29 June 04

"Another beer?"

"Sure," I say. And I'll keep saying it, right up to the point where I feel sick from the beer and not from anything else. It usually takes four, sometimes five. Six if I ate that day. It used to take three. I guess I'm building up a tolerance.

I like this bar because I can walk here from my super-efficiency (meaning: the closet I sleep in), and because they keep the news feed on closed-captioning, silent. I ask Joe the bartender about that. Does it really fulfill the requirement?

He shrugs and slides a hot, clean wineglass into the stemware rack. "Near as I can tell. So, until they issue a new statement that specifically requires 'sound,' or until somebody complains, the sound stays off."

"Isn't that dangerous?" I ask. I'm thinking of the Right Squad and their pre-emptive crackdowns at the bookstore and the newsstand; they didn't even give them a chance to comply, but had assembled gangs ready to swarm in as soon as the proclamations were given.

But Joe shrugs. "Eh. None of them Righters cares what happens in a bar."

I sit there and contemplate that for a while. He might be right. I can't think of a single crackdown that happened at a bar that wasn't also a hip nightspot, or a homosexual hangout, or something like that. Not places like this. Not an unapologetic dive, with a hundred years of stale cigarette smoke and spilled drinks and fry grease soaked into the carpet, a place with no windows and a 30-year-old jukebox still defiantly playing actual relic standalone discs without benefit of the central entertainment feed, a place with a whole row of beer taps to remind everyone that there used to be more than one kind of beer. That's because there used to really be beer, before the grain blight.

I stare fixedly at the television captions, at the white text crawling across a black bar that partially blocks the red tie knotted just under the serenely smiling face of President Grim. How many damn official announcements can one guy give, anyway? Or maybe they're just broadcasting the same one over and over. I can never tell them apart anyway. It's always just Grim in front of that revised Christian American flag. Am I the only one who thinks the stars in the shape of a cross looks really stupid? I guess I'll never know, because I'm not gonna say it out loud. And nobody else is either.

"I was going to go into journalism before all this happened," I say, and wonder what the hell I'm thinking, talking about myself like that. I mean, I trust Joe, and the bar appears empty, but you never know where the surveillance is going to turn up, and you really never know what's going to get you into trouble.

"Is that so?" says Joe, politely. Still putting the glasses away. I can feel the heat coming off them, the steam, and it merges with the heat and steam of the day, and I'm sweating all of a sudden, I feel claustrophobic, like I've got to get outside into the fresh air which doesn't hardly exist any more anyway, and certainly not on a downtown afternoon in the middle of May and I start to breathe panic, in and out, in and out, a crushing weight on my chest oh God am I having a heart attack?

Breathe. Breathe.

"Billy? You all right?" says Joe, looking at me in concern.

"Just a little short of air," I say. "Hot day."

"Isn't that the truth," he says.

Everybody acts like the heat is a constant surprise, like they've never noticed it before, or like it's a one-time deviation and things will go back to normal soon. Only, you know, when something has been a certain way for ten years or more, doesn't that make it, actually, normal?

People are like that with the crackdown, too. People say, I think it's getting better, don't you? with these tight, nervous smiles, looking around over their shoulders in that way that has become second nature to most of us. And I just nod. I know we're both probably captured on somebody's security video feed. I know that people might, or might not, be watching me at any given time. At my workplace they are supposedly watching me in order to keep me, the night clerk, from being robbed at gunpoint. I've been robbed a couple of times anyway. Shot in the arm once. We're told to use the store gun to defend ourselves, but there's never any time to get it out and they bloody well know it. By the time you realize you're being robbed, there's barely time to dive to the ground and escape the bullets.

"So anyway," I continue on with my semi-suicidal confessional urge. "I was going into journalism, but the last round of consolidations eliminated so many jobs in the field that my college counselor strongly advised I switch career plans. He said I could get a job in cleanup work, that's where a lot of the ex journalists were going, but I didn't, mm, I wasn't excited by that field so I just dropped out. I was running out of money anyway."

"You don't say," Joe says.

