Now, I know there's more to it than this, but if all I got out of college was some really, thoroughly impressing titles for people to see when they look at my bookshelves--well, then I've won.

Scene opens to the main protagonist in my current fiction project fighting with his parents about a trip he's planned. The trip is what makes up all 300 pages, so this scene kind of matters.
“But I showed you the map.”
“A US map with thumbtacks in Las Vegas and Memphis doesn’t count, ok?” My mother put her hands on her hips.
“You forgot Chicago,” I said.
They made further stipulations to the effect that we needed to make set dates, we had to call them regularly, and we couldn’t take The Box.
“Talk your father into lending you his car.”
"Wait," my father, having heard his job title, turned away from the television. "What?"
This put us in a position. It didn’t violate any goals, per se, rather it too away from the anti goals of our trip. We intended to be modern cowboys. To ramble from town to town and sleep in the dirt. To wake up and fire up a camping stove on the hood of the box and fry potatoes. To shave rarely, but to use the rearview mirror for it when necessary. To search out the rough and tumble of our society in out of the way diners and to cook baked bean in the can, goddamit.
And, well, how can I put this? My father’s car was beige.
There’s just nothing cowboy about beige. When sending Tonto into town to do errands and, presumably, laundry, the Lone Ranger never once said, “And can we do a beige load this week? I don’t want my new bandana to get bleached with the whites.”

Labels: Chicago

Only one day until food stamp tuesday. I'm so goddam hungry.

It's gotten to the point where I'm done applying to restaurants only because I'm not even sure anymore which ones I've already applied to. There's one in particular where I would really, really like to work. It's specialty is Southern Home Cooking, which has an obvious racial coding to it, especially once you see the middle class clientelle and staff.

It's not that they're opposed to hiring a white guy, but they make it a habit to describe their qualifications in other ways. "Brendan, we're kind of a...we're kind of a place with soul...you...you know what I mean when I say soul?"

"You mean you play funk music."

"Right, we play funk music. When our customers come here they expect to hear funk music."

"That's great. Are you looking for a DJ? Cause I could bring you my tape and you could check it out." I realize immediately that in the interview we're both going to tip-toe around the black issue. If I overstep the line, I'm out, but if they do it, we're cool. My degree in English has trained me the they're looking for signifiers of cultural markers. But everytime it looks like they aren't interested in my, half of me starts to say, "Hey wanna hear me beatbox? Huh? Ready, buhg-ah buhg, ba-ba-ba, buhg-a buhg..."

"We're looking for some with alot of experience. It's a demanding environment, high turn over, very demanding customers."

"Wanna see me breakdance? Ready? Check out my worm."

I decided to make my face commonplace and hang out and get to know everyone until the manager came in for the night. Then I could smile at her while I'm hanging out with all of her employees. They soon took me in as one of their own and within half an hour we were talking about music. "Brendan, do you like hip-hop music?"

"He's a DJ, man, of course he does." I mentioned my deep interest in the upcoming Sleepy Brown release, the way I felt when I first heard Common and Mary J. Blige sing "Come Close." I'll just keep pretending that we spoke only of black people because we were in a genre.

When speaking of the clientelle, JP leaned over to confess that some people will just come in and drink three bottle of Moet and leave a hundred dollar tip. "Some people can be cheap, and no offence, but white people tip." I assured him that I carried no grudge. "I mean some of them come in here and are like (he puts on what I assume is a white-people accent, which I assume is the same as his Michael Jackson impression), Ain't you got no pigs feet?"

"Damn, what do you say back, 'No, but I can get you a nice slice of watermelon, Massa.'" I would have made a joke about fried chicken and catfish, but that's over half of the menu.

He laughs as though I'm the first person to ever put this all together. "Damn, I gotta use that."

We sit down for a game of Dominoes ("I didn't know white people knew how to play dominoes") with the whole staff: bartender, cook, host, servers. They continue the impromptu interview, "Brendan, I don't mean to sound racist, but do you live with all white people?" I mention the various shades of roommate that I have. Jew, Iranian, Sri Lankan, etc. "Y'all got five guys crammed in there? How you ever gonna get any with four people listening? You got a girl?"

"Sort of...It's complicated..."

"And she's..."

"Biracial." They all exchange looks as their mornic race-test (which only works in my favor, so I can't complain) is complete. We turn back to the game and someone named Jamie walks in and Linda says she's helping me out and can't partner up with him. "Psst. Linda, come on. Let's gang up on the white boy."

