I need your help. I recently wrote about Five Effective Habits Of Highly Annoying People, which reminded me that for a long time I’ve wanted to develop a new guide to etiquette, one that uses a little humor to address manners and how new technologies have evolved with no courtesy guidelines to go with them. A typical example being cell phone manners. One of my favorite books of all time on the topic of etiquette is probably P.J. O’Rourke’s Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People. With advice like “Guns are always the best method for private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time” and “Never refuse wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn’t drink must be an alcoholic“, O’Rourke touched on a lot of issues of contemporary etiquette that weren’t being addressed anywhere else. Especially the “Taking Drugs” chapter, which includes this handy chart (also below) for proper social behavior under the influence of drugs. Although the book is still an hilarious read within certain circles, it has finally started to show its age; a lot of the humor is based on old money culture, and the typical nouveau riche bobo or fauxhemian just doesn’t have the class or sophistication to get it. So help me out. What are your biggest pet peeves about modern manners and courtesy, whether humorous or not?

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Even if they feel compelled to read it upside-down….

I’ve been feeling a little in the dark lately about just what the current administration is really up to. Back in the Bush days you could easily get a sense of things by just looking for where the bombs were dropping, or where the poor people were drowning and starving in a major US city. I’m afraid we’re dealing with a more subtle beast now; though he campaigned on open government, President Obama seems to be resorting to clever loopholes to keep the blinds drawn. And while I’m pretty excited that the house has voted in favor of the new Clean Energy & Security Act, I wonder how many of the representatives have actually read it? In the case of the recent $787 billion dollar stimulus package passed not too long ago, legislators literally had one minute to read for every billion dollars they were making a decision about. Does it make sense to you that a legislator should vote on a bill that he might not fully understand even if he did read it? If not, take a look at readthebill.org, a group that’s pushing for legislation that requires a bill to be posted on line for 72 hours prior to voting. Given the tendency of congressional reps to not read bills prior to voting, maybe it’ll squeak by. Me, I’ll be over at Ben’s Guide To Government For Kids, trying to get a handle on this whole government thingy.

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And no silly tricorn hats, okay?

During the reign of a corrupt government, a country faces a major financial crisis, triggered in part by the cost of engaging in an overseas war, and exacerbated by an unequal system of taxation. Eventually the middle class of this country grows tired of the corrupt beauracracy and stages a revolution. Sounds like the storyline for a realistic, near-future dystopian film, doesn’t it? Well, if you know your history, you’ll recognize the scenario as what we more commonly refer to as the “French Revolution”. Which is an amusing coincidence (but not ironic), since the expensive overseas war that brought the French all these financial woes was the American Revolution, and both events are celebrated this month; the US celebrates its independence on July 4, and Bastille Day is on July 14. We’ve been prattling on a lot lately about our right to revolution, so if you feel the motives utilized by both the French and the colonial Americans were legitimate and would like to start another revolution, I’d like to suggest perhaps we get things rolling on July 9. Not only is it conveniently between the two dates, but it’s my birthday and would make the day very special for me for the rest of my life. I promise I’ll come up with some catchy slogan involving the consumption of sweets or pastries or something, and maybe we’ll end up with some cool new idea like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. I personally think that notion needs a refresh, how ’bout you?

But do I really want to sleep in a trailer with someone like this every night?

I have a few recurring fantasies. One is to head to Las Vegas in a red Cadillac with the top down, my lawyer, and a trunk full of booze and drugs to re-enact Hunter Thompson’s trek in Fear and Loathing. This is problematic, since I don’t do drugs or drink. I’d also love to run off and join the circus, but only if it’s a giant puppet circus. And then there’s my broad array of fantasies of living off the grid, one of which involves becoming a Carnie. I have no idea what the allure is; I don’t have Carnie Hands, I don’t like my food on a stick, and I rather like bathing on a regular basis. Still the allure remains. I think it stems from the almost surreal childhood memories I have of the weird mixture of excitement and creepy disappointment that seem to hover quietly but menacingly around a carnival as a summer day ends, the sun goes down, the rides light up, and emaciated, tattooed guys with teeth missing start inappropriately scoping the teenagers. It’s like the scary clown thing I guess. In any case, if you’ve ever shared this fantasy, real employment opportunities exist. Companies like Modern Midways, Wade Shows, and Strates Shows all have colorful and inviting employment pages. They seem to leave out some of the possible downsides of carnie employment though; for some “behind the midway” insights, check out this hilarious letter that a National Review reader and former carnie sent to John Derbyshire, who apparently had made some unflattering remarks about carny people in an article. The letter explains, for example, things like “Carnie Teeth” with colorful brevity: “….the smoking, the sugary diet and the poor dental habits account for the rotten baked beans your average carny man calls his teeth…” and gives a well-rounded view of why carnies are the way they are in general.