"Until the crackdown, I thought I would still write for the independents. No money in it, of course, but I thought it would be a hobby. You know. Give meaning to my pathetic existence."

He laughs, though I can tell he's not sure if I'm making a joke or not. It's probably safest to assume everything is a joke, if you're a bartender.

"That's some story, Billy," Joe says.

"Yeah," I say. I search his face carefully for anything other than a bartender's friendly blank mask, and now I realize why I'm telling him my pathetically common story -- I'm sending out feelers. How does he react? What does he say?

And I'm disappointed when I realize the answer is, exactly what you'd expect from a bartender.

Suddenly, I don't want any more beer.

"Hey, Joe, I think I'm ready to go home and go to sleep," I say.

"Well, okay, thanks for coming in," he says. He always says that, "thanks for coming in."

I pay him, in cash, which is how the bars like it. I'm starting to think he knows what he's talking about, the Righters don't care about what goes on in his bar, and I guess the cash keeps it that way. Of course, they're starting to phase out cash. Because terrorists and foreign spies use it. And I guess they do.

The midday heat shocks me, knocks my breath out of me, and again that heart attack feeling. Not that I know what a heart attack feels like. And not that I would know what to do about it anyway, since there's no way the night clerk at a gas station makes enough to afford to see a doctor. I picture myself having a heart attack on the sidewalk, what would happen? Well, somebody would call a paramedic, and they'd run my ID number for credit and then they'd take me to the Christian Mercy Hospital where I would probably die waiting for treatment, or if I didn't, they'd fix my heart right up and then I'd be serving in the congregation on my off hours for the rest of my life just to pay for it.

So, it better not be a heart attack.

You hear that, body?

I plod home, wondering if it's me, or if car exhaust and garbage and mucky puddles of storm runoff really do smell more foul today than usual. I wonder if my building has always looked this dingy, and if a black layer of soot has always stuck to my hands when I touch the metal railing, and if the horizon has always been that sick greenish brown color. I'm so tired I think I'm going to just plop on my cot and sleep, but for some reason the claustrophobia won't leave and I can't stand the sight of the upper bunk, can't stand being closed in by the mosquito curtains, and it makes my heart thump nervously in spite of my fatigue. Instead, I get up and wander into the common room, where a TV actually has the sound on. It's entertainment feed, not news feed, and the other people in the common room are laughing at what looks like an old movie, a comedy. Nobody really makes movies anymore because it's so hard getting things past the guardians, but a lot of the older stuff cleans up pretty well and so that's what we get. I stare blankly at it. Is it a comedy? People are laughing, but I can't, honestly, tell what is supposed to be so funny.

"Hi, Billy," one of the women says to me. "You hear the news?"

"What news?" I say, suddenly numb with dread.

"The war's going really well. The Holy Brothers have captured the city and deposed the First Antichrist."

"The first?" I say. I haven't really been following the religious decrees, then realize I shouldn't let on about that. "Oh, well, that's great then."

"Yes, it's glorious news," she says, but looks a little doubtful, as if she isn't quite sure what it means either. "That means things can open up a little bit. Maybe we can even travel. We just don't have to be quite as scared."

"We don't? Wow." I say. "What a relief. I guess I'm going to bed."

"Sleep well," she says. "They treated the curtains earlier today so it might smell a bit thick in there, but you know you don't have to worry about the mosquitoes."

"Thanks," I say. Is that why I felt so oppressed? Pesticide?

Back in my bunk, I think about it. I think about it some more. I reach a decision.

I pick up a pen and start writing in one of my paper notebooks, using the tiny, careful script that I have always used to make sure they last as long as possible. It's so expensive to get paper these days, and it's always that rough stuff. But it occurs to me that I don't have to do that any longer. This is my last notebook. I'm going to leave them all behind.

No, I'm not going to put my plans here for you to examine at your convenience. I thought about putting in fake plans, but didn't have the energy. This is a confession, an apology, and yeah, I thought I might talk myself out of it when I was done with the writing. But I didn't. I'm still gonna do it. And, innocent people might die. I feel sort of bad about that, but I won't let it stop me.

