Capturing my Election Ennui

I've checked out of the election, but I did see this video, which made me laugh.



It's a response to this video, which made me want to throw up. If you haven't seen the original "don't vote" condescension from the Gods of Hollywood, then the response video may not make you laugh as hard as it made me laugh. But I wouldn't encourage you to watch the original, because it may make your eyeballs bleed.

Chapter 4.1

Hello. I'm kind of too distracted to blog much, and I have no interest in politics, so I'm posting more novel chapters. Hope you don't mind. It won't be all novel all the time, I promise. But your comments on my book are wildly helpful, and I'm addicted to them.

I'm going back to the original chapter numbering scheme and combining all 12,000 words of the original chapter three into one piece again. This is the first of two parts of the original Chapter 4. It begins with nudity. Enjoy.

__________________

David was naked, and he wasn’t sure why.

He looked down and saw his shoes were gone. He remembered that. His feet had been bulging and his shoes had fallen by the wayside somewhere up the street. His arms had both inflated, which explained his missing shirt. What about the pants? He thought. Even the underpants?

It was only then that he realized that this time, the transformation had included his whole body.

A cloud had lifted, yet David was in a darker place than he had ever been. With unflinching clarity, he recognized the enormity of his sins, and the crushing guilt had returned, ten times stronger than it was before.

Please let someone else have done this, he prayed. Let this be a dream. Or a movie. Or let me take it all back.

And if all that fails, at least let me die.

He had lost both his size and his bloodlust in an instant, the moment he saw his prey vanish into the skies, carried aloft by a brown and gold man with shiny white calves. He had seen a sheet come floating back down to earth and snatched it before it had hit the ground. He draped it around his exposed waist the way he wore a towel after coming out of the shower. He skulked off into a dark alley, away from the prying eyes of the police who had descended en masse on the scene of the crime, along with hordes of vans and cameras and loud, important-sounding baritones, each pontificating to their broadcast audiences about What It All Means.

As he made his way toward an empty alley, he saw a bloody, severed arm trapped between a cement wall and a Chevrolet. It was too much - he threw up and then stepped in the bile as he made his way toward the village outskirts.

The smell of the vomit, some of which still dripped from his bare and hairless chest, may have been what dissuaded most of the passers-by from stopping and questioning him, and given his scrawny, pathetic, half-clad appearance, no one could have imagined that he had been the one hurling cars just a few minutes earlier. One diligent policeman stopped and asked if he’d been hurt, or if he’d seen the incident firsthand. David used the opportunity to stare down at the ground and, when the cop seemed determined to stay put until he got an answer, he held out his hand.

“Spare change, mister?” he asked plaintively.

The cop hemmed and hawed before heading off to something more urgent.

David buried his face in his hands and tried his best not to cry. He failed.

_________________


“Emergency room!”

“What?!!” Over the wind, Jeff thought she was speaking nonsense. Something about mushrooms…?

Clearly exasperated, Lisa motioned downward toward the ER entrance. “There!” she yelled.

Jeff saw, nodded, and slowed down to make a comfortable descent for both his passengers. He floated, feet-first, through the emergency room doors and made a soft landing right in front of the nurse’s station. He stooped to let Lisa slide off his back down to the ground, and she tried to smooth out her tattered skirt, which had not been designed for high-speed air travel.

Jeff spoke. No, he proclaimed. “This…citizen needs a doctor!” He held Vikki in as heroic a pose as he could muster, trying to mimic Superman’s stance as he held his cousin Supergirl after she had been felled in the first Crisis on Infinite Earths. Walthius was right – the classics would guide him through this. He had never used the word “citizen” in formal conversation before, but it seemed like the thing that Kal-El would do. He deepened his voice and was speaking in something akin to an English accent. He thought it sounded commanding.

Yes, commanding. Confident. Captainy.

In his mind, it also made sure that Lisa wouldn’t penetrate his disguise. What it didn’t do was get anybody in the hospital to move. They just stood there, slack-jawed, not quite able to adapt to the process of accepting patients who had just fallen out of the sky. They were gaping at him like he was some kind of mutant.

“Hurry!” he shouted, losing his newly acquired aristocratic dignity.

“Easy there, Jumper,” Lisa whispered softly. She walked up to the head nurse and said, matter-of-factly, “She needs help. Her arm’s broken badly, and I think she’s in a deep state of shock.”

The attending nurse nodded, picked up the phone, and within seconds, a stretcher appeared and whisked Vikki away into the bowels of the hospital. Lisa stayed at the station and started filling out forms.

Jeff took off his glasses and wiped them on his spandex-like uniform, which only smeared the water on them and made the visibility worse. Once he got them back on his face, he struggled with what to do with his hands. He balled them into fists and placed them on the side of his hips, but he wasn’t sure where to take it from there. He wished he had pockets. He finally let his arms dangle awkwardly on either side.

Then he looked around and saw that everyone was still staring. He was all-powerful, yet he felt like a leper.

This isn’t how I wanted to make my debut, he thought.

He found a tissue in a box on the waiting room table, near where a little boy was playing with a small plastic airplane. The boy ran with the plane making jet engine noises, and he almost bumped into Jeff’s knees. Jeff smiled at him weakly, which was too much for the tyke’s agitated mother, who yanked her son rather roughly back to a chair near her, lest he touch the leper and have to end up wearing tights himself.

This wouldn’t do, Jeff thought. It wouldn’t do at all.

“Citizens, may I have your attention please?” he said in his most captainy voice. With a generous dose of bravado, he began his impromptu announcement speech.

“You seem alarmed by what you have seen,” Jeff said, his throat suddenly dry and scratchy. “No need. I serve the greater good.” He coughed. “Excuse me.” He swallowed twice to bury the phlegm, and that helped improve things a bit.

“Um, let the word go forth,” he announced, “that the Captain has arrived.” No contractions in his speech, he thought. Good. No apostrophes. Let each word ring out with power. There was no sting of heroic music to punctuate the moment, although the television hanging in the corner of the room did seem to get louder all of a sudden. Then the kid with the plane zoomed past him, making the appropriate sound effects. And someone else coughed, too, which, in turn, made Jeff hack up another batch of sympathy phlegm.

“Excuse me, miss?” he said, pointing to Lisa. “Could you, by any chance, get me a glass of water?”

Lisa lowered her eyelids halfway and drew her mouth together into a thin, angry slit.

“Anyone? Water?” A nurse with a glass appeared, and Jeff took a healthy swig. “Mmmm,” he said, nodding his approval. “Thanks a lot. Hit the spot. Thanks.” Oops! He thought. Too informal! “I mean, thank you.” Nice save. He made a point of handing the glass to Lisa, who flared her nostrils with contempt.

“And thank you, young lady. You know, I could not have done it without you, Miss…” he said, motioning for her to give her name.

“Sheila Glutz,” Lisa deadpanned.

“Miss Li… Sheila?” He raised his eyebrows, trying to get her to correct the record.

Lisa didn’t move. Jeff shrugged his acceptance.

“Miss Sheila Glutz,” Jeff announced to the rest of the room with confidence. “Sheila Glutz, then,” Jeff said. “A citizen this brave deserves a round of applause.”

Jeff started clapping, and, at first, only the airplane kid clapped along. Then everyone else in the room joined in halfheartedly. Everyone did not include the newly christened Sheila Glutz, who sidled up next to him to put a word in his ear.

“Knock it off, Downey,” she hissed.

Jeff’s blood froze.

Did she just say “Downey?” She couldn’t have. He still had the mask, didn’t he? And the Captain voice was pretty good – the accent was off, yes, but the gravitas was there. Only one contraction, and I fixed it right afterwards. Maybe he heard wrong.

Except didn’t she call me Jumper right after we first arrived…?

This took the edge off of his confidence as he continued his speech. To compensate, he put both of his fists against either side of his hips again, except this time, it had the effect of making it him feel like he had a distended stomach. “Let the word go forth,” he boomed, “that when injustice is, um, near…”

Lisa was subtly, almost imperceptibly shaking her head in disapproval. Jeff was trying to ignore her, but it wasn’t easy. His hands now felt like dead weights, and he kept wishing for those pockets. Except what would it look like for a Kryptonian to put his hands in his pockets?

“When injustice is near,” he repeated, shaking his head back at her tightly, trying to get her to stop throwing him off stride, “when liberty and justice are threatened, and the powers of evil are, um, evil, because injustice is near…”

“You already said that before,” the airplane kid said, before being snatched back and scolded by his mother.

“No need for alarm!” Jeff said, far more alarmed than anyone watching. Lisa rolled her eyes and turned her back on him. Be that way, Jeff thought. At least I can finish my speech in peace.

“Like I was saying to this young man,” he continued, indicating the airplane kid, who was now glaring at his own mother and losing all interest in the Captain, “The power of evil and the doers of evil – evildoers, if you will – will ever be with us.” There we go. He was gaining his confidence back, along with his accent. He started dropping the R’s at the end of his words. “This is evah as it has been, yes, yet not evah as it must be, for I can fight evil, as a Captain among average citizens like yourself.” Lisa was on the other side of the room, and the distance was helping. He was on a roll now. “I, the Captain, will be theah! To right the wrongs! To, uhh…”

He was stalled. He needed another phrase, and he’d already used “right the wrongs,” which was the best one.

“To help the helpless?” Lisa offered sarcastically, her back still turned. Jeff shot her a look, but he wasn’t too proud to use someone else’s material.

“Yes! To help the helpless! And to –“

“Is that you?” said the Airplane Kid.

“Yes!” Jeff said. “I’m the Captain!”

“Is that you?” the kid said again. Jeff nodded vigorously until he saw that the kid was pointing at the television.

On the screen was a special news report with the bold caption TERROR IN WESTWOOD. There were no shots of the giant or the girls. Only a gangly, pasty-thighed goofball in tights trying to shake a pick-up truck off of his leg. He looked angry and frustrated. Ripped from its proper context, it looked as if Jeff were the one throwing the cars, not the giant.

“No!” Jeff exclaimed. “I mean, yes, that’s me, sure, but it’s all wrong…”

Someone in the waiting room yelled “Terrorist!” and everyone hit the floor.

Everyone, that is, besides Lisa Meyer, who leapt onto Jeff’s back and murmured, “Time to fly, Jumper!” She dug her heels into his thighs and made a clicking noise, as if she were trying to kickstart a beast of burden.

“I’m not a horse, lady,” he complained. Then three beefy security guards entered the room, summoned by an unseen alarm no doubt triggered at the nurse’s station. All of them had their hands on their gun holsters.

“Jump now!” Lisa ordered. And Jeff complied, hopping adroitly over the heads of the guards, yet careful enough to keep Lisa from banging up against the ceiling. He slipped out between the last guard’s hat and the doorframe, and, in a split second, he was arcing upwards, back into the night sky.

After they were about fifty feet above the building, Jeff craned his neck backward and shouted, “You mind telling me how you know who I am?”

“What?” Lisa bellowed. “I can’t hear you. The wind…”

“What?” screamed Jeff. Was she trying to say something? He couldn’t hear anything, and he could barely see, either – his glasses had fogged up the moment they took off.

“We need to go someplace and talk,” she shouted.

Jeff couldn’t hear her. This was useless. He decided they needed to go someplace and talk.

_____________

David smashed the window and started rummaging through the empty apartment.

It was the perfect time for breaking and entering. All the cops were otherwise occupied trying to sort out the mess down by the movie theaters, and they’d set up traffic blocks so that nobody could come in or out of the surrounding area. That meant that unlit windows were unlikely to hide any unwelcome surprises.

The first two apartments he’d broken into were less than helpful. Number one was clearly a girl’s place – far better decorated than most, but there were still no usable clothes to be had. Number two was more co-ed with plenty of dirty dishes piled in the sink, yet all the men’s clothing was about two sizes too big. What kinds of girls share an apartment with fat guys? he wondered. Especially slobby fat guys. He’d found cash in both apartments, though – about $50 in the first and a twenty-dollar bill in the second. It wasn’t enough to live on, but it was better than nothing.

The third apartment was the mother lode. He discovered an envelope under a mattress with $200, and the guy was about his size, and with a decent taste in clothes. He put on a red button-down, long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. He couldn’t find a truly acceptable pair of shoes, but there was a pair of dirty old sneakers that would do just fine for the moment. He found a piece of paper and scribbled two copies of an IOU – one for his victims and one for himself as a reminder, taking inventory for everything, including the cost of a replacement window. He was going to pay everyone back. He was going to make amends.

Amends. Sure. Who was he kidding?

Petty thievery was one thing. Mass murder was quite another. He wasn’t sure how to come to terms with any of that madness, but he could at least plant the seeds for some kind of redemption, beginning here.

IOUs are step one, he thought.

Step two, I turn myself in. Let the cops sort it out.

He turned up his collar and stepped out into the night, renewed by a fresh sense of purpose. What was the worst they could do to him? he thought. Kill me? I want to kill myself. I’m not even sure if I can. At least they can lock me up. Or they can try to, anyway.

David wasn’t sure how to deal with all the complications that were sure to arise. Not my problem, he told himself. Just do what you have to do. Plead guilty, and let the system do its thing.

He came up on one of the roadblocks and signaled to one of the officers taking statements. At first, the cop tried to wave him off, but David wouldn’t be denied.

“What is it kid?” the cop asked impatiently as he walked up to David. “We’re kind of busy here.”

“Officer, it was me.” With that out of the way, the dam burst, and the rest was easy. “ It was me. I did this. I threw the cars. I killed all these people. That arm – severed arm. I did that. And I also broke into the apartments up the street. But I’ll pay it all back. I swear.” The words all poured out in a jumble, almost overlapping each other.

The officer smiled wearily. “Kid, tonight’s not the night, okay? I’m taking statements. Go bother someone else.” He turned to go.

David grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him back to face him. Had his hand bubbled up, or had David just imagined it? David mentally willed his hand to stay small. He wasn’t going to go down that road again. Even so, it was imperative that the officer believe him.

“Hands off, pal!” the officer reached for his nightstick. David put his hands in the air. He could feel the beat of his heart, pumping a fresh rush of power toward his limbs.

No. No. His veins were pulsing now. No. Not now. Not ever. Although just one more wouldn’t make that much of a difference, would it? And it might make him feel better, since this guy clearly deserved it…

No. NO! He closed his eyes and managed to hold back the floodgates just a little while longer. His hands trembled, but the transformation didn’t take hold. So I can control this, he thought, basking in the glow of his inner triumph. I can stop it. I’m not really a monster.

“Sorry,” David said. “I just… I want to tell somebody what I know.”

“Yeah, fine,” the officer said. “As soon as I’m done with these reports, we’ll talk it over, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” The officer turned to leave. Ignorant, David thought. Nothing but ignorant. He’ll never know how close he came to dying tonight. And David was sure that nothing but a full-fledged demonstration of what he could do would convince any of these pinheads.

He had to talk to someone who might believe him.

That narrowed the list of possible confidants down to one.

Chapter 7, or Chapter 3.5

Okay, this is the last piece of the original Chapter Three. I really recommend reading the whole thing all the way through as one piece, because many of the questions you're asking get answered in due course. If it feels choppy and incomplete, I think that may have something to do with the fact that the very long Chapter 3 was supposed to be indivisible. The next chapter has no cars, no freeways, and no comic book discussions. 

Anyway, here's the end of Chapter 3, or Chapter 7, depending on your numbering system:

_________

“Why do I need a name?”

Walthius was insistent. “You know why. You need a name.”

“I already have a name.”

“Not one you can use.”

“Why can’t I use it?” said Jeff. “I’ve used it my whole life!”

“Think, you cretin!” Walthius said. “Think! All the heroes who go public get into trouble! What, you think you’re smarter than Bruce Wayne? Than Clark Freakin’ Kent, for the love of Pete?”

Jeff knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “What, I’m going to have a secret identity now?”

“You already have the glasses, man,” he said with a smile. “Take ‘em off, and who’s going to recognize you?”

“Anyone without a severe astigmatism, that’s who.”

Walthius laughed. “It only works for Clark Kent because Lois Lane is an imbecile.”

Jeff laughed back. “And Clark Kent can actually see with his glasses off.”

Walthius was serious again. “Did you put the mask on?”

Jeff looked down and saw a black linen Zorro-style mask at the bottom of the box. He gulped. “No,” he said.

“Yeah, well, that’s why the mask is there.”

Jeff sighed and then dutifully wrapped the mask around his glasses, which didn’t quite fit. So he took his glasses off, put the mask back on, and then put his glasses back on over it. He looked over at Walthius, who gave him a quick once over.

“Needs work,” Walthius admitted.

_________


Lisa heard the crash of flying cars before she saw them. So did everyone else in the village, which sent them all scrambling for cover. There was no way to sneak back toward the medical center, which ruined Lisa’s original plan. And it was impossible to come up with a Plan B with in the midst of the pandemonium.

And then Vikki Dennis collapsed in the middle of the street.

“I can’t,” she muttered, “I just can’t.” She was unconscious before she hit the ground. Lisa tried to drag her, but she was dead weight.

As opposed to me, Lisa thought. I’m just dead.

_________

“Back to the name.”

Jeff let out a sigh of his own. “Fine. A name.” He waited for a moment until things got awkward again.

Walthius glanced at him. “Are you waiting for me to say something again?”

“You said I need a name.”

“Yes. That I did.”

“So? What name?”

“Oh, no,” said Walthius. “No, no, no, no, no. I can’t bend the rules on that one.”

“What rules?”

“You gotta come up with that name on your own.”

At this point, Jeff knew better than to ask why. “Fine,” he said. And as he pondered for a moment or two, he said, “Maybe I ought to be the captain of something.”

“Captain?” Walthius asked. “Of what?”

“I dunno,” Jeff said. “‘Captain’ seems to be the rank of choice for most superheroes.”

Walthius stroked his chin. “You may be on to something there, my friend. You don’t hear much about ‘Corporal America’ or ‘First Lieutenant Marvel.’”

“Or ‘Drill Sergeant Kangaroo,” Jeff added helpfully.

“Enough with the kangaroos.”

“I’m just saying.”

That hung in the air for a moment, and then Jeff asked, “So we’re agreed, then?”

“On what?”

“On ‘Captain’ being the way to go?”

Walthius scowled. “That’s not my decision. The name has to be yours.”

“Fine, it’s not your decision,” Jeff said. “But it’s a decision you can live with, right?”

Walthius just snorted.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

_________

David was a little too distracted with all of his fresh new targets. He’d almost forgotten why he was here in the first place. He had new strength, new speed, and he was eager to flex his muscles. Besides, he knew that sooner or later, one of his cars would hit the mark.

One of the cars even had a couple of people in the back seat.

Tsk, tsk, David thought. In the backseat of a parked car on a dark street? They were obviously up to no good and deserved what they got.

_________

Two more cars and they’d be on the freeway. Finally. Jeff could never get used to freeway gridlock.

“Captain - what?” Walthius asked.

“Huh?” Jeff said.

They were just one car away.

“You can’t just be ‘Captain.’ You’ve got to be captain of something.”

They were in the front of the line, and the on-ramp light was green. But the freeway was jammed, too, and they weren’t moving. “Oy,” Jeff said, in response to the new traffic jam. Walthius clearly took it as something else.

“Why does it always have to be me?” Walthius whined. “All right, fine. You’re ‘Captain Fantastic.’ Satisfied?”

Jeff shook his head. “Sorry. Taken.”

“Ah, there’s where your wrong,” Walthius said. “Reed Richards is Mister Fantastic!”

“Not Reed Richards. Elton John.”

“Who?”

Jeff laughed out loud, which made Walthius even more confused. “”Your knowledge of trivia is expansive, but maddeningly selective,” Jeff explained.

“Elton John,” he said, trying to place the face. “He’s the singer guy with the big glasses, right?”

“Thirty years ago, maybe,” Jeff smirked. “These days, my glasses are bigger than his.”

_________

“Vikki. Vikki, honey, wake up.” Lisa was slapping her face, and even tried jostling her arm once in the hopes the pain would arouse her.

A brand new minivan landed twenty feet away from her.

Lisa briskly reviewed her options. If I leave her, she’s dead. If I stay here, we’re both dead. And we’re probably both dead anyway.

Not good options.

_________

“How about ‘Captain Power?’” Walthius offered.

“Nah.”

“Captain Spectacular?”

“Stupid.”

“ ‘Captains Courageous?’ ‘O Captain my Captain?’ ”

“You’re getting warmer.”

Walthius opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he were deciding something. Then he spoke. “Look, since you haven’t really distinguished yourself with any particular superlative. Maybe just - The Captain.”

“You said that was bad!”

“I’ve had a change of heart,” Walthius said. “It’s direct, simple, and easy to modify if you do something powerful or spectacular.”

“ ‘The Captain,’ Jeff announced with a booming voice, trying his new moniker on for size. “And I can always change it later?”

Walthius laughed. “If you capture Lex Luthor or the Penguin, you might even get a promotion.”

“I like it,” Jeff said. “The Captain it is!”

Walthius looked unhappy.

“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked.

“Nothing,” Walthius said. Before Jeff could protest, Walthius added, “It’s just –“

“Just what?”

“You should have come up with the name yourself,” he said.

Jeff rolled his eyes and turned back toward the window, where he saw a large Volvo flying through the air right next to the freeway.

_________

David rounded the corner.

There they were, all alone, in the middle of the street.

A smart girl would have run away, David thought. Maybe she’s not the challenge I thought she was.

She was making it all too easy. He reached for the nearest car. A Porsche.

A classy way to finish this.

_________

Having destroyed the handle earlier, Jeff had been forced to kick the door clean off of the passenger side before he could soar out to face the peril of the flying cars. He didn’t take note of Walthius’ reaction, but he was sure he would approve. After all the grief he’d given him, he would no doubt be fully supportive of anything that furthered the Captain’s first mission.

The Captain’s first mission!

Jeff was filled with pride. The greater good is at stake. I can’t be too concerned about a little property damage. I’m a hero now.

Initially, he was sure that there had been some kind of a gas explosion, except, as he got closer to the center of the action, he realized that the site of the car launches was shifting in a linear pattern toward Westwood Village, and still all the cars were flying in the same direction, as if they were somehow being aimed. And then Jeff finally got a look at what was aiming them.

