The whole mess that the Attorney General has gotten into is one that I find emblematic of the way that many peoples’ minds seem to work: We need not face consequences as long as we apologize for what we’ve done and really mean it.

I can’t get behind that, not really.

Consequences are a bit like lightning. Once a charge has been created, it sort of floats around, waiting to hit someone. So it always seemed to me that if you created a consequence, you should go ahead and be the lightning rod that grounds it as much as possible, or someone else is going to get hurt by it.

In any ethical set of beliefs, we see this notion pop up again and again under any number of different names—atonement, reparations, penance, restitution, reconciliation—the notion that we are responsible for mitigating pain that we have caused in whatever way we can. Often, we see these words crop up in a religious context but we also see them in most judicial systems ... whether we’re talking about someone having their wages garnished to pay off debts, or looking at US reparations for the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WWII, or how the Japanese will address their use of comfort women during that same period.

And yet, although atonement is a central theme of many religions, it is also one that makes me want to smack certain religious types. It seems that an awful lot of the “devout” are more interested in doing the “right things” to avoid a god’s justice. Me, I look at the concept of a “just god” and I see a loyalist—someone who will kick my ass in an appropriate way if I need it. And I honestly believe that is a good thing.

I then look to all of the people who do penance by saying extra prayers, who go to church and talk loudly about the use of Limbo as a tool to outlaw abortion, or who chant anti-gay slogans at the funerals of hate-crime victims, and I see people who are scared. I see people who are desperately trying to avoid paying a real consequence by hiding behind dogma and claiming that any miseries in the world are of someone else’s making, never their own.

I can understand their fear. They’ve been told that Hell awaits them. That eternal torment is the price for sin.

This does not logically fit with the concept of either a “just god” or a “merciful god.” Eternal torture is the punishment of a vengeful god.

So, let’s pretend that god is merciful. There are a couple ways I see that could play out for the sinner: you die, God shrugs, and lets you into heaven to spare you from pain; you die, God asks, “Are you truly sorry,” and if you are, you get into heaven—perhaps after a stint in purgatory paying for all those things that you didn’t accept consequences for in life. This latter option is the one that certain people in the public eye appear to be so ardently attached to. But one thing troubles me about this scheme. If you are truly sorry for your sins, wouldn’t you try to fix them or pay for them when it would do some good to the people you wronged?

From the American Heritage Dictionary via Dictionary.com (slightly abridged)

jus·tice (jŭs’tĭs) n. 

1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2.
a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
c. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
3.
a. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
b. Law The administration and procedure of law.
c. A judge.
d. A justice of the peace.
4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason

As children, we frequently complain about perceived unfairness; as adults, we know that life isn’t fair but we often wish it were so. Is it any wonder that we hope that our enemies and criminals find justice, if not in life, then after death? But consider the words “fairness,” “equity,” and “due reward” (or punishment). If we are honest, what we usually have in mind for enemies is revenge—vengeance. It’s no wonder, then, that we fear the same will happen to ourselves. Happily, embedded in the concept of a just god are the notions of fairness and equity. These are inconsistent with vengeance and eternal torment. We can only cause a finite amount of suffering so how can we be asked to pay an infinite price?

And yet people are afraid of Hell. Could it be that they secretly believe in a vengeful god while professing belief in a merciful god or a just god? Or are they hedging their bets because they don’t trust their god to be either merciful or just?

Or are they just trying to escape consequences?

After this diatribe, it may surprise you to know that I do not consider myself religious. I follow no dogmas, I do not pray, and I do not have any particular opinion about the existence or non-existence of the gods that people believe in. I do, however, have a firm stance on consequences. Take your lumps if you’ve earned them—it’s the least you can do for all those fellow human beings sharing this planet with you and that you’ve been told to love. If there’s a just god, maybe I’ll meet up with it someday and get a divine (and equitable) ass-kicking. Perhaps I’ll be given a pass by a merciful god. If god is vengeful, I never really had a chance, anyway.

And if god doesn’t exist, shouldn’t we take better care of each other, since we’re all we’ve got?

I got a little bit of a sunburn on my nose yesterday and didn’t mind it a bit. After a week of cold, dreary weather here I was sitting in the sun three hours south of home under a nearly cloudless sky feeling the just-barely cool wind. I was waiting in a town outside Fort Worth to bury my stepfather’s ashes next to his father and grandparents. He died in November 2005. Yesterday would have been his fifty-sixth birthday. Tomorrow I’ll be thirty-four.