As the Righters themselves are fond of saying, the end justifies the means.

07 July 04

"I can't believe you're still a Caudill supporter," Mr. Gretch said to his wife. He plumped himself down in the lounger, arms folded, and glared at the television.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Mrs. Gretch said. She gestured toward the television, toward the illuminated and magnified face of President Caudill. He was smiling. "I supported him in his first run for office. Nothing has changed."

"Nothing has changed? He announced on national TV that he was the Antichrist!"

"Oh, that." She made a dismissive sort of "pffflph" noise that flapped her lips together. "People don't understand what that means, really. They were talking about it at church. The Antichrist is necessary for the world to end and for Jesus to come."

"So?"

"So he's a part of the plan."

"They tell you that at church, do they?" muttered Mr. Gretch, who did not share his wife's enthusiasm for church. "So they're for this Armaggedon business then?"

Mrs. Gretch had the uncomfortable look of a child called upon in class to explain what she has learned about the metric system.

"Not exactly a good thing, in and of itself, you see -- it's more complicated than that. It's for the greater good."

"The greater good," Mr. Gretch said. He sounded unconvinced.

"Yes, that's it exactly," said Mrs. Gretch. She clutched one of the lace crochet pillows to her chest and studied the television for a moment, then used the remote control to turn the sound up.

"...we will come through this time of tribulation more united..." said the buzzing broadcast voice of President Caudill.

Mr. Gretch lurched out of the recliner and began poking frantically at the television buttons until he found the off switch.

"What'd you do that for?" said Mrs. Gretch peevishly.

"I should think by now the answer to that would be obvious," said Mr. Gretch, with a sigh. "No, look, I want to talk about this. When Caudill sacrificed that baby on Labor Day, your church still supported him -- because it was all part of some greater good?"

"Well," she said, "It wasn't as if the baby was unborn, now, was it? An unborn baby is innocent, but once they're born you can tell if they have an evil soul, or a good one." Mrs. Gretch frowned, and fell silent for a moment.

Mr. Gretch prompted, "So you're saying that somehow Caudill knew that this baby had an, an 'evil soul'?"

"It's in the Bible."

"In the Bible?" Mr. Gretch was incredulous, but, allowed that his wife's familiarity with the Bible was greater than his own.

"'When God called upon Abraham to lay his only and most beloved son Isaac upon the sacrificial alter, God tested the soul of Isaac and found it pure and called off the sacrifice, but now I say unto you, how much greater must our sacrifice be in these last days to find favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis chapter 22 verses two through 14.'"

Mr. Gretch, ever suspicious picked up a copy of the Bible and flipped to Genesis chapter 22.

"It doesn't say that here," he said. "About the last days. And anyway, God told him not to do it at the last minute, look. He killed a goat instead. Or maybe a sheep, I don't know, just look!"

He held out the book, pages crinkling, but Mrs. Gretch shook her head.

"It's not in that version, silly. That's an old translation. Anyway, you know it didn't suffer. Slit its throat and all the crying stopped just like that..." Her gaze went blank, mesmerized for a moment. Then she came back, cheerful and determined. "So, you see, it's all going to work out."

"Work out how?" Mr. Gretch grumbled. "Because my impression is that the point of this whole thing, is that it works out with the end of the world."

"Well, yes. Of course. It'll be glorious."

Mr. Gretch looked at her incredulously. "It'll be the end of the world."

"And that will be glorious," she said, patiently. "When Jesus comes again."

Mr. Gretch stood up, abruptly, legs planted widely apart. "Jesus isn't coming, you stupid goat," he declared, and stomped off to the bathroom, leaving her to ponder what he might have meant. Jesus wasn't coming at all? Or wasn't coming for her?

She turned the television back on.

"You know what to do," President Caudill said to her. He addressed her directly, with his dark eyes and penetrating gaze, which Mr. Gretch couldn't see at all; Mr. Gretch said that President Caudill looked and sounded like a cross between a weasel and a monkey. But Mrs. Gretch saw it all so clearly, and heard that special soothing voice meant just for her, just for the chosen, those who were selected to bring about the glorious second coming. Those who were selected to clear the way. Remove obstacles. Punish unbelievers.

