The Garab Chronicles

Real Estate

"You killed my father, prepare to die." 

Maybe I'm just nuts, but it seems to me that if you cram 1.5 million people into a piece of land the size of a Waffle House, surround them with tanks, barbed wire, and a whole bunch of (really hot)soldiers armed to the teeth, then you periodically lob laser guided bombs at them from almost outer space that happen to be powerful enough to level a city block just because it's a Tuesday...and because you can, then you shouldn't expect very rational behavior in return. Oh, and if your super shiny laser guided smart bomb thingies land on top of five year olds and turn them into road pizza, you don't get to tell their parents "whoops, I didn't see your kid from my F-16, I was aiming for the guy in the turban." 

In simpler times, when disgruntled Palestinian teenagers threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, they just got shot in the chest. There was a simple immediacy to the whole thing. It was clean, homicidally intimate, and horrifying on a minor scale, kind of like a Michael Bay movie. Nothing smart about a tank round, but back in the day, if you were a Palestinian civilian you had the luxury of knowing where the fire was coming from so you could duck. Not a member of a terrorist organization as clearly indicated by the three petrified infants tucked under your arm? Hey, no problem, just scoot right into this militarized slum with a few hundred thousand of your kind. There's no electricity or running water, but we promise not to shoot you. Ah, the good old days.

I'm also gonna go way out on a limb and suggest that launching rockets into civilian areas is a really bad thing. Hell, launching rockets at anyone is a really bad thing. Depriving other human beings of life, liberty, and their basic dignity by scaring the ever loving shit out of them on a consistent basis is a really bad thing, not to mention the fact that it accomplishes exactly nothing. Three year olds take giant dumps on their mothers' brand new carpets every day, and sometimes they'll scream loud enough to get your attention before the smell does. But most of them grow out of it.

I was lucky. I got out of a god forsaken part of the world where people slaughter one another wholesale while arguing the finer points of what piece of land the almighty gave to which group of chosen people down to the square inch while the neighbors stood around and poured gasoline on the fire and urged everyone to keep fighting so long as they kept it out of their own back yards and their own children weren't touched in the process. Now I live half a world away where my tax dollars help supply the weapons to both sides so they can continue to maim one another and, over a second bowl of delicious high fiber cereal, I get to try to convince myself that, somehow, I'm not complicit.

I get to break speed records avoiding dinner party conversations about who started it because it's more practical to ask who keeps it all going and too scary to realize that we all do so the best I can muster is "it's complicated", which, if your kid is now road pizza, just isn't good enough. 

Merry Christmas, Everybody.

Hope the big bearded guy doesn't get lodged in your chimney without at least dropping the bag of goodies down ahead of him. Ignore the screams for help long enough, and all you'll have to worry about come January 1st. will be that strange smell coming from the fire place.

Thanks for being twisted enough to make The Garab Chronicles part of your day. My mother thanks you, my shrink thanks you, and, most of all, I thank you. There's enough coming  next year to warrant an FCC fine or two, and given that we'll have an administration that will actually make sure that such institutions function properly, consider this a preemptive lackluster attempt at ass-cover fundraising as much as it is a virtual holiday greeting card.

Speaking of ass, there will be many more stories about mine in the coming weeks and months. Haven't been formally introduced to my ass? Go HERE, and you'll get all caught up.

Cheers!

Kenneth Starr: Asshole

Silly me.

I thought that Kenneth Starr, the witch hunting nimrod that spent millions of tax payer dollars trying to impeach a President over a cigar poke 10 years ago had retired to the hallowed halls of Pepperdine University Law School. There, I figured he'd spend the rest of his golden years harmlessly banking shitloads of cash in bloated speaking engagement fees and getting drunk at cocktail parties hosted by Newt Gingrich and his 4th wife. But no...

Today I got a little wake up call - nay, a big fucking wake up call that K-Starr is one virulent little wart determined to remain a festering blight on the the left ass cheek of American politics. The Viagra poster boy from the late 90's is back, this time filing legal briefs on behalf of Proposition 8 advocates trying to nullify over 18,000 gay marriages in California. I'm not kidding...

