al-Qaida, Inc.
Within days of the DNT's publishing my piece ridiculing media coverage of al-Qaida's search for a new leader (http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/201511/group/opinion/), the global terrorist network did in fact make a somewhat official-sounding announcement naming Ayman al-Zawahiri as Osama bin Laden's successor. Thanks, assholes.
Here's why I'm glad to be wrong, though: I still think the old al-Qaida, at the height of its mojo, would have made its announcement via some sort of attack - not a blogpost on some cyber backwater. That they didn't have something cued up may offer some insight into how dysfunctional and diminished they have become. Without a plot at the ready, and the media constantly chirping about whether they were still relevant, they decided to feed the beast what it wanted in the most truly American fashion: a lame press release. So perhaps we aren't merely projecting our values on to al-Qaida, but actually instilling them. To turn a popular punchline about making concessions to terrorists around: "If we have to issue a press release to stay relevant, then the Americans have already won."
Rogue Alarm Redux
The window for solving the rogue alarm dilemma is closing! In my previous post, I described how my neighbor's alarm is driving me to violence and asked for suggestions. I even dangled a 6-pack of Lake Superior beer out to the most creative solution. Thanks to the AV switchover, I've got only one response. Worse, I know him, and prefer not to let him poach a free sixer off me just because nobody else chimes in. I'm closing this deal out on SUN, so please put your two cents in soon!
CTRL: Sound of Summer: Beep! Beep! Beep!
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from the final printed entry:
I’m guessing that, like me, most of you don’t thrill to the sound of your alarm clocks each morning. After all, if you had something truly worth waking up for, the anticipation alone would probably negate the need for an alarm.
Rather than sounding the clarion call for another day of basking in our self-made Edens, most alarms function more like the jangling keys of a gaoler – yanking us from our escapist reveries and locking us back into our joyless routines.
Now, imagine if this sound came two full hours before you had to get up. Imagine that it emanates not from your clock, your partner’s or even your roommate’s. Imagine, instead, that it’s not even coming from inside your house. Imagine that, to stop it, you’d have to kick down your neighbor’s door, rush up the stairs at two per stride and hack the clock into a hundred pieces with an ax.
I have.
Such are the charms of sleeping with the windows open during summer. It’s an especially cruel business here in Duluth. We spend months smearing semi-toxic goop and gunk into every crack in our houses, sheathing windows in clear plastic film, and lining door jams with rubber gaskets. We breathe recycled air rife with the amplified odors of wet socks, damp rugs and over-stuffed kitchen trash cans.
We do this with the understanding that, for perhaps 10 weeks each year, we’ll be able to throw those windows wide open and allow cleansing Canadian and Lake Superior breezes to sweep out the dank, dust and dander during the day and provide cool, fresh envelopes of slumber at night.
You’d think that braving winter’s brutalities would be payment enough for the simple delight of sleeping next to an open window. Instead, opening the window opens an entirely different can of worms: the flatulent engines of beater cars and motorcycles, the booze-soaked cackles of every gaggle of drunks that stumbles by, and, in my case, the sound at 5 a.m. of a neighbor’s alarm clock.
After a week or so, you can probably recalibrate your senses to ignore or quickly recover from disruptions like the first two above. The alarm, however, is a different animal. For most of us, the hard-wired mixture of startle and dread delivered by its insistent sonic prodding cannot be so easily brushed aside. (That’s why so many TV ads now use the sound to grab your attention. God damn no-count broke-a$$ baby-shaking m*therf*ckers…)
Making matters worse, in my situation, is that NOBODY TURNS THE F*CKER OFF! Frequently, it beeps for 10 minutes or more. I’m not talking about multiple “snoozes”, either. I’m talking about 10 unbroken minutes of grating, syncopated torture.
Sadly, I have some prior experience with this phenomenon. At one of my former apartments, a neighbor’s alarm beeped for four days. She forgot to turn it off before leaving for a long weekend, and it didn’t have an auto shut-off. Needless to say, I didn’t like her very much after that.
Which brings me to my current dilemma: Right now, I like my neighbor – and I’d prefer to keep it that way. So how to broach the subject of the bleating alarm? Annoying as it is, it still seems like a very personal thing to bring up in porch-to-porch chit-chat. (So, when did you stop sleeping in your bedroom?)
