Life does NOT imitate art. Never has, never will. As an example, I’d like to use a recent episode wherein I was very nearly fired. For obvious reasons I will be circumspect, but you’ll get the picture.

I had an argument with a person from another department, by phone. This gnawed at me enough that I went to that department, found the person, and got into a good, old fashioned shouting match. Never mind who was right and who was wrong, that’s not germane. The point is, I was really pissed off, and I went and told the object of my wrath, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of him (or her…circumspect, people).

As I was doing this, a voice in my head kept telling me this would end badly, and it was right. I knew better, knew I would lose, but…

Here’s what I mean. In my mind, all managers, overlords, straw bosses and administrators are the enemy of humanity. Mealy mouthed, corporate robots who speak in couched terms will never make my Christmas list. We’re all down here in the trenches getting dirty together, while the administrators walk through with their binders and their coffee mugs (“yeah, ummm, about those TPS reports…”).
If you and I have an argument (no matter how heated), then let’s argue like men! We’ll have an argument (we did), we’ll compromise (we did), we’ll apologize to each other (we did), case closed. An argument between two honorable people, end of story.

But, of course, that’s not what happened– and I knew that’s not what would happen, because I can spot corporate zombification a mile away. I was arguing with a corpse, a mindless shell. It could no more disobey its primitive programming than could a housefly. In cases of conflict, the zombie uses a simple but deadly strategy: “You yelled at me! Me tell supervisor! Supervisor smash!”

And that is why my supervisor-robot met me the next morning with an email from the zombie’s supervisor-robot and gave me a Stern Warning. Basically, the zombie told on me, and I got in trouble. Just like first grade.

This brings me to the subject of this post: why I fucking hate Gregory House and his crappy show. Dr. House, as you may know, yells at anyone he feels like, insults people at will, craps great stinking craps on Authority, and does all this while thumbing his nose at the administration, who shrug impotently (because he’s so brilliant). In what bizzaro-universe does this take place? They never say.

There should be a show called “Real Life House”. On this show, as soon as Dr. House does anything improper or disrespectful, management would swoop down, crucify him, inject him with rat poison, drive bamboo slivers under his fingernails and force him to eat his own bowels.

That’s a show I’d watch.

Seven years later, his appeals exhausted, 28 year old Eamon Flaherty was executed in Nebraska’s electric chair, and so made the papers again.  Reporting the news of Eamon’s death was an excellent way to revisit his crime in grim detail, and the papers reveled in it.  There were other stories, too, for the few reporters who did some digging: Eamon never lifted a finger in his own defense– in fact, he barely spoke to his attorneys.  Often, he didn’t reply to their letters.  They, in turn, went through the apellate process pro forma, with little interest; when Eamon’s thinly worded appeals were exhausted and the switch was thrown, they went on about their lives and never looked back.

Most vexing of all, perhaps, was this: Eamon never offered any explanation.  He never tearfully confessed, never offered a motive, never revealed to anyone why he walked through his house that rainy night in May 1919 and methodically murdered his entire family.  Rather than an apology, Eamon’s last words were, “Blood for blood.  And tell Sully he can have my shoes.”

Michael Sullivan, “Sully”, was my great-uncle, he’s been dead since ’93.  When I was a kid I used to ride my bike to Uncle Sully and Aunt Pat’s house– I remember it was always dim inside, shades drawn.  Aunt Pat would always make a fuss, I guess I liked the attention.  Years later I found out from my mother that Uncle Sully had done time in prison.  She said it was something the family “didn’t talk about” and changed the subject.  Verboten. I couldn’t get my mind around old, stoop-shouldered Uncle Sully doing hard time, and he and I had always been close, especially after Aunt Pat died.  I decided I would go to the source and ask the man himself.  I didn’t know any better, back then.

I drove to Uncle Sully’s house with a six-pack of Miller.  I was still just a kid, barely 22 years old– driving over to Sully’s house with some beers seemed like such a novel “just us guys” thing to do.  We sat down at the ancient Formica kitchen table and bullshitted for a little while; then I told old Sully I wanted to hear about his time in prison.  My great-uncle stared at me for a long time over his beer.  The fluorescent lights hummed and the electric clock over the sink hummed back just like when I was a kid.  Finally, Sully seemed to reach a decision.  He let out a long sigh and said, “If you come back tomorrow, I’ll tell you a story.”

