Woe to the werewolf.

Hollywood has not been kind to our hairy hound of hellacious howling. In fact, tinsel town has been downright cruel with movies not even a junkyard dog would enjoy – lowly affairs like “Silver Bullet”(1985), “Howling II” (1986), “Wolfen” (1981), and “An American Werewolf in Paris” (1997).

And please don’t make me watch “The Howling – New Moon Rising” (1994) because I might just shoot myself with a silver bullet to make it go away.

The werewolf has been neglected. While the vampire continues to wow Hollywood with big budget affairs like “Interview with the Vampire” (1994), “Blade” (1998), and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), the werewolf is regulated to B (even C) movie status.

The cold hard fact is that creating a good werewolf story is difficult because the storyline is so structured: bitten by wolf; slow build to the full moon; transformation; rampage; and then (usually) death. It's not easy to insert an original narrative into the werewolf tale. Werewolves are animals -- savage beasts that growl, spit, and howl. Vampires, on the other hand, are suave, cultured, and wise with centuries of contemplation. As an actor which creature would you prefer to play?

But there is hope. A glimmer of hope, anyway.

There have been a handful of werewolf movies worthy of viewing. There’re not all gold mind you – but at least they aren’t rusty pieces of old scrap iron.

So for our weeklong horror celebration DaRK PaRTY presents the list of “Seven Werewolf Movies that Don’t Totally Suck.”

The Howling (1981)
Joe Dante’s film is the grandpappy of the modern werewolf movie and the first movie in the franchise most responsible for taking the werewolf genre into the gutter. But let’s stress the positive, shall we? First, the werewolves in “The Howling” are among the best on screen. They’re scary, savage, and completely creditable.

We even get a plot here. News anchorwoman investigating a murder stumbles onto a rogue werewolf. She journeys to “The Colony” (a coastal community in Northern California) with her husband and discovers that the rustic town is an outpost for werewolves.

Silver Nugget: All the werewolf characters are named after famous werewolf movie directors of the past.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)
For a long time, “An American Werewolf in London” was the best werewolf movie ever made. It’s now second best. Two Americans are backpacking through the English moors and attacked by a werewolf. One is killed and the other, David, is mauled.

Waking up in a hospital, David falls for the nurse and ends up moving in with him. But as the full moon comes, David turns into a werewolf in what may be the best make-up transformation of man into wolf ever filmed.

Then he kills a lot of people.

The movie is a bit disjointed and can’t decide whether to be a comedy or a horror flick (so it’s both), but it’s a genuinely good movie despite being about werewolves.

Silver Nugget: David Naughton, the lead actor, was cast after director John Landis saw him in Dr. Pepper commercials.

Teen Wolf (1985)
When a Michael J. Fox comedy makes the list – you know werewolf movies are in trouble. But despite its overall blandness, “Teen Wolf” is kind of fun in a “Sixteen Candles” meets “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” kind of way.

Fox plays a high school nerd playing on a terrible basketball team. Then he starts changing and his dad informs him that he’s inherited his werewolf genes. Suddenly, Fox is the star basketball players and the most popular kid at school.

Silver Nugget: Fox was 24 when he starred in the movie.

Wolf (1994)
Hollywood’s first attempt at a big budget werewolf flick and it flopped. This may be the most unsuccessful Jack Nicholson movie of all time – and it also has Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader. But this movie is pretty good nevertheless.

Nicholson plays a has-been literary editor at a publishing house. Just before he gets the boot in favor of his younger rival (Spader), he’s bitten by a wolf and starts his glorious transformation from milquetoast to werewolf. There’s more here about becoming middle-aged that werewolf mythology (which might be why the film didn’t do very well).

Silver Nugget: Sharon Stone turned down the Michelle Pfeiffer role.

Ginger Snaps (2000)
Werewolf aficionados love “Ginger Snaps.” I’m lukewarm on it, but considering the competition – it makes the list. The movie, directed by John Fawcett, starts out with a lot of promise. Two attached-at-the-hip Goth sisters get their relationship challenged when the oldest, Ginger, is attacked by a werewolf.

