Or Possibly an Aneurysm

7:40 PM MAY 21 2009 ---KODIAK
An uneasy hush fell over the Borough Assembly Chambers as I brought my tirade to a close with a flourish and a fleck of foam. The members of the Assembly looked at me as though a bear was hanging over the lectern. I can hear the desperate clicking of the panic buttons hidden under the rim of the mahogany table: buttons that will summon the security gorillas from their basement lair with swinging batons and that pesky straightjacket. My time is short. So I gather my files and folders, leap to the aisle, shuffle sideways through the double doors and jump into the Jeep. I nose the Jeep up Pillar Mountain and park between the titanic feet of tomorrow’s windmills. They’d never look for me here.
They all think I’m crazy. The fools.
I began to hear whispers soon after I started preparations for my campaign for Governor of Alaska.

“Doc thinks you’re crazy.” Branson told me as we waited in line for a latte last Wednesday.
“That’s not a whisper.”
“He thinks you’re suffering from megalomania. Possibly brought on by a brain tumor.”
“Well, in my defense-- megalo is definitely one of the best manias. There have been some very high functioning megalomaniacs. And talk about a fun mania! You rip around all full of confidence and grand designs...”
“I think you’re just drinking too much coffee.”

Crouching over a small brown notebook in the Jeep I sipped my espresso and listened to the hum of electricity to be. Then I fell to work on my great work of literary import- Kodiak: A Play in Three Acts. All the jigsaws are flying recklessly into place.
Soon I will be deep in the Western Gulf, witching whales and putting pieces of Pollock into the great circle of life. Under me, in the black bottom of the sea, a fish awaits his fate.

Kodiak--A Play in Three Acts

Cast of Characters:

Big Mike: A Deckhand on the fishing vessel Frenzy
Crazy Mike: A Deckhand on the fishing vessel Frenzy
Irish Mike: A trawl Skipper
Hercules: A Crab crewman
Mr. Clean: Skipper of the Frenzy
Senator: A deckhand and rather self important local politician
Birdie: A long suffering bartendress

ACT I:

TIME: A cold winter evening in Kodiak, about 4 PM

SCENE: The R&R Bar, the oldest bar in Alaska. It is a square building the size and shape of a doublewide trailer home, but without the charm. It is constructed of ancient soggy logs from the Russian era. Two doors offer entry: the front door between two windows, stage left and the side door next to a dumpster that is visible stage right. An old U shaped bar dominates the right side. There is a single pool table and a couple of dart boards on the left.

AT RISE: Seated at the bar are Big Mike, Crazy Mike and the Senator. Irish Mike and Hercules are playing pool. The bar is smokey and sporadically lit with dim lights. Irish Mike, a wiry man in fleece pants and a sweatshirt, is orbiting the pool table, eyeballing different shots and muttering. Hercules, a very large shaggy man wearing a tattered fleece jacket is standing still, regarding Irish Mike with a flat, emotionless gaze.Though he is inside, his ragged hood is pulled over his head. This, along with his long hair and beard, give him a leonine appearance. At the bar Crazy Mike is gesturing wildly at the wall mounted television set. Big Mike and the Senator, holding pints of beer, are watching him.

