This is a letter that was sent to me several years ago (1996) by a dear friend and baseball junkie who was, at that time, living in Japan. He's back in the States now, and currently not speaking to me because he feels I've gone to the dark side re my thoughts on the Free Trade protesters in Miami. But I still love him, and once the season starts, I'm sure we'll be taunting each other over the standings of the Giants and the Marlins.
"Dear LARedd,

as you might have gathered, Hideo Nomo can't do anything without 120 million of his countrymen and women (& me) knowing about it, least of which is striking out 17 Marlins -- a game they showed here twice (ugh!). Seeing the Marlins, however, kick-started thoughts of you, and as cherry blossom petals snow down along the basepaths, I thought I'd say hello and describe baseball Nihon-style.

No national anthem, for starters. Teams, as you may already know, carry names of corporate sponsors rather than cities, with the exception of the Yokohama Bay Stars (to be fair, there are 3 teams with city and corporate names: Fukuoka Daiei Hawks -- Fukuoka is in Southern Japan, Daiei is a department stor; Hiroshima Toyo Carp (Toyo as in Toyota); Ciba Lotte Marines (Tokyo suburb and food manufacturer).

The home team here is the Seibu (railroad/department store/land developer) Lions, whose motto is, in English, "Winning with irresistable force," but at the moment it is false advertising -- they're 2-5. Two leagues: Central & Pacific, with the Pacific employing the (gag!) DH. Anyway, with the lack of a national anthem, the home team takes the field not as a group, but individually as a lengthy intro is given for each player. Pitchers work fast here. Managers have an annoying obsession with bunting runners over -- yes, even the clean up hitter is expected to bunt when asked to.

Opening day was against the Kintetsu Buffalos (Kintetsu Railway's own -- bearers of the world's ugliest baseball uniform) and the Lions and their irresistable force jumped out to a 7-0 lead. Two innings later, however, with a cold wind blowing in from right, the Buffaloes tie it up. Hey, cold wind? Home team blowing a 7 run lead? Gee, I feel right at home. The stadium is divided into home and road sections for good reason: each team has thousand of rabid, albeit well behaved ( i.e., no hooligans), fans who chant non-stop while their team is at bat. There is also a definite caste system at work: folks in the box seats (i.e., me on opening day), at ?2,500 (about $25) are subdued -- the fun takes place out by the foul poles (where I intend to sit next time). At a critical point in the game, a Lion named Kiyohara gets a double and, thrilled at the prospect of a lead-taking run, I yell "Yeah! Kiyohara, you're the man!" Which causes everyone to turn around and stare at the crazy gaijin (foreigner, i.e., me), and causes a beer vendor to come up to me and ask which kind of beer I would like.

No seventh inning stretch -- I get up in the middle of the 7th and Kyoko says "Are you going somewhere?," while the guy in the seat behind repeatedly pokes me in the back, saying "sumimasen": (Excuse me). They do, however, sing the Lions song in the middle of the seventh. The ushers have whistles, and it wasn't until a foul ball came our way -- tweet -- that I knew why. An American, I am proud to say, came through to win it for the Lions: Scott Cooper, or su-ko-to Ku-pa, who played 3rd for the Red Sox last year, hit a two-out RBI double to break a 10-10 tie in the bottom of the 9th. There are a few other yanks here: Darrin Jackson (Lions), Darnell Coles (Cunichi-newspaper-Dragons), Shane Mack (Yomiuri-newspaper-Giants), Tom O'Malley (Yakult-health food-Swallows), Glenn Braggs, (Yakult) and more. The Japanese are getting smart and are poking around the Dominican Republic and have two guys who are outstanding: Yomiuri has a pitcher named Galvez and Nippon Ham (food processors) Fighters have a guy named Brito whose homers are measured in kilometers.

Oh yeah, Pete Rose's son plays for Yokahama, and who can blame him? If my dad was as big a scumbag as Pete Rose (and he has his moments...), I'd play as far away from the US as I possibly could. We just finished Koshien, the semi-annual high school baseball tournement, televised nationally (oh, and I should mention, baseball is on tv every day here - is this a great country or what?). At koshien, each school brings their student body to the game, including their band. The student body does a cheer, like "Kawashima, he's our man, if he can't do it, Soto can,: after which the band breaks into "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man." This is the standard for all 3 schools -- chant and "Popeye" theme (although one school's band played the theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark").

Look for a guide for American baseball fans visiting Japan called (in Japanese) "Take Me Out to The Ballgame," currently being penned by moi. Also, read "You gotta have Wa" by Robert Whiting.

Your pal,

Larry"

Psalm 2004

Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He leadeth me beside the still factories,
He maketh me to lie down on park benches,
He restoreth my doubts about the Republican party,
He guideth me onto the paths of unemployment for the party's sake.
I do fear the evildoers, for thou talkst about them constantly.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy deficit spending
They do discomfort me.
Thou anointeth me with never-ending debt,
And my savings and assets shall soon be gone.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of my life,
And my jobless children shall dwell in my basement forever.
And from this side of the pond, a little satire, sung to the tune of "The Beverly Hillbillies"

The Ballad of the Texas Hillbillies

Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy name Bush
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush
He drank like a fish while he drove all about
But it didn't really matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out
DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up

Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale
He can't spell his name but they never let him fail
He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk
And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke
Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy

The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam
Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom"
Let the common people go to get maimed and scarred
We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard
Cushy, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy

Twenty years later George gets a little bored
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord
He says, "Now the White House is where I oughta be"
So he calls his daddy's friends and they call the GOP
Gun owners, that is. Falwell. Jesse Helms

Come November 7, the elections runnin' late
Kin folks say, "Jeb, give the boy your state!"
"Don't let those colored folks get into the polls"
So they put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes
Chads, that is. Duval County. Miami-Dade

Before the votes are counted five Supremes step on in
They tell all the voters "Hey, we want George to win"
"Stop counting votes!" is their solemn invocation
And that's how George finally goes and gets his coronation
Rigged, that is. Illegitimate. No moral authority

Y'all come back to vote now. Ya hear?

