To make good on my Friday-morning promise that I would the post the first installment on what I intend to be a regular feature of this page, let me say a few words about nihilism. In a "Colt 45 Chronicle" post I poked around the idea that nihilism is what binds fathers and sons. The father leads the way into the unknown and the son haltingly sometimes blindly follows along from behind.
Nihilism means never having your story told. People could not really care any less about what you have to say. Let the tomb take you and the abyss swallow you whole, for there will be less than a mouse click's worth of interest, not even a stifled yawn, when it is time for you to pass over into the unknown.
To wit, a coworker asked me the other day if I might attempt to find something online in the way of an obituary for one of the union local retirees who recently died. I told her I would be happy to. After a broad search revealed little, I narrowed down to the city where he last lived. Sure enough, I found an obit entry in the online classified section of the city -- mid-sized, eastern part of the state -- newspaper. But on closer inspection the obituary was not an obituary but a digital book of condolences maintained by the funeral home who handled the retiree's remains. No one had left any thoughts or prayers let alone sign the book. The page for the retiree read "0 messages." Thinking that I somehow had been careless and that I missed the customary written obituary, I clicked back to the newspaper's obituary page. No, I hadn't been careless. In fact, on closer inspection, I noticed that most of the deceased had digital guestbooks only and not the traditional obit; and most of the guestbooks were empty.
Maybe it was just the luck of the sort. I don't know. But it seemed revelatory. A digital, fully-searchable world where no one searches or comments. We have an electronic infrastructure capable of handling petabytes of information and no seems to care.
I include "Dance With Me" off the 2003 remastered reissue of The Modern Lovers (1976) album because I think those boyish songs of Jonathan Richman wandering around outside in the dark late at night pining over a girl who doesn't love him are wonderful representations of nihilism.
Get ready for non-stop hearings on the IRS using selective search criteria to single out Tea Party groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. It starts tomorrow when the House Ways and Means Committee hears testimony from freshly-ousted acting commissioner Steven Miller. Then on Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee will hold its first hearing. The next day, according to Jonathan Weisman's story, "I.R.S. Chief Out After Protest Over Scrutiny of Groups,"
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear the testimony of Lois Lerner, who heads the I.R.S.'s division on tax-exempt organizations and was aware of the issue nearly from the beginning, in 2010, yet told reporters on Friday that she had learned of it from news reports in 2012.
“Lois Lerner lied to me,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who helped initiate the Congressional investigation of the I.R.S.
Republicans are going to turn this into a search for false statements; they'll construct timelines and talk of smoking guns and grand conspiracies. Democrats, if they're smart, will bring it back to the elephant in the room -- abuse of the tax code. The 501(c)(4) classification is sought after because it doesn't require disclosure of donors. Many well-heeled political money-men like to remain in the shadows. The whole thing could be cleared up by Congress requiring any organization engaged in political spending (which would have to be defined legislatively) to file as a 527 group; 527 status is tax exempt but it requires disclosure of contributions.
And possibly, the hope here is with the Senate since this is where Democrats maintain control, the role of the nefarious Koch brothers can be revealed. Check out the last paragraph from Weisman's story:
The I.R.S. released a list of 176 groups that have been granted tax-exempt status through the review process, which centralized operations in Cincinnati in order to deal with a crush of applications that began in 2010 with the Tea Party movement. That list included organizations with names like American Patriots Against Government Excess; Rebellious Truths; the Coalition for a Conservative Majority; and Friends of the Constitution; as well as dozens of Tea Party chapters.
I know from having been a treasurer for a local chapter of a political party in a state and a city with strict disclosure laws that IRS filings can be the trickiest and most confusing. For there to have been a sudden "crush" of groups applying for social welfare tax exemptions as opposed to exemptions as political organizations tells me that some sort of central counsel was being provided. Who was supplying that counsel? This is where Democrats should push back.
As I completed the Lake Union Loop this morning, the sun punching through the chilly fog, Femi Kuti's "Beng Beng Beng" shuffled on my iPod:
Fitting since the letter below, number six taken from a packet of epistles pried out of storage during the second half of the Seahawks-Falcons playoff game last month, is a paean to music and sex.
Stacey was my last Berkeley girlfriend prior to my marriage (in Reno on our way across the country to New York City and the married student housing located at 60 Haven Avenue). I conceived of the idea of a Reno marriage thanks to a trip I had taken there with Stacey, at her suggestion, a couple months before; in fact, we flirted with idea of getting married there ourselves (I remember being more up for it than Stacey). We got a room at Circus Circus; made love fully clothed on top of the bed; showered; saw a real life dog and pony show in the theater downstairs; walked the main drag downtown; watched people gamble; bought some drinks at a bar that had a wonderful old mural and a Dallas Mavericks playoff game on a TV mounted high up on the wall. We returned to our room early after Stacey started to feel sick. She woke up a couple of times during the night to go to the bathroom and puke. She communicated to me the next morning that she was upset that I had slept through her illness and hadn't got up with her. I apologized. We drove back to Berkeley a roundabout way that took us through Carson City.
