Patrick M Brennan

I’m grateful to Republican State Representative Ben Bridges of Georgia for pointing out some interesting facts which I had somehow never heard of.

It seems that this “Evolution” thing – you know, the idea that plants, animals and people are descended from older forms which evolve over geologic time – isn’t just untrue. No, friends, it’s much, much worse. The ideas that, for example, the universe is billions of years old, that it is billions of light years across, even, apparently, the idea that the Earth moves in space – are all lies. And not only that, there is a sinister conspiracy to spread these lies and fix them in our minds.

Who do you think is spreading these lies? That would be the Jews.

Oh, and this “Gravity” thing is a Jewish lie, too.

You know, it’s one thing to come across some crank’s web site. Honestly, I’d rather just talk about that, because, Jesus Jones, is it hilarious. We’ll come back to it.

But here we have a really scary brew: we have a lunatic who has a crackpot theory of the world, driven to invent an evil conspiracy which is suppressing his theory. And where does he turn to supply the bad guy? To the closest little nub of hate he has in his heart, naturally. But then he gets support from not one, but two elected officials in two different states. The mixture of fanatic belief, conspiracy theories, scapegoating minorities, and government power, even though it is sort of small and comic in this episode, is something to keep a careful watch over. It’s like a pile of paint-soaked rags in your basement – you don’t want to tolerate it, even if you think the risk is small. You can expect that if there ever is a fire like that in America, this will be the place it starts.

The two elected officials in question are scrambling to backpedal their support for the kooky crank. They didn’t mean for a lot of people to notice that they were endorsing the view that Mathematics is a conspiracy to destroy Christian America. Just the kooky cranks in their districts. It’s entertaining to watch little men twist themselves into pretzels trying to pretend they don’t actually agree with this view, while putting out the wink to show the True Believers that, yes, actually, they do.

It goes without saying that they’re Republicans, doesn’t it? I think it’s probably true that the majority of Republicans would admit that the Earth moves, but in every important way, they truly are the party of reality-denial. We have been and will continue to pay the price for having them in office, as we shoulder the burdens of bad decisions based on delusions and lies.

But enough of that. Let’s get back to FixedEarth.com, a product of a gentleman named Marshall Hall.

I had thought that the battle between actual, enlightened, reality-dwelling people and kooky fanatics had moved off of the question of whether the Earth moves around the sun, and had moved into the issue of how human beings came to evolve into their present form. That’s what I thought the last time I wrote about this issue. It seems that, at least as far as Mr. Hall goes, I was wrong. He wants to take up the battle against Copernicus all over again. It’s too bad he’s about 460 years late to the party. His site (which is incidentally, a masterpiece of clueless Web design), shouts:

The Earth is not rotating…nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science". The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s “knowledge” about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

Marshall Hall is a wheel in the political effort to remove evolution from the public schools in Georgia. Since he’s a fundamentalist, he’s gone back to the fundamentals. He feels he needs to demolish Copernicus in order to topple Darwin. I suppose he’s on to something, although it seems to me the facts of biology would remain the same if the Sun went around the Earth. But never mind that, and never mind the fact that even though Darwin is bedrock biology, Copernicus is even more deeply embedded in astronomy. In another part of the web site, he proclaims:

…the Copernican Model of a rotating, orbiting Earth is a factless, observation-denying deception that is the keystone which is holding up all of modern man’s false “science” and “knowledge". It’s time for the truth.

See? He’s right! There are no facts and no observations which support the idea of a rotating Earth! Stellar parallax? Poppycock! The retrograde motion of Mars? A Kabbalist illusion! Foucault’s Pendulum? A clever trick. There really is an entire section of the website devoted to showing how any observations which support the motion of the Earth are, in fact, lies and deceptions.

He even explains why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move, and it’s such a mishmash that’s it’s damn near impossible to figure out. I don’t think he quite understands how geosynchronous satellites work in the first place, and comes really, really close to disavowing that there is such a thing as Gravity. (He also confuses gravity with atmospheric pressure, which is very funny if you’re a nerd like me.) As best as I can reckon, his explanation for why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move is :

1. The Earth doesn’t move.
2. Geosynchronous satellites rely on the “earth-is-moving” hypothesis to work the way they claim to be.
3. But since the Earth isn’t moving, there can’t be any geosynchronous satellites.
4. If this gets out, it will expose The Conspiracy.
5. Therefore the Earth doesn’t move!

(Actually, it’s right there on his page, right after his paragraph which begins “Five things are certain at this point:"… I’ve just clarified the language.)

I also think it’s fun to note that his web site only vaguely implies that the Earth might be a sphere. Nowhere does he set that out explicitly.

At what point do you think Mr. Hall will admit that the Earth moves, and is more than 6000 years old? Let’s ask Thomas Kuhn:

During the century and a half following Galileo’s death in 1642, a belief in the earth-centered universe was gradually transformed from an essential sign of sanity to an index, first, of inflexible conservatism, then of excessive parochialism, and finally of complete fanaticism.

Well, Galileo’s been dead for more than three hundred years now…

This is rather bizarre. I got a letter from the Army today:

Now don’t imagine I’m not flattered. I think it’s about time the Army decided they needed a guy of my caliber. But, you know, I have read that they’re having a tough time finding new people to ship off to Iraq, and it seems to me that they’re kind of deluding themselves if they’re sending this to me. Right? Clearly they think I’m about, oh, half my age or something. They got my address right. I am the only Patrick Brennan living at this address. And I’m sure my records are good, judging from the other junk mail I receive. Commercial marketers know very well, for example, that I have a mortgage, a wife, a baby girl, and a degree. They know I’ve paid my student loans off. They don’t send me solicitations geared toward recent high school graduates. So how come the United States Armed Forces can’t figure that out?

There are all kinds of ways this letter diminishes my already infinitesimal respect for our current government’s ability to manage information properly. I mean, I’m not even trying to hide. What chance have they got against the terrorists? Speaking of which: talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing! While the Army is trying to recruit me, the Department of Homeland Security thinks I’m someone who needs special scrutiny before I’m allowed to board an airplane. I suppose I’d rather the government thinks I’m a potential soldier instead of a potential terrorist, but they’re so laughably wrong on both counts that it just makes my head spin.

I’m not down on service. I even gave it some serious thought myself, for about ten minutes back in the eighties. The early eighties. (When, you know, I really was a recent high school graduate.) But ultimately I decided it wasn’t for me. (Believe me, I made the right decision for me and for my country.) Twenty-odd years later, I’m more sure than ever that being an infantryman is not really what I want.

Maybe I’m wrong about the Army. Maybe – just humor me now – they’re just being clever. Too clever by half, perhaps, but still. Maybe they think that if they flatter me, I’ll be more disposed to sign up. (Sure, I’m too old to join the Army now, but they’ve recently raised the maximum age for enlistment. Maybe by the time I’m 50, the maximum age will be 51 or something.) The letter was accompanied by a postcard which promises a cool knit cap with an Army logo. All I need to do is fill it out with all my personal information (or fill it out online). They’re gonna need that data in 2009, when they’ll need lots of new guys to occupy Tehran. And I’m torn about filling out that card, because on the one hand, I want to help the government keep its records straight. They only have all my tax returns, after all. On the other hand, if I fill out the card, I’m taking the risk that the Army won’t stop pestering me. When I retire, they’ll be asking me what I’m planning to do with my college degree. When I’m 90, I’ll be getting letters asking me about serving in the National Guard (”one weekend a month“). And they’ll still be promising the same lousy pay, bad benefits, and the constant possibility of being shipped off to a hostile country to be maimed or killed.

