Assured Destruction—if everyone has the means to kill everyone else, no one will pull the trigger, so to speak. As a theory it isn’t proven, but it does have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’, don’t you think? It’s a romantic idea, essentially, that we can find peace through preparation for war.

The fatal flaw in this argument has nothing to do with whether or not such an experiment would be successful or not. My problem isn’t even the logic, necessarily, though it’s dodgy as hell and devoid of any scientific backing or historical precedent. My problem is the hypocrisy of the theory’s most ardent supporters. Their inability, or refusal, to extrapolate their own ideology to a global scale leaves them vulnerable and, in a word, hypocritical.

So…

Bad guys will get guns no matter what anyone says or does, right? Fair enough. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and whoever else is currently making the American hit-list are going to get weapons of mass destruction eventually anyway– according to this argument, you can no more stop them from getting nukes than you can stop a mob boss from getting guns (Evil is as Evil does, as Ted Nugent says). If this is the case, and we follow the bouncing ball of MAD logic, then we should be handing out nuclear weapons left and right to Canada, Liberia, Brazil, Botswana, South Korea, and Japan to help safeguard all us “good” countries. If a “bad” person walks into a restaurant and starts shooting, he won’t do much damage if everyone else is armed, right? So, logically, if one of those “bad” countries gets a little crazy and starts using their guns (incendiary bombs, biological agents, nuclear warheads, etc.) then a “good” country will quickly step in and annihilate them. Disaster averted. Everything is fine. Right?

Suddenly the pro-gun camp shuts the fuck up, because they’re the same silly assholes who clamor for an invasion of Iran and North Korea over nuclear technology even though, according to their own argument, it’s absolutely and completely impossible to stop them from getting what they want. The same assholes who think we should all carry guns because you can’t trust the police want to make us the police of the world and not allow anyone else to carry. What the fuck? This is hypocrisy of the deepest and most offensive nature.

The pro-gun lobby is quick to point out that even without guns, plenty of people still kill—with steak knives, plastic bags, bricks, swords, nooses, etc. and that is absolutely true. But when was the last time someone walked into a classroom with brass knuckles and murdered 30 people? Were 29,569 Americans murdered in 2004 by poisoning? That’s how many died from firearms. Yes, sick people are going to do sick things no matter what, but I’ll take my chances with someone brandishing a knife in a crowded room. There’s a simple law of physics involved in this: If I can run faster than someone with a knife, they can’t possibly hurt me, yet a 105-year old man in a wheel chair with an oxygen tank could shoot me dead from across the street. Fuck that.

You’ll never end violence. It just won’t happen. But using that as a reason to keep the handiest tools for perpetrating violence around is a bit like saying “you’ll never end warfare, so why not let everyone have nukes?” So, Ted Nugent, why all this fuss over uranium enrichment? The world is actually safer if we have all the means to kill each other in the blink of an eye, right?

Right?

The virtue of being in Australia at the moment is this David Hicks fiasco—I don’t know how much attention American media is giving it, but it’s huge down here and fascinates me endlessly as the perfect example of government screwing the pooch so badly that an admitted terrorist doesn’t actually get punished for his crimes (not that our track record for such things is superb.) Mike Rann, the Premiere of South Australia, came out with a hilariously valid point the other night—why is a man that America has said for 5 years is incredibly dangerous being sent back to Australia to serve only 9 months of an otherwise suspended 12 year sentence? Somehow, America has managed to ass the situation up so outrageously that less than a year from now, a convicted terrorist will be absolutely free. (Maybe he could go to Harvard!)

What fascinates me even further is the amount of sympathy poured on him by the Australian public. To be quite honest, most people down here care far more that America held him without trial for five years (something very much illegal in both our nations), subjecting him repeatedly to torture (allegedly, though I find it hard to believe that homeboy sodomized himself for the attention.) and not allowing him to see the sun for almost a full year of his life, than the fact that he eventually plead guilty. Though, if you’ve been following the case for a while, it’s not hard to see why they’d be so damn frustrated.