It was a giant.

Sort of a giant, anyway. He wasn’t anything like a Jack and the Beanstalk-style giant. The proportions were all wrong. This guy was a gelatinous, massive, bulbous, pale naked man about ten or fifteen feet tall, lifting the cars like they were so much flotsam, and aiming them at two helpless girls sitting in the middle of the street.

Instantly, Jeff discovered that one of those girls looked an awful lot like Vikki Dennis. And a silver Porsche was about to fall on her head.

There was no time to think. Jeff swooped down and knocked the Porsche with a single blow to the gearbox, and it fell to the ground with a fantastic thud.

Strike one, Jeff thought.

And strike two was already upon him. It was a classic red Mustang convertible, circling lazily as it fell out of the sky. Jeff slugged it just below the bumper, reversing its momentum and sending it twirling off harmlessly into the graveyard to his right.

Then there was strike three. A massive pick-up truck. Jeff hit it squarely in the cab with both hands, punching a clean hole right through the middle. It caught at the bottom of his left leg, and he had to shake it loose, as if it were a boot that wouldn’t quite come off. Once it was free, he had to kick it with his left foot to keep it from landing on the girls. He ripped another hole through the steel as his leg carved through the side of the flatbed on its way to its final resting place, wedged up against an unsuspecting street lamp.

It dawned on Jeff that if he kept this up, someone was going to get hurt.

Jeff scooped Vikki up in his arms and was about to leap into the sky when he heard another, familiar voice yelling, “Me, too!”

He turned to face a frantic Lisa Meyer, who used the confusion to glom on to his right arm right before takeoff. He had to dodge yet another vehicle, which crashed directly on the spot where Vikki had just been.

And then he was in the air, holding Vikki with Lisa Meyer dangling from his right side.

He jerked his arm upward to help hoist Lisa directly onto his back, which almost resulted in shaking her loose. Lisa was somehow able to hold on, and she was small enough that she wrapped her arms around Jeff’s neck without throwing him off balance. The only problem was the nylon cape, which kept flapping in her face., Lisa ripped it off at the seam from the back of Jeff’s neck and let it flutter to the ground.

“Hey!” Jeff protested.

“UCLA Medical Center,” Lisa barked, pointing directly ahead of him. “That way.”

“What?” The sound of the wind rushing past them made it almost impossible to hear. He could see her finger in front of his face, and he thought maybe she was pointing at the giant. As if he wouldn’t be able to see the giant without her help.

Except he couldn’t see the giant, because the giant wasn’t there anymore.

The cars had stopped flying, and Jeff couldn’t see where the giant could have possibly gone. Did he disappear? Was he dead? It didn’t make any sense that he was there to begin with. Then again, nothing that had happened to Jeff made any sense, either.

“That way!” Lisa shouted. “The hospital is that way!”

Something about a hospital, Jeff heard. Good idea. He dutifully followed the finger.

He looked down at the traffic below and tried to spot Walthius’ car. I’ll be home before you will, he thought, even with Lisa Meyer on my back.

Lisa Meyer on my back and, impossibly, Vikki Dennis in my arms.

Stallion Checks Out

I voted last week. Now I’m done.

I remember election night in 1994, living in DC and calling my brother across the country and gloating as the Republicans came storming out of nowhere to recapture Congress. It was such a delight to watch all the supposedly objective news anchors aghast with horror as America threw the bums out.

In 2006, when it was clear that the GOP had abandoned its principles and America was abandoning the GOP, I listened to Christmas music all the next day. I felt much, much better.

Well, that was then. This is now. 2008 is going to make 2006 look like a Republican Wonderland.

We’re turning ourselves into France. I suppose that’s not all bad – I’ve been to France, and they have nice crepes. But that’s about it. Their economy is stagnant; their entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t exist, and freedom has given way to a false security induced by governmental largesse. All of Europe is going down that road, but it’s been okay, because they’ve had the big, bad US to stand ready to do violence on their behalf should things go wrong.

Now, with supermajorities in both houses of Congress and the most committed Leftist president in the history of our republic, Barney Frank’s vision of a 25% cut across the board of our military forces is about to become a reality. As old entitlements metastasize and consume our entire federal budget, new entitlements that will be impossible to kill are coming down the pike. New rights are going to be invented by courts that are sensitive and caring about everything except the actual language of the Constitution. Our economic downturn is going to be deepened and widened by elected officials who trust themselves more than markets, which means they’ll screw things up with the best of intentions.

It’s going to suck. So I’m checking out.

I’m done with politics until it’s safe to come out of my virtual bomb shelter. I’m going to stop checking political websites; I’m going to turn off the television. No radio, unless it’s Christmas music. KOSY 106.5 starts playing Christmas music on Halloween. My radio is going to be set permanently to that station until I can stomach seeing the political wasteland my country has become. I have no interest in seeing the same news anchors who wanted to shoot themselves in ’94 gloat with delight as all their statist dreams come true in 2008. I don’t want to hear anything that Barbra Streisand has to say.

This blog will be politics free for quite some time now. (That will make Thursowick happy. )

So enjoy it, leftists. It’s your world now. As for me, here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane.

Chapter 6, or Chapter 3.4

Precursor to the actual chapter:

My wife, someone who's actually spent a good deal of time working as a physical therapist in Los Angeles' medical facilities, pointed out after reading the last chapter that the UCLA Medical Center would be directly visible from where Vikki and Lisa crashed, and the idea that they'd head to Westwood instead of the hospital is ludicrous. (You were right, Heather! Who knew?) 

So I've mapped out Lisa and Vikki's route via Google Earth, and I've rewritten pieces of the last chapter posted, as well as much of the stuff going forward. It doesn't require huge revisions and doesn't redirect the plot at all, but I thought that before I post the next piece of my original Chapter Three - I really think it needs to hang together rather than be split up like this - I ought to give you the revised chunks from the last chapter so you can make some sense of everything going forward. (In addition, I discovered that it's the West Gate of Bel Air, not the South Gate, that exits out on to Sunset. I've changed that in all the necessary places, too. I won't post those changes. Just... please make a note of it.) 

Here are some revised pieces from the last chapter:

_______

Not enough people were on the UCLA campus on a Friday night, Lisa thought. A crowd was the only way to hide. Either that, or a building. But none of the buildings were open this long after dark.

Except the hospital!

There it was, shining in the distance. The UCLA Medical Center. It wouldn’t take too long to get there, either. They were moving much more quickly now since Vikki had picked up the pace and toned down the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was probably because her arm, which had no doubt been at least bruised in the fall back at David’s house, was now seriously broken and misshapen. She was in real pain, and she couldn’t afford the energy to sustain her previous performance.

“Just a little farther,” Lisa implored, even though Vikki’s stride was longer than Lisa’s, and the shorter girl had to scramble to keep up.

Yet Vikki’s eyes were starting to glaze over. I’ve got to keep her moving, Lisa thought. She’s going into shock.

“How… how much farther?” Vikki asked, her voice tiny.

“Just until we can get to the hospital,” Lisa said. “It’s just up ahead.”

“How far up ahead?” There was a note of muted panic in her voice. She thinks it’s too far, Lisa thought. And she’s probably right.

“It’s where you need to be, sweetie,” Lisa reassured her, trying to sound as soothing as possible.

“This sucks,” Vikki sulked.

Lisa nodded. “It sucks big time,” she said, all the while trudging forward.

____________

The girls passed a handful of people along the way, and none of them volunteered to help them, despite the fact that Vikki clearly needed medical attention. She was starting to weigh heavily on Lisa’s tiny frame, and Lisa wasn’t sure how much longer they could maintain forward motion. They were passing under some fairly bright street lamps, which was not, in Lisa’s mind, a good thing. It made them more visible then when they had walked past the dimly lit running track. Lisa would have stopped to rest, except she knew that Vikki was being propelled by pure inertia now. If they stopped, she would pass out, and this would all be over.

Lisa kept scanning behind her, praying not to catch a glimpse of David, or, at the very least, to see him before he saw her. She did her best to stick to the shadows. Part of her brain was telling her that surely they were safe, that David had lost their trail and given up.

Her gut told her otherwise, so they kept moving forward toward the bright red sign.

“He hurt me,” Vikki muttered to no one in particular, no inflection in her voice. She was on autopilot now.

“I know, honey,” Lisa said, sympathetic for the first time. “He hurt a lot of people.”

And he’s far from being done, she thought, as they made their way forward.

_______________________

[Okay? Got those chunks in the brain instead of the old stuff? Just to clarify - they're on their way to the UCLA Medical Center, not Westwood Village. Excellent.]

Now, without further ado:

CHAPTER SIX - i.e CHAPTER 3.4

The truth was that David had just about given up.

It wasn’t because he had lost his murderous intent; it was that there were simply too many places they could have gone. He was slightly worried about the scene back on Sunset, but he thought it highly unlikely that he would actually be caught. The police would have a hard time imagining that a scrawny kid could have tossed cars aside like playthings. They might, however, want to ask him some questions, and he was in no mood for interrogations. The guilt he had wrestled with back at his father’s house had receded into memory, or someplace deeper. He felt none of it, anyway, and it was almost as if it had belonged to someone else. In a few more minutes, it would be gone completely. David already had a hard time even recalling what it had felt like.

Instead, he was enjoying moving beyond David, or beyond what David had been before. Now he was something Other, something new, yet ancient, something with a destiny he could embrace, or, at the very least, a destiny that had embraced him. There were no more doubts. All that was left was a bright, shiny purpose, gleaming like a diamond in the noonday sun, leading him through the darkest places of his soul.

It all begins, he thought, with the death of those girls. Then we’ll see where the wind takes me. He smiled as he savored the possibilities. There was no door closed to him now. At least, no door that he couldn’t rip and tear and power through with his bare hands.

There’d be time for that later, he said. First, I’ve got a couple of girls to kill.

Wait a second, he thought. Is that a hospital up ahead?

________________

“Look, I’m not trying to make fun of you,” Jeff assured Walthius. “I know this is serious.”

“Serious as a heart attack, my friend,” Walthius agreed. “If you’re going to do this hero thing, you’re going to do it right.”

“Okay,” Jeff said. He stepped back from the fantasy, with the option to return when the moment presented itself. “So now we’re talking,” he said, as much to himself as to Walthius. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“So, with all things considered,” Walthius continued, “it sounds like you’re going to need some help.”

“Right.” Jeff was nodding vigorously. “That’s right. Help. So what do I do?”

“Well, step one is pretty obvious,” Walthius said.

“I know it is.” He breathed out a sigh of resignation. “I just have no idea what to say to her. ”

“Her?”

Her? You idiot! Not her! Think, Jeff, think!

Walthius regarded him coolly. “Say to her? Say to who?”

“Say to them!” Jeff said.

“Who’s them?”

“What do you mean, who’s them?” Jeff said, far too defensively. He needed a “them,” and then he came up with one. “My parents! Them! I totaled the car! And soon everyone at school is going to hear about this. You should have heard Lisa Meyer after I fell off the bleachers. ‘You sure are a good jumper.’ Like I’m a kangaroo or something. What a –“

Walthius interrupted him with a clean slap across the face.

“Ow!” Jeff said. “That really hurt!”

“Yeah,” Walthius said, “it hurt me.” Walthius was now clutching his own hand in agony.

Jeff rubbed the side of his face with his hand where Walthius had made contact. Of course it hurt! Didn’t it? He couldn’t tell. If there had been any pain, it was gone now. Maybe he only thought it had hurt because Walthius had taken him by surprise. And Walthius was now opening and closing his fist, apparently trying to shake off some of the sting. “If someone doesn’t believe you, just have them slap you. One time. That’s all it takes.”

“What did you do that for?”

Walthius started wincing. “I may have broken something.”

“Focus, Walthius!”

“You focus!” Wealthiest shouted back before returning to wincing. “Focus on step one,” he said in a pained voice.

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re blubbering about your little personal kerfuffles. I’m talking about step one."

“All right,” Jeff said, humoring him. “I’ll bite. What’s step one?”

“Step one: tights.”

“WHAT?!”

Walthius reached under his seat and, with his good hand, he pulled what looked like a shirt box. He tossed it into Jeff’s lap.

“Open it,” he said. Jeff complied, and then he gasped.

He lifted out a gold and brown unitard with a large sunburst on the chest. It was attached to a white, nylon cape. Jeff let out a long, low breath. If anything, this was an even more surreal moment than the first time he flew.

“So?” Walthius asked. “You like?”

Nope. He didn’t.

________________

Lisa kept glancing behind herself. Did she hear something? Was she being followed?

She had tried to stay off the main path, cutting through bushes and the darker parts of campus. She knew she had gone too far when she hit Sawtelle, which was too far west. To the right of the girls, bathed in creepy moonlight, was the veteran’s cemetery, which struck Lisa as a bad omen. She could see the edges of nearby Westwood Village and the throngs of people crossing Wilshire from the Federal Building. She felt her heart skip a beat as she realized she was probably more exposed than ever, and too far away from her goal.

“Are we there?” Vikki breathed, barely able to get the words out.

“We’re almost there, honey,” Lisa lied. “It won’t be long now.”

Vikki ignored her and kept going straight on her originally programmed course. Lisa had to grab her to get her to make the sharp turn back toward the hospital. She shifted her sideways, which jostled her broken arm. Instinctively, Vikki let out a blood-curdling scream.

They could hear that from a mile away, Lisa thought.

________________

“Where did you get this?” Jeff demanded. They were about a mile away from the Wilshire onramp, just on the other side of the Federal Building.

“I didn’t get it. I made it,” Walthius said. “That’s bending the rules, I know. Even Peter Parker made his own suit. I should have let you make it. But circumstances being what they are –“

“You made this?”

“You can’t get something like that off the rack,” Walthius said. “You gotta have your own colors.”

“You made this,” Jeff said again, still disbelieving. The thing was, it was actually pretty good. It had clearly taken some time and effort – more time and effort than Walthius would have had after he had gotten the phone call.

“When did you make this?” Jeff asked.

Walthius shifted in his seat. “You don’t like it.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s just –“

“It’s the school colors, I know. I should have picked something else. And that sunburst on the chest. Let me explain. It seems a little gaudy, I know, but it will come in handy if you have to -”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, if you don’t like it just say so.”

“I didn’t say I don’t like it. I just don’t understand-”

“Did you see the mask, too?”

“Mask?”

“At the bottom.”

Jeff fumbled around the bottom of the box and found a black, Zorro-like linen mask. Walthius had clearly thought of everything. It made Jeff unusually queasy.

“Something wrong?” Walthius asked.

“Yeah, there’s something wrong!” Jeff blurted. “I’m supposed to wear this?”

“What did you think you were going to wear?”

“Well, unlike you, I hadn’t planned all this in advance.”

Walthius let out a sigh. “Do not tell me,” he said impatiently, “that you’re not willing to do the tights.”

“How did you know –”

“Never mind that!” snapped Walthius. “It’s the tights that matter.”

Jeff just stared at him with his mouth hanging wide open. Walthius broke away from watching the road and stared back. Jeff thought for a moment that he could establish some kind of psionic connection, where he could scour his friend’s brain and discover something that might explain all of this. Maybe this is just one more of my superpowers, Jeff thought. I’m sure it is. I know I’m feeling a connection here…

Then Walthius blinked. “So that’s a no, then?”

“A what?” This didn’t jibe with the psychic readings he was getting.

“A no. On the tights.”

“Really? That’s what you were thinking?”

Walthius turned back to the road and rubbed his face with his hands. “You can’t read minds, you idiot.”

Jeff’s pride was bruised. “Who said I could?”

“The tights, you moron! You’ve got to wear the tights!”

“Why should I?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Walthius began to sputter. “Because… because…”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the tights, man!” Walthius said. “That’s self-explanatory.”

“Not to me, it isn’t,” Jeff said, “Why should superheroes was all feel this unyielding urge to dress up in silly clothes?”

“They’re superheroes, you dolt. That’s what they do.”

“Well, yeah,” said Jeff, “I mean, sure, they can move mountains and everything, but can’t you do that in a pair of jeans instead of a leotard?”

“Look to the classics, my friend.” Walthius said. “The classics. If you’re going to quote Peter Parker, you have to dress like him.”

“But I don’t look like him.”

“So?”

“So he’s got muscles that ripple when the wind blows. I’m six foot four and weight 165 pounds.”

“So?”

“So who wants to see a guy with a caved-in chest and a pair of chicken legs in a unitard?”

“Are you going to take this seriously or not?” Walthius asked. They were finally at the onramp, at the end of the line to get on to the freeway. Jeff decided that the rest of the ride might go more smoothly if he played along.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jeff sighed, giving in. “Fine. What’s a pair of tights between friends?”

“Good,” Walthius said, satisfied.

“Yeah, good.”

They drove in silence for a moment.

Then Walthius spoke. “Well?”

Jeff stared at him. “Well, what?”

“Well, nothing!” Walthius shot back. “Aren’t you going to put them on?”

Jeff looked like he’d been hit in the head with a frozen duck.

________________

David turned to face the noise. That was a girl’s scream, he was sure of it. And it wasn’t that far away.

David ran out to the end of the street and turned on to Sawtelle, where he saw two girls crossing the street before the lights had changed.

They were at least three football fields away from him. So close, and yet so far. Too far to run and catch them unawares.

But close enough.

________________

Jeff kept protesting, but once he realized that Walthius would not be denied, he began undressing in the passengers seat. His legs were too long to fully extend them as he removed his jeans, so he arched his back up and slid the wet, heavy denim off his legs. He was left in his soaking wet underwear, and realized he would have to take that off, too. He looked left and right, as traffic was moving too slowly to prevent any curious onlookers from peeking in on him. As soon as he was convinced that none of the other drivers were paying attention, he ripped off his undies and with lightning speed, he yanked on the tights, flailing against the space constraints and smashing his elbow through the window, sending shattered glass out into the street.

“Watch it!” Walthius shouted.

“Sorry!” he said to Walthius, and then “Sorry!” he said to the car next to him, waving and grinning sheepishly before slinking down and ducking his head below the window. He tried to scoop up the bits of broken glass that had fallen inside instead of out, and then he went to open the door to dump it all into the road. In his frenzied state, he lacked the control to keep from ripping the door handle clean off the side.

“Oh, that’s real nice,” Walthius moaned. He had to moan pretty loudly, too, since the newly absent window was welcoming in all of Santa Monica’s nighttime cacophony.

“I said I was sorry!” Jeff yelled. “I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“Of course you didn’t,” Walthius yelled back. “Anyway, how do they feel?”

Jeff looked down at himself. The truth was they felt pretty good,. They were dry, anyway. And while there were no rippling muscles to speak of, his skeletonic frame meant that there were no unsightly bulges, either.

“They feel good,” Jeff said. “They feel really, really good.”

Walthius smiled. “I thought they would,” he said.

“Where do you want these?” he said, dangling his shredded briefs in his hand.

“Oh, man!” Walthius said. “You were supposed to leave those on!”

Jeff laughed. “What, you think Superman leaves them on?”

Walthius shook his head. “Superman wears those yellow things on the outside.”

“Yeah, great,” Jeff said. “I’m not wearing these on the outside.”

“Toss them in the back, then,” Walthius ordered. “It’s time for step two.”

“This thing is okay now, but I’m pretty sure that when I stand up it’s going to start riding up my crotch,” Jeff complained. “And it’s not long enough.” He looked down at his exposed white, flabby thighs, and it undermined his confidence to leap tall building without looking like he was waiting for a flood.

“Who cares. We’re at step two now.”

“All right, fine,” Jeff said. “Step two.”

“Good.”

Jeff tilted his head, “There’s a step two?”

“Step two,” Walthius said. “A name.”

________________

There was a line of parked cars all along Sawtelle, the last bit of free parking available before heading into Westwood. David started running down the side of the cars, and in an instant, both of his arms had ballooned to giant size, along with, for the first time, his feet, which burst out of their shoes. They provided the power to dash down the hill at breakneck speed. He was definitely running faster now, picking up cars as he went and throwing them as he gathered steam.

He got it down to a pattern: two steps, throw car. Two steps, throw car. Soon he was lost in the rhythm of it.

The girls were entering the village now. He couldn’t see them. He did see a few horrified people on the other side of the street, which made for good target practice.

You should all feel lucky, David thought. You each get a car of your own.

Science for Girls: Smart, not Clever

I recently discovered a very cool new music album, produced by a very old friend. It's called Science for Girls, and, despite the title, it's not an educational children's CD. Instead, it's a collection of songs written and produced by Darren Solomon, a New York-based musician who spent a good deal of time touring with Ray Charles and Barry Manilow and who may now be the finest bassist on the planet. (Remember, John Entwistle is dead.) Darren's also the guy who long ago taught me how to do armpit farts, but that's not what makes his music so good.

Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins once famously remarked that there's a "fine line between clever and stupid." I think he's right, but there's an even finer line between clever and smart. I don't think that "clever" is necessarily a good characteristic in an artist of any stripe. Being clever always involves showing off and calling attention to yourself at the expense of the work. And one of my biggest problems as an actor and as a writer is my propensity for cleverness.

If you're reading my novel, then I'd cite a phrase like "paroxysm of panic" as an example of clever writing on my part that's not really good writing. It's alliterative; it uses a big word, and it calls attention to how brilliant I think I am, but it's also clunky. It yanks you out of the story and asks you to applaud the guy writing it. That gets very tiresome very quickly. I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I've never been able to get through his detective novel The Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul, which opens with perhaps the cleverest line I've ever read:

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."

That made me laugh. In fact, I've used that line on several occasions. But as the Adams book progressed, every line after that tried too hard to be just as funny. Some of them may have been, but I ended up so exhausted trying to keep up after a few pages that I put the book down, never to return to it.

Musical Theatre is filled with Clever. Stephen Sondheim has made a career out of it. I love a lot of Sondheim, but I also recognize why he's so off-putting to Mrs. Cornell, among others. He dazzles you with odd syncopations and clever rhymes, but he also purposely distances himself from you at the same time. That's because "clever" almost always ends up being condescending. In order to appreciate the genius of the Clever Artist, you have to be looking up at him to do it.