But maybe – just maybe – if I sign up, they’ll take me off their no-fly list.

No promises.

True story…

The middle of the night. HE and SHE are in bed. HE is vigorously shaking his wife.

HE: Honey, wake up!

SHE: (waking from a nightmare) What? Huh?

HE: Are you OK?

SHE: (Still disoriented) What? Why did you wake me up?

HE: You were having a nightmare!

SHE: I was? What – did I say anything?

HE: You were yelling.

SHE: Oh, that’s right.

HE: You remember?

SHE: Kind of.

HE: You were yelling, “You’ll never get away with it!”

SHE: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

HE: Who were you yelling at?

SHE: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

HE: (suppressing a chuckle) White House Press Secretary Tony Snow?

SHE: Yeah. It was a dream, OK?

HE: OK. What was he doing?

SHE: He was about to molest a child.

(A long beat.)

HE: Was her name Truth?

You’ve probably heard about Ted Haggard, the (former) pastor of the New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, and (former) president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals. Until just recently, he was a big wheel in the Christian evangelical movement and in the Republican Party, participating in weekly conference calls with George W. Bush, Karl Rove and other senior strategists of the Party. It’s no secret that Haggard was in the vanguard of a movement which stokes up hatred against gay people in order to cement their political power, which is why there is a poetic element of rough justice in last week’s revelations that in secret, Haggard was abusing methamphetamine and availing himself of the services of a gay hooker.

The specifics are Haggard’s alone, of course, but the general outline of the story is so familiar, it’s become a cliche. Another highly-placed hypocrite gets hoisted by his own petard. Not very surprising, right? But what is it about these particular people that have made it such a cliche? After all, you wouldn’t think that the population statistics of leading evangelical preachers, who all agree that homosexuality is a vile sin, would track the distribution of homosexuality in the general population. In other words, you wouldn’t expect that some fundamentalist preachers are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators; you would expect that none of them are. And yet, here you have it: some of them really are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators, just like some of the rest of us. I’m not judging; I’m only pointing out what it means, which is just this: we’re all human after all.

But there’s another point that occurred to me when thinking about Haggard. One of the cornerstones of Haggard’s career, and the power of the movement he is a part of, and the power of the Republican party he served, is hatred. It might be impolite to point that out, but it’s true. Haggard was a willing participant in a system which stokes hatred, not exclusively against gay people, but largely against gay people. Encouraging and fomenting hatred is a political skill, and some people are better at it than others. I bet the people who are best at hating others are so good at it because they’ve had lots of practice hating themselves.

I feel very sorry for Haggard, and for all the victims of the corrosive ideology that he represents.

I’m very happy to report that my play Milgram’s War was selected as the Second Prize Winner at the Attic Theatre’s 2006 One-Act Marathon in Los Angeles. A satirical play about prisoner abuse in an unspecified war zone, Milgram’s War was directed by John Timmons and featured Los Angeles actors Dave Huber, Scott Charles, and Rosemarie Li.

I received a $100 cash prize from the Attic Theatre!

Why has it taken me so long to post this news? Well, now you know how my life has been lately.

I certainly agree with Dick Cheney when he says that the primary election of Ned Lamont to be the Democratic candidate for Senator from Connecticut is a victory for the “Al Qaeda types". After all, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush know very well – it’s simple common sense – that the only way we can protect our airports and airliners against native-born passengers carrying bombs aboard is by launching a ruinously expensive war against a far-off country, and bogging us down for God knows how many more years in a long and bloody insurgency without any idea how we’re going to get out of it. The Defeat-O-Crats know this just as well as Joe, Dick, and George. Like we said, it’s just common sense. But they want the terrorists to win. That’s why this result can’t be allowed to stand.

(Of course, Joe, Dick, George, and all the rest of their buddies only want what’s best for America. They would never, ever exploit this issue for political gain.)

Tonight is opening night of Attic Theatre’s Homeland Insecurity. Milgram’s War is the opening play.

I was thinking about my friend “Fred” a few days ago, as a TSA officer pulled me aside for “extra scrutiny", and my bag and laptop case underwent a shallow and perfunctory search by his colleagues. My boarding pass had big bold S’s written across it ("Search"? “Security"? “Stupid Waste of Time"? I don’t know). This is now routine for me; I get this treatment every time I fly.

I have written about the absurdity of finding myself on a so-called “No-Fly List” before. Fred is one of my five loyal readers, and he responded to my post by submitting the following comment:

“Oh no - we had better accept that truce! Osama alone holds our safety in his cowardly hands. LOL.”

(Fred is referring to the so-called “truce offer” in the January 19, 2006 tape of Osama bin Laden )

Fred’s politics, you may have gathered, are opposed to mine. Fred didn’t mean any harm, of course, but when he posted this comment, in his own way, he was calling me a cheese-eating surrender monkey. It’s a common accusation hurled at anyone who doesn’t uncritically and unconditionally support every tiny detail of the Republican right-wing agenda. Anyone who isn’t completely with them is just a filthy traitor who wants the terrorists to win, and that includes me, of course. This is what passes for debate these days.

Fred has uncritically supported everything done by George W. Bush and his corrupt crony government since January 2001, up to and including the many steady erosions of our liberty perpetrated by that crowd. My inconvenience at the airport is just a minor aspect of this trend. I’m much more troubled by the news about all the myriad new ways the NSA and the Bush Administration, with the help of the big telecom companies, are creating to ensure that whenever they want to listen in to anyone’s phone conversations or read their email, they don’t actually have to deal with the inconvenience of justifying their actions in front of a judge.

Based on what I know about Fred, I’ll assume he supports this illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping program 100%. I’m sure that he’d say, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Fred is also a full-throated supporter of the war in Iraq. What’s really hilarious about Fred, though, is that in all of this, my friend considers himself to be a patriotic American.

I thought that the Fourth of July would be an excellent day to point something out to Fred: The United States of America was formed in direct opposition to the values espoused by its current government. This should be evident to anyone who has taken any time at all to learn about the history of our country. Exhibit A is the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

See, the Founders didn’t believe that if you’re doing nothing wrong, then it’s all right for the government to search through your stuff. The Founders believed that if you’re doing nothing wrong, your stuff is none of the government’s god damned business.

“But we’re in a war,” Fred says. “And it’s a war against a different kind of enemy.” To which we Americans reply: Bullshit.