Ken Starr - douche bag supreme, and moralist monkey masquerading as legal eagle - is jumping into the fray to dissolve other people's marriages. Maybe he's bored, maybe he thinks it's his legal or religious duty, and maybe he's craving some of the attention I've already devoted to him in writing this. Perhaps he's doing it 'cause they paid him and he needed to the money to send his kids to private school or pay for his daughter's wedding. Maybe he doesn't have any kids and he likes sleeping on thick pillows made entirely of freshly printed dollar bills.

Whatever the motivation, a big "Fuck you, you crusty old self-important waste of milk with a law degree" is in order. 

"But Garab, we should be civil," you say.

I'm a huge proponent of polite conversation, civility, and a good, spirited debate. My mother taught me well. But she also taught me to stay the ever loving fuck out of other people's bedrooms unless they've invited me in.

It is not okay to legislate away other people's civil rights by majority vote. One's inalienable human dignity is not up for public debate, and to be forced to defend it as such at the threat of second class citizenship at the hypocritical discretion of religious zealots is as much a blight on our society now as it has ever been.

The legal briefs filed to overturn existing gay marriages in California, on the heels of the hate mongering campaign that led to the passage of Prop. 8 in the first place, are the equivalent of pouring gasoline on one's neighbors after setting them on fire and hoping like hell that they don't get up and fight back.

And that, if nothing else, is a big mistake.

 

Just Found This...

If you saw "MILK" -  and everyone should go out and see "MIlK" - then you'll want to see this. Fair warning, you'll need Kleenex.

575 Castro St. from FilmInFocus on Vimeo.

Disgusting Thought of The Day

Two Girls, One Cup: discuss.

SAM SPARROW - 1 GRAMMY NOMINATION LATER, YA'LL!!!

Shameless friend promotion - Garab favorite and resident superstar SAM SPARROW just got nominated for a frakkedy-frakkin' Grammy! Like most of you out there, I could usually care less about such trifles.

But this is SAM - so I'll be Tivo'ing the shit. I might even go back to  iTunes and buy the album again...and again...and  again.

This Slumdog's For You!

"Slumdog Millionaire" kids - go see it. Yes, the lead guy's fucking gorgeous, but the movie's so good that I even paid attention to all the other stuff that was happening.

Now, mind you, this ain't no "City of God" or "Innocent Voices". It is, however, beautifully done, and one of the best things out there right now.

Bling Bling Went the Pocket

I have cell phone envy. "Have you driven a Ford lately?" is about to regain punch line status, sane people  everywhere are still trying to wrap their heads around the insanity that was Mumbai last week, and Britney Spears has unleashed yet another salvo against a society striving to regain some modicum of taste. And I, when not downloading and dancing naked to every remix of "Womanizer" available in the mega disco that is my bedroom, lust for ye, iPhone.

Sweet, sweet iPhone, with your limber rotating screen and elegant user-friendly touch screen, you tempt me to distraction. I long to sheath your sleek, black body in the plastic womb that will distinctly designate you as my very own. You will be my iPod, my Blue-Tooth enabled link to civilization, my solace and my status symbol.

I too will get to share the frivolous YouTube brilliance emanating from your crystal clear display...at work. When I pull you out of my back pocket at the movies, the people shall marvel at my discriminating purchasing power play in an uncertain economic universe. The peasants shall gape in awe at your arrival in their midst, the swift flick of the wrist that takes you from rectangular jeans pocket bulge to in hand technological wonder at the speed of $150.00 a month. And oh, to own the wrist that does thy flicking.

I curse your newfound rivals, Blackberry Storm and G-phone, hackneyed hacks to your design whore satisfying 3-G magnificence. Glitch free art thou, second generation and tried by fire at the threat of full-refund returns and stock value ruin. I spit upon the Palm, and gnash my teeth at any and all slide panel technology. You, iPhone, mine but for thy sticker shock inducing price-tag, share a love that will not be compartmentalized.

I dream of thee, my beloved. I wait for thee, and trust that the chosen moment of your well-timed arrival will relieve me of Sanyo flip-phone, non-camera inclusive depravity. And then, I too shall be deemed "hipster", inducted into the magical tribe of Facebook-update-by-iPhone exclusivity.

Sing, Britney. Sing, that the gadget gods in a strobe-lit heaven will hear my lament, and my prayer. But for now, I weep...I weep in the solace of the desperate longing of my tech geek heart.