The movie degenerates into a cliché ridden murder fest, but the strong performances of the cast make up for the poor writing and directing.

Silver Nugget: Lucy Lawless is the voice over the school’s PA system.

Dog Soldiers (2002)
The best werewolf movie ever made. Here it is. The tagline says it all: “Six Soldiers. Full Moon. No Chance.” Director Neil Marshall doesn’t shy away from the fact that he’s making a B-movie horror flick. Instead he embraces it.

What we get is a squad of British soldiers trapped in a secluded cottage as they are relentlessly attacked by a pack of werewolves (actors in cool costumes and make-up) rather than CGI animation. The result is just great fun.

Silver Nugget: The character of Sgt. Harry G. Wells is named after author H.G. Wells, the favorite writer of Marshall.

Underworld (2003)
“Underworld,” one can argue, is really a vampire flick. Hard to argue back because the main character is a vampire and most of the movie is told from a vampire’s point of view. But the premise of this ambitious and surprisingly effective film is the ongoing war between vampires and werewolves.

Selene (played by Kate Beckinsale) is death dealer, a vampire who hunts werewolves, but when she falls for a werewolf, she needs to decide which side she’s really on. Lots of action and great werewolf effects.

Silver Nugget: The original pitch for the movies was a crafty “Romeo and Juliet between vampires and werewolves.”

Labels: Horror, Movies, Werewolves

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Summary: Mary Mahoney, six months pregnant, knits in her parlor waiting for her husband, Patrick, to get home from work. Patrick, a dour, unfriendly police detective, returns in a foul mood. After drinking glasses of whiskey, Patrick tells Mary he is leaving her. Shocked, Mary prepares dinner – fetching a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer. When her husband tells her not to bother, she crushes the back of his skull with the lamb. Mary proceeds to get her alibi prepared by putting the lamb in the oven and then heading to the butcher’s. Returning, she puts the lamb in the oven and pretends to have discovered her murdered husband. She calls the police and her husband’s colleague come in investigate. In the end, she offers them the leg of lamb and they eat the murder weapon.

Analysis: Roald Dahl may have one of the most unusual writing careers in history. He’s famous for authoring some of the most beloved children’s novels of all time – “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” and “Matilda.”

Labels: literary criticism, literature, Roald Dahl

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What defines a great cover song? DaRK PaRTY believes there are two crucial elements:

• A complete and successful re-interpretation of the song that stretches the scope of the music in entirely new directions
• When the song title is mentioned, most people believe the song belongs to the cover band rather than the original artist

With that limited criteria as our guide, DaRK PaRTY presents the 10 Greatest Cover Songs of All Time.

All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

Bob Dylan originally sang this one as a folk rocker, but Hendrix rescues it with some scathing electrical guitar work. It’s amazing that Dylan released the song in 1967 and by 1968 most people already considered it a Hendrix song. In fact, Dylan even liked the Hendrix version better and played it “heavier” in concert for years in tribute to Hendrix. This is a perfect example of an artist completely re-interpreting a song to make it better, yet still echoing the original.

I Fought the Law (The Clash)

Does anyone even remember that this song was originally done by the Crickets in 1965? Probably not because before the Clash’s version, the song was made popular by the Bobby Fuller Four (Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car the same day the song hit the Top 40). But for all purposes, the Clash have so thoroughly taken command of this song that it’s become one of about five tunes that people immediately connect with the band. It’s an outstanding cover because the Clash’s punk version is a better fit for the tune musically than the original rockabilly style or the Bobby Fuller Four version.

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (George Thorogood)

This was an old blues number by John Lee Hooker that George Thorogood and his Destroyers made into one of their signature songs (along with “Bad to the Bone). Thorogood takes Hooker’s insightful, introspective song and creates a party number out of it by ripping it pieces with his masterful slide guitar antics.

Red Red Wine (UB40)

How’s this for stretching the limits on a song? UB40 takes puffy pop standard by Neil Diamond and makes it into a rollicking reggae tune that became one of the defining songs of the 1980 retro-reggae scene. However, UB40 didn’t even know Neil Diamond wrote and recorded it until after “Red Red Wine” was a hit. The band thought the song belonged to another reggae band – Tony Tribe, which recorded it in 1969.