Earplugs won’t work, as they will negate the effectiveness of our home security system (which currently is the 90-year-old wood floor).
Got a solution? Post it as a comment below. The most creative one wins a sixer of Lake Superior beer.
CTRL: Snap, Crackle, Poop
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from July's entry:
For all of you firecracker enthusiasts out there who failed to work through your entire stocks this weekend, allow me to make a suggestion:
Shove the rest up your f*cking a$$es and light the fuses.
Yes, kids, it’s another installment of “Uncle Mike Shakes his Microbrew at the Unwashed Masses.”
(Fortunately, despite the coming of my 36th birthday on Wednesday, I don’t have a cane to brandish quite yet.)
Few cultural phenomena offer irony quite as sublime as fireworks. Outside of cigarettes (another of Uncle Mike’s faves), can you think of anything else so dependent for survival on the very group of people to whom they pose the most harm?
For you slower readers, I’m talking about kids – in both cases.
When I was young, the weeks preceding the Fourth of July turned our neighborhood into a wonderland for war games and other aggressive fun. When my friends and I weren’t using the constant din of pops and cracks as the soundtrack for our Star Wars reenactments, we’d play a morbid game of “assassination” that could only fly in our white-bred suburban subdivision.
It went like this: With any random explosion, one of us would stop whatever we were doing – whether it was shooting hoops, riding Big Wheels or diving into the community pool – convulse wildly and then hit the ground (or water) as if we had just been shot. The other guys, provided that they also had not reacted similarly to that particular SNAP! (a frequent occurrence prompting many arguments and occasionally some actual bloodshed), would rush to the felled comrade and scan the houses and tree line for the culprit, yelling “Sniper!”
Much like in Minnesota, fireworks with any real punch were illegal where I grew up. Naturally, that only fueled the fascination. On every trip through Indiana, I’d sit with fingers and nose pressed to the car window, peering longingly at the parade of billboards, campervans and corrugated metal sheds (that’s when you’ve made it in the fireworks trade) offering up untold incendiary delights. We never stopped.
(BTW - Fireworks sales, along with cheaper taxes on tobacco and booze, constitute the bulk of Indiana’s economy, as far as I can tell. Credit to Mike Manderino for most of this thought.)
Despite the obstacles provided by the law and intelligent parents, I managed to get my fix as time went on. Friends with means (i.e. relatives in Indiana or Wisconsin) enabled me to work my way up from the classic trick of lighting and holding onto Black Cats until the very last moment all the way to blowing up porta-sh*tters with half-sticks of dynamite in college.
But that, unfortunately, is where the proverbial fuse burned out. Listening to some jackass shoot screamers out of an empty Miller Lite bottle at two in the morning (or, being that jackass) suddenly lost its appeal when I had to get up for work four hours later.
The motto for the, er, home fireworks enthusiast seems to be, “It ain’t worth a damn if it can’t blow off your hand.”
At least we have their grisly injuries to thank for what is now the highlight of my Fourth of July: the ubiquitous TV news piece wherein the local police department destroys a series of storefront mannequins with M-80s.
Enter again, the irony though: Can you think of anything that could make firecrackers look cooler to a kid than that? Hell, it’s almost enough to light my punk for a shopping excursion to Douglas County.
CTRL: Film Fest Mop Up
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from June's entry:
“This is the first time we’ve been in Duluth…”
That’s how Solid Gold frontman Zach Coulter kicked off his band’s set at the inaugural Sound Unseen opening-night after-party at Greysolon Ballroom last week.
You could probably say the same for many of the 30 or so people who filled the dance floor just a few feet from the band. Perhaps they were all locals, but they danced and sang along like friends and groupies who carpooled up to support their heroes on this rare foray into the wilderness.
First time in Duluth. Really? A band can become favorites of the Twin Cities music circuit and the darlings of the indie radio station without having to shit sideways at Duluth even one time? They can just ignore a college town like this? Have they been to St. Cloud, at least? Rochester?!
Scanning the rest of the room, however, I found it hard to blame them. Outside of their coterie of loyal converts, very few of the other 200 or so people in attendance seemed to notice they were onstage.