Where am I going with this re: Science for Girls?

Darren Solomon is a very, very bright man and musician. And very talented. But you never get the sense, in Science for Girls, that he's showing off. The arrangements and melodies feel simple and effortless, despite the fact that they're actually quite complex, both in terms of the hardware and the songs themselves. iTunes lists his music as part of the "Electronic" genre, yet the songs feel very intimate and personal. You can listen to four of them on Darren's MySpace page. I've heard the opening track, "14 Days," a zillion times now, and I never get tired of it. It feels so breezy, but it's really a stunning piece of work underneath it all, complete with key changes and chord shifts that flow perfectly from beginning to end.

Darren's not being clever. He's just being smart. There's a fine line between the two, and Darren always stays on the right side, armpit farts notwithstanding.

Bigotry

Bigotry.

What is it? Well, it’s bad. I know that.

People refer to conservatives as bigots on a regular basis, and they’re not being especially kind when they do it. It seems we on the Right fit the dictionary definition of those with “stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.” As opposed to the tolerant, kind, and loving Left, who call us Nazis and Neanderthals, or, as we were recently called by a Proposition 8 supporter in California, “orcs” inflicting their “vampire-dripping heterosexist nightmares” on everyone else.

I don’t live in California, but Proposition 8 has become a big deal, since my church officially supports it and is helping to lead the charge to solidify the traditional definition of marriage. This has led to angry words, which invariably include the charge that those of us who support traditional marriage do so out of bigotry. To those making the charge, there can be no other explanation.

Consequently, even the most reasoned, dispassionate response is dismissed out of hand, because it’s hiding how we bigots “really” feel. See, we try to sound sort of reasonable in public, because if we let the electorate know how dark and vile our souls really were, they’d recoil in horror. But when we’re alone, we let down our hair and burn pictures of Harvey Fierstein and let the expletives fly. It’s kind of like that old Eddie Murphy SNL skit where he dresses up as a white guy and discovers that white people give things to each other for free when there are no black people around.

I’ve written extensively on why I think redefining marriage is a terrible idea, and I’m not interested in rehashing that again – you can find my original thoughts on the matter here and here. Instead, I want to make the case that bigotry, as a charge, does not constitute argument, and is, in fact, a substitute for it, used primarily to just shut people up.

All the cool people know this when they’re talking Right-on-Left bigotry. Call a Lefty “unpatriotic” and anyone who’s anyone won’t let you get away with it. But call us Righties “bigots” and you get thoughtful questions like “what do you think made them go so wrong? Are they evil, or just stupid?” Suddenly, whatever was being initially discussed is taken off the table, and the Righty has to defend his motives. That’s how the well gets poisoned. Even if a Righty is correct on the facts, they can be dismissed, because nothing good can come from a bigot.

Once you discredit the messenger, you can ignore the message completely.

A relatively benign example of this can be found in my own weird little online world. Back when Battlestar Galactica was being revived, many of us geeks were posting in various online enclaves that the reimagined version proposed by Ron Moore was a bad idea, and, instead, the revival ought to be a continuation of the original series. Unfortunately, we were joined in our cause by a loon named Languatron, who insisted – and still insists - that anyone who disagrees with him is on the payroll of Universal Studios, that God Himself will smite the head of the SciFi Channel if she doesn’t comply with his demands, and, by the way, gay people are scum.

Reasonable voices no longer mattered once Languatron took the stage. As far as anyone in Moore’s camp was concerned, all of us original series supporters were a bunch of Languatrons, and we didn’t have to be taken seriously.

Are there bigots on the Right? Yes, of course. But I will only concede that point as long as those on the Left recognize they have their share of bigots, too. I don’t know if their share is larger or smaller than ours. I do know that they’re far more effective at using our bigots to dismiss our arguments than we are at doing the same.

Case in point: Almost anything that the McCain/Palin ticket says or does to fight back is portrayed as an appeal to conservative’s latent racism. They’re not saying bigoted things overtly, but apparently they’re using “code words” that sleeper-cell racists recognize. This puts the GOP in a defensive crouch, because not only do they have to defend their charges against Obama, they also have to defend their motives for making the charges and prove they’re not bigots.

This wouldn’t work with a principled, persuasive conservative a la Ronald Reagan, who would ignore the charges with a twinkle in his eye. But John McCain is far more concerned about what the New York Times thinks of him than he is about what his own party thinks, so this tactic works well against him. He’s constantly on the defensive as he tries to assure the cool people that he’s one of them.

He’s also losing. There’s a direct correlation.

Chapter Five

“He hurt me! I can’t believe he hurt me!”

Yeah, well, believe it, Lisa Meyer thought, as Vikki blubbered in the passenger seat of the Dennis family’s brand new Jeep. Vikki was still cradling her arm, which seemed, at various times, to be hurting in different places. Drama queen, Lisa thought. Lisa had no patience for drama, at least not for the manufactured, adolescent kind. This moment was fraught with plenty of drama all by itself. It was all she could do to focus on the task at hand.

She knew it must be David’s car directly behind her, driving erratically. He knew his way around the maze of Bel Air better than she did, and he would have caught up with them by now if Lisa hadn’t ignored every stop sign in Bel Air and sped like a maniac. She also knew, sooner or later, that whether David caught up with them, or whether she rolled the Jeep through careless and reckless driving, both she and Vikki would end up just as dead.

Vikki, on the other hand, didn’t seem to know much of anything beyond her own pain. “Why did he hurt me? Why?” she moaned in anguish for the umpteenth time. That proved to be the final straw for a harried Lisa, who had just skidded over a curb and almost popped a tire in an attempt to avoid a jogger.

“Look, will you shut up?” Lisa yelled. “I’m trying to drive here!”

Vikki recoiled as if she’d been slugged in the stomach. She drew in a sharp breath and then turned her head histrionically, refusing to bear any further indignity.

Fine. The Queen of Sheba can hate me all she wants, Lisa thought. Just as longs as she lets me drive.

David’s car was never quite able to overtake them, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He got close enough at one point to nudge their bumper, which threw Vikki into a loud paroxysm of panic.

“Shut up, already!” Lisa barked. Now David was trying to pass them on the left, and the road was barely wide enough to accommodate a single car, let alone both. As the road narrowed quickly, David swerved his car hard enough that he would have hit them if Lisa hadn’t punched the gas going into a sharp right turn. She took out a mailbox on the corner, but she was now a car length or two ahead of him. Except the mailbox collision had made Vikki squeal again, and Lisa would have hit her if she hadn’t been clutching the steering wheel for dear life.

There was another car ahead of her, which she managed to pass on the left, barely, and sped on ahead. David’s car came slamming into the other car and sent it fishtailing off to the side of the road. David’s bulky Buick weathered the blow, but it had lost a few seconds, which allowed the Jeep enough time to turn the corner without being seen. Any moment now, he would come bearing down on Lisa, who now faced a terrifying, split second decision.

The Jeep was careening toward the south Bel Air gate, which emptied out directly on to Sunset Boulevard. Sunset, as was to be expected on a Friday night, was a bumper-to-bumper barrier of automobiles, and, at the speed she was going, there was no way she could merge into the traffic without plowing into the side of a solid wall of cars.

I can’t do that, Lisa thought. Even if I could get in somehow, he’d expect it.

What wouldn’t he expect?

Knowing she had no other choice, she made an impossible left, turn, tires screeching, directly into the oncoming traffic, at a tight enough angle that she found herself driving on the grassy shoulder and praying that David wouldn’t be able to follow. She miraculously avoided a head-on collision, but they only made it about half a mile up the embankment before the Jeep rolled over and hit a tree. Thankfully, the front of the car took most of the blow, and, while the girls were now upside down and Vikki was out of her wits, their seat belts had kept them relatively unscathed. Lisa had the presence of mind to look behind them.

David’s Buick was nowhere to be seen.

“Come on!” she urged Vikki, as she fumbled around to release her belt. She didn’t know how much time her little stunt had bought them, but she sure wasn’t about to waste any of it. Vikki was screaming louder than ever, her sobs punctuated by tiny squeaks in between breaths. Lisa was somehow able to block it out as she reached over her shrieking banshee companion to pry open her door, which she had to kick with all her might to get it fully ajar. Then she crawled over Vikki and, fumbling to unbuckle her seat belt, too, managed to release her and pull her out of the car onto the grass.

“My arm!” Vikki’s volume had gone down, but she had lost none of her intensity. She was crying real tears now, Lisa knew. But she didn’t have time to care.

“Can you walk?” Lisa demanded to know.

“My arm!”

“I’m not talking about your arm. Can you walk?”

Vikki’s face was a mess of tears, spittle and mucous. She was incoherent. Lisa dragged her to her feet and draped Vikki’s good arm over the back of her shoulders.

She suddenly heard horns honking wildly, and she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that they were signaling the approach of two more headlights plowing up the side of the embankment.

If they stayed here, David would get them.

Lisa and Vikki ran into the slow-moving traffic and managed to cross Sunset between the cars. When they got to the other side, Lisa looked back and expected to see David Chakiris’ eyes blazing with fury in the reflection of the oncoming headlights.

He wasn’t there. But Lisa knew he would be, soon.

With Vikki in tow, she scurried toward the lights of the UCLA campus, running through the landscape and staying off the road. I want to live, she told herself. That’s not what David wants.

That thought kept her focused as she forged ahead.
________________

“So the real question is - what are you going to do now?” Walthius asked. They were marginally closer to the freeway, but Jeff was sure they’d have been there sooner if Walthius hadn’t decided to take a shortcut up to Wilshire Boulevard, which was, if anything, even busier than Santa Monica.

“I’m not going to get home anytime soon, that’s for sure.”

“I’m serious,” Walthius said.

“Yeah. So am I.”

“Ha ha.” Then, in a voice of concern, Walthius asked, “You gonna to tell your parents, then?”

Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“You’ve got a lot of options, you know,” Walthius offered. “You could sign up for the NBA.”

Jeff grunted.

“What?” said Walthius.

“You don’t just sign up for the NBA.”

“Stop and think for a second,” Walthius countered. “I don’t know basketball, but I’m pretty sure if you show up at a Lakers game and fly the ball down the court without dribbling once, they’ll sign you up pretty quick.”

Jeff considered this and then asked “Why basketball? Why not football? Or baseball? Lots of interest in baseball.” His voice wandered off at the last sentence as he started looking around the back seat. He was starting to get hungry.

“Lot of cash in baseball, too,” Walthius agreed. “And you’d save a lot of money on steroids.”

“Good to know,” Jeff said as he scoured the floor to find any more food. He struck gold, or, at least, green. There were two more Granny Smith apples in a plastic grocery bag.

“You going to eat these?” Jeff asked, apple in hand.

“Help yourself.”

Jeff took a bite of an apple and looked out the window. Baseball. I could be a baseball star. Or football. And I wouldn’t even have to go pro. I could be a Topanga Titan and consign Stallion Cornell to the second string, both on and off the field.

He felt a rush of wild excitement as he dared to name his deepest desire.

I could date Vikki Dennis.

All of a sudden, this was getting good.

“Nah, it’s no good,” Walthius said.

Jeff chuckled and took a bite of his apple. “No good, huh?” he said, not convinced. “And why not?”

“It’s the Peter Parker temptation,” Walthius said simply, and Jeff, like any comic book aficionado, knew exactly what he was talking about. Spider-Man had started out trying to get rich, but after his selfish behavior led to the death of his uncle, he decided that he had to use his powers for the greater good.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Jeff quoted.

“Look to the classics, my friend.”

Yeah, great, Jeff thought.

Except Peter Parker had never met Vikki Dennis.
________________

David surveyed the wreckage of the Jeep, but he knew even before he looked that the girls had escaped. He thought, for a moment, that they might have tried heading up toward the Sunset Strip, but they would have had too far to travel. That would have made them easy targets. That might have been what Vikki would have done, but the little blonde girl was smarter than that. It had already taken him at least five minutes to figure out that Lisa had made a crazy left turn. Smart girl. He found himself, in the midst of his wrath, filled with admiration for her.

That would make her death even more satisfying.

He looked across the street, which is where he was certain the girls had gone. How long a head start did they have? How soon before they were out of his reach? Best not to take any more chances.

As soon as he decided on his dark purpose, his hand swelled out to meet the task it had been given. Without thinking, he grabbed one of the slow moving cars and flung it out of the way, end over end, as if it had been a Matchbox toy. That got him out on the street, into the first lane. He yanked another car out of the second lane and pitched in into the opposite direction. Four more lanes of Sunset, four more cars. Two flung left, two flung right. He cut through the traffic like a knife through butter, leaving another scene of automotive carnage in his wake.

There, he said to himself as he reached the other side and smelled the smoke rising from the wreckage behind him. He watched his hand shrink again, its task completed.

That ought to make up some lost time.
________________

“Well, then what about your civic duty?” Walthius asked.

Why does he care so much? Jeff thought to himself. He picked a piece of apple out of his front teeth. “I didn’t know I had a civic duty,” was Jeff’s answer. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was essentially over. He wondered if it was typical for teenage boys to plan their own weddings. He didn’t care about the caterer or the guest list - Vikki could pick the colors and everything, but, still, he wanted to have the ceremony outdoors, early summer, maybe late spring…

“Of course you have a civic duty,” Walthius said. “Think about it. Some fanatics got a hold of some hostages? People hijacking planes or blowing things up? You'll have all the bad guys on the White House lawn in twenty minutes, and you let the Secret Service have a go at them.”

Jeff raised his eyebrows. This made sense. And it was helpful besides. No doubt about it. Maybe he could squeeze some heroing in while Vikki was off working – she’ll be all the more impressed when he got back…

“You like that, huh?” Walthius asked. “And I’ll bet the reward money would be pretty sweet.”

Why does he keep talking about money? Of course Vikki would be impressed by that, too, Jeff thought. Power. Money. Either one alone would be helpful. Together, he’d get the girl for sure.

As a dreamy smile crept over his face, he looked over and saw Walthius shaking his head.

“Don’t even think about it,” Walthius scolded.

“What?” Jeff protested. “You just told me to think about it!”

“You’re not thinking about it the right way.”

“You don’t know what way I’m thinking about it!”

“You think Steve Rogers would do it like that? That he’d be willing to be a government stooge the rest of his life?”

Again with the comic books, Jeff thought, exasperated. Steve Rogers had volunteered for an experimental super soldier serum and became Captain America. At the end of World War II, he was frozen in an iceberg and, after being de-thawed, went on to fight crime freelance, including battles, at times, with his own corrupt government.

Jeff took a leisurely bite of his apple. “Steve Rogers doesn’t exist, Walthius.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Jeff said, humoring him, realizing that all this thinking about Vikki Dennis might require him to freeze himself in an iceberg before too long.
________________

Not enough people were on the UCLA campus on a Friday night, Lisa thought. A crowd was the only way to hide. Either that, or a building. Except none of the buildings were open this long after dark.

They were moving much more quickly now since Vikki had picked up the pace and toned down the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was probably because her arm, which had no doubt been at least bruised in the fall back at David’s house, was now seriously broken and misshapen. She was in real pain, and she couldn’t afford the energy to sustain her previous performance.

“Just a little farther,” Lisa implored, even though Vikki’s stride was longer than Lisa’s, and the shorter girl had to scramble to keep up.

Yet Vikki’s eyes were starting to glaze over. I’ve got to keep her moving, Lisa thought. She’s going into shock.

“How… how much farther?” Vikki asked, her voice tiny.

“Just until we can get to the village,” Lisa said. “It’s our best chance.”

“Westwood Village?” There was a note of muted panic in her voice. She thinks it’s too far, Lisa thought. And she’s probably right.

“It’s the only place where we can find a crowd of people,” Lisa reassured her, trying to sound as soothing as possible.

“This sucks,” Vikki sulked.

Lisa nodded. “It sucks big time,” she said, all the while trudging forward.
________________

“I’m warning you. You simply cannot be in this for the money!” Walthius scolded.

Jeff was almost done with the apple. “And why not?” he said languidly, tossing the core to the floor of the car. Vikki wouldn’t tolerate this kind of slovenliness after the wedding. Oh, Vikki, Jeff thought. Don’t try to change me, baby.

Walthius sniffed.

“What?”

He sniffed again.

“I said what!”

“I think you know.”

“Just for the sake of argument,” Jeff said, “pretend that I don’t.”

“Money will destroy you if you go down that road. Peter Parker learned that on his first day.”

“There’s no such thing as – “

“Right. I know. ‘No such thing as Peter Parker.’ But you were the one who quoted him.”

“ ‘Cause you’re the one who seems to think there’s a reason for everything,” Jeff said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, who gets to decide what the reason is?” Jeff was agitated now. He wasn’t about to let Walthius become the homewrecker of a perfectly good fantasy. “Why do I have to be the role model who fights badness all the time? What if I choose to be a, a - football star, or something? What if that’s how I want it?”

Walthius thought for a moment.

“You are here for a reason,” Walthius said, “and I don't know what it is, exactly, but I do know this much: it's not to score touchdowns.”

“Glenn Ford,” Jeff noted, recognizing the reference. “Pa Kent. Superman: The Movie. 1978.”

“Good job,” Walthius said.

Jeff scoffed at him. “I passed again, did I?”

“I didn’t say that,” Walthius said, scowling. “You’ve still got a long way to go.”
________________

The girls passed a handful of people along the way, and none of them volunteered to help them, despite the fact that Vikki clearly needed medical attention. She was starting to weigh heavily on Lisa’s tiny frame, and Lisa wasn’t sure how much longer they could maintain forward motion. They were passing rows of well-lit apartments, which was not, in Lisa’s mind, a good thing. It made them more visible then when they had walked past the dimly lit running track. Lisa would have stopped to rest, except she knew that Vikki was being propelled by pure inertia now. If they stopped, she would pass out, and this would all be over.

Lisa kept scanning behind her, praying not to catch a glimpse of David, or, at the very least, to see him before he saw her. She did her best to stick to the shadows. Part of her brain was telling her that surely they were safe, that David had lost their trail and given up.

Her gut told her otherwise, so they kept moving forward toward Westwood Village.

“He hurt me,” Vikki muttered to no one in particular, no inflection in her voice. She was on autopilot now.

“I know, honey,” Lisa said, sympathetic for the first time. “He hurt a lot of people.” And he’s far from being done.

Scary Pumpkin and Funny the Marble

Once upon a time, there were two friends: Scary Pumpkin and Funny the Marble. They were a good pair of buddies. They played football together. And they also were really good at football. They both got touchdowns a lot.

Once there was a time when they got tackled ten times. It was scary. The bully is the one who tackled Scary Pumpkin and Funny the Marble. The bully was so scary that they fainted. Then they got up and ran away for their life. Funny the Marble thought that was soooooo funny that he peed his pants. Then Scary Pumpkin stopped and started to laugh his head off.

Both of them started laughing so hard that Scary Pumpkin's eyes and nose and mouth started to glow. Then they ran over to the bully and said stop being mean to me and my friend or we will punch your head off, and that is what they did.

Then they said the same thing sentences over and over again. The bully was getting so annoyed the he ran away from them. They said go away and never be a bully again.

"OK," said Scary the Pumpkin.

"OK," said the bully.

The end.

Who cares about Colin or Oliver?

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama has me scratching my head in the same way Oliver Stone’s new movie W. does. In both cases, I have to ask myself: who are these people trying to influence? In the case of Powell, I think the endorsement is certainly a blow to McCain, as it adds stature and gravitas to his inexperienced rival, and it gives the Obama camp some bragging rights.

But is there a voter out there who was waiting to see what Colin Powell was going to do before casting their ballot?

If there is, I just don’t know who it would be. This is the first election when I’ve ever had the experience of being a somewhat undecided voter, and Powell’s endorsement does nothing for me one way or the other. Then again, I know something about Powell’s politics; despite his party affiliatiuon, he leans left on social issues and has said that he’s concerned about what two more Republican appointments to the Supreme Court would do to the country.  That actually pushes me toward McCain, as Powell has more faith in McCain’s conservtive judicial street cred than I do. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Somebody certainly does. 

I don’t think I’m the average undecided voter. I’m a disaffected conservative who would desperately like to vote for a traditional Republican, and I find myself having to struggle with what to do when that choice is denied me. Is that the standard template? Or are there people who really look to see what the cool people are doing and decide to do that? I get the sense that that might actually describe Powell. Waiting this long to endorse, and then demurring when asked to actually campaign for his guy, suggests he was waiting to see which way the wind was blowing. Would he be willing to do this if his guy was losing to McCain as badly as McCain is currently losing to Obama? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

I suppose there are some completely nonideological voters out there who just want to jump on the bandwagon of a sure winner, and Powell may be the thing that finally pushes Obama into inevitability. I still cling to not just my guns and religion – I have no guns, actually, but never mind – but also to my respect for the American electorate. Surely not that many of us are that shallow and vapid in their political decision making?

Are they?

I’ve been wrong about everything else this election cycle, so I’m probably wrong about this.

I was certainly wrong about the box office appeal of Stone’s new movie, which I thought would sink like a stone. Honestly, why would anyone want to see this movie? If you hate Bush, I guess, there may be some vicarious thrills in seeing Stone do his usual leftoid hatemonger hatchet job on the guy, but I hate Clinton, and I’d just as soon hit myself in the head before paying to see anything about him, fictional or otherwise. And I can’t imagine any Republican wanting to sit through anything Oliver Stone has to say, regardless of how they feel about the president.

Proves I’m wrong, though. W.’s doing great at the box office.

I have never felt more disconnected from the pulse of my country’s political life than I feel right now. Even during the Clinton years, I felt there was a cohesive opposition that I could support. Now, I feel completely and totally adrift.

Chapter Four

Okay, I've broken my original Chapter Three into bite-size chunks, and I'm enjoying this far more than what I feel like writing about today, which is this hideously depressing Wall Street Journal article which essentially outlines how the US turns itself into a European-style welfare state overnight, only with the extra added bonus of the end of free speech. Someone please talk me down from the ledge... or just comment on my novel instead. 

