There is absolutely no moral or logical reason...

...why prosecutors shouldn't have the option to seek the death penalty in abuse cases this venal and where the defendant's guilt is not in question:

From the Associated Press via CNN:

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- A former respiratory therapist was sentenced to more than 45 years in prison Wednesday for sexually preying upon some of the most defenseless patients at the hospital where he worked: children so sick they couldn't speak out.

Wayne Albert Bleyle had pleaded guilty to molesting five disabled children and taking pornographic photographs of others. Prosecutors said he targeted patients who were comatose, brain-damaged or too disabled to talk.

He allegedly told investigators he molested as many as half the children he treated in 10 years working in the convalescent ward at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego.

More:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/07/25/therapist.molest.ap/index.html

Bigger assholes than Lindsay Lohan's parents

I don't usually weigh in on Britney, Jessica, et al because they don't interest me, but Lohan is actually quite talented and perhaps has more in common with Robert Downey Jr. than, say, the Hilton sisters. I'm not underestimating the severity of Lohan's back-to-back DUI charges: my grandmother was permanently injured by a drunk driver and spent the rest of her life in crippling pain. But I have several friends and acquaintances who are recovering alcoholics and/or addicts. I know that addiction doesn't absolve morally or exonerate legally, but that it does explain the neurological underpinnings of certain behavior.

That said, could Lohan have been saddled with more craven and inept parents than her perpetually convicted father and her never-had-it-never-will mom? Yes, but only slightly. Individuals from various historical epochs who are/were bigger assholes than Michael and Dina Lohan:

• Eva Braun: Hitler is the more obvious choice, but Braun willingly and repeatedly gave him beav. Which makes you wonder if she didn't occasionally pull trains with Weimar thieves and child peddlers: it seems unlikely she leapt straight from courting normal fellows to boffing one of the most evil men in history.
  
• The two guys who asked if I wanted "one in front and one in the butt" and said they wanted to "give those curls a pull" when I was walking through Belltown last week on my way to meet TJ. If I could get Titus Andronicus on them--grind them into a pie and feed them to their loved ones--I would, unquestionably. Besides, I know several great musicians who would play a most raucous "Free Litsa!" show.
• The Nazi soldier who shot at my father when he was a kid, thereby permanently lodging shrapnel in his leg. (Yes, I know, another Nazi, but there's room on this list for more than one.)
  
• Ann Coulter. Not only is it okay to refer to Ann Coulter as a "cunt", it shouldn't be okay not to.
• The person married to ______. See "Ann Coulter".
  
• "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the deceased Haitian dictator and father to the only slightly less deranged "Baby Doc" Duvalier. "Papa Doc" would have his enemies decapitated then have their individual heads brought to him on a tray while he was in the bath, where he would stare into their eyes and meditate. You have to wonder from whence the initial impetus sprung, i.e. the first time he thought, "You know, I've got an idea..."
• Anyone who says, "It's all good".

I'm in so much pain right now I can barely stand it and yet...

...I'm mustering the concentration to note that this is one of the most poorly written pieces of shit ever:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/now-its-on-to-iran-and-l_b_57468.html

You know you wish you'd thought of it:

• To stave off protracted economic instability, airlines should offer, at a slightly higher rate, flights that bar children under twelve. (I'd suggest charging parents of said kids more, but like swiping ecstasy for Dick Cheney's heart meds or throat-punching Seattleites who refer to New York as "too noisy", it would be illegal.)
• If you don't like Regina Spektor and/or Elliott Smith, you don't get to vote.
• In the eighteen months following a divorce, one relocates to a government-sponsored ranch in say, Wyoming, where therapy and beer are provided for free.
• The stone-throwing scene from "The Lottery" is enacted against those who don't think Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby's recording of Cole Porter's "Well, Did You Evah!" is one of the high points of the twentieth century.
  
• Free head and pizza for whomever cures CFIDS.
  

One more reason I heart Jezebel.com:

I have a love/hate relationship with Gawker Media--sometimes I think they're spot on and others I think they're recklessly cruel--but their latest venture, Jezebel, is wickedly funny and the smartest of the bunch. Today's post on perceptions of curly hair makes me want to buy their editorial staff a round of blueberry-glaze donuts:

http://jezebel.com/gossip/standards-of-beauty/why-is-straight-hair-the-epitome-of-style-280210.php

And if you haven't already, check out the unrelated but equally compelling Feministing.com:

http://feministing.com/

Stuff I don't get:

• Telling me you ate rabbit the other night
  
• The guy with the "Free Tibet" and "Peace is Patriotic" bumper stickers who, while driving like a teeth-grinding meth head, cut me off on Market Street this afternoon
  
• Jamie Lee Curtis' musings on Huffington Post
• Healthy individuals with ample cash and no kids who prattle on that they don't know what they want to do with their lives, expecting sympathy instead of bemused disdain
  
• Journey, then or now (seriously, David Chase, what the fuck?)
• Writers who believe MFAs connote talent
• My downstairs neighbor who beats off loudly (dude, you're solo: color within the lines)
  
• Billy Corgan's sense of self-importance
  
• "Vegetarians" who don't understand that "just eating fish" makes them carnivores
• Anyone who doesn't think Wanda Sykes and Patton Oswalt are totally fucking hilarious
• Deriving anything but time-warping boredom from wedding and baby showers
• Giving a shit about Janet Jackson's weight
  

The Hitch

The introduction is unintentionally hilarious--why bother eating oatmeal for your cholesterol if you knock it back with Scotch, cigarettes and prosciutto?--but the man is staggeringly intelligent and remains one of my favorite writers. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Christopher Hitchens:

http://radaronline.com/features/2007/04/christopher_hitchens_god_is_not_great_1.php

Another gem unearthed in the pre-move excavation:

Q: Does the glamour part of show business put you off?