BIRDIE: Four twenty five, Crazy Mike.
CRAZY MIKE: (Taking the beer without paying, pointing at the television.) There! Right there! Did you see it? Her eyes flashed red like a demon! I tell you Nancy Pelosi is the Devil! Sometimes you can see the leathery wings folded behind her head. She has a scaly neck. Like an alligator.
BIG MIKE: That's just Fox News, Crazy Mike. What they do is they use flash images to burn a subtextural tapestry on the walls of your eyeballs. That way the overlaid lies all weave together seamlessly. Also, have you ever noticed how much darker President Obama is on Fox?
SENATOR: Darker? How? How can they make him darker?
BIG MIKE: That's easy. They use a dark filter on the camera. Same shot on CNN Obama looks like Arthur Ashe. On Fox he looks like Wesley Snipes. Everyone behind him is darker, too. The Caucasians look like Latinos, the Chinese Americans turn into Cambodians, and the Pakistani Americans all look like African Americans. So to the Fox viewers , namely frightened old white people, it looks like an army of minorities coming out of the television to get them, like bloodthirsty zombies. Really, this is what Fox does best. They push the fear button, and people love it. Its like slasher movies and roller coasters, once you get a taste for it you keep coming back for the thrill of the chill. And when Dick Cheney is on TV, (shivers) now that's scary.
SENATOR: Sometimes I wonder why you are Big Mike and he is Crazy Mike. Because you are not that much bigger than he is and sometimes a lot crazier.
CRAZY MIKE: That's right. Why do I have to be Crazy Mike? You know it would be so cool if someday somebody would just call me Mike. My friends used to call me Mike. My Mom used to call me Mike. Now its "Good Morning Crazy Mike. Here's your beer, Crazy Mike..."
BIRDIE: Four twenty five Crazy Mike. (He gives her a stunned look.)
BIG MIKE: Your Mom calls you Crazy Mike?
CRAZY MIKE: I think she may have started it.
SENATOR: (Interrupting) Look, Crazy Mike, its simple practicality. There are just way too many Mikes in this town. Plus Kodiak is an island, so there's no way for all the Mikes to spread out. If you stuck your head out that door and yelled "Mike!" half the heads in the boat harbor would turn around. So every Mike has to have a title. So he's Irish Mike (waving to where Irish Mike is still orbiting and muttering) he's Big Mike and you're Crazy Mike. (Counting on his fingers) And then there's Minnesota Mike, and Stupid Mike and all the Mikes you identify by boat they work on, like Winona Mike and Serenity Mike and Predator Mike and the guys who dropped the Mike entirely, like Elway and the Weasel and uh... hey what is Hercules' real name? (Points toward Hercules)
BIG MIKE: I think its Hercules
CRAZY MIKE: I still don't see why I have to be Crazy ... There! Right there! I saw the wings! They flash at the same time as the claws!
BIRDIE: Four twenty five Crazy Mike.
CRAZY MIKE: Aw, just put it on my tab, Birdie!
BIRDIE: You don't have a tab. No more tabs.
CRAZY MIKE: What? Since when?
BIRDIE: Since you guys don't pay. Also no more personal loans and no more mail held for over a year.
CRAZY MIKE: We just started fishing, Birdie. Most of the fleet hasn't even been paid yet. Now no more tabs? Now? This place is the fisherman's haven. Its right across the street from the boat harbor. (Drinks from beer wistfully) Why, the steady trade of the thirsty, hardworking fisherman is the very life's blood of this fine establishment. It always has been, Birdie. For nearly a hundred years, now. Whalers came to this bar for a beer! Whalers! And now you're going to tell me a poor deckhand with a dry mouth can't slake his hot thirst today and repay when he gets paid, I'd say tomorrow, or maybe the next day?
BIG MIKE: Dude, that was a poem
BIRDIE: Four twenty five, Longfellow Mike
CARCASS: (Bursting in through the dumpster-side door) Drinks! Drinks! Drinks for all my friends! (His voice is raspy, like he gargles with battery acid. He walks to a large brass bell hung over the bar and begins to ring it boisterously.) Glory! Glory to us my friends for I have been paid, and I'm rich for a day!Drinks for alllllllll my friends! (He gestures expansively to include all five patrons, including Hercules, who has not moved. He has been observing silently, his cue stick held to his chest with both hands, his expression stern. Carcass crosses to him) Hercules! hows it hangin', Tiny? Have a beer with me! (He claps him on the shoulders like he's beating a rug, and with a similar amount of dust. Hercules nods and leans his cue against the wall. Birdie has already set new beers in front of Big Mike, Irish Mike, and the Senator.)
CRAZY MIKE: I'll take another Liquid Sunshine, Birdie.
BIRDIE: Carcass is payin' for the one you just drank. (She is getting beers for Hercules and Carcass.)
CRAZY MIKE: Aw, c'mon Birdie. Carcass, I already drank the beer you just bought me.
CARCASS: Another beer for my friend Crazy Mike!
CRAZY MIKE: Ah hah! Thank you my good friend, you are a scholar and a gentleman. A liquid Sunshine and a shot of Chivas please, Bernie.
BERDIE: He didn't say anything about a shot.
CARCASS: Shots for everyone! (He gestures expansively with his beer and there is general acclamation.)

