Layla's Dark and Foreboding Weblog

I've been really busy at work, so I haven't had time to write anything lately. I haven't been too busy, however, to read the newest Best of Craigslist additions. Mui bueno.

A few things before I post someone else’s brilliant piece of writing:

Bush "moved".
A guy ran over a four year old with his lawnmower, killing him.
Pat Tillman, former NFL player, was killed in Iraq. He had a powerful jaw line. That's all I know, so read the article.

The news this week has been especially bad. I realized that one of the main reasons I have been in such a bad mood this week is that I listen to the news on NPR on the way in. Maybe its Bob Edwards' voice that does it to me. I've decided that my commutes in can now be "music only".

So, here you go. A really funny "Best of Craigslist" that someone who is not me wrote:

Hey Crackhead

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: anon-27499971@craigslist.org
Date: Sat Mar 27 15:36:01 2004

Yes, you. You sick fucker. On Wednesday morning I emerged from my girlfriend's building by U.N. Plaza to find that you had sawed the tops off both the sparkplugs on my motorcycle. At the time, I had no idea why anyone would do that. Other than the sparkplugs, the bike was untouched. Some kind of bizarre vandalism? A fraternity prank gone awry? I had no idea. All I knew is that I looked like a huge douchebag riding the Muni to work in a padded motorcycle jacket and helmet.

Because the bike was immobilized I got a $35 street sweeping ticket that night. Thursday I had it towed to the shop ($45) where they replaced the sparkplugs and the boots ($50 including labor). They explained to me that "people" - I use the term loosely here - like you break off the tops of spark plugs and use the porcelain tubes to smoke crack. As an engineer and former MacGyver fan, in a way I think this is kind of cool. But then I remember that I just paid $100 for YOUR crackpipes, and I get angry again.

Crackhead, it was really good to have my bike back though. I rode home from the shop with a couple of spare sparkplugs and a smile on my face. I figured the next time I parked at my girlfriend's place overnight I would have to buy some crackpipes and tape them to my bike as a peace offering. Overall, I wasn't that upset. Despite having to ride the bus for three days and dropping a hundred bones at the shop, I had gained some fascinating knowledge, a new set of sparkplugs, and a pretty funny anecdote about how fucked up you are, and how our paths once crossed briefly in the night.

But you couldn't just let sleeping dogs lie, could you Crackhead. You couldn't just stay in on Friday, watch Letterman through the window of a home electronics store and then call it a night. You couldn't rest on your laurels. Two porcelain sparkplug crackpipes just wasn't enough for you, was it Crackhead? You just had to come back for more.

This morning, a scant fifteen hours after I rode it out of the shop, I found my motorcycle violated once again. This time you only took the right one - maybe you were having an off night. At least this time I had a spare sparkplug and the tools to fix it - or so I thought - having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week. But no, the sparkplug socket in my new toolset was for American sparkplugs. So I had to go down to the neighborhood Ace hardware. They had an 18mm socket that would fit over my sparkplug, but it was for a 1/2" drive ratchet. My toolkit only has 1/4" and 3/8" ratchets. So I had to buy a 1/2" ratchet along with the socket. Even though the clerk took pity on me and gave me the senior citizen discount (I'm 25) it still cost me $22 all told. Now, you might say that I should have just gotten a 3/8"-to-1/2" drive adaptor instead of springing for the whole ratchet. And to that I say "Shut the hell up, Crackhead, I'm not finished. And besides, I was eventually going to buy a 1/2" ratchet anyway so it's probably not worth it to take it back now."

OK, now I'm rambling. But the point is, Crackhead, that you have done me wrong. Now, I get that you love crack. That is totally understandable. I've heard it is really fun, at first, and quite addictive. What I don't understand is,

YOU ARE A CRACKHEAD. WHY DON'T YOU OWN A CRACKPIPE?