I saw his lead defense counsel, Major Michael Mori, speak in Adelaide several weeks ago and it was quite the eye-opener to follow the trail of America’s barely legal inadequacies over the years; how laws were written and applied retrospectively, how charges were leveled for which the U.S. hadn’t a shred of evidence, how evidence gathered under certain “duress” would not be admissible yet the government refused to divulge which evidence was gathered that way. After all of this, and much, much more was made public, we couldn’t even pretend that whatever trial David Hicks got would be fair—after five years of being called “enemy” every day, could he possibly have been acquitted no matter how little evidence they had? Not a fucking chance. He had to be guilty, and he was smart, taking advantage of America’s situation and allowing them their pride in exchange for his freedom.

It’s sad because all America did was sit on its thumbs while the world fumed, creating this situation through its own stubborn stupidity. If someone is caught doing anything illegal, especially training with Al Qaeda, they need to be arrested, tried in a timely manner, convicted (if you can actually prove guilt) and punished. But if you dick around with someone’s life, deny them a trial, flout domestic and international law just because you can, then guess what? People are going to be pissed at you, and not them! For an administration that has built policy left and right on the personalization of fear and the vague notion of “Us vs. Them”, they’ve managed to completely fuck this up. If America had just tried and convicted David Hicks four years ago, on the best charges or plea bargain they could manage, he’d likely still be years away from freedom. At worst he might have gotten a similar amount of time to that he’s already served, only legally, and without all the fanfare and bad publicity we’ve suffered as the bastion of “Freedom” that pisses on the Geneva Accords and mocks the right to a fair trial. As it stands, America held a man some 1,500 days looking for the best way to convict him, couldn’t really figure out how or flat out refused to, and when he was willing to admit guilt, happily suspended 94% of his sentence– not exactly tough on terror are you now, G Dub? It was a face-saving tactic, plain and simple.

Similarly, Iran, after all its hard-line talk, was dumb enough to capture 15 British marines that it can’t do anything with. They don’t dare execute or otherwise punish them, but now they’re forced to ramp up the rhetoric and act tough while looking for a way out (maybe a few years of detention before releasing them with a slap on the wrist?). Meanwhile, Britain has taken an equally hard-line though they’re not no going to do shit but wait for Iran to save face and release the hostages so both sides can breathe a sigh of relief and go on national television to proclaim victory. The Iranian government just can’t afford to back down and admit mistakes, and in this respect Ahmadinejad and Bush (who’s got hard-line rhetoric for days) have a lot in common. This posturing is no more impressive to me than two dogs barking over a fence at each other

Hubris is really the issue here: a foolish, self-centered pride that allows a nation to act inconsistently with both logic and law, under the assumption that no one will notice or care. It leads to this– face saving tactics at the expense of reputation and security. America got burned badly this time, and Australia as well, and the whole free world, in a sense, because a man who hated the West in the first place and has been treated like shit by the U.S. for half a decade is only serving 6% of his sentence and will be free this time next year. Way to go, guys, at this rate all of Gitmo should be free by 2010 just so you can tout a 100% conviction rate.

David Hicks is just lucky he’s Australian; America has far fewer qualms about screwing over brown Pakistani nationals than they do about those quaint people “Down Under” with their cute little accents, and ‘isn’t it just a shame what happened to that Steve Irwin? –He was so wonderful and will be missed and his family is so strong and our hearts go out to them.’

Adam

Note: less than 72 hours later, a direct quote from the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran: “I declare that the people of Iran and the government of Iran — in full power to place on trial the military people — to give amnesty and pardon to these 15 people and I announce their freedom and their return to the people of Britain.”

Surprise… fucking… surprise…

I like to drink. There’s nothing wrong with that inherently— well, health factors aside there’s nothing wrong with that except for one nagging complication: I’m poor.