Respect (Aretha Franklin)

Otis Redding said all that needed to be said about Aretha’s version of his original. “I think the bitch stole my song.” That she did. Aretha added the “Sock it to me” line to the song (which is a sexual reference) and added a rocking bridge line to the tune.

Walk This Way (Run DMC)

This may be one of the most significant covers in history. By converting Aerosmith’s popular rock anthem into a rap song, Run DMC brought hip hop to the mainstream and rescued Aerosmith from the dustbin. Run-DMC stumbled upon the album, but had never heard of Aerosmith (in fact, they thought the name of the band was Toys in the Attic, the album with “Walk This Way” on it). Aerosmith was pretty much over and the song helped revive its career after the disastrous release of the band’s worst album “Done with Mirrors.”

Suspicious Minds (Fine Young Cannibals)

How is it possible to swipe a song from the King? Ask the Fine Young Cannibals who turned Elvis Presley’s last number one song before his death into one of the most popular songs of the alt-rock movement of the 1980s. This is a bouncy, guitar heavy tune that would have made the King proud.

Take Me to the River (Talking Heads)

I’ll never forgive the Talking Heads for taking the Modern Lover’s bass player, but they kind of make up for it with this fantastic cover of an Al Green tune. This is the song that put art rock band Talking Heads on the musical map. This slowed down, bass-heavy rendition of the original became the coda of urban cool and helped usher in the new wave movement in 1978.

You Really Got Me (Van Halen)

This song was the first hit for the Kinks and the first hit for Van Halen. Ray Davies of the Kinks said he liked the Van Halen version better and that the Kinks version was a prop airplane and the Van Halen version was a fighter jet. This song really encapsulates early Van Halen showing off Eddie Van Halen’s guitar mastery and lead singer David Lee Roth’s trademark squeals.

Ring of Fire (Social Distortion)

It’s difficult to unseat Johnny Cash from his own song – never mind pick him up and throw him to the ground. But that’s exactly what Social Distortion does to “Ring of Fire.” They punk it up and own it. The song, however, was really written by June Carter, who wrote it while driving around one night worried about Cash’s wild partying.

Think we blew it? Want to throw a cover song into the mix? Then use the comments section below to tell us what we missed and to add to the list.

Labels: Music, Songs

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(After reading one of Laurie Foos’s surreal comic novels, after throwing away the box of Kleenex used to wipe away the tears of laughter, a reader tries to visualize what in God’s name could this author possibly be like. Two images come immediately to mind:
1. A deranged bag lady with leaves sticking in her hair and a thick, patch-quilt overcoat pushing a shopping cart filled with half-scrawled notes for her next book through urban alleys.
2. A severe, bespectacled intellectual clad in black clothing and smoking European cigarettes through an ivory holder like muttering with the voices in her head.

Neither, however, is the real Laurie Foos. In person, Laurie comes across as engaging, funny, surprisingly patient – and completely normal. Laurie is the author of the novels “Before Elvis There Was Nothing,” “Bingo Under the Crucifix,” “Twinship,” “Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist,” and “Ex Utero.” She teaches in the low residency MFA program at Lesley University and lives on Long Island with her husband and two children. What’s going on here? DaRK PaRTY decided to find out.)

DaRK PaRTY: For those DaRK PaRTY readers who have not read one of your novels -- can you give them a brief description of your style?

Laurie: This is always a hard question to answer. When people ask me what kind of novels I write, I usually say, "absurd comedies," and I guess I identify myself with the absurdists and surrealists--though, quite honestly, I think that the overriding premises of my books are surreal but that mostly, they are grounded in a world we recognize--or at least one that I do.

DP: Your first novel "Ex Utero" which is the story of poor Rita who loses her uterus at the mall. Can you give us a peek into your creative process? How did "Ex Utero" happen?

Laurie: In a way that I'm sure will never happen again. Truly!

