ANTI-PRESS EZINE #04 "We're Positive About The Negative" Copyright (C) 1998 Anti-Press This ezine may be reproduced free of charge with proper copyright notice. A December "Fug The Holidays!" E-dition _AN XXXMAS STORY_ "Ho, ho, ho! Boys and girls, this is your big buddy Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Old Saint Nick. Might have to scratch that last title. All this spiritual-secular conflict with Christians, especially the Catholic Church, has been building up lately. Seems the Pope wants less money spent on toys and more on tithing. I don't blame the old guy; he isn't feeling well and the people around him are stirring up the shit. It's those bureaucratic rats in the Vatican, the Curia, that are causing all the trouble. "They want to yank away my sainthood-- like they did with poor old Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Hey, still got my Saint Christopher statue on the dashboard of my sleigh; it saved me one time from intersecting with a damn Iraqi scud. Here in the higher reality a lot of us get annoyed when you meat-bots down there decide you no longer believe and then jump on the next cult-of-personage craze as if we're only Beanie Babies or Furby dolls. Saint Christopher takes his unsainthood to heart; wounds him deeply. Saw him the other day hanging around with Odin and Zeus, getting shitfaced drunk in Valhalla. "Gee, hate to get so downbeat this holiday season but some of us really are in torment up here in the higher plane. I know most of you believe I live at the North Pole but that isn't really true. The magnetic north pole serves as a portal so I can materialize into your world and carry on my job-- until you toss me aside like the other has-been personalities of the higher plane. If that happens, I'll go postal... "Ho, ho, ho. Just pulling your Yule log, boys and girls. Anyway, I know the Curia are probably going to push to maximize their profits by minimizing Santa and gift-giving. With declining church attendance and all those lawsuit settlements pertaining to pedophilic priests, they got to do something to keep the ark afloat. "Some of you are angry with me for being so blunt. Well, up here in the higher plane you can't live with denial. No fantasy around this place; you're the ones who need it. "Anyway, being closer to the Highest Plane than you are, Santa knows what is on God's mind. And man, is he ever pissed at times at the way some of you use His Name as a excuse to screw over others. (Real Christians he respects but the rest of you...) So God probably won't mind if I tell you a story that illustrates this point-- and also shows the Curia are in no position to cast the first coal at Santa. They perpetuate the myth that the Vatican is the Seat of All Holiness, beyond reproach at all times during its existence. Well, my North Pole Interdimensional Portal Operation For Worldwide Gifting ain't perfect but I don't have as much dirt to hide under history's rug like the Vatican. (Just ignore all those stories about NAMBLA and my elves, especially if you hear them in Latin.) "Got a couple of tomes here from my endless bookshelf that form the basis of my special Christmas story. Since I only work one day a year Santa has to keep himself out of trouble with hobbies like reading. But if you read enough, you'll find all sorts of trouble for yourself, especially if you repeat ugly events unknown by the majority of you meat-bots. "Let's see, this book is THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE POPES by J.N.D. Kelly and the other is THE CHAIR OF PETER, A HISTORY OF THE PAPACY by Friedrich Gontard. You can check on the details of Santa's story for yourself. As you hear my story, please keep in mind that Santa used to work with such greats as Henny Youngman-- I'm a big ham into the schtick. "Once upon a crime a pope came to power, Stephen VI, who had a real hate for a previous pope in the limelight. In January of 897 CE Stephen VI reached the pinnacle of his showbiz career with the performance noted by reviewers as the 'Cadaver Synod' or the 'Corpse Synod'. "Pope Stephen hated a previous Vatican headliner named Formosus so much that he had the decaying body of Formosus disinterred, clad in full papal vestments, and then propped up on a throne to face a trail on such charges as perjury. (President Clinton, take note.) Now it could be argued that dead- as-a-doorknob Formosus couldn't speak in his own defense. Being a reasonable guy Stephen had a deacon speak for Formosus. Santa wonders if that deacon was a ventriloquist; comes in handy when you don't want to stand too close to the dead, just throw your voice. "Anyway, this bit of gruesome Vatican vaudeville came to an end with Formosus being found-- surprise, surprise-- guilty. The three fingers of his right hand which had been used during his life to swear and bless were chopped off and later his body was tossed into the Tiber. "Now I know some of you need a happy ending or you won't be able to sleep at night. Well, a hermit rescued the body of Formosus from the river and reinterred it. As the months passed the audience turned against Pope Stephen and his show. There was a buzz on the street about miracles performed by the humiliated corpse of Formosus. Stephen's