Everyone looks around to see how cool I am with racial humor (ha!) and I put on a real serious face for a second. "Alright fine," I look around the bar. "But winner gets reparations."

And from then on I was golden.

For a guy with a D-minus on his record from freshman year, this is a great registrar screw-up to get in your inbox.

Hi all:

Apparently there was a mistake---the registrar does not have a form listing
your honors. I can only assume I did not file it properly. I am very
sorry---I only knew this when your honors were not announced at commencement.
I have contacted the registrar and she is at least reprinting your diplomas
which will now say that you have honors.

I am very very sorry--- I can not adequately convey to you how dismayed I am
that you did not get your well-deserved credit for all your hard work. We are
very proud of you and we know you worked hard. I apologize for the confusion.
Best wishes in your future work.

Regards,
Linda
Provost

Tuesday's going to be great. Every other day until then will suck. I now have three jobs pending, no money, and little food.

Brendan's Tuesday Schedule.

8:30 AM Go to Health and Human Services to get my picture taken for my high-tech foodstamps card.
9:30 AM Buy as much groceries as a guy can on foodstamps. No alcohol, no tobacco, no hot prepared foods. I cannot buy roasted chicken, but I can buy frozen roasted chicken.
3:00 PM Interview at a sushi restaurant near my house. Jesus I need a job.
5:00 PM Interview at downtown bar that needs a daytime bartender.
6:00 PM Interview for my new job in direct marketing. My job will be to dress slick, walk into bars and pretend to be just a regular guy who wants everyone to enjoy the smooth crisp taste of Rolling Rock Green Light.
8:00 PM Eat the biggest meal you've ever seen.

Some Notes on Moving to Wicker Park, Chicago

1) My neighborhood is all I've ever wanted. It's like Brighton, UK only cheap and American. Just by walking out my front door I can get a bagel, a used couch, exact replicas of thrift-store clothing I own. With a little work I can find any CD I could possibly want. I can eat Thai, Indian, Creole, and all brands of fushion.

2) My street in particular is, from what I've seen, the cool place to go to raise your biracial children.

3) I want to be a DJ here, if only to speak of it for the rest of my life in the past tense.

4) Condoms are free everywhere, but pregnancy tests are always kept locked in jewel cases.

5) I've applied for twelve jobs. Each one involved lying, mostly about experience, and in every instance I've made up a restaurant or a position for myself. However, when I applied for foodstamps it was the most honest application I've ever filled out: No, I don't have a job. Yes, I do have an apartment. No, I do not have enough money to pay my rent. No, I don't have any savings. No, I have never been on food stamps before. Yes, I have a bank account. It has seventeen dollars in it.

Labels: Chicago

There's alot of things I'll probably skip over so I can get to the good stuff. When I first sat down to write this it was supposed to be a post about the woes of unemployment, the poor treatment my caseworker gives me down at the foodstamps office, and the degree to which I am screwed if I can't find a job before tuesday.

Today I needed to get a job haircut so that I could morph from being an unemployable college student to being an unemployable urban-type. To pay for this haircut I knew that what I would end up doing is getting the work done and then acting surprised when my credit card got declined. This involved making promises to go right down to my bank (who cares that it's in ohio) and straightening this out.

But after an hour and a half hanging out with Montgomery and Kia at their hair place, after they each called all of their fancy friends who own fancy restaurants, I knew that my credibility would disappear the moment I walked out on a haircutting bill.

They don't take credit cards, so I called my bank, learned that my rent check had cleared, and overdrew my account by forty dollars.

Right now I have to shut down my computer and move it out of my apartment. College is over. That's it. Here's the picture I took today with my right hand as my left hand accepted the diploma from our college president.

Holy shit I'm graduating tomorrow and moving to Chicago.

I just have to write it down so that I'll believe it.

Labels: Chicago

There was a fucking tornado that touched down a mile from campus today immediately following Bacca Laureate today. I don't know what that ceremony is/means, but I've lived in Ohio for four years, spent time in a place where every friday they test the horrible tornado warning system--which is a loud-ass horn they blow for twenty minutes just for the hell of it. A mid western air-raid siren. It went off everyon ten minutes today, and us northeasterners figured the five-minute gap in between--despite the fact that the sky was gray--was a good time to nip out for a beer.

They had everyone in basements, and that put us in the currently defunct WKCO radio station, meaning that I powered it up and did a weather broadcast while playing indie bullshit for an hour.