The idea for "Ex Utero" came to me while I was lying in bed (hence that first line, I'm sure), and thank the gods I had the sense enough to get out of bed and get myself a notebook, despite the fact that I am forever telling my students to keep one at their bedsides. If I hadn't, I'm not sure--maybe the idea would have been gone. In any case, I had the idea for the three women--I think there were four scribbled on the notebook, but one did not fit in--and the novel, from that point on, evolved from the central metaphor.

I believe in writing a first draft, in getting to the end, and only then going back to revise. With "Ex Utero," the whole novel took about nine months to write (which sounds campy, I know) and came out almost entirely as it went to print. This has not--and I suspect, will not, ever happen again. There were some revisions, but I recall them being pretty minor, not at all like the more major overhauling I've done in subsequent novels.

It's also possible that I've gotten tougher and have had stricter standards with each book, and I know that like most writers, I'm never entirely satisfied and always wish there were things I'd done differently. Of course I never thought the book would see the light of day, and so perhaps I was bolder in that first novel than I've been since. It was only after I'd finished the novel that I realized that I was writing about my own feelings of ambivalence about motherhood--and in some ways, at the people who were asking me, "When do you plan to have kids?" and more intrusively, "Are you trying?" Now I have two kids and try never to ask anyone who doesn't have children that question.

DP: I love your novel "Bingo Under the Crucifix" because I could so relate to the concept of a man turning back into a baby (even if his head remains adult). I don't know what that says about me -- but which one of your books is your favorite and why?

Laurie: I love a man who can admit he relates to that premise. Thank you!

Each book has come out of a certain time in my life and has been born out of the obsessions I've been occupied by at various times in my life, and so they are all special for me for that reason. And each one has allowed me to write the next book. I believe Philip Roth said that each book acts like a bulldozer, clearing the way for the next, and I understand that. But if I had to pick a favorite--and you're asking me to, so I will--it would have to be "Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist." There is nothing real or remotely close to my life in the book, but it is in many ways the book that is closest to me--or to who I was at that point. I dug deeply with that book, and I believe it allowed me to write the others.

DP: Your new novel "Before Elvis There was Nothing" may be your wackiest yet. Two sisters are abandoned by their parents who go off looking for Elvis on the 10th anniversary of his death. Are you an Elvis fan and why did you choose Elvis as the story's epicenter?

Laurie: Yes, I am a huge Elvis fan. HUGE. Not ashamed to admit it, either:). I love Elvis in all his incarnations--young and promising, even bloated and near death--and I am fascinated by the death culture and mythology surrounding Elvis. I've been to Graceland three times and have a ton of Elvis memorabilia (though I did pack most of it away when we moved to this new house). My mother was/is a huge fan, and so I grew up with Elvis.

It's always intrigued me, too, that despite all the books, all the films, all the tell-alls, no one has ever quite gotten to the core of why he threw it all away--and of course no one ever will. It's what keeps us coming back. He's the American Dream and its deterioration, its facade, all in one. He embodies both hope and hopelessness, beauty and decay, promise and despair. I could go on and on.

I didn't want to write about Elvis, though, and I naturally worried what I might possibly add to the list of Elvis literature, so I resisted for quite some time, though I knew that eventually he'd win out. When I began the novel, he appeared--in reference to the parents--and I thought to myself, "All right, he wants to be in this book, it seems, so I'll let him, at least for awhile," and he just stayed and seemed to fit. Elvis seemed to personify all the questions of identity that I wanted to explore. So much has been written about him, much of it badly, though, and so I did fight him off as best I could. But you can't win against the King, I've found.

DP: No offense is meant by this question -- but in person you're such a nice, normal woman. Yet you write these radical, surreal novels that completely impale modern society. Are you a closet revolutionary?

Laurie: People always say that to me: "But you seem so normal!" I like to think that I am, but of course, what or who is normal anymore? I live a nice, quiet life with my husband and our two babies. I skewer suburbia--and yet I live in it, always have, probably always will. It seems ambivalence is a great motivator for me. I don't know that I'm a revolutionary, by any means, but I will say that there are fundamental aspects of our society that I simply don't understand, and moreover, I don't understand why we all buy into them and perpetuate them. I suppose, in some way, I'm rallying against them in my work, or at the very least, trying to have a voice.


