Roll Yourself Up

Is there anybody out there who doesn't understand the basic idea of Role-Playing Games (RPG's) in general and Dungeons and Dragons in particular?

Anyone?

Today, you can play D&D on your laptop ,but back in the old days we played it on a tabletop. A tabletop is not a form of computer, it's just the top of a table.

(A table is like a desk- only unlike a desk, you are supposed to eat at a table)

One person would assume the role of Dungeon Master, or DM. The DM's job in the game was to make stuff up. The DM would have an entire fantasy world mapped out , along with a general background story for the various regions and a few highly-detailed adventure scenarios for actual gameplay. The DM served as a sort of live-action interactive storyteller, explaining the settings and situations to the players-or Player Characters (PCs) - who would assume a 'fantasy' persona such as a wizard, warrior, priest or thief and respond to the information presented by the DM. A snippet of a D&D game might sound something like this:

DM: " You hear a rumbling, crashing sound in the forest to your right, it gets noticeably closer, and you can tell that it is the sound of large trees falling. It sounds like something big is
coming, and fast."

PC 1, Fighter: " I draw my sword!"

PC 2, Wizard: " I cast a protection from evil spell."

PC 3, Thief : (in a written note handed to DM): "I pickpocket gold from PC2 while she's distracted."

DM (Rolls dice) : " Wizard, you notice a tugging at your belt- it's the thief and his hand is in your purse. Meanwhile, a hungry manticore has lunged out of the woods and is charging directly at you. What do you do?"

The DM and players used polyhedral dice with 4, 6 , 8, 10,12 and 20 sides to generate the results of the various combats, magic spells, thieving endeavors, etc. that would take place. Events and actions were assigned a hierarchy of probabilities/outcomes and the results thereof would be determined by a combination of the DM's intent and a series of random numbers.

To generate a random number between, say, 2-16, one would roll a pair of eight-sided dice , or d8s. D&D dice came in a huge variety of colors and materials and were collected , envied and admired in much the same way that previous generations venerated glass marbles. Oooh, a glow-in-the dark d20! A transparent d4! A loaded d6! Cool!

These same dice were used to create (or "roll up") the player's characters, who were comprised of a series of attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. The normal human range was based on a bell-shaped curve between 3-18; for example, a character with a Strength of 18 could knock most ordinary doors down with little effort, while one with a STR of 3 could scarcely slice bread.

(Typically, 3 d6 were used (3-18), although I usually allowed the PCs to roll 4 d6 and keep the highest 3 dice.)

Most 'normal' humans fall into the 9 to 11 range, but the fantasy characters generally needed above average scores in order to survive very long, hence the best 3 dice of 4 mentioned in the preceding paragraph. (A weak Fighter would not win many battles, a stupid Wizard couldn't cast many spells, etc...)

Each player also chose a class (profession) , such as magic-user, bard or fighter; a race -human, elf, dwarf etc , and an alignment- a moral compass to act under: Evil, Neutral or Good, which could be further catergorized as Lawful ,Chaotic or Neutral.

As these characteristics and attributes were determined, the players would write them down on a 'character sheet' ( piece of loose-leaf paper), which would be modified as the persona gained experience and powers over the course of their adventures. It might look like this (sans comments, of course):

Name: Mungo the Mighty

Class: Fighter ( uses all weapons and armor skillfully, cannot cast spells)
Level ( how skilled/experienced the PC is): 2 - barely starting, has killed a few goblins and a dozen giant rats .

Race: Human.

Alignment: Lawful Good- Mungo is an obedient, good-willed Boy Scout at heart.

STRength: 18- maximum 'normal' strength. Mungo is buff! If he hits you, it is gonna hurt.

INTelligence: 7- Mungo have hard time make complete sentence. He is vulnerable to mind-control magic.

WISdom: 12 - Mungo has enough sense to ask the Wizard for help with his grammar.

DEXterity: 14- Mungo is agile, making him a harder target to hit in battle. He's a good shot with a longbow.

CONstitution: 15- Mungo is quite healthy. He can withstand more punishment than most folks and rarely gets ill. He is somewhat resistant to ordinary poisons.

CHArisma: 6- Mungo's face has launched a thousand whips. Mungo is also sort of a drag to be around; Mungo lack tact but Mungo not care. You behave or Mungo be mad. Not many friends for Mungo.

Hit Points: 22 - For an unseasoned warrior, Mungo is very durable. (Zero hit points = dead)

What kind of character would you be? Here is myself in D&D terms:

Name: Me
Class: Bard - Bards are adventuring storytellers and musicians. They are mediocre fighters, have some thieving skills and can cast low-level magic spells. Their songs can inspire their comrades, giving the entire group bonuses in combat and other perilous situations. They are otherwise pretty useless. Not many people play them as characters.

Level : 8- I'm OK, but there are an awful lot of bards who are better.
Alignment: Chaotic Good - I try to follow my conscience; I despise rules, unless I have a say in making them. I change my mind but not my convictions.

Race: Human

STR: 13 - Me is a lot stronger than he looks. Me was once the arm-wrestling champ at his buddy's tattoo parlor . Me beat a bunch of burly dudes in an impromptu tournament, probably the most macho moment of Me's entire life.

INT: 25- This is as high as human intelligence gets in the game. The rules need to be re-written to accomodate Me's enormous intellect- and Me is just the man to do it, being a super-genius and all .

WIS: 6 (3) -Me really should know better, but he keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Me's high INT tells him he's doing dumb stuff, but Me's low WIS lets him do it anyway. The parenthetical '3' reflects Me's minus-three penalty when dealing with the opposite sex.

DEX: (14) 11- Me used to be quite nimble, but illnesses and injuries have permanently lowered this score. Two surgeries on his left arm, broken ankles on both legs, etc...currently 11, was 14 at first-level. Still OK. Dancing incurs an additional penalty of minus 4.

CON: (17) 13- Years of drugs and booze have caused a permanent minus-4 penalty here, but Me never would have survived at all without a really high base CON score. Currently 13, was reduced to 0 at one point , late 2005. Zero CON= dead.
That was why Me quit drinking.

CHA: 8- Yeah, Me may be beautiful, but if Me rates his own INT at 25, Me must be crazy in a delusional and possibly dangerous way, and that personality defect lowers his CHA to the point where the rules say Me can't even be a Bard , much less an accomplished one.
A truly great bard has a high charisma score and performs for royal audiences- Me has a garage band that plays at open mic night and keggers. Mungo plays drums.

Hit Points: 50- For a wimpy bard, I'm frustratingly difficult to kill.

Notes: Me suffers a minus-3 penalty to Wisdom when interacting with human women.
Me also gets an additional 3 bard songs per day, as Me is abnormally prolific.