A Moment, A Great Moment:

Parents are checking in for graduation. I'm welcoming a dear friend of mine's parents and siblings. White mom, black dad, three light-skinned children and myself.

My friend, the eldest of the biracial children, steps away for a moment when a professor with whom I am cordial walks in.

The professor looks at me, then she looks to the white woman I am speaking with and the black man next to her and the two younger boys and she makes a quick summation.

A look flashes across her face as she--in a way that only midwestern people can--realizes that she has figured something out and realizes that she doesn't want anyone to know that she has figured something out. But you can see the thought bubble in her head as she assumes that she has just met my own parents. It will read: "Huh, well, I guess that's why Brendan's so liberal."

Last night I had no problem being the asshole DJ. People would come up to me and request songs (which I like in theory: my job is to decide what everyone wants to hear, but I'm way to busy--or at least appear to be--to listen to you beg for some shitty-ass, off-topic song). I was really only doing it for the promise of $150, which I need now like whoa.

There's a terrible person at my school whom I would normally tell to fuck off if he said anything to me. And last night his twin brother was on campus for graduation. The twin kept coming up to me and requesting really shitty songs and I felt a little bad later because everyone on this campus probably hates this person they've never met as well.

It got fun at the end. My redux of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" is still a magic charm. The floor filled with more people than were in the actual room. At the end everyone left to go have hopeless sex with one another, but about 15 people stayed in the gigantic room and I played songs I actually wanted to hear, ones that meant something to the remaining people, who filled the stage with me and danced.

A Moment, A Great Moment:

Parents are checking in for graduation. I'm welcoming a dear friend of mine's parents and siblings. White mom, black dad, three light-skinned children and myself.

My friend, the eldest of the biracial children, steps away for a moment when a professor with whom I am cordial walks in.

The professor looks at me, then she looks to the white woman I am speaking with and the black man next to her and the two younger boys and she makes a quick summation.

A look flashes across her face as she--in a way that only midwestern people can--realizes that she has figured something out and realizes that she doesn't want anyone to know that she has figured something out. But you can see the thought bubble in her head as she assumes that she has just met my own parents. It will read: "Huh, well, I guess that's why Brendan's so liberal."

It's possible that I think about Valhalla more than the average person my age. But then again, I'm 22 now, which is middle aged in my becursed family. Somehow I hope (and this is not hokey, this could be my dying wish) that when I die I end up anywhere I was yesterday. Either in the van with friends, or at this cabin on the gypsy road about a mile from campus where our friend Ander's lives. It's woodsy and full of wood panelling and half-brick. We had a massive thunderstorm halfway through the evening and everyone went inside. The rain pelted the cabin and the lightnight made a beautiful blue backdrop behind the trees, through the skylight. We sat in there, draining beverages and doing exactly what you should do when you're hanging out with people you may never see again: remind them of what they're supposed to remember from four years.

Right now I'm probably in the middle of some seriously great days. Yesturday was our big class trip to Mohican State Park to go canoeing. Me and my asshole friends waited in line forever while watching our classmates go off in vans that would not come back for us. It soon became upsetting. I found one of the deans and told her I was certified to drive the 15-passenger vans (a lie). We had to jump the battery to the van cause some ass left the dome light on. I know this isn't healthy, but when things go horribly wrong all at once, I know that somehow it's going to balence out all manic-like and it's going to be great, just like that day when my friend died in Iraq, I lost my job, and my gramma had a stroke.

More and more we've been making our own fun this year, which is what we used to do and is the reason we're friends and enjoy ourselves. Halfway down the river we pulled off at a campground that had river-side advertising for boaters. We all got icecream and caught up with one another. I was, for about an hour and a half, the hero of the trip because I was the only one with cigarettes that weren't in a canoe that tipped over.

We pulled off further down to go swimming. Then we skipped stones. Then we had a rock fight where the only legal throws were skip-tosses. Since I had the keys to the last van, the only people left when we got to the end were me and my aforementioned asshole friends. The ride was something of a microcosm of what I imagine happens when your parents go out of town. Everyone was smoking with the windows down and passing around strange bottles of alcohol. I know this is superficial, but it was one of those times where it's not so bad to have all indie friends. We screamed along to The Thermals, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Smiths, The Darkness, The Beastie Boys, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Andrea True Connection, and The Clash.