I am an engineer. Do you ever see me shaking down bums in the Loin for a calculator and sliderule? No, you don't. Because engineering is the main thing I do, I went and bought myself a calculator. The main thing you do is crack. How do you get by without a crackpipe? The other crackheads must clown on you non-stop. I mean, the fucking saw you used to saw off my sparkplugs is probably worth five or ten bucks. Why not sell or trade it for a crackpipe? You really haven't put much thought into this, have you?

Please, Crackhead, please don't tell me you sold your crackpipe to buy crack. Even a stupid crackhead such as yourself couldn't possibly be that stupid.

I've decided that taping crackpipes to my motorcycle would be tantamount to appeasement. You have crossed a line, Crackhead - specifically California Street. You have come onto my own street and you have desecrated that which I hold dear. You have stolen from me, and you have caused me to spend the last half hour writing this post instead of engineering shit, and it is concievable, if not likely, that my boss could find out about this and fire me. I am hella pissed at you dude.

Here are my options as I see them:

1. Write a note saying that I have coated both of my sparkplugs in rat poison and tape it to my bike at night. You can thank Tim for that one, it was his idea.

2. Don't write a note, but just coat both sparkplugs in rat poison. This is probably closer to a punishment that would fit your despicable crime. I'm sure this is super illegal and shit, but it's not like anyone is going to miss you, Crackhead. Don't fool yourself.

3. Wait in an alley near my bike armed with my new stainless steel mirror-finish Ace Professional brand 1/2" drive socket wrench, my 18mm sparkplug socket, and my searing rage. It's pretty heavy and well balanced. I am not a large man, but I am angry.

In conclusion, Crackhead, why don't you just do both of us a favor and buy yourself a crackpipe? It will both enhance your crack smoking experience and save me a lot of time and felony assault charges. Think about it.

Sincerely,
Matt

*** If you are not the Crackhead that took my sparkplugs, please disregard this posting ***

______________________________
Have a good weekend.

Posted by layla at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a glorious day. The Fix is back.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday to me are the best days of the week. I can come in to work (I get in an hour before everyone else), drink my coffee and read The Morning Fix (linked down below on the left). The Fix is written by Mark Morford, a witty and irreverant San Francisco writer, with whom I'm loosely linked. No, I don't know him at all. My sister-in-law, who I live downstairs from and spend a good portion of my non-working time with, works with his girlfriend. What's that? Two degrees? Not bad...

The Fix is just about the only this worth reading on SF Gate, the online edition of our daily news publication, the San Francisco Chronicle. But for the past month, it's been MIA. Now, I've had the inside dirt about how and why, but I don't think that I can really say it here. Let's just say that journalistic/media censorship has been a real problem in the past few months.

Anyway, today was about The Passion of the Christ. My favorite. Check it out, and you'll see why I didn't go and see it for myself.

*****

I saw Mayor Newsom at dinner last night in North Beach. For all of my "looks don't mean a thing" talk when I was compaigning for Gonzalez, I was like a 13 year old school girl. The hair. The skin. The "Don't You Want to Have my Baby, Layla?" look in his eyes. What an idiot I am.

Posted by layla at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Genocide. What a word, huh? My Jewish family fled eastern Europe because of it. Many were killed as a result of their love and loyalty to their homeland. Everyone has a story to tell. Genocide. It's why we're in Iraq, right? Not because of oil. The ones who said if it's not the WMD's, then it's because we needed to kill Saddam or take him or something, in order to stop the atrocities committed on his own people. Well, not really his own people, because he didn't consider the Sunni to be important, though they make up well over half the population. And forget the Kurds, they're all the way up in the mountains, and who really cares about them anyway.

Genocide. As Americans, we go and help the countries where these heinous crimes against humanity are being committed, right? Right? That's what we do! We're the good guys. Everyones hero. Right? Ok...

Rwanda. A landlocked country in Africa with a population of over 7 million. Life expectancy is 39 years old. Infant mortality rate is over 10%. In April of 1994, the president of Rwanda is killed when a missile shoots down his plane. Hutu extremists take over the country. In the following 100 days 800,000 people are brutally murdered. What did America do? Nothing. Not one single thing. As a matter of fact, there was only one editorial in the NY Times and one in the Washington Post for the entire duration of this massacre.