Again, if you need a refresher, please reread the Prologue,  Chapter One,  Chapter Two,
and Chapter Three. The comments are as much fun, or more fun, to read than the actual story, so please keep them coming - be as brutal as possible! 

Enjoy!

_____________

“Want to stop and get anything?"

Walthius was driving up Santa Monica Boulevard chewing on the remains of a large green apple. Jeff was riding shotgun. He asked the question to Jeff as they passed one of their favorite comic book stores at the 11th Street intersection.

Jeff just stared at him blankly.

“Now might be a good time,” Walthius said. “Don’t know when we’re going to get back here, after all.”

Jeff stared at him some more.

“You sure?”

Jeff nodded.

“Suit yourself, then.” Walthius then giggled inappropriately.

Suit myself. What an odd thing to say, since Jeff was still shirtless, shivering, and stunned at how well Walthius was taking all of this. He had just told him the whole story, which came rushing out in uneven and unedited bursts. Jeff would have appreciated a little more rehearsal time to make the whole thing sound plausible, but, even so, it was all on the table now. He felt exposed but much lighter, like he had unloaded a burden that he hadn’t realized he was carrying.

He also felt very, very silly.

Jeff found Walthius’ response, or lack thereof, to be tremendously disconcerting. What was wrong with him? Would a regular human being be acting this way after a revelation like this? Is this normal?

The problem wasn’t that Walthius was acting abnormally. It was the normalcy that was most disturbing. Walthius was just sitting, listening, taking the whole thing in. He was being completely inscrutable, something he’d never been before. Prior to this moment, Walthius had been the most scrutable person Jeff had ever known.

He didn’t know if Walthius believed him, if he pitied him, or if he was paying attention at all. The story sounded even dumber to Jeff as he put it into words, and he started to think that Walthius was going to slap him back to his senses by the end of it. Walthius didn’t do that, but during the long, awkward pause after the speech, Jeff kind of wished that he had.

Didn’t matter. Walthius didn’t even blink an eye. And after a particularly awkward silence, he finally glanced over at Jeff and asked, “Are you waiting for me to say something?”

“Only if you want to,” Jeff said sheepishly.

“Well, I said the thing about the comic store…”

Jeff breathed out a mirthless laugh.

Walthius’ eyes narrowed and he looked at Jeff directly. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’”

“You got more you want to say?” Walthius said, no inflection in his voice whatsoever.

Jeff rolled his eyes. “No.”

Walthius turned his attention back to the road. “So that’s it?”

It? What does he mean by it? Jeff thought. “That’s pretty much it, yeah.”

Walthius took a bite out of his apple. "So,” he said with his mouth full, “Where do you go from here?"

Another pause.

"Where do I go from here?” Jeff repeated. “That's all you want to know?'

"What else is there to know?” he said with just a dash of spittle, his mouth still filled with apple. “It sounds like you told me everything." He took one more bite and then looked at Jeff with his apple hand outstretched, offering him some.

Jeff shook his head.

He doesn’t believe me, Jeff thought. Of course he doesn’t believe me. And he’s not laughing, either. Which means he thinks I’m crazy. Or dangerous. And maybe I am.

"This wasn't the reaction I was expecting,” Jeff said, trying to draw Walthius out.

Walthius shrugged and bit in to the apple core. "What reaction were you expecting?” Bits of apple flew onto the dashboard as he spoke.

“Never mind.” Jeff wiped the sprayed apple bits to the floor. Another awkward pause. Who am I trying to impress? Jeff thought. It’s just Walthius. Get it all out.

"I know you don’t believe me, all right?” Jeff blurted, raising the volume of the conversation by a few decibels.

Walthius didn’t bother to look at him. “I don’t?” he asked, as if this were news to him. "And why don’t I?' He was academic and passionless, like Mr. Barry explaining a particularly vexing axiom.

"You don’t believe me,” Jeff said, “because I don't believe me."

Another pause. Another apple bite. “Well, then you’re the one with the problem,” Walthius stated matter-of-factly. Having passed judgment, he just kept on driving. And stopping. All these red lights and they hadn’t made it through a single intersection.

“Friday night traffic sucks,” Walthius said. “You owe me for this.” He threw the apple core out the window. “It’s biodegradable,” he said in response to the disgusted look on Jeff’s face.

“You think I care about the apple?” Jeff asked incredulously.

“Well, you should,” Walthius said. “That was flagrant littering. Which is, as you know, against the law. If you’re going to fight crime, you’re not going to have the luxury of overlooking stuff like that.”

“If I’m going to fight crime?” Jeff sputtered.

“Don’t tell me you’re not going to fight crime,” Walthius said. “I don’t want to be disappointed in you.”

To Jeff, this was turning out to be a very disturbing conversation. They drove in silence until Jeff had the presence of mind to formulate a rational question.

As he spoke, he did so slowly and precisely. “How can you just sit there and pretend that this is no big deal?”

Walthius shot him an angry glance. “When did I say it was no big deal?” Walthius asked, then returning to stare at the river of taillights in front of him. “Of course it’s a big deal,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s a huge deal, in fact.”

Jeff sighed. “Thank you.” He turned to look out the window.

Walthius snorted. “No, thank you,” he said, far too formally. The light turned green; the car lurched forward another few yards and then came to a stop again.

Jeff blew out a burst of air. “So you don't believe me,” he said, more to himself than to Walthius.

Walthius snorted again. “You got from school to the Pier before the end of sixth period without the benefit of a car,” he laughed. “How else would that have happened if what you were saying isn’t true?”

He believes me. He believes me completely. 

Jeff sat there, dumbstruck. Walthius pointed at him and winked, as if to say “gotcha.” As if Jeff were the only one in the car who needed convincing. Jeff blinked. He really does believe me. Which means he’s crazy. Or dangerous. Or both. Maybe I just should have flown home.

“Maybe I just should have flown home,” he repeated aloud.

“You’d certainly get there faster,” Walthius said, as if they were discussing the merits of train vs. bus travel.

Jeff shook his head. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

“Yes.”

Jeff leaned in closer to him. “You know, it bothers me that you believe me.”

“That’s not surprising.”

He sounds so reasonable saying crazy things, Jeff thought.

Walthius seemed to be able to read his mind. “You seem to be forgetting,” he said “that cosmic catalysts happen all the time.”

Jeff cocked his head. “What the Sam Hill are you talking about?”

“The only thing worth talking about in a situation like this one,” Walthius replied. “Cosmic catalysts. One second, you’re one thing, and in the blink of an eye, you’re something else.”

Jeff turned his attention back to his feet. “Yeah, that’s great.”

“Sometimes it is, yes.”

“Newsflash, Walthius!” Jeff shouted. “This doesn’t happen all the time!”

Walthius snorted louder than usual. “Happens every day. A guy wins the lottery. Another guy gets hit by a truck. A kid is born; a mother dies. Someone wins, someone loses. Changes happen instantly, immediately, and irrevocably.”

Walthius stopped the car to let someone make a right turn into traffic ahead of him, which Jeff found annoyingly polite. Then he continued his speech, looking Jeff straight in the eye. “And you. You’re minding your own business; you fall off the bleachers and then wham! Cosmic catalyst.”

“Okay, granted,” Jeff conceded. “If that’s the way you want to go, fine.”

“Are you patronizing me?” Walthius said with mock seriousness, a small smile on his lips. “Are you actually patronizing me?”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up,” Walthius said. “So there.”

Jeff shut up. Then he didn’t. “This isn’t like winning the lottery or getting hit by a truck.”

“Why not?”

“Well, to begin with, the guy who gets hit by a truck usually ends up as road kill, not Superman.”

“Aha!” Walthius said, lifting his index finger to add a sting to the point. “Key word there is usually, my friend.”

They stopped again. Walthius surveyed the traffic again and frowned. “Can I get over to the right lane?” he asked. “Maybe if we take Pico, we’d move faster.”

“Maybe if you’d stop letting people in ahead of us, we’d actually be moving at all.”

“You want to drive?”

“No.”

“Then up your nose with a rubber hose,” Walthius snapped. “Can I get over or not?” It was the first time he sounded even remotely angry.

“Pico won’t be any faster,” Jeff snapped back. “And stop changing the subject.”

Walthius smiled with Cheshire impudence. “Testy, are we?” Then he returned to his tone of professorial seriousness. “Your raise a provocative point, I must admit. I concede that when a bolt of lightning hits someone, they usually die.”

“Who said anything about a bolt of –“

“But Barry Allen didn’t die, my friend,” Walthius said, cutting across him.

“Barry Allen?”

“Barry Allen,” Walthius confirmed. “He didn’t die. Cosmic catalyst right there.”

“So what?"

Jeff couldn’t remember a Barry Allen. Was he the guy with the tiny head in Wilkoff’s class? “Barry Allen?” Jeff asked. “Do we know a Barry Allen?”

“Wake up.”

Then it hit him. “You mean the comic book character?”

“I mean,” Walthius said, pausing for dramatic effect, “The Flash.”

Jeff slapped his forehead. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that Barry Allen defied your so-called logic.”

“So?”

“So nasty arachnids send most people to Poison Control, but one turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man.” Jeff tried to protest, but Walthius wouldn’t give him the opening. “And,” he continued, “not everyone at ground zero of a gamma bomb explosion turns into the Incredible Hulk. But, my friend, remember, always, that Bruce Banner did. And no one can say that he didn’t.” With each of those last few words, Walthius poked Jeff in the chest and then he nodded his head with a smug “so there” gesture. Then he frowned slightly. "Of course, there's the TV show version, where he did it to himself, but that's not relevant, is it?"

This led to the most awkward pause yet. Jeff’s eyes bore into Walthius, who didn’t bother to return his gaze.

Jeff was beside himself. “That’s it? That’s your argument?” he said, more as a sarcastic statement than an actual question.

Walthius raised an eyebrow. “Is there any other way to look at it?”

Jeff breathed a few times before speaking. Finally, he said “You’re a flaming idiot.”

“High praise,” Walthius said. “They said the same thing about the Human Torch.”

“Who did?” Jeff asked, his voice and temper rising. “Nobody says anything about the Human Torch.”

“Of course they –“

“There is no Human Torch!” Jeff was getting angry now. “There are no radioactive spiders! There’s no such thing as a gamma bomb!”

“Even so,” Walthius said.

“Even so? There’s also no such thing as the Flash or Peter Parker or the Incredible Hulk!”

Walthius threw up his hands. “Now you’ve lost me,” he said. The car began to swerve. Jeff reached out instinctively to correct course, but Walthius immediately regripped the steering wheel.

“What do you think you’re doing!” Jeff yelled.

“Sorry,” Walthius said. “I know I’m not supposed to take my hands off- “

“You’re talking comic books!” Jeff exploded. “You’re rambling on about some stupid comic books! I’m talking real life, here, Walthius! Try and keep up.”

“Real life,” Walthius repeated dully. “Stupid comic books.” His tone was flat, but there was an edge of irritation in his voice.

“Don’t patronize me!” Jeff shouted.

“Then stop being stupid!” Walthius shouted back. He brought the car to a screeching halt and was almost rear-ended by the car behind him.

“What in the world is wrong with you?” Jeff said, panicking.

Walthius eyed him with cold fury. “I expected more from you, Jeff. Especially from you.“

Jeff refused to meet his gaze and instead motioned aimless toward the windshield. “Just drive, willya?”

Walthius ignored him, as well as the exceptionally loud blats of the horn honking directly behind him. “Comic books,” he explained, “are our modern legends, my friend. They’re archetypes. Constants. They’re the myths we tell each other when we’re huddled around the campfire. And there isn’t a myth that doesn’t have its roots firmly planted in the truth.”

Jeff nodded heartily, looking behind him. “Fine,” he said, his eyes locked in a staring match with the furious motorist behind him. “If I agree, will you start driving again?”

The motorist came down on his horn again. Hard. If he’d had my powers, Jeff thought, there wouldn’t be much left of that car.

“Seriously, can we move again please?”

Walthius pondered for just a moment, and then said, simply, “Fine.”

“Fine!” Jeff said, relieved.

They drove in icy silence until Jeff began to mutter under his breath. “Campfires,” he mumbled derisively. “Ghost stories. Crap.”

To Jeff’s surprise, this was the thing that set Walthius off. “Crap, is it? Thousands of years of oral tradition. It’s all crap.”

“Easy, there, Tex!” Jeff said, smiling uneasily, trying to diffuse a tension he hadn’t noticed until now.

Walthius would not be deterred. “The building blocks of civilization were laid around those campfires, you ungrateful little pud.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Jeff said, his voice unnaturally calm. “It’s just –“

“Just WHAT?”

“We don’t huddle around campfires anymore.”

“Then maybe we should!” he shouted.

Jeff came right back at him with “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You think so? You think that the cosmos isn’t interested in you? That stuff just happens because it happens?”

Jeff was too angry to actually think about his response, but he still knew what his answer was. “Yeah, you got one thing right. Stuff just happens because it happens.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Walthius yelled. “And this…”

He took a deep breath and collected himself before he thrust his finger into Jeff’s chest and then pulled his voice down to a natural, conversational level.

“This,” he said again, quietly, “is the cosmos proving you wrong.”

Jeff opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn’t have an answer for that one. And he could see the freeway up ahead.

A Great Wall of Headlights, all standing fixed and immovable. At this rate, they’d never get home.

Chapter Three: Part One

I'm enjoying this probably more than the rest of you, but here's Chapter Three of my magnum opus. If you want to catch up, the Prologue is here, here's Chapter One, and here's Chapter Two.

Right now, Chapter Three is over 12,000 words long. I need to break it into pieces, but I'm not quite sure how. This part at the beginning is only 2355 words, and it fits together as a piece, but I'm not sure if it's long enough to sustain itself as an entire chapter.

I'll post more pieces of the chapter in coming days.

In the meantime, read and enjoy. Even if you don't enjoy, read and comment.

_________________

At least I can still bleed.

David Chakiris found unlikely comfort in this thought as twilight fell on the ornate rock garden by the swimming pool. He looked over the Bel Air estate that had been torn down and rebuilt to replace the home in which he’d grown up. He’d been reluctant to throw a party in his father’s absence, but his girlfriend seemed to think it was the thing to do, and it may very well have been. All these cheerleaders scurrying around the halls made him feel awkward, and then angry. This is my house, he thought. Why should I feel awkward? Despite his father’s social standing, he had never been able to master the obligatory social graces, and he took some pleasure in the thought that it wasn’t going to matter anymore.

As he listened to the man-made stream trickling over the stones, he relished the warm, red gush pouring down the length of his forearm, even though it all began to seem strangely innocuous.

He was starting to get woozy.

Although he was entirely stationery, the sounds of the party raging in the house behind him grew more distant, and David found himself of two minds as to what he should do next. Do I stop the bleeding, wash up, and go back to playing the good host? Or do I let nature take its course?

He had to do something. He almost wanted to do the right thing. He just wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Twelve people who were alive yesterday were dead today. I did that.

I killed them.

He had seen death before, and it had unsettled him. Unnerved him. But this was the first time the blood was on his hands.

I killed them.

He wasn’t sure if his conscience would ever let him think about anything else. He hadn’t meant to do that, he told himself over and over again. Surely that counts for something. He kept repeating that, mantra-like, for his conscience’s sake, but his conscience was still at war with the fevered rush of pleasure that had enveloped him the moment those cars came plunging off the overpass. Guilt washed over him in waves, cresting and falling, but each wave was stronger than the last, and the perverse delight of killing was still burning too brightly to ever be fully extinguished.

No. This isn’t me, he thought. I never wanted to be a killer.

Anyway, it was all moot, wasn’t it? He had no idea how he’d done it before. So why did he want to do it again? These questions were the impetus behind his decision, made over the course of the evening, to proceed with a simple, elegant solution. Since he had already killed twelve people, all he had to do to end it was kill one more.

That way, everyone’s happy.

This was the perfect place for it, too. He staggered toward the diving board at the far end of the pool, trying not to imagine what someone would think if they found him, bloodless, lying at the bottom, but he knew it would be better that way. He tried not to think of the dreams that would haunt the one to discover him. And anyway, there’d be less mess to clean up.

His mantra was lost. He was definitely on the edge of consciousness now, and it was getting harder and harder to remain standing. He barely noticed the sliding glass door opening behind him, or the slender, heavily decorated brunette who stepped out on to the patio. He caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and he thought, vaguely, that she looked very much like his new girlfriend. What would she think if she knew he’d taken the bus today? Pretty girls don’t date bus riders, and, if nothing else, she was such a pretty girl. Pretty stupid, too, but you can’t have everything, which was really the whole problem in a nutshell, now wasn’t it?

That might have been his final thought if she hadn’t opened her mouth.

“David?”

From where she was standing, the shadow prevented her from seeing the stained knife dangling precariously from the end of his non-sliced arm, or the pastiche of blood that smeared the front of his shirt. You’d think, David thought, that she’d at least be able to smell something, some kind of blood musk…

“There you are!” she squealed, oblivious. “You are, like, so in trouble. Everyone’s looking for you, and I’m all…”

Her voice trailed off when he collapsed into a heap and dropped the knife, which rang out against the cold stone patio.

“DAVID!” She ran to him and stopped short. “What’s wrong? You’re, like, all bloody!”

“Careful,” David mumbled, “you might soil your miniskirt.” It was a clever line, but David knew the moment was ruined. Why did she have to spoil this? No, it’s not her fault. It’s mine. Can’t I get anything right?

“What are you doing?”

“Doesn’t matter,” David answered. “I’m not doing it anymore.”

His dreams of a fashionable death dashed, he hobbled over to the fountain and plunged his arm into the stream, applying pressure to the wound with his good hand. Blood and water ran together until everything was clear, and within moments, David found himself newly focused and alert. His girlfriend just stood planted, blinking, her mouth hanging wide open.

She’d be prettier, David thought, if she learned to breathe through her nose.

“It’s only a flesh wound,” he quipped with his best Monty Python accent, trying to keep things light but knowing full well she’d miss the reference. He watched her kneel down to examine the discarded weapon. She was shivering with revulsion.

“This is, like, a knife!” she winced, holding the offending instrument by the blade with her thumb and forefinger as if it were the tail of a dead mouse.

“Nope. Not ‘like a knife.’ It’s the real thing, lady,” said David, all the while toweling off his arm with the dry part of his shirt. Then he examined the place where the wound was supposed to be. The bleeding had stopped, and there were only a trace outline of where he’d broken the skin, like a long-healed scar.

He had recovered completely in just a few seconds.

Maybe I can’t bleed after all, he thought.

“I really can’t do anything right,” he muttered.

“Seriously, what are you doing?” she asked again.

“Seriously?” David answered back. “You mean it? You’re serious this time?”

No, that’s not right. Why am I taunting her? What is this? What’s happening to me?

At the same time his head was clearing, the pretty girlfriend was descending into the throes of panic. “Help!” she screamed back to the house. “We need help out here!”

“No, we really don’t,” David said, and instantly, he was down on his knees and right upon her, slapping his hand over her mouth before she could shout again. He was sure he had been too forceful and had hurt her, and was disgusted with himself for not caring. “That’s enough of that,” he hissed with more than a hint of a threat. Ignoring her resistance, he, a little too roughly, raised them both up to their feet.

She wasn’t trying to resist. She was merely whimpering now, weak and afraid. David had no use for her.

Oh, how I hate this, David thought, and then realized that it wasn’t true. No, he didn’t hate this. He hated himself for how much he was enjoying this.

Yet she was absolutely terrified. And so was David. It took everything he had to keep from breaking her neck. He felt his hand start to swell, a fresh but familiar bloodlust engorging him, consuming him. She’s too pretty, David told himself. Much too pretty. I’ll bet her blood is pretty, too.

Enough. Enough! He took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and he told her to do the same. And then they breathed together, and he felt his conscience awake, and it incrementally overcame his murderous impulses. He spoke to her in a very slow, deliberate voice, as if he were calming a young child after a tantrum.

“Now you listen to me. Are you listening? Blink twice for yes.”

She blinked twice. Then she sort of nodded.

“Good. Nobody else has to know about this. Right?”

Another two blinks. This was too silly for David, so he loosened his grip just enough to allow her to nod properly.

“In fact, nobody else is ever going to know about this. Because you’re not going to say one word about what you saw out here. Do you understand me?”

Her eyes welled with tears as she nodded, slowly. He nodded along with her.

“That’s right,” he said in his most patronizing tone. “Because we both know how bad it would be if you couldn’t keep that pretty little mouth of yours shut. So as soon as my hand comes off of your mouth, this will never have happened, and we’re both going to go back in there and have a few laughs at our fun little party.”

Her eyes seemed to brighten a bit. Was she trying to smile? David thought. I can salvage this. Maybe this won’t be such a disaster after all.

“Now I’m going to take my hand off of your mouth, and you’re not going to make a sound. Are we clear on this?”

She nodded once more time.

“What’s going on out here?” asked a sharp, female voice from behind them.

David wheeled around to find himself facing a petite blonde who he recognized as one of those other high school cheerleaders. Startled, he dropped his hand from his girlfriend’s mouth, and she took advantage of the moment.

“He’s hurting me, Lisa!” she shrieked. “He’s hurting me!”

“I told you,” David seethed, “ to keep your stupid mouth shut!” He yanked her by the arm and then hurled her to the ground with enough force to make a sickening crunch as she hit the floor.

“Vikki!” Lisa scrambled to her side and stumbled over the bloody knife. She looked down and gasped in horror. “He stabbed you?!” she said to Vikki, picking up the knife with a firm grasp on the handle.

Not so dainty, this one, David thought. Might take a bit more to bring her to tears.

Vikki tried to answer, but she was incoherent. She was cradling what looked like a broken arm, wailing hysterically.

“For your information,” David intoned with an eerie calmness, “Nobody has been stabbed, least of all, her. I know you’re both just high school girls, but I’d appreciate a little perspective.”

Lisa shot him a withering glance before she gently eased Vikki to her feet, cradling her elbows in the palms of her hands. “You need a doctor, honey,” she said soothingly. Vikki nodded, still shaking, trying to get her tears under control.