I remember the next day was a Saturday.  Sully and I sat at the kitchen table again, and he placed an ancient, worn-fuzzy brown paper grocery bag between us.  “Open it,” he said.

I reached inside the bag and removed a pair of old, scuffed, prison-issue shoes: what are sometimes called “chukka boots”.  These were ancient– the soles were leather, nailed on.  Inside each one– in black ink on a strip of cracked white paint– was the name FLAHERTY in block letters.

“I never told anyone about this,” Sully said, smiling.  “But I’m an old man, and I don’t sleep so good any more.  Maybe talking is good, I don’t know.  Anyway, you wanted to know, so…”

For the next four hours, my great-uncle, Michael Sullivan, talked, and I listened.  I don’t think I even got up to pee, although he did, several times, talking all the while through the open bathroom door.  My Uncle Sully told me about growing up poor in rural Nebraska, and he told me about robbing a post office and getting away with it, and doing it again and getting caught.  And then he told me about his cellmate of five years, Eamon Flaherty.

Eamon Flaherty enlisted in the US Army in January of 1918, a month after the United States declared war.  He was sent to France and saw action with the 3rd Infantry Division.  During the Second Battle of the Marne, he was thrown through the air and knocked unconscious by a German artillery burst.  Although he was physically unhurt, he was “never quite right” after that.  Among several items Eamon was relieved of when mustering out of the army were several gold teeth and two human ears.  When Eamon returned to Nebraska in 1919, his family, by and large, ignored his strange behavior.  They were stoic people– they didn’t ask what had happened to him in France, and he didn’t tell.

Eamon would stand out in the cornfields for hours, whispering.  Once he stood there for two days, never moving.  He told his sister he was talking with “spirits.”  When the family dog turned up dead with it’s throat slit, Eamon said that the “spirits” had told him to do it.  “Blood for blood,” he said.

Eamon stopped taking his meals with his family, then stopped sleeping in the house.  He slept in the cornfield, or in the hayloft when it rained.  He told his family he was “cleansing” himself.  And then, one rainy night in May of 1919, Eamon Flaherty walked through the old farmhouse with an axe handle he got from the tool shed, and crushed the skulls of his entire family.  Two weeks later, the Knox county sheriff found them.  His deputy found Eamon in the cornfield, whispering.

When Uncle Sully got to prison, he was put into Eamon’s cell.  Just the two of them, alone.  Sully, for the most part, tried to avoid Eamon, tried to make himself small, unthreatening.  Gradually, the two men got the feel of each other, like two tomcats sharing the same apartment.  After a while, they were comfortable enough to talk to each other.  Sully told Eamon about robbing the post office and getting caught, and Eamon told Sully about France, and the trenches, and the German shell.  He told Sully about coming home, and hearing spirits in the corn, but he offered no explanation for the murders, and Sully didn’t pry.

Once, Sully and Eamon got into an argument.  Sully owed Eamon a pack of cigarettes, but cigarettes didn’t come cheap in the state pen, and Sully was slow in paying back the debt.  He dragged it out and made excuses for a few months, until Eamon finally got angry enough to put Sully against the wall and threaten him.  Sully gave Eamon his brand new pack right then and there, and went without for a few days, and figured all was forgotten.  Eamon never got angry again, and Sully never got in hock to him again, case closed.  And eventually, after five years together, Eamon’s appeals ran out, and he was moved to the Death House, and took a ride in the chair.

The next day, a guard arrived at Sully’s cell with a package: Eamon had left Sully his shoes.  Inmates got one pair of shoes every five years, but they wore out in about two.  To have an extra pair was a luxury indeed.  Except…

“Except he did it on purpose, the bastard,” spat Sully.  “That wasn’t a gift, it was a curse.”

I told Sully I didn’t understand– which was true, I didn’t.  Flaherty’s shoes?  These shoes?

“These shoes,” said Sully.  “You know the Indian saying about ‘walking a mile in a man’s shoes’?  That’s just a poor translation!  It’s much more powerful than that; once I touched his shoes…”  Sully’s voice trailed off.  I could see tears welling up in his old eyes.