Read our Six-Word Short Stories here

Read our interview about Writing Forums here

Labels: 5 Questions, Laurie Foos, literature, Writing

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Labels: Batman, comics, Parody

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• Three weeks (15 days) of paid vacation
• Six weeks of paid maternity leave for women
• Two weeks of paid paternity leave
• One year of unemployment benefits

Vacation
American workers are exhausted. Europeans and Australians enjoy four weeks of vacation mandated by their governments. In the United States, the average worker receives an average of eight days of vacation – a little over a week. Globalization and technology have made working 9 to 5 obsolete and result in longer hours and more days worked. In this type of hyper-competitive atmosphere, workers need to be protected – and this means making vacation time mandatory.

Well rested workers will increase productivity, create safer working conditions, lower stress related illness, and allow workers to send more time with their families. In our plan to mandate three weeks of vacation for every full-time worker in the U.S., small businesses will be eligible for tax cuts and subsidies to help pay for their workers to take time off. Workers will be encouraged to take the time off – but if they do not, they will be compensated for any vacation time leftover at the end of each year.

Maternity & Paternity Leave
There’s a lot of talk in America about valuing the family – but little action. Just like we lag behind the rest of the industrialized world in vacation time, we fall far short in providing time off for new parents.

In fact, there is no requirement in the United States for paid maternity (never mind paternity) leave of any kind. According to a recent study at Harvard University, out of 168 countries in the world, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave. The U.S. enjoys the company of Swaziland, Lesotho, and Papua New Guinea as the only nations in the study that did not.

Industrial nations are unusually generous (or realistic) when it comes to advocating for parents to be with their children. Canadian women enjoy 14 months of paid maternity leave and in Sweden couples get 16 months of paid parental leave (at 80 percent of salary), according to a recent article in U.S. Today.

If the U.S. is serious about being family first – then we need to start with maternity and paternity leaves. Six weeks is hardly adequate for mothers, but it’s a starting point. This benefit (and the two weeks of paternity leave) will be compensated directly by the government at full pay. Companies will have the option to extend the benefit, of course. Under the plan, the amount of time will be reviewed for an increase every two years.

Unemployment Benefits
The average length of time it takes for an unemployed worker in 2005 to find a job is about 20 weeks. Unemployment benefits in the U.S. last an average of 24 weeks and that’s cutting it much too close – especially when you consider older workers who have a more difficult time finding work.

It’s a ridiculous notion that you can lose unemployment benefits while still actively looking for a job. Why do we want to burden workers with a ticking clock of anxiety as they search for a new job? Twelve months of full benefits is fair and allows people to adequate time to find a new job.

We want to make sure people don't fall into bankruptcy, enter into a spiral of debt, and lose their self-esteem like looking for work. Extended unemployment benefits ensure the dignity of all workers.

Labels: Corporate, Essay, Work Ethic

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Labels: Floetry Spades, Poem

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(DaRK PaRTY was a huge fan of the band Treat Her Right in the mid-to-late 1980s. The band played a stripped down blues with two guitars, a harmonica, and a cocktail drum. Billy Conway was the drummer – a funked-out, long-haired dude with a sardonic smile. The band played soulful, haunted blues-infused rock with song titles like “I Think She Likes Me,” “I Got a Gun,” “King of Beers,” and “Where Did All the Girls Comes From.” Treat Her Right lead singer and guitarist Mark Sandman and Conway left to form the band Morphine. Morphine had a devoted fan based for their jazzy rock numbers that only featured guitar, saxophone, and Conway’s drums. Their hits included: “Honey White,” “Super Sex,” and “Sharks.” The band broke up after Sandman died of an apparent heart attack. Conway know runs Hi ‘n Dry, a recoding studio in Boston, and plays with the band Twinemen. DaRK PaRTY recently caught up with Conway to talk about his life in music.)