In my refusal to sacrifice drinking in favor of paying rent, I’ve had to be very creative when it comes to finding cheap booze. Having rich friends is helpful. Dating an enabler is awesome, but most of the time you’re on your own searching for an affordable drunk. Cheap domestic beer works, but no matter how much Coors Light I choke down, I can’t seem to enjoy it. A box of wine (or, a cask as it’s known down here) is always a solid bet. But my favorite standby has always been handles of generic, store-brand liquor. They mix well (enough) and can be taken as shots (if you don’t mind watery eyes and twisted, black bowel movements the next day). But the miracle that is the internet, and the smaller miracle that is my brother, turned me on to a revelation in my recent efforts to escalate my drinking without denting an already thin wallet.

The theory goes thusly: One major difference between cheap and expensive vodka is charcoal filtering. Those cheap and widely available Brita filters contain charcoal. Connect the blurry dots and the outcome is clear: dirt cheap vodka without the dirt taste.

In just a few hours you can turn acetate into tap water. All you need is:

The dirtiest, cheapest bottle of vodka you can find. My poison cost $10 for 1.75 liters, or roughly thirty cents a shot.

A standard Brita filter

And an accomplice

I know it sounds like some David Copperfield shit, but it works. It works well. To help explain this miracle I called Scientist Brother. He talked for several minutes about excess hydrocarbons and their molecular attraction to the elements that make up charcoal, then realized I was probably masturbating out of boredom (good call, dude). So he simplified it: charcoal is Alf, and evil errant hydrocarbons are cats. Let the man from Melmak munch and he’ll eat the bad taste right away. As an added benefit, it severely reduces the hangover you would have otherwise received, which is extremely helpful to any functioning alcoholic.

So we got to work about 10:00. In an attempt to be scientific, we took two control shots, and then samples after each filtration. I intended to take notes, but by noon I was on shot number six and instead found myself trying to imagine the genitalia of various past first ladies. (Eleanor Roosevelt’s must have looked like the inside of a melting Astrojump). By mid-afternoon I was passed out cold on the couch, and when I awoke several hours later, headache free, there was still plenty of vodka to take home for later. Two drunks in one day? Who am I, Danny Devito? OHHH!!!

One last word of advice from Scientist Brandon: “You want the vodka to go through the filter, but drip well away from it. If you let the vodka sit around the filter, it will dissolve the alcohol-soluble parts of the charcoal and taste like a dirty asshole.”

Get your filter on!

Adam

With the kind of rapt attention that can only be paid to car wrecks and carnival sideshows, in the vacuum of activity between orientation and commencement of classes I find myself daily watching the Aussie version of Howie Mandel wonder-showzen ‘Deal Or No Deal’.  It’s similar to the U.S. version, but with differences key enough to make me really interested—in fact, I think it surpasses the original in almost every aspect.  For starters, the show is only good for $200,000 total—a pretty penny, but not so much cash that each episode must be a ratings whore.  There are no professional models being paid to dress alike and smile dumbly through Vaseline coated teeth.  The audience is broken into ‘blocs’ and at the beginning of the episode one bloc is chosen, and one person from that bloc actually plays.  The rest of the bloc gets up on stage behind the cases, including the contestant’s family which makes for interesting drama when someone’s mother totally screws them out of $100,000.  To sweeten the deal, each audience member chosen gets to guess what is in the case they’re about to open, and if correct they win $500—every once in a while they call a ‘Mega Guess’ and if the person correctly chooses the amount in their case they win $10,000.

With the one-word name recognition of The Donald or The AIDS, “The Deal” is actually a rather ingenious facsimile.  The host is less obnoxious, the pace much faster, the drama less played out and boring.  There are no giant light rigs or cheesy interplay with the mysterious banker in his darkened booth, and the producers down here have stumbled upon the most brilliant of ideas (pay attention NBC)—to use The Deal as a vehicle to promote other network shows.  Last week was Ugly Betty week, and each day the initially chosen case (and final check) is brought up to the podium by an Ugly Betty look-alike and two or three times during the broadcast the host is sure to parlay the contestant’s situation into a cheesy joke about the show.  For all the shamelessness of the ploy, it takes all of two seconds, can be slightly humorous, and is guaranteed to boost ratings for whatever show they rep.  This week they’re having contestants from some dance show come play on behalf of a random person who pays only .55 to register for the chance, trumping the bullshit text-a-thon side game of the original.