(MR. CLEAN enters through the front door. He is immaculate, from his clean cannery logo baseball cap down to his high tech tennis shoes. He brushes his shoulders and looks down at his shoes as he carefully shuffles them on a cocoa mat set inside the door. He looks toward the bar and shakes his head disapprovingly. Making an exaggerated hands-held-open-in-amazement gesture, he crosses to the bar.) Guys, guys, guys...what's going on? Its four o'clock in the afternoon, I come down to the boat, and nobody is there! I didn't know what to think. I got the parts in my hand, I'm all ready to go, and no crew. I didn't... you know, I didn't, well its just lucky this is the first place I looked, that's all.
CRAZY MIKE: That is lucky.
BIG MIKE: And a lucky guess on your part too.
CARCASS: A beer and a shot for Mr. Clean! (There is a clamor of agreement. Mr. Clean is visibly offended by the smell of Carcass.)
MR. CLEAN: No no no now boys we have the parts now. We better go rebuild that pump.
CRAZY MIKE: (Excitedly) You left to get those parts at 9:30 in the morning! The hydraulic shop is a hundred yards away. I bet you changed your tennis shoes twice and had eight lattes since then. We're down on the boat waiting for you, retying gangions and painting everything slow enough to catch while you hang aroung the ramp telling the same idiotic story to every fool who walks by. I bet it took you four hours to get across the street!
MR. CLEAN: You are this close to getting fired, buddy. And let me tell you right now, if you make me fire you in the middle of the season you will never work in this town again.
CRAZY MIKE: Hah. You don't scare me. I've been blackballed in this town more times than I've been 86'd for life outta this bar!
BIRDIE: Here's your drinks, Mr. Clean.
MR. CLEAN: I don't want any drinks and don't call me Mr. Clean. Why does everyone call me that? (They look at each other and themselves. Except for Birdie everyone is dressed like a greasy hobo.) Why can't you just call me my name?
BIG MIKE: What is your real name?
MR. CLEAN: Mike.
BIRDIE: Here's your beer, Mike.
MR. CLEAN: I don't want...(They are pushing him toward the beer.) I have the parts now...
BIG MIKE: Tell you what. If you can drink that beer faster than Hercules here, we will go down to that boat right now and rebuild that pump. But if he wins we're done for the day.
MR. CLEAN: (Smiling) No one can drink a beer faster than I can. No one.
BIG MIKE: So you have claimed.
MR. CLEAN: (Still smiling) OK then, c'mon big boy. (They both drink. Mr. Clean clearly wins.)
MR. CLEAN: Allllll-right boys, let's go. (He is already noticibly looser.)
BIG MIKE: Two out of three.
MR. CLEAN: No way. Let's go. (He starts to roll toward the door)
BIG MIKE: Two out of three and if we win we stay up all night remeasuring the buoy lines.
MR. CLEAN: Why? What's wrong with them?
BIG MIKE: Nothing. I'm just saying.
Mr.CLEAN: I knew it! I knew it about the buoy lines!I can see you guys laughing when you set them. Laughing and looking up at the wheelhouse! Why are you laughing?
IRISH MIKE: Maybe they're stoned.
BIG MIKE: I'm just saying....
MR. CLEAN: Alright, alright, you're on! You're on! You guys are gonna be rebuilding and remeasuring all night long! (Birdie sets two more in front of them. Again Mr. Clean clearly wins.)
Lez go now, lez go! (He waves awkwardly toward the door but no one moves. He wavers to his feet.)
BIG MIKE: No no, its two out of three, you have to drink three.
MR. CLEAN: OK OK alright. Set em up, hurry up, gotta build a pump. (Birdie sets up two more and again Mr. Clean wins handily.) Lez go, lez go! (He staggers toward the door and falls down.)
IRISH MIKE: Fastest drinker in town, and the biggest lightweight in the state. (Mr. Clean is up on his knees, looking unsteady)
CRAZY MIKE: And he always forgets. He drinks fast, he blacks out--complete mind erase. The next day he's so embarrassed he never says a word. Never asks what happened.
BIG MIKE: (Lifting Mr. Clean and setting him back on the barstool.) Whoa whoa let's get you back up here Mr. Cleanio. Hey didn't you just order another round? I don't think Birdie heard you.
MR. CLEAN: Nother round, Birdie. I'm the winner!
BIRDIE: Yes, you are. You want a shot or should I just hit you over the head with a rubber mallet?
Stay tuned for ACT II

A Conference of Fish Doctors

(Dr. L, Bristol Bay Bill and Swampsy Mike)



"What's the hell's a swampsy?"
asked the man in the cellophane jacket.

"Carnivorous bog rat." interrupted the priest. "Native to Aus-traaaah-lia."

"No no" I held my hand up, "SWAMC. The Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference. We try to advance the collective interests of the people, businesses and communities of Southwest Alaska."
"Oh yeah?" said Cellophane "Sounds like a bunch of commies."
"Hah." the priest laughed "Buncha minor officials is what they are--clappin' each other on the backs and crying about 'infrastructure'."
"Yeah that's us, I geuss. Well, mostly we cry about fish and fuel."
"I see." said Cellophane "So now you're here to cry in your beers."

Mr. Cellophane and the priest were orbiting like moons around the Jupiter sized table the Swampsies had successfully colonized in the Humpy's Alehouse System of the Downtown Anchorage Galaxy.

