Don't Uninstall my Heart

Baby, Baby, don't uninstall my heart.
Please don't delete me then restart.
I don't think that we can run apart.
Baby, Baby, don't uninstall my heart.

When I met you by the satellite dish
You were the log-on to my every wish.
You were the perfect binary code
Your love for me I didn't have to goad.

You said that I was user friendly
And you said that you were plug and play.
We didn't need no chaperone
We didn't need no drivers.

You didn't think my messages were forward,
And you didn't serve me spam.
I used to look so lovingly at you
Through your 24-hour web cam.

At the internet cafe where we sometimes ate
The servers came by to drop down menus
We always double-clicked together
You were my girl and I was your E-male.

But then you said you needed an upgrade
Suddenly, my version was obsolete
You started running with different hardware
Bigger, better, faster. I couldn't compete.

I tried your number to dial up
But you replied that I was DSL
I tried to some interest to rile up
In spreadsheets I sent you in Excel.

Alas your new beau had more ram
And more cache to spend, more loot
"You're drive is soft and floppy," Sam
"Our love no longer does compute."

You broke my heart:
You ripped out my power supply
You took all my memory
You unplugged my cables and
I lost all my drives.
and worst of all,
You said that in sleep mode I snored
And that I, even your mother bored.

Oh woe! Alack! Alas!
Our love has encountered a problem
Our relationship has run out of gas.

Our program is (not responding)
So has to shut down, I guess.
Don't bother sending any message
No one can sort out this digital mess.
:(

Fun with Long Island Place Names

She wasn't much to look at but she had a Great Neck
And she had the biggest Yonkers I had ever seen.
There they were in Plainview
But I tried not to stare.

She may have been from Jamaica
But all she had to say was Montauk
Since she was boy crazy I guess.
She had a dog with her, name of Perth.
I made the mistake of saying to Perth, "Here, girl!"
But she corrected me immediately in her broken English: "Perth AMBOY!"
Okay, Okay I said.
But then something went SPEONK! and
She then started to swear like a sailor.
Apparently there had been a wardrobe failure.
I did not like the fact that the conversation had gotten to this Blue Point.
Only one person can wear the pants in the family
And only sometimes does it happen that the Manhasset.
And in her case that wasn't the case.
I knew I didn't want to date her, but I suspected Brentwood.
Brent would come by, put on some music and then ask shyly "Wyandanch"?


But then Hicksville is not that far from Manhattan.
Islip and they suddenly realize I ain't from Levittown,
Still friendly however, they tell me to Commack
And bring my wallet whenever I want.
Between meals I often can be seen Eatons Necks.
That's probably why I don't fit in Amityville.
My life had reached that Rocky Point
I was at that Middle Island between youth and old age.
I could neither run Norwalk.
I found myself south of East Northport,
And I was wishing someone would shut their Yaphank.
I told my class "Noyack".
I was quickly going Nutley, but here at least there was a Great Peconic Bay.
since I loved pecan pie.
The Coyotes were baying, but politely stopped and asked me if they should continue.
I said "Bayonne, fellas"


But enough about me, don't let me Babylon.
I better say goodbye, I'm off now to Fort Salonga.

These Salad Days (poem)

THESE SALAD DAYS

It ain't easy being green
It ain't easy eating greens, neither
my friend
Those leafy things are viewed with suspicion
Of toxigenic coliforms undergoing fission
While once we but salads tossed
Now we are tossing our cookies too.

And meanwhile turning over a new leaf, too late,
Or maybe turning over a page or two
The Foley age is below consent
Oversexed and overpaid
And constantly trying to get laid.

Wild bores in the halls of congress
No moral fiber in their diet
No matter how you cook or fry it
By strange things their sexuality is whetted
Too bad as lawmakers they weren't better vetted.

:(

Adventures in Commuting

I like trains, but there are certain things that are maddening about them, or maddening about me. It is hard to know sometimes where the breakdown in function occurs: within myself or in the complexity of timing that is commuter rail. The lights are on so bright in the trains you could perform surgery in there, but of course you wouldn't want to perform surgery or any operation that involves sharp instruments on a moving train. The windows are tinted green, so the view of the world is rather greenish. What you see fronting tracks isn't all that entertaining anyway. It is not for beauty that most of the world fronts railroad tracks. (A lost opportunity for advertising perhaps?). I missed my stop on the train. So what? Don't they do enough to tell you where to get off? Train schedules, a rolling marquee in most cars, commodious handicapped restrooms all decked out in stainless steel, and of course the ominpresent announcements, and boneheaded conductors who may or may not ask you to show your ticket and may or may not be drunk or stupid. MY PROBLEM is that sometimes people can be saying things and I won't hear them. God knows political advertising and the less season but incessant stupid advertising on the radio makes obliviousness to verbal communication and cloying advertising jingles kind of necessary to maintain sanity. All that babble, news, sports, and aluminum siding is kind of a lullaby for the unquiet soul. At work sometimes I don't hear the bells ring and then have to hurry off somewhere to do something. It doesn't happen all the time, but enough to make me look foolish.