A: No. Not at all. I love it. It's dress-up. I like all that. It would be awful to lose that. It's like the monarchy. I might not necessarily approve of what it represents, but I'd miss the hats.

--Emma Thompson, Vanity Fair, February 1996. (Interview by Kevin Sessums, photo by Annie Leibovitz.)

At the risk of sounding ethnocentric...

...I'm appalled that such practices continue in any part of the world for any reason, whether it be religious, cultural, or economic. It's just wrong:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/05/damon.india.widows/index.html

Everything about this makes me sad

Lauryn Hill is deeply talented and there was a time she seemed lit from within. I hope she finds her way out of the miasma:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/29/HILL.TMP

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2007/06/damn_lauryn_hills_train_wreck.php

On a blonde right-wing commentator

Humans die through one of five ways:

• Homicide
• Suicide
• Accident (falling off the roof, etc.)
• Weather (flood, hurricane, et al)
• Illness

An affluent person in the Western world is most likely to succumb to the latter.

Said commentator enjoys making jokes about death in the Edwards family, which would be out of bounds for either party at any time, but seems particularly venal given the state of Elizabeth Edwards' cancer.

And yet, where Mrs. Edwards is, said commentator will one day be, in all probability.

Remember Lee Atwater?

Enough said.

The Rainn King:

Today I encountered a real estate agent who didn't know the square footage of the condominium he was showing.

"I think it's around seven hundred," he said offhandedly.

"Do you know for certain?" I asked.

"No. I left the flyer in my car," he replied, visibly annoyed, as if I'd snatched a fry from his plate or flicked him in the balls.

Perhaps he was having an off-day or is the throes of an existential crisis, unsure if he wants to spend his finite time hawking overpriced conversion units that reek of Hungry Man Dinners and cat piss. But mostly, he seemed bad at his job, a walking refutation of social Darwinism. And also, kind of a schmo.

Which is why, tonight, I salute Rainn Wilson, a.k.a. Dwight Schrute on the U.S. version of "The Office". I have no idea what Wilson is like as a person (and for all I know, he's delightful), but that's not the point. In a world teeming with gas-siphoning scofflaws and pencil-chewing half-wits, the shruggingly disdainful and those who phone it in, Wilson embodies Schrute with the precision and vigor of a heart surgeon on Red Bull. He is, quite simply, good at his job.

And in all forms, good is worth noting.

"I have no desire to go back to Iraq, but here, it's almost like a prison. I want stability, a house, car. I want to get married, to have a life."

Today is World Refugee Day:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/20/damon.iraqrefugees/index.html

I just watched President Bush explain on CNN...

...why he vetoed the embryonic stem cell research bill.

I won't address the intellectual and moral incongruity of a man seemingly untroubled by tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, yet protective of life in its least developed form. And I was going to be flip and joke that if it would cure CFIDS, I would support research that harvested arms and legs from my neighbors' kids.

But the underlying issue--more so than any religious underpinnings-- is that the man does not understand the exigency of circumstances for those who live with chronic illness, injury, or pain, nor how it impacts the lives of their friends, families, and lovers.

In a strange way, he's lucky.

I love the happy parts, too...

...but this might be excessive:

http://fleshbot.com/sex/sexy-science-corner/how-to-see-your-vagina--from-the-inside-270624.php

Could get interesting if they use (hardening chocolate syrup) Magic Shell, though.

Hippie kids report mass sightings of blonde yeti in aviator shades

JR covers Bonnaroo for MSNBC:

http://bonnaroo.msnbc.msn.com/

Unless you're a communist or something

Turns out listening to the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man", Outkast's "Hey Ya", the Who's "The Kids Are Alright", Oasis' "Up in the Sky", the White Stripes' "Hotel Yorba", and Weezer's "The Good Life" sequentially and at earbleed level is akin to 50 cc's of seratonin injected through the skull and directly into the cerebral cortex.

Occasionally, it is that simple.

Armistead Maupin Lives:

Salon's Laura Miller wrote of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books, "As with the Beatles, everyone seems to like Maupin's Tales--and, really, why would you want to find someone who didn't?"

Maupin's work is smart and engaging and tastier than picnic table cobler on a warm June night. The Night Listener and the TotC series were the best part of some otherwise hideous couchbound weeks in '02 and '03 and I'm delighted that his newest, Michael Tolliver Lives, is on stands now.

While I might never forgive the editor who declined to let me interview him and assigned a Q & A with a video-installation artist instead (yeah, I know), I did enjoy Maupin's recent tete a tete with EW:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20041807,00.html

And mad props to my parents, who not only read "The Cousinfucker" (see yesterday's entry)...

...but who just called to tell me how much they enjoyed it.

That cinches it: no old age home for you guys.

"The Cousinfucker"

My short story, "The Cousinfucker", is in the June issue of the lit journal, Hobart:

http://hobartpulp.com/website/june/dremousis.html