A Thanksgiving Haiku

Though turkey was dry
I ate all I could and more
Colon will pay price

The picture above is frame 231 from Abraham Zapruder's film of President Kennedy's assassination. From Zapruder's point of view, Kennedy's car disappeared for a split second behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. The first suggestion that something was wrong appears as the car emerges from behind the sign (just a few frames before the one above). Here you can see Kennedy clutching his throat - the so-called "magic bullet" had just exited and begun its improbable path through Gov. Connally's body. Just a second or so later Kennedy would dead from a shot to the head.

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. As y'all probably know, I've had a little obsession with the assassination and different conspiracy theories. There's a ton of confusing, misleading, and poorly constructed arguments against the then official government story (that one assassin, acting alone, killed the president). I say then official story because after a second federal investigation of Kennedy's death in 1978 the US government concluded that at least two shooters were involved - a conspiracy - but said nothing about who was involved or why. The main evidence for this conclusion has been debated ever since and very well may not be valid. Regardless, I do believe there was a conspiracy and that the government actively worked to cover-up information about the assassination. I don't know who did it or why, but it's beyond certainty that the original investigation was not meant to find out the truth.

The one piece of evidence that, to me, clearly demonstrates this comes from Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico. Oswald went to Mexico just 7 weeks before the assassination. Oswald was in Mexico from Sept. 26-Oct. 3 1963. He made at least three trips to the Cuban Embassy and two to the Soviet Embassy and also made phone calls to the Soviet Embassy. He was trying to get a visa for Cuba, for which he needed to first get a Soviet visa. He didn't get either and returned home to Dallas. Supposedly nothing was made of this trip in US Intelligence circles - the official story was that they didn't have much interest in Oswald - until he was fingered for the assassination. The CIA and FBI frantically searched their records the day of the assassination and found, among other things, audio tapes of Oswald's calls to the Soviet embassy (the US was bugging the embassy).

The agencies freaked out when they found the tapes - the guy who just killed the president had been in contact with the Soviets & Cubans just weeks before. What if one or both of those governments had ordered the hit on Kennedy? Imagine if it became public - would the US have had to attack the USSR in retaliation? A weird thing happened though. Neither the voice claiming to be Oswald on the tapes nor the purported photos of Oswald entering the Soviet Embassy were actually Oswald.

Because of Oliver Stone's JFK movie people were up in arms about a conspiracy and the government agreed to release millions of documents relating to the assassination. One of these documents was a transcript of a call between LBJ and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover just hours after LBJ was sworn in as president. LBJ asks Hoover what's up with Oswald going to Mexico and Hoover tells him that they've reviewed the audio tapes and surveillance photos and found that it wasn't really Oswald, that it was someone else was using his name.

http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/LHO-Mexi.html

Thing is, the official investigation never once said "Wait a minute, maybe the fact that the supposed assassin met with people from our two biggest enemies a few weeks before he killed Kennedy is something we should look into" or "Does our finding that Oswald was a lone nut fit with the fact that someone was impersonating him to our enemies just weeks before the assassination?". If Hoover was telling the truth, that means our government intentionally did not investigate the connection to either the Soviets or the Cubans (and remember, at that time we were actively trying to kill Castro as well as overthrow his government), or they did know that either/both were involved and wanted to avoid WW III and not let the public know, or they put their head in the sand in order to avoid WW III. If Hoover was lying to LBJ, Hoover was covering up possible/actual foreign involvement in the assassination. True or not, that the official investigation did not make the Oswald impersonator an important part of their work clearly demonstrates, for me, that the first official investigation was bullshit. Maybe y'all are smarter than me & can come up with a plausible scenario within which it would not be necessary to investigate the Oswald impersonator. Some have suggested that it was a US spy making the calls to find out what Oswald was up to. However, US intelligence at the time supposedly didn't have an active interest in Oswald, so why were they following him out of the country and why were they not watching him just a few weeks later on November 22, 1963?

I need to try this using a picture without my glasses (I think they pulled all the pictures with plastic glasses from their database) but I do remember some girl in hgih school telling me that I looked like James Spader (or was it Andrew McCarthy?). What do y'all think?

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I'm back in Pittsburgh for the week. There are some things I have to get done, but it's nice to be back in my pajamas on the couch.