Here's a blank sheet. Roll yourself up and paste it somewhere. Special powers are OK. Be psionic. Or not.

Name:
Class:
Level:
Alignment:
Race:

STR:
INT:
WIS:
DEX:
CON:
CHA:

Hit Points:

Notes:

Show Me!

For decades I have been hearing this claim: " men think about sex more often than women". Sometimes this is quantified , such as : "men think about sex every 52 seconds opposed to every 96 seconds for women" etc...

To me, this is an absurd thing to claim as fact. How do you measure thoughts? I once challenged a friend who claimed men had a 'sex thought' every seven seconds ( 9 for women) to show me some scientific proof.

She said: " but everyone knows it."

They do? I don't.

"I read it somewhere."

Where? I've looked a lot.

"It's a well-known fact."

If it's so "well-known" why won't any credible sources lend their backing to it?

I recently had a fave penpal make the same claim in general terms...and here it is again in yet another permutation (every 30 seconds for men) in my previous post's comments...aarrrgh!

Everyone knows it, but no one knows how they know it.

I have never read of a conclusive, scientifically valid experiment that can objectively measure the frequency and occurrence of specific thoughts.

A simple survey will not work- merely asking "how often do you think about water?" skews the results because it immediately forces the subject to think of water.

Asking people to honestly and objectively measure and report their own thoughts about sex is pure folly; people lie about sex and it's damned near impossible to be objective on the subject of self.

If someone thinks of water, are they thinking of rain? Thirst? A car wash? What is a water thought?
What constitutes thinking about sex? This crucial element is undefined in the "common wisdom".

Note that for this exercise, it doesn't matter which gender thinks about sex more often- ( my guess is that it's roughly equal-with many, many variables)- the only thing that matters is the methodology used in the experiment that proves or disproves the statement.

How would you set out to measure how often a human thinks about sex?

My first idea would be to measure the electrical brain activity in humans in a sexually dormant state and compare it to measurements taken from sexually aroused subjects.

(Sexual arousal can be measured- if you don't know how, you are too young to be reading this)

Activity present in Group A brains (horny) but not in B brains ( unhorny) might offer some insight as to what regions of the mind control sexual impulses, but to prove that , you'd need a numerically significant control group- subjects who through accident or design were missing that specific area of their brain- and only that portion- if they had damage or modification to any other cerebral regions, they would be unsuitable test subjects.

(If such a control group ever existed, it was probably in Germany circa 1940.)

Then you would have to prove that disabling that specific mind-region inevitably, absolutely led to the cessation of all sexual 'thoughts'; but again, you are stuck with trying to devise a way to measure thoughts- not generalized brain activity , but specific thoughts...how?

Measuring brain activity does not equate measuring 'sexual thoughts'- in any case , who would be thinking about sex while they were having their brain scanned?

So how was this fabled "study" conducted?


Vulcan mind-meld?

A friend suggested experimenting on animals, but animals don't think about sex, it's entirely run by instinct and hormonal cycles.

I did find a blogger who had attempted to answer the question of who had proved this "common knowledge" and how they proved it. This blogger put a lot of time into it and came up empty:

--------------------------------------------------------------

From Language Log: (w/ comments and emphasis by me)

Well, I wasn't going to blog this, because it's got nothing directly to do with speech and language. But it does have to do with rhetoric, and with the use of authoritative-sounding assertions backed up by empty references to scientific studies, a topic that we've been featuring recently. And several readers have asked me about it, based on my earlier posts about the "emerging science of sex differences". So here goes:

On page 91 of The Female Brain, Dr. Louann Brizendine writes (emphasis added):
Males have double the brain space and processing power devoted to sex as
females. Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion
while men have a small country road, men have O'Hare Airport as a hub of
processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands
small and private planes. That probably explains why 85 percent of twenty- to
thirty-year-old males think about sex every fifty-two seconds and women think
about it once a day -- or up to three or four times on their most fertile days.

This striking different in rates of sexual thoughts is also one of the bullet points on the book's jacket blurb -- but there, female sex-thought frequency is downgraded from "once a day" to "once every couple of days":

Thoughts about sex enter a woman's brain once every couple of days but enter a man's brain about once every minute .

(Women only think about sex every few days? Does ANYONE believe that?)

Whatever the exact numbers, it's an impressive-sounding difference -- scientific validation for a widespread opinion about what men and women are like. And this is interesting stuff, right at the center of social and personal life, so you're probably wondering about the details of the studies that produced these estimates.
(YES! YES! SHOW ME!)

The end-notes for the quoted segment from p. 91 yield the following references:
1. Bancroft, J. (2005). "The endocrinology of sexual arousal." J Endocrinol 186(3): 411-27

2. Laumann, E. O., A. Paik, et al. (1999). "Sexual dysfunction in the United States: Prevalence and predictors." JAMA 281(6): 537-44.

3. Laumann, E. O., Nicolosi, et al. (2005). "Sexual problems among women and men aged 40-80: Prevalence and correlates identified in the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors." Int J Impot Res 17(1): 39-57.

4. Lunde, I., G.K. Larsen, et al. (1991). "Sexual desire, orgasm, and sexual fantasies: A study of 625 Danish women born in 1910, 1936 and 1958." J Sex Educ Ther, 17:62-70.

Well, if you've been reading my earlier posts on (the popular presentation of) the "emerging science of sex differences", you can guess how this is going to come out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, if you've been reading my emails, you can also guess how this is going to come out. Not a single one of the quoted studies even approached proving anything about the frequency of sexual thoughts according to gender. Curiously,one study referenced was limited to women only.

Really, it doesn't matter. Everybody thinks about sex all the time, more or less. If an academic study was done that proved this in a quantifiable way, the authors of that study would make darned sure they got their academic props in a publicized forum.
It also combines prurience and pop psychology, perfect meme material- it would be all over the internet if it existed. Publish or perish and all that...

The point is: we accept too many "facts" without checking the sources. Iraqi WMD is a great example. Judith Miller ring a bell? It should. Check her source- his code name was 'Curveball'...we want our critical intelligence from 'Curveball?

There never was any evidence, just talk about evidence. People actually believed that an unmanned drone airplane could somehow escape what was the world's most heavily controlled airspace ( remember the no-fly zone?) , cross an entire ocean and wind up in Kansas, spewing anthrax on our wheat. (In reality, we are in more danger from tainted food imported from China than we ever faced from Iraq.)
That balsa wood attack plane was an idiotic premise, easily debunked , yet people accepted it without question.
When I pointed out the fact that it was impossible, technologically or militarily , for Iraq to attack America ( those 9/11 planes were piloted by our allies, the freedom-loving oligarchs of Saudi Arabia) nobody listened.
I was insulted and threatened and lost a few friends. A man at a stoplight wanted to know why I didn't have a Flag on my Honda...he wanted to fight me. He had accepted the "common knowledge" that you are either with us or against us. It's not black and white, but to him it was clear.