On Friday, as the RLA and I were coming home, we missed getting T-boned by a teenager who was racing out of a cul-de-sac without paying attention to the stop sign. We didn't even see him in our rear view mirror, but our neighbor, who thought he was about to witness death and mayhem in his front yard, followed us home to tell us how lucky we were.

On Saturday, as we were parked in a lot behind the comic book store in South Miami, some asshat in a white vehicle parked next to us. Or, more accurately, parked in us. We didn't notice getting into the car, but getting out, at home, we found a deeply creased left front side panel on the PT Cruiser. We know that the asshat was in a white vehicle, because the crease and accompanying scrape on the running board was filled with white paint. A dent that bad should have made itself known with a metal shriek. I'm sure it did.

But this is the Naughts, where it's only what's in it for oneself, and putting a good grand of damage on a stranger's car is inconvenient to acknowledge. So one doesn't. And we, the RLA and myself, were happy and chatting and not paying any attention when we got in the car, and so didn't notice if the car parked next to us was the one that creased us or just an innocent bystander.

So the question is this: Coincidence? Fate? Was the damage to the car inevitable, and we had to make a sacrifice to the gods who protected us the day before? The truth is, if we had been mowed down by a reckless teen, the car has airbags and good side column impact resistance, so we would probably have escaped with minimal damage. But the dog, who rides free in the back cargo area, would have been killed.

The RLA says that kind of thinking is superstitious. Whatever. The universe will unfold as the universe will unfold. We dodged a bullet of one kind on Friday and took a hit, albeit very minor, on the next.

It was a crap day all around, anyway. It was rainy and windy. There were no bargains or fabulous styles at the shoe store, for either me or the RLA, and we left without making a purchase. The stretcher strips were all warped, at the art supply store. They had a sale on colored pencils, and I was able to find all the colors I wanted (I had had a dream about the luminous water in Biscayne Bay and wanted to work with the colors I'd seen) but then, they only had one clerk at the register, and she kept wandering off to check prices for the person three ahead of us in line, and there seemed to be no end in sight to her wandering, so we left there, too, without making a purchase.

But today the sky is clear, and there are farmer's markets to visit, and other art supply stores.

Spam, wonderful spam....

squishy nebulae
itinerant shrink
minuend arsine floyd
hydrology fallout competent midwinter
gadgetry gilt bradley quadruple feminism
estes doubleday juno gregory contiguous
client frail frizzle indochinese

And yet, despite the wonderful alliteration of some of those subject lines, the mystery they promise, the cosmic quandaries they profess to ponder, all of them are selling the same thing: male sexual enhancement drugs.

To which I can only yawn.

In honor of it being the birthday of my ex-husband (the Antichrist), I'd like to present you all with some excellent examples of the Lying Sacks of Shit that we have in power today. But I'd like to begin with what I've been assured is a quote from the lovely and admirable James Carville:

"Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"

I gave up on trying to format the rest of this post, which was up for the past day or so, and looking like shit. Suffice to say, it was a loverly screed against the lying sacks of shit in office, and came to you courtesy of MoveOn.org.

If you really want to read it, try the archives, or just go here.

Take it as a given that I want to keep my job. So how do I solve this problem? I can't do my job at the level of quality that I want, because other people have a say in what I do and how I do it. My boss asks for my advice, then either disregards it entirely, or just screws it up randomly. My battles with the PR department have been documented on this site, and every time I think I'm getting out from under their control, they fuck me in the ear with no oil.
I have a new VP, who has promised to "go to the wall" for us if we have a valid idea about how to do our work, who will defend us to the end for our vision of best practices. On the two occasions that I've had to test that resolve, he's caved, with the comment that one has to pick one's battles. So the result is that I don't believe in him or trust him and he's only been here for less than six months.

If asked for my opinion, what do I do? Do I give my best and honest answer, and wait for it to be ignored or gotten wrong? Do I give something less than the best answer, knowing that when PR gets wind of my point of view, they'll demand the polar opposite be done? Do I just smile politely and explain to my boss, that, well, he's the boss and he'll have to make those decisions? That I just couldn't (or won't) say?

That looks like (and is) passive aggression at its best, and a practice that is held in high esteem in this institution. While it works for damn near every incompetent I've had to deal with here, I suspect that I won't be allowed to get away with it. After all, the rules are different for me. Just look at the example of my office and the way I had to bend the rules into an origami crane just to get the furniture configured the way I wanted it, whereas the rest of the team, and the other team all got to bully their ways into what they wanted with no discussion from above.

Working here is like working in a particularly nasty whore house. Nobody wants to marry you when you quit. After a certain number of years working here, nobody wants to hire you when you leave. You've been ruined for real work.

And I have passed that point long ago. By the same token, I have lasted so long here that I am firmly held in place by the golden handcuffs. Offer me a job at the same salary, with the same benefits, and with a marginally more competent group and I would jump like a flea off a dead rat.

When I talk to other employees, we are all in the same place: held together with anti-depressants, cigarettes and alcohol.