“Sorry,” David said, taking a series of small but deliberate steps in their direction. No sudden moves, he told himself. This can still be salvaged. “That’s not going to happen. And I’m afraid, Vikki, this means I won’t be able to accompany you to your homecoming dance Saturday night.”

“Keep him away from me!” Vikki howled. Arm and arm with Lisa, she started limping back toward the door.

David wasn’t pleased. “No!” he shouted. “You’re not going anywhere!” They ignored him.

“Hey!” No response.

David was in no mood to be ignored.

Without thinking, he reached over and grabbed one of the huge, molded boulders that made up one of the foundations of the fountain. It seemed perfectly natural to him that his hand and his arm were now about five times their normal size, and with the strength to match. He lobbed the boulder over the girl’s heads and it hit the glass door, shattering the nearby windows and destroying most of the back wall of the house.

Vikki forgot about her dramatic limp and, while still trying to cradle her arm, tore off toward the gate to the front yard. Lisa trailed close behind. David, finished with the warning shots, grabbed another boulder and heaved it directly at them, only to have it blocked by the fully-grown maple tree near the neighbor’s fence. The tree cracked on impact and fell directly on the roof of the house, collapsing the whole northern wing, which was, thankfully, far from the center of the party’s action. Had he thrown in the other direction, who knows how many guests would have been crushed?

Who knows how many more I just killed? I didn’t want to do this. So why do I keep doing it?

David looked at his arm after the throw. The pangs of conscience had begun to deflate it, the same way it had the day before. But this was not over. His heart was still racing. He had tried to kill again, this time in his own father’s house. Soon all the other cheerleaders would be out here. They’d know what he did.

So he’d have to kill them, too. Most of him didn’t want to do that. But there was too much of him that did.

No. There was another option. Not entirely bloodless, but less bloody, surely.

He dashed around the side of the house just in time to see Vikki’s car racing out of sight. He opened the side door to the garage and saw that Dad’s good car was gone, but the big old Buick was still there, and David knew where the extra keys were hidden.

Dad will kill me if I hurt his car, David thought instantly and then almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

Within seconds, David was out on the street, winding his way down Stradella Road toward the south Bel Air entrance. He could see Vikki’s car just up ahead. He imagined what it might look like after it was grabbed, tossed like a shot put, and splattered all over the nearest hillside.

He cursed himself as his hand throbbed with pleasure at the thought of it.

Debate Wrap-Up

I’m very grateful to have avoided blogging my way through perhaps the most frustrating of all the presidential debates. It wasn’t the most boring – that was the last one – but this one demonstrated, more than any other, why John McCain is easily the worst Republican presidential candidate to get the GOP nomination in my lifetime.

McCain was “feisty,” according to Tom Brokaw in the follow-up, which is a nice way of saying he was cranky, testy, condescending, and argumentative. Plus he blinked too much and smiled like Igor from all the vampire movies. He moaned and whined about Obama’s friends calling him nasty names. He then tried to link Obama to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and the voter fraud machine known as ACORN , but his heart wasn’t in it. Instead, he boasted, again, about what a disloyal Republican he’s been, even managing to compromise himself on the one issue that might have persuaded me to vote for him: the judiciary. Over the weekend, he stated that Obama’s potential Supreme Court nominees would be just dandy, and tonight, he trumpeted his support for judicial tyrants Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer and bragged about cutting off the GOP at its knees with his dumb “Gang of 14,” which undermined the Bush administration’s judicial nominees.

He also let Obama get away with murder - i.e. infanticide - on the Born Alive Act and partial-birth abortion.

In the meantime, Obama looked like a grown-up and, once again, sounded like a conservative. He promised a “net spending cut” after implementing all his new federal programs, which is either a freakin’ lie or the biggest, dumbest demonstration of ignorance possible. Mathematically, it simply can’t be done, especially while entitlement spending continues to consume a metastasizing share of the federal budget. He also, again, promised a tax cut for 95% of all Americans, overlooking the fact that 47% of American PAY NO INCOME TAXES. yet McCain ignored that completely, because he doesn’t understand it, either. He ran to the left of Obama on his asinine “let’s buy everyone’s mortgage!” plan, and he was unable to articulate, in any coherent fashion, a single conservative idea, beyond a nebulous support of tax breaks for his pal Joe the Plumber.

And you know Joe the Plumber’s going to show up in the Saturday Night Live sketch, don’t you?

I just stand aghast that this is the man my party has decided represents me and what I believe. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even come close. If he’s elected, the GOP will lose any connection to the principles that first attracted me to it. How can I vote for that? How can anyone vote for that?

I cannot stomach Obama, either, but I will say this: if someone put a gun to my head and said I had to vote for one or the other – instead of throwing my vote away, which is what I intend to do – I’d have to accept that there are essentially two Democrats in this race, and the right thing to do is to cast a ballot for the only one who is honest enough to put a D by his name.

Obama’s going to be the next president. That’s a terrifying thought. The only thing more terrifying is the idea of John McCain as our next president.

Heaven help us.

Debate Issues

Tonight is Presidential Debate #3, and I'm about as interested in watching McCain getting flushed down the crapper again as I am to watch, well, anything get flushed down the crapper. Each debate blogging has gotten in me in hot water with Mrs. Cornell, as she has had to deal with the majority of the family issues/Stalliondo nudity during the debate time. 

So I make no guarantees as to my blogging participation in the continued ritual immolation of the Republican Party. If I can blog, I will, but you may be on your own on this one. 

The Authorship Question

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your comments on the novel. They are more helpful than you know. Some comments on your comments: At one point, the dog was important, but as the novel progresses, it doesn't seem to be working out that way. Except Lisa calls Jeff "Jumper" throughout the book based on that incident, and I'm reluctant to give that up, as "Jumper" was the name of this story back when I wrote the whole thing in first person and it was a self-indulgent mess. I'd like to keep that connection, but I probably shouldn't worry about it, especially if it's not germane to the plot. And, yes, the ripping off of the shirt has to go.

The Nathan Petrelli connection is a little more disturbing. I watched the first season of Heroes and gasped in a few places as I realized that my book would likely have to change to avoid charges of plagiarism - even though I finished the first draft of my old novel ten years ago. (I started writing this story in 1994. I could win a court case, but I doubt anyone would publish this thing if it was too Heroesesque.) I haven't seen any episodes of Heroes since the first season, but I'm confident that this story is different enough at this point that I'm not as worried as I was.

When writing, it helps to read to provide some perspective. I just finished the book Interred With Their Bones, a murder mystery that focuses on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. It's a serviceable thriller, made even better by a fictional visit to the Utah Shakespearean Festival, an event the author describes in detail - and gets the details wonderfully right. It's something of a Da Vinci Code knock-off, only instead of Jesus, the subject is Shakespeare and one of his lost plays, Cardenio. Along the way, the question of "who was William Shakespeare" comes up more than once, and this book's greatest flaw is its timidity in providing a definitive answer. 

As commenter thursowick can tell you, prior to beginning work on my silly novel, I wrote a silly play, which has gone through several titles and iterations. I think it was originally called The Butcher's Apprentice. The latest version, which I haven't touched for a couple of years, is called Fortune and Men's Eyes. The plot, the characters, and just about everything in this play changes with each successive draft, but one thread remains constant - the idea that William Shakespeare was actually a pseudonym, belonging to one Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. 

If you're not familiar with what Shakespeare folks have come to call "The Authorship Question," then you're probably already bored reading this. I keep trying to find people who want to talk about it, and nobody really cares. I have an entire forum at Stallion Cornell's Moist Board devoted to this very issue, and I think nobody has posted there since the beginning of time. 

A quick summary for anyone who IS interested: the problem arises from the fact that the man credited with writing Shakespeare's plays is entirely disconnected from the plays themselves. We know very little about him biographically, and what we do know bears no resemblance to the man who would and could have written the works attributed to him. 

Just one example: None of his original manuscripts exist, so the only things we have that were written in his own hand are six signatures from legal documents, all of which are spelled differently and are hideously messy. They look more like the handiwork of an illiterate, not the greatest writer in the history of the English language: 

There's more. In fact, the evidence that the man from Stratford-on-Avon did not write these plays is considerable. The question of who DID write them, however, is more difficult to answer. Mark Twain, himself a pseudonymous author, helped make the case that Shakespeare was actually Sir Francis Bacon in his pamphlet Is Shakespeare Dead?  Others believe that playwright Christopher Marlowe, who died in a bar brawl in 1593, faked his own death to return to writing under an assumed name - William Shakespeare. Many candidates have been proposed throughout the years, including Queen Elizabeth I herself, but the most persuasive of them all is Edward de Vere, who had the unfortunate distinction of having the case first made for him in a book by Thomas J. Looney. (His name is pronounced "Loney," but that doesn't soften the blow.)

The Looney theory, such as it is, is that de Vere, as a nobleman, would not have been permitted to write for the lowly public theatre under his own name. And since de Vere was such a controversial character in his own right, the Royal Family took great pains to ensure that he remained anonymous even in death. Suddenly, much about Shakespeare's writing makes all kinds of sense. Hamlet becomes almost autobiographical, and the Sonnets, which are largely love poems from an older man to the Earl of Southhampton, make sense for the first time. (Southhampton ended up as de Vere's son-in-law, so when he tells him, in Sonnet 10, "make thee another self for love of me," you can see where he's coming from.) 

I can rehash all of this all day long if you'd like, but there are others who do it far better than I do. Shakespeare by Another Name is by far the best of the Oxfordian biographies; Alias Shakespeare by Joseph Sobran is short enough to read quickly and makes the case based on the Sonnets alone, and The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality by Charlton Ogburn is the gold standard of Oxfordianism. It's also well over a thousand pages long in hardcover with a tiny font. It's as dry as dust. If you want just a simple introduction to the idea, I recommend the Shakespeare-Oxford website's FAQ. 

Usually, when I start to discuss this with anyone, people don't tell me I'm wrong. Instead, they ask me why I care. After all, we have the plays and the poems, so why does it matter who really wrote them? The problem is that such a question could be asked of just about any work of literature. If it doesn't matter who wrote the greatest plays ever written, then it doesn't matter who wrote anything. Knowing something about de Vere makes the play far more fascinating as you see his life, his ideas, his point of view shining through. If you're a Shakespeare aficianado at all, knowing who really wrote the plays will enhance your appreciation for them tenfold. 

Still, despite a significant body of evidence pointing to de Vere as the true author, orthodoxy will not go quietly into that good night. I remember one particularly unpleasant experience when I was seated next to Fred Adams, the illustrious founder of the Utah Shakespearean Festival, at a charity banquet. Mr. Adams is a distinguished and a delightful man, and the conversation was entirely pleasant until, just for kicks, I told him I was an Oxfordian. 

His face darkened. "You're not really, are you?"

I assured him I was. 

He scowled. "Well, I guess that sells a lot of books, now, doesn't it?" He didn't say another word to me for the course of the evening. 

Chapter Two

Only four comments on Chapter One, but all four are very helpful. Most complain about the length of the comic book setup, but there's less fat there than it might seem - much of the banter becomes important in later chapters. I was trying to lay some expositional groundwork without being tedious, and I'm not sure I succeeded.

Yes, thursowick, I was trying to be somewhat disorienting in the first couple of paragraphs, much like a camera in a tight shot, pulling back to reveal a scene entirely different from one you might have imagined. I thought that was fun, but it could be that it's simply annoying.

And, yes, those bits of dialogue are a pretty sitcommish. Out they go. What did you think of the dreams? Bill Cosby and his dog chow make an appearance later in the book.

wbpraw, "Rahsaan" was the name of an African-American KOTC guy. I wanted a name that suggested his ethnicity without using something clunky and obvious. Anyone else think it sounds Indian?

Thanks for the typo corrections, too - and I'll have to check out that Buffy ep.

Since it seems that you four are the only ones interested in commenting, I thought I'd offer additional incentive by putting chapter two online today. I mean, really, why not? You have all weekend to read it while civilization collapses around you.

Here 'tis:

________

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Jeff muttered this to himself about seven times before punishing himself with other, more profane curses. He was walking quickly, but he was going nowhere in particular. He hiked up the steps to the front of the campus, ostensibly to use the toilet up in the boy’s locker room. Since he had no urgent need to use the facilities, he kept on walking toward the football field, staying in the outdoors to clear his head.

That’s when he saw the homecoming float.

It was actually a silver pickup truck with a makeshift floral façade slapped on the flatbed in the back. The cab and the wheels were still clearly visible, and Jeff assumed that the Student Council hadn’t finished decorating it yet. There were several other floats on the other side of the field, which looked a little too professional to have been produced by mere high school students. Jeff assumed that they were props for the movie they were going to be filming tomorrow. Topanga High, being relatively close to Hollywood but still looking somewhat small-townish, often appeared on the silver screen as a double for more rural locations. Jeff wondered if his fellow marching band members were going to get paid to be extras. If not, Walthius would be sure to raise a stink. I wonder how an extra files a grievance?

He didn’t have long to ponder the question, because he soon spotted a truck that was making its way along the jogging track around the football field. The float itself really wasn’t much to look at, but what was riding in back took Jeff’s breath away – and it distracted him from his self-flagellation for at least thirty full seconds.

It was the entire Homecoming Court, led by a tiara-clad Vikki Dennis, in all of her homecoming queen regalia, waving at the imaginary crowd sitting in the stands.

Jeff’s first instinct was to wave back, which is why he didn’t wave back. He learned long ago that things went better when he ignored his initial instincts. Instead, he took a lonely seat in the back row of the bleachers and settled in to watch the rehearsal, which seemed to consist solely of lots of waving and looking pretty.

And that was exactly the way Jeff liked it.

The only other observer in the stands was a scruffy looking black Labrador, who had wandered onto the school grounds from parts unknown. Jeff ignored him at first, until the dog decided that sniffing in the crotch seam of Jeff’s jeans was a far more interesting activity than watching a bunch of girls wave their hands without moving their fingers.

The first time Jeff pushed the dog away, he tried to be nice about the whole thing. “Shoo,” he said as he gently nudged the dog’s head, which reverted back to its initial sniffing position as soon as Jeff’s hand stopped obstructing his goal.

“I said shoo!” Jeff hissed, more forcefully this time, and with a harder shove, but with no change in the ultimate result. This exchange repeated itself several times, and as the dog grew increasingly insistent, Jeff became more and more riled up. He finally stood up and jumped down over the next row in the bleachers to a seat below, hoping that the dog wouldn’t think to follow.

The dog, of course, wasn’t thinking at all, and he jumped down with Jeff, which led Jeff and the dog into a game of bleacher bench hopscotch, as Jeff and the nosy dog crisscrossed and zigzagged their way across the bleachers. Jeff, in a vain effort to escape, started jumping two or three rows at a time, up, down, and sideways, with the dog was right behind him every step of the way. The canine was also becoming increasingly agitated, and he had started to yelp, and then progressed into a full-throated bark. It didn’t take long before Jeff was screaming like a little girl, and soon the pickup truck stopped cold as the Homecoming Court observed this whole spectacle with the horrid fascination of people watching a train wreck. It was impossible for them to take their eyes off the snarling, sniffing dog and his shrieking, gangly victim as they gamboled about in a mad frolic that was bound to end in disaster.

And end in disaster it did.

Jeff lost his balance near the top of the bleachers and fell onto the track below. He was about ten feet above the ground, and he missed the pavement to the rear of the bleachers and landed on the gravel-covered earth, which, while it could have been worse, was not really a good thing, since he landed squarely on the side of his head.

Jeff was disoriented, more by the fact that he was still alive than by any kind of pain. Had he been knocked out? He should have been, but he didn’t think he had. In fact, he felt strangely alert, as if the fall had shifted something inside of him that needed to be shifted. He didn’t quite understand it, but he had the sense that something had just clicked into place.

The girls on the float screamed in panic, and the driver of the pickup truck jumped out of the cab and scurried to Jeff’s aid. The Labrador pounced on Jeff immediately after his fall, snarling wildly as he tore Jeff’s Green Lantern logo T-shirt right off of his skinny frame. Jeff kicked him away, and in the ensuing chaos, the Labrador was smart enough to make a clean getaway from the scene of the crime.

The pickup truck driver was Mr. Sylvester, the head football coach and Jeff’s former P.E. teacher, and he was startled to find that Jeff had survived the fall without losing consciousness. “Are you all right, buddy?” he asked. The girls had now formed a semi-circle around him, and Jeff, blinking, looked up straight into the face of Vikki Dennis. She had a look of deep concern on her face, which thrilled and terrified him at the same time.

No one was more surprised by Jeff’s safe landing than Jeff himself. He found he was staring at Vikki just a little too long when the coach asked again: “Are you okay? Talk to me, buddy.”

Jeff blinked, and then said, simply, “I’m fine.” He resumed staring at Vikki, who, for the first time since fifth grade, was actually staring back. Jeff then allowed himself a big, goofy grin, partly to show how casual he was about the whole thing, and partly because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. A slight breeze began to blow, and Jeff felt the wind on his bare chest. Jeff tried to cover himself by putting his hands over his nipples. The girls tried in vain not laugh, but they were only partially successful.

“Better get to the nurse’s office. You took a pretty bad fall,” the coach said.

“No, no,” Jeff said, standing up and brushing himself off. “No, I’m fine, Coach.” He had never called Mr. Sylvester “Coach” before, but he had heard football players do it, and he hoped it would make him sound manlier. He was trying to recover, or at least manufacture, just a bit of dignity, and he tried to play down the silliness of the whole thing. He shrugged his shoulders and conjured up an artificially smug look on his face. “I’m good,” he said, playing the tough guy. “Nah, I’m good.”

“Well, you sure are a good jumper!” one of the girls said in a condescendingly earnest tone. Suddenly, no one could deny the utter ridiculousness of the situation. The giggle dam burst and everyone was laughing out loud.

“All right, that’s enough,” the coach scolded, but his heart wasn’t in it. Jeff could tell he wanted to laugh, too. Jeff smiled a pained smile, trying to ignore the hot, sticky wave of embarrassment that was sweeping over him. He shot a look at the girl who had mocked him. It was Lisa Meyer, a tiny blonde cheerleader with an attitude twice her size. Being an easy target, Jeff was frequently on the receiving end of her pointed barbs.

Lisa Meyer, Jeff thought to himself. I should have known.

“Sorry, pal, but you’d best get along to the nurse’s office,” the coach said. “I insist.”

Jeff didn’t argue. He turned his back and walked away, still covering himself with his hands, trying not to run but walking as fast as he could so he wouldn’t have to hear the continuing giggles behind him and the coach’s half-hearted attempts to silence them. “You sure are a good jumper,” he repeated to himself in a singsong, nasal voice. Jeff decided that when he ruled the world, Lisa Meyer was going to be strung up by her thumbs.

As soon as he could no longer hear them, Jeff picked up the pace and started to run. He knew he should make his way to the nurse’s office, but the fall hadn’t seemed to injure him at all. In fact, if anything, it had cleared his head completely. Emotionally, he was falling apart, but, physically, he had never felt better in his life.

He picked up his pace.

He now seemed to be running almost twice as fast as he’d ever run before. But he wasn’t even winded! Jeff poured it on and tore past the main administration building, past the lunch court, past the classrooms and the tennis courts at the edge of campus, and down to the lower student parking lot.

He traveled a distance of over four hundred yards in about seven seconds.

He stopped when he reached his own car, an ancient, maroon Nissan Sentra. He had delivered papers for three years to save money to buy this cheap piece of junk, and all for nothing. All of a sudden, he could run faster than he could drive.

Jeff stood still for a long time. He put his finger on his pulse. His heart wasn’t racing. He hadn’t broken a sweat. He was breathing normally, and he had a hard time reconciling what had just happened with what he knew about running. Granted, Jeff hadn’t had much athletic experience, but he had had enough to know that people aren’t supposed to run that fast, especially uncoordinated people. He was always the last across the finish line for as long as he could remember. Now he was fast enough to cut through the ribbon before the other runners got out of the gate.

Jeff had never ditched school before, but he was naked, humiliated, and seriously freaked out. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket, pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose, and got in the Sentra and drove away.

He didn’t want to go home, so he drove down Topanga Canyon Boulevard until he got to the Ventura Freeway onramp. He headed south toward downtown, but with no real destination in mind. On a good day, he could make it from school to Hollywood Boulevard in twenty to twenty-five minutes.

This was not a good day.

It was smooth sailing for about two miles, but soon the traffic was backed up, bumper to bumper. He turned on the radio to the news station, and apparently this was all still caused by some overpass that had collapsed the night before. It was the only thing the commentators were talking about, how the bridge’s structural integrity should have held, how twelve people were dead and thirty more injured, about how awful it was, and what was the government going to do about it…

Jeff didn’t care. He was furious that he couldn’t see around the van driving in front of him. Knowing there's a bridge down up ahead didn’t make his car go any faster.

But finally, enough was enough. Jeff hadn't moved fifty yards in fifteen minutes, and he was getting antsy. Surely traffic had never been that slow before. He started to get angry at every car on the freeway. He imagined his car with a big, impregnable glass shield in the front, pushing helpless Volkswagens to the side of the road like some freeway snowplow. Sure, people would be killed if he did that, but at least he'd be moving.

Finally, he got so angry that he started to swear at the top of his lungs. Every foul word he could think of came streaming from his lips. Jeff was not a swearer by nature – in his view, profanity should be reserved for those tender moments when you are stranded in the center of a sea of chrome with no land in sight. That's when he used his army vocabulary.

Walthius always told Jeff that swearing is like cheap romance - it’s exhilarating while it's happening, but it feels lousy the second it ends. Jeff had never paid attention to that, because who would believe Walthius knew anything about cheap romance? Well, apparently, Walthius had more experience than he let on, because he sure knew something about swearing. Jeff’s tirade made him feel awful. Even worse, it just made him angrier. Now he not only didn't mind if he hurt someone - he NEEDED to plow his car into the something, and he didn’t care what it was.

Shaking with rage, he slammed down on his wimpy little horn and held it down, hoping to annoy everyone in sight until the traffic gods were appeased. This was much better than swearing, because it inspired real misery in others. Jeff was now the freeway judge and jury, and his verdict was that all other drivers needed to be punished.

