Going Bat-Shit

I've never been very much into science.

Sure, there was a time when I put salad dressing, ice cream, bits of old candy bars, a celery stalk, and strips of cheese into a soda bottle and would leave it on the kitchen counter, covered with a towel, for a month to see what would happen, but that was largely the extent of my interest in science. I got an "A" in chemistry, probably because my teacher was insane, definitely through no actual comprehension of the Periodic Table or any tenets of Chemistry, and we know that my affiliation with Physics lasted for all of two days.

When I hear a story on the radio about something sciency, that's generally my cue to tune out and gaze out my windshield at some unsuspecting pedestrian/joggers tank-top-covered breasts and, usually, get caught doing it because, while I have limited scientific abilities, my slickness abilities are far more limited.

Yesterday morning, however, a sciency story caught my ear and actually held my interest, but it wasn't necessarily because there were no boobies to stare at, or because it was particularly interesting, it was because it made me mad.

The story, (admittedly, I didn't catch the whole thing) centered around an alleged problem that was occurring with recently-constructed wind turbines, which are wind-powered generators of electricity, just on the off-chance you didn't know that.

Apparently, these ostensibly ecologically and environmentally-friendly energy producers are secretly creating an unintended though significant problem in our fragile ecosystem:

They're killing bats.

You know-- these things:


Yikes, right?

According to scientific research, bats are being killed by wind turbines, and not necessarily in the way you might think they're being killed. See, you might be tempted to think that, because wind turbines have dangerous, rotating fan-type things that spin around at sometimes high rates of speed that bats are being essentially filleted to death as if by a Hibachi chef at your table side on a Saturday night-- but that's not what's going on at all. No, it's not the bird getting sucked into the 747's engine fan situation. Apparently, according to research (that's probably being paid for by the government, you know, while the whole country is basically out of work) the pressure that is built up inside the wind turbines is so great that, when a bat gets near the turbine, its lungs and/or other internal organs basically explode.

And I was sitting there in my car, driving to therapy, actually, thinking to myself,

"So?"

I mean-- take another look


and ask yourself


"Do I give a shit about this?"

Chances are you'll probably come up with, as I did, "No. I do not."

See, the way I look at things like this is the old Cost/Benefit method. Less dependence on oil, gasoline and coal, versus some dead, disgusting, fucking scary-ass flying fang-fuckers? I'm kind of okay with that.

The other thing is-- is there some kind of law that says that scientists have to ruin everything? Okay, so, you're bored. You're sitting in your high-tech laboratories playing "Zelda" and looking for chicks who dig losers on E-Harmony and you're wondering about what you can write your next $3.2 million dollar grant for, and you come up with this? The Effect of Wind-Turbines on the Bat Population of America?

Come on, guys. Why don't you just shut the fuck up? Focus on the remote possibility of your ability to procreate and leave the rest of us alone.

I don't know-- maybe if Koala bears or puppies were having their organs explode because of wind turbines I would care a little bit more, but bats? You're gonna have to try a little harder than that to take my attention away from the tank-tops and bobbing up and down ponytails of the world.

The End of Their World

It was a little after ten o'clock at night.

Two young cops walked together along the sidewalk towards their radio car after answering what turned out to be an unfounded call for help at the Colonial Park Apartments, a dubious quad of low-income, movin'-on-down housing in Harlem. Gunshots ripped through the quiet of the night. Everybody always says that gunshots sound like fireworks, but nobody sets off fireworks in Harlem on in mid-May. One of the bullets caught the black cop square in the back of his head, killing him instantly, felling him like a tree.

The white cop was shot thirteen times, his dead partner's revolver prised from its holster and used against him, shot after shot pumped into his writhing body. The assailants fled. Help was summoned. The white cop tried to crawl to safety, but, when you're bleeding out of thirteen holes in your body on the sidewalk in Harlem, how can you know where safety is? He died in the back seat of the patrol car that sped towards Harlem Hospital, cradled in the arms of another officer. He'd found safety at last.

Widows had to be notified, and children, far too young to understand what had happened to their fathers, were shuttled off to neighbors or relatives houses so that bodies could be identified, so that vapid, inconsequential words could be muttered into their ears by police commissioners and mayors, so that asinine questions could be brayed at them by reporters. Flashbulbs in the waiting room. Pandemonium in the E.R.

"Oh my God!" a nurse screamed as the bodies were wheeled in, "it can't be!"

But it was.

I think it's funny when leathery, old, possibly psychotic evangelists run around predicting that the end of the world is going to happen on May 21st, 2011. Actually, I think it's rather a bit more insulting than it is funny. I think it would be very interesting for Harold Camping, the lunatic who is behind all the billboards and all the palaver and all the rapture, to meet the families of Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini. To sit down with them and try to convince them that the end of the world is going to take place on May 21st, 2011. I think they would have some interesting things to say to him.

Because their world, or at least a huge part of it, ended on May 21st, 1971. They know what it feels like to have the floor fall from beneath their feet, to have the ceiling come crashing down. The end of the world? Please. They've been there, and beyond.