Yes, that’s right. Only 200 people TOTAL for a $14 event featuring free food, free BEER and a band that packed First Avenue in Minneapolis just 48 hours later.
For better or worse, this turnout featured the patented Duluth mix: the sport-coat and mock-turtle entrepreneurial types who funded the affair (and for whom the Solid Gold Dancers might have been a bigger draw), the greenie/indie set (in which I guess I should count myself) and this growing cadre of hipster clowns you see more and more around town. And of course, the ubiquitous middle-aged couple who would have slow-grinded in the exact same rhythm whether it was Solid Gold or Michael Bolton between the amps.
But the issue on Wednesday was one of quantity – not quality. My wife and I ran through the possibilities:
The summer student exodus? You have to admit that scheduling is a tough call. Slate it for April or September and you might have a security problem once word of a $14 beer ticket gets around. Schedule it in June, and apparently, you get an empty ballroom.
Lack of promotion? Upon our arrival, the first things we noticed – after checking out the band’s gear – were the local radio station banners flanking the stage. I couldn’t imagine hearing a Solid Gold track on any of them. Even more conspicuous was who was missing: KUMD. In fact, we only discovered the show on Sunday morning because Northland Voices follows Face the Nation on KDLH 3. (We leave the former on for its impeccable morning background noise.)
Or, perhaps local music fans were saving themselves for what rates as the “real deal” ‘round these parts: a set later in the week by Charlie Parr. I can’t imagine that gig was as sparsely attended as Solid Gold’s.
I hate to harp on Mr. Parr’s popularity because the guy deserves everything he’s got in this town. But I can’t help but see that popularity as the embodiment of the differences between the Twin Cities and Duluth music scenes.
I love Duluth, but last Wednesday, my heart was in Minneapolis…
CTRL: D-bags Love Pancakes
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from May's entry:
Sometimes you have to wonder whether or not you’re a douche-bag. Other times, you just know that you are.
I experienced a moment of this latter ilk at the annual Lions’ Club Pancake Day at the DECC.
In terms of the charity-community feel-good quotient, this event probably has no equal in Duluth. The business and community leaders at the local Lion’s Club give their time and money to flip flapjacks and help benefit people with hearing and sight impairments, as well as those with diabetes.
(There’s no small irony in eating plate after heaping plate of syrup-soaked pancakes and sausage to help fight diabetes, but I doubt that a Bran Flakes and Sugar-Free Jell-O Day would reach a 53rd year.)
Adding to the good vibes, countless other local organizations – from seniors’ groups to grade-school kids – lend their support by volunteering to fill coffee cups, bus tables and empty trash cans all day.
On the whole, humankind rarely has moments better than this.
Yet there I was, sitting in the middle of it all, thinking how totally f*cking awesome it would be to come to an all-you-can-eat pancake dinner after a marathon smoke session.
Now, I must admit: Even in college, I was never a champion toker (despite briefly earning the moniker “Red Eye”). Nor do I often find myself on the business end of a bowl anymore.
Yet the, er, residue of monster munchies past continues to color my perception of the most random circumstances.
Why is this?
Perhaps it’s because I can remember most of my “high times” – unlike so many of my myriad alcoholic escapades, which often had to be reconstructed via credit-card slips, third-person hearsay and home voicemail messages from bars telling me when I could come back and pick up my cell phone, briefcase, suit jacket or whatever.
I remember noticing the rhythmic crackle of the vinyl on the sample backing Tribe Called Quest’s “Oh My God” for the first time. I remember almost pissing my pants with laughter in a musty Memphis hotel room while waiting for a ride to a Pearl Jam show. I remember the queerest hue of electric orange slowly eating the sky over the hills of pre-dawn Johannesburg.
OK. That last one might have been the acid. But still…
When you get older, you think about shit like, “Why do I come across like a shameless stoner in my writing when I’m actually an incurable drunk?” Perhaps I am pandering subconsciously to this publication’s demographic. Yet I know for a fact that plenty of booze hounds read it, too.
Pancake Day prompted no alcohol-driven fantasies, though. (This despite the fact that my drunk-munchies have taken out entire packages of Keebler Fudge Grahams in single swoops.)