run came to an end when the outraged people rose up and hooked him off the stage. His theater went dark when he was strangled in jail. "Well, doesn't that little tale warm your heart this happy time of year? Brings tears to Santa's eyes-- from laughing so hard. Ho, ho, ho. So the next time some sanctimonious sluffhead is dissing Santa and Christmas materialism, you remember that in some cases those who appear to be so pure of heart, who believe they are doing the work of the Highest Plane, just might be in denial-- denying to themselves that their actions are more appropriate to the Lowest Plane. "Merry Xmas, you little bastards. And to all, fear the night..." _RUMBLINGS FROM THE REALITY CENTER_ Anti-Press here. Enough of the Santa crap. Just had to get that out of our system after the "Happy Holiday". At this time of the year we're extra- grouchy, trying to survive another relentless winter here in Plattsburgh, NY, the Siberia of northeastern New York State. Some locals have been whining about not having a "white christmas"; no snow on the ground. Too bad. Why does snow on the ground mean anything to celebrating a corrupt version of the pagan celebration of the winter solstice? These idiots are brainwashed by all those images on TV and in the movies. To them happiness equals snow piled up to your nose, shoveling through dunes of God's sluff until you drop from a heart attack. Anyway, enough of that. There's more important things to talk about. You've noticed that the title of this section refers to a "Reality Center". How did this come about, calling this cluttered corner of our apartment the nexus of existence? Simple. Being extra-grouchy during the Dismal Months we're sensitive to stupid things that others overlook in their obliviousness. Doesn't take too much to irk our attention, especially on TV where used car salesmen sell "pre-owned vehicles", undertakers want you to "pre-plan" your funeral, and some crap shampoo "micro-texturizes" your hair. The Plattsburgh TeeVee Station features during its local newscast an ever- smiling simpletonoid who does weather-guessing (as opposed to weather- forecasting). The camera will cut to the guesser in his corner of the studio with an array of computer monitors sitting on his desk. Of course, this guesser is like the rest of the other "forecasters" across the country who act as if they are giving you a tailor-made prediction for your own region. Most likely they get their prediction from the NOAA weather service or a private concern like AccuWeather. All the local TeeVee weatherman does is repeat the prediction-- more like a wild guess when it comes to a five day prediction-- while showing you all sorts of fancy colorized graphics of cloud patterns over North America that don't mean shit to that butterfly in China that flaps its wings and causes a hurricane a few months later in Cuba. (Hey, maybe all that radar they're using to track those cloud patterns is screwing up the climate, especially if it's disturbing the butterflies.) On the local TeeVee newscast the Powers-That-Be have decided their grinning weather-guesser needs an edge over the other TeeVee stations in the region. So when they cut to his office in the corner, they try to make it appear that Smiley The Clown is the leading source on any bad weather on the way, a weather watchman on the wall, above all others, manning his post as he keeps scanning the horizon. So how do you create this appearance? You just print some black-and-white signs emblazoned with the words "STORM CENTER" and paste them all over the wall in the weather-guesser's cubicle. When the camera cuts to his desk, you're not looking at the place where he sips coffee, bends paperclips into questionable animal shapes and plays Pong on his computer-- why, you're actually peering into THE STORM CENTER! So what the fug. This cramped folding table and ancient computer are THE REALITY CENTER! We printed out some signs and pinned them on the wall, so there! _TOP TWENTY, YOUR ASS!_ We're always suspicious of polls and ratings, especially when it comes to Plattsburgh, NY. A while ago we had heard some buzz on local TeeVee and in the (news)Paper that this picayune Podunk had been rated highly in some book about good places to live in the USA. Investigating at the Public Library we found a copy of THE RATING GUIDE TO LIFE IN AMERICA'S SMALL CITIES by G. Scott Thomas (1990). Subtitled "Report Cards on the 219 Micropolitan Alternatives to Metropolitan Hassles", the book ranked P-burgh number 31 among small cities across the country. It's noteworthy that this book is published by Prometheus Books, the same publisher who puts out skeptical tomes debunking the paranormal and the occult. Usually their POV is that any extraordinary claim demands extraordinary proof. By reading such tomes written by James Randi and his ilk, we've developed a skeptical view towards everything, even Prometheus titles like THE RATING GUIDE. In doing research for this essay we tried to consult the second edition of THE RATING GUIDE, now appellated as THE NEW RATING GUIDE TO LIFE IN AMERICA'S SMALL CITIES (1997), "updated" by Kevin Heubusch. Since we don't have any money to buy a copy we thought we could read this edition at the Public