Peter Krupa

It was bound to happen, and it’s just one more sign of the times we live in. Today, 48 hours after the execution of Saddam Hussein, you can watch a video of the excecution on Google Video. Someone in the little dark chamber where they hung him had a cell phone with a camera.

I guess it goes without saying that the video is pretty creepy. More so, perhaps, because it’s grainy and shaky and dark and there’s a whole bunch of people shouting things in Arabic. Since I’m feeling prosaic this morning, I’ll go ahead and say that this video embodies the horror and conflict Iraq has seen and is about to see. Shiite killing Sunni and visa-versa. Out-of-control masculinity. Black-hooded executioners.

I’m on the record as supporting the execution of Saddam. It’s a historical fact that rabble-rousing political leaders, when imprisoned, have a nasty habit of popping up again - from Nelson Mandela to Adolf Hitler to Hugo Chavez to Napoleon himself. Kill that leader, however, and he can’t lead anymore. He will either fade into history or become a martyr, and in that latter case, martyrdom is less a product of the leader’s inspirational abilities and more an indication that there was a giant populist movement casting around for a symbol.

The way the execution of Saddam was carried out, however, was deeply un-smart. When a state executes someone, it should do it from a position of strength, as the monopolizer of violence. This is why executions used to be public (along with the fact that, as the 800,000+ views on the Saddam execution video can attest, people love to watch). Saddam’s execution had none of this.

Saddam’s execution looks like a bunch of vindictive Shiites in black ski masks committing a murder.

I recently bought an HP Deskjet F380 printer/scanner/copier. It’s nice. It cost me, I don’t know, about $85. So I bought this printer, and there I was happily printing along, when I got this error message: “Printer ink low.”

I looked at the date. It had been a mere two weeks. Are they serious?

Yes, they are fucking serious. It turns out my snazzy new printer churns out a whopping 150 b/w pages per ink cartridge. This isn’t even remotely acceptable. When you crunch the numbers, at roughly $15 per black ink cartridge I’m paying 10 cents a fucking page.

I got better rates when I printed stuff in internet cafes in Costa Rica.

It’s too late for me. I’m chained body and soul and credit card to this fucking thing sitting on my desk which, while giving me high quality printing and scanning capability, costs roughly as much to maintain as a small pet.

However you, dear reader, perhaps have not yet fallen prey to this printer scam. Resist. And consider a cheaper way to get your thoughts onto paper. Like, I don’t know, printing things at your parents’ house.

I haven’t posted for the last week or so because, fortunately, I’ve had more important things to do. Most of those things involved eating massive amounts of food, imbibing delicate alcoholic beverages, and sending up clouds of luxuriously silky second-hand smoke from my thinkin’ pipe.

Being as we’re in the midst of Holiday No-Man’s Land (Dec. 26-31) I’m loath to restart the blogging machine just yet, except to complain that United Airlines just sent my luggage to Philadelphia. Granted I was going to Philadelphia too (tickets were cheaper) but on an earlier flight, which was quickly followed by a bus ride to New York. I fear the lady behind the lost baggage counter in Philadelphia didn’t grasp the entire gravity of the situation when she mumbled something about sending me my bag this evening.

It’s not so bad. I can go without a toothbrush for a few days, at least. The real problem is, my thinkin’ pipe was in that bag…

Earlier this month, Science News came out with a fascinating and creepy piece on psychopaths. Seems that there’s a bit of a push to classify psychopathy as a legitimate mental disorder. Not to be confused with sociopathy, which describes someone who has been socially conditioned to be deviant but still adheres to the
mores of his or her particular deviancy, psychopaths are characterized by an inability to interpret their social surroundings, the result being a complete lack of empathy, loyalty, and any other human feeling thereof.

Meanwhile, Popular Mechanics has a lengthy piece on the military’s plan to develop the ability to strike anywhere on the planet within about 20 minutes. Basically, they’re tweaking Trident II inter-continental balistic missiles to turn them into conventional weapons that do the following:

Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

Jesus. Another possibility is that they’ll be mistaken for nuclear warheads and pop goes the planet. Hypersonic cruise missiles, therefore, are another option on the table.

And last but not least, Raul Castro is calling for more openness and debate in the Cuban government’s political establishment. If he really is planning, as seems increasingly likely, to open up Cuba gradually, I’m predicting the Miami Cubans are going to make asses of themselves with increasingly shrill cries for blood. The most practical way to slip Cuba out of totalitarianism and into democracy and economic freedom without plunging it into chaos is not necessarily the most glamorous or ideologically pure, and so I doubt Miami Cubans will settle for practicality. They are, after all, a passionate people.