Everyone knew Saddam was involved in 9/11. They just knew because everyone did, so when it came time to invade, well hell yeah, vengeance is ours...except we were wrong. Iraq was pretty helpless in 2003, and had nothing at all to do with 9/11/01, but Saddam at least kept Iran in check.Now Iraq is no longer a nation at all and it's getting worse, not better.

"But Saddam was known to murder his own citizens", squeal the War Pigs, "if we don't kill them , he will- we must destroy the country to save it".
America has killed a lot more Iraqis than Saddam, that's for sure...although the Americans don't count civilian casualties - that was one lesson the neo-cons learned from 'Nam- civilian bodycounts are bad for morale at home. Better to ignore and suppress them.

There are no surprises in this war. Everything that has happened was easily predictable. If we, as a people and as a government, had bothered to check our facts and verify our information, we would have found no reason to invade Iraq. Would the world be a better, safer place had we stayed in America? I say yes.

After the invasion, terrorism has steadily increased, not decreased.
After 9/11, most of the world considered America as the victim. That impression is long gone, now we are perceived to be in the business of creating victims.
Fox News says the other networks don't give the good news from Iraq- but Fox doesn't report the good news either, only the other media's failure to do so. This is because there is damned little good news to report.

But everyone knows the world is better without Saddam.
"They" say so.

I say show me. Show us.
Give me the methodology of the' sex thoughts ' experiment. Who conducted it; when, where and how? Scientists publish their papers, they want people to read them. If it exists, it's not hidden. Find it.

Failing that, explain how the world-and especially the Middle East- is safer now than in 2000.
Dick Cheney just said it's better now, but he didn't say why. I want the why. Car bombs kill 30 is not a sign of progress, not after four years of occupation. Were the West Germans using car bombs in 1949, four years after we defeated Hitler? No.

Beware what "they" say , check the sources, and show me.

Consider this: If there is a conclusive way to measure specific sexual thoughts, it follows that the same method could be used to measure thoughts of any sort...one can imagine a polygraph machine that not only tells you that you are lying, but also spills the details. A Police State would thrive with this sort of technology- thoughtcrime would become reality.

Are you loyal to the State? Prove it to the telepathic guillotine.

Potential for Steam

My car came perilously close to overheating this evening. In the space of a mile or so, the
thermostat goes from it's normal '12 o'clock vertical all the way into the far-right red zone, not quite clipping it, but close.

Can't drive like that without wrecking my engine, so I park in a 'reserved' spot in a nearby apartment building.

Under the hood, greenish-gray spray is everywhere...a coolant hose has split and the antifreeze is squirting into the fan and the belts, which are spraying it downward and aroundward...there is a puddle forming on the asphalt...damn.

Well, I can patch the leak with duct tape and put enough coolant in to get home, but first I need to wait for the engine to cool...it's too hot to stick my hand inside.
(Note: find the fuse labeled 'radiator/turbo fans' and remove it before sticking your hand anywhere near a radiator or turbo fan. Important.)

So I sit in the sun and think. I was thinking about how I was recently forced into discussing my alcoholism in real life, and how uncomfortable that was for both me and my interlocutor.
I was asked about my "support system"...I don't go to AA or any other group, but I do have other things, things I think work. I'm somewhat proud to have these things but not so proud I can't be grateful for them:

1) The radio. I have to get up every Sunday at 5:30-6am and do radio. I love doing this so much that waking up is never a problem, although sleeping beforehand often is. If I started drinking again, I would lose my ability to function in the morning. I'd lose my show.
Radio is part of my support system.

2) My grandmother. She is proud of me. To her, I am the one who beat the odds, she can talk about me at church without eliciting sympathy. To me, she was my anchor in a tsunami childhood. She did everything she could, and I'm here now when I otherwise might not have been.

3) You. My blogpals. You accept me despite knowing things that I haven't told many of my close friends. (Perhaps some of you don't, but you aren't reading this , so it's a moot point. )The real point is: I appreciate all the kind thoughts. (Some of you have marvelous timing...uncanny! )
I write about things that are hard for me to explain and that must be difficult for others to read, but sometimes it reaches someone who reaches back and that makes it worthwhile. Contact.

The thing is, I explained this to someone who has a history of dealing with drunks. They seemed to think it was reasonable and they especially thought #3 above was an interesting alternative to AA. I had never looked at blogging quite like that before, my idea was more along the Isle of Misfit Toys...

Was she wrong? I see some truth in it, but I don't think that's bad. I think it good.

Anyway, I patched the leak (for now) and got home, but I did get some thinking done while I waited for the engine to cool.

I'm thinking it's gonna work out somehow.

Nothing Personal

I'm walking to the bustop and I'm forced to pause a moment when a blue Toyota noses out of the parking garage to my left. The driver, a beautiful dark-skinned woman, waves at me and smiles.
I smile politely back and continue walking, but she keeps waving.
Her window comes down and she calls me by name, beckons me over to her window.

Me? You know me? You want me to talk to you? Can do!

This is exactly the kind of thing that should happen to me every day but in reality never does. Except maybe now.

" Hi! Hi! Remember me?"

Wow. She is remarkably beautiful. My IQ plunges as a dormant part of my mind rouses itself and starts searching for something cleverly stupid to say, draining resources from my already faltering memory.

I don't recognize her.
Or.
Maybe I do. Ah...it's like a mnemonic sneeze waiting to happen.

"Uh..."

" I'm Kris! From Bank of Generica! How are you?"

Oh yeah. Now I remember. Kris with a 'K'... I liked her, but we didn't work on the same "team", so we didn't get much time to chat. She looks different now, but I can't say how.
I was mortally drunk during that period, so my recall of those days is just a little blurry.
She was nice to me. I remember that much . It's a start.

"Doin' good! Nice car."

Jay-sus. That's not quite the dumbest thing to say, but it is close. There's a second car pulling up behind her, forcing her to move out of the lane and I've blown my one chance at being witty and charming. Her face is round, beautiful, her expression expectant; I look at her and I go into instant mourning for our never-to-be children. They would have been wonderful, talented kids. Our life together would have been a blissful celebration of unending love- but I have already fucked it up. Our future dies a painfully existential imaginary death.

Years into the future, I feel the leaves falling on my solitary, unvisited gravestone.
No one clears them away.

"Need a ride? I'm going towards Suchandsuch street."

"Sure! Thanks!"

Hah! So much for falling leaves and unmourned graves!

This is cool. It's twenty years in the future and we are walking hand-in-hand along a moonlit beach and laughing about the old days which have suddenly ceased to not happen yet.