DaRK PaRTY: Treat Her Right was a stripped down blues band featuring Mark Sandman and Dave Champagne on guitars; Jim Fitting on harmonica; and you beating the daylights out of a cocktail drum. Can you give DaRK PaRTY readers a brief origin story on the band and what the musical philosophy was behind it?

Billy Conway: We began in the mid-1980s with Sunday jam sessions doing whatever music that moved us. Paul Kolderie was playing bass and was unable to make one of the sessions and Mark (Sandman) began playing bass lines on his guitar. We liked the sound of low guitar and high guitar and there was a precedent in the blues that we all liked. We adopted the less is more theory and focused on simplifying everything we were doing. If there were too many chords in the song we just removed them or skipped that part of the song. We held high regard for one chord songs and strived to make simple and emotional music like our heroes – Muddy (Waters), (Howling’) Wolf, and Jimi Hendrix.

We wanted to make music with the power of the blues but still our music and not reliant on the tradition. Since we all had been in rock bands with too much gear and production we decided to apply the simple approach to performing as well. Each one of us had to be able to carry our gear into the venue in one trip without help and no gear that required two people to lift. We wanted to be able to do our thing in a living room or the enormodome. We took a steady local gig and saved the money to make our first record with Kolderie's help at the original Fort Apache studio. Our record was DYI (Do It Yourself) before the acronym was popular.

We sold some records and got signed by a major label and learned a lot of lessons.

DP: When Treat Her Right broke up, Mark Sandman formed Morphine in 1989 with saxophone player Dana Colley. You came in to play the drums after the original drummer Jerome Deupree became ill. Morphine had a rabid following of fans that really dug the band's ability to fuse blues and jazz elements with rock. Why do you think Morphine became so popular?

Billy: The sound of Morphine was unique enough that we were seldom compared to other artists or genres and had to be taken on our terms. We also knew that the songs would always be the test and it was always about the songs. We stripped down the lineup and worked really hard on the road and worked on having a good live show and making the real connection out in the world. As much as we believed in ourselves we were still astonished at times that our music was finding a place in a market that had very little music similar to ours.

DP: Mark Sandman died on stage in Italy on July 3, 1999 while performing. Can you tell us about Sandman as a musician and what he meant to you as a friend and band mate?

Billy: He will forever be an inspiration to me. He was fearless and relentless musically. He worked constantly and was always moving forward. It was not uncommon to see a song title on the set list that I didn't recognize. When I would ask him about it he wouldusually say something about a jam and a riff and that I would remember it when we started playing.

He was a great old school entertainer and emcee of the show and I think it was effectivebecause he was sincere. He would comment that when on stage you can't say thank you or the name of the city too many times. Having a good show was the singular goal of everyday on the road and he lived for that.

DP: You help run a recording studio called Hi 'n Dry and now play with a new band called the Twinemen. Can you tell us about the studio and what the Twinemen are all about?

Billy: Hi ‘n Dry was the name of Mark’s studio as far back as Treat Her Right and through Morphine and we kept it after his death. Every record we made had songs that were cut at Hi ‘n Dry and our last record was made and completed there. Dana and I decided to keep the studio and began producing records there and forming our own little scene and eventually had to stumble into our own label. It is mostly a community affair and a form of musical social work. Artists without much money helping artists without much money make records. It is a rewarding community to be involved in with a great history and supportive relationships.

Twinemen began after we completed a tour with Orchestra Morphine (a nine piece band we put together to promote "The Night" Morphine's final record). Laurie Sargent had been doing some of the singing in the orchestra and Dana and I were contributing music to her solo record when we realized the music was taking on its own path. So of course we followed along. Laurie’s solo record still is not finished, but Twinemen are preparing to release our third studio record in January. We acquired Jeremy Moses Curtis on bass after we lost the previous bass player to some guy named Dylan. The music of Twinemen is ever evolving and always exploring and we really enjoy not knowing where it is going as long as it sounds new and unlike music we know about. It must be in the Hi ‘n Dry air.

The name Twinemen came from a cartoon strip that Sandman had during morphine.The character was three headed twine ball as a comic reflection of life in a band.