We left in Mom’s company Shetland SUV at about a quarter to eight yesterday morning. She drove. I let her load the ashes into the wayback. She commented on how heavy it was. There was some unspoken invitation for me to take it for a moment, to feel it’s weight.  I told her I knew it was heavy. Not long after he died I was in her house alone helping with some remodeling and painting. I found the container in her closet. I picked it up.

***

My parents divorced when I was five. Before I was six this man was the steady boyfriend. Before I was seven he had moved in. My mom’s parents and my father were Not Pleased.

My first memory of my stepfather is set in the all-floor back of his big, covered late-70’s truck. They were called 4X4s then. We’re going somewhere to eat—a date with kid in tow. Probably the first such event. I find one of those clear, plastic collar stays from a new shirt. I busy myself during the ride tearing it into little pieces. I don’t have a concrete memory of being nervous but it’s a nervous thing to do. When we arrive at the destination long since forgotten he sees the pile of tiny transparent garbage. And he loses his temper. I’m willing to make allowances for the fog time places between our recollections of childhood events and what actually took place. Even so I am confident that the reaction was well out of proportion to the offense. My mom makes a seemingly half-hearted attempt to defuse the situation. By soothing him.

This guy was different from my father. He wore a suit to sell things to people. My dad wore Casual Whatever to his job at the post office. My dad had a full beard; this guy just a well groomed mustache. This guy was a former hippie-turned Reagan disciple. He was going to Make It. Dad’s union job was a job. Dad worried, sulked and stewed. This guy blew up. The different-ness was probably a primary point of attraction for my mom. Ambition and appearances were obviously important.

My stepfather had recently left Texas, two ex-wives with one of his children each, most of his immediate family, and a mess behind. The younger child he’d see a handful of times before her mother moved without telling him where. The older child he never saw. He is my age. It is consensus among every member of my family that I was resented from the start. I was indoorsy and bookish. I couldn’t ride a bicycle. I listened to records in my room and watched TV a lot. I was a little fat. None of the traits that the son my stepfather had barely had any contact with (and of whose existence I was not yet aware) would have evinced, surely. I was different. Lacking. Fat and lazy. Needed to be the center of attention. I was reminded often. These traits were resented but mostly I’m sure it was my existing at all. He’d have scored the perfect setup with this attractive redhead except for this weird kid in the house demanding a share of the attention.

Like many stepfathers he bought the entire 19th century parcel of his role. Finding a child absent a father, the noble newcomer selflessly takes on the charge of straightening out the half-orphan.  Never mind my father was three miles down the road and not eaten by a bear or lost down the mine or shot over a prospecting claim. He was going to bully me into being tough and capable.  Never mind that early evidence made clear that the only lesson I was going to learn from the bullying was that I couldn’t win. I exuded an aura of Easy Victim in what had to be visible wavy stink lines, at least to my peers. I’d get picked on at school and come home to be berated for not leaving a pile of near-corpses in my wake. Any behavior infraction had a good chance of leading to a long lecture at the dinner table. I discovered you can scream “shut up” in your head an average of forty times per minute. I could reach a thousand several times a year. There was always one Project or other going on in the house or backyard. I had to not only help but had to want to help, which usually consisted of standing in wait of something to hold steady. He swung the hammer, I picked up the dropped fasteners and cigarette butts after. 

By adolescence all of my friends knew my stepfather by either of his two nicknames—Asshole and The Dickhead. His drinking had become more regular. He went through jobs; the intervals between jobs grew longer. Usually they coincided with summer vacation. Prolonged shouting harangues at my mom and myself became more frequent. I swore I’d videotape myself dancing on his grave so I could watch it any time I was feeling low. One weekend when I was sixteen they went to visit his aunt in Amarillo. I packed up my whole room into the backseat and trunk of my 1981 Datsun and moved to my dad’s. No precipitating event preceded the decision. I don’t remember there being a decision at all. It was like somebody else took those posters off the wall and rolled them up.

In the next sixteen years he was disappointed in me, was proud of me, hated my guts, needed to be my buddy. Somewhere in there I realized he’d never had a relationship with me at all. I was a proxy for the shitty relationship he’d had with his stern, drinking father and for the son he didn’t know. I stopped hating him but the most I could manage was ambivalence in hate’s place. He moved his sales office to the house. He ascended to full-on drunk status.  My mom left him. Came back. A couple of times. He blew through money he wasn’t making and was convinced everyone was out to get him.  Which was not an unreasonable fear for someone who left so much ill will in his wake. I started hating him again. My mom left him again after several AA-storytime-worthy events. She told me (and had told him) that she wasn’t going back this time. A week later she went to pick up the mail and found him dead on the floor. Heart attack or stroke. Something quick at any rate, defying my expectation of a lingering, bank account draining illness or a messy handgun suicide.

