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March 31: Fight Club
“WELLLLLLLCOME, lay-deez and gennnel-muuuunnn, to the show that never ends, the generation unto generation smackdown that lets us know what time it is, old style! No need to check your notes, you been here before, just relaaaaaax, and let it wash over you all over again, it’s the best entertainment money can’t buy! “
“That’s right, Vince! We don’t need Don King this time. Thanks in great part to the inaction of our current administration, we got the Brawl in Ramallah (brought to you by Odwalla)! And let me tell you, these two fighters don’t like each other one bit. This one is for all the marbles, for the world title to the sorriest piece of land in Hell’s Half Acre! Introduce us to our gladiators, Vince!”
“In the left corner, wearing Star of David briefs and a man-boob disguising baggy tee-shirt from the Gap, we have Ariel “Not the Fairy” Sharon. Sharon is down in the polls, betting shows he’s got some serious doubts from the bookie community. In the plus column, he’s got a standing army of several thousand and a war chest that staggers imagination. Sharon’s feeling mighty feisty, having been beaten in a TKO by his opponent back during the Bruising in Beirut in 1988.”
“In the right corner, wearing camouflage briefs, a back brace and a kaffiyeh, waits Yasir “No Sir” Arafat, a fierce competitor in the old days who has been foundering lately in the wake of younger, hungrier fighters. Yasir’s a sentimental hometown favorite, but it’s got to be said, he’s lost a lot of credibility lately. Not much has been heard from him in the past few days.”
“Well, to be fair, Vince, it’s been tough to get through, what with Sharon’s team cutting off his phone, light and water. He’s got to conserve his air, it’s all he’s got now.”
“That, and his will to win, you mean.”
“Both of these warriors have the eye of the tiger. You can see that.”
“Sure, you can see that. Of course. That’s what makes it so fun to watch. That and the fact that this may very well dictate the future of an entire region for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m on the edge of my seat. Let’s go to Christiane Amanpour at ringside for more information. Christiane? Christiane?”
“I have to say, Vince, this entire spectacle makes me physically ill. This is not some kind of circus--”
“Oooooh, we have some video difficulties, sorry, Christiane! Anyway, stay put for the latest massacre in the Holy Land, coming up next on CNN. After the bout, be sure and stay tuned to your local affiliate for the post-show wrap-up and hockey scores. Happy Easter! Here’s a message from our sponsor.”
03/31/02
March 30: Order of Magnitude, Hold the Mayo
First of all, let me state that no one’s problems are of greater interest to me than my own. Catastrophic flooding in Kuala Lumpur? My pinky toe still hurts where my friend stepped on it yesterday. Massive outbreak of the Ebola virus in Uganda? I got a zit the size of West Texas colonizing my left jawline. Don’t tell me about your pain, nameless strangers on the other side of the world. I got agues and plagues of my own to deal with. Walk a mile in my orthotics-fitted $140 Kenneth Cole pumps. Then come talk to me.
Culpas mea’ed, I move on to what is vexing me today. I decided to have a pyjama day, one of those lovely afternoons where, after showering, I put on a new and clean pair of pyjamas, the lounging-about kind rather than my sleeping ‘n’ drooling-in variety. After rolling around on my bed making out with my cats for awhile, I took a stroll into the living room to watch some tube. I wasn’t allowed to watch more than an hour a day of television as a child, so now I find it the sweetest indulgence to channel surf endlessly, lighting upon Bollywood videos here, Craftmatic adjustable bed infomercials there, and sporting events everywhere. Note to parents: I highly recommend forbidding your child from doing relatively harmless things, it makes them crave it later. It’s a safe haven for adult rebellion. Really, I’d rather watch Richard Simmons cry with the formerly fat than shoot smack.
Then I do something really stupid. I purposely press “5-0” on my clicker and up pops Christiane Amanpour with more chaos in the Middle East. Shit is raining down hard, no one will just say “it’s war now, it’s a real war,” various U.S. policy types dither like Aunt Pitty Pat in a full-on attack of the vapors. I could probably wrangle together a cogent analysis of what I viewed that would halfway make sense, but I don’t want to. Just let me say that, when I find myself agreeing with Robert “The Sultan of Saturnine” Novak, it may be time to find Jesus, because the Rapture’s coming, my babies.
No, what I want to address is the other story that was running with equal frequency throughout the broadcast, and that is the death of England’s Queen Mum. Now, I liked the Queen Mum, she tickled me with her pouter pigeon bosom and fondness for gin and tonnies. She lived a good life, was a tremendous figurehead for English stoicism during the Second World War, and died in a way any of us who are going to die (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that I’m from a race of immortals myself) would envy. But come on! She was really, really old. Everybody was a little saddened, absolutely nobody was shocked. I’m pretty sure that the staffer who originally ginned up the memorial video footage obituary has long since left the Turner organization, it’s been that long in the coming. Still though, every ten minutes there’d be a cutaway from some gruesome scene of carnage, some unbearably tense live footage of Yasir Arafat and his staff trapped in a bunker without light or water, so that we could hear some yobbo on the streets of London declare that he was “very sad” about the death of this old broad. Okay, yeah, sad. But she didn’t BLOW UP. She’s not in a bunker about to be potentially assassinated by the Prime Minister of Israel, to settle a score dating back to 1967. Focus, newspeople, focus.
CNN runs a lot of the supposedly less newsworthy stories in a crawl at the bottom of the screen. I was wondering, given the nature of the day’s events, why they did not choose to do that with the details of the Queen Mum’s death. Instead, I began to resent the hell out of this reportedly sweet old dotard. To die peacefully in her sleep sounded like a positively callous act when conflated with the horrific deaths being shown in the same newscast. Not her fault, I know. But I couldn’t figure out why CNN was going back and forth between the two stories as though they were of equal magnitude.
Then it hit me. The Queen Mum was famous. She’s a celebrity here in the States, even though she had dubious day-to-day relevance to her own countrymen, and really none at all to we former colonists. But we know who she was, we can probably identify her photo in a lineup of similar pastel granny types. She’s on par with a Hollywood movie star, she’s the Russell Crowe of people who died today. Israel and Palestine could play catch-up with truckloads of dead bodies, but unless one of them was on “Saved by the Bell,” we aren’t going to get as het up about it as we might if they had some celebrity cache. We don’t know them. Sad in the abstract is just not that sad. Geopolitical Significance, we need to have a little talk with Personnel about your Q rating.
So here we go, Kuda’s reforming her wicked ways yet again. I vow to pay attention to what’s really important, to stop frittering away my time and cable access on E! gossip and MTV news. What’s Courtney wearing? I don’t know, I was watching a debate on the Shays Bipartisan Reform Act on C-SPAN. And I will foreswear discussing Julia Roberts’ hugging on Denzel Washington at the Oscars unless and until it can be proven she was wearing a Semtex-laden vest at the time. Harrison Ford could be having sex with Callista Flockheart in my guest room right now, I’m not even going to take a peek. How scared are you, that I’ve gotten to the point where I am weary of frivolity? I’m very scared indeed.
03/30/02
March 29: Line, Sand, Drawn.
Sometimes I miss those heady dot-com days. Standing on line at the bus stop to go to a dodgy area of town where my edgy office awaited, desk upon desk of visionary worker ants ready to help build the New Economy between games of foosball. There was a pretty decent diner within walking distance, and a funky bar where on Fridays a local woman peddled killer enchiladas from a cooler, to the delight of the mixed clientele of truckers, derelicts and recent marketing MBA grads. Then I shake myself back to reality, because I got totally hosed at the back end, moneywise. I’ve spent more time repairing my credit rating post hoc than I did working for that now-defunct website. If I ever see those sorry-ass visionaries and/or their moronic venture capitalists, it’s for a jury to decide.
It was my first and, if self-examination truly provides insight, last incursion into the ranks of management. Big management, big title, fancy business card territory. I got appointed, through sheer, let’s say, basic competence in simple mathematics and ability to create an EXCEL spreadsheet that actually functioned, to a position that caused me to (a) have a significant number of underlings and (b) feel responsible for the well-being of a corporate entity that had no actual existence on God’s creation. Yes, faithful reader, I was coopted in all my disgruntled splendor. I’m still disgruntled, more so than ever, although safely re-esconced in the Ancient Order of the Old Empire, AKA “We can make a profit off a bubble economy or human misery, what’s it to you?” So herein I present: a supersecret peek into Management, as viewed by Kuda Bux.
“Thirty thousand foot view. What’s our demo?”
“Women who want to be men. Metaphorically of course. The trannie dollar ain't worth diddly. HAHAHAHA. I kid. Currently, our site hits show that we are a primary resource for career women between 23 and 45 who are ambitious, well-educated and anxious to do whatever it takes to claw through the glass ceiling. Also, they appear to be interested in Intel job offerings and our links to drugstore.com.”
“Interesting. And who do we want to be our demo?”
We don’t want to lose the devil we know. H, you are that devil, so we have no fear that we will lose our voice with that community. No, what we need to do is skew lower.”
“You intrigue me. Go on.”
“Our current audience will eventually age out of our site. There’s only so much wannabe-ism we can take for granted before these chicks realize they are either well past needing us, or that they are career admin asses (Editor's note: “administrative assistants”). We need to hit the teenage girls where they live.”
Contemplative silence as we all gaze at our Palm Pilots with furrowed brow. Yes. Yes. Indeed.
“Any suggestions? I don’t want to hear a Hanson tickets giveaway. Is Hanson still popular? N, make a note to find that out for me and email me, m’kay? Thanks. Anyway, what do you propose? I’m not helped unless you have a positive agenda item.”
“I do. First of all, we need to co-brand with something a little less grandmotherly than IBM and Microsoft. Keep those links, the contracts are solid and written in their favor, so the Triple A (Editor's note: The American Arbitration Association) will fuck us up the ass if we do anything to violate them anyway. But let’s give pride of place to something a little more raw, a little more today. I propose a webcast, with heavy sponsorship presence. I get calls every day from companies just dying to get their hands on our teenage eyeballs. Clinique, the Gap, Mattel. Let’s get Carly Fiorina in, we’ve got her by the short and curlies anyway after getting that videotape of her drunken antics at the flooz.com launch party. She’s didactic yet approachable. Moms will insist that their girls sit tight and watch all four hours, including commercials, as Carly fields questions about exciting careers in Internet space.”
Collective groan. Collective shout: “Carly’s HARDWARE. No one cares.”
“OK, somebody content or e-commerce. Some hottie in a half-shirt from, I don’t know, Pets.com, the girls love animals.”
“We have contacts with them. Interesting. I think they’re mostly dykes, but they’re cute baby dykes, so the half-top, approachable, don’t-scare-mommy thing is feasible.”
Everyone was very excited. And then I raised my hand.
“Pfft. Yeah? Kuda? What do you have to say, sigh.”
“Um. I just was curious. See, when I was interviewing with you all, one thing that was reiterated time and time again was that we would never, let me look at my notebook, ummmm, yeah. We would never ‘commoditize our younger audience.’ It’s in the Mission Statement too, at least the laminated copy I have on my bulletin board.”
“Kuda, you raise a good point, you’re our little conscience, you know that? But I gotta say, you come from an older economic model. You’ve spent a lot of time in the hidebound mentality of the superseded corporate structure. We’re a jet engine, you’re used to taking a horse and buggy. There are marketplace realities to be faced and one of those realities is things change.”
I checked my notes. I wrote some new ones. I looked up. H was still staring at me, condescension written across her tiny, feral face.
“You get me, punkin?”
I stared back. I stared at her and tried not to laugh.
“Yeah. I get you. So, how broke are we?”
I packed up my desk and fired myself shortly thereafter. I don’t want to sell things to kids. I can live with pitching electronic tchotchkes to the endlessly credulous, relentlessly ambitious consumer powerlady of the new millennium, but I’m not about to infest that nonsense on the next generation. I know, slippery slope. But I got some traction on these here boots of mine. For now. For now.
03/29/02
March 27: Swollen With Pride
Inspired by the newfound joy Courtney Love’s ethnicity has brought her, I decided to finally investigate my own background, to plow a furrow into the rich soil of the heritage I’m sure I must possess. There’s only so many times a girl can check “Asian/Pacific Islander” on government forms because it’s the first listing without wondering what ingredients are present in the genetic soup Nature has bestowed upon her. I decided to consult my ancestors.
“Hi Mom, what’s shaking?”
“I’m eating tacos and drinking beer. What do you want?”
“I was just wondering. Well. What am I?”
What are you? A pain in the ass. Next question.”
“No, you crazy old broad, I mean, what nationality am I?”
“What nationality are you? What are you, an idiot? Look at your last name, figure it out.”
I looked at my ID blankly. “I’m something that really enjoys vowels?”
“You’re GREEK, supergenius.”
A thousand images spun in my head all at once. Mostly about how much I’d enjoy a taco about now, but then it coalesced into an image of Anthony Quinn doing a goofy dance on a rocky coastline. G-r-e-e-k. It sounded so strange.
“So we’re Greek. That’s good, right?”
“YOU’RE Greek. I’m solidly American, I just like the Greek men. Can’t get enough of them. Bore two Greek kids, that’s how nuts I am. I gotta go, the Wheel is on.” CLICK.
I decided to research my cultural legacy. It turns out that many prominent people are or have been Greek at one time. Pretty, pretty Hollywood actress Jennifer Anniston used to be Greek, as did famous Hollywood spouse Rita Wilson. Lots of actors have pretended to be Greek in movies, most recently that really cool Spanish girl who dates Tom Cruise. Many politicians alive and dead were Greek, such as Paul Tsongas and Michael Dukakis. I fancy that I have much in common with them, in that I think many important thoughts about the issues of the day, although I am quite tall and not at all swarthy. Here’s some Greek words: democracy (yay!), philosophy (could go either way), hubris (fancy!). The food is pretty tasty too. I had some baklava once at a church bake sale, and mmmm-mmmm. I’ll probably have it again some day.
In conclusion, I have discovered that I come from a very complex and beautiful people who have done many things. I’m going to continue to study and memorize all the good stuff. No burn on your heritage, I’m sure it’s very nice for you. But my people are pretty special, as far as I know.
03/27/02
March 26: Bootlicking as Reality and Metaphor
I admire the people who have sex with me. I think they’re brave and visionary. I would like to commission Maya Lin to create a tasteful commemorative doohickey upon which to inscribe their names, but sadly, I live a life of quiet compartmentalization. The membranes of my psychic walls are not permeable, because I have been trained by a lifetime of bad Catholicism to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto the appropriate party whatever’s left over. More precisely, the personal and the professional must and shall never collide, if I have any say in the matter.
A woman I know has recently made a rather startling career transition. She has decided, after years of administering profitable spankings to naughty businessmen, to move into another, entirely unrelated, field. Well, maybe not entirely unrelated. She’s going into Human Resources.
Before I began to ponder the significance of this shift, my first thought was, what the heck was that job interview like?
“What do you think makes you uniquely qualified for this position?”
“I’m a student of human behavior. I can size a client up on the first phone call, whether he’s a bossy bottom or a scared dominator. Those are very hard to discern, you know, and yet quite commonplace. I can tell when the time is right to have my subject kneel at my feet while I berate the inadequacy of his shrivelled manhood, or if it’s the moment to allow him to please me orally while I crank call his dentist. Or if he just wants me to pee on him. I don’t do smoke or diaper fetishes, but I’ve studied those techniques extensively and can extrapolate from the important data points. Basically, I know I’d be an ideal applicant screener and could streamline and efficacize the interviewing process.”
“Wow, you’re just what we’ve been looking for, here at the Yolo County Board of Equalization! Welcome aboard.”