DP: Word has it that Treat Her Right will be releasing a new album based on some recently rediscovered recordings. Can you give us a sneak peek at the project? Where was the music found and will there be any new material?

Billy: Yesiree, there is yet another edition of Treat Her Right music. At the end of our band life we had made a record for our major label that they actually paid for but never heard before they dropped us. We printed up a bunch of cassettes and hit the road selling them from the stage and actually broke even for once on the road. Since then it has been on the shelf and we thought it was time to make it available. It is a pleasure to hear the music now with all the miles in front of it. It still has its own unique sound and that, asalways, is a difficult thing to accomplish.


Read our picks for the 5 Bands That Should Have Been Huge -- But Blew It


Read our picks for 7 Really Pissed Off Bands here

Labels: 5 Questions, Billy Conway, Morphine, Music, Treat Her Right

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Labels: Horror, Movies

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Labels: death, Essay, Poetry, Shakespeare

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• The government kept Padilla in complete isolation for two years – his only human contact guards who delivered his food and military interrogators.
• He would be placed in “stress positions” shackled and manacled for hours at a time.
• Noxious fumes would be pumped into his cell strong enough to cause his eyes and nose to run.
• The interrogators threatened him with imminent execution.
• His captors injected him with LSD and PCP.

It’s like a bad TV show – culled from a drug store paperback thriller.

The real crime is the lack of outrage from Americans. Jose Padilla was a punk – a gang member and criminal with a violent history. One wonders if it’s because he’s Hispanic and Muslim that few people care. How forgotten is Padilla? There's a web site dedicated to his cause that hasn't been updated since November, 2005. The bulletin board on the site has only 32 registered participants and there's been no activity on it for more than seven days.

No one in the United States should have to endure what Padilla has experienced. This isn’t Stalin’s Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. This is supposed to be the greatest democracy in history – the United States of America.

Jailing citizens without charges and torturing them shouldn’t even be possible in the U.S.

How have we gotten to this point? A deeper question, however, is when is the Bush administration going to held accountable for these types of actions? Too many Americans agree with this president's actions and wrap themselves in the flag with justifications that torture saves innocent lives.

How unAmerican is that?

Labels: Essay, Politics, Torture

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In his book “In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,” Journalist Carl Honore tried a simple experiment to help down-shift his life from the hyper-speeds of modern living. He decided to obey the speed limit. No more barreling down highways, weaving in and out of lanes, frantic to make it to appointments one or two minutes earlier than if he’d driven slowly and lawfully.

He found it nearly impossible to comply.

With much the same end goal as Honore, I decided to duplicate his experiment. How difficult could it really be to drive slower? I even went one better – I was going to give my fellow drivers the benefit the doubt. Rather than immediately assume the people in the cars next to me were all morons – I’d treat them with the respect and dignity they deserved.

I flamed out after a week – more frustrated than ever.

I’ve been conditioned to drive fast. Being from Massachusetts, reckless driving is hardwired into my DNA. As a former journalist working for a technology consultancy that moved at the speed of the Internet – speed was cultural. A way of life. Even when I focused on traveling at the legal limit, as soon as my mind started to wander, my foot hit the gas pedal and eventually I’d be bombing down the road again.

On those rare occasions when I succeeded in driving slowly, I was in agony. My car felt like it was strapped to a tortoise. I was plodding – stuck in quicksand. My fellow drivers – those impatient morons – despised me. The looks! The sneers and the one-finger salutes! The horn! People giving me the horn!

Better to die in a flaming wreck than be subjected to that.

Slowing down has proven to be more difficult than I imaged. I want to slow down and smell those damn roses. I know taking it down a notch will improve my health, reduce stress levels, and make me happier more patient person. In my quiet moments, I often fanaticize about moving to rural Maine, dropping out of the rat race all together.

I had lunch with a former colleague not long ago. He also works for a high technology company. We found that our work environments were amazingly similar.

Labels: Corporate, Essay, Work Ethic

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Labels: Guy de Maupassant, literary criticism, literature

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