“That was Ponca Indian land, all that land up there in Knox County,” Sully said.   “We just threw them off of it and took it.  Whatever happened to Eamon Flaherty in the war, that knock in the head, it changed him, see?  He could see things the rest of us couldn’t.  He came home to Crofton, all that anger, rage, from the war…he was wide open, he was, I don’t know…receptive.  The Ponca were thrown off their land, and in return they died of malaria, starvation, Sioux raiding parties killed the rest.  The Ponca couldn’t come back to live on their land, but they could demand payment, demand sacrifice, and they did.  And Eamon was their instrument– the instrument of the curse their shaman laid on the land.  And he exacted revenge: blood for blood.

“I didn’t know any of this when he was alive, how could I? All he ever did was ramble, mumble about corn and spirits…but he knew enough to curse me, God Damnit!  He never forgave me for the cigarettes…such a small thing, but in prison…and he left me his shoes.  And I touched them, put them on.  And the curse passed to me.”

Uncle Sully was crying openly now.  I reached across the table, tried to comfort him, but he batted my hand away.

“No!  You still don’t understand!” he yelled.  “Blood for blood!  The curse passed to me!  I held out for so long, I prayed to God to help me, but…the curse…you kill the ones you love the most, don’t you see?  Don’t you see?”

Uncle Sully, grief-stricken, breathed in ragged sobs.  “I’m done,” he said.  “I should have died years ago, this house is a tomb.  After I killed Pat, after I killed my wife for them, I thought I was done, but I was wrong– I had to pass on the curse, I am…was…compelled to live until I pass on the shaman’s curse…but now…”

Of course.  I had touched the shoes.  My uncle had laid the curse on me, and now, at last could die– did die.  Old uncle Sully died four months later, in his bed, the bastard.  And me? I have three children, a beautiful wife…and I’m so tired.

Blood for blood.

I used to be a fireman.  I did it for six years, while I went to college.  Loved it.  I went to school full-time, but held down the firefighter job as well.  No problem, except that every third day I had to be at the firehouse bright and early at 6:45am.  After oversleeping (and getting reprimanded) several times, I developed a rule: if I was up later than midnight and I was on duty the next morning, I slept at the firehouse.  No exceptions.

One night I was out particularly late.  I don’t remember what the occasion was, but I remember the time I tiptoed into the firehouse: 3:02am.  I had gone home, showered, changed into a work uniform, driven to the station, crept up the stairs through the kitchen to the TV room, flopped down in an easy chair, cranked it all the way back (clock glowing over the stove 3:03am)… and the alarm tripped.

Point: if you were off duty but in the building, and the alarm was for a working structure fire, you went.  Point: the odds were greatly in favor of me happily ignoring the alarm and going to sleep.  As with any fire department, the overwhelming majority of our calls were medical, requiring only the ambulance (and sometimes the rescue) to respond.  Even if the alarm was for fire, it was usually something small: a car fire, a smoke investigation, something minor that I could safely ignore.  Point: I was a fireman for six years, and I probably slept in the station the night before work, say, twenty times.  Only once in those twenty-odd times did I have to get on the truck because I was “in the building”.  This was that once.

The alarm was, indeed, for a working structure fire.  Worse, the alarm said something about “people trapped”.  After that, things happened very quickly.  I don’t remember getting on the truck, or putting on my gear, or arriving at the “structure” involved (a large, old, two-story house).  I don’t really remember getting into the damn house.  What I do remember, very, very clearly, is not being able to get upstairs.  That was my job: to get upstairs.  Other people had other jobs that night, my job was to: 1) not get cooked, 2) not let the guy with me get cooked, 3) take a hose and get to the second floor.

Being in a fire, as you probably know, is not like it looks in the movies.  The interior of a burning building is not brightly lit with dancing flames– it is pitch black.  Absolutely black.  And very, very hot.  I had managed to find the stairs leading to the second floor by feel, after crawling through a maze of junk: bicycles, boxes of what felt like books, clothing, all manner of crap.  At last I found what felt like a bannister or handrail, and a step.  And then a wall.  I backed up.  Again: bannister, step, blocked by a wall.  I felt for my buddy a few feet behind me (don’t let go of the hose and you won’t get lost) and yelled my problem to him.  Yelling anything through a facemask is like yelling from across the street with a sock in your mouth, but he got the idea.  Railing, here’s a step….wall.  Wall?  There are supposed to be people trapped in here, we’re supposed to get upstairs, this isn’t– I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with these stairs.  All this junk….