Library. After all, when you're rated 31st overall, your community should have a good library. Forget it. The Public Library only has the 1990 edition. You see the City Powers don't want to invest that much in the PL, ergo it doesn't have most of the latest books. We did try to look at the newer 1997 edition. We went to the uncommodious Waldenbooks store at the Shopping Maul. By the way, for rating so high in the nation, Plattsburgh (City and Town combined) will soon boast of ONE bookstore for new books. There used to be three (wow) but one closed during the summer and another is going dark next month. Such variety! Anyway, the helpful staff at Waldenbooks tried to find the 1997 Edition on their computer. According to their database, the book isn't available, i.e. it doesn't "exist". We can now see the advantages of living in a one- bookstore town. But we did find the 1997 RATING GUIDE at the other bookshop that is gasping its last breath. We glanced over the new edition, took a few notes, and our scanning indicates the it isn't much different than the first one. Generally it has the same format, same categories. The major change seems to be the number of small cities surveyed. The new edition has 193 cities listed with a few additions and deletions from the original list due to changing population bases, i.e. some cities became too big or small to be considered "micropolitan". Even with a somewhat shorter survey, we though Plattsburgh would still be lower on the list due to setbacks it has suffered since 1990. But we were shocked to find Plattsburgh, NY is now ranked at 17 out of 193! It's ranked higher, even though we know from personal observation things around here are crap! (We're still wondering how even ranked 31st.) Like we said before, we don't have the money to waste-- er, we mean "spend"-- on the 1997 edition, even at a steep "Going Out Of Business/Last Gasp" discount. You'll find a lot of people like us in this "city" who are independently poor thanks to the plethora of great job opportunities offered by this Top Twenty Micropolitan "Mecca". Anyway, our limited consultation of the second GUIDE only reflects on the limitations we face every day living here in "The 'Burgh". Nutshell: both editions of THE RATING GUIDE-SMALL CITIES rank a selection of micropolitan communities with a variety of categories-- Climate, Economics, Health Care, etc. Plattsburgh is mentioned as having a weakness in the area of weather due to its insufferable six months of cold white misery, AKA winter. But there are other weaknesses that don't show up in the 1997 edition, for example, in the category of "Sophistication". One new bookstore and an underfunded Public Library? And there are other factors that impugn the alleged sophistication of this area. It seems every other week-- almost like a regular feature-- we pick up the (news)Paper and learn that some bent creep has been arrested for child molestation. Of course maybe this can be considered "sophisticated" when a pedophile sits at home and uses the Internet to distribute child porn. In separate cases two locals have been arrested on that charge. (Maybe THE RATING GUIDE should add another category: Perversion.) In our research of THE NEW RATING GUIDE we came across an interesting critique at the Amazon.com Web Site by a reader. The customer said the book was "distressing simplistic" with "no local color" on any of the cities. He was very disappointed because the book offered "nothing more than rows of numbers-- and not very relevant numbers, at that." What a skeptic! Anyway, as a public service to readers like one quoted above, we're offering the "subjective information" on the city we know best. And it will give plenty of "color", the stuff you won't see in the Local (news)Paper or promulgated by the Chamber of Commercialism. The plain fact is that if you come here with a good-paying job and then lose it, you're probably screwed because good-paying jobs are few and far-between around here. We've seen it happen a few times, somebody cock-of-the-walk one day, a top management position, and then-- BOOM!-- nothing, he ends up selling stereos at The Maul during the Xmas season for minimum wages and minimal commission. This area does have its advantages, especially if you like six months of winter and want to ski downhill and Sonny-Bono your brains into a tree. During the (brief) summer the lake is nice, especially if you own a sailboat and know how to outmaneuver rude French Canadian boaters who think it's World War II again and that they're plowing a dreadnought through enemy waters. There's all sort of places to go around here: hikes in the Adirondack wilderness with pleasant surprises like a rabid raccoon chewing on your foot, day trips up to Montreal where you can enjoy payback time by dispensing Ugly American rudeness-- but it means nothing if you don't have any money to buy lift tickets or to get your sailboat out of dry-dock or to keep up with the payments on your car. Years ago we saw a pie graph at the Unemployment Insurance Department, a breakdown of what employees in the county were being paid. The biggest section of the graph-- we think it was like 75 percent-- were minimum wage jobs. Those wages are a joke. Guess how