But first we have some small talk. We live in the same neighborhood, just a few blocks apart.
Good.
She refers to our ex-boss as a "fucking asshole", breaking the profanity barrier and establishing some common ground.
I am so digging this.
Ha ha, yeah you are right, I agree, that dude was a major asshole. Fuckin' checklist this, ya know?

Haha!

Do I need to be somewhere? No, not really.
Why?
Sure, that sounds great. They have a patio bar, maybe we can sit outside.
Park and walk? No, I don't mind waiting on your porch while you change.
Trust me, I understand what you mean when you say it's a mess inside!
It's a gorgeous day, take your time.

She's a quick changer and she looks great in jeans, two admirable traits. We head to the corner bar.

Dude. You are rolling. Don't fuck up.

Kris orders something with Crown Royal in it. I order coffee. Kris doesn't say anything specific, but I sense that my failure to order an alcoholic drink is a minor breach of an unwritten social contract. Not a fatal error, but a sign. Of what?

Nevermind to all that. This is going really well. Kris just got a promotion, she's branch manager at a competing bank; she's pumped up about it, thinking about buying a house...I can feel her imagination from across the table and it is warm and inviting. Kris is very articulate and funny, haha- I think everyone hated the "ice cream socials" at the Bank, but no one said so- Kris tells me she despised them, I tell her that I was actually ejected from one.
That was you? Haha! Awesome!
She gives me a hi-five. Well done!

The ice cream the bank served was barely edible cheap, mushy, terrible stuff made from tainted Chinese yak milk; yet we were supposed to act grateful and obedient for having it foisted on us in lieu of raises. Ten cents an hour more would have been better for morale than bad ice cream.

Kris points this out:
"The only thing worse than having a shit job is being forced to enjoy it".
Ha! Damn, that's true.. I like women who say stuff like that. It shows realism. I bet she's a good manager.
Hello, comfort zone.

Sure, why not have dinner while we are here?

Tonight's special: filet of carpe diem served with a garden salad of earthly delights. Just don't fuck up.

Kris is very animated, I'm entranced by her delicate hands as they tell the story of how she went from temp worker to management in less than a year. She is looking at houses, thinking of moving to the country even though the commute will be long. She would like to have a greenhouse and an outdoor dog. She has a cat now and it's stir-crazy in her apartment; her fingers make scampering motions on the tabletop as she talks. Manic cat, they say.
Her talking hands are not wearing a diamond. They gesture at me.

"How did you do that?"

Do what? My exploits are legendary. She could be referring to any number of my award-winning accomplishments but I haven't even had a chance to tell her how totally fucking awesome I am yet.

"What's that?"

"The weight. How'd you lose it? I hope that's not being too personal...but you look great."

That's right! I was fifty pounds heavier back then. At this moment I feel 75 ft. tall, but in reality I am short. Fifty pounds was 25% of me. I was in terrible shape back then.
I'm proud that I look good to Kris.
Don't fuck up.

"Well, I...uh...well let's just say there's a lot of calories in beer."

Her gaze shifts to my coffee and then to her cocktail and back to the mug. Behind her bottomless brown eyes, her banker's brain is busily calculating, doing the math. She adds it up. Smart woman.

"So...you don't drink at all?"

"No."

"Oh."

She needs to tell me something. She has dated two alcoholics and they are both dead. She was engaged to the second one when he killed himself. It is nothing personal, but if I have a drinking problem, she'd appreciate it if I told her now.

Don't fuck up. Now is not the time to mention my family history of self-annihilation, yet here it is again- the past is destroying my present.

I pause, fumble around... a refill buys me a few seconds to gather my thoughts.
This is tricky stuff.
I am convinced that I will never drink again, but I can't deny that I have a drunk in my past or that a single drink might kill me. I won't let that happen but I don't know how to explain this to her. There is no guarantee. I can't promise anything to anyone.

"I used to drink. I don't anymore."

"Used to... a lot?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Again, it's nothing personal, but she can't take a chance with a drug-using heavy drinker again. It's been too hard on her and she can't go through it another time.

I can tell that she has been having an imaginary future too, and in her vision a life that never was has just ended.
It's a familiar feeling and I recognize it for what it is.
And she is right.
It's nothing personal. I've had a number of variations on this conversation over the last two years and I know the only reasonable outcome is unfavorable to me- in an impersonal way.
I can't offer up any proof that I won't drink again. There isn't any.
I can't expect her to take a chance - not after what she's been through.
If you are betting on horses, it's not wise to put money on the one with a record of falls.
Given her luck, maybe it's best to avoid the track altogether, but we are all gamblers at heart, so some chances will always be taken.
Some will not.

Like people, the better the chance, the more likely it is to be taken.

I am an untaken chance.

This is an awkward moment. The chemistry is intense but Kris isn't looking for a one-nighter and frankly, neither am I.
It wouldn't work like that. We can both tell, no use pretending otherwise.
We are both looking for a nearly identical imaginary future and that search is what separates us.
Her dream requires an absence of alcoholics , mine merely requires my own sobriety.
It's a subtle but irreconcilable difference and it brings our imaginary tomorrow to a real end tonight.

Maybe my feelings should be hurt. Maybe they will be, but I doubt it.
I didn't do anything wrong- I didn't fuck up!- but I can't ask for trust that can't be given. Watching someone you love kill themself will fuck you up, no doubt about it. I know.
Two drunks in her life was two drunks too many and there is no third chance to be taken or given.
Who wants to volunteer for a suicide mission?
I understand this. It bothers me but it doesn't destroy me.

It's nothing personal.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

TONES OF GOSPEL : JUNE 24 ,2007

Irony of ironies- me hosting the Gospel Hour. Our regular host "praises" and talks a lot and usually only plays five or six songs as a result.
I doubt that his listeners would care to hear my thoughts on the subject, so I let the music speak for itself.

Quite a few of the songs on the list are from the soundtrack of The Gospel at Colonus . The Lord in reference is actually the Greek god Apollo, sorta. Donald Fagen (Steely Dan) produced the album and it sounds great. I think it's my new favorite record. Now I wanna see the movie.

PRAISE THE LORD:

Aretha Franklin - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Aretha does Paul.

Sam Butler, Clarence Fountain & Soul Stirrers- Stop Do Not Go On
Colunus.

Mahalia Jackson- His Eye Is On The Sparrow
Have you ever heard her sing? Wow.

J.D. Steele Singers- How Shall I see You Through My Tears?
Ow. I poked my eyes out.

Sam Cooke- This Little Light of Mine
The audience starts shouting Ay- Men, Ay-Men at the end, I turn on the mic and join in. Ay-Man!

Mavis Staples- Wade in the Water
A lot of Christian songs use pagan symbols...water being one. I guess water, even more than music, is our universal language.

