Forbidden (or merely crafty) Thoughts In a Doctor's Office

1) I wonder if doctors believe they're superior to Congressmen. They probably do.

2) Is there any human organ more inaptly named than "testicle"? (Seriously, "testicle"?)

3) The other patients who took Tootsie Rolls from this bowl -- you sure what they had wasn't contagious?

Paging Noah Baumbach

You wouldn't finger me as a fan of independent films -- a category I define broadly as movies that people in New York and San Francisco like to watch -- and you'd mostly be right; the last great movie I saw was "The Sorrow and the Pity," followed closely by "Terms of Endearment." But lately, in the service of little-C catholicism, I've been trying to expand my filmic diet, and so it wasn't too long ago that I ventured out to see the latest from the director all the kids are talking about, Wes Anderson. Let me put it this way, so as not to offend: Hated it.

But something in the movie did catch my eye -- the final credits, in which I spied a heretofore unknown name in the screenwriter's billing, that of Noah Baumbach. Now, friends, Dennis Kucinich makes it a point to know most every big name he reads; I never forget a name, this is one of my peculiarities. Go ahead, ask me anything. I dare ya. Who was Ross Perot's running mate in 1992? Easy. Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale. What about, oh, say, Michael Dukakis's veep choice from 1988? Lloyd "I knew JFK" Bentsen. In fact, ask me about any VP choice of the last 200 years! I know them all! This what I do, folks. It's a hard, sometimes sad, often solitary life, but someone's got to know these things, and in our time it's me. Ask me the name of the US Open Women's tennis champion, 1992. No, forget it, don't ask me. It'll be an insult to my intelligence, and it'll make you look like a fool in front of your woman. For real, don't ask me. You'll sound stupid, trying to trump me with something so outlandish and then having me slap it back in your face like it was last week's electric bill. So, better not to ask me.... What? You still want to ask me? Yeah, I figured you would. They always underestimate me. Anyway, here's your answer (punk): Monica Seles (of course). She of sound mind and firm abdomen, strong thighs, a grunt you'd have to be a priest not to notice. Now go cry to your sister.

But I was saying. I saw the name Noah Baumbach and I got curious, and when one is curious these days one of course types his query into a computer, and when that query is "Noah Baumbach" one finds some interesting movies and a half dozen or so Shouts & Murmurs from The New Yorker. Curious about Mr. Baumbach -- curious about he'd ended up as Mr. Anderson's partner on this movie -- I looked up some of his old films, and today was able to watch his second film, "Mr. Jealousy," with Eric Stoltz and Annabella Sciorra (Michael Powell reminds me that she also starred in "Jungle Fever.")

I hear you in the back yelling at me to get to the point, so I will. It's not even a long point: What a perfectly delightful mediocre movie! Yes, some of the lines are bad and the structure's all wrong and the narrator's intruding and the acting's not that great (I let Michael know it's no "Jungle Fever") but for all that, the plot is creative and surprising, with odd twists you wouldn't guess (watch for the stutter) and even a good ending, a good, good ending.

So please: Do watch.

Also, one more thing, yes, of course I know the answer to that. The Piggly Wiggly.

FLASH!!!!!!!! BRIAN WILLIAMS WINS!!!! FLASH!!!!!

Can someone please explain to me Matt Drudge's inexplicable fascination with the men who anchor network news? Who cares about network news ratings? Do you? I don't. I didn't even know anyone watched network anymore. Is this a sexual thing?

Now we're blind to Eyes on the Prize

My party, the Democratic Party, has long been supported by Hollywood. It is a pact with the devil, I tell you, as I've long suspected that these firms are living in the past -- they do not realize how the media landscape has changed, how decrepit copyright law is, how damaging their ideas are to the world of ideas. Larry Lessig is a good resource on this, the best there is, and he's done good, good work. But I just wish that influential others would do more, for look at this -- "Eyes on the Prize," that magnificent documentary of the Civil Rights movement, is
now no more, thanks to the media companies.

I am so a fan of Susan Sarandon and her not-husband Tim Robbins, but guys, please -- can you make sure your industry doesn't eat our culture?