The pictures are of a few other meals I had in Lebanon, TN. I felt like I had to go to White Castle to honor one of my favorite stoner movie (the little burgers are very tasty), and the bbq pork sandwhich from Whitt's was decent enough (although I liked the design of the Whitt's name on the packages as much as the sandwhich, and I definitely would choose the sweet tea over the sandwhich. In addition to the big gulp of sweet tea I had with dinner, I took a gallon back to my hotel room to keep me juiced enough to finish my work that night).

I've been trying to keep it positive here at business n'at - you know what Oprah says: "Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” - but I've heard from the grapevine that some of you are wondering if I had any bad experiences in Lebanon, that they would appreciate hearing about any bad meals I had. Those of you who know me know that I don't like to bring negativity because it takes more muscles to frown than to smile (and I'm really lazy & hate wasting energy). I will say that the breakfast buffet at the hotel was pretty crappy. It was totally low budget - miniature danishes, not the full size ones you get at a Hampton Inn, and sometimes there weren't any cheese ones at all; the orange juice dispenser looked like every other dispenser (it even said Minute Maid) but the oj was fucked up. I don't know what was wrong with it but it was not the high quality oj I need to get prepare myself for driving hard business deals. There was a hot buffet consisting of a container of biscuits & another of gravy, usually a big favorite of The Man. However, the gravy looked pretty skeezy and, as hard as it was, I just said no. My breakfast routine was as follows:
1) Wake up, put on pj's, make coffee in room.
2) Pee, wash hands.
3)Walk to buffet.
4) Put bagel in toaster, drink two glasses of poor quality oj, eat a mini-danish.
5) Watch local news while waiting for bagel to finish.
6) Pour cup of coffee & place lid on coffee*.
7) When the bagel is finished I put cream cheese & jelly on the bagel, then walk back to my room with bagel & coffee.

*The coffee at the buffet is important because my in-room coffee maker is small & I need the extra cup.

The Hampton Inn in Hollywood, FL was closer to the standards required of executive business travel: better bagels & pastries (as well as a larger selection), better oj & the choice of grapefruit juice as well, larger selection of fruit, and the hot buffet had fun surprises every day. one morning there were mini-breakfast pizzas, another morning there were pigs in a blanket. The breakfast buffet is easliy overlooked, but it's so very important. I may have to hit the Waffle House down the road when I go back next week.

Just another meat and three.

DATELINE: LEBANON, TN, Day 2, Lunch

I know the picture looks a little gross (I think it kind of looks like a screen shot from a filming of some surgery), but I think documentation is important. Eating food, like archaeological excavations, are destructive activities. Once they are completed there is information about the lunch (or archaeological context) that are lost forever. this is why extensive and detailed documentation of the process is key for current and future analysis. While we may not get much from this picture, it is possible that in the future there may exist a new technique or methodology that will allow somebody to ask new questions of it.

That said, the picture is of the awesome lunch I had at Los Compadres. Whomever came up with this meal was really thinking creatively and came up with some next level shit. They took standard fajitas and baked them in a broiler. Doesn't seem like such a big deal, huh? What if I told you they were covered in cheese sauce & then broiled? Greg, you're thinking, what's the bfd? What I told you that they were broiled in a creamy. cheesy bacon sauce? And I'm not talking about dry bacon chips made from a left-over breakfast buffet - they used big pieces of softly fried fatty bacon. For me, the bacon sauce just came out of nowhere...who would've thought to add bacon to fajitas? I know that Kristin can appreciate the genius of this lunch. Sooooooooo tasty....I wrapped them up with guacamole, sour cream, and salsa in warm flour tortillas. Somebody should make a perfume out of their smell. For the last few days I've been trying to think of what the next step could be but it's so hard to imagine. When Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven came out with their first sides they changed everything. The music was so new and different people were just blown away & they had a hard enough time accepting what it meant let alone anticipating what Duke Ellinngton would do in the next decade. Maybe it could be battered, fried, and turned into a finger food or hot pocket.

When I was 10 or 11 there was this annoying kid in the neighborhood who would say crazy shit, like that he had a dirt bike with invisible shocks and an invisible dog that lived in his attic and only barked at night. I guess he needed attention or who knows what. He may have been kind of screwed up because of his dad. His dad was a nice enough guy and I don't think he was an asshole to Josh, but I think because his dad had a local tv show Josh felt both arrogant and a little weird. Or maybe it was because his dad's name was Dick Klinger. I never thought about it when I was a kid but I have no idea where the invisible dog thing came from. Maybe he was just talking shit and it came out because he had just told us about the invisible shocks on his bike. I do know that you would have a very difficult time moving dogs like that in today's pet marketplace, even if you employed an agressive e-commerce strategy. You would probably have to offer a pretty liberal return policy that would end up killing your margins.