Trains create lots of awkward situations. Crammed into a car for 20-25 minutes every morning with 80 or so strangers going various places, really it’s amazing that more awkward and uncomfortable things don’t happen. Enough take place as it is.

One common sight is the crazy talker. The crazy talker on the train takes many forms. Sometimes it’s the tall woman telling the wall to go fuck itself, and that she would kick the shit out of it if she didn’t have a court date that morning. This kind of crazy talker is deeply annoying, possibly dangerous, yet easily avoided by simply sitting on the other end of the car. Mumblers are a less disturbing form of crazy talker, but equally easy to avoid.

Sometimes, however, crazy talkers trick you by not starting to talk until you sit down next to them, when they begin spewing forth all sorts of pornographic things into your left ear. At this point – and as with any situation involving crazy people in general – it’s important not to make eye contact, not to acknowledge an interaction, not to flinch. Remember, crazy talkers are drawn to weakness, or just the hint of an opportunity for human interaction. Don’t give them that opportunity, and eventually they will look for easier prey.

A more insidious crazy talker is the crazy talker with a theory. These are trouble because you think at first that they’re just clever and out-going New York City Transit customers, but do not be fooled. Eventually, they will get around to explaining to you how the government built airplanes out of depleted uranium and crashed them into the World Trade Center, or how they are planning to sue three different hospitals for $1 billion each because of back pain due to a mix-up in medications that had something to do with syphilis. As you nod and smile, or frantically stare at the floor, or look around at all the people studiously ignoring your helpless situation, you should know that only one thing will save you now: Your stop.

Crazy Talkers are certainly awkward, but they can be dealt with. So too can the bitch lady. The bitch lady (I say it’s a lady, because it always has been in my experience) is the woman who says “Excuse me” not to politely squeeze her way through, but to announce that she has arrived. While everyone else is quietly and earnestly shuffling into or out of the car, she says, “Excuse me,” as if we should give a fuck. Sometimes she says “Excuse me” in such a tone that it means “Excuse you!” Native New Yorkers likely respond with something equally rude. The rest of us think up sarcastic things to say after the fact, and hope that mass transit karma has something particularly ugly in store for the bitch lady.

You’ll notice that generally, the best way to deal with uncomfortable moments on the train is to pretend they’re not happening - bottle it all up inside, with the possible side effect that one day you will snap and punch an old lady in the throat, or tell the homeless bum to get a fucking job.

One awkward situation, however, is particularly hard to ignore: the abusive parent. The abusive parent is that angry woman with three kids sitting across from you who, after some preliminary yelling, proceeds to slug her son in the leg. You will try your damnedest to pretend this is normal, but it’s hard, because you are wondering, if she does this in front of strangers, what does she do in the privacy of her own home?

You find yourself second-guessing the entire institution of the family when presented with these scenes. Once I was sitting across from said angry woman when her son threw a little tantrum and sprawled out on the floor. It was apparently a well-worn strategy because Mom just looked at him coldly and said in a level, calm voice, “Oh, that’s right, just throw yourself on the floor. I will embarrass you. I will embarrass you.” The kid thought better of it and stood up.

I had a good laugh with that one. After I got off the train, of course.

As people who read this blog know, I don’t like the way the New York Times covers Latin American immigration. I admire the fact that they cover it as much as they do, since it is more or less the biggest story of our lifetime, but my objection is one of narrative.

Basically, when journalists set out to cover a story, I don’t care how objective they think they are, they always have prejudices, and those prejudices most often manifest themselves in the narrative arc of a certain story. This is especially true of feature stories. In a feature story, you have to have a narrative with something of a plot and characters, which provides a nice outlet for prejudicial cliches (e.g. - homeless people are victims, military parents are proud).

My particular problem with the New York Times‘ coverage of Latin American immigration is its chosen narrative - that immigrants to America are harried, shat-upon, victims of fate struggling against the odds in a cruel world. The latest addition to the Times‘ work in this vein is a huge story today that follows three sisters in an immigrant Mexican family.

I don’t have a particular problem with this image of immigrants. But if it’s true for them, it’s also true for any number of struggling American families. So what is the real difference between struggling immigrant families and struggling American families?