You know, during the Cold War, from roughly 1950 through 1990, the United States squared off against a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. That was a different kind of enemy, too. The Soviet Army was poised to overrun Western Europe and the Soviet nuclear arsenal was ready to utterly destroy the United States - not merely as a political or economic entity, but as a biological entity. During this same period, the United States underwent a tremendous growth in liberty. There were still many abuses (such as COINTELPRO ), but by and large the Cold War was marked at home with an expanding sphere of personal liberty. All this happened despite claims that the Communists were “a different kind of enemy.” Now, compared to the real threat that the Soviet Union posed to the United States (and by way, the real threat posed by the Russian nuclear forces, which still exist), what sort of a threat is Al Qaeda? The answer is not much. Al Qaeda is nothing more than a band of criminals, who should be brought to swift justice with all appropriate legal means. However, there’s nothing about Al Qaeda which necessitates the creation of a surveillance state.

If the President or anybody else in authority wants to listen in on telephone conversations or read email or detain American citizens, all they have to do is justify what they’re doing to a judge, and get a warrant. Why is that so hard? What is the objection to that? That’s the point of this whole NSA story. It was never terribly hard for Bush to get warrants, but he chose not to. Why not?

The Founders of America knew perfectly well that oversight helps prevent abuses of power.The Constitution was specifically created to stop the USA from becoming a monarchy or a dictatorship. Anybody who wants to call himself an American should know that.

I don’t know which rigidly authoritarian Eastern European police state Fred’s ancestors came from, but my ancestors came to America to get away from that shit. My ancestors, along with a lot of other proud and free Americans, stood together and fought a Cold War and a handful of hot wars to defend the liberties which define America, and I’m not prepared to surrender them because I’m spooked over a bunch of criminals.

Happy Fourth of July!

More Spine-Straightening Reading:
Are we such a bunch of wimps?
Big Audio Dynamite

A couple of weekends ago, we closed the Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival. I’m happy it’s over, and I’ll be caught up with my sleep in about another month. (I’ll never be caught up with my blogging, but you knew that already.)

The best thing for me this year was the fact that we completely sold out the first weekend of the festival! It was literally Standing Room Only each night! It was a nightmare to keep handling people as they came in, but that was more than compensated for by the enormous energy and joy the playwrights and the performers derived from a packed house. It really makes a difference!

My one-act play Milgram’s War has been selected as a finalist for the Attic Theatre’s 2006 One-Act Marathon in Los Angeles. Milgram’s War will be one of six finalists produced as part of the Attic Theatre’s Written Word Festival, which starts on July 7th, 2006, and runs for six weeks. A panel of judges drawn from the LA theatre community will see all six of the plays produced, and vote on the winning script. The judges’ final ruling will be announced on August 12, 2006, and cash prizes will be awarded to the second and first place winners.

I’m pretty sure this will be the first play of mine produced in LA. Wish me luck!

I have to admit I’m a little annoyed by “writers” who don’t bother to learn how to use their word processors. Since I am a well-known techie in my circle of writers, I often field questions from my fellows, and I’m happy to help. But I’m also dismayed by the lack of knowledge some writers exhibit about their primary tool. Simple things like properly setting up a page can utterly defeat otherwise intelligent people because, as they lamely explain, “I don’t know anything about computers.”

Well, look: if all you want to do is bang out letters, you don’t need to know much about your word processor; it’s push-button simple. There’s not much formatting involved. On the other hand, if you are creating documents of any complexity at all, you should know how to manage that. Plays are rather complex in terms of their formatting. But there are simple commands in every decent word processor to create the formatting you like (and there are programs you can buy that will do the formatting for you, if you’re rich and lazy). It’s not hard, though, and it’s not “computers".

Things like highlighting a block of text, pointing to a menu, and clicking on a command aren’t arcane any more. They don’t belong to the realm of “computer literacy". In the age of the $500 laptop computer, they’re just everyday nuts and bolts stuff. It’s easier than driving a car (and less dangerous). Nobody is too stupid to learn this stuff. If you don’t know how to do it, then you just haven’t bothered to learn it – which isn’t a value judgement, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person – unless you’re a “writer". In that case, as I said, I’m a little annoyed. Are you a writer? Then be a writer. Take the time to learn how to use your tools.

I thought back to this on my vacation, when we took an afternoon to tour Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West. One of the highlights of the tour, for me, was visiting Hemingway’s writing room, which still has his portable Royal typewriter. This humble machine was the instrument Hemingway used to create some of his best work. Hemingway, obviously, was not a mechanical engineer, but I’m sure he knew how to change the ribbon and set the margins on his typewriter. In fact, given the amount of travelling he must have done with it, I’m confident he was able to make simple repairs to the machine.

Now what would Hemingway say to you if you told him you couldn’t figure out how to make your word processor format your document correctly? I’ll tell you.

He’d laugh. In your face.

A memory from high school visited me very vividly last night. I recall sitting in my high school library, and I was working on some science assignment, but I’ve forgotten the details. Nerd that I was (and am), I was solving the problem by creating a program on my handy TI-59 Programmable calculator. To create this program, I had written the program steps – essentially keystrokes – in a column on a couple of sheets of paper. A program would look something like this:

RCL 1
x
RCL 0
x2
+
RCL 2
x
RCL 0
+
RCL 3
=

The paper was at my left hand, and my calculator on my right as I keyed the steps into it (in “learn” mode).

As I was doing this, an older woman – whom I had never seen before or since – toodled up beside my table and without a word of introduction, she said:

“In my day, we didn’t need a calculator to add up a column of figures.”

And then she shambled away, smugly, without even waiting for an answer.

I think she was an administrator of some sort at the school.

I guess a picture really IS worth a thousand words.
On the other hand, a US dollar is worth about 8 yuan – but don’t expect that to last.

Last night was the first of two (only two!) performances of No Politics at the Theatre Cooperative, and it was an excellent debut! We had a full house! (In fact, the management of the house turned people away at the door, which I will have more to say about shortly.) The performance itself was perfect! And the audience went right along with it the whole time. They laughed! They gasped! They clapped! I stood in the back of the house with my director, and we were a pretty proud pair as the play unfolded. At each of the critical moments where we knew we’d have to have the audience, we were rewarded with the reactions we’d sought. It was a beautiful thing. After the performance, we had a Q-and-A with me, the director, and the cast. That part was OK, and I did in fact learn some things I hadn’t known about the script, but I’d already learned what I needed to know through the laughter and the applause of the audience, and through the smiles on their faces when the lights came up. The play worked, it was entertaining, and people weren’t sorry they came to see it. Of course, I was extremely blessed to have been paired with such a skilled director and such a talented and energetic cast. (If that hadn’t been the case, and the play flopped, I might be stuck wondering whether it was a bad script or just a bad performance; and I’d probably just blame the performance.)

Last night, we opened. Tonight, we close. It’s a small theatre in a backwater of the city. But today I feel a flush of accomplishment and pride unlike anything I’ve ever felt as a playwright. It’s a good feeling.

A few years ago, you may recall, some religious fanatics in Georgia managed to push a measure through their local school board mandating that biology textbooks should bear a disclaimer sticker which states:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

The fanatics insisted that they had no intention of advancing creationism in the classroom. (Of course not!!) They swore that all they wanted was to have students aware that a diversity of viewpoints existed on the question of the origin of life. This is the same line that the “Intelligent Design” (a.k.a. “Rebranded Creationism") crowd recently tried to use in Dover, Pennsylvania, when they managed to cram down their baloney into the local curriculum. Their main talking point is that we should “Teach the Controversy“. George W. Bush clucked approvingly of this talking point, and said that he thought teaching the controversy was a good idea.