The Filmfest went off with more tech problems that a Jurassic Park openning. The sound wouldn't play in the speakers. We only had one sheet to project onto (it was on the tennis courts). My model in life is to take the absolute value of any situation. This was about a negative nine. |-9|=9 The joke in my intro was an adult-swim set up: plain black screen and white text with music backgrounds. One of my last lines was "I'm glad you underclassmen are leaving because it would make my senior-week list* too long"

"Wanna see my list?"

"When"

"Now?"

"Like right now"

"Ok, here goes"

"Brendan's Senior Week List"

"Brendan's Senior We List
Monday- Sarah Di---"
(the list of fake names blinks on screen and then off)

"Oh please like I'd actually
1) make a senior week list
2) show it to you at the filmfest
3) sit here as you look for your own name in horror"

*the people you have been meaning to hook-up with and won't have another chance to.

Worked on my last final of college for the morning of my birthday and then Taya and I went to a place near campus called The Shark Pond. It's a lake at the bottom of a waterfall, which is accidentally fed by a manmade lake about a mile away where people from Iowa have vacation homes. We got lost on the way there, but the nice thing to keep in mind about Ohio is that with all the farm land, there are not enough roads to get truly lost on. Instead of turning around, we took a left onto a dirt road and drove up and down the hills for twenty minutes and ended up getting to the place from the other side. For the remainder of the day, I was the reigning alpha-male.

The waterfall had dried up since it hasn't rained lately and so some of the carp that they stock the vacation-pond with were on their way down the waterfall and got stuck in one-foot deep puddles. It's called the shark pond because some of these carp are four feet long and about five inches in diameter. They're stock fish, so when you swim they bump into you because they're too stupid not to.

We climbed up the dry waterfall and Taya wrestled with crawdads by grabbing their claws, which is unassailably cool. It's really nice to know that with some of my friends, I'm not the crazy one.

Some boys from the nearby Christian college followed us up there, assumably to prevent us from sinning. We got to the top and watched momma ducks tend their babies. The god-boys tried to save the carp from a puddle, which was great because they were also scared of the fish, so they'd get it by the head and then the fish would smack the shit out of them with its tail.

Taya, to both of our great delight, caught the fish with her hands on the first try and let it go in the main lake. Take that boys.

When I got back to campus I had promised a friend that we could hang out at seven, but I couldn't find him at dinner. So I had a snack and walked home. My friend Justin ran into me near my house and asked what the fuck I was doing there.

"You know, hanging out."

"You're supposed to be at the environmental center. Everyone's down there for your birthday. No one told you---fuck. I forgot it was a surprise."

"Well it was a well kept secret since I didn't even know not to eat dinner."

Got down there and my whole college-family was there. It was kind of like a hollywood movie with the whole cast in one place at the very end. Amanda made Gnocci with pesto and bought me a cow creamer, which is something we used to look for at flea markets and thrift stores back when housewares were both of our business. We had tallboys and taco bell. Georgia brought corn. It was beautiful. And I am writing it down right now because I will hate myself if I ever forget it.

Just for the record: today is my 22nd Birthday. In my family, considering my birth position, I am middle-aged. Which means i'm entirely justified in buying a convertible, sleeping with my secretary, and anything else I might need to write off. It's also my first college birthday.

Ghosts of birthdays past:
Freshman Year- All my friends had left school and I was in the company of a girl who was transferring the next year. My final words were something like, "Hey, today's my birthday and my dad's picking me up to go home at 8 [AM]...are you awake? Well, okay, see you next year...except not, since you're transferring."

Sophomore Year- I was in Deleware for the first time, before Amanda and I moved there, and in the company of all my dearest friends, most of whom don't get along at all anymore. We went to a Mexican restaurant where they stuffed fried icecream in my face and sung Compleanos Felice to me as my friends saw me ingest an animal product for the first time. Later me and Amanda went to the ghost-town of a ghost-town.

Junior Year- I was with my father and brother at our hometown bar at midnight of my 21st. I had three and drove home with my dad. Then I got a job in a Mexican restaurant in Delaware. It's funny how life looks when you write it down.

Senior Year- One year ago today i was in a bar. Now I'm in the library trying to finish my last paper of my college career. Who knows what I'll do tomorrow night.

A girl just walked into the computer lab where I am starting my last final ever, and she smells precisely like somone I used to date. It is now difficult to concentrate.

It's that time of year again.

Today was one of my most favorite days to have. Nothing of importance to do, other than show someone nice things I know. I drove to Columbus with a friend and we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at a strang Ohio place called Easton Town Center. It's somewhere between a mall and a functioning authoritarian society. For example, there are rules against unauthorized singing or dancing.