"Yes, lord," she said, and went to the kitchen to pick up the large cast-iron skillet, and then to stand in the hallway outside the bathroom, waiting for Mr. Gretch to emerge.

27 August 04

The world was stunned today by the president's announcement that his challenger is the Antichrist. While some dismissed it as more "dirty politics," others saw it as confirmation of what they've been saying all along.

"This just confirms what I've been saying all along," said Spinny Faulter, noted political commentator and swimsuit model. "When the president is such a Godly man, and appointed to office by God, it just stands to reason that his challenger must be nothing less than the earthly incarnation of Satan himself."

Others had a different reaction, most notably, members of the challenger's own political party. "This is the most absurd accusation yet," said Jiffy Swanson, female leader of the challenger's political party and noted for her lack of resemblence to a swimsuit model. "Previously the president has limited himself to lies about his challenger's record which we have been able to disprove using facts readily available to the public. But this isn't even -- how can you possibly prove that somebody is or is not the Antichrist? It's a religious belief."

Swanson's remarks drew fire from religious leaders, who denounced it as "typical of the challenger's atheistic political party, to deny the very existence of such a well-documented being as the Antichrist," according to People for the Christian American Way spokesman Rorshach Lambuster. "The overwhelming popularity of the Left in the Lurch series proves that." Left in the Lurch refers to a series of best-selling novels depicting prophesied End Times events, including the rise of the Antichrist.

The president's announcement, though controversial, is having an effect on the race. The challenger's poll ratings have dipped again, and many voters have even more doubts about the challenger than they did before. When asked by pollsters if they worry that the challenger might be the Antichrist, more than two-thirds said "yes" even though only a third of respondents self-identified as "millennialist Christian" on the same poll.

"It's definitely caused me to doubt my previous doubts about the president," said unemployed Silicon Valley web site developer Arcturu Boorman. "My economic situation has been rotten since the president took office, and I don't support his environmental policies, or his foreign policy, or his domestic agenda. But I don't know if I could vote for his challenger if he is the Antichrist. Even though I'm not that religious about most things, wow, the Antichrist, that's pretty heavy stuff."

According to Wrestle Pucklebit, spokesman for the challenger, the announcement is groundless.

"Clearly there's no truth to this accusation," Pucklebit said. "The challenger is a devout Catholic."

Father Daedilus Marzipan, a Jesuit scholar and bestselling author who actually supports the challenger, had this to say: "Most Catholics, and many other mainstream Christians, believe the Beast in Revelation that we commonly call the Antichrist is a reference to Nero, the corrupt Roman emperor associated with the rise of deification of the emperor and the beginning of the fall of the empire. We believe that prophecy was already fulfilled at the end of the age. So the assumption that there is an 'Antichrist' still to come is far from universal even among Christians."

Maverick overweight filmmaker Marcus Morovit urged readers of his web site not to "fall for this kind of garbage. I mean, think about it. If the challenger actually were the Antichrist, wouldn't he be destined to win the presidency anyway? If this is all prophecy, isn't it more reasonable to believe that the person sitting in the White House right now is the Antichrist?"

Faulter countered on her own web site. "It's so typical of these challenger-supporting, America-hating, atheist, ugly, stupid traitors to attempt to smear the president's character like that. If the president says that God told him that the challenger is the Antichrist, you can bet your life the challenger is the Antichrist."

Thus concludes the long, drawn-out process of the Goth House characters leaving goth house. People have asked me -- what next? Are you ending the series? Reinventing the series? Killing off all the characters?

Sort of.

The next thing that happens chronologically is, we launch into a long, ongoing series about the band on tour. But before I do that, I want to clear my head with a shorter series about the key characters meeting in high school. High school is on my mind right now (on account of my 20-year reunion which happens later tonight) and I think that a lot of the things that are going to happen to the characters in the band story are made more interesting if you know a little more about where they're coming from.