Well, now that they’ve opened the door, I don’t see why teaching the controversy needs to be limited to science education. There’s plenty of controversy between religions, for example. People have fought wars over things like whether priests should be allowed to marry, after all! But you know, I’d like to get even more basic than that. How would the fanatics like it if we put this on the front of every catechism – or even every Bible? Here’s my first draft:

This book contains material about God. Students should be advised that God is only a theory, not a fact. The existence of God has never been proven. Most theologians and philosophers believe that God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven. There are many gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of God, and there are alternative explanations for every phenomenon routinely ascribed to God. Students should be aware of these alternatives, and should know that they do not need to believe in any God at all in order to understand the world and be successful in it. Belief in God can be beneficial, but it has also been known to have many potentially life-threatening side effects, such as feelings of moral superiority, delusional behavior, blind obedience to authority and even the commission of acts of heinous sin in the mistaken belief that God has commanded it. Students should be careful in how they think about God and know that no matter what they believe, the world is as it is. Reality is still there whether you believe it or not.

Hmm. That would be pretty hard to fit on a sticker, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s only a first draft. While I’m working on it, you can take a look at these alternative disclaimer stickers, made up by a biology professor.

Seriously, I think we should teach our children more about religion, not less. I think the Bible ought to be required reading – so that students can see for themselves a) what a magnificent work of mythic storytelling it is, b) what a fundamental piece of literature it is to this culture, c) how many truly appalling ideas it contains, and d) how anyone who thinks it’s literally true either can’t possibly have read it or is an idiot. (or is selling something.)

Oh, and P.S. If you haven’t read my post carefully, you may go off believing that I am hostile to belief in God. That’s not true at all. I’m just saying that you can’t say, on the one hand, you want people to have open minds, but then turn around and declare that some things are off-limits to open minds. Minds are either open or closed.

I’m very excited to announce that my one-act play, No Politics, is being performed at the Theatre Cooperative in Somerville this February 3rd and 4th! We’ve got an outstanding cast and crew, and I’m expecting it to be a really fun show!

No Politics is a comedy about the challenges of keeping the peace in a family where everybody has a different political opinion. If you’ve ever been to a family gathering where the mere mention of “George W. Bush” or “Bill Clinton” could ignite another War Between the States right in your own home, then this is the play for you! Somewhere between Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and What’s the Matter With Kansas?, No Politics is a hilarious and provocative exploration of a group of people who love each other, even as they look at each other across the Red-Blue divide. No matter what your politics are, you’ll enjoy No Politics!

As part of its New Play Series, the Theatre Cooperative is mounting a special two-night full performance of No Politics on Friday and Saturday, February 3rd and 4th, 2006, at 8:00 PM.

Tickets for No Politics are $10.00 and are available at Theater Mania : (http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/116299)
Or you can call the Theatre Cooperative Box Office at (617) 625-1300.

More information about the Theatre Cooperative’s production of No Politics is available here (http://theatrecoop.org/newplays06.html).
More information about the Theatre Cooperative is available here (http://www.theatrecoop.org/) and here (http://www.theatermania.com/content/theater.cfm/int_show_id/116299).

The Theatre Cooperative is located at 277 Broadway, in Somerville. A map and directions to the theatre can be found here (http://theatrecoop.org/map05.html). A cool bird’s-eye view can be seen here (http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=adr.277%20Broadway%2c%20Somerville%2c%20MA%2002145).

I’m proud and honored that the Theatre Cooperative has chosen No Politics as part of its New Play Series, and I’m confident that it will be a great show! I hope to see you there!

The web is a wonderful thing. Once upon a time, it was difficult to find rambling, incoherent, grandiose, paranoid delusion in a single narrative. It used to be that the best way to get this stuff was to be a celebrity, in which case the paranoid-delusional out there would send it to you in the mail. Nowadays, you can find a veritable smorgasbord of conspiracy on the web. This is one of the tastier samples out there:

“…The US government controlled all of my conversations since my birth with a computer program, beam weapons, and subliminal messages that went back in time to control us, so that I have been isolated most of my life from the rest of society. Government agents and secret society agents, claimed that the US military and the CIA had been targeting my person and associates with beam weapons, and that the CIA had done most of the time travel beam weapons body possession of my person back in time that changed my physical form from one form to another.”

Much, much more where that came from here.

I admit I’m a junkie for this kind of material. Aside from its sheer surface entertainment value, I’m also drawn to the people who write it, though I’m a little hard-pressed to explain what I find so fascinating about such characters. There’s mental illness here, sure, but there’s more. They’re a little sad, I think, that the world is altogether too mundane to contain their fantasies, or that they didn’t turn out to be as important as they deserve to be. Well … there but for a well-regulated prefrontal cortex (or lack of a good thought screen hat) go I.

Someday I’d like to write about one of these guys.

(ENTER BILL. BILL wears a short-sleeve white shirt with a name tag, a black tie, pressed slacks, and unassuming black shoes. He is in a television commercial:)

BILL:The looks on their faces when I’ve done my best to help ‘em – that’s what makes the job worthwhile.

ANNOUNCER 1:(Voice Only)Bill O’Keestis. Father of three, and a Flawed-Mart employee for fourteen years.

BILL:We’re here to help the customer find exactly what they’re looking for, and when they’ve found it, they need to know that they’re going home with the best price they could possibly pay.

ANNOUNCER 1:He’s been an assistant manager for the past eight years.

BILL:And if that means that we have to work a few hours off the clock, well, we’ll do whatever it takes.

ANNOUNCER 1:He’s finally got enough time with the company to qualify for health insurance.

BILL:I’m not asking my people to do anything I don’t do.

ANNOUNCER 1:And he’s finally got a wage that lets him afford it, unlike most of the people he manages.

BILL:It’s been a long time since I had that health insurance.

ANNOUNCER 1:He used to run the hardware store downtown. But the hardware store isn’t there any more.

BILL:People want low prices!

ANNOUNCER 1:Neither is downtown.

BILL:I don’t mind working a little overtime. Neither do any of the people I manage.

ANNOUNCER 1:Of course, it’s completely against Flawed-Mart policy to ask or expect our sales associates to work off the clock.

BILL:I was only doing what the store manager told me to do.

ANNOUNCER 1:And we don’t expect our managers to alter employee time cards.

BILL:He told me to do that, too.

ANNOUNCER 1:I said, our managers don’t alter employee time cards.

BILL:I have three daughters at home.

ANNOUNCER 1:Of course there are targets to meet. Flawed-Mart works hard to keep payroll costs down, in order to pass the savings to you.

BILL:I need this job.

ANNOUNCER 1:We don’t tell our managers to time-shave. We don’t have to.

BILL:My wife is sick. I need health insurance!

ANNOUNCER 1:And it’s men like Bill O’Keestis that keep Flawed-Mart the kind of place it is.

BILL:It won’t happen again. I swear!

ANNOUNCER 1:A place where you can find the finest Chinese-made products at the lowest rock-bottom prices.

BILL:Please!