Clarence Fountain & The Five Blind Boys- Lift Me Up (Like a Dove)
I suppose air is important too.

Elvis Presley- Amazing Grace
The King is probably the worst singer on this recording. His voice is buried deep in the choir at times. Still, it is what it is.

The Soul Stirrers w/ Willie Rogers- Eternal Sleep
From Colonus

Soweto Gospel Choir- Many Rivers To Cross
This is simply beautiful...really moving- and then it jumps into double-time- it's awesome. I'll be playing this again on my regular show

The Institutional Radio Choir- Lift Him Up
Great name.

Bob Marley- Go Tell It On The Mountain
I can't help it. It's gospel, OK?

The Soul Stirrers - Never Drive You Away (Jubilee)
I'm shouting yeah! yeah! at the end. How can you not?


THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: JUNE 24, 2007

This my show. I can play anything I want to.
I wanna play some stuff by sexy, gun-toting mutant art waifs, but I only know of one- Danielle Dax (above).
Who would you want watching your back in a free-for-all bar fight: Dax or Paris Hilton?
Danielle's gotcha covered.

PASS THE AMMUNITION

Sweetwater - Motherless Child
Forever.

Aphrodite's Child- I Want To Live
Maybe not forever, but for a while yet.

Jimi Hendrix - Machine Gun
Dude was dead, they finished the record without him. Still, it is what it is.

Danielle Dax - Jehovah's Precious Stone
Danielle is a HUGE fan of religion.

Loreena McKennitt- The Mystic's Dream
A pagan dreams of the ending world. Life goes on, but for how long?

Chris Spedding- Bored, Bored
Never. This song has cowbell. It needs more.

Lou Reed- Rock and Roll Heart
I knows I ain't smart. But deep down inside, I got a rock and roll heart.

Snakefinger- Bless Me For I Have Sinned/Jesus Gave Me Water
I'm feeling the spirit move me...7-11 coffee is giving me water.

Marianne Faithfull- Guilt
This is for Enemy, who is not an adversary. Of mine, anyway.

...*sigh*....
I love this observation by Marianne: "Every time I see your dick , I see her cunt in my bed".
I can't play that song on the radio. Too bad, it's got a great groove. Broken English is my new all-time favorite old album.

The Clash- Guns Of Brixton
Still my all-time favorite album. I have hundreds of all-time favorites, but this is near the top.

Supertramp- Bloody Well Right
Godzilla help me...this sounds really good today. I got this LP from Columbia House back in the days when you taped a penny to a coupon, mailed it in and got 10 free records. Then you moved away and did it again under another name.
At least I did.

The Who- Put The Money Down
"Before I walk on the water, put the money down."
Again with water and Jesus. Is there no escape?

Savoy Brown- Money Can't Save Your Soul
But it sure would make life easier.

Pretty Things- Sickle Clowns
Parachute was Rolling Stone's Album of the Year back when that still meant something. 1970, it was. (Motor-sickle)

Hot Tuna - True Religion
That's an oxymoron in my opinion, but Jack and Jorma are so good that I forgive them. Papa John Creach adds some mighty fine fiddlin'.

Clannad - Poison Glen
I used to call my cocaine buddy 'Poison' Glen. He died in prison. Let that be a lesson.

10 CC - Rubber Bullets
These guys are fantastic...how did I miss them for so long? This song fits my show perfectly. Even the songwriter's last names , Godley & Creme, work with it. I'm having a radio grin!

Led Zeppelin- Dancing Days
You say it's alright!

Gary Numan- Conversation
You say it's not alright?

Fiona Joyce- Cry Over You
Conversation does that to me.

Alan Parsons Project- To One in Paradise
I believed in my dreams
Nothing can change my mind
Till I found what they mean
Nothing can save me now

Damien Dempsey- The Jar Song
Enough of that pretty crap. If you stereotype Dempsey, his Irish ass is goon lay a shillelagh oopside yoor noogin. That's the way they came.

Fairport Convention- Come All Ye
Jesus Christ and a Globe fulla drunken bards. I feel like I'm in a Revival tent at the frickin' Renaissance Festival.

Bob Dylan- Sarah
Except for some kelp.

Pretty Things- Loneliest Person
One man's kelp is another man's seaweed.

Happy Week's End.

Amen!

Cowboy Junkies

Update: If I can ever figure out how this artist-authorized bootleg swap site works, I'll start a "Vine" with this show. Does anyone understand this site?


I took the afternoon off from my 'real' job to produce a radio spot with Mike and Margo Timmins from the Cowboy Junkies.
That's me with Margo, Mike is in the foreground, talking to one of his legion of adoring fans.

I didn't know it until a few days before the show, but the Junkies are largely comprised of siblings and the theme of family, good and bad, is an important element of their original songs. I am definitely going to have to add some CJ records to my "get list".


This second photo offers a glimpse into the sordid underbelly of the music business.

Margo, you can see, is knitting a sweater.

Mike is being give a CD ( I think) by a mutual friend whilst simutaneously tuning his guitar.

In the foreground is a cup of water and a ballcap.

This sort of over-the-top hedonism is pretty common in the music biz but it's daunting to see up close.

Margo's sweater hit a 'critical phase' during soundcheck but she somehow managed to keep things from unraveling. That's the mark of veteran performer as well as a top-knotch knitter.
She's also got the voice of a worldly angel. Pretty, but edgy as hell. Impressive.

Mike and Margo were wonderful guests and seemed quite cozy in the somewhat funky and low-budget converted bedroom that serves as our production studio. They aren't exactly prima donnas, the CJ's. They are our kinda people.

They care about their songs and it shows. I was in the 'control room' with headphones on and I was drawn into the songs in a way that I seldom am when recording bands.
It was the lyrics and the stories they told that made me want more.
Compelling stuff...I think the sparseness of the guitar fit nicely with the evocative lyrics.

The third photo is my view from the 'control room'. Paul, the show's host, is the foreground.
The standing gentlemen is my friend of 20 years, Tim H. He had dropped in to say hello to the Timmins.I didn't know it, but Tim's early band had met and befriended the Junkies nearly twenty years ago while on tour. This friendship led to Mike meeting his wife -his wife is friends with Tim & Co- and they have been happily married for a long time. Many years. Kudos!

The Junkies seemed pleasantly surprised to see Tim- he is surprisingly pleasant- and the vibe in the studio turned into a warm "catching -up-on- old times" session. You'd be surprised how many musicians are just normal folk who like to knit, talk with friends and generally feel good about what they do.
It's contagious.

They played three songs:
-Cutting Board Blues
-Spiral Down
-Sun Comes Up

I'm a sucker for a heartfelt songs and they are really good at writing them. Honesty in music turns me on.

Obviously, I am not going to post downloads- you can get those from the band.