Then comes the story about the band. After that I am, yeah, kind of planning to end the series. It might begin again immediately in a new form. Or I might change my mind completely. I'm not planning to kill anybody off. But I might.

(I'm trying to build suspense here...how am I doing?)

Whatever happens, the high school series plus the band series will take a while to complete at approximately one page every two weeks. Years, actually. You notice it's taken me half a year just to get them out of goth house. So there's going to be new Goth House for quite a while yet. I reserve the right to allow the story to take unexpected turns. In fact, having them leave goth house was unexpected. I originally assumed they would take the band on tour just 'cos they wanted to, not because they were suddenly homeless. But once it occurred to me, I knew I had to to it.

The photographs used in the art this fortnight are of: Glasgow's Necropolis, London's Highgate, New Orleans' St. Louis No. 1, Bellingham's own Bayview, a cemetery by the highway out in Louisiana Cajun country, and the Stonehenge replica in southern Washington State. They were all taken by me, or by Paul Carpentier.

You know, I've been to a lot of cool cemeteries.

I started building web pages sometime in the mid 90s, along with everyone else. The first thing I did was a very simple page built out of HTML code typed into a text editor. Easy-peasy. Kind of clunky, but it worked. Then I got Adobe's PageMill (v 2.0) and started getting a bit fancier, with tables and whatnot. (Why PageMill? It was cheap, simple, and I like Adobe products.) Still, I kept it pretty basic, and was always running to the HTML screen to tweak things. In fact, this was my only complaint about PageMill -- it would rearrange my HTML to suit itself and not me (making all the tags upper case, for example), but usually not in major ways.

Then, the company web site got turned over to someone else for a while. Then turned back to me.

In the intervening time, the other person had ported it to Microsoft FrontPage.

I tried to make a go of working with his design, I really did. He'd added all sorts of fanciness, like substituting little pictures for the bullets, and font schemes (in a font I really disliked) and universal top and side menu bars, and so on. But after slogging through the bog for a while I decided that it would actually be faster to simply redo everything in PageMill again.

FrontPage (that edition anyway) was the worst program I have ever tried to use. Ever.

Yes, worse than PowerPoint, which at least behaves in a predictable manner. It just wreaks havoc upon the world by encouraging those with no clue how to organize a presentation, to do so anyway.
(hint: reading the exact text of your slide show at the same time that you are showing your slide show does not make for an entertaining and informative presentation.)

Trying to use FrontPage was like trying to play catch with a water balloon -- every time I thought I had it, it would squirm out of my grasp in some completely unexpected way. I would change things, think I had saved them, and then they would be back the way they used to be the next time I opened the file. I would try to turn off absolutely every automatic doodad, so that FrontPage wouldn't put anything there that I hadn't expressly told it to put there, and I would still open up my pages and find them full of inexplicable things. Nothing about this program was intuitive or sensible. I was less baffled when I tried to use a Japanese version of PageMaker on an outdated Macintosh.

I shook my head, moved on, and never really thought about it again.

A few years later, at another company, a co worker was making some changes to her parents' web site. She was using their copy of FrontPage, since that's what they would be using to keep it updated. She was frustrated by something she couldn't get it to do and called me over to see if I could help. I did manage to help, but I discovered something in the process.

Front Page was STILL the worst program I have ever tried to use. Ever.

The main thing I don't get about Front Page, is that its intended audience seems to be people who don't know anything about HTML. And yet, my co-worker was helping her parents, because they couldn't get it to do what they wanted. And I was helping my co-worker because she couldn't get it to do what she wanted. At each stage, a more experienced HTML programmer had to be called in to figure out how to get FrontPage to behave. Not somebody more experienced in FrontPage, somebody more knowledgable about HTML.

So I can't figure out how you're supposed to use this program. My best guess is, set up your web site using one of their built-in templates and then never change the design again.

(Although I have since learned that newer editions of FrontPage make it easier to turn off all the automatic shenanigans and use it as a regular HTML editor, which is good, but man -- it took 'em long enough.)