much the minimum wage went up from 1978 to 1988? Not one cent. How much inflation during that decade of Reaganism? Minimum wage in no way reflects what an employee should be paid, particularly nowadays. No wonder there's so many families around here with dad and mom working and they still need help from food stamps. And things ain't any better. This area has taken two hard hits, one being the closure of the Air Force Base and the other being a sharp decline in Canadian shoppers due to a wide gap in the exchange rate: their Monopoly money is worth like 65 cents on an American dollar. Anyway, take it from us-- retail pays squat around here even during boom times. Among the few well-paying job "opportunities" in this area is a sentence as a state prison guard and putting up with the scum of inhumanity, complete with urine thrown in your face or a HIV-positive bite on your arm. But there are advantages to having a depressed economy, at least for a big businessman. With people so desperate for work, if they're not "lucky" enough to land a job in a prison, they can be exploited by companies from Canada. This is the usual scenario: a company from up north relocates here, getting all sorts of breaks with taxes and import duties. It sets up shop for a couple of years, operating cheaply with minimum wages during that time, and then it heads home to find more employees to exploit. Meanwhile the discarded workers are back searching for another job that might last for a couple of years. They are treated like expendable scum that is occasionally allowed to rise to the surface of the labor pool. And what is happening here in the Plattsburgh area is obviously happening in other parts of the country. Companies "right-sizing", jobs moving to other countries, other countries coming here to use displaced workers. We're no longer living in the America of the Good Old Days where you retired with a good pension and a fancy watch from the company president after decades of faithful service to the same business. If you move somewhere else for a job, especially to this neck of the woods, take our advice and don't set your roots down, especially buying a house. We've seen people with opportunities elsewhere but they're stuck with a nice but almost unsaleable house here in "God's" country. Usually the wife has to stay behind and take care of the white elephant dwelling while the husband starts his new job many miles away. "But having a house is the American Dream! And why pay rent? What do you have to show for it years later? Invest in a house." Usually a banker is the one with that line. We all know how altruistic bankers are, don't we? If it's not a banker uttering that bullshit, baiting you into an overpriced loan, then it's someone financially secure-- a rich yuppie bastard-- or someone who believes misery loves company. Are you so insecure that you think you're less of a person if you RENT instead of BUY? Renting gives you more freedom to move on. It's easier to break a lease than it is to sell a house, especially around here where we have a glut of nice places waiting for the right suckers. A house: a symbol of personal freedom or a financial albatross hanging around your neck? Leave your options open: be a wanderer, ready to pack up your show in a gypsy wagon and hit the trail for another job, hopefully a better one that might even last _three_ years. You don't read about any of this in either edition of THE RATING GUIDE TO LIFE IN AMERICA'S SMALL CITIES. Sure, they grade a small city on all sorts of factors, from crime to education to weather, but it's based on the assumption that you will get and KEEP a good paying job while living here. Also, if you're a successful yuppie, you don't have to worry about finding a job elsewhere when you got money in the bank, rich relatives, and credit cards as sheet anchors. So if you fall into that elite segment, then THE RATING GUIDE will help you overcome any ennui your poor materialistic soul might be suffering at this point while living in the Big City. But for the rest of us average people THE RATING GUIDE can serve as a half-way decent doorstop (at least the hardcover edition). Sorry, Prometheus Books, but you trained us too well in skepticism. The extraordinary claim of Plattsburgh ranking in the Top Twenty is CRAP-- unless most of the other small cities on the list REALLY SUCK. And if that's the case, why does your book recommend small city existence as a good alternative to the hassles of metropolitan life? Stick with exposing psychic spoon-benders. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted works must be ready for publication (edited and proofread). Word Limit: 1000 words. No sci-fi, poetry, sci-fi poetry, poetic sci-fi, etc. Do some research and read a couple of issues to find what we want. Submissions and readers' comments should be sent to Antipress1@aol.com. Anti-Press Ezine and its sporadically published issues are available at: http://www.disobey.com/text/ Copyright 1998-2000 Anti-Press Publication by Disobey. http://www.disobey.com/ TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe APE TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe APE ------------------------------------------------------------------------