ANNOUNCER 1:Flawed-Mart. Always willing to find a scapegoat. Always.

BILL:It’s the fucking media! If they hadn’t run this story, who’d've cared!

ANNOUNCER 2:(Voice Only)Now seeking sales associates in your area! Apply at your nearest Flawed-Mart.

Was it simple intolerance? Xenophobia? Class resentment? Insecurity? Mental illness? Self-loathing? Or a combustible mix of all of these? Whatever it was, put on display on this video segment from Trading Spouses, it made for a hell of a show (in more ways than one, apparently). This poor woman from Louisiana loses it when she returns from “dark-sided” Massachusetts, and launches into a tirade about being a “prayer warrior,” about “gargoyles,” about the horrible “soltice party” [sic] she attended, about how she had to force her hosts’ children to go to a Catholic Church! I watched slack-jawed – appropriately enough, I suppose – as this woman screamed at her husband and children, humiliating herself and her family on national television. (and I thought, “those girls aren’t going to let their mother ever forget about that“) At one point, she tries to throw out all the crew members who aren’t Christians, and screams, “Get the hell out of my house – In Jesus’s name, I pray.” Brilliant.

It was great TV. I feel sorry for her, because there are no do-overs on national TV, and she’s had her bite at the apple, and she will forever be the fundamentalist crazy fat lady on the TV who doesn’t even know what a solstice is. (Hint: It has nothing to do with Satan.) However, sorry as I feel for her, it was still great TV.

If I had written her words as dialog, I would have been accused of being an anti-Christian – or anti-Southern – or anti-fat bigot, a hater of people who are not like me. If I had written her words as dialog, they would have been dismissed as totally unrealistic and over-the-top. Now I have a counter-example. Serious, steadfast, insular, raging lunatics really exist, utterly convinced of their own rightness and the rightness of their particular version of reality.

It’s sad, and I pity this poor woman and her family – not that she would care. I come from the hated state of Massachusetts, and I’m not a Christian, so I must be dark-sided. For what it’s worth, I agree with Margaret Perrin that astrology, psychics, and tarot cards are baloney; where I part company with Margaret is that I don’t think they’re evil. Also I eat less.

Somewhere at a secure, undisclosed location, a grey-suited government official gives the word to a junior officer. In the other room, a prisoner waits. He knows where a bomb is hidden, and when it’s going to explode. Clearly, the gloves are going to have to come off…

Milgram’s War is a black comedy about the war, terrorism, and torture. It’s a one-act play which we will read for the first time on Sunday, December 4th, at Playwrights’ Platform. It’s not a polemic – I wanted to write a real play which, while being thoughtful and interesting, would also be funny and entertaining. I think I’ve largely succeeded. I’ll see how close to the mark I got on Sunday.

My short plays Simbiotic and dog_eat_dog.com have just been published by JAC Publishing & Promotions of Burlington, MA. I just received some copies, and they really look great. JAC Publishing is lately picking up a lot of the good local work – there are some terrific pieces in their latest crop – and I’m very proud to be counted among that group. If you’re looking for a good play to perform, or if you just want to help me justify my writing habit to my family, please go spend some money there.

What do you do when your brand of politics isn’t the same as your in-laws’? When you can’t agree on whether George W. Bush is the greatest president ever or … well, not, you might do what Jack and Amy do when they’re hosting their parents. In their house, when the in-laws are visiting, the rule is, “No Politics". But in a family of strongly-held opinions, it’s hard to stick to rules like that…

No Politics is the title of my new comedy, which will be playing at the Theatre Cooperative in a workshop production on February 3rd and 4th, 2006. The performance will be followed by a talk-back session with the director, the cast, and me.

I’ve been writing No Politics since 2003, when I had the sense that a lot of people are experiencing the strains of our current political situation in their families. Family comedy is a new genre for me, and I’m really pleased at the opportunity which the Theatre Cooperative has extended to me in offering this workshop production. If you’re in town on those nights, please consider coming to the show! Whether you vote Blue or Red, whether you’re celebrating or seething at the current administration, I promise you a lot of laughs!

(No American soldiers, “former Hill staffers", or New York Times “reporters” were harmed in the making of this play.)

I just saw George W. Bush on the television, announcing his program to help the victims of the terrible disaster on the Gulf Coast. In response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Bush has announced that the United States will invade Cuba. “We can either fight the hurricanes in the Caribbean, where they spawn, or we can fight them on our own soil,” he said. Makes a whole lot of sense to me. Let’s Roll!

I’m sorry, but Larry King is an idiot. For proof, see this actual quote from last night’s program :

LARRY KING: “…how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he really said that. And that is why Larry King won’t do two shows a night. He just won’t. It wouldn’t be fair to him or to his audience.

Thank Jesus for James Dobson! See, without insights like this, I would never have realized that I am (are you ready for this?) – gay!

…most homosexuals “…were not explicitly [so] when they were children. More often, they displayed a ‘nonmasculinity’ that set them painfully apart from other boys: unathletic … somewhat passive, unaggressive and uninterested in rough-and-tumble play. A number of them had traits that could be considered gifts: bright, precocious, social and relational, and artistically talented. Tip: Discern whether your boy struggles with feelings of ‘not belonging.’”

Say – I thought to myself when I read these words. Wasn’t I “unathletic, passive, unaggressive and uninterested in rough-and-tumble play"? I bet my gym teachers thought so! Wasn’t I “bright, precocious, …and artistically talented"? Yeah… Didn’t I feel like I “didn’t belong"? Yeah… hmmmm….

<a moment of reflection later…>

Oh My GOD! I must be GAY! And worse than that – I’ve been in deep closeted denial all these years – even though I am totally uninterested in having sex with men! My wife sure will be surprised when she finds out! (So will all those girls I dated…most of them, anyway…)

Dobson also helpfully blows the whistle (no pun intended) on the Homosexual Campaign Against Children. For a while after reading the article, I was puzzled, because it didn’t convince me that there actually is a Homosexual Campaign Against Children (outside of Dobby’s paranoid mind). See, for reasons I can’t quite discern, he doesn’t actually bother to back up his charges with any, um, you know, sources and facts. But never mind! If Crude-but-Inaccurate Stereotypes and Proof by Assertion^[*] are good enough for Jesus and Doc Dob, they’re good enough for me!

Since my recent revelation, I’ve changed my mind about Ronnie Paris, Jr., who really took James Dobson’s teachings to heart. I used to think that this man was a despicable murderer, a man who would kill his own child for the sake of his ignorant rage and prejudice. But now, I realize that Paris was only trying to help his Boy Become a Man^TM. See, I know now that thanks to Dobson and papa Paris, little Ronnie (3 years old and GAY!) has been spared the prospect of growing up and becoming a part of the Homosexual Campaign Against Children; and countless other little children, as yet unborn, have been spared the prospect of being little Ronnie’s victims. Instead, I’m confident that even now, up in Heaven, little baby Ronnie has been cured of homosexuality by Jesus’s magical touch, and the Apostles are showing him how to have some rough-and-tumble fun in the great outdoors, just like Real Men Who Aren’t Homosexual do.