After the film we had Pad Thai at The North Market, which is one of the things I think of ever year when I dread returning to central Ohio. It makes me happy. In the 1800s it was a farmer's market and now it is a yuppie grocery store operated by about 40 independent vendors. Then I went to the record store, but they didn't have the new Laptop album, so we left.

I realized later how much I love going to the movies, getting Thai food and going to the record store. And it's going to be weird living in my excellent neighborhood in Chicago next week. Because I can do all three of these things just by walking to them.

Labels: Chicago

One of the noises I look forward to recalling long after I've forgotten my college experience is the clamor of different plastics as the lid screws down on a nalgene bottle just before it makes a tentative thud and muted splash on the seminar table.

Today I woke up at 10:17 for my 9:10 class. That is to say that I slept through the last class of my college career.

An excellent, sappy, dramatic, poppy song for the end of a similar school year.
It's from the "Lost in Translation" Soundtrack. Be young. Steal music
Phoenix
"Too Young Lyrics"

Baby when I saw you turning at the end of the street
I knew a time was gone and it took me like ages
Just to understand that I was afraid to be a simple guy
I tried my best to smile but deep inside my heart
I felt it was shouting like a crowd dancing
I guess I couldn't live without the things that made my life what it is
Can't you hear it calling oh yeah
Everybody's dancin' oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young
I can't lie on my bed without thinking I was wrong
But when this feeling calls this world becomes another
Nighttime won't hold me in your arms again
I got a very good friend who says he can't believe the love I give
Is not enough to end your fears
I guess I couldn't live without the things that made my life what it is
Can't you hear it calling oh yeah
Everybody's shakin' oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young
Oh rainfalls and hard times coming they won't leave me tonight
I wish I knew what I was doing
Just do let this spirit survive
Can't you hear me calling oh yeah
I guess I couldn't live without the things that made my life what it is
Can't you hear me calling oh yeah
Everybody's dancing oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young

This week is my two-year anniversary as a person with a weblog

It started over two years ago, actually, when a visiting student to my school recognized me from Ben's website and new all kinds of creepy things about me. The idea of total strangers knowing things about me was so enchanting. So I started in may of 2002.

Forgot this one:

We have one bar in town, formerly The Pirate's Cove, currently The Gambier Grille. Everyone still calls it 'the cove' just to be cool. The weird thing is that people there play drinking games. Which is offputting. They may be fun, but they're intrusive and divisive. It's as if I brought in two pairs of headphones and played songs on my iPod for an audience of two or borrowed a laptop and put on a DVD. You're not going to walk up to me and start chit-chatting, you'll just ignore me and think I'm an asshole.

So the other day I was doing my everyone-talk-to-the-extrovert thing. Walking around, saying hello. It's probably the only bar I'll every attend where I can speak so friendly-like to strangers and not have them think I'm some creep who's trying to hump their leg. So these girls were playing Quarters which is moronic and irksome in that you can hear it even if you can't see it.

I tossed a few in, never making any of the shots, and stopped paying attention because it was really as boring as I thought. The girls turned to me and screamed "She got it in! Drink! Drink! You gotta drink!"

"Really? I mean..." The point of the bar is to drink, the point of the game is to drink, why not. Downed the glass (it's a gin-and-tonic sized glass, half-full). And something didn't go down right.

"Ha, ha, your turn, gimme the quarter."

"Ughh...who put the icecube in the drink. That shit hurt."

"Crybaby. Now play...where's the quarter?"

"What quarter?"

"The quarter that was in the cup. Are you hiding it under your tongue? Stop picking on us. Spit it out. Give it back."

"I can't..." I felt the bevelled metal slide down my esophagus. "I'll give it back to you tomorrow...I gotta go home, I don't feel so good..."

Someday there will come a time when something is missing, and I won't know what. I don't know now, of course, but I think that some part of why my life is so fulfilling to me is because I love the feeling of my cheeks touching my lower eye-lids as I laugh and smile.

When I'm old I hope that I remember how much fun it was to pretend to be a professor. In one of my literature classes, the teacher is a Booker Prize winner from England who has never taught Americans before. Two weeks ago he ran out of material and asked if anyone wanted to take over. My hand went up. So today everyone had to read the chapter I assigned (ch. 12 of this year's Booker Prize winning novel Vernon God Little). I dressed for the part: collared shirt and my only sport coat. It was pure fun. I had lesson plans and concepts to prove about the late modern novel's use of what I call "the bloodclot" which is a trajectory of narrative that leads to the inevitable without description. In Raymond Carver stories it's a story about a drunk who hides his bottles in one closet and doesn't tell his wife about them and the story ends with him tipping the shelf and the glass teetering over en masse. You know what's going to happy. Shit will hit fan. But that's not important. On and on.