***

At about 11 we arrived at the nursing home where my stepfather’s sweet, lovable aunt has been for five years after a stroke left her mute and immobile.  It’s the first time I’ve seen her since it happened.  Thankfully she doesn’t seem to be at home behind her eyes these days so while there’s the spooky sensation of a person looking right at you without any communication in the gaze I’m spared the horror of imagining her fully intact behind those eyes unable to do more than smile or cry with them. The visit is mercifully short. We left there with my stepfather’s sweet, lovable uncle to select a grave marker. This is also a short, painless excursion. Mom chose a fish to be carved into the stone. A jumping fish, not a Jesus fish. We had lunch at a good Mexican restaurant. The tamales were beef and not pork, which is different from the restaurants here. But they were good.  The salsa was 40% onions and 40% cilantro, which is different from the restaurants here. And it was not good.  We went back to my uncle’s house (because this is one I’ll claim for my own) to kill a little time before meeting his sons at the cemetery. The house has missed a woman’s touch for five years.

We were the first to arrive. It was a gorgeous day, mid-70s, slight breeze to keep the sun from bringing sweat. We sat on the shiny, black stone benches of a new veteran’s memorial at the cemetery I hadn’t seen since we buried my stepfather’s dad twenty years ago. The names aren’t restricted to war dead. Any dead that had served merits a line. His dad is up there. He will be too. Terry Southern’s on there.  The names go back to the Civil War (every one of them CSA). The big, old pecan trees are setting on leaves at the ends of the branches. It’s too early for the small, fast, black wasps that abound in central Texas. A mockingbird ran through its repertoire. A scissortail hunted no-seeums. The cousins and their wives arrived one at a time.

My uncle had already dug the hole. We gathered around it and the younger cousin placed the box in it. My uncle said a few words. My mom read a poem, tearing up just a little. Both cousins and their wives shared a memory going counter-clockwise around the hole. I was next and last. My mom rescued me by asking our uncle to say something about a square, concrete paving stone lying by the hole.  My stepfather’s grandfather had mixed and poured a set of them and this one had been a step somewhere between his front door and mailbox. My uncle wanted it to provide a first step to whatever is next for my stepfather. He broke up a little. My mom gave him a hug.  His elder son placed the stone on top of the box and his brother shoveled the dirt back where it came from. Mom had made a little silk flower arrangement the night before to mark the spot until the stone marker arrives in a month or so. There was a bit of worry that the wind will take it away. I found a narrow stick and pressed it through the styrofoam and dirt which will do until the cousin that lives near the cemetery can anchor it more securely. Not even the threat of tears from my quarter. Also no desire to dance.  Our gathering built slowly to a sudden break up. Work to get back to, a kid to pick up from school, a three-hour drive.

I was grateful to my mom not just for sparing me the awkwardness of having to speak unprepared, much less about such a complicated thing as my memories of this man.  I was glad because I feared anything I would have said that held any truth would have intruded upon or detracted from the experience of these three people who were there to mourn the passing of this nephew, this cousin.  This kid that I never met.

I like the interweb: every time I see Uncle Al I give him a big hug and kiss on the cheek for ensuring that funding for ARPAnet was carried forward and it didn’t remain just a place for the industrial/military complex to exchange messages regarding the color of one another panties and what their top ten most played songs on their 8-tracks was. But with good, comes some bad. I’m down with that: a world where I like everything would make my teeth hurt. I don’t have to like everything I read/see/hear—but the interweb makes it easy to read/see/hear a much wider range of voices than was possible with, say, ham radio.

So what’s my interweb irk? There’s a few actually, but let me share just one.

Seen that Comedy Central show with Jon Stewart? It’s on four nights a week. It’s cool. It makes fun of the news and it’s funny as all get out.

Ever read that web site “The Onion” [or one of it’s many imitators]? It’s on 7x24x365. It makes fun of the news and it’s as funny as, well, let’s see:

The writers on The Onion come up with a joke.

The writer who came up with it writes the bit. Another writer has a new “spin” on the same joke, and he writes his bit. The next writer? Same thing. There are two things that kill a joke: analysis and repetition. So I’m going to commit joketricide right here, right now. This is from the current Onion front page.

“Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy: ‘We’ll Go Through Iran’"
OK, that’s kinda funny, and the bad quote marks are sloppy but we won’t kill anyone over it. But the joke is told. We’ll exit through Iran. This is funny as Iran is right next door to (what used to be) Iraq, we can’t invade them (no manpower, complete loss in Iraq), but Bush is an idiot and might say such a thing. Gotcha. Ha ha.

WASHINGTON, DC—Almost a year after the cessation of major combat and a month after the nation’s first free democratic elections, President Bush unveiled the coalition forces’ strategy for exiting Iraq.

Two little issues: it’s not a year since the “cessation of major combat” and it’s not a “month since the first free democratic elections” (both dates are wrong, and Iraq has held free democratic elections for decades). Why is this important? Faux news only works if the faux parts are surrounded by actual, real parts. Getting these stats would have taken five minutes, tops.

Bush announces the pullout of Iraq through Iran.
Yup, that’s the joke. Thanks. It’s not quite as funny this time out.

If you wish it stopped there, I’ve got news for you: and it’s not good. The same joke gets respun, retold, repeated no more than another ten times in text, twice in clever little diagrams--you know, little maps and shit.

The Onion concludes: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei welcomed the exit plan.
“Let the Allied armies come to Iran,” Khamenei said. “I believe I can assure you that, if they do withdraw here, their brothers-in-arms in the Islamic Republican Army, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Quds special forces units, and the Basij Popular Mobilization Army will no doubt do everything they can to make the troops’ trip back home memorable."

So why is the Daily Show funnier than The Onion? The Daily Show tells a joke, and moves on. The Onion tells a joke, repeats the joke, tells it again, repeats it, a slight new spin on it, beats it into the ground, tells it again, and again. And again tomorrow.

For services to the destruction of “the funny” I award “The Onion” and it’s ilk the full blown “makes a grown man cry” award.

So, tell FatJerry what is your interweb irk It can be small or large, funny or ironic, a site with pictures of Alanis Morrissett’s head pasted onto naked pictures of Gillian Andreson—you won’t be judged, you get to be the judge!

Ah, the joys of the job hunt. Write the resume. Check it once, check it twice—are the lies mostly cover-able? Are the generalizations general enough? Are the overstatements overstated enough, yet still subtle? Do you have people you can use as references who will back this novella up? (Yes, I saw him walk on water many, many times. He brings eyesight to the blind like it ain’t no thing.  ) Are the dates at least approximately correct? Do you have explanations for why 80% of the companies you worked for went belly-up? And you are not one of those reasons? Super!

Step two then: find a possible position. There are so many ways to do this (pound the streets, local rags, national newspapers, companies’ web sites, word-of-mouth)—but most everyone (certainly in the technology field) will end up using at least two big Internet resources: monster.com and (insert local area here)jobs.com. Usually, to make your life easier, you’ll set up a few search agents: for example, inform me of all the new jobs within 50 miles that have the word IT or Network or Manager in the title.

All simple enough. Sit back, check your eMail each day, see what new openings are available to you. Apply as you see fit. Very straightforward.

I’ve been doing this for about four years now (my resume (or me) must stink). And I’ve noticed a few things:

• Some companies seem to hoard their positions, and post them all at one point during the month (hello, PayPal, an eBay company)
• Some companies must be terrible at hiring people: the same positions appear again and again, month after month (hello again, PayPal)
• Many companies you’ve never heard of appear to need all new-staff on an every other month basis (hello Rad-Bio Labs, GenFibro)
• Applying to positions in any of the three categories above is pretty much pointless

The first two can be explained away simply: the first is just a matter of HR procedure, the second is a management/budget trick: to keep budget for a headcount, you have to keep advertising it, even if you have no intention of filling it—especially important to managers in a company recently merged with a larger entity (though PayPal has been an eBay company longer than just “recently"—my contact inside indicates that there is still a lot of waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s just that eBay is too busy elsewhere to come in and rationalize its ownership in terms of staffing).

The third though always struck me as odd: why would the same companies, month after month, need so many headcount? Why would these by companies you’d never heard of before? Sure, the valley has many start-ups, many established but not so well-known companies, but even so, something about this smells off.

