Mark Morford's Morning Fix

I absolutely adore Morford's columns, and even if they're incomprehensible to me some of the time, he sounds like he's flowing with the moving stream of consciousness, and for that I forgive him.

Denizen
Denizen, welcome to Able2Know; we are glad to have you join un. I hope you visit often and post a lot.

Last year I retired and moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mark Morford's "Morning Fix" relieves some of the home sickness I feel from time to time.

Even if he's not always 100% understandable because he writes the world's longest sentences, he is always funny and relevant.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

Mark Morford's Morning Fix 9/15/03 (partial)
============= SF GATE MORNING FIX =============
September 15, 2003 -- Tommy Lee Jones is 57 today
By Mark Morford: [email protected]
http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a/
"Lube up, lean into the fire, and laugh"
~~ nil desperandum ~~

== THE MEDIA SKEW ==
Fertile weeds from the savage garden of the SF Gate newswires

== We Bring Dead Things To Life ==
A 75-year-old Phoenix man stored his wife's body for nearly six years in his backyard, twisted and upside down in an old freezer packed with dry ice, because he hoped she could someday be brought back to life. When police went to Edwin Rowlette's home, they found dozens of cats along with feces and urine inside the house. The backyard, where one of the daughter's friends discovered the body, was cluttered with garbage, debris, insulation and furniture. Authorities found Marcia Lynn Rowlette's body packed in dry ice and insulation and stored along with the bodies of ten dead cats. Rowlette told police he used the cats for research.

And here's you, trying to shake it off but unable to resist multiplying this tale by about 10,000, if not more, as you sort of sense just how many creepy sad backyard psycho loners there are in the world, and just how many old freezers, and how many frozen dead cats and dead bodies and scary messed-up tragicomic everyday psychopaths, how many eerie lost nooks and crannies of the culture, especially Arizona and Idaho and Texas, making you shudder and wince as your inner eye sort of pans wide and takes it all in, wonders at the deep warp of the mind, the cracks in the sidewallk of the soul, the impressive longevity of old backyard freezers.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/09/12/national0327EDT0445.DTL&nl=fix
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== Good Christians Prefer Big Sales At Enemas 'N' Such ==
Looking for new ways to raise money in a tough economy and because they've pretty much exhausted their supply of heaping piles of steaming
quivering sexless guilt as well as their back-stock of pre-packaged shrink-wrapped quivering homophobic anti-choice intolerance, the Christian Coalition is delving deeply into e-commerce and urging its members to shop, and not just for German fetish porn and self-flagellating automatic wind-up cream-filled self-loathing desperately horny frantically masturbating Bible-whackers, either.

The 2 million-member Christian Coalition has signed up for a program called SharingCertificates.com, wherein it sells gift certificates redeemable at a range of stores and gives a share of the proceeds to the sponsoring group, like, say, killindependentthought.com or shutupandmakemeapotpiebitch.org. Shockingly, purchases of Belladonna's new "Evil Pink" DVD are not included on the list, despite how every single Christian Coalition member you have ever met or will ever meet in your entire life so very desperately needs to unbind their twitching souls from the hellfist of fleshy fear, it would be really funny if it weren't so goddamn disturbing and sad.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/09/12/national1430EDT0629.DTL&nl=fix
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== Colin Powell Sniffs Dank Winds Of Hell, Smiles Wanly ==
Secretary of State Colin Powell actually came right out and said, as the gaping maw of hell itself surprisingly did not open up to swallow him whole, that he is convinced "the winds of freedom are blowing" across Iraq but acknowledged the possibility that terrorists are trying to make their way into the country and sabotage the process, gosh yeah right.

Powell spent 12 hours in talks with the team of American officials guiding Iraq in the postwar period and with the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He described impressive moves toward self-government and seemed invigorated by what he heard.

"There is vibrancy to this effort, a vibrancy that I attribute to the winds of freedom that are now blowing through this land," he said. "Or maybe that's just the fragrant glorious stink of all the dead charred flesh on top of the fine olfactory bouquet offered up by of the countless tons of vile cancer-causing depleted-uranium ordnance we've been pumping into this country like a GOP senator pumps a ten dollar Thai hooker," he did not add, the last shred of his moderate and calm intelligence sitting off in the corner, weeping like a kicked gerbil.

"Hey by the way, has anyone seen my shattered and entirely emasculated
sense of self-worth? Jesus, what the hell happened to me? Why do my own kids point at me and scream?"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/09/14/international1617EDT0547.DTL&nl=fix
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== The English Roses Meet The Screaming Lillies Of Actual Talent ==
Madonna's "The English Roses" is being unleashed on 100 unsuspecting
countries Monday with a lot of secrecy and high expectations and enough
ridiculous advance hype to gag a horse and make the authors of truly
insightful and artistic and beautiful children's books suck down of bottle of McCallan's 12 and deeply resent the entire goddamn unjust universe.

The initial print run of "The English Roses" is more than 750,000 copies in the US, and 1 million worldwide, because, you know, screw it, why the hell not just exploit the living crap out of the former sexpot and tuneless superstar who can't act her way out of a peanut wrapper and has exactly zero experience writing anything with any depth or nuance whatsoever?

"The English Roses," which is being printed in 30 languages, is about a friendship shared by four 11-year-old girls and their mutual envy of a beautiful classmate, and not, as you might assume, about the ongoing psycho antics of the little screaming demon squirrels that run Madonna's tiny semi-articulate brain.

In related news, other quasi-celebs have taken up the children's book craze. Titles to look for by Christmastime: Tom Cruise's upcoming "Billy the Mind-Sucked Scientologist Cultist Billygoat," Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Little Hans Shreds His Right Thoracolumbar Fascia," John Ashcroft's "Sammy the Really Pissy Angry Slug Who Hated Women And Icky Gay People and Sex," Lynne Cheney's "My Mommy The Itchy Thermonuclear Warhead," and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's "Betsy Bipdopper's Big Discovery That She's Addicted to Xanax and Diet Dr. Pepper and Premium Colombian Flake."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/09/14/entertainment1232EDT0475.DTL&nl=fix

Hello, Bumblebee, I trust you're finding New Mexico not too dull after the excitement of the multi-cultural, multi-layered, always surprising Bay Area.

Isn't the web great for quenching the waves of nostalgic longing for what was once your home?

I look forward to seeing you in these forums.

Denizen
Denizen, Albuquerque is a very different world in climate, culture and pace. The people I've met have been great. My experience has surprised some of the natives here.

The most difficult part has been leaving all my family and friends to move to a place where I only knew two people. As I approach October's anniversary of my move date, my small circle of people I've come to know has grown. I also adopted Madison, a Bichon Fries puppy, who is a joy if a frustration at times, but the neighborhood children adore him.

My coping skills seem to be working and I'm adapting to my new environment.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

Bumblebee, I understand your position somewhat, having lived in California for the past nineteen years, and my immediate family essentially on the other side of the globe.

In the beginning, it was difficult for me, but this has become my home, and my extended family and friends have helped made me feel like I belong.

Growing new roots, I find, seems to be the most rewarding, if challenging thing anyone can do when relocated, but once those roots take hold, it does tend to get easier.

I wish you peace and a newfound sense of belonging.