The Aussie version struggles to be different, but in that struggle they seem to have surpassed the frivolity and vomit-inducing glitz of the original.  Given the reduced production costs, no models, and much smaller sums of money given away, The Deal has managed to captivate public ardor without becoming droll and laden with advertisements.

Giving away smaller increments to more people, and keeping a faster pace, means that both watching and participating are much more enjoyable.  The average person takes home around $20,000 dollars Australian, and while that pales in comparison to the regular six figure payouts in U.S. dollars, there’s almost no one in Oz or the States who couldn’t find a heap of useful or things to do with that much money— that much scratch would pay for my entire academic program and most of my living expenses for the year.

The funniest bit?  When things go wrong, they go very wrong and it’s not unusual for a contestant to walk away with a paltry payout, which is almost more fun to watch.  In fact, it often comes about that more money is given away to audience members correctly guessing their case values than to the contestant themselves– the ‘celebrity’ today playing for John Doe ended up with $100 dollars, but the audience took away $1,500 and the last woman even caught a Mega Guess and missed a 50/50 shot at winning $10k.

I’d try to be a contestant on the fucking thing, but I doubt they extend those honors to non-citizens.  Shit on being the foreigner—it’s so much harder to turn my nose up at people.

Adam

You can’t be from Southern California and not feel at home here. From the intense heat to the artificial greenery to street grids to brown hills on one side and the ocean on the other, it’s home through and through. It’s only been a week, but something about this place makes me feel as if I’ve been here ages. I’ve only lived in this house five days and couldn’t be more comfortable:

My tiny room with tiny bed, desk, bookshelf and armoire.

My most awesome of showers (The shower head is actually taller than I am!!)

My comfy living room:

My street:

My Campus:

My new routine:

Every morning I wake around 8 to the sound of the Mandrills at the zoo doing their high-pitched warble. Rumor has it you can hear the lions some mornings as well, though no confirmation of this. I stumble into the kitchen, make two pieces of toast and a cup of coffee and scan the paper. On weekends, room mate Lauren and her boyfriend David join me and we have a go at passing around the more interesting articles and taking all the quizzes and such. If I have obligations at the Uni I head that direction—a ten minute walk down Finniss Street, through the park, down the path by the River Torrens and across the footbridge to Campus. After my obligations are complete, perhaps a jaunt down to Rundle Mall if I need to pick something up, or just head home where I spend the rest of the afternoon camped under our most powerful of air conditioning units. Once evening settles in and the heat is less oppressive, I take the show out front to the porch where I sit and read, write, or just watch the people go past. Afterwards I may fix myself a little dinner, or meet up with some of the folks I’ve met to go for dinner, or out to one of the bars for a drink. At night North Adelaide is pretty quiet, being a posh kind of suburb, but down in the city proper on the other side of campus there are various clubs, pubs and even a casino that stay open ‘til 6:00am or so on weekends. Once classes start the routine won’t change much, just four hours of classes a week and part-time work if I ever get around to applying for working rights and looking for a job. I don’t watch much television, though I’ve taken to some of the Aussie game shows (more on these at a later date) and given bandwidth limitations the internet can no longer function as my constant distraction—all I can really do is check email, blog and catch up on my beloved online comics every once in a while. In related news, check out the new site: drunkardofoz.blogspot.com Read from the beginning and it will make more sense. I’ll keep that updated as regularly as I can.

That’s it for now. I’m here to write and I’ve done much of that, but didn’t feel right posting anything without first mentioning my new digs. So that’s about it. Next week is O’Ball—a big concert on campus, and two weeks after is WOMAD—the Adelaide World Music Festival out in the Parklands which lasts three days. That should be a trip. David is going to take me to see Ben Folds’ house in the suburb of Norwich, and if he happens to be in Adelaide sometime this year I’m going to knock on his door and tell him just how much ass he kicks.

I’m gone. Drop me a line and I’ll catch you fuckers later.

Adam