After they left, Paul and I edited the recording for airplay , after which we were treated to burritos.

It was a good day.

Bush: 'Right To Life' Excludes The Living

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. And it is not the only option before us,'' the president said.

This is the first time in six years that I have heard George W. Bush tell the truth.
Unfortunately, it's only true if taken out of context.
If he had made the preceding statement as a reason to not invade Iraq, he would have been both honest and wise.
But George W. Bush is neither honest nor wise.

The "human life" BushCo refers to :

Specifically, embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro—in an in vitro fertilization clinic—and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman's body. The embryos from which human embryonic stem cells are derived are typically four or five days old and are a hollow microscopic ball of cells called the blastocyst.

The "human lives" have no probability of being born. If they are not used for research, they will be discarded, presumably incinerated in the same fashion as medical waste such as surgical gauze and amputated limbs. Research or not, they will be destroyed, but BushCo is a real enthusiast for the unnecessary sacrifice of people and resources, and there is no reason to expect his enthusiasm for the sacrifice of others to exclude frozen Microscopic- Americans.

"Thank Allah the embryos are safe!"


"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred. And our conscience calls us to pursue the possibilities of science in a manner that respects human dignity and upholds our moral values," Bush said, vetoing a bill for just the third time in more than six years in office.

There has been blood on every Bush veto.

He has vetoed stem cell research twice. The other vetoed bill was a war funding package that required a timetable for troop withdrawal in Iraq.

Medical research that could help millions of people without risking a single real "human life?".
Unthinkable!
Veto!
Twice!



Peace? A plan? That's crazy talk.
War is where the money is and the profit faucet ain't gettin' turned off. No way.
Veto!

Both bills were supported by a large majority of the American public.

On the surface, it seems pretty obvious that Bush is merely caving in to his rabid neo-con base, trying to throw them a hush-puppy to settle them down over the immigration unpleasantness. And that's probably the true reason behind his veto...

-but-

Perhaps Bush knows something we don't. Maybe there is a man-made catastrophe looming- a biological war or a series of unfortunately-timed industrial/environmental mishaps- and it is threatening to render the human species sterile. Maybe we are gonna need all those frozen embryos in order to replenish the human race. Six years ago, I would have said that as a joke...now? Not sure.

As it stands, it is extremely unlikely that any of the contested embryos will ever be 'born', i.e., converted into a 'real' human being, funding or no funding.
But if did happen, wouldn't it be funny if every child 'born' from one of these "rescued" in-vitro embryos somehow turned out to be gay?

That would be justice.

A Holiday of Now

I promised myself that I would never talk to my father again.

Then why is the phone in my hand? I said I was going to erase his number, yet it's ringing and I'm holding it.

It doesn't matter. My father is always drunk, so he never answers his phone. I'll leave a message and he won't reply. That is the way it is with us.

Or it was. Before I stopped talking to him.

Why am I doing this?

And why does Dad answer the phone? He never does that.
Is it because he is sober?
He is, I can tell.

So there's this fake holiday to break the ice and maybe for one second I stop hating Hallmark for inflicting these landmine holidays on us.
One second.

Happy Father's Day.

He sounds genuinely surprised to hear from me, but we do need to talk. It's a bit urgent.

My father tells me that I need to be prepared, that his mother probably won't ever leave the convalescent facility she is in...she is gravely ill.
He wants me to know that it is serious.
Really serious.

I have been anticipating this conversation for months. Dreading it.

See, I know his mother is sick. I know all the details. I have been visiting and calling her for the last two months.
My dad, on the other hand, was missing on a multi-week bender, so he didn't find out how bad it was until he came home and slept it off...which took him days. My twin brother flew in from Chicago to help sort him out. It's a miracle that booze hasn't killed our dad.
Anyway, if Dad hadn't been lost in a drunken stupor, he wouldn't be so surprised to learn that his mother can't take care of herself anymore.
Taking care of her was his job, but he won't even take care of himself.
I use him as a model on how not to live my life.

These are things I thought I was going to say to him if we ever spoke again.

But I don't say any of those things. For a moment they slip my mind.

I ask him how he is. I already know, but it's important that he knows I'm asking because I care.
Now.
Yesterday, I didn't care. Tomorrow I may not.
So it is very important that I ask him now.
It's for my sake as much as his.
I care now.

He is OK, he says. It is a lie, but a forgivable one.

My father is very close to breaking as he tells me what I already know.
Yes, I agree, we need to be ready for the worst.

Any day.
Oh, yes, there's always the false alarms...keep hope alive.
Remember last fall? Haha. Boy, were we scared!

We laugh at some of the close calls and false alerts of the past. None of it was funny then, but some of it is now.

And now is where my father is.

So we talk about now.

I know where he was , I know where he is, but I know better than to ask about where he will be. I don't ask for or make any more promises.
His promise to stay sober mean less to him than my promise to disown him means to me and I've already broken mine.
It's only a matter of time before he breaks his.
I know that.
He knows it too.

But he is here now, and for now, we are speaking again.

Oui Hours

If you catch me in the right mood, I can be agreeable to almost anything. I was in that kind of mood when I said:" Yes. I will fill a two-hour slot with music early Sunday morning. But only once."
That was seven months ago.
I've been doing it every Sunday since then.

Similarly, I will occasionally partake in a meme. Like now. I am doing this at the bequest of my new blogpal Cowbell, who wants me to list eight things about myself and then force this chain of confession on eight of you.
I am refraining from doing that. My blog circle is small and incestuous and the resulting tags would likely have webbed toes and harelips.
Feel free to tag yourself.
I'll use my playlist to talk about myself. My list of eight starts with #2.


Peter Tosh- I'm The Toughest
This song is about me.
2) I can do drugs that would kill a lesser mortal.
Witness:
This morning I stopped at 7-11 for coffee and they were selling a scorched brown liquid called "Energy Coffee", which is really just bad coffee with extra caffeine and guarana added. (Guarana is to caffeine what corn syrup is to sugar - the same, only more so.) They also had a box of single-serving non-dairy screamers -a sign advertised :" Espresso Flavor Shots...40mg caffeine per serving."
They were free.
It took 48 of them to fill a 24 0z. coffee cup.
I filled a second cup with "Energy Coffee."
Fuck with me now, you bastards.

Chris Spedding- Breakout
Chris never did break out on his own, but he played with some greats- Eno, Cale, Nilsson. This song sounds like Joe Strummer.

Joe Strummer- All in in a Day
This song also sounds like Joe Strummer. It doesn't sound like Chris Spedding, though.

Red Hot Chili Peppers- Behind The Sun
Songs about dolphins are cool.
3) I once played in a band that opened up for the Chilis. They weren't famous then, but you could tell they would be. We were not a hard act to follow.

Steve Hillage - Motivation
The title of the album is Motivation Radio.

