new glasses

Late, hate-music blaring, once again fucked by the train. If it's not one it's the other. One of these trains is going to get me.

There's some guy at the G-stop at Nassau who's always writing: "Kill this fucken tyrant Bush" and "Traitor Bush is the son of a bitch", and a couple days like clockwork, somebody adds a few strategic lines here and there trying to obscure it, like some G. Gordon Liddied Holden Caufield and meanwhile there's this war of wills, for months now, fought on the unlikely territory of Fresh Direct advertisements and coming attractions for Harrison Ford. Welcome to Greenpoint, political debate on tap.

At 8th Street on the R/W it's all about marches that have already passed and days of solidarity, mixed among the murals. Somebody's politically energized and it makes me think about how quickly time passes on and seasons mix like muddied palettes: this no-man's land of March.

After school another meeting, purposeful, direct and invigorating. We stuffed envelopes but we couldn't find most of the addresses. I stuffed one envelope.

Then I tried on glasses and found a couple pairs. It was a relief to find I didn't have any obvious signs of eye disease or defect besides being massively near-sighted. That I already knew.

A couple things: first, about this abortion law in South Dakota, sad enough to see pro-lifers linking abortion to gay marriage ("Legislators feel that now is the time to wrestle back their authority from the courts," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, based in Washington. "The courts have overstepped their bounds on issues like gay marriage, and the legislators are speaking up."--NYTimes//3.7.06) but for pro-choice forces, sputtering about constitutionality and affronts to the rule of law, this hardly seems an appropriate response to the emotional outburst of the pro-life side that claim the rule of law is about murder rather than something abstract as "women's health". If pro-choice forces want to rally the base and get a few more on board, shouldn't they start asking about the innocent babies killed by American bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, civilians? It seems if pro-"lifers" want to claim the moral highground of not being murderers it would be more difficult. If they claim it's ok to kill a few innocents in the name of "fighting terrorism" in a country that did not support the terrorism against us, then certainly we can argue that along that slippery slope it seems odd that a woman wouldn't be able to defend herself from the assaults of those who would tell her what choices she has to make about her body -- if terrorism is the oppression of freedom of movement, thought and belief, then what do we call this. And who may call themselves innocent? A woman making this decision should only have to answer to herself.

Second, it's always comforting to see Bush flipping the finger to Pakistan for the hell of it. Giving India the green light to ignore calls for restraints on developing nuclear missiles is mystifying enough. Then telling Pakistan we wouldn't agree to the same deal with them was typical of the compound stupidity of this administration. I never understood this trip, it seemed kind of on-the-fly and the policy created for the trip seemed unconnected and splotchy. Today I saw a t-shirt advertised, it was pro-Bush, it said "Cutting taxes and killing terrorists: 4 more years!" What do you say to that? It's what a stormtrooper might wear off-duty at Mos Eisley.

"Hot Cop" by the Village People just came up on the random. 22,000 songs get distilled to this one. Oh "Hot Cop", what happened? Were you a visage the same day Adam saw the guy from ZZ Top?

I heard that Kirby Puckett died. Stroke. When he first came up you never saw somebody looking to take the extra base, find the extra way to win the way he did. He was electric and had great line-drive power as his career established itself. He was one of my favorites. Today I was talking to Corms about it, I asked if he thought it was true about Kirby's off-field problems, specifically about whether or not he assaulted women. I didn't want it to be true, I was hoping Corms would reassure me it was all bullshit because I still remember him beating Toronto in the play-offs. When was that? I don't even remember, ridiculous green Astro-turf named after what the future was going to be as far as 1966 believed turning my tv memory almost blue. But Corms remembered hearing something about his difficulties with temper, and supposed there was a good chance it was true. What do you do then? I loved watching him play. The thing I remember about watching Kirby play was he was one of those guys you never wanted to see fail.

Off to sleep.