"Oh no. No beer crying. This is the most important part of the Conference. The Post Conference Conference. The PCC. Get away from the stiff backed chairs and bounce ideas of each other like tennis balls. We have people from Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, Bristol Bay, the Aleutians...look we even brought the good doctor. Hey, Dr. L.!"
" Father, Mr. Cellophane, this is Dr. John Lynham."

Dr.Lynham is an economist. I'm glad we were able to persuade him to join us. It is important to encourage economists to swim in the sea of humanity. Economics is second only to astrophysics for pure dark robed mountaintop mysticism. They are the money philosophers, divining smoky truths from scant data for the benefit of awed minor officials like ourselves. Dr. Lynham is a good egg, though. He is from the University of Hawaii, by way of New Zealand and Ireland, with an accent from one or more of those strange places. But he is an islander, so I have hopes of convincing him how terribly wrong he is. He is among a growing tide of scientists, ecologists and corporations who are encouraging us to privatize the sea.

At the Conference Dr. Lynham showed us a series of graphs and tables and color glossy photographs that seemed to show that IFQs or "Catch Shares" can save the world's fisheries by giving them permanently to private individuals and corporations. The theory here is that if you own something you take better care of it. Kind of like Hertz giving away a car to the next renter because it is tired of fender benders. The whole media blitz for "Catch Shares" is centered around a fancy reader friendly e-report called "Oceans of Abundance" put out by the muscular "market-based-approach" ecogroup Environmental Defense .

Dr. Seth Macinko of the University of Rhode Island, who was Dr. L's counterpart on the stage that afternoon, had a different take. He makes the point that no one talks about permanently giving away all the trees, oil and minerals to the companies that extract them today. And that the federal law states expressly that no ownership rights to fish can be conferred. That in fact the privilege to take fish from the sea can be taken away at any time. In fact in a paper he wrote in 2002 with David Bromley, he seems to question whether the federal government itself can act as "owner" of the ocean. I had hoped to convince Dr. M to join us at Humpy's, but he was not feeling well after the banquet (I hope it wasn't the shrimp).

Southwest Alaska has already seen what privatization brings. In Bristol Bay today fishermen pay a fee of seventy percent of ex-vessel price to people and corporations on the shore for the privilege of harvesting the nation's crab. A thousand fishermen lost their chance to make a living. After taxes levied for a boat buyback program and administrative costs, the working fishermen that remain, the ones you see on TV, are working for one quarter share. There are still good guys out there: boats still paying full share to their skippers and crew. But there is a terrible temptation to charge the highest possible lease to the working fishermen- just enough so they can make boat payments and insurance, maybe pay the crew a little and hope that fuel prices don't go up.

Dr. Macinko has an idea about limited duration Catch Shares that would have all the advantages of the system: a slower, safer, easier to manage fishery with a higher quality end product, without permanent allocation. I have debated the merits with him many times. I was hoping to get both doctors here so they could have a brain duel, just like the movie "Scanners". But as I watch the Dutch Harborians surround Dr. L I think it might be a worthwhile PCC after all.

Yep, economists are a funny bunch. To even enter the field you must have a semi-masochistic desire to understand the unknowable: the bright universe of human endeavor. No amount of graphs or color glossies can describe it. Sometimes the closest glimpse might be at Humpy's between the good beer and the bad harmonica.

http://www.yale.edu/ccws/Macinko.html
http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=8791
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/5896/1678

Bad Poetry Cafe, Vol. 1

Sumo Buddha

No direction
Misconception
A thousand points of darkness
Downstream on a river of pure aggression
Minnows into sharkness
What is right and who is wrong
Fight the fight or go along
Its like Buddha in the Sumo ring
The roaring crowd
Is much more loud
Than the choir in his head can sing.

"Now here is life on the halfshell nut"
he says to himself as he's kicked in the gut
"Laid out languid or pinprickle fury-
these are my choices? (Don't call me Shirley)
Stinging bee and honeyed hive-
Its a study in contrasts just being alive"
Pinning his opponent with a peaceful piledriver
He says "You are alive
But I am aliver"

The Jobs Americans Don't Want To Do

How to Lose Your Soul by Not Using Your Hands

It was 8:45 AM, March of 2008. I was slumped into a convention chair on the holo-deck of the Washington DC Hilton, listening to a slight, scholarly lady talk about immigration policy. The morning's latte was dancing a slow waltz in my head with the ghosts of the previous evening's martinis. All around me dellow felegates from the National League of Cities' annual descent upon the nation's capitol sipped coffee or dozed under ten gallon hats as the lady, Tamar Jacoby, argued that Joe Farmer needs access to cheap foreign labor, i.e. illegal aliens.