Loreena McKinnett- Mummer's Dance
This song is six minutes long. That should be enough time for a coffee achievement.

Altan- The Trip To Cullenstown
4) I would like to visit Ireland one day.

Damien Dempsey- Marching Season/Seize the Day
5) If you asked me, right now, who my favorite band was, I'd tell you "Dempsey."

Fiona Joyce- Trees
5a) "Joyce."

West of Eden- High Ground
5c) Not West of Eden. They're OK, but I miscued this disc. The espresso shots are taking over.

Steeleye Span- The Storyteller
6)Among other reasons, I love blogging because it helps keep the art of storytelling alive.

Be Bop Deluxe- Love is Swift Arrows
7) Cupid is a drunken knife-thrower and I am on his spinning target wheel.

Talking Heads- Don't Worry About The Government
8) I am distraught over the current state of American Government.

Steeleye Span- The Blacksmith
Back in the day, the village blacksmith was often considered to be quite a stud; Maddy Pryor sure sounds enthusiastic as she lustfully sings of doing her duty. Once you've had blacksmith...

Bob Dylan- Gotta Travel On
Been stuck around this old town too long.

Ten Years After- I'd Love To Change The World
It is possible.

The Kinks- Starstruck
Ye Olde Rocke Gossiper sez : the original lyric "...addicted to wine and cocaine... gonna drive you insane" was changed to to "wine and champagne" at the last minute by the record company, which really angered Kinks songwriter Ray Davies. Davies then went on to write concept albums about how much he hated the music biz.

Pretty Things- Trust
Excuse me. Please.

Pentangle- In Time
Another five minute song. I'm glad there's a radio in the bathroom.

Jefferson Airplane- Pretty as You Feel
I hope that you are feeling beautiful, because you are.

Patti Smith -Privilege
Playing Patti on Sunday mornings gives me something to live for.

Fairport Convention- Tale in Hard Time
Dude, just play 4/4 like the rest of us. Kidding! I love this band- their first few albums sound especially good.

Neil Young - Vampire Blues
Neil singing about Big Oil back in 1974..."I'm a vampire, babe, sucking blood from the earth."

Flaming Groovies - Headin' for the Texas Border
Flee! Get out while you still can!

Funkadelic- I'll Stay
Don't go! I'll wait!

ELP- In the Beginning
Damn. This remind me that I was planning on playing some Genesis. Too late now.

Blonde Redhead- Cure
I wonder if the Cure have a song called 'Blonde Redhead?'
I used to know a blond redhead...sigh...where are you now? I could use some asylum.

Last-Ditch Effort

Here is some of my emergency gear.
My new Maglite, a mechanical timepiece, canned goods and vinyl records. I keep the records handy in case I have to rush to the station at the very last second and do a two-hour program of 1980's music.
Usually I narrate my playlists, but frankly I've got too much shit to do and I need a break.
I'll be back on the air tomorrow morning, 7am.

Good news coming tomorrow. Or maybe Monday or Tuesday.

Until then, here's what I scraped together:




Snakefinger- The Model

Magazine- The Honeymoon Killers
Steve Hillage - These Enchanted Lands
Oingo Boingo - No Spill Blood

Blue Oyster Cult- Burnin' For You
Yello - La Habanera
Siouxsie and the Banshees- Spellbound
Meat Puppets- Up on the Sun
Neil Young - On Broadway
Troublefunk- Woman of Principle
George Clinton- Airbound
Grace Jones- My Jamaican Guy
Danielle Dax- Funtime
Crack the Sky- Monkey Boy
The Damned- There'll Come a Day
Lou Reed- Martial Law
Robyn Hitchcock- Grooving on an Inner Plane
XTC- Shake Your Donkey Up
Adrian Belew- Adidas in Heat
Mother Gong- Upwardly Mobile Song
Mission of Burma- All World Cowboy Romance
Dukes of Stratosphere- 25 O'Clock
The Kinks- Low Budget
Stranglers- Praise of the European Female
Tupelo Chain Sex- The Revolution Will Be Televised
Poto Doudongo- Bolingo

Confucius in 2008

A disciple once asked Confucius what would he would do to reform a corrupt State.

"We must correct language," replied the scholar, "if language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant , then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything."

Confucius, who was a skilled diplomat and political adviser as well as a philosopher and teacher, was making an argument that society's leaders must, above all, be honest and forthright; and that the consequences of deceit and miscommunication would include moral entropy and societal decay.

Confucius disliked 'spinning' the truth.

Confucius would have loathed George W. Bush and his forked-tongued cabal of serial liars.

1) "...if language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant..."

Here are some of the major arguments used to support the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq:
We need to invade Iraq because Saddam has WMD...we are spreading freedom... we need to stay the course, otherwise all the pointless death and destruction that has already occured would be even more tragic and futile than it already is...

What those words really mean:

There were no WMD and we knew it. We are using the war as a means to redistribute the nation's wealth upward and outward- for instance, we'll give billions of dollars to war profiteers like Halliburton, who will then re-locate to Dubai in order to avoid paying taxes on the $22.6 billion in annual revenues generated by the no-bid contracts awarded to them as a result of this unjust war...we will also give billions of dollars in tax subsidies to oil companies who are already experiencing record-breaking profits - this war is too profitable to consider halting . BTW, you will never pay less than two dollars for a gallon of gasoline again, ever.
Vote for us.

2) "...if what is said is not what is meant , then what ought to be done remains undone..."

K-A-T-R-I-N-A . Undone.

Stem cell research. Undone.

What we should be doing is building schools, hospitals and factories in America. We need a Health Care plan that works and the $15 billion dollars we just gave to Exxon, Conoco et.al.
ought to be enough money to pay for that. We don't need to cut spending on social services, we need to curtail funding on war, warfare being essentially an anti-social disservice to humanity.

We can also extrapolate this from #2 : 'what ought to remain undone gets done'.
The endless occupation of Iraq would be a good example of something that should have remained undone. Monetary gifts to the world's wealthiest corporations would be another.

3) "... morals and art will deteriorate, justice will go astray."

Morals? Modern morality is dictated by self-appointed arbiters like Ted Haggard, a self-loathing , homophobic cock-sucking meth-sniffer; Tom DeLay , an unrepentant money-washing embezzler and all-around political tool and William Bennett, a gambling addict who blew over $8 million dollars on slot machines and call girls before declaring himself America's "Values Czar."

Our chronically moralizing President is an alcoholic whose re-election was , in part, due to the fact the more Americans would rather "have a beer with" Dubya than with John Kerry.
Drinking with alcoholics is a bad idea. Electing them is worse.