Today, I'm not thinking about whether or not my theatre tickets for tonight's performance will be redeemed if the Rapture comes, and I'm not going to be in some cinder-block basement at 6pm, EST, quivering with my wife under a wool blanket. I'm going to be thinking about two families who had to endure unimaginable sorrow on a May 21st, 40 years ago. To have to hear about how their husbands and their fathers were hunted down like wild animals, felled by shots from behind, never having a chance to return fire or even react. To have their lights darkened. To have their worlds end, so violently, so callously, so offensively.

The end of the world? Rapture?

Save it.

Ready... Cassette... Go!

According to the New York Times, which is never wrong except when its reporters just kind of make crazy shit up, no 2011 model-year vehicle is offers a cassette option. Humorously enough, the absolute last vehicle to ever offer a tape deck was the 2010 Lexus SC-430, a two-door convertible that retailed new for $68,405. I don't know how your brain operates, but mine finds it extremely difficult to fathom an image of a Lexus SC-430 buyer sitting in the dealership ticking over the options (18-inch Machined Tourmaline Wheel/Tire upgrade, for example) with the tip of his gold-plated Parker pen and saying,

"Oh, yeah, and, by the way-- throw in that tape-deck, too. I've got some great Weird Al tapes left over in the glovebox of my mistresses' Audi R8."

Be that as it may, reading this article made me rather nostalgic for my first car which, of course, had a tape-deck, and I was actually fortunate that it did. My 1990 Ford Crown Victoria was a retired police car. As such, many police cars are manufactured with a radio-delete option which, as you might suspect, deletes the radio, leaving a very unfortunate space where the car's radio would have been. The reason being is that police commanders could then be sure that their officers weren't cruising the streets of America listening to Stevie Wonder or, maybe worse, Stevie Nicks when they should be listening to, you know, their police radio. Plus, the temptation to play Ray Charles's "Busted" whilst driving criminals to the local lockup would just be too tempting for some badge-jockeys.

Fortunately for me, my car was ordered from the factory for use by a commander, and so it was crammed with options-- plush velour seats all around, instead of the standard cloth in front for cops, vinyl in back for shitheads motif, power windows, locks, mirrors, and, yes, a radio AND a tape-deck.

It was a beautiful four months. Until the engine exploded.

Anyway, to celebrate my new car's arrival, I did what most 16-year-olds did in my neighborhood in 1996 when they got their first cars. I went to an awesometots music store (remember those?) called-- are you ready?-- Plastic Fantastic. It was dark. There was always Led Zeppelin music playing, or so it seemed. The clerks behind the counter always looked like Garth, or so it seemed. The floors were littered with huge boxes of records. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with tapes. There was a mysterious second floor that I didn't ever venture towards. This was a store, I was stone-cold convinced, in which high school dropouts got laid.

What did I find in this vast musical maze that would be my inaugural purchase of music to grace the inside of my ex-police car? What tunes did I score? What musical mayhem would ensue in my enclosed little world of velour, metal, rubber and glass?

The soundtrack to the original cast recording of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

I know. I am gay. My wife knows, too. She doesn't seem to mind.

You never know in life how happy you were at any given point until it's years later, I suppose. Those first few months, in my first car, with my first audio cassette tape (that I still have) were some of the happiest of my life. Barreling down the roads of my youth, commanding this absurdly gargantuan ton of steel, using its hood ornament to keep it straight on the road, being absolutely enveloped by the astounding voice of Laurie Beechman, well, it's hard think it's going to get that much better than that.

Look at me-- 30 years old and getting all schmoopie over the end of the tape-deck. God. What a wussy old pussy.

If Your Birthday's May 22nd, Celebrate Early

Remember all that horseshit about the world ending in 2012?

Remember that terrible movie?

Well, forget about it.

May 21st is the new D-Day. At least, that's what they say.

Well, that's what he says.

According to radio evangelist Harold Camping, May 21st, 2011 is when the world is going to end. Of course, from the looks of him, that may very well be the end of his world, not ours. I'm not even sure he'll make it that long. I do kind of dig his sideburns, though.

Camping asserts that, on May 21st, 2011, "this world will be a horror story beyond anything we can imagine." I don't know if Harold Camping has been unable to open his eyes for the last 89 years of his life, or if he just had them closed for that photograph, but isn't that kind of where we've been for a long time?

Fella: this world IS a horror story beyond anything we can imagine, and it has been since "The Carol Burnett Show" went off the air.

I suppose the world is going to end some day. I don't necessarily believe it's going to be a religious event, but, if it is and Jesus comes back here, he's going to be disappointed.

"What? You couldn't even be bothered to clean up your fucking room?"

My room is not clean, and it will not be so on May 21st, I can promise you that-- spring cleaning be damned. Not only will my room will not be clean; it will not be clean enough for Jesus. Can your room ever be clean enough for Jesus? Christ-- my bedroom is a goddamned mess. You should see the top of my bureau. There are, like, four old wristwatches on there and a bunch of papers and gloves and shit. And a big book about Sondheim. Jesus is going to look at all that shit and he's going to think I'm some kind of hoarding homosexual with four arms.

And he's going to vaporize my sorry, bony ass.

Not because I'm Jewish-- but because I'm a fucking, holy-rollin' mess.