Al Zarqawi captured�

Let's hope that this is true....

A Note on Reality

"Are you for real?" This is a question I'm asked frequently in my life. I walk around my house without shoes. I go without meat and eggs. I call for radical change in the nation. It all sparks incredulity. "Are you for real?" And I must respond that indeed I am. That indeed meat is murder. That indeed the country needs change. And again I'm asked. And again I answer. Such is the life of man on the edge of things, a man on the fringe.

"Are you for real?" Now the question resonates on my blog. See the comments posted here if you must. An argument rages over whether I am really the Dennis K. Well, what can I offer you, friends, other than my word? Nothing much. We can quibble over facts and you'll win some and I'll win some and we'll be nowhere in the end. What I want from this site is not a discussion of my reality. "Are you for real?" In the end what does that matter, I wonder? What matters beyond that I am here, I am real, and I offer you these words....

Now with Syndication....

As requested, I've turned on the site feed. URL: http://deejaykucinich.blogspot.com/atom.xml

How I Spent My Christm Holiday Break

Well, boy. As you may have noticed I took about a week off from this site, left my troubles behind, flew off to the Alaskan Wilderness for my annual thinking/relaxing/mountain surveying retreat. As it happened, though, I spent most of my time watching TV, drop-jawed at the horror coming in over the screen.

Still, a few fun times were to be had. To wit: For Christmas an old, round-heeled lady friend of mine surprised me with something I'd put on my Amazon wishlist only as a gag, thinking it'd be a cold day in you-know-where if anyone bought me that. But she did: An iPod Mini! I spent much of the week, then, bleeding my ears with some of my favorites -- the audio version of James McPherson's great book on Antietam, The White Stripes over and over and over again, and after watching the droll "Napoleon Dynamite" I hooked on to this great instrumental group The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, who, really, I can't recommend enough.

The reading life was not as well nurtured, but I did squeeze in a couple tomes. One I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but this blog's about truth, so here we are: "State of Fear," Michael Crichton's anti-environmental screed. I have to say, as much as I hate the man's views and his thin characters and predictable plotlines, he sure does know how to keep a fella intrigued. I don't know what it is -- it's the kind of book you can't put down, partly because you're angry, partly because you can't bear not to find out what happens in the end. And also, too, Crichton's anti-global warming evidence is ... interesting. I'm not saying I believe him. But it's well-documented, well-annotated, and were I a climate scientist I'd be rushing to the public square right this second to disprove him.... Anyone? Anyone?

Lastly, then, I reread "On Photography," Susan Sontag's masterwork on the visual life. We lost great one this week. RIP, old girl. RIP.

New feature: DeeJayKay's oddities.

One twin swaps places in jail with the other twin -- and then quickly realizes that was a dumb thing to do, since jail isn't fun.

The Kids Are Alright

I do not have a child, and to tell the truth have not yearned much for children in my years. When I was younger I regarded children as an albatross -- the path chosen for me, a clever and successful male, by society (not just by the parents and the aunts and the uncles and the cousins but also the citizens, folks who would regard my ambition for public office as a little cold, a little naked and self-serving, if it didn't come wrapped up in a family, a pretty wife and some smiling tots in tow.) Sometime last year a friend sent me this essay from the Web site Salon.com, and I remember thinking that the writer summarized perfectly what I felt:

The daily depredations of child rearing, though, seem so viscerally real that my stomach tightens when I ponder them. A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person with needs and desires that I would be tethered to for decades. And everything about meeting those needs fills me with horror. Not just the diapers and the shrieking, the penury and career stagnation, but the parts that maternally minded friends of mine actually look forward to: the wearying grammar school theatrical performances. Hours spent on the playground when I'd rather be reading novels. Parent-teacher conferences. Birthday parties. Ugly primary-colored plastic toys littering my home.

The horror this female writer feels is not very different from what I've long felt as a male.