In any case METRA, the commuter rail network in Chicago obviously is designed by someone for whom visual cues are not necessary, otherwise they would not have designed it that way. Not only are the lights in the train so bright you could do surgery in there, but the windows are tinted and the stations are not well lit at all. It is very dark this time of year and by God if it werent for familiar sights dimly made out. Jeezus. Why can't they spend a bit more to light some signage along the stations and less to light the rail cars? There must be a rule somewhere or a DOT regulation to this effect. And why is Grayland station look like some depressing part of the turd world with graffitied up signs and leaky shelters? They don't give a rat's ass, and besides they have better jobs with better benefits than you. METRA is a fitting metaphor for the world. Some of us are warm and dry and have papers to read on plush seats, and some of us are sitting on aluminum bus shelter seats in the dark wondering about the mental and moral stability of our companions wandering around in the dark and with whom you emphatically do NOT want to talk to.

II. Grading papers late on Friday night, I borrowed a fellow teacher's desk chair and dozed for about half an hour. I could hear the weather happening outside my window, the sky opened up, the thunder tore, like ripping taut fabric. Could those be droplets hitting the air conditioner? They sounded more like pebbles of sleet. I woke up with a start and looked at the clock: it was 5:24. I muttered to myself "time to get the puck out of fodge". I judged that 45 minutes was about the safest time frame for getting to the bus stop on Addison and catching the train at 6:15.

Naturally I had no umbrella. My umbrella, safe from my forgetful habit of leaving them as donations to strangers in need, was in the trunk of my car. My car was parked at the Libertyville station, many miles away. I was on 2500 West Addison on the North side of Chicago on a stormy night. As I padded down the steps of that Gothic castle of secondary education, Lane Tech, and as I headed down the hall, hoping that the doors had not been padlocked shut by the night crew just yet, I saw a group of three teenage girls open the doors ahead of me. They recoiled back in comic horror. "Oh, wow!" they exclaimed in dismay. "You can't go out there!" one of them said to me, "it is windy and icky and WET!" I said "Well, I'm not staying here all night, I want to go home" and out I went. The three of them followed me out to the bus stop. They were, of course, quite right.

Here it is, 5:30, no bus shelter in sight, just you, God, and three school girls on a street lit only by the rush hour traffic and rivers of water running down the gutters, a VERY dangerous street. "Trucks and Buses, and CARS!!! Oh my! Trucks and Buses and CARS!!! Oh my!" Two lanes of fast moving traffic each way, a heavy iron plate covering a hole in the street a few feet away. Buses and trucks going over it every so often. "Ga LUMPH!" "Ka CHUNK!" and then launching the water at the curb in jets at any pedestrian foolish enough to be standing too near. ( Oh go ahead, I'm all wet already), and of course the rain coming down in huge drops. The girls were huddled in their winter coats facing away from the wind, wearing flip flops (they were on the Lane swim team). "I can't feel my toes!" one of them said. I stood facing into the wind and the oncoming traffic straining to see in my droplet blurred vision. I pull out my pocket binoculars and look on down the street, as if seeing it coming a minute earlier than I would normally is somehow comforting. I stood as close the curb as I dared, as cars rushed by, their headlights glaring. Occasionally a truck seen from a distance would raise false hope, as its dome lights mimic the orange marquee you see on the CTA buses.

I thought I looked ridiculous, wet as I was. Another fellow had me beat. A young man came up to the stop wearing a suit and tie, no overcoat or anything. He looked like a drowned rat. Water was dripping off his necktie. I remarked to him over the din of traffic "Boy I'm glad I didn't drive my car tonight, traffic is HORRIBLE tonight!" He said "Yeah, I am too. If I don't catch pneumonia".