Eric Rudolph was sentenced yesterday to two life sentences for a series of deadly bombings he committed. Rudolph issued a statement in which he justified his crimes by claiming to be a part of the movement to end abortion. One of Rudolph’s bombs did in fact target a women’s clinic (and killed an off-duty policeman), so that checks out. I didn’t know that abortions were also being performed in gay nightclubs and at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where two more of Rudolph’s bombs exploded, but that just goes to show that you learn something new every day.

Of course, after having killed two people and injured 150, Rudolph’s spree, in the end, never prevented a single abortion. There are plenty of people out there, who are both for and against a woman’s right to choose, who work on the issue legally and nonviolently. Some activists have found common cause in working from people on the opposite side of the issue to reduce the number of abortions. If Rudolph was so concerned about abortion, there were lots of things for him to do that didn’t involve explosives. Unfortunately, they did involve hard work, and apparently that just wasn’t exciting enough.

I don’t think Eric Rudolph is a hateful Christianist terrorist of the Paul Hill variety. I think it’s closer to the truth to say that Rudolph never really cared about abortion. What Eric Rudolph really wanted was to be the hero in his own action movie. He only needed a cause, but not to give his life meaning – he needed a cause as a plot device. In action movies, it doesn’t matter what the backstory is; all it needs is a good guy, a bad guy and the thinnest veneer of plausibility. Beyond that, nobody cares as long as the chases are cool and the explosions are big.

Rudolph got his explosions and his chase scenes. It’s too bad he left so many destroyed lives in his wake. It also kind of sucks for him that the real heroes of the story were the men and women who tracked him down and brought him to justice. May he rot in prison, and may we never hear from him again until the footnoted obituary; with luck, nobody will even remember the name by then.

Words to make all free people proud:

I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our seaports and look at our railway stations: Even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free; they come to live the life they choose; they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

    – London Mayor Ken Livingstone, in the aftermath of the bomb attacks in his city.

Andrew Sullivan posted this remembrance today:

Today is the late math genius’s birthday. Turing was a brilliant Englishman, one of the founding fathers of computer science, and a patriot whose cracking of the Nazis’ Enigma Code was critical to winning the war against Hitler. His amazing work was rewarded by being offered the choice in 1952 of choosing chemical castration or imprisonment for being gay. Two years later, a broken man, he killed himself. Today is a day for honoring him and the countless men and women over the centuries whose gifts and dignity were obliterated by ignorance, oppression and hate, hate that is still being excused and perpetrated today. May those of us lucky enough to have been born in their wake never forget what they went through, never forget the cruelty and evil they had to confront, and do everything we can to prevent these wounds being passed to the next generation.

I wish I believed that a lot has changed since the 1950s. Turing was an atheist as well as an intellectual and a homosexual. I am confident that he would not last long in the political climate of these times, regardless of his accomplishments and contributions.

My play Get Out of My American Way, which was performed at the Fourth Boston Theater Marathon in 2002, has been published by Baker’s Plays in their BTM4 Anthology, which is on sale here. (Better late than never, I suppose).

My short plays dog_eat_dog.com and Simbiotic have been accepted for publication by JAC Publishing. These will be available shortly as individual books.

Finally, my short play Bits was performed at the 33rd Annual Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival of New Works this June, and will be performed at the XXX Annual Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival in July. I’m not sure how I feel about performing at an XXX festival, but I am proud that the Platform has been at this longer than Sam French.

Treason never looked so smart! Dannika’s set to go straight to the best-dressed list at Gitmo in this charcoal grey outfit by Gia Sarlocci. Its bold lines and flattering cut make her the envy of Democrats/Traitors everywhere. This bold ensemble looks right at home wherever enemies of America gather: in a George Soros board room, hanging out in Hollywood with the liberal elite, or out on the town after a hard day at MoveOn.org! Dannika proves you don’t have to look like a hippie, or a Muslim, to hate freedom. It’s a look that might be called conservative, except Dannika believes in free speech, limited but effective government, fiscal responsibility and the separation of church and state. It’s a shame she’ll be trading it in for a burlap hood and an orange jumpsuit, but at least she’ll look great as she’s riding the CIA’s Gulfstream to Cuba!

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. – Woody Allen

Everyone thinks about their mortality. Probably, everyone thinks about how to transcend it. There sure are plenty of ideas out there, as there have been for thousands of years (many of them have plenty of currency today). Of course I’ve been thinking about this because my wife and I are about to participate in the single most popular mode of achieving immortality, that is, we’re about to have a child.

I don’t want to get specific in this post, though, because I want to do something a little different with this post. I want to solicit your opinion this time out. Since everyone brings their own assumptions to the question, I don’t want to prejudice your answers.

So: How do you plan to live forever?

Feel free to interpret the question as you like. Consider it as a spiritual problem, a philosophical problem, a metaphysical problem, or even a biological problem. Everybody has something to say about immortality, especially their own.

Post anonymously if you like, but please post. I will follow up in a later post, though I can’t promise how much later, because baby is due any day now.

You might have missed it, if you weren’t looking. Another couple of servicemen were killed in Iraq this weekend.

Did you read that? See it on the news?

That’s in addition to the 24 dead and 58 wounded after four car bombings in Baghdad and Tikrit. In general, the level of violence in Iraq seems to be back on the increase. And in other news, George W. Bush just got Congress to pony up another $80 billion (borrowed money, of course) to finance the war and occupation. Remember when he promised this occupation would fund itself? Oh, never mind. And so, the numbers just keep climbing: 1,571 killed and 11,888 wounded, and financial costs of approximately $300 billion. (I’m expecting the Congress to rubberstamp this request, just like it always does.)

Hey, did you hear? We’re Still At War! In fact, we’re kinda losing it!

Was this news on the front page of any newspaper? Did it lead any newscasts? It wasn’t even easy to find on the Internet.

Did you catch those great “elections” in Iraq back in January? It’s been three months since then. Let me ask you a few questions about those great elections. Who ran for office? Who won? Who were you rooting for? Do you even know? Do you even care?

And now, three months after these great elections, this Glorious Victory for Democracy, where’s the government? The fact is, they still haven’t formed a government – three months after elections!

(If you’re still keeping score at home, 127 American service members have been killed and 1,118 wounded while we’ve been waiting for the Iraqis to form a government.)

Who’s driving this clown car? Oh, wait: I already know.

We’re now two years into the Second Bush War. It’s been two years since “Mission Accomplished,” and we’re still bleeding over Iraq, literally as well as figuratively, blood and red ink in alarming volumes, and I’m still sitting here wondering just what the fuck was the reason to get us into this mess again?

And while I’m wondering that, it seems like the Iraq War has disappeared from the national news. Why do you suppose that is?

Have we just become numb to the steady drip-drip-drip of American and Iraqi deaths? Or has the news been squelched by the media, reduced to the minimum volume necessary so that they can still say with a straight face, “we covered it – now move along"?

Well, on the one hand, broadcasting quagmire and failure is bad politics: it reflects badly on the liar and fool who got us into this mess, who is well-known to be nasty and vindictive to those who are seen to disagree with him or his party. We have abundant evidence that the mainstream media are either on the Republicans’ side already (e.g. Fox News) or have been effectively bullied into meek submission to the Republican agenda (e.g. CNN). On the other hand, quagmire and failure is a real bummer: it just doesn’t sell advertising, a lot of which is incidentally bought by Republican companies.