But -- but but but how to put this? The heart is a curious thing, friends, and recently, to my surprise, my heart has ached. And after considering for a while the possible reasons for this hurt I realized with a start that the ache I feel is for children, for little ones of my own. It's a dull, ever-present hurt, not unlike the pain attendant at the death of a loved one -- in my more introspective moments I see it clearly as the pain brought on by the closing of my options before me, the setting of the sun upon my wasted fertile years, and with it the sudden realization that I would have been an especially good father, that my children would have become very successful, that the world would have smiled upon their faces.

This morning the bus was filled with children and their happy mothers on the way, I imagine, to shop for Christmas. As I sat there amidst the cherubs I tried to make my through the bitter, serious news of the New York Times, but I cannot tell you that I was successful, I cannot tell you that my mind didn't wander to thoughts of children and what might have been....

Goin' down to South Park....

There is nothing more to say than this: South Park's season finale Christmas special, which I just caught on TiVo, is a work of genius. Can any more be said? Can I extrapolate on the brilliance of the conceit, to dress up the show as a boring old kid's special featuring saccharine "woodland critters" who dance and sing the most repetitive holiday songs but then to suddenly twist that conceit Into itself, to have those critters become the devil's spawn, to have Santa wielding a shotgun, to feature an extended lesson on how to perform abortions ... can I extrapolate on that brilliance? I cannot. No writing could justify the brilliance. Folks, trust me on this: Watch this show. You'll thank me for it.

Who am I? Why am I here?

"Dennis, honestly, did any good come out of your campaign for the presidency?" I hate this question. I hate it because I'm an honest man and when I'm asked it -- as I am every now and then -- I'm forced to answer honestly, and to my embarrassment the answer is no. I came to this conclusion immediately, just after the returns were in on Nov. 2. There I was at the I asked myself this question. "No, old fellow, not a bit a good came of it," I was forced to admit, and I determined then to find a better way.

And that brings me to another question I've been getting with some frequency over the past couple days, in response to my intensely personal posts on this blog: "Dennis, why are you doing this? Why are you writing about yourself so casually, with so little regard for how it sounds, for how it will play?" Why am I blogging?

I'll tell you why: Because Americans need to know who I am. In the past two years we saw virtually unknown people and candidates -- the folks who run the fine blog DailyKos, or the pundit at Instapundit, or the foul-mouthed guilty pleasure Wonkette, and even my old, misguided rival Howard Dean -- become national sensations on the strength of their witticisms online. They sold themselves to the people on the Web, and thanks to that they managed to effect actual political change. Markos of Daily Kos was even invited to the Democrats' convention, which is more than I can say for myself!

So that's why I blog. The American people are not in love with our president, even if they reelected him. Indeed, as far as I can tell, the American people love very few people -- there's Bill Cosby, there's Ray Romano, there's 50 Cent, Warren Buffet, there's Colin Powell, there's John McCain, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and Mohammed Ali and Eminen , and at the head of the class there's Oprah. How did these people do it? How do they manage to seduce us, to intrigue us, to disarm us, to get us to trust them?

They did it through sheer force of personality. John McCain is always honest with us, and for that I love him, can't keep my eyes off him, even if I disagree with him all the time. And that's what I intend to do on this blog. People, here, online, I'm a new man. I've got a personality that I'd like to express, I've got a human side I'd like you to know about. I will pull no punches. I will make no bones about it. When I see something that must be taken down, I'll take it down. When I see something that needs a heads up or someone who would do well from a shout out, I'll pass out that heads up, and I'll shout out that shout out. This is what you can expect from me here: No exceptions, guaranteed.

Now let's get on with the show.

Can't live with them, can't live without them. (Pesticides)

Much as I'm disgusted by pesticides I've got to note here, for the record if for nothing else, that the substance known as Raid is a miracle unto man. Every year 'round these times my kitchen becomes a staging location for a battalion (or is at a platoon? a company? I'm not familiar with much military lingo.....) of invading ants. From here, the corner of my well-worn larder, where I've done some of my best thinking, the ants take aim upon my entire abode -- they send out light, maneuverable, highly successful sorties toward my bedroom, my bathroom, the cats' playroom, and by the time Christmas falls the whole place has often been captured, conquered, occupied. Everywhere you look you see nothing but the spindly little legs and the uncaring faces of this invading force, and of course there's always the marching, the constant hup-two-three-four in a formation so disciplined, so precise, so ordered you'd think you were watching a Leni Riefenstahl film.