I drove home on my roomates' scooter, alone, and thought of what a great life it would be to don a sportcoat of convince twenty year olds that---based on my achievements--what I say matters.

Summer Send-off 2004

1) It's a big thing the college spends too much money on every year. We always get a band that is either up and coming or on the way down. Toots and the Maytals, De La Sol, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, or this year, which was Nappy Roots.
2) The point of the day is to begin drinking on a saturday around 9:30 in the morning and continue into the night.
3) Things I wanna remember, but might not:

a.I fell asleep at dinner and kept getting woken up by concerned individuals who wanted to know if I needed water.
b.The day began with omlettes, etc at the A1 girls apartment. It was full of good music, pleasurable beverages (Andre, Concentrate-Lemondade & Whiskey, and PBR Tallboys). I kept it light.
c.The downfall of my evening was getting stopped by the sheriff on the ten feet of street between our dining hall and the lawn where the band was playing. They asked me to dump out my cup--which contained a good two hours worth of rum and coke--and therefore I returned back inside the dining hall, had another burger, and then fell asleep after finishing my drink.
d.It rained during the all-grateful-dead-cover-band. But the rain was somehow beautiful. And it was hard for me to admit it. But I liked The Dead, I owned Skeletons from the Closet in sixth grade and I loved listening too it. And I loved hearing the old hits. "Uncle John's Band", "Friend of the Devil", and "Casey Jones."
e.Before Nappy Roots came on I did what I do to do things. Walked up to the soundtech booth and pretended a legitimacy:
"Hey, I'm Brendan, I'm from the DJ Union here. Do you need someone to play songs before the bands go on?"
"Uh....yeah, but I'm under contract and I can't do anything unless the woman who hired me tells me to."
I return three minutes later with the woman in charge and pull out an RCA cable and my iPod. I openned with my remix of "Pass That Dutch" and the DJ for Nappy Roots was on stage setting up and, well, and he liked it. Even danced a little bit. It reminded me of my greatest moment in high school: my entire band was at senior prom talking about how great it would be to play a few songs if the prom-band would let us use their instruments. So then we got the call to go up, played "You Gotta Fight (For Your Right To Party)" and our original "Eat Shit." Great fun. But we got off stage and heard from soom hippie band: "Yeah, good job guys, they said we could play a set soon, but I don't think it's going to happen now." None of us asked, turns out. But the hippie band did. Even got permission and were called to the stage.
e.The rain turned to mud, which meant that you could tell the next morning who didn't make it home last night because they had brown pants.

"Hey Brendan, I want you to meet my mom."

"Oh, hello there, you're S___'s mom. What can I get for you?" I took their order at my new job, which I hate, and looked out for her younger brother, whom I hate. He's just one more of those suburban D.C. kids who go to my school, spend all their parents money on drugs, and never bother being anything less than an asshole. Once a week he sends and all-campus email to celebrate the death of someone middle-eastern and to oil the genitals of the American War Machine. I hate him, passionately, but his sister is a sweetheart, so I never say anything bad about him. "I'll bring that out to you in a second."

"Hey, tell your dad congratulations." The thing I never say to her moron brother, when he spouts off like a moron, is: Hey, remember when your father was indicted in the Ir@n Contr@ Sc@ndal? What was his nickname again? 'The Wheasel'? But of course I don't.

"Congratulations for what?"

"Didn't he just get a big appointment in the Bush cabinet?" I meant, or beleived that I meant every word in that sentence.

"No," her mother said.

"Or not the cabinet, and I don't think it was an official post. But I'm sure it was him."

"Uh, I don't think so," mom said.

"Are you sure? I swear I read something about him Three days ago in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Somehow his name got dropped."

"No," mother said. "He was falsely accused of being the CIA leak." She stormed away with the rage that comes from two decades of defending someone who turned a profit on a hostage situation. It was at that moment that I realized we both knew the same AP story with the sentence ...____ an aide who gained infamy in the Ir@n-contr@ sc@nd@l... Only it wasn't spelled in such a way that when she goes home crying tonight and checks for updates about her criminal father on google, this site won't come up.