His plan to anger the entire freeway yielded the desired undesirable results. He didn’t realize, however, that the other motorists would so eagerly punish him back. A symphony of car horn blats and honks filled the air and built to a chaotic crescendo that nearly drove Jeff insane. Losing complete control of his temper, he raised his fist and slammed it down hard on that fragile horn, making as frightful a noise as a Nissan possibly can.

His hand didn't stop with the horn.

His hand plowed all the way through the steering wheel and into the steering mechanism. He pounded the thing so hard that the entire dashboard collapsed, and he fell forward and smacked his head on the windshield, shattering it with the force of the fall.

He was trying to relieve stress, and in the process he’d totaled his own car.

He stopped and took a deep breath. He looked at his hand. No blood. He felt his head with his hands. No cuts, no bruises, nothing. He looked at his car. No front half. It looked like it had had a head-on collision from the inside.

Whatever else he had done, he had also set off the horn mechanism. And now that the horn itself was lying in a pile of rubble, he had no way of stopping it. The car wouldn’t start – the key was now part of the steering column slag by the accelerator - but it was easily the loudest car on the freeway. Yet it probably still wasn’t much louder than the guy with tattoos all over his arms behind Jeff who was cursing him at the top of his lungs.

“Move it! Move it! MOVE IT!!!” Tattoo Man yelled, leaning out of his driver’s side window.

“Shut up!” Jeff yelled back. “SHUT UP!!!”

This dialogue continued for several seconds before Tattoo Man leapt out of his car and ripped open Jeff’s door. He reached into to grab Jeff by the collar, but since Jeff had no collar to grab, he ended up grabbing him by his shoulders and flung him out of his car. As he lifted his arm back to deliver a full body blow, Jeff did the only thing he could.

He ran. And ran fast.

And ran up.

He didn’t do it on purpose. He just wanted to fly away and leave the Nissan to rot.
So he looked up, reached for the moon and, much to his astonishment, found himself halfway there. It was a really unsettling and exhilarating feeling, all the same time - sort of like bungee jumping backwards. When he finally bothered to look down, he saw his car sitting on the main artery of Los Angeles like some tiny blood clot, and at that point he didn't care about traffic reports or homecoming floats or rabid Labradors or anything earthly.

Now he was a thing of the air. He was part of the sky. He could do and be anything he wanted.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed up there, gliding about aimlessly, somersaulting with giddy delight, or backstroking through clouds. It felt like forever, but his watch said thirty minutes. In any event, he started to get confused by the impossibility of it all and felt he might do well to figure all of this out on the ground before he started drag racing with helicopters.

Do helicopters drag race? he asked himself. This is getting too weird.

He decided to fly home, which required him to figure out how to get from here to there, something he had a hard enough time doing when he was on land. He decided to follow the freeway back the way he had come, which was easy to do, since his side of the freeway was completely clogged. He watched the road as he flew, although he had to stop every few seconds to wipe the condensation that was collecting on his glasses. Clark Kent wore glasses as a disguise. Despite his other new powers, Jeff still had to wear his specs to see the big “E” on the top of the eye chart.

Following the freeway was easy enough, but knowing where to get off the freeway was difficult from just below cloud level. He also wasn’t sure which interchange he was supposed to take. Was he still on the 101, or was he following the 10 or the 405 now? All the buildings looked pretty much the same, and he had no frame of reference for where he lived. He was also flying much faster than he realized, and he knew that when he hit the ocean he had gone too far.

He decided he was probably in Santa Monica, and his suspicions were confirmed when he caught sight of the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. He came hurtling down from the heavens and plummeted straight into the water about two hundred feet from the shoreline. His glasses were knocked off on impact, and he desperately flailed about to find them as he rose upward. Thankfully, they were cheap enough that they were floating just above the waves, and he grabbed them and put them on before surfacing. Other than that minor snafu, he judged his landing to be an unqualified success. He would have attracted a lot of attention if anyone had actually seen him, and as he popped his head up and sputtered for air, he was reasonably sure that no one had.

Not that he cared much. He was in a world apart from them now. He was bigger. Better. The little people could think what they wanted, but none of them had the power to fly sans airplane.

He swam to the beach, and as he got closer, he relaxed and drifted, letting the waves do most of the work. He washed up on the sand with bent up glasses and waterlogged jeans. And still nobody paid much attention to him as he wandered up the hill to the top of the pier.
He was quite a sight, but Santa Monica had seen a whole lot worse than him.

He flopped backward into the sand and lay there, gritty and salty, his soggy clothes sticking to his back. He lay there for more than a few minutes, just staring out over the horizon.

If I wanted to, he thought, I could leap up and fly right past the horizon.

Maybe I’ll spend tomorrow morning in Hawaii. Or Tahiti. Or Jamaica. Except isn’t Jamaica the other direction? Maybe Tahiti was, too. It didn’t matter. If he got lost, he could zip to the other side of the world in the course of an afternoon. There were no limits anymore. He could disappear forever, start a whole new life, and maybe even get a girlfriend.

Only then did he start to feel anxious about the life he would leave behind. Was it right to disappear without even saying goodbye? Like I’d really go through with it. And where would I go, anyway? As he pondered, he felt a sudden surge of warm water trickling out of his right ear, and suddenly he could hear better. He didn’t even know his hearing had been temporarily impaired.

There’s a lot I don’t know.

Too much had happened for him to make any decisions like that on the spur of the moment. His head had cleared to the point that he wanted to go home, and, for whatever reason, his instinctive caution warned against trying to fly again. He had no cell phone, so he had to track down the last pay phone in Los Angeles. Which, to his surprise, he did, at a solitary service station up along Pacific Coast Highway. He dug through his drenched pockets to find any loose change. There was none to find, so he picked up the receiver and dialed “0.”

The operator came on the line and asked if she could help him.

“Yes, I’d like to make a collect call, please.”

“To what number?”

Jeff started to give her his home phone number, but then he stopped.

“What was that?” asked the operator.

“Hold on,” Jeff said. What was he going to say to his mother if she picked up the phone? How would he explain what happened, when he couldn’t possibly explain it himself?

There was only one other person who could help to begin to make sense out of all of this.

“Sir? Are you there?” the operator asked.

“What? Sorry. Yes, I’m here. Can I start over?”

“It’s your nickel,” the operator said, which made Jeff chuckle inwardly as he gave her the home number of Ted Walthius.

Chapter One

So here's Chapter One of my book. Yes, it's late, So are my birthday greetings to my big sister, JBN. Happy birthday, JBN! And happy birthday today to my lovely bride Mrs. Cornell, who is now older than me again. 

Anyway, you know the rules. Actually, there are no rules. Savage this without mercy. (You can go back and reference the Prologue if you need a refresher.)

Enjoy!

_________________

“You, sir, are wrong. Dead wrong.”

Jeff Downey just laughed. “I’m not wrong. And, besides, even if I were, what are you going to do about it?”

“Hmmmm.” Walthius stroked his chin in mock thoughtfulness and jutted out his large lower lip. “A fine question,” he mused. Then he scrunched up his nose tightly, driving his black wire-rim glasses up to his forehead.  

Jeff pretended to cough and said “Chicken” at the same time.

“That’s fine, laugh all you want,” Walthius said finally, with a vaguely Germanic accent. “I’m going to kill you.” He stood up from his bench and leaned across the table so he could face Jeff nose-to-nose, his small, beady eyes close together in a threatening squint.  

He then smiled toothlessly and said, “I’m going to kill you very much.”

Jeff laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose.

“Milk just came out of your nose,” observed Rahsaan Leonard from the far side of the lunch bench. He then went back to reading his newspaper.

Jeff laughed again and dabbed at his face with his napkin, all the while surveying the landscape. Thankfully, no one else at the outdoor lunch tables of Topanga Canyon High School seemed to have noticed the milk-snorting incident. Jeff didn’t find that particularly surprising. He had long ago accepted the fact that the center of gravity of the school’s social universe was not to be found anywhere near his unlikely trio of friends.

Sure, the attention of the gaggle of girls who were just then fluttering around starting quarterback Sam Cornell might be nice on occasion, but Jeff decided that when you’re arguing with Ted Walthius about whether or not Superman could be killed by a nuclear explosion, geeky anonymity came in handy.

“How could a nuclear blast even dent the guy?” Jeff said. “Superman moves planets.”

“Big deal,” was Walthius’s reply. “Nothing explodes when you move a planet.”

“Moving planets is stupid,” Rahsaan muttered. “But no one listens to me.”

“Yeah, well,” Jeff countered, not listening to Rahsaan, “he also saunas in the core of the sun, which is, like, what, a billion nuclear explosions a minute?”

“Sure,” Walthius said. “But remember, it’s a yellow sun.”

“So?”

“So the Planet Krypton orbited a red sun.”

Jeff arched an eyebrow. “And again I say - so?”

“So I think my case speaks for itself.” Walthius sucked the straw on his empty milk carton, making a gurgling noise and drawing the disapproving glare of a girl at the other table. He gave her a cutesy “hello” wave, and she turned her back in disgust.  

“Rahsaan, a little help here?” Jeff said.

“Sorry. I don’t read the white man’s comic books,” said Rahsaan, not bothering to look up from the paper. “So unless you all start talking about the Incredible Hulk, I’m out.”

“The Hulk?” Walthius sniffed. “The Hulk’s a white man!”

“Excuse me?” Rahsaan slammed down his paper loudly enough to cause a few heads to turn. “A white man? I think not. The Hulk is a green man. Which makes him a brother.” He nodded smartly, picked up his paper, snapped it open with a flourish and began to read again. He mumbled to himself something about a bridge collapsing yesterday, which both Jeff and Walthius ignored.

“When he changes back to Bruce Banner he’s white, though,” Jeff said. “I don’t think it counts.” 

Rahsaan, without moving his face, shot him a glare filled with mock scorn before returning to the front-page section.

“The hard truth that you just don’t want to face,” Walthius continued, his attention focused back on Jeff, “is that the fusion reactions of a red sun directly mimic the nuclear explosions of your average ICBM.”

This proved to be too much for Rahsaan, who pulled down his paper sharply to give him direct glaring access to Walthius. “And just how would you know that?” he said scornfully.

“It’s science, young man,” Walthius said. “You’re just a sophomore. Come back to me when you’re older.”

“It’s stupid is what it is,” Rahsaan responded, raising up the paper again.

“Even if you’re right,” Jeff said, humoring him, “what difference does it make?”

Walthius was aghast. “What difference does it make? Is that what you’re actually asking me? What difference does it make?”

“Did I stutter?”

“Ooh, tough guy,” Rahsaan mumbled from behind his paper.

“It makes ALL the DIFFERENCE in the world!” Walthius was getting agitated. “It means that a nuclear blast would be a tiny red sun, which would effectively decimate a Kryptonian even more than a regular human being.”

Jeff laughed. “Decimate more? Did you really say that?”

“I didn’t stutter, if that’s what you mean.”

“Zing!” Rahsaan said, still reading.

“How can you decimate someone more than someone else? You’re either decimated or not. No in-between.”

Walthius considered this, and then shook his head. “No. Partial decimation is possible.”

“What a load!” Jeff said.

“The word refers to the ancient Roman wartime practice of killing every tenth man,” Walthius said. “Look it up.”

“So you’re saying a nuclear bomb would take out a tenth of Superman?”

Walthius waved his hand dismissively. “The details don’t matter.”

“If you ask me,” Rahsaan added, “it depends on the tenth.”

“The important thing is that he’d be dead,” Walthius explained.

Jeff cocked his head slightly to the right. “What? So Superman would be fully decimated, then?”

“With a nuke?” Walthius nodded. “Oh, sure. He’d be dead by more than just a little bit.”

“Mostly dead,” Rahsaan quipped.

Jeff snorted.“That’s like being a little bit pregnant!”

“No, it’s like being a little bit dead,” Walthius said. “Pregnancy and death are two different things.”

“Not according to my mom,” said Rahsaan, who put down the paper long enough to take a bite out of his PB&J and shift backward on the bench and catch a glimpse of Sam “Stallion” Cornell, the Topanga Titans quarterback, as he wandered in their direction. 

“Heads up,” he said to Walthius as nonchalantly as possible.

“What?” Walthius asked.

“Cornell coming at you at 3:00.”

Before Walthius could respond, Stallion Cornell wordlessly smacked him in the back of the head, which forced him to cough up a bite of his cafeteria cheeseburger. Stallion just continued on, not even looking back to gloat.

Rahsaan was fuming. “I wish he’d find another hobby,” he said.

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” Walthius winced while rubbing the point of impact. 

Recognizing that this lunch hour had taken a turn for the worse, Jeff changed the subject.

“Did you finish your essay for Wilkoff’s class?” he asked.

Walthius was undeterred. “You’re changing the subject,” he said. “And why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re scared.”

“Scared?” Jeff chuckled. “Of who? You?”

“Looks that way.”

“Wanna bet?”

Walthius opened his mouth and shut it again. I win, Jeff thought as he took another bite of his sandwich. His eyes wandered over toward the beautiful ladies around the other table where Stallion had sat down to eat.

Then, with reasoned calm, Walthius said, “Yes.”

Jeff’s eyes and ears were still focused on the girls. Those aren’t just girls. They’re actual cheerleaders. And they’re talking to him the way real people talk. What would that be like?

Maybe Vikki is over there, too, but I don’t see her…

“Did you hear me?” Walthius asked. No response. He grabbed the sports section from a protesting Rahsaan, rolled it up and slapped Jeff in the face with it. “Hey! Doofus! I’m talking to you!”

“What?” Jeff snapped, his face now focused on his friend but his mind still over at the girl’s table.

“I said yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?” Jeff said, confused.

“Yes,” Walthius answered, “I want to bet.”

“Oh, this is good. Good times,” Rahsaan smirked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah, well, I don’t.” Jeff said. He took another bite of his sandwich and went back to cheerleader gazing.

Walthius’s expression darkened. He then reached into his backpack, picked up a book and slammed it down on the table.

Hard.

It was loud enough that even Sam Cornell’s table heard it. After the sudden noise, equally sudden silence fell on the outdoor lunchroom, and suddenly, much to Jeff’s horror, Walthius was the only person speaking.

“Crossover Classics,” he said, reading the book’s title, his voice raised and unperturbed by the virtual spotlight. “All the great DC/Marvel stories. Superman meets Spider-Man for the second time. And on page 74, he finds himself trapped in a nuclear reactor, which mimics the effects of the red sun of his home planet Krypton. Proof, sir, that Superman cannot survive a nuclear blast.”

“Fine,” Jeff mumbled. “You win.” He pushed the book back to the other side of the table.

“Everything all right over there, Downey?” Cornell shouted with the hint of a giggle in his voice. The cheerleaders were also stifling giggles. Jeff cringed. Giggling was not a good scene.

“We’re fine, Stallion,” Rahsaan shouted back, his nose still buried in the paper. “You just go right on flirting.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed and his ears turned red, either from embarrassment, anger, or a sick mixture of both. He glared at Rahsaan, who, in turn, smiled back a little too broadly. Jeff knew that if either he or Walthius had dared to use used that hated nickname, they might have ended up with their head embedded in a brick wall. Fortunately, Rahsaan was only in 10th grade, and he stood out from the rest of the student body as the only African-American student in the entire white bread school. Not everybody liked him, but everyone knew him, and they’d probably frown on any attempt by the biggest guy on campus to beat him senseless.

“We’re fine, everyone,” Rahsaan announced after Sam/Stallion had finally looked away. “Just fine. Turns out Superman can get all blown up. Nothing to see here folks.” Then, under his breath, he said to Jeff and Walthius, “You people are idiots.” He got up, grabbed his paper, but then caught a glimpse of Walthius’ book and did a double take.

“Is that the Hulk on there?” he asked Walthius.

“Yeah. He fights Batman.”

“How does he fight Batman? I thought Batman was DC and Hulk was Marvel.”

“Look at the title, will ya?” Walthius said. “Crossover Classics. DC and Marvel together. Side by side. Rising above their corporate differences.”

“Yeah. It’s a beautiful thing,” Jeff added, relieved that the worst was over and everyone was ignoring them again.  

“Batman against the Hulk? Ha! That would last about five seconds,” Rahsaan said, grabbing the book and flipping through the pages. “I mean, who is Batman? Can’t fly. Can’t run fast. No super strength. Just some rich dude in a rodent suit.”

“Bats aren’t rodents,” Jeff said. Then he furrowed his brow. “Or are they? Maybe they are.”

Rahsaan rolled his eyes.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Batman,” Walthius said. “As the world’s greatest detective, he has the resources and the skill to –"

“Can I borrow this?” Rahsaan interrupted. Before a startled Walthius could say no, Rahsaan said “Thanks,” and, within seconds, he was halfway across campus and well out of earshot.

“No one respects Batman the way they ought to,” Walthius groused. “The movies help, but it’s still that stupid TV series. I don’t think the character will ever fully live it down.”

Now that the unwanted attention had fully dissipated, Jeff started to seethe. “What is wrong with you?” he whispered tightly. Walthius just shrugged. To Jeff, that was the last straw. This had to end – right here, right now.

“All right,” Jeff said, all business. “Superman. Nuclear explosions. Here’s why you’re full of it.”
Walthius raised his other eyebrow.

“In the first place,” Jeff continued, the words pouring out of him with a geeky, fevered passion, “This was a crossover. That means it’s out of direct continuity. So it doesn’t affect Superman’s official history. Plus, that story is, what – thirty years old? How many reboots have their been since then? You know as well as I do that every few years, they blow up the universe and start over to keep Superman from celebrating his 40th birthday. So, summing up, your material, sir, is outdated.” He took in a deep breath and then said “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Walthius said nothing for what seemed to Jeff like forever, and then a smile crept slowly across his face. “You passed,” he said. He then reached into his wallet and slid a five-dollar bill across the table.

“What’s this?”

“The bet,” said Walthius. “You won.”

“We didn’t make a bet.”

“I did.” Walthius said. “At least, I wanted to. So in my mind, we did.”

Jeff eyed him warily, looked around again, and then quickly slipped the bill into his pocket. “I earned this,” he said, more to himself than to Walthius, who nodded in agreement.

“And don’t worry,” Walthius added. “She didn’t see any of this.”

“She?” Jeff said, a little too quickly.

Walthius smirked. “Now who’s being the bonehead?”

Jeff tried to protest, but then rolled his eyes. “You’re right. She wasn’t there. I checked.”

“Yeah, what a surprise,” Walthius said. “Except she’s not dating Stallion anymore. She’s got some movie star boyfriend or something.”

“Whatever,” Jeff said, nonplussed. It didn’t matter who she was dating. Jeff just knew it would never be him.

The bell rang. Both boys started gathering everything in their backpacks for their next class.

“I dreamed about her again last night,” Jeff said.

“Another big surprise.” He shoved the remainder of a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth and then started to walk toward the math building.

Jeff frowned. “Have I told you that before?”

“The dream. You’ve had it eight times by my count,” Walthius said. They walked briskly to join the herd being shepherded into Mr. Barry’s trigonometry class. “You got any plans for the weekend?”

“Not as such,” Jeff said. “Why?”

“There’s a Planet of the Apes marathon on Saturday.”

Jeff winced. “The marching band will be playing at the big game Saturday.”

“You mean tomorrow,” Walthius corrected him. “The game’s on Friday, bonehead.”

“It is?” Jeff looked perplexed. “I thought it was Saturday.”

“Nope.”

“Then what’s on Saturday?”

Walthius sniffed. “Like you don’t know.”

“Humor me and pretend that I don’t.”

“The big dance. The homecoming dance.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jeff mumbled. “No wonder I forgot.”

“No date again?” Walthius asked.

“Like you have one.”

“As a matter of fact,” Walthius said, “I do.”

Jeff was baffled. “With who?”

“Not who,” Walthius said. “What. The Apes marathon.”

“Hmmph,” Jeff said. “Tell Dr. Zaius to save the last dance for me.”

Walthius furrowed his brow. “Is that even legal?”

They walked inside the room. Jeff took his usual seat on the next-to-last row, although his lanky, spidery frame couldn’t quite squeeze under the tiny desk. In a kinder world, thought Jeff, I would be a basketball player. Maybe if I weighed a few more pounds. He opened his backpack, pulled out a half-eaten Snickers bar and took a hefty bite.

Walthius sat directly behind him, just as he had in every class they’d had together since third grade. Mr. Barry, the decidedly rumpled teacher with a bowl haircut, was still seated behind his own desk. He was patiently listening to an exasperated Lucy Greene, who always wasted the first five minutes of every class trying to get a private lesson to make up for ten years of math lessons that she’d failed to understand. The classroom was filled with the idle chatter of twenty-five students waiting for the lecture to begin, which gave Jeff enough time to look over where Vikki Dennis sat – two rows to the left, right up in front. Jeff had chosen this particular seat at the beginning of the year because it allowed him to stare at her for the entire hour without calling attention to the fact that he was staring at her for the entire hour.

He had been infatuated with Vikki Dennis since the second grade, when she first moved to his neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. Her mother and his mother were both on the P.T.A. board, which meant that the two kids traveled together in carpools on a regular basis, beginning with their first music lessons. Jeff, unlike Vikki, had continued his musical career and was now Topanga High School’s First Chair French Horn, with Walthius right next to him as French Horn #2. This allowed Jeff to watch the cheerleaders – especially Vikki – during football games, which, as he thought about it, was the only social advantage that band membership provided him.

It was different in the old days, when both Vikki and he shared the same piano teacher. Since Jeff’s lesson was right after Vikki’s, they each had to sit and wait through the other’s session. Jeff figured he’d fallen in love with Vikki sometime around the time she learned to play Beethoven’s Fur Elise. He’d probably been smitten before that, but even today, with Jeff now a senior in high school, the first few notes of that melody always transported him back under the hot sun on Mrs. Chisholm’s patio, where he could see the little girl he wanted to marry tinkling the ivories on the other side of the sliding screen door.

Yeah, well, that was then. This was now. And now Vikki Dennis was a tall, leggy homecoming queen way out of his league, so much so that he found it difficult to walk in a straight line if she was within a ten-yard radius. It was so much simpler to gaze at her from a distance, which is what he intended to do for the remainder of the hour.  