Screw it– I decided I was going to stand up.  Now, heat rises, and inside a burning building there’s an enormous amount of heat.  As it accumulates, the layer of cooler air gets lower and lower, displaced by hot gases from the fire.  Safest place to be is down on your knees or belly.  But: I was totally confused by these stairs, and (I thought) if I can’t figure it out horizontally, maybe I’ll have some luck vertically.  I stood up, and noticed two things: 1)it was incredibly hot, like I just stuck my head in an oven, 2) the wall ended.  I grabbed my buddy, put his hand on the top of this strange low wall, and climbed over, onto– the staircase!  It was covered with crap, but it was definitely the staircase.  We made our way to the second floor, and gradually things changed.

They must have vented the roof, because I remember gradually being able to see.  Still hot, still smoky/hazy, but if I stayed by the floor, I could see.  Bedroom, empty of people, full of junk.  Second bedroom: same.  Bathroom: empt– shower curtain.  Pulled back to reveal a young, lifeless girl in the tub.  Surprised?  Firemen aren’t.  they say small children and pets often seek safety in bathtubs.  We grabbed her, took her down the now-visible back stairs (yes, there was a back staircase we hadn’t managed to find), did CPR all the way to the hospital– nada.  No luck.  She was 14 years old.

By the time I got back to the fire, it wasn’t.  It was out, or mostly out, and you could walk through the remains of the house standing upright.  Which I did, right to the goddamn staircase.  And found the bench.  The long bench, dark wood with a high, slatted back, covered with books and clothes and junk,  that someone had pushed across the stairs.  Why?  I’ll never know.  If not for that bench, would the girl be alive?  If I had realized that it was a bench sooner, instead of wasting precious minutes groping around in the dark, would the girl be alive?  I’ll never know.  Funny how that goddamn bench popped into my head.  Real funny.

I’m trying in my own slow, stupid way to understand the current situation in Iran.  I don’t mean the general situation, I get the whole “incumbent hardliner beats populist moderate in rigged election” thing– rather, I’m trying to understand the historical relevance of the recent events in the Islamic Republic.

A major topic of discussion on the internet is that social media tools like Twitter are having a significant effect on events in Iran.  The gist of the story seems to be that Twitter is providing a way for Iranian moderate dissidents to report on events, remain in contact with the world at large, even coordinate events– despite the government’s control of that country’s traditional media.  In other words: in Iran, the government controls what you see and hear, controls the telephone and to a large extent the internet, but Twitter is giving the “good guys” a powerful tool.

What we don’t know, what we can’t know is: is this true?  Are we witnessing something truly new and historic, or are we all just falling for more “isn’t technology exciting” hype?  I submit that we can’t know the answer because we’re too close to the events in question temporally, and too far from them geographically.  Here’s what I mean:

The passage of time gives great perspective on events.  Let’s use for an example one of the most pivotal events of the century so far: 9/11.  On that day, as events unfolded, none of us had any idea what was going on, we just reacted as events occurred.  It was, in many ways, chaos.  As time passed, we were able to learn more and more about the who, what, why and how of 9/11 until, ultimately, one could sit down and watch a two hour documentary laying it all out.  Here are the actors, here is their motive, here are the events as they unfolded.

The events in Iran are happening now, we have no perspective yet; we lack the clarity that hindsight gives.  To compound the problem, we’re not there, watching things unfold.  We’re here, on our couches, in our democracies, gleaning what little we can from the media, or from the internet, or from friends or relatives who are there.  At some point in the future, someone intimately involved will say, “Yes, I was there, I protested, I was beaten by the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard and Twitter was a great help to our cause,” or “No, I was there and I was bloodied and I can tell you that social media was useless to us.”  Until then, we won’t know.

Naysayers point to April’s so-called “Twitter Revolution” in Moldova, where hindsight seems to show that social media played a relatively small part.  I’m inclined, however, to think that the events in Iran are different.  Iran’s population is much larger than tiny Moldova, so the number of people with access to social media tools is greater.  Too, it appears that people in general are taking a greater interest.  There are websites that allow you to turn your Twitter avatar green to show solidarity with the protesters.  Internet articles abound detailing how to help the Iranians, how to set up proxy servers for the protesters, etc.  There seems to be a groundswell of popular support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his followers, especially in the wake of the farcical elections.