I had met Stacey the previous winter at a hipster hang out in the Lower Haight one night on the town with the boys. It was a Saturday and everyone was drunk. The guys danced with each other and the girls did likewise, but we all were really dancing together. It was one of those rare perfect evenings. I drank with Stacey at the bar until last call when she wrote her telephone number with lipstick on a cocktail napkin and gave it to me.
I never called, but I did run into Stacey walking her ten-speed bike one afternoon a month or two later near the Class of 1914 Fountain. I had been working on my honors thesis on the analytic a posteriori (which now describes this blog). I was jittery from too much espresso and too little to eat. We decided to go to "Cafe Be Seen" on the corner of College and Bancroft; I called her many times after that. Our spring romance had begun.
Stacey was the apotheosis of undergraduate cool -- an art history major who had been a drummer in a short-lived garage band; an aspiring writer (now published with a couple books under her belt) who had transferred from Wesleyan. Our romance was leavened by Stacey's concern that she might be HIV-positive due to the obligatory hipster ritual of shooting smack (which she blamed on the influence of her last boyfriend). I loved Stacey (part of the reason I decided to get with my last girlfriend, the predator, was she was named Stacy -- without the "e"). One of the best things I ever did was to wrap up my university career by being Stacey's lover. She didn't want me to leave. But I left. I had to get to the metropolis.
This letter is addressed to my friend Oliver, who was not only a partner in 49ers fandom but a music aficionado who taught me a lot about listening to bands.
Summer 1989
Get this Oliver -- I too am now a proofreader at a law office. And you know what? It's the best job I've had since I've been in New York. My supervisor, who is twenty-six year old paralegal, is a true music "liver" (we exchanged MEAT PUPPETS II quotes my first day: mine was: "Holy ghosts and talkshow hosts lie planted in the sand"; but the deal is, now that I look it up at this very moment, the deal is that it is not "lie" but "are," and I kinda secretly suspected this, or some such aberration, the whole time; his was: "And an illustrated book about birds" -- from the same tune; and even though mine is embellished and therefore fucked up and his is A-1 absolutely correct, I still think mine is tastier than his, but probably and only because I snatched thebest one first). Anyway, he was shocked that I didn't know The Stooges. So he lent me two of their albums for the weekend, along€ with HUEVOS, which is one of those Meat Puppett albums we never bought. The "Dog" song -- "I'll be your Dog" or "I Wanna be Your Dog" -- on the first album, THE STOOGES, is truly great, and side two is also very good -- Iggy sounds a lot like Jonathan Richman; but I don't like the second one that much, FUN HOUSE -- they're trying to be The Doors, too muddled long and boring; as for the Meat Puppets, well, that's why I gave up on them after UP ON THE SUN -- no three-cup-of-coffee burn, none of those long & waving & scratchy licks, just that burbling Chick Korea jazz-fusion guitar and that jig step drum beat, boring -- it misses the mark; you know, and I know, that Curt Kirkwood is an asshole; oh hell, it happens everywhere, 3-WAY TIE (FOR LAST) was a piece of shit too.
But the reason why I write this now is something that doesn't have a whole helluva lot to do with that preceding paragraph other than that tonight was the night that I made my supervisor (the aforementioned) a tape. He wanted GENERIC FLIPPER (by all means an excellent album), and after I finished that I had a whole B side of quality Maxell left to fill. I ran out of the Coors and headed into the Gordon's gin. The gin was warm and tasted like puke but it was all there was in the apartment. Anyway, the song I finished the tape with was a song I heard over at a girlfriend's apartment (the girlfriend who wasn't Maura) one morning when the Oakland sun came powering its way through a second-story kitchen window on 63rd Street (I always used to say to myself when I was over there, "My, how close I am to Oliver and Lyn's"), and I was just rising from sordid beermares. She had one those Murphy beds, those beds that collapse back into a closet, except this one didn't collapse because she had it nailed to her wall. The bed itself was nothing but a bunch of metal coils. So I got up and trotted into the living room and she was already up and sitting on the couch in one of those 1940's housewife flower-patterned dresses. She was drinking a mug of coffee and was smiling big and heavy. On the stereo she had this song -- "Start The Clock" by the Silos -- and though it couldn't've been past Eight in the morning the stereo was blasting like I was at a DAY ON THE GREEN back when who knows what. I was still dizzy from the previous night's beer and pussy eating, and I said: "This is a great morning song." And she replied, with a cherished beauty, "You're right, it is." I sat down and listened, right next to her. And I wrapped my arm around her hip -- a waist as soft and as warm and well-slept as a favorite bedtime pillow -- and I smelled flapjacks with syrup and clean sheets after a hot shower. Oh God, the sun was pouring through the window and Ashley was alone somewhere and I was in love and dizzy hungover and the music was so fine. And tonight brought it all back.
There was a time when Bob Dylan and the Minutemen solved all my problems and I was on track. -- Thanks for listening Oliver, you're the only one who could.