Then she said something that pulled me up in my seat. Little alarms were going off in my brain, so I looked down on my notebook to see what righty had written. Ms. Jacoby had said:
"A large percentage of them work in dirty, demeaning, low paid jobs that native born Americans no longer want to do: busboys, chambermaids, farmhands, nurses' aides, sweatshop workers, on the assembly line, in meat packing plants."

I shook the martini ghosts out of my head and listened. She described an America that is older and more educated, and not willing to do "unskilled work". I look down on my own rough and misshapen hands. Hmmmm.

She goes on to make the case that the American of tomorrow will be heady and shiny, graduating with honors along with his friends and classmates, festooned all over with gold stars and blue ribbons, comparing their trophies for participation at the mall where they consume the proper products in languidly prowling packs, waiting for the day when they will be placed in a skilled, non demeaning positions of oblique responsibility. Obviously these uber-Americans will need unskilled, uneducated foreigners to clear the plates, harvest the corndogs and empty the chamberpots.

At first I thought I' was just offended by the idea of an underclass, a shadow segment of our society with a hungry belly that the rest of us rule because of their need to fill it.
But there's something more. We are also hurt by our own aversion to simple physical work.
This didn't really strike home to me until the recent "financial crisis" began to unwind. For years my wife has been asking me what it is Americans do, exactly. Most of us (If WalMart wages aren't sucking you into the underclass) seem to make a living providing services to other Americans. Chefs, CPAs and surgeons all charge each other enough to make a sweet living. "But if so few of us actually make anything," my wife asked "where does all the money come from?"
"I don't know." I replied "Maybe its the savings from all the illegal beef butchers and diaper changers."

It turns out some of our most skilled and educated financiers conspired to build a house of mirrors that crashed under the weight of its own reflections. What they did to the entire world should be criminal, but instead we have chosen to open our forgiving arms and wallets to these prodigals.

But the original prodigal son was contrite. Ours have flown back to Daddy unrepentant, in sleek private jets, sheepishly grinning fops with silk hankies who need a new stake after foolishly gambling away their ready cash. Of course Daddy is broke too, so the sharecoppers in the valley will have to pony up Junior's bailout because, after all, if he can't generously spread his money around how shall the little people survive?

Well I have news for the dandies of high finance. You are the little people. I know working people here in Kodiak who came from Mexico and Guatemala and the Phillipines who work their whole lives gutting fish and sorting mail who have more honor and nobility than a thousand bailout sucking CEOs. Their character is the true bedrock of our society, and it is built from dirty hands and sore backs.

And isn't true value created by the one who catches the fish, builds the car and invests in the factory? That's real capitalism. You work to make or do something and are paid a purchase price or wage. Then you take that money and risk it to make more. The emerging pseudo capitalism in which morbidly obese corporations are "too big to let them fail" neatly combines the worst aspects of Marxism and fascism. Corpogovernment will preserve our failing businesses like Lenin's waxy corpse for the good of the people. But what should we expect from a culture that no longer values the contributions of those who actually do something? Somehow we got it backwards. We seem to believe that money makes people and that character comes from strength.

You know it is ever true that the best of us, he kindest, those with real patience and generosity seem invariably to be those who have known real hardship and adversity. If you ask me every kid in America should have to work in the sweatshop before he gets his Gap t shirt. And every financial executive who gets a bailout should carry chamberpots for lettuce pickers.

Change is Good

Fish Council Tackles Ratz Problems

The North Pacific Management Council takes on another tough issue: How to fix perceived problems with the Crab rationalization Program. Its a wrestling match, but the Council as it sits today seems willing to find ways to address crew issues and adjust the processor quota aspect of the Crab Fishery Management Plan.

Its going on right now. I'll be back on later with details.

News Flash- Bush Will Never Pardon Ted Stevens

"Bush" or the Justice Department that is made in his image, went after him in the first place

Scuttlebutt has always centered on a certain Native Corporation that Uncle Ted helped to get a no-bid contract to supply cell phones in Iraq. The phones were second hand Fisher-Price Big Bird models that would only connect you to Elmo, or some such. At any rate Phonegate added to a pile of embarrassing contractor scandals in Iraq, and it was one of the only ones in which Cheney wasn't involved. Add that to Stevens' "Don't pet me, I bite." charm, and we find a Republican Mr. Bush is quite happy to see the J-Dog clamp onto.. Bush let the beast off its leash in the first place.

So don't look for a Presidential pardon for Uncle Ted. W. has himself to worry about.

A complete look at the pillaging of both Iraq and the US taxpayer by contractors and their Congressional enablers, including Ted's Big Cell Phone Adventure:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_6_86/ai_n27084061?tag=rel.res1