Am I right?  Is this really something new and different, something historic?  Is the emperor wearing any clothes, or isn’t he?  I don’t know– but for whatever reason, I find it compelling.

sur ly

1. menacing or threatening in appearance   2. arrogant, imperious  3. irritably sullen or churlish in manner

My father is an asshole.  I know, a lot of people don’t get along with their parents, but my father is really an asshole.  My wife asked me the other day why I don’t call him anymore (mercifully, he lives 1100 miles from me), and I mumbled something about being busy.  Well, it’s true– I am busy, but that’s not why I avoid my father.  I avoid my father because I’ve lost interest.

We have this car, see– it’s a 1955 Chrysler New Yorker.  Nothing flashy, not a sexy car, just a nice old hunk of Detroit steel.  It languishes in the garage at the house where Dad lives (the same house he grew up in, incidentally).  I had been asking my Dad about the car, expressing interest in giving it a new home here in Florida.  This was a mistake, because once you show interest in something my father has the power to give, he has you.  the more you want it (whatever it is), the more he makes you dance.

At first, I was only asking casually.  “Hey, Dad, what about the Chrysler?  Have you driven it lately?”  Of course he hadn’t;  my father does two things: sleep and drink (he’s rich as Croesus, he can afford to drink and sleep as much as he wants).  After a while, as I learned that the car was doing nothing, I decided that I would ask him to let me have it.  It had been in the family for years, he wasn’t using it, I had a good home for it, etc.  Stupid me– I was agreeing to play his game, and his game goes like this:

Call me (I’ll be drunk, or at least have a pretty good buzz on) and we’ll discuss it.  At the end of the phone call, I’ll remain noncommittal, and insist that we discuss it further.  The next time we speak, I’ll deny any memory of the previous phone call, and become indignant (I can’t become surly, I was born surly).  Repeat ad nauseam.

I played the game for months.  don’t ask me why, after a while I just wanted to win.  Finally, he agreed.  We made the arrangements, and I waited for the car to arrive.  Instead, I got a letter, which explained that he had changed his mind, and that he was going to keep the car.  Next time we spoke, he denied any knowledge of the letter (insert scream of frustration here).

So, I’ve lost interest.  I don’t need an old car, and I don’t need a passive-aggressive old alkie jerking me off by telephone.  I may mumble excuses to my wife, but you, dear blog, will always know the truth.  Want a drink?

The French have an expression for this, they call it “l’esprit de l’escalier” (literally: “the spirit of the staircase”).  In the stairwell, after the fact, you’re the man, but only in your head.  I think the French are right on the money with that one.  “Nul ne sait mieux que l’âne où le bât le blesse.”

“I was there and I was actually driving the car!  I think it was my shitty Dodge Aries…it pissed me off that Bob had a better car than I did…the car drove out of the driveway and turned right toward my car.  I slammed it into reverse as Bob drove his car towards me.  He then turned sharply and drove back into the driveway front first.  We bolted and laughed all the way back to McD’s.”    –Steve K.

“I will never forget Dirt Bag Bob…his name was actually Kurt (I asked him one day).  I never had the heart to refill his dirty cup…I always gave him a new cup.”   –Susan I.-R.

“I remember Kurt…he was really nice even though quite scruffy.  I remember also hearing that he had served in the Vietnam conflict and when he came back he was a bit “unhinged”…don’t know if that’s true or not but it would explain a lot of his odd behavior.”   –Christine S.-B.

Now think about this: how long would it take you to get back to where you are right now? I mean all the way from “step 1: take a shower” to “step 10, 978: finish college, get job”? I don’t know why I do this, but it’s like a mental exercise. As far as these people have fallen, is it possible to climb back? Sometimes I really get into this, like “ok, so I need to get clean, I can go to the Salvation Army, then I need to find a job…….day labor? MacDonald’s? Can I eventually get an apartment? Can I prove I finished high school or do I need to start working on a GED?

I figure it would take about fifteen years to go from random unfortunate homeless person to college grad. I know, I know: I need to get a life.