Except she wasn’t there.

Jeff frowned slightly and leaned his head back. “Walthius,” he whispered.

“I know,” Walthius whispered back.

“That’s the first time this year. She never misses class.”

“I know that, too.”

“So where is she?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Where’s who?” asked Charlotte Wasden, who was sitting in the chair directly to Jeff’s right.
Jeff smiled sheepishly. “Nobody.” Except he spoke simultaneously with Walthius, who said “Vikki Dennis.”

Jeff kicked him in the shins from under the desk.

“Vikki?” Charlotte said. “Isn’t she at homecoming practice?”

“Practice?” Walthius snorted. “What does she have to practice?”

“What do you mean, what?” Charlotte answered, nonplussed. “Maybe it’s because they’ve got that film crew coming over to film a piece of a horror movie tomorrow in the middle of the game?”

Walthius looked confused. “Is it or isn’t it?”

Charlotte looked like she was gagging. “Hello!” she said, pouring all her disdain into the word’s heavily emphasized second syllable.

Jeff sat up a little straighter. “Is Vikki going to be in the movie, then?”

“Umm, yeah!” Charlotte said with impeccable San Fernando Valley sarcasm. “Her boyfriend’s dad is funding the movie, hello.”

“Hello!” said Walthius, with cheerful inappropriateness. Charlotte rolled her eyes and turned back toward the whiteboard.

“Wow,” Jeff muttered to Walthius. “So Vikki’s going to be a movie star.”

“You should be very happy for her,” Walthius said.

You’re right, I should, Jeff thought. And I’m not. Stardom would put her even further out of reach.

“She’s not going to be the star,” sneered Charlotte, her back still turned. “It’s a horror movie, hello.”

“Howdy!” Walthius said, a bit too loudly. Charlotte huffed in disgust.

“If she doesn’t want to be greeted,” Walthius said to Jeff, “she should stop using salutations.”

“What does it matter if it’s a horror movie?” Jeff whispered, unwilling to be distracted.

Before Walthius could answer, Charlotte, who seemed to have amplified ears, turned to face him.

“Um, maybe you should, like, pay attention during the morning announcements! The whole cheerleading squad gets killed in it.”

“Wow,” Walthius said. “Maybe if you were a cheerleader, they’d kill you, too.”

Charlotte looked like she’d swallowed a partially decomposed rat. “I am a cheerleader. If I weren’t a cheerleader, then I wouldn’t be going to her boyfriend’s fathers house tonight for the big kick-off party, now would I?”

“Would you?” Walthius asked.

Charlotte scrunched up her face as if she were sniffing at a pile of rotting beetles.

“You know,” Walthius said, “Your limitless scorn seems to interfere with your capacity for communication.”

Charlotte sneered. “You’re a geek,” she said before turning around again.

Walthius looked thoughtful. “Now that, I understood.”

“Good for you,” said Jeff.

Walthius, not willing to leave well enough alone, leaned forward and tapped Charlotte on the shoulder. When he had her attention, he spoke again.

“So if you’re a cheerleader,” he said, “why, then, are you not at the practice?”

“Ummm, the whole homecoming court is having a rehearsal. And I’m not a homecoming queen or princess, am I?”

Walthius shrugged. “Are you?”

“Whatever.” She turned her back yet again.

Walthius looked at Jeff. “Why isn’t she homecoming queen? Isn’t she pretty enough?”

Jeff didn’t answer, but he thought that given the fact that Walthius was only five foot four, covered with acne, and had strangely wavy hair reminiscent of a fiberglass fun house slide, he was in no position to comment on someone else’s physical attractiveness.

“Charlotte,” Walthius said, “I just want you to know that I’d vote for you. Twice, if I could. And I could, you know. There are ways…” He stroked his chin with an air of mystery.

Charlotte just huffed again, but Jeff felt the need to apply another quick backward heel thrust directly into Walthius’ shins. Walthius loudly howled in pain, which brought all other chatter in the room to a screeching halt.

“Mr. Walthius? Are you all right?” Mr. Barry had disposed of Lucy Greene and was now standing at the whiteboard and staring back at Walthius along with the rest of the class.

“Oh, the pain! The pain!” Walthius seemed to be enjoying the attention.

“Are you having a seizure, Mr. Walthius?”

Walthius stopped abruptly. “Come on, Mr. Barry! You’ve never seen Lost in Space?”

Mr. Barry just stared at him blankly.

“That was an homage to Dr. Smith,” Jeff explained to a befuddled and increasingly contemptuous Charlotte Wasden, but loud enough for Mr. Barry to hear.

“Mr. Downey, please be so kind as to tell your friend that if he doesn’t want an homage to the dean’s office, he should get out his textbook and stop disrupting my class.”

Jeff nodded, smiled, and opened his textbook. Walthius followed suit. Mr. Barry turned around and began writing on the board.

“Way to go, genius,” Jeff whispered without moving his lips.

“‘Homage to the dean’s office,’” Walthius whispered back. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

The hour descended into a mundane discussion about sines and cosines and logarithms and other stuff Jeff found intensely boring. Eventually, they broke up into groups to do an assignment that took Jeff and Walthius a third of the time it took everyone else. Left with about twenty minutes to spare, Walthius pulled out the latest copy of Daredevil and began to read.

“You want anything?” Walthius asked, referencing his backpack’s vast comic book library.

Jeff shrugged. “Maybe later,” he said. He took off his eyeglasses and placed them on the desk in front of him. Then he put his elbows up on his desk and buried his face in his hands. Twenty minutes, he thought. Then he yawned. What am I going to do for twenty minutes? He let his eyes close and his mind wander, exploring the possibilities.

Then he was burning his socks. He was shaving some mutt off the street. The street was filled with grunions, and only Jeff could smell them. He stood up, only to find himself on the football field facing Stallion Cornell and the rest of the Topanga Titans in their full helmets and uniforms. He was the only one on the opposing team. He hiked the ball to himself and ran far in the opposite direction, far enough to end up in mid-air above the school parking lot, running, flying, the clouds beneath his feet…

The scene shifted to more familiar surroundings. Again he was on top of the mountain where the sun always sets. He leapt into the air, soaring higher, higher, and still he could hear the muscular man with the black linen mask cackling at him, always floating ten feet above, and she was there with him, screaming, help me, won’t someone help me…

Vikki.

And so he flew higher and harder, until he was above them, and just as they almost reached him, the man in the mask grinned an evil grin, and then he dropped Vikki Dennis to plummet to earth, and the faster Jeff flew to catch her, the faster she fell, until she disappeared into the clouds, too far gone to see.

No. Come back. I’m coming. No.

He flew faster, but she was beyond hope. Beyond reach. I’m coming. I’m not coming fast enough.

No. She has to wait. I have to save her.

No.

No.

“Nooooooooo!”

Everything stopped.

“Problem, Mr. Downey?”

Jeff’s eyes flew open, and he found himself smack dab in the middle of reality, face to face with Mr. Barry and his bowl cut, and neither one of them seemed too happy about it.

The class burst out laughing. Jeff’s face flushed bright red.

The laughter didn’t stop as he grabbed his glasses and the hall pass and scurried out of the classroom. Usually, a student had to tell a teacher where he was going when he left the room, but everyone seemed to recognize that these were unusual circumstances.  

“It was an homage to Luke Skywalker,” he heard Walthius explain as he left. “From The Empire Strikes Back.”

Wow, Jeff thought. What a geek.

Debate II Commentary

Got here late. Obama blames the economic crisis on George Bush. He needs to read my "Bailout for Dummies." This is sheer scapegoating. Now he's beating up on CEOs with bonuses and golden parachutes. He says middle class needs a rescue package - a mini-New Deal. Lots of class warfare tonight. 

McCain looks awkward and starts to sound populist. He lurches into energy independence. Let's not raise taxes on anybody...today. Wants a package of reforms. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He wants to do something about home values...? Wants Washington to BUY INDIVIDUAL HOME MORTGAGES?! What kind of jackassery is this? First use of "my friends." Thinks Washington buying homes will creates jobs. Second "my friends." This is pure gunk.

Brokaw asks who'd they'd appoint as Treasury Secretary. McCain starts with Warren Buffet. Gag. This guy is AWFUL. Now says maybe Meg Whitman. Now starts to complain about corruption on Wall Street and greed. He's an economic buffoon. 

Obama likes Buffet, too. Slams trickle down economics. How can Obama get away with slamming McCain for saying economy is fundamentally sound when he said exactly the same thing this week? Class warfare abounds. 

Oliver Clark wants an explanation of the bailout. McCain says it isn't a bailout; it's a rescue. Cites his boneheaded campaign suspension. How dumb is this guy? OKAY... here we go! Starts to slam Fannie and Freddie and links Obama to it. Hope he keeps this up. He looks uncomfortable. Stumbling through a slam on Fannie and Freddie slams. Now tries to sort of explain the rescue package. Goes back to his WRETCHED idea of DC buying houses. 

Obama's is actually answering Oliver's question, and doing so quite reasonably. Point for Obama. Now gets defensive about Fannie and Freddie and raises a deregulation boogeyman. Obama tries to pretend he was out ion front on this. Now being defensive about Fannie Mae. Now tries to link McCain to Fannie. Says "I'm not pointing figures; how is this going to impact you?" Obama seems to understand this issue - he's walking away with this. 

Brokaw asks if the economy is going to get much worse before it gets better. Obama says no, but can't say why. Goes back to this vapid ""2oth century system for 21st century markets." That means nothing. Stump speech. Stump speech. 

McCain says it depends on what we do and then GOES BACK TO DC BUYING MORTGAGES. Are conservatives going to line up with this? Can anyone tell him how stupid this is? Cites some letter that Obama didn't sign. McCain DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE ECONOMY. AT ALL. 

Weird looking chick asks how we can trust either of you. Obama gets a little folksy with her. He's got a very light, personal touch. Then he goes into slamming Bush. Tedious. Says "nobody is completely innocent," and then says it's all Bush's fault. Goes stump speechy again. Health care. Energy. College. Now says he's cutting more than he's spending. Bullpucky! 

McCain tries to give essentially the same answer. Talks about taking on special interests. Boasts of the horrific abominations of campaign finance reform and climate change. Boasts that he's a disloyal Republican. Bipartisanship, Johnny? Translation: "Screw over my own party." Goes into earmarks. Tries to attack Obama on spending. Looks desperate. At least he's not smiling like soom zombie vampire. "My friends" again. My fiancee's probably drunk by now. My daughter Chloe comes into the room to say she read something about the economy that has to do with rattlesnakes. 

Brokaw asks them to rank priorities of health care, energy, and entitlement reform. McCain says we can work on all of them. "My friends" #4. Fiancee sloshed. McCain talks about all his creepy Democrats friends. This guy is so mind-blowingly awful that I want to stick a hot curling iron in my eye socket. 

Obama says we're going to have to prioritize. Energy is at the top of the list. This guy sounds like a grown-up; McCain sounds like the guy yelling "get off my lawn." Have to go get shampoo for Cornelius. 

Shampoo gotten. Obama pretending he has line-item veto. Slams tax cuts. 

McCain's first question from the Internet. Question: what sacrifices will we have to make? McCain says we will have to elimnate some programs. Now McCain pretends he has the line-item veto. Says he's going to cut DEFENSE SPENDING?!!! Really? That's the first thing at the top of the list? McCain is NOT A REPUBLICAN. Goes back to earmarks. Says some "good" projects will be cut. Now says he won't cut defense spending. This guy is a deluded old gasbag. Now goes back to health care and energy - wants to do them at the same time. 

Obama begins with 9/11 reference. Slams Bush for saying "go out and shop." Chloe says John McCain will win because of Sarah Palin. She's wrong, but I don't tell her that. Obama goes into energy. Slams foreign cars built in South Korea. Chloe asks "why not North Korea?" Obama wants to double the Peace Corps. Chloe wants to know if that includes kids. I say no. I may be wrong. 

Brokaw asks how we control deficits. Obama says both spending and revenue sides need to be addressed. Obama predictably slams tax cuts. Says people don't feel like they're sharing the burden. CLass warfare crap. Stalliondo comes in naked, slapping buttcheeks. Wants to get in the bathtub. Leaving to go draw his bath. 

Water is running. McCain says "my friends" twice. Slams Obama on taxes, yet maintains he won't "cut taxes for the wealthy." He loses. Brokaw won't let Obama respond. 

Obama says he won't address entitlements for two years. Says "McCain's Straight Talk Express lost a wheel." Obama's tax cut for 95% of Americans, which is ludicrous. Says "only a few percent" of small businesses make more than 250,000 bucks. He's wrong. I don't think he's lying; he's just wrong. He does NOT understand taxes. Neither does McCain, but at least McCain is fumbling around on the right side of the issue. Blames Bush again. 

McCain starts laughing, and nobody else does. Another "my friends." And another. Calls for a "commission." Oh, THAT'LL do it! Brags about what a crappy, awful Republican he is. Slams Obama for raising taxes. Brags about his record. Another "my friends." Someone hit this guy in the head, please. 

Chick asks about climate change and "green jobs." McCain brags about his Lieberman crap. Stalliondo dumps an entire bottle of shampoo on his head. Leaving to rinse his hair so I don't have to listen to this ghastly dreck. 

Obama talks about a new energy economy. Says the computer was "invented by a bunch of government scientists?" Don't think that's true. Obama claims to favor nuclear power. Stalliondo out of tub, says "I like orange." Obama calls for a sustained effort on energy. Obama slams US oil use. "Can't drill our way out of the problem." Global warming cited, even though the globe is cooler than it was 10 years ago. Wants us to produce all of China's energy, too. 

Brokaw whines about time. He wants to know if we should fund a "Manhattan-like project" for new energy sources, or fund lots of garages? Bad question - we should free up entrepreneurs, but McCain doesn't agree. Another "my friends." McCain calls Obama "that one." Wanders into voting against spending. Supports off-shore drilling. Obama looks on serenely. He's mopping the floor with McCain's geezery arse. 

Obama asked if health care should be treated as a commodity. Obama tells sob stories and talks about rising health care costs. Obama lays out a simple health care plan. Wants all medical records on computers. Slams McCain's $5000 health care tax credit and sounds bright on this. 

McCain starts saying "me, too." Begins repeating Obama's answer. Slams a government solution and mandates. Says Obama will fine you if you don't get insurance. Starts talking about going across state lines. His health care plan is more market based, but he presents the case for it clumsily. Says he needs a hair transplant. He's warbling the right tune, but his singing voice sounds like a belching orangutan. 

Brokaw if health care is a right, privilege, or responsibility? McCain says responsibility and then answers as if it's a right. Goes back toward Obama's fines. Obama says health care is a right. Ah, new rights. They're quite expensive, you know. Obama repeats his previous answer. Now starts talking about insurance companies being evil and says crap about mandates. he's going over, and Brokaw won't stop him. McCain asks for the size of the fine and gets crickets. 

McCain is asked how economic stress will affect our ability to be a peacemaker. McCain says we have to have a strong economy. "My friends." America is the greatest force for good in the world. McCain's strongest answer of the night. Cleta screaming in the background. 

Family meltdown with much shrieking. Missed five minutes. Heard snippets of Obama anti-Iraq drivel. Says we can't be everywhere all the time. Pretends our allies hate us. Talks about Darfur. 

McCain asked about McCain Doctrine. "My friends." Slams Obama on withdrawal from Iraq. "My friends." My fiancee may be dead by now. Says we must do whatever we can to prevent genocide. Says we need a "cool hand on the till," which disqualifies him. Brags about standing up to Reagan. Why is insulting Republicans such a huge badge of honor for this clown?

Good, conservative question for Obama: should the US respect Pakistani sovereignty or ignore the borders and pursue our enemies? Obama dodges; slams Iraq. Obama claims al Qaeda is stronger now than any time since 2001 - not true. Wants more troops in Afghanistan. Rattles a saber at Pakistan. Says we should take out OBL whether or not Pakistan lets us. 

McCain pauses - preparing to whiff it. Talks about Teddy Roosevelt. Says Obama talks loudly. McCain says we should attack Pakistan without announcing it. Starts recounting Afghani history for no particular reason. Calls for an Afghan surge. Talks about having visited some weird Waziristan or something like that. Talk softly, carry a big stick. 

Scrap about follow-up, and Obama gets one. Obama says he didn't call for an invasion of Pakistan and then calls for an invasion of Pakistan to get OBL. Slams McCain for singing "bomb bomb bomb Iran" and calling for annhiliation of North Korea. McCain tries to get a little dig in and fails. Slams American ally Musharraf. 

McCain apologizes for singing. "I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends." I'll miss my drunken fiancee. Boasts of his experience... blah blah blah. 

Brokaw asks how you reorganize Afghan strategy because we're supposedly losing there. Obama says yank troops out of Iraq and put 'em in Afghanistan. McCain says we need an Afghanistan surge without actually saying it. Speaking in legislative shorthand. Looks old. Thinks Petraeus can work miracles. 

Question: how can we apply pressure on Russia for humanitariam issues? McCain says Russia's behavior is bad. Says Putin is a KGB jerk. Goes into Ukraine. He sounds solid on this. Wants Ukraine's membership in NATO. 

Obama says we must deal with the resurgence of Russia. Says he agrees with McCain. Says we have to provide financial and concrete assistance to help rebuild economies. Obama fumbling around a bit for the first time tonight. Point for McCain on this one. Lurches back to Iraq to get on solid stump speech ground. 

Brokaw asks a yes or no. Asks if Russia is an evil empire. Obama says "they've engaged in evil behavior." McCain says "maybe." It depends on a lot of things. Says yes means cold war is back, while no means we ignore their behavior. Says we can deal with them, but they're facing a determined US. 

Two more questions. First is about Israel. What we do if Iran attacks Israel? Will we wait for the UN? McCain stalls for time. Shakes hand. Says we won't wait for security council to defend Israel. Says Iran is a great threat with nukes. Reminder about Obama's "no preconditions" gunk. Brings up loony "League of Democracies" crap. Says "My friend," singular. Does that count?

Obama "me, toos" on service. Says we can't allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. Sounds resolute without answering question. Refuses to take military options off the table. Says he WON'T go to UN?! Oh, wait, he's hedging on that one. Now talking about diplomacy, etc., and wanders into familiar lib territory. Time to end this debate/McCain mauling. Now talking about talks. 

Brokaw asks "what don't you know, and how will you learn it?" Obama makes a joke about his wife. Obama says it's never the challenges you expect; it's the ones you don't. Goes into biographical/flag waving mode. Stalliondo comes in and wants his pajamas on. 

McCain gives closing statement, saying what we don't know is the future. Boasts of experience. Goes into his own bio mode. References his own experience being tortured. This is powerful stuff, but it won't be enough to salvaged a dreadful performance. 

Bottom Line: get ready for President Barack H. Obama. McCain loses, and loses badly. 

Blogging through tonight's debate, too...

Won't be as fun as Palin/Biden, but if I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound.

Join me for yet another running commentary.

The Bailout for Dummies

So I spent Saturday night and Sunday morning up in Park City with my lovely bride, ditching the Priesthood session of General Conference because Mrs. Cornell’s sister was willing to take all five kids off of our hands overnight.

This does not happen often, and when it does happen, the opportunity must not be squandered.

We did watch plenty of LDS General Conference, though, and I especially liked Elder Uchtdorff’s talk on hope, as well as Elaine Dalton’s words about “ever texting and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Not quite sure why Elder Oaks thinks a white shirt is a necessary component to passing the sacrament, but there it is. I really dig the idea of a Mormon temple in the shadow of the Vatican. That should be very interesting, indeed.

The other thing we did was spend Sunday afternoon discussing the bailout package with family members, and it became clear that very little about said package is clear at all. A brother who used to work for Fannie Mae added some light to the discussion, and others with some inside Washington scuttlebutt inspired me to write today’s blog entry, which I have appropriately titled “The Bailout for Dummies.” This does not mean everyone who is getting bailed out is a dummy, although certainly some of them are. What it means is that I’m trying to make the basic principles of what happened comprehensible to the average Joe Sixpack who may still be drunk from taking a shot every time Sarah Palin used the word “maverick” in the veep debate. In the process of doing so, I want to see if I could put it into words without embarrassing myself.

So here we go.

Once upon a time, people who bought houses went to their local bank and got a loan from that bank in order to pay for the house – a “mortgage,” if you will. These loans guaranteed that the bank a got a monthly payment from you for the next thirty years, and that flow of cash is how the bank made money on the deal. Over the life of the loan, they recovered the “principle,” – i.e. the amount of money initially borrowed – and a certain amount of “interest,” additional money charged by the bank for the right to be able to borrow all that cash up front.

With me so far? Good, because those sweet, simple days are long gone. It gets a whole lot more complicated from here.

See, now when you buy a mortgage, that cash flow is usually sold to another company almost immediately after you close on the loan. And the company to whom you end up paying your loan may not end up being the company who gets the cash. Modern technology makes it possible for every aspect of your loan to be handled by different parties, and often loans are sliced, diced, and bundled into mortgage securities that are sold to financial institutions all across the globe. Every time you pay your mortgage, dozens of banks anywhere in the world could be getting a piece of the action. And any one security could include chunks of dozens of loans – some subprime, some not. A computer spits out a number that tells you how risky any part of a security is based on how risky it’s been in the past, and the whole thing get so convoluted that nobody really knows how much risk they’re taking. As long as things continue to function as they have in the past, though, everything should be fine.

And there’s the problem.

What’s happening now is unlike what’s happened before, because two things screwed everything up.

The first is a well-intentioned and inept federal government. Through Fannie and Freddie and a host of federally-blessed lending programs to provide the “dream of home ownership” to people too poor to afford homes, people got mortgages who really couldn’t afford to pay them over the long haul. This is why Sarah Palin’s cutesy “predatory lenders” shtick sticks in my craw so much. Sure, there are predatory lenders, but the biggest ones come from Washington DC. They told poor people to buy houses with balloon-payment loans, which would be just fine, because when the balloon payment came due, the value of the house would have risen to the point that all they had to do is use the increased equity to get a new loan, and they’d still come out ahead in the long run.