And so, it makes all kinds of sense that we have a steady turn-down of the news from Iraq. Slowly it is scrubbed from the news, and the air minutes and the column inches are fed a different diet. Instead of hearing about anything which actually has any bearing on our lives, the newscasts are led by Scott Peterson, then Robert Blake, then Michael Jackson, then Terri Schiavo, then John Paul II, then Charles and Camilla, then Michael Jackson again, then Cardinal Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI … Who’s next? Who cares, as long as the public is sufficiently distracted?

And on and on and on it goes, while somewhere, in a far-off land, another American lies bleeding to death in the street. While you’re watching Fox News tonight, his body will be secretly conveyed under cover of darkness back to the United States, safely shielded from any media attention, and he will be quietly buried and forgotten. His government, so eager to get into this war and now with no fucking clue how to win it or otherwise disengage, is keen to just forget the whole thing, and hopes that you will want to just forget it as well.

I guess it’s just the Patriotic Thing to Do.

Last week, I had a short play of mine performed in a festival in New York. The festival producers had asked me to supply a short bio for the program, and I sent them something which began like this:

Patrick M Brennan is a playwright trapped inside the body of a computer programmer…

I think that’s a pretty good joke. At least it’s a not-bad joke. All right, it’s a joke!

Anyway, when I went to see a performance of the festival, this is what was written in the program:

Patrick M Brennan is trapped inside a computer programmer…

ummm… What?!? I’m trapped inside a computer programmer? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? They took my joke and they turned it into a confusing non-sequitur. Thank You! I’m sure that made a terrific impression on the audience!

See, I’m a writer. I think about the words I’m writing. Even when I write a bio, I’m careful about my words. Words are all I have. Screwing up an actor’s bio would be bad, but not nearly as bad as screwing up a writer’s bio.

Anyway, of course I know they didn’t do it on purpose. Someone clearly typed my bio into the document for the program, and made an honest mistake.

Since I sent the bio to them over email, however, it kind of baffles me that Copy and Paste seems beyond their comprehension …
(as does actual proofreading …)

No, it’s OK. I’m over it now. Really. I didn’t even mention it to them. I only blogged it for the whole world to see!

No, really, it’s OK. The medication will kick in any moment now … really.

(mumbling to self:) “trapped inside a computer programmer.” Oh, hey, that’s a great joke. Yeah.

10. Kirk jostles better when the Enterprise is hit.

9. Kirk doesn’t have some kind of foofy accent.

8. Kirk rips his shirt at the drop of a hat. Picard keeps pulling his shirt down, as it keeps riding up, and that really bothers him. (What is he hiding?)

7. Kirk : Screw the Prime Directive, let’s kill something!

6. Picard delegates the landing parties to his first officer; Kirk insists on doing it himself.

5. Picard delegates the overacting to his first officer; Kirk insists on doing it himself.

4. Kirk drinks coffee ; Picard drinks tea. ‘Nuff said.

3. Kirk makes sure to show all the alien babes the “Captain’s Log".

2. Kirk: Red-blooded American. Picard: French? British? We’re not really sure, but it’s definitely suspicious.

1. Kirk: not afraid to wear a rug.

Boy, if there’s anything we should learn from the Terri Schiavo case, it’s that we should all make living wills. Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson, and I decided that the best way to make sure that my living will is honored is to post it on the web. (That way, there won’t be any doubt as to its authenticity.) So here goes:

LIVING WILL
I, Patrick M Brennan, being of sound mind and body, do affirm and declare that this is my LIVING WILL, and reflects my decisions regarding my care in the event of a medical condition which renders me incapable of making informed decisions for myself. I make this declaration of my own free will, without any force or coercion whatsoever.

IF, in the judgment of my physician, I am suffering from an irreversible condition so that I cannot care for myself or make decisions for myself and am expected to die without life-sustaining treatment provided in accordance with prevailing standards of care:

(a) I would very much like my breathing yet mindless body, the bag of reflexes which I have become, to be reduced to being a political football, to be kicked around the media by the likes of Tom DeLay and Randall Terry in the pursuit of a cheap political stunt which ensures them a few days’ worth of headlines;

(b) I definitely do not want my spouse to be making any decisions for me whatsoever; I think that’s best left to my parents. After all, once upon a time, when I was capable of exercising my own free will, I chose of that selfsame free will to spend the rest of my life with my spouse, and I have only spent years sharing my home and my bed with her. Therefore, clearly, not only do I share none of my religious, moral, and ethical values with my spouse, but she also knows nothing about my religious, moral, and ethical values. My parents, on the other hand, who visited our home on holidays and weekends, and with whom we occasionally have spoken on the phone, know all about my values, which is why they wish to impose their values on my decision regarding how I control the end of my life. Therefore, they should have the final say, not my spouse.

(c ) Speaking of my spouse, if I were somehow capable of receiving and integrating outside stimuli and understanding what was going on around me, it would please me immensely to watch on live television as my spouse’s name is repeatedly dragged through the mud in the House of Representatives by crass and opportunistic politicians, simply for attempting to fulfill what she perceives to be my wishes and my best interest.

(d) I’d also like someone to explain to my spouse exactly what she’s doing wrong. Apparently, she didn’t realize that when the Republican Party claims to be the party of getting government off the backs of the people, they weren’t talking about gravely personal decisions within a family. When it’s an industrial plant, owned by Republican donors, belching tons of toxic filth into the air and water, that’s a private matter, and the government should get off those donors’ backs. When it’s my family, struggling to come to terms with my basic wishes regarding the end of my life, that’s where government belongs.

(e) And I’d really love it if somebody could make sure that there are boatloads of creepy anti-abortion protesters hanging around outside my hospital room, especially if they could harass my spouse as she is coming to visit me. That’s because it’s not bad enough that she’s dealing with my illness and impending death – she should be hounded by crazy fundies with their own agenda who claim to be “pro-life” but who literally couldn’t care whether I live or die.

(f) I’d be particularly pleased if the astronomical costs of my care placed a horrible burden of debt on my spouse, and if, thanks to the very same Republicans in the Congress, she would be utterly denied the ability to get out from under it. It would make my afterlife a real joy to know that she would lose our house, our savings, and all our property, literally everything we have worked together to build; and she would be reduced to a life of poverty, working only to pay off what she could of her debt burden, and that without our savings, our daughter would be deprived of any chance to ever receive a decent education, and therefore a way back into the middle class, which is where we were before I had my accident.

(g) Speaking of costs, I wouldn’t want any of the burden of my illness to fall on the government. That’s why I support the Texas law that George W. Bush signed when he was governor, allowing hospitals to overrule even the decisions of the family, and finally remove my feeding tube once there isn’t any more money left to pay for my care. You see, once my spouse is finally bled dry by the costs of maintaining my breathing, bedsore-ridden carcass in a state of living death, I know that the Republican-dominated Congress, which just gutted Medicare and Medicaid, has ensured that there will be no money left; and given the choice between honoring their commitment to “life” and their commitment to tax cuts for their corporate friends, well, you know – the TV cameras won’t be running forever. Once they’ve been turned off, so will my life support. Finally.