You could pick the obvious differences: language, food, religion, family values, legal status. But a striking difference that is little remarked upon is that these immigrant families are suddenly about ten times more prosperous than they were just a few years ago. They are more prosperous because they chose to take a risk and come (in many cases illegally) to a country with a better infrastructure, a better economy, a better legal system, and more opportunities for social mobility. Recent immigrants aren’t coming here to escape a war or a dictator or a famine. They’re coming because, damn it, they want to make $12 an hour like tio Jose.

The upshot of this particular truth is that the social well-being of immigrants is not the most pressing concern at the moment. They put themselves in the situation they’re in, and while I applaud them for their bravery and stick-to-it-ivness, I’m not particularly interested in reading one long anecdotal narrative after another about how hard it is to do what they’re doing. This is something that should be left to novelists.

In the meantime, there are a lot of real and pressing stories that could be covered. What is the state of Latin American entrepreneurship? Are immigrants buying houses? Are they stagnating in destructive social patterns? Is new illegal immigration snatching away opportunities from earlier waves of immigration? What are the causes of this illegal immigration? What about public infrastructure? How has the INS been approaching illegal immigration? What about the prison system? If you want to do an anecdotal story, why not hang out in a small town in Illinois or North Carolina where the Latino population has quadrupled in the space of a decade? How are they dealing with it? What are the new immigrants adding to our economy and society? How much uneducated, poor, skilless labor can our economy and society absorb and convert into educated, middle-class, skilled citizens? Is there a tipping point after which our economy will be overwhelmed? Or is the American capacity for absorption limitless?

There are so many interesting stories that would have meaning for the decisions politicians, policy wonks, and voters will be making in the coming years. Every once in a while the Times’ takes a stab at reporting something meaningful, but they inevitably slip into the same “Latino = victim” narrative.

Considering, however, that this is the biggest story of our lives so far, I’d like to see a little more depth.

Just so you’ll know what everyone’s talking about for the next six months, you should read this story today in the New York Times. Get to know the name Donald Vance too, because I suspect it will become household. Mr. Vance was a private security contractor in Iraq who was suspicious of some of his company’s dealings, so he became an informant for the FBI. Later on, when US military folks swept in an confiscated a weapons cache and arrested a bunch of people - partly based on tips that he provided - they also picked up Mr. Vance.

He was not allowed legal council, not allowed to contact anyone, and he was interrogated and held under oppressive conditions for months. His family didn’t even know if he was alive. He took notes in the Bible they gave him.

One day, Mr. Vance met with a camp psychologist. “He realized I was having difficulties,” Mr. Vance said. “He said to turn it into a game. He said: ‘I want you to pretend you are a soldier who has been kidnapped, and that you still have a duty to do. Memorize everything you can about everything that happens to you. Make it like you are a spy on the inside.’ I think he called it rational emotive behavioral therapy, and I started doing that.”

You might recall a recent bill that passed Congress suspending habeas corpus for “enemy combatants,” a chillingly vague catagory. Mr. Vance wasn’t labeled an “enemy combatant,” but the justification was that he was “deemed a threat.” If that’s a good enough reason for the US government to start denying American citizens their legal rights, we have a serious problem here.

People talk about “lambskin” condoms as if they have something in common with soft leather jackets, or the hat I wear when it gets really cold out. I’ve always pictured them as leather tubes with an exceptionally supple texture, and maybe a stitched seam on one side. After coitus with a lambskin condom, perhaps you could even rinse it out, give it a rub-down with linseed oil, and whip it on for round two.

Like - I don’t know - a baseball glove.

This didn’t strike me as sounding particularly comfortable, and though the Romans used lambskin condoms, I was pretty certain they used them grudgingly.

But a recent conversation encouraged me to believe just the opposite- that lambskin condoms were the closest one could get to “going bareback” and gave an exceptionally natural feel. Is it possible, I wondered, that a 2,000-year-old prophylactic made from an animal product could trump modern technology? Not being one for empty speculation, I decided to try them myself.

The first thing one learns upon googling “lambskin condoms” and clicking on a few links is that they are not, technically, lambskin. Trojan (the only mass-producer of said condoms that I could find) is happy to encourage the misconception with box-top blurbs like, “The #1 Natural Skin Condom For A More Sensual Feeling.”

Look a little closer, however, and you’ll spot the word “membrane.”