A little investigation proves interesting. First, these companies are fiercely loyal to their recruitment partners: those using BAJobs.com don’t use monster.com; those using monster.com don’t use any other agency. Doesn’t that seem odd, since clearly their current recruitment strategy isn’t working? Next, when you try to do a little background work on the company you’ll find either a nondescript, thrown together from a GoLive / DreamWeaver template site, or sometimes nothing at all. Nothing. A quick “whois” on the domain names returns similarly evasive or bland information. Check for Annual Reports? Nothing.

It’s almost like these companies don’t actually exist: now there’s a staffing problem, to be sure.

So why would anyone create these shell companies, and why would they advertise positions that clearly don’t exist? Who could stand to benefit from this?

If these companies don’t exist, or exist only as shells, what would that benefit whoever set them up? Tax dodges, sure. Money laundering? Possibly. But why advertise open job position? To make a fake company look real somehow? At great personal risk, I contact my Comare and ask her if any of the names ring a bell: nope. It’s not 100% sure if she would know if these were owned or not, but it’s pretty certain that they are not.

Who else then? Maybe family businesses trying to implicate the tax scammers or the walking wounded? Again, it’s possible, but usually the government has enough resources to have a working website, a physical address, numbers outwith the 555 region. If this is family, it’s incredibly sloppy, and bad as they may be, sloppy isn’t part of the game.

The answer (which of course I cannot prove) seems simple, once you think of it. Who does it benefit to be offering up lots of job opportunities? Who is in a competitive battle with very similar organizations? The posting organizations themselves. How? For the potential employer, it can’t hurt to be able to say “We posted X number of Y jobs in the past year.”; for the job seeker, the same deal: “We’ll give you access to X many employers, offering Y many jobs.”—in both cases, the bigger the X and the Y the better it is for BAJobs.com, Monster,com.

Speculation? Sure. Got a better explanation? Share it. 

I don’t know if it’s precipitated by the loss of a cat, but I’ve recently been thinking about all the ways we have to die. I even entertain the notion of wanting to know how I die, though I’m sure that discovery would be horrific. The suspense is killing me, pardon the pun. I fear I’ll go the way Egg went, minus the euthanasia: cancer is a hideous disease. Or, I worry, will I be zombified by Alzheimer’s or Parkinsons? For some reason, I am most terrified I will get hit by a bus. I’ve become a little more cautious around crosswalks. But then there is me and I am impatient, and in an off moment I run into the street as soon as the light turns yellow. Surely that’s how I’ll go then. It could be next week.

My shrink says grieving produces hallucinations in the first month. I am dying to have one. I thought of going off medication in hopes to encourage this. Before putting Egg down, I begged her to haunt me. Literally. The night before, I sat down with her, explained my goodbyes, and said, “Please come back as a ghost.” I used to be afraid of the dark, but now I keep my eyes open, looking and listening for a black spectre to disrupt the litterbox. For some reason, I think I will hear her in the litterbox first. Because she will come back as a ghost, you know, in order that she may poop.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am completely willing to change my mind on that.

My shrink also suggested, because she has this notion of me as an artist, that I draw pictures of her, a suggestion I found horrifying.  So I am writing this instead. When I look at photos of my cat, I cry. And surely an attempt to draw her would result in my bawling on and on for hours, whereas otherwise I am for the most part numb. When she was alive, I tried to draw her, but she seemed too aware of my gaze and would move to be near me as soon as I had an ear down. It’s fitting, really, that I couldn’t capture her.

In college, a Chinese family gave me a coin dipped in gold, a good luck charm after I’d been in a car accident. They told me not to worry when I lost it. I would lose it, they said, should lose it even, as a positive reminder of the temporary nature of all things. Actually, they didn’t tell me that, they told my boyfriend. My French boyfriend. Using whatever language they brought with them from Taiwan. Maybe he made it up, maybe it was his way of saying I like you, I even love you, but ... there is a temporary nature to all things. Or maybe he just witlessly mistranslated. Anyway, the phrase has stuck in my craw. A positive reminder of the temporary nature of all things.

The Chinese family was horrified to learn that I adopted two cats (for reasons not entirely clear to me), but they did keep a paw-waving ceramic good-luck cat in the restaurant. Perhaps she’s like a good luck charm, little Egg. I would lose her, should lose her, as a reminder that everything is temporary, that I am temporary. Hopelessly horrendously temporary. When she died I begged her to haunt me. I meant as a spectre in the apartment, but instead its my mind she spooks.  I wish I could say I was all seize the day about this, but for the moment, I cross the street warily, step a little more shyly, shiver at my own ghost.