DATELINE: LEBANON, TN, Day 2, Lunch (Tease)

I don't have time to go into it, but I want to commend Los Compadres restaurant for playing the game the right way. They were thinking out of the box when they created the lunch dish I ate today, creating the kind of synergy that is key to promoting positive growth and success in the business arena.

Fun signs around town.

DATELINE: LEBANON, TN, Day 1, Lunch

Lunch was awesome today. I stopped at the Snow White Drive-In and had a meat & three - that's your choice of meat and three sides. There were lots of choices, like chicken fried steak or meatloaf, and I had the bbq pork. My sides were fried okra, fried apples, and mashed potatoes. Wash all that down with lots of sweet tea and corn bread pancakes and you've got a perfect meal . Jesus Christ it was so good. My only regret was that if I had stopped at a meat & two I could've had some cobbler for dessert. While the fried apples tasted like apple pie filling and were crazy delicious, I do love cobbler something fierce. As I had bite after yummy bite of the bbq pork I kept wondering why I didn't live in the South because this food makes me truly happy.

DATELINE: LEBANON, TN, Day 1

Today was my first real day on the job and it went pretty well. The client had overbooked me but several interviews fell through so it all worked out in the end.

There's nothing like watching tv on the couch in my king bed suite, pudding chilling in my mini-fridge, while thinking about the complimentary continental breakfast buffet waiting for me in the morning to make me feel like the power business man I am. That is, nothing except for driving around in my white rental Pontiac Grand Prix while enjoying the heated leather seats and satellite radio. Maybe I'll get a coke from the vending machine to enjoy during my late night soak in the hotel hot tub. I won't even care if my newspaper gets wet....there's always another USA Today in the lobby tomorrow.

PITTSBURGH: AIRPORT LOUNGE

I'm sitting in the airline private lounge at the airport having a beer & watching the Steelers actually win a game. The last week was, for the most part, low key - I've been home waiting for this trip (Nashville 11/12 - 11/18) . We did go out Thursday night to see the Derailers, an Austin based Honky Tonk band I used to see when I lived there. The long-time lead singer left the band a few years ago (quit drinkin' & found Jesus) so the lead guitarist has taken over the singing duties. He was ok, but the band is now a little more rock n'roll and it just wasn't the same.

Friday night a local peace & justice organization, the Thomas Murton Center, had their annual fundraising dinner, giving an award to Angela Davis (w/ Mumia Abu-Jamal introducing her via audiotape) and Adale got me a seat at a table with some people associated with her work (she sat at the YWCA table). The people at my table were elderly folks from a suburban peace & justice group, which worked out just fine for me because old ladies love me. I don't know what it is but they always do - they give me extra pirogis at church dinners, great deals at church bazaars/rummage sales, etc. I don't know what it means that I also have a similar effect on many lesbians, but I do know that I would have it made if old ladies & lesbians ruled the world. Anyway, it was a fun night. Mumia's intro was good. He has such a funny voice. I think he would have had a successful career as movie announcer guy if he hadn't been railroaded onto death row. Angela Davis's remarks were not as good. We saw her a few years ago at Cornell & she was amazing, but this time she kind of winged it and that didn't really work. To be able to listen to her speak is amazing because she's so inspiring (both her speaking style as well as herself & her story). However, it was kind of like at Dead shows where the audience would've given a standing ovation if they had taken a shit on stage. She's probably better when she has to be.

Anyway, I've got to finish my beer & face the riff-raff at the gate.

This picture of me was taken by a Hilton employee in Fayetteville, Arkansas, post-continental breakfast buffet.

Sorry I haven't written in a few days. I've been a bit distracted because I just realized that you can see naked ladies on the internets. I always loved the google, but now it means so much more to me.


I had kind of weird experience last week in Texas. I was working with a historically black college, located in a really small town outside of Houston (three blocks long with a bbq shack, mini-mart, two fast food restaurants, and a crappy motel). Outside of the college the area is mostly black as well. I was early for the first meeting of the day and stopped in the one, run down mini-mart in town for a cup of coffee. I asked the woman behind the bullet-proof window (middle aged immigrant from Africa, