1.14.13

I got sick yesterday. A cold. Shit. I know half the country has the flu but I was sick last month and don't need to go through this again. It ain't fair. I am on my feet for the next two weeks, the first one right next to the door in a big, cold barn and this could be the opening sonnet to bobbie's journey to death's door. Last year at this time I was sick as a dog in Santa Barbara and was hoping to not go through that business again. I need to be chipper and charming, witty, persuasive and all that stuff.

I slept until almost ten, grabbed some c and zinc out of the cupboard. Went into the bathroom, looked at the scary picture on the wall that turned out to be me and quickly had to avert my eyes. Opened the drawer and did a quick calculation on the damage that the dull razor blade might do to my face, decided against it.

I got a lot to do to get ready for the coming weeks and somehow propelled myself off my ass and into my car. Drove to CVS and looked at razor blades. I know that we have been here before but I still can't figure out when they jumped to 20 to 30 dollars and why anybody in their right mind wouldn't just opt for the cheaper temporary razors at this point? I looked seriously at the house brand and then decided to splurge the extra buck and go schick. Big spender. The line was long. The cashier was a colored woman with facial tattoos, a big ink splotch on her forearm and a big blonde wig like the cute shaggy dog in Please don't eat the daisies. A woman at the head of the line dawdled over which gum to buy, gaining certain pleasure at her ability to make the rest of us wait.

The couple behind me looked like they had suffered a hard night after a hard decade or two. She had a strange way of applying mascara with some sort of crude instrument which skipped patches of brow and lash that kind of reminded me of Marcel Marceau or maybe Emmet Kelly. She had a single large bottle of Black Velvet nestled in the crook of her arm like the madonna holding the holy child. Salvation obviously comes in a multitude of forms.

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Clarence Thomas actually spoke today. First time since forever even if it was a quip that was barely heard in the peanut gallery. Thomas hasn't asked a question since Feb. 22, 2006.

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I have been engrossed in the Aaron Swartz saga. This is a portion of the last few paragraphs that he had written on his blog regarding Batman and the societal role of the Joker. I wonder which one of the two roles he assumed that he was playing?

The Joker had by far the most interesting plan: he hoped to out-corrupt the corrupters, to take their place and give the city “a better class of criminal”.

And the crazy thing is that it works! At the end of the movie, the Joker is alive, the gangsters and their money launderers are mostly dead, and their money has been redistributed (albeit though the deflationary method of setting it on fire). And, as we see from the beginning of the third movie, this is a fairly stable equilibrium: with politicians no longer living in fear of the gangsters, they’re free to adopt tough anti-crime policies that keep them from rising again.

The movie concludes by emphasizing that Batman must become the villain, but as usual it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero. But even though his various games only have one innocent casualty, he’s much too crazy to be a viable role model for Batman. His inspired chaos destroys the criminals, but it also terrorizes the population. Thanks to Batman, society doesn’t devolve into a self-interested war of all-against-all, as he apparently expects it to, but that doesn’t mean anyone enjoys the trials.

Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide.

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The kid up in Riverside that shot his Nazi father was found guilty of murder today. I feel sorry for him. Imagine living with a prick like that. Hope he gets off easy. Kid did the world a big favor. From the Los Angeles Times:

The judge who found a 12-year-old Riverside boy criminally responsible for murdering his neo-Nazi father said Monday that years of abuse and neglect clearly had damaged the child’s thought process, but that she could not ignore evidence that showed he plotted the attack and knew that killing was wrong.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean P. Leonard found the boy guilty of second-degree murder and for using a gun while committing a felony.
The youngster, who was 10 when he put a gun to his sleeping father's head and pulled the trigger, was charged as a juvenile. He could be held in juvenile detention until he is 23.
The boy’s father, Jeffrey Hall, was a West Coast leader for the neo-Nazi organization known as the National Socialist Movement. He was asleep on a couch in the early morning hours of May 1, 2011, when his son crept downstairs with Hall’s .357 magnum revolver and shot his father point-blank in the head.
The judge said Hall’s attempts to indoctrinate his son into the hate group corrupted the thought process of a disturbed boy who already had displayed violent tendencies.
“It’s clear that this minor knows more than the average child about guns, hate and violence,’’ Leonard said.
Still, she added, “this is not a naive little boy unaware of the ways of the world.’’
The boy attended neo-Nazi events with his father, associated with a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan and went on “patrol” along the Mexican border to look for illegal immigrants, according to court records.
A juvenile disposition hearing is scheduled for Feb. 15. 

Joseph Hall was convicted despite witnesses describing repeated abuse and beatings, which led to social services being called to the home over twenty times. The public defender, Matthew Hardy, also said the 10 year old boy clearly stated he was trying to defend his family from his father, who had routinely beaten his son and, shortly before the shooting, threatened to burn down the family’s Riverside home with his wife and children inside.

“He didn’t think it was wrong; he thought it was justified," Hardy said about his client. “He thought he had to do it.’’