As for the weed envy, I actually got a vicarious whiff as my wife and I finished our pancakes. A couple of grinning college kids sat down very near to us and commenced giggling.
“Man, I am really feeling it,” I heard one of them say.
Rather than tell him how there I was with him, or even pass him the syrup with a wink, I merely smirked and thought to myself, “Wow, what a douche-bag.”
Ah…hypocrisy. That’s my anti-drug.
CTRL: Solicitor Shooting Gallery
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from April's entry:
I’ve never been much of a gun nut, but with the early onset of the door-to-door season here in Duluth, I might just come around.
Yes, there is a price for everything in life – including the first snow-free March in these parts in almost 140 years. Last week, the bill arrived in the form of a Charter cable salesperson knocking on our door and freaking out our dog just after we had sat down to dinner.
(Unfortunately, the dog is a Boston terrier and not a pit bull. We kick it East Hillside-style – not Central. Life: It’s about the trade-offs, no?)
Now, we have not lacked for contact with Charter since moving to Duluth. We lived in an apartment complex, so it was the only choice available to us for cable. Thanks to this simple yet fateful circumstance, I had the privilege of paying almost the same money I had paid in Chicago for one third – ONE THIRD – of the HD channels and absolutely putrid digital picture quality.
Indeed, if I had to pick my favorite memory from this period of captivity, it would probably be sitting through the avalanche of ads for Charter trumpeting its exceptional value for the money. However, reading each day about Charter’s battle with the Big Ten Network over which one would get to bilk me out of more money for the right to watch my mediocre football team would rate a close second. Ah, good times…
Even after we bought a house and switched to a satellite provider, Charter did its best to, er, keep the lines of communication open. It seems like once a month, I get an e-mail and a conventional letter in the mail reminding me of the services I left behind.
So, needless to say, we are aware of the cable company and its wares. Yet there was the salesperson, knocking on our door.
This brings me to a larger point about all door-to-door soliciting. In this age of the Internet and hyper media, where more information about more products is available to consumers than in any point in history, is there ANY shred of value left for the consumer in door-to-door sales?
Or, have we finally stripped this odious and intrusive practice of the disingenuous premise – that people would not otherwise know about a product, cause, charity or church – at its black heart?
I’m leaning toward the latter – if you couldn’t guess. Whether they are peddling home security systems or salvation, the person at your door has come to use the immediacy of a face-to-face encounter to compel you to make a decision that they KNOW you would not make under different circumstances.
To me, that’s a harmful intent. And that’s where “stand your ground” laws passed by various states (but not yet Minnesota) come into play. If you’re not familiar, these statutes provide enormous latitude to people for the use of deadly force against someone they believe is about to commit a crime against them.
Previously, I thought of these laws as doing little more than deputizing would-be vigilantes and, in the worst cases, aiding the very criminals and wack-jobs they’re meant to deter. After all, is there a better way to help a lone gunman run up his body count than setting up a crossfire?
Now, however, I am beginning to see the wisdom. Personally, I cannot imagine many crimes more heinous than talking someone into signing up for Charter cable. What jury would convict me? Certainly not one comprising Charter customers.
The Runaways
Call me cruel, but I have to smirk each time I see one of those homemade handbills announcing the search for a missing pet in the neighborhood.
You know the type: Plain letter-size paper. Taped to a telephone pole or street sign. Name of the missing animal. Date of departure. Owner’s contact info. Testimonial to his or her good nature and/or “bestest-ness.” And a picture that makes the animal look either like an amorphous blob or the spawn of the devil (depending on the level of red-eye.)
Even in these few words, you often sense a level of anxiety and anguish that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Rest assured: This is not what amuses me. In fact, my writing of this post virtually ensures that my own beloved pet – a spunky, swaggering Boston terrier – will soon go missing and thus run me through this same wringer. So take heart, those of you who are already offended beyond the pale.
No, I smirk because I can’t help but think, “Hasn’t your pet – through the very act of absconding – in effect rendered its verdict on life at your home?”
To take it a step further, does the animal have any other recourse for communicating such preferences or registering its grievances? I mean, how many times can you crap on the stairs or the shower mat without effect before you throw up your paws and say, “This here is broke beyond fixin’”?