(h) And of course, nothing would please me more than to have the whole sad saga of my family’s suffering splayed across FOX News and talk radio as some cheap maudlin moralistic circus, as a feeding frenzy for the kind of bottom-feeding media types who need my story to sell advertising, and who will be on to the next soap opera in another couple of weeks.

Signed on the 23rd day of March, 2005, by my hand and seal:

/s/
Patrick M Brennan

What’s the fastest, safest, cleanest, most efficient way to travel ever invented? And is it a good idea to buy one? That’s the question Claude and Shannon are asking themselves, in my new ten-minute comedy Bits, which is having a performance in New York this April and a short run in Boston this May!

In New York, I’m very pleased to be returning to the American Globe Theater’s 11th 15-Minute Play Festival, running April 18th-30th. (For information or ticket reservations call American Globe Theatre at 212-869-9809, or go to Theater Mania. Call early, they’re always sold out!) I was at this festival two years ago, and it’s one of the best venues I’ve ever played in. I’m pleased to note that Stacie Scaduto and Don Downie, the same actors who took Bits up in its last performance in New York, are performing at the American Globe.

In Boston, this will be my first time being part of the Devanaughn Theater’s Dragonfly Festival, running May 5-22nd. (Go to Theater Mania for tickets.)

Each venue has a different cast and director, so I am particularly excited to see what different groups of people are able to find in this script. Besides that, these two festivals are absolutely worth the price of admission ($15 in both cases, I think).

I’m not alone in being sorry to note the passing of Arthur Miller. Miller was a great playwright and a great American. His moral clarity and his willingness to question prevailing orthodoxy set an example for all of us. I have always been profoundly influenced by his writing. We need more such men today.

This is George.

George is in charge of the biggest and most successful retirement insurance program in the world.

This is George’s friend Ken. You might remember the company he used to run.

George has a terrific idea for you …and Ken. Mostly for Ken. Here’s what he’d like to do.

First, George will borrow a dollar from Ken. He’ll do this by selling US Treasury Securities to Ken. Ken knows this is a pretty good investment, because they’re backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, with a low rate of return but with virtually no risk.

(George has been borrowing a lot of dollars on your behalf from Ken lately, but that’s another story.)

Next, George takes a dollar from you in Social Security payroll taxes. Right now, when you give that dollar to George, you’re paying part of some retiree’s monthly Social Security installment, and you expect that somewhere down the line, some other person will help pay yours when you retire. That’s the contract that forms the basis of Social Security.

Well, George takes your dollar and gives it to the retiree just like he’s always done. However, George says he’s got a better idea for the second part of the deal: you know, the one where you get paid back that dollar when you retire.

Here’s the deal, says George. (He almost said New Deal.) He’s got that dollar that he just borrowed from Ken. He says, instead of giving it to you when you retire, he’ll give it to you now, and then let you invest it in the markets. He says that he’s sure that by investing it in the markets, you can earn a high rate of return. High enough, he says, that you’ll end up with much more money in your retirement than you’d end up with if you just had Social Security.

Well, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want more money when they retire, right? So you say, Sure, George. Sign me up. And you hold out your hand for that dollar.

Oh, no, you don’t understand, says George. He didn’t say he’d just give you your dollar back. See, what he meant was: He’s going to invest this money in the markets for you. And then, when you retire, he’ll give you that dollar back, plus whatever you earn on it from investing it in the market.

That’s not exactly what George said at first, but what the hell. You’re still going to get those great returns from investing in the market, right? So okay, you go along with it.

George takes the dollar he borrowed from Ken, and he puts it into an account with your name on it. Then, he uses that dollar, from that account, to buy a share of stock in Ken’s company. Now, your account is just one of many millions of accounts that George controls this way, so when he starts buying stock in Ken’s company, he’s buying a lot of stock, and the price of the stock starts to rise. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth two dollars.

Ken has a few shares of his company’s stock, too. Ken likes the fact that his stock price is going up, especially since he didn’t pay anywhere near what you paid for the stock. But hey, as long as stock prices are rising, who cares? After all, it’s worth a lot more than you paid for it, isn’t it? So everybody’s happy. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth three dollars.

At this point, George tells you that there’s something else about your account you need to know about. Since it’s a private account, he’s going to charge you a quarter to administer it for you. Well, what the hell? After all, you put a dollar in, and now it’s worth three dollars, which is two dollars more than you would have gotten back with old Social Security. So even minus a quarter, you’re still way ahead of the game.

A few years later, Ken is found to have committed a few felonies in the conduct of his business.

It seems his company wasn’t doing nearly as well as everyone thought it was doing. Ken was lying about the state of his company’s finances in order to get people to keep buying his company’s stock. That’s called securities fraud.

Of course, Ken has known for a long time that the jig was up. (When you have friends like George, you know when the FBI is on its way.) That’s why he sold all of his stock, at three dollars per share. Ken made a lot of money. But by the time word of his arrest and his company’s collapse reaches you, the selling frenzy has already begun. Ken’s company’s stock is worth a penny a share.

Remember that dollar? All you have left of it is one cent.

There’s nothing I can do about that, says George. Investment carries risk. You read the prospectus before you signed on.

That’s right, says his friend Paul. “Part of the genius of capitalism is that people get to make good decisions or bad decisions. And they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions.”

Well, says George, now that it’s time for you to retire, let’s see how you did.

You have one penny in your account.

You owe George a quarter for managing the account. That doesn’t depend on how well you did.

Oh, and remember the dollar you started the account with? George borrowed that dollar from Ken, but in thirty years, a 2.5% bond has doubled in value. Remember, George borrowed it in your name.

So now you owe Ken two dollars and George a quarter. Those are tax dollars, by the way, which makes George’s IRS, in effect, Ken’s collection agency.

You haven’t got it? You were counting on that three dollar return? That’s too bad, but George will be all too happy to help you out by liquidating your house or anything else you have of value.

Ken needs that money, after all.

See, after bankruptcy reorganization gets that company back on its feet, Ken has some penny stock to buy.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away".
         – Philip K. Dick

A car carrying a father, a mother, and their children was stopped by US gunfire yesterday as the car approached an Army foot patrol. The mother and the father were killed by machine-gun fire; several of the children were wounded. There were no weapons on or in the car.

Here’s a question, especially for the Republicans out there: As the children in that car heard the bullets flying all around them, as they watched their mother die and their father absorb “so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body grotesquely disfigured”, what emotion do you suppose they felt? Might it have been … terror?

Let Freedom Reign!

So some children saw their parents gunned down in front of their eyes, but hey, says the US military, it was their own fault. And there, in microcosm, is the whole fucking war: blow some shit up, kill a bunch of people, blame them for their own deaths, and when they resent that, push the boot down harder. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat…

“But we’re not there as conquerors – we’re there as liberators,” I hear you saying. Sure, we just liberated some kids from their parents, just like we’ve liberated thousands and thousands of Iraqis from their loved ones, their homes, their security, their health, and their lives. You think that makes them love us?

If you voted for W, you voted for this. Are you enjoying your war?