But that doesn’t work if home values don’t continue to rise forever. And that’s the second shoe that’s dropped – home values have collapsed.

As much as Pelosi and Co. would like to say that this, like everything else, is George Bush’s fault, the reality is much more mundane. The bubble has popped. Just like the dot com bubble popped at the end of the last century. Just like the oil bubble – hopefully – has just popped. That’s what happens in free markets; people speculate; markets correct themselves, and bubbles pop. But this time, Fannie and Freddie had bet heavily on the bubble’s integrity.

Suddenly, an unprecedented number of subprime mortgages are collapsing, which screws up the computer models that bundled these loans into securities along with everything else. Record foreclosures mess up the model that determines the value of those securities, so nobody’s really sure what those securities are worth.

So if you’re a bank, and you’re holding a fortune in mortgage securities with undetermined worth, you have a real problem. The FDIC comes in and looks at your books, and they say “hey, these securities aren’t worth the price on the label. So unless you can determine their real value, you can’t rely on them as assets.” All banks have strict loan-to-asset ratios, and if their assets are suddenly devalued, they have to stop making loans.

This has far-reaching implications well beyond Wall Street. Lines of credit that run small businesses would all be frozen. Car dealers all across the country would have to shut their doors unless they paid cash for all the cars on their showroom floors. Without a free flow of credit, the economic engine that drives this country would be like a motor running without oil, seizing up and grinding into bits.

That is the crux of the issue at the heart of the bailout.

The Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve wandered into the White House and Congress last week and said they were out of tools to fix the problem, and the United States was just days away from total economic collapse.

The rest, as they say, is very recent history.

So what does this mean? What is this bailout – what does it do? What does it NOT do? Is it the end of capitalism as we know it? Is it going to add almost a trillion dollars to the national debt? And is it all George Bush’s fault?

Let’s address each of these one at a time.

What does the bailout do?

The bailout creates a saleable market for the nebulous mortgage securities that are cluttering up bank’s balance sheets. The federal treasury will buy those securities and free up assets for affected banks and allow them to start making loans again. This restores confidence in the credit markets and allows the free flow of capitalism to continue.

What does it NOT do?

It does not prevent people from losing their homes in foreclosures if they can’t pay their bills. It does not keep the Dow Industrial Average above 10,000. Despite the heated rhetoric, this is not a “Wall Street bailout.” It does not forestall a recession, which is on the horizon and is probably here already. It does, however, keep the recession from being deeply intensified by a full-scale financial collapse.

Is it the end of capitalism as we know it?

That’s actually what it’s trying to prevent. Had the government not been so deeply involved in getting us into this mess, we probably wouldn’t have to rely on government to help dig us out. There’s also a two-year sunset provision in the bill, so the government will forfeit the power to conduct business like this by 2010. (I should add that Mrs. Cornell says “fat chance” with regard to this provision, and she’s usually right.)

Is it going to add almost a trillion dollars to the national debt?

This is, I think, the biggest mistake people on the Right are making as they review this; they see this as the Treasury writing a 700 billion dollar check and sending the money scattered to the four winds, never to return.

That is not what’s happening here.

Although that’s not to say the Federal Government isn’t capable of doing something that stupid; indeed, they did that with about $200 billion earlier this year when they sent us all “stimulus checks.” I appreciated the nice chunk of change at the time, but that was money that went directly on the treasury balance sheets as part of our metastasizing national debt.

In this case, the only way all 700 billion ends up adding to the debt is if 100% if all the securities the government purchases end up in default. We aren’t anywhere near that number of foreclosures. Indeed, if we were to hit a 10% foreclosure rate, that would be worse than most of the direst predictions out there. Consequently, if a good chunk of these mortgages continue to be paid, there’s a very good chance that the government could end up making money on the deal.

Of course, all the larded up wool subsidies and pork-barrel gunk added to the bill to sweeten the deal for reluctant lawmakers will add to the debt, but while it’s obnoxious and shameless that this stuff was included, it’s really not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

Is it all George Bush’s fault?

Not this time. Hell, even Saturday Night Live acknowledged that this past week. Bush, McCain and the GOP have pushed for greater regulation of Fannie and Freddie, only to be called thugs and racists by the Barney Franks and Barack Obamas of the world for trying to prevent poor people from owning homes.

Remember when Enron and WorldCom went down with the dot com ship and Washington paraded a host of disgraced executives in front of Congress to give them a public, ritual shaming? Don’t you find it curious that no one in the Democratically-controlled Congress seems to have the appetite for a similar spectacle with Fannie and Freddie this time around?

This is political correctness run amuck in the world of finance, and no amount of speeches by Nancy Pelosi can change that. They can, however, demagogue the issue and muddy the waters enough so that nobody really understands the problem.

Thank you, Stallion Cornell. You're a friggin' genius.

You're welcome. This has been “The Bailout for Dummies.” I wish John McCain would read it, as he, more than anyone else in Washington, has no idea what this is all about.

Veep Debate Commentary

Got here late, because Mrs. Cornell wouldn't let me out of doing the dishes.

Biden's now saying that these are the worst economic policies in history and blaming all this crap on Republicans.

Palin is now speaking. She looks great. Brings up a kid's soccer game right away. "I betcha you're gonna hear some fear." A little too cute, although Biden's oddly restrained. She's saying everyone's scared. Sounds solid, if a little canned. Reminding people that McCain wanted to reform Fannie/Freddie. Needs to hold Dems accountable on this, but she focuses on "bipartisan" efforts and reminds us about McCain's stupid campaign suspension.

Gwen Ifill makes me itch.

Joe Biden says he's been bipartisan his whole career? Rubbish! Wants to respond to Palin. Reminds us that McCain once said the fundamentals of the economy are strong, something Obama said just this week. Palin responds saying that McCain was talking about American workforce. She's dang good looking! Talks about being a "team of mavericks." Blech. OOO! She's slamming Obama for being partisan. I think she's exceeding expectations, which isn't hard, because most people expect her to be brain dead. Stop using the word "maverick."

Ifill says no one answered the question. Tough, Gwen! this isn't about you! Now she asks "who's at fault in subprime mortgages?"

Palin blames predatory lenders. You're a friggin' dolt on this, lady. Getting cute about "hockey moms" and "Joe Sixpacks." People who borrow too much money are digging their own graves, but Palin either doesn't know or care.

Biden is saying Obama was a whistleblower on subprime mortgages. Really? I doubt it. Biden looks drugged. Saying McCain wants to radically deregulate. Blaming Wall Street for subprime. Keeps using the word "deregulate" as if it's a dirty word. Talks about an imaginary friend named Joey. As he warms up, he's going to get goofier.

Biden looks insufferable as Palin SLAMS him on taxes. Good stuff! She looks confident, poised, and solid. This might end up being the gamechanger the last debate wasn't. Biden's patronizing smiles while Palin speaks look really condescending.

Biden says McCain raised taxes 477 times and says that Palin didn't answer question about deregulation. "Letting Wall Street run wild." Palin refuses to answer Biden's question and slams him on taxes. Good for you, Sarah! Play to your strengths. This is going to drive both Biden and Ifill nuts. Ifill cuts her off as she's on a roll.

Ifill asks about Biden's tax increases and "class warfare." Ifill says taxing health benefits will throw "5 million people into being uninsured."

Biden champions "fairness." I HATE fairness! Saying people aren't getting tax breaks, ignoring the fact that the people he's talking about DON'T PAY INCOME TAXES! What a freakin' jackass! Tax cuts go to people WHO PAY TAXES!!! And then he cites Ronald Reagan. Jackball.

AAAAH! Palin cites the fact that Biden's slamming small business! Why isn't SHE at the top of the ticket? SLAMS him for saying paying high taxes is patriotism. Says government is the problem, not the solution. I'm a Palin fan again. Ifill moans that Palin isn't "defending" McCain's health care plan. Yet Palin's slamming it out of the park. Demolishes Obama's universal health care plan. Ifill tries to cut her off, because she makes sense.

Biden says "I don't know where to start." Gets all small towny. Goes back to fairness. Biden says small business owners won't get tax increases, ignoring the fact that S corporations and sole proprietors will get double taxed and reamed by Obama's hikes. Says 20 million people will be dropped. Gets a laugh on dumb Bridge to Nowhere non sequitor.

Ifill re-asks a bad Lehrer question. Biden says we've got to forego tax cuts and plays class welfare again. Beats up on corporations, ignoring the economic disincentive of huge corporate income tax.

Palin makes oblique reference to Obama's "cling to guns and religion" thing. Palin shifts back to her strengths, talking about energy. Cites her record fighting oil companies. Biden smiles with patronizing smarm. I hope Palin completely ignores Ifill and Biden.

Ifill re-asks the question, and Palin says McCain will keep all his promises.

Biden defends Obama's vote on an energy bill. Biden's explaining, so he's losing. Keeps saying McCain's doing nothing but cut taxes for Exxon Mobil. Biden misrepresents Palin's position, saying it was a "windfall profits tax" and won't it be nice when Obama does the same thing.

Ifill asks about the tightening of bankruptcy laws, and Palin goes back to Fannie and Freddie. Blaming predatory lenders again. Says McCain warned everybody. Whoop de freaking doo.

Now Biden is being forced to admit that he and Obama voted differently on this. He tries to pretend that Obama sounded a warning try. Quotes McCain and then says he's paraphrasing. What? He says principle payments should be deductible alongside interest?

Biden smiles like a leering Hefnerite. Palin lurches back to energy, just bypassing the question altogether. It works, though, because she knows what she's talking about, and she's very engaging when she's on firm ground. Oops. Says we're not giving oil company tax breaks. Biden's going to slaughter her on this.

Ifill asks about climate change. Blech. Palin is answering it right - she doesn't dismiss it entirely, but attributes it mostly to "cyclical changes." Talks about her climate change sub cabinet. Goes back to energy independence. She doesn't sound loony, but since I'm loony on this issue, I'm slightly disappointed.

Biden says it's man made. "Clearly man made." Arrogant twit. "If you don't understand what the cause is, you can't come up with the solution." Bite me, Biden. Why hasn't the globe warmed since '98, chump? Goes back to China's coal-fired plants and saying we should invest in clean coal, contradicting his statement on the stump.

Palin says "the chant its 'drill, baby, drill.'" Just called him Senator O'Biden. Slamming Biden on energy production! Slam him, baby, slam him! Just said "nukular." Reminds people of Biden's comment on the stump.

Biden says the comment was out of context, which is wrong. Keeps coming back to McCain's voting against alternative energy.

Ifill asks about same sex benefits and granting them. Biden says he supports it. Biden practically endorses gay marriage. Thinks same sex couples hospital visitation rights are written in the Constitution? What? He cites a bunch of rights he thinks are in the Constitution that aren't mentioned in the Constitution.

Palin defends traditional marriage, sort of, but then claims to be "tolerant." Weak, weak answer. Gets back to traditional marriage at the end, though.

Biden says he flatly doesn't support gay marriage and then supports gay marriage. Palin sort of agrees but sounds awkward and Ifill gets a laugh with a mocking "you agree" statement.

Ifill asks about Iraq. Palin defends the surge and calls Petraeus a "great American hero." Says Obama voted against funding troops, and then points out that Biden slammed Obama on that at the time! COOL! Wants more troops in Afghanistan. I think people watching her have to be impressed.

Biden says "with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan." Stalliondo just ran into the room butt naked and said "watch me." He wants to know what I'm watching. Can't hear Biden's weaselly answer. Biden's hair plugs look pretty good in the front.

Palin says "your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq." She's back to the surge. "We'll know when we've won in Iraq when the Iraqi government can govern its own people." Stalliondo slapping his bum in front of the TV. Palin points out that Biden once said he'd run with McCain and that Obama isn't ready to be C in C. Biden clearly uncomfortable. She's winning this hands down.

Biden says "John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops." Says it again. He's going to have to back that up. Links McCain to Dick Cheney and says John McCain has been dead wrong on the war, ignoring that Biden voted for it, too.

Ifill wants to know if Pakistan or Iran is a bigger threat, a softball to Biden who cites his longstanding record of Pakistan fearmongering. Says Iran isn't close to getting a weapon. Says an attack from the homeland will come from al Qaeda planning in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Except there hasn't been an attack, because this is the one thing Bush has done right.

Mrs. Cornell surfaces and wants me to put Stalliondo to bed. Palin seems like she's looking at notes. Says "nukular" twice. Leaving to get Stalliondo in the bathtub. Palin calls Ahmidinijad "not sane or stable."

Been gone. Got back to hear that McCain won't meet with the President of SPAAAINN! Biden looks pompous.

Palin touts a two-state solution. Supports Israel. I'm now being drafted to fix a drawer. Leaving again.

Fixed the drawer. Biden hasn't heard how McCain will be different from George BUSH'S! Says Bush's name 500 times in a row.

Ifill asks what should be the trigger for nuclear weapons use. Palin dodges, says we should make sure that "nukular" weapons are never used. Goes back to Afghanistan - says Bush Administration policies won't be McCain policies. Slams Obama for saying we're "bombing villages."

Biden says "surge principles in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan." Isn't that what Obama has been touting, Senator? Stalliondo says he doesn't like this movie. Biden cites McCain's opposition to a bunch of treaties. Tells a fairy tale about a piece of legislation with Richard Lugar.

Palin slams back on surge principles - sounds bright on Afghanistan. Biden did a Gore sigh. Biden staring him down as she schools him on surge in Afghanistan. Biden caught off guard and fumbles a bit. Goes back to slamming McCain. Now cites Obama's call for more troops, which should contradict his point about an Afghanistan surge. Taking a break to rinse Stalliondo's hair.

Hair rinsed. Biden talking Darfur and Bosnia. Claiming credit for saving tens of thousands of lives like an arrogant doof. Says he's been in Chad.

Palin cites her outsider status and points out Biden voted for the war and supported McCain's strategies until he became veep pick. Palin agrees with Biden on Darfur. Phone is ringing. Phone is for oldest daughter Cleta.

Biden now talking about genocide being bad. Biden says he never supported McCain's strategy, claims it was Cheney's strategy. Invites people to go to JoeBiden.com. I won't. Biden says McCain's strategy has been wrong from the beginning.

Palin coquettishly calls him a liar, puts in a media dig. Says McCain "knows what evil is." Says McCain knows how to win a war.

Ifill asks how these guys would be different from the guy on the top of the ticket if someone died.

Biden points out that Obama dying would be bad. Bold! Predictably goes back into standard stump speech and doesn't point out a difference. Standard talking points about engaging allies and rejecting Bush Doctrine, etc. Hope Palin doesn't try to go there. Biden talks about the "biggest ticket item," but then doesn't say what said item is.

Palin answers cutely. I must go put Stalliondo in pajamas.

Stalliondo calls me "big and strong" and strikes a bodybuilder pose.

Palin turns on the cute. "Say it ain't so, Joe, doggone it!" A bit cloying, lady. Palin says teachers need to be paid more. A BOLD position! Gives extra credit to third graders. Gets a laugh. Rips No Child Left Behind.

Ifill embarrasses both of them with their weak statements about veeps. Palin calls it a "lame attempt at a joke," gets an audience laugh. Biden tries to follow up, gets crickets. Palin answers solidly. Biden says he'll be in the room for every major decision, which highlights Barack's inexperience.

Ifill tries a "gotcha" question about Palin's answer about Constitutionality of Vice Presidential duties.

Biden calls Cheney the most dangerous veep in history, sounding like a Constitutional scholar, except he's wrong and Palin's right. Calls veep as part of legislative branch a "bizarre notion."

Ifill says Palin lacks experience and that Biden lacks discipline.

Palin goes into stump speech mode, but does so cutely. Pours on the hockey mom crap, special needs, laying it on thick. A bit much, but she's so dang sincere. She'll survive this campaign even after McCain loses. And make no mistake, McCain's gonna lose.

Stalliondo posing in front of the window. Doing jumping jacks.

Biden says he's weakness is really his "excessive passion." Too much information, bonehead. He's so flipping arrogant! Goes into stump speech mode, too. Talks about being a single parent.

Mrs. Cornell wants me to put Stalliondo to bed. I tell her only ten minutes more. She doesn't believe me.

Palin says maverick too many times. Cites McCain's disloyalty to the GOP as a selling point. Says maverick again. Cites Lieberman's endorsement. Says the word "tumultuous" without hurting herself.

Biden gets disgusted with the word maverick. Ties McCain to Bush on a laundry list of crap. Can we send Mary back to school next semester? Please.

Ifill asks if they've ever changed a position.

Biden cites his treachery on the Bork nomination and his responsibility for poisoning the well on judicial nominations. Weasel.

Palin wants to have vetoed more budgets and cut taxes more. Says she hasn't changed her principles. Wants to bring both sides together. Blah blah blah.

Ifill wants to know ho they'll change the tone.

Biden claims to be the king of all bipartisanship, which is a load. Tells some weird story about Jesse Helms. Says he's never questioned people's motives. Good answer at the end, actually.

Palin says she appoints people regardless of party affiliation. Why would you do that, lady? Geesh. She's so flipping adorable! Goes stump speechy again.

Closing statements. This debate has gone by far more quickly than the last one. Palin begins by slamming the media. She looks intelligent and reasonable - she'd lost that in the Couric interviews. Says we're blessed to be Americans. Quotes Reagan about freedom being one generation away from extinction. Good, strong statement. Palin does well.

Biden claims it was a pleasure to meet Palin. Biden uses his time to bash Bush. Looks sleepy - mentions Exxon again. Tells hokey stories. Tries to sound small towny, which doesn't really work. Time for America to get up together. Are we down, Joe?

Bottom line: Palin wins easily, but is a veep debate a gamechanger? I doubt it.

Debate Blog: The Veepstakes

So my intention is to blog all the way through tonight's Veep debate, too. I'm far more interested in this one, as it has all kinds of potential to be really, truly weird. If Palin is as bad as she's been in recent interviews trying to muzzle her instincts, then this could be one heck of a train wreck. Watching Biden try to not be a jerk will be fun, too, and he's sure to say something stupid along the way.

Anyway, tune into the Moist Blog for a running commentary.

Evolutionary Heresy

I'd meant to post Chapter One of my novel and have you folks cleave it to pieces, but I want a chance to rewrite it somewhat before I hurl it into cyberspace. In the meantime, I received a very recent comment to one of my very first posts, Evolution Poisons Everything, which led me to today's magnum opus.

Philip, a fine young man who lacks Sarah Palin love, took issue with my statement that "the theory of evolution is pretty good at explaining intraspecies adaptation but woefully inept at explaining how one species evolves into another, or how complex systems like eyes develop out of a series of random mutations."

Here's Philip's response:

no, in fact evolution is perfectly suited to explaining those things as well, does so in scholarly papers that are rigorously peer reviewed, and has been doing so for many moons now. the supposed holes in the theory are nothing more than the ignorant showing their epidermis.

I responded, too, saying the following:

Not so, Philip. There's not a single peer-reviewed article that comes close to explaining the evolution of complex systems like the eye. And the fossil record has been woefully unkind to anyone trying to show gradual transition from one species to another. Articles provide much speculation on these subjects - and plenty of insult to heretics who dare to question - but nothing approaching hard facts.

I don't want to rewrite and re-argue what I said back then, as the power of my original genius can still be seen by all, but I want to personalize this a little bit.

See, my wife thinks I'm a loon on this, too.

She's coming from a different place than Philip is, I'm sure. She's a woman of faith and a former Biology major who sees no conflict between science and religion, whereas Philip is not a big fan of religion of any stripe. Yet she also bristles when I start questioning evolution - and she mocks me mercilessly. She has told many people, on many occasions, that I believe dinosaurs "fell out of the sky." That's a gross misrepresentation of my position, which isn't that big a problem, as I'm not really quite sure what my actual position is at any given time.

What drives her crazy is that I don't particularly care about the issue much.

No, that's not entirely true. I actually think it's fascinating, and I'm certainly engaged in the political discussion surrounding it. What I mean when I say I don't care is that I don't care about the issue theologically. Nothing in what I believe about God, me, and the relationship between the two is remotely affected by whether fish sprouted legs and became squirrels/monkeys/people. I don't treat the Old Testament like science, and, conversely, I don't treat Darwin like religion. I believe truth is truth, and that when the whole picture becomes clear, we'll see how the religion and science pieces fit together.

I've learned over the years, however, that atheists can't afford the luxury of evolutionary disinterest.

One need not prove evolution false to believe in God. But the converse is not true; if there is no God, then evolution, or some other arbitrary explanation, has to account for existence. That is why evolution can't be questioned dispassionately the same way, say, the theory of gravity is. Nobody's personal concept of Deity is threatened by exploration into why objects of small mass are drawn to objects of larger mass. Questions like "why?" or "how?" with regard to gravity aren't the equivalent of saying that you believe things fall up instead of down.

Yet when you start to say "why?" or "how?" about evolution, suddenly you're announcing that the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC. Because questions about evolution aren't just questions; they're atheistic heresies. They need to be quashed, evaded, and ridiculed, because there's too much at stake for those who rely on evolution as justification for their rejection of a higher power.

I think I am retreading some of the ground of my previous post, so I want to extend the discussion into a consideration of what has come to be known as Intelligent Design. Some think it's little more than gussied-up Creationism, which is the province of those who think biology teachers should be using Genesis as a scientific textbook. From what I can tell, ID is much more sophisticated than that. It certainly raises excellent questions, particularly about the unlikelihood of natural selection as an explanation for complex systems. But its alternative answer - life was designed! - isn't helpful. Or, at least, it's not scientifically helpful.

Consider this: a car shows up in your driveway. Where did this car come from? Answer: It was designed! Well, okay, great, but how? Where? What was the process? And how did it get here? I don't even need to know "why" as a scientific inquiry. Just telling me that the car has been "designed" doesn't tell me anything of value. Unless Intelligent Designers can provide scientific evidence of an alternative process to evolution, just touting "design" isn't adequate.

Fortunately, I can wait until all the evidence is in. It's too bad that atheists can't be nearly as patient.