Much in the same way that you could mistake the brilliantly offbeat and overlooked sixties film The President’s Analyst for a film that’s about being hunted by the FBI and the CIA, you could easily mistake what you’re reading at the moment for some kind of obtuse film review. I hadn’t thought of “The President’s Analyst” for quite some time, until I recently had an almost epic series of problems with The Phone Company (why kid ourselves, there’s only one, when you get down to the basic plumbing). My recent problems all involved a ridiculous series of lapses of communication which at one point inspired one of their own technicians to share the witticism: “Remember, we’re a telephone company, not a communications company“. With my problem still unresolved after literally hours on - how ironic - the telephone, I began to feel a little paranoid and persecuted. As maybe I should. In the hilarious, surreal, and quintessentially sixties film that stars James Coburn in a very In Like Flint role, it ultimately is revealed that “The Phone Company” is more powerful and secretive than all the world’s intelligence agencies combined. Which is disturbingly prescient, given the recent history of AT&T’s relationship with the NSA and their creepy and insidious FISA amnesty lobbying. Which, since I’m publicly bellyaching, all makes me wonder if I will finally get my DSL service activated on Tuesday as promised, after three weeks of waiting. I mean, Adam Savage of Mythbusters has gone public with his AT&T frustrations, but he has millions of followers on Twitter to back him up. Dissociated Press only has about 8,000 readers, and only about 5 of them comment with regularity. Now’s your chance. Had any problems with AT&T yourself? Feel free to vent in the comments.

The 1974 JVC Video Capsule and the 2002 iMac

This little review of the Sony Walkman by a 13-year-old iPod owner reminded me that for most of my life, I’ve felt like I’m living in some sort of time warp, or am genuinely displaced in time. As a kid in the sixties, I would watch Star Trek, and the technology and philosophy of the show seemed perfectly natural to me: no war, money was obsolete, computers had flawless voice recognition, and if you were captain of a starship, you could be white and kiss hot black (or even green) chicks and no-one would bat a lash. Then I’d go out to play, and my reality would be crushed; the first thing I’d see in the driveway was my brother’s rusted out ‘62 Ford Galaxie, which, in spite of the space-age name, certainly didn’t have warp drive, and definitely ran on filthy petrol-matter, not anti-matter. Ironically, in spite of the fact that I lived through the era of 8-Track tapes, then cassettes, then the still-cumbersome CD, I am at this point genuinely disappointed, for instance, at the crappy sound quality of mp3 files and the utter lack of compact, single-source holographic audio and video. As a result of feeling like the present is antiquated, I have a perverse fascination with the even more antiquated technology of decades past, which is why I just lost about two hours of my life over at RetroThing.com, where I not only spent hours reminiscing about once-incredible technologies like the Magnavox Astro-Sonic Stereo Console and this incredible pocket-sized computer, but I also learned about tragedies like the impending demise of Kodachrome. Damn. And I was just shopping for a Pentax Spotmatic the other day. Know of any other cool retro sites?

Although for most of us Michael Jackson’s death won’t have the “what were you doing when” impact of JFK’s assassination or 9/11, I for one will never forget, because a friend of mine called and asked, out of the blue, “Is Michael Jackson dead?”, to which I replied with something like “I almost hope so, for his sake”, thinking at first that my friend was being flip. Since I don’t have TV, I spent the next few minutes on the web watching the news unfold, switching between cnn.com, bbc.com, yahoo news, and Wikipedia. What I’ll never forget is that Wikipedia listed him as dead before any of the news sites had committed.  I personally felt an odd sense of relief rather than anything like remorse upon finding out; I mean, what kind of life could the man possibly have left to live? My first experience with caring much about Michael Jackson as an artist was when his song “Beat It” - which strongly resembled my band’s song “No Soul” - was released, much to our irritation, because record labels on several occasions used the comparison to say we weren’t original though our song was written well before his. Although over the years one couldn’t argue his undeniable talent, the fact that his most meaningful relationships seemed to be with children, aging glam queens, and monkeys named “Bubbles” tended to diminish his credibility. My personal feelings about him vacillated quite a bit over time; although I was definitely in the camp that would gleefully make fun of his quirks for many years, a friend pointed out something to me in the late 80’s that gave me pause, which was the fact that on top of any stories of his father’s abusive behavior, his child stardom had put him some pretty strange situations with adult women, and his insular lifestyle simply made it impossible for him to mature in anything like a normal fashion. This left me feeling a bit sympathetic toward him for a long time, That is, until it turned out that he ultimately was a 40-ish child molesting multimillionaire who refused to give up fairyland, and whose best friend remained a monkey. Thanks for your music, and rest in peace, Michael Jackson. I’m sure you had no peace left here on Earth.