Cambodia. During the period of 1975 through 1979, the Kampuchean Communist Party began a campaign of ethnic cleansing. They decided to "rustify" or basically ruralize the country, driving out the educated and raiding cities, leaving people to literally starve to death. The targets were Vietnamese and Chinese, who relocated here to escape the Vietnam War. Another main target was Buddhist monks and ethnic Chams (Muslims). The death toll has been reported to be as few as 1 million killed to as many as 3 million. Only in the past few years have the UN acknowledged these crimes.

Bosnia. Bangladesh. Armenia. East Timor. These are all countries that were victims of genocide or ethnic cleansing where the US did little to nothing to aid them. But they have one other thing in common. Not one sits atop an oil well.

But we're in Iraq because of the crimes against humanity. Right? Right?

Posted by layla at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I want so much to write about the death penalty today. I recently read a great book that a friend gave to me called Actual Innocence, which talks about the Innocence Project, a group dedicated to helping wrongly accused and convicted convicts. It's sickening to know that this country deems it an acceptable practice to let innocent people die in the hopes that a few of the injected are guilty. Ok, though, enough about that. Let's talk about jail in general.

We are an incarcerating country. Break the law, you go to jail. Oh, wait, let me rephrase that: Break the law, be poor or a minority, you go to jail. The prisons are full of low income minority groups. You'll hear a lot of excuses from a lot of people as to why this is the case. Mostly people can agree that lack of education and money in the inner city is to blame for the surge of criminal activity among the poor. But there is another problem.

Last month I wrote about some problems that drug addicts face in saving their own lives. Beyond having the shame of living with addiction, there are criminal ramifications for buying and selling drugs, for carrying, and for being under the influence.

In the 1980's, Nancy Reagan pummelled us with her War on Drugs. She wanted to send a clear message that not only do we not like drugs, not only do we hate them sooooo much, not only do we hate the addict, we are going to WAR! Granted, this was at a time where most kids didn't know what war was all about, our fathers had all come home from Vietnam, no one had really ever attacked us on our soil in our lifetimes. Beirut and Grenada were words you heard a lot in the news, but what was war, really?

War is what we've waged silently on the minority population in this country. 1 out of every 8 black men will be in prison at some point of his life. That number is staggering. Yet, many white people say "Why are blacks mad at me? I didn't have slaves. My parents and grandparents didn't have slaves." While to an extent, it's right to feel that so much hatred is put on you just because of the color of your skin, think about the institutional, governmental racism that happens every single day.

"Quit looking at the symbols. Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies." - State Rep. John Graham Altman (R-SC), addressing African-American concerns about the 'symbol' of the Confederate Flag, New York Times, 01-24-97.

"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men." - State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

The war on drugs cost this country $19.179 BILLION in 2003 alone. Over 50% of incarcerated felons are there for non-violent crimes or drug offenses for which there is a mandatory sentencing in effect. 3/4 of that are black or latino men. This is institutional racism. Above that, it's accepted.

Posted by layla at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

M's good friend D was not really shocked when I told him how much I hate Bukowski. He understood that, as stereotypical as it sounds, he just doesn't appeal to women. He's a drunk, a sexist degenerate. But, isn't that the recipe for a great writer? D urged me to read Bukowski's collection of poetry called What Matters Most is How Well you Walk Through the Fire. It took me some time to find it, but I did.

Let me also say, and I've said it before, that I hate poetry. There are maybe 3 poems that have truly touched me in my life, and I've read A LOT. But I have to say, after reading about 30 poems in this book, I have found one that I really, really like. So, copyright laws be damned, here it is, a lovely poem by one Charles Bukowski:

lifedance

the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience-
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted

Thanks D, if you ever read this. I hate Charles Bukowski one poem less now. Grazie.

Posted by layla at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm off for the southern land! Today I embark on a seven day trip to Dallas to be with my baby. Yay! More next week...

Posted by layla at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)