Art? Who needs art? We have entertainment. If we ignore art and concentrate on entertainment , we can simultaneously dismiss and ensure the deterioration of art.
One of the most popular entertainments of our time is little more than a glorified Karaoke contest, punctuated with petty insults and laden with contrived and grossly undignified debasements and humiliations, self-inflicted and otherwise. Americans know more about their Idols than they know of their Congressional representatives...another famous ancient philosopher warned us against the worship of false idols, but today few pay more than self-serving lip service to that man's words.


Justice? In my estimation, the only noteworthy accomplishment of Paris Hilton's entire lifetime is her inadvertently calling attention to the obvious inequity of our Justice system.

I have my own experience with Justice:
In 2000, I was facing 25-125 years in prison based on some seriously trumped-up Federal drug charges- I had five charges arising from possession of under .8 of a gram (two roaches) of marijuana.
My expensive lawyer told me flat-out: " If you were black, I could probably get the minimum sentence- 25 years- for you. Since you're white, I may be able to get you off."
I served 18 months of supervised probation- which I violated twice without serious punishment- and was discharged. It's not fair, but it did work for me.

Since then, I've had no illusions about the 'justness' of our Justice system.

4) "If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion."

Confucius didn't mean that the people would literally come to a halt and stand in the streets, scratching themselves. He meant that people would lose sight of the Way, that they would lose the ability to think critically and act effectively and would therefor be defenseless against the machinations of malevolent leadership. In essence, they'd be too busy tracking the irrelevant activities of their False Idols to notice what their leaders were really doing.
Confucius would have hated 'reality' TV.

5) "Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. "

Modern leaders aren't just arbitrary- their words are surreal, inarticulate and incoherent.

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns."
-Former BushCo Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on those elusive WMD's, and why we went to Iraq in the first place.

"Success is not no violence."
- Current Resident George W. Bush, using a double negative to describe his Iraq 'strategery'.

The prognostications and observations of Confucius were not couched in ambiguity and political doublespeak.
What he said would happen, has happened.

Is that clear?

CAUTION: Improved Conditions

September 7, 2005 was a bad night for me. I didn't know it at the time, but decades of heavy drinking had given me a large number of separate tiny bleeding ulcers in my lower esophagus and upper GI tract. On 7 Sept, these small perforations united and I began hemorrhaging. I was losing blood by the mouthful.

I knew I was dying but I wasn't sure I cared. I did some truly last-minute thinking and I decided I didn't want to die, so I drove myself to the ER late at night.
I got lucky.
I walked into the ER and vomited blood on the floor, an act for which I gained immediate attention, medical and otherwise. The medical attention saved my life. I was later informed that I had anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so to live at the time of my arrival- without immediate care, I wouldn't have lived to be outraged about this story:

LOS ANGELES—A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal.

Relatives said Rodriguez was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated early enough.

If you are vomiting blood, your life is in serious jeopardy. ER personnel should know that and I'm sure that they did. What they lacked was concern and any semblance of human empathy. The staff and the 911 dispatcher display a sociopathic indifference to human life and suffering:

"I'm in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, is heard saying in Spanish through an interpreter on the tapes.

The man was calling 911 from the ER. It wasn't a frivolous call. He was unable to get help , which prompted a bystander to place a second 911 call. The police finally responded by driving to the hospital and arresting Ms. Rodriguez for a parole violation. They put her in a wheelchair and started to remove her from the hospital, presumably to jail, but she died before they could leave the hospital .

The woman went to the ER , in obvious peril for her life, and wound up dying in police custody.

UPDATE: Here is a more detailed account from the LA Times.

The Hospital, (King-Harbor), had already been cited by the Federal government. The Feds don't seem to realize that if you are puking blood, you don't have 23 days to wait for the medical staff to rehab itself:

Federal inspectors last week said emergency room patients were in "immediate jeopardy" of harm or death, and King-Harbor was given 23 days to shape up or risk losing federal funding.

Dr. Bruce Chernof, director of the county Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called Rodriguez's death "inexcusable" and said it was "important to understand that this was fundamentally a failure of caring." He has said conditions are improving, though.

Conditions are improving? The police just arrested a dying woman in the Emergency Room. She didn't survive the visit.
What was it like before the 'improvement'?

"Conditions are improving"...hmmm. That sounds familiar. Where have else we heard that sentiment expressed?

"In the 83 days since I announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, we have made progress, steady progress, in restoring hope in a nation beaten down by decades of tyranny."
-George W. Bush
July 7, 2003. 2003. 2003.

"The plan sets out ambitious timetables and clear benchmarks to measure progress and practical methods for achieving results. Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment. "

-same asshole, same speech

What happened to the clear benchmarks? I thought BushCo was against putting timetables on American withdrawal from Iraq. In fact, Bush recently vetoed a withdrawal timetable.
BushCo argues that timetables encourage terrorists...we've seen a massive upswing in terrorism since Bush gushed about his "timetables" in 2003, so perhaps they are correct.

Bush in 2003:

"America has assumed great responsibilities for Iraq's future. Yet, we do not bear these responsibilities alone. Nineteen nations are providing more than 13,000 troops to help stabilize Iraq. And additional forces will soon arise -- arrive. More than two dozen nations have pledged funds that will go directly towards relief and reconstruction efforts. Every day we are renovating schools for the new school year. We're restoring the damaged water, electrical and communication systems. And when we introduce a new Iraqi currency later this year, it will be the first time in 12 years that the whole country is using the same currency.

Our greatest ally in the vital work of stabilizing and rebuilding a democratic and prosperous Iraq is the Iraqi people, themselves. Our goal is to turn over authority to Iraqis as quickly as possible. Coalition authorities are training Iraqi police forces to help patrol Iraqi cities and villages."

47 months later:

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS) - The U.S. Coalition is the principal cause of Iraq's current woes, charges a report released Wednesday by the Global Policy Forum (GPF), a New York-based watchdog group.

Since the March 2003 invasion, the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq has "utterly failed to bring peace, prosperity and democracy, as originally advertised," says the report, entitled "War and Occupation in Iraq".

"The United Nations and the international community must end the complicity of silence and they must vigorously address the Iraq crisis," it says.

Produced by GPF and 29 international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the report was released to coincide with U.N. Security Council consultations on the Iraq problem. The 117-page report assesses conditions in the country, especially the responsibility of the U.S.-led Coalition, for violations of international law and concludes with recommendations for action, including a speedy withdrawal of Coalition forces.

It covers areas such as destruction of cultural heritage, unlawful detention, killing and torture of civilians, displacement, corruption and fraud, attacks on cities and long-term military bases.

"This is ongoing, is not under control, and is something the Coalition is saying it is doing under mandate of the U.N. Security Council," James Paul, GPF's executive director, told reporters Wednesday.

'Progress is being made.'

'Conditions are improving. '

Lovely epitaphs, those.