I crack wise, but this woman is one of the brightest people I know. When she decided to become a dominatrix, she studied like a graduate student, the history, the philosophy, the ethos and the basic how-to’s of the profession, including how to keep it all legal and relatively safe and sane. That part didn’t trouble me. What I found disturbing was how much of the aesthetics of her profession bled through into her everyday life. Skin tight velvet and leather became her fabrics of choice, even to sedate gatherings to celebrate Lou and Maria’s 20th year of married bliss. I became more familiar with the contours and geography of her nipples than my own due to a combination of frank discussion and sheer blouses. She developed a habit of, to my mind, inappropriate touching and rubbing of herself and others. Boundaries were increasingly foreign to her. If I raised this, in my typical half-assed snarky fashion, she would proclaim me a sad victim of patriarchal self-censorship, a mindless worshipper of social convention. She was wicked articulate for a pervert. But her barbs never burrowed deeply enough into my psyche to allow me to wear a belly shirt to a christening, to read pornography on a crowded subway train, to even say the word “fuck” in front of my parents.
She’s one of me now, in a way, dressing more conservatively, getting up early in the morning in a stupor of obligation and fretting about the day to come. How she must long for the heady days wherein she rose at noon to swan around in silk and silver chains, waiting for the lucrative opportunity to abuse a bound state senator with a length of rubber tubing. I’m gonna guess though, it must be a comfort to put the whore back in the bedroom and the corporate drone behind the desk. I’m sure the stern nanny peeps through regularly enough in the workplace, but I bet at the end of the day, she’s glad to have that piece of her psychic landhold back to herself.
03/26/02
March 25: Did you know...
The Iraqis invented calories? That’s right. A long time ago, what we call food today (called something else then) was a hobby. People would eat and eat and eat, as much as they liked, even with lots of butter and sugar. They didn’t have poptarts and french fries then, but they had stuff just as good. Nobody ever got fat. There wasn’t even a word that meant “fat.” All the people in the world would travel to a place called The Fertile Crescent because that’s where the best food was, and they would have a ball. You didn’t even ever have to poop because the food without calories would just magically disappear from your stomach after you ate it. Calories, which your body does need in order to live, were obtained by consuming a yam-like tuber, one per day. It was the only thing with calories. But then the people of the Fertile Crescent, the Mesopotamians (long ago speak for “Iraqis”) decided to put a little bit of this tuber into everything they grew to make things more convenient and before you knew it, everybody had to watch what they ate. They thought it was a good idea at the time, but geez. Way to go, Iraqis!
The birthplace of middle management is North Korea? Before 1950, the idea of middle management did not exist. People were either managers or workers, and everyone was happy. Managers were few and far between, and they spent most of their time quietly in the counting house. Workers clocked in, did their work and went home, usually without being spoken to by anyone in nicer trousers all day. During the height of the Korean Conflict however (ask your grandfather or a trusted friend’s grandfather about this), the North Korean managers couldn’t manage all their workers and still have time for counting and running their evil war machine, so they did something known today as “delegating.” All the other Communist countries saw this and because their managers were lazy, they did the same. The U.S. didn’t know this was a trick and they were scared that our managers would be too tired to wage war properly, so all the American corporations did the same thing. Now we have to get rid of all the middle managers, which is really hard because most middle managers don’t know how to be workers. If anyone ever asks you to be in middle management, even shift supervisor at Carl’s Jr., just say no. You want to work.
People in Yemen breed mosquitos as housepets? Many scientists who have been to Yemen are amazed by the quantity and variety of biting bugs. They have now figured out that the Yemeni people like to train and fight their mosquitos for money. Of course, very few mosquitos are any good at fighting, so the rest are let loose to go where they may. Many of them fly across the ocean, hoping for a better life in America for their larvae. Unfortunately, mosquitos need blood. Ouch!
Lots of Arabs would like you to do drugs? Arabs don’t do drugs, and think drugs are bad. But they don’t mind if you do them. In fact, they like it because they grow drugs! So far the drugs don’t have calories in them, but it’s only a matter of time. They’re bad anyway, the drugs.
These and many other facts can be found in “Blood Libel for Dummies,” available free when you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to “Uncle Tommy’s Information Hut, Pueblo, Colorado. “ We’ll also send you a really cool flag decal for your car, Razor scooter or skateboard, so you can show your friends that you are a well-informed American!
03/25/02
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