Never was I so happy to see a bus, but it seemed as if we (the three swimmer girls, the man in the wet suit and I) had stood there in the pounding rain for an eternity. Since the front of the bus is for the elderly, I usually find my way back to a seat near the rear exit. I gingerly sat my soggy dripping self next to a woman who appeared dry and without a hair out of place. The lights were on in the bus and the windows were steamed up so I periodically had to wipe the window with my fist to see where we were. Past McDonalds and Gordon Tech and a German Restaurant called "Mirabella", a shopping mall and a K Mart on the left, finally crossing over the Kennedy expressway and the Blue Line to O'Hare. At the Blue Line stop there are inevitably LOTS of folks getting on and many of them searching in their pockets for the requisite number of coins or bills. The time and the nearest cross street is flashed on the marquee at the front of the bus. Every half block or so someone pulls the cord above the windows, DOINK and the marquee flashes the message "STOP REQUESTED". A bit farther we pass St. Viator's with a little statue of Mary in a grotto outside with candles flickering at her feet even in this downpour.

I had long since given up as hopeless my intention of catching the 6:15 from Grayland. I figured I would drown my sorrows in a smoky little bar right below the tracks and a flight of wooden steps away from where the train stopped. Normally if I have more time I get off on the other side of the tracks near Kilbourn street and cross them to the train because it is a shorter walk, but this time I figured I had only about 6 minutes if the train was on time. So I got off at the corner of Milwaukee and Addison and jogged half the way up the street, crossing the street when there was a lull in the traffic and then walking briskly the rest of the way. It must be a good quarter of a mile up to where the steps up to the station are located. It always seems to be farther to walk when you are are in a hurry.

I got there at just about 6:15 according to my watch. The squawk box across the tracks announced in a garbled voice that sounded half submerged underwater that "Due to a combination of factors, train number 2515 to Fox Lake will be ten to fifteen minutes late. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause." (Yeah, right) What a dreary little place. The wind blew, the drops splattered, the water ran off in streams from the top of the bus shelter. I wasn't going to sit down in there because (1) there was a puddle where I would place my feet, and the aluminum seat was wet. I stood waiting and watching for the train shining like some ground level comet, the telltale glint of light off the rails ahead of it. At some point you could see the bright central beacon with the two flashing lights on either side like some giant beast pumping its glowing fists and rolling with frightening speed toward the station. It comes hissing and squealing to a stop, the passengers already on, contendedly reading their papers or dozing behind the green glass. The doors slide open, a dozen people get off and the conductor leans out to make sure that all the wet and lost souls wanting to get on have done so. gives the engineer a signal and we are off. We have to change trains again in Deerfield and wait for yet another train to where I get off, but we're finally going home. :)

Those Wacky Iraqis

I am old enough to remember many Middle Eastern adventures, and I've seen Lawrence of Arabia three times. I even made a valiant effort to get through T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

In general, beware humorless fanatics, regardless of what their fanaticism is about. Unfortunately there a lot of these in the Middle East and all of them are fixated on geography: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Najaf, Mecca and Medina. Everything in the Middle East is either Holy or Oily. And let us not leave out the geography of the fossil fuels that have blessed this arid region so generously.

Suffice it to say, the Middle East was a playground where the US and the Soviets played one group against another. But face it, the Russians were not that far culturally from being just like us. They tried to make loyal comrades out of the Chinese and the people of Afghanistan. They failed. We have recently tried to make loyal freedom loving folks out of Shiites, Sunni's and Kurds. They don't understand that we were trying to save them from Saddam and bless them with a Western outlook. No, we are the godless infidel. We caught Saddam and why are we wasting our time putting him on trial? It would not have taken them five minutes to dispose of Saddam. Due process, polite political discourse, hasn't got a chance in a country where masses of people are capable of such corrupt murderous nonsense.

We have unwittingly gotten ourselves in another messy conflict born of our naivete and arrogance. The weapons of mass destruction pretext does not wash and never really did. Sure, Saddam was a dangerous dude. He sponsored terrorism and perhaps we did more good by neutralizing him that we yet know. On the other hand Pakistan already has nukes, and it is just a regime change away from being just as scary or scarier than, say, Iran or North Korea. On the other hand, could Iran be so determined to develop nukes because we scare them? And how safe is the world when enterprising capitalists in France and the former Soviet Union are selling technology to humorless fanatics?

In a less sophistocated age, it was optimistically thought that world trade would make warfare unlikely because of the economic interdependence of all nations. Would that it were that simple.