For this reason, I’m not entirely sure what I would do if the pet in question were to saunter by just as I was reading one of these posters. I’m sure it’s a crime of some sort to take animal in and NOT call the owner – and that’s a good thing. But the dime-store shrink in me would certainly want to ask some pointed questions in furnishing the return.
“How have things been with Sandy lately? Did she give you any indication something like this was coming? Has she crapped on your bath mat recently?”
Granted, I would probably not appreciate such inquiries from a neighbor returning my dog – were he to split on me. I would want, however, to get to the bottom of some of these issues and work through some of the hurt feelings that would inevitably be in play. These latter can poison a game of fetch faster than you can yell, “Stop eating that rabbit sh*t!”
Fortunately, I can envision my dog and me patching things up fairly quickly. After all, I can convince myself that a dog might jump a fence in chase of a squirrel or skunk, only to look up some minutes later and not recognize his surroundings.
Cats, however, pose a different dilemma. In fact, if your cat could suddenly speak, the very first thing he or she would tell you (after, “You need some friends.”) is that there are no accidents in a cat’s life - only intent.
This is why I would call the owner of a cat if I saw it, but wouldn’t try to apprehend it myself. Most cats seem to pick up life on the street pretty quickly. And for those who don’t, well, do I really need to finish this thought?
CTRL: Salon Shaggadelic
Each month, I write a column for Transistor (http://www.transistormag.com) called CTRL+ALT+DULUTH. (Yes, it plays on the "duh-LOOT" pronunciation.) Below is the text from last week's issue:
If you ever want to do your barber or hairstylist a favor, do what I do: Show up for each appointment looking a shaggy Sasquatch.
It’s like giving a gift, really – an opportunity for him or her to effect a dramatic transformation and enjoy the concomitant satisfaction immediately and concretely.
In a way, you’re providing a little slice of reality TV (just think of all the programs serving-up 30-minute makeovers of people’s houses, wardrobes and waistlines), but in reality, of all places. And if work were more like TV – with its promises of effortless metamorphoses and breathtaking “reveals” - wouldn’t you enjoy it more?
To my stylist: "You're welcome."
Sure, the fact that my lumpy head and slack features still lurk beneath the brush may limit the final achievement, but still, pruning me down has to beat merely tidying the neckline on some standard-issue businessman cut or re-dyeing some housewife’s roots too dark – again.
Naturally, such gifts also present challenges – for the giver. During this particular stretch, in which I went three months with nary a trim, my burgeoning fuzz generated a fair amount of friction between my wife and me. (Call me naïve, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast sex can turn from carrot to stick.)
Choosing who to bestow this gift upon can also be difficult. In Duluth, you’ve generally got three choices. You can go to an overpriced salon, from which you emerge with a sharp cut but also smelling like the produce section at Whole Foods Co-Op. You can visit an old-school barber shop, where for twice the machismo and half the price of the salon you can choose between a crew cut, flat-top or clipper trim of what you’ve already got – provided it’s still recognizable. Or, you can try any number of chop-shop franchises (e.g. Great Clips), where for $10 you can step out of the chair and into a JC Penney catalogue shoot without so much as a daub of gel.
This time around, choosing the barber shop would have yielded the most radical metamorphosis, given the girth of my overgrowth. But I opted for the salon option, mostly because there’s one within a rock’s toss of my house. I guess I could have hoofed it the five extra blocks to the Skyline Barbershop, but that’s a long way to lug all of that extra hair.
Now, you may find this surprising, but fully three quarters of teh way into my haircut, I still wasn’t sensing a level of gratitude commensurate with the magnanimous nature of my gesture. In fact, even after explaining myself, I rated more of a “meh” than a “My Hero!”
This puzzled me. “Hasn’t this guy seen ‘America’s Favorite Fat Ass,’ ‘Slobs to Snobs’ or any of these other shows?” I asked myself. “Does he not see me for the Magi that I am?”
Perhaps he was grossed out by the ear hair, which I discovered was still sprouting healthily upon my return home. Say what you will about old-codger barbers and their clipper cuts, but if you’re over 30, they know your pain, and minister to bushy eyebrows and scraggly ear-wells without your having to ask.
It’s almost worth the tradeoff of walking out of there with a flat-top.
dulu-sions