You'd suppose that I'd be able to ignore these tiny creatures, but you'd be wrong: A man's heart is not settled when his land's been violated. How can I ponder the finer points of democracy when I've been usurped in my own home? As I've said a million times before, freedom does not flourish under occupation.

Over the years I've tried many weapons in my rebellion against these ants. Non-violence has been my paramount concern: I've caulked shut the window openings, I've used a Chinese ant-repelling chalk hailed for its pseudo-magical powers, I've invested in a home-wide, high-pitched sonic device designed to keep away pests of all sorts. All of it in vain (and my cat Disraeli developed a quite-painful tinnitus as a consequence of the last one.) So this year, despite, I'll admit, my better ethics, I took the advice of my once-a-year housekeeper Mrs. Lopez (no relation, I've determined after much intrepid inquiry, to the other more famous (and more fabulous!) Ms. Lopez) and purchased a can of Raid.

God in heaven, what a thing you have bestowed upon us in this unassuming can! Just one spray in the larder upon the marching enemy and like that, faster than you can say IED, the rebellion was on. (To be sure, cat lovers, I kept the area off-limits to the felines.) Invisible, virtually odorless, and so painless -- killing was never meant to be so easy, but here we are.

And so, the upshot: The ants, succumbing the long-lasting power of this magic substance, have packed up and gone away. Self-determination has once again prevailed.

Goodbye to all that.

Here we are, brothers, here we are at the end of 2004, another year another beer, and what do we have to show for it?

Or let me ask you, man -- what do you have to show for your time on the planet these 365 days? You spent your hours bellyaching world affairs -- Rummy this, Condi that, Dubya screwed this up, Blair screwed that up, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Scalia, Frist, Lott, Rove, Delay, yada yada yada yada -- ENOUGH! I say. What'd you do besides complain?

And don't say you voted. Good for you, you voted. Great. You want a medal? A shiny certificate? An honorary doctorate from Harvard? You're supposed to vote, maroon. Don't claim any prizes for voting. And not for phone-banking or canvassing either. So you left your moist, windowless basement apartment in Brooklyn to spend a week in Miami -- you think that's some kind of civic sacrifice? You think that's on the order of Give me liberty or give me death? No. It's kid stuff. And as we saw on Nov. 2, fat lot of good it did, too. All your blogging and your MeetUps and your ACTing and MovingOn -- heh, that worked out well, didn't it?

Friends, I'm not trying to sound mean-spirited. I understand you meant well. But I think you've got a problem, and I don't think we're going to win unless I intervene. The problem is this: you've gone soft. You claim to be a liberal but I fear that what really thrills you is looking like a liberal, thinking you care about the world's ill, the dying, the disaffected, etc., etc. But go home tonight and set a chair in front of a good, clean mirror and look at yourself deep in the eyes and, if you dare, ask yourself this: If you were asked to make a really hard choice, to sacrifice something of real value in order to better this world, would you do it? If a man asked you to give up your iPod so that a boy in Nepal can eat a good meal this evening, would you squirm? Be honest with yourself. If a man asked you to throw out your TiVo to spare the life of a Chilean Sea Bass, would you politely walk away? How many hours of HBO would you do without in order to get our troops out of Iraq? What if I asked you to boycott Desperate Housewives until the Saudis abdicate their throne? Would you look at me as if I'd keyed your Audi?

Goodbye to you, I say. Goodbye to all you softs. We don't need you in the movement. When Dennis J. Kucinich decided to change the world, I stopped wearing shoes. I stopped eating meat and cheese. I did without. I've done without women, without love, without children. I may even have to give up my cats. I've put up with the slings of our jokeaday society, our angry, angry world. I've given up my dignity, my pride.

And until the rest of you do the same, I say: Goodbye to you, and goodbye to all that.

My first post!

Hola, compatriots! It's Dennis DeeJAYKay! My first post, just testin' the tires on this thing, will rap wit ya lates!