They’re not specific about what kind of membrane. Bladder? Intestine? Any membrane will do, I suppose, as long as it’s from an innocent little lamb and fits neatly on a variety of different penises. On the box, they helpfully put a little graphic of a lamb wearing a crown, so even if you don’t know what part of tripe you’re rolling carefully onto your penis, you can be sure it came from royalty.

But squeamishness will get you nowhere in life, so I swallowed hard and bought a box of three Trojan NaturaLamb Lubricated Condoms (I used shopinprivate.com, which is ironic now that I’m announcing all this on my blog, but really it’s a good place to order sexy things if you still live with your parents).

The condoms arrived safely and discretely in the mail, and most of the details that immediately followed that event are private. But I will say that I like “lambskin” condoms for two reasons. First, they did feel more natural. My sources on the internet say this is because they transmit heat better than latex, and that matches with my experience. Qualitatively, membrane is roughly analogous to a plastic sandwich baggy. It wasn’t quite riding bareback, but it was pretty damn close.

The second reason I liked the membrane condoms is harder to define. It’s the same reason people prefer oak to veneer, brick to aluminum siding, wool to polyester. It’s somehow… classic. An Old World material. Quaintly enough, to keep the condom on snug you pull a little piece of string at the base. String! It felt like 1912, which I’m pretty sure is the last year people used string for anything.

Of course, membrane condoms are little-used today for a good reason: they don’t protect you from AIDS or any other virus, only babies. Being a married man, however, this suits me just fine, and I will probably use lambskin condoms as long as I can afford the luxury.

And as long as the lamb population holds up.

An interesting quarterly journal called The New Atlantis (”A journal of technology and society”) is having a little debate about the idea of selling kidneys on the free market. In this corner, we have the moral argument against an organ market. Later on, a medical doctor “specializing in the care of kidney transplant patients” chips in his two cents in favor of an organ market. And, in my personal favorite piece, one Peter Augustine Lawler gives not so much an argument for as a description of why organ markets are in the cards for our libertarian, post-moral society.

The reason this topic has come up in the first place is because, in the United States, there are a growing number of sick people who need kidney transplants, and a static number of brain-dead people whose kidneys can be harvested. Short of an unprecedented overflowing of good-will from Americans eager to part with an organ for the sake of altruism, we’re running into what has been referred to as a “kidney crisis.”

One possible solution: Considering everyone is born with two kidneys, and a person only really needs one, why not allow people to sell a kidney?

It’s an interesting discussion, and you can more or less sort out where the political chips will fall. The left will be outraged at the anticipated exploitation of the poor, and the right will be incensed for some very good moral reasons, which we’re not sure of exactly but it’s in the Bible somewhere.

That is to say, I don’t think the issue breaks down very well along the right/left split. I don’t want to recap all the arguments here, but a few of them give me reason enough to place myself in favor of the organ market.

For one thing, since secular liberal thinkers have made such a ruckus over the last few decades about a woman’s right to do whatever the fuck she wants with her own body, I don’t see how they can stand behind a law banning her from selling part of it. She can abort babies, or sell her hair for wigs, why can’t she sell a kidney?

Also (and to use another tried and true pro-abortion trope) if you don’t make it legal, what about back-alley kidney dealers? There is obviously a growing demand for kidneys, and the longer you wait, the more sophisticated will become the black market suppliers: the kidney dealers in Brazil, India, Mexico, etc. We all saw how the War on Drugs panned out, and now that we have the chance to do it over again, why not let people sell drugs, (er, kidneys) that are clean, regulated, and don’t kill innocent Colombians?

Which brings me to the principle liberal objection to kidney sales: that they exploit the poor. The thought is that rich people will buy the organs of poor people, and Marx will roll over in his grave. But laws against this won’t help any, because rich people will buy kidneys no matter what. The question is, do we force them to spend their money on sketchy third-world providers that really do exploit the poor, or do we set up a system so everyone knows the score and gets something decent in return? We already let poor people sell plasma. Why not kidneys?

None of which even begins to touch the moral problem. The fact is that an organ market will save (or at least extend) a lot of lives, something generally considered a moral good. Unfortunately, I doubt moral thinkers will get past the initial “yuck” reflex of an organ market, and we’ll end up with a bunch of unproductive polemics.

Anyway, like I said, I know where I pitch my tent. Ona and I have decided that our kidneys are for sale. $100,000 a pop. I’m not sure of our blood types, but we’re young, non-smokers, and we walk a lot.

Come and get ‘em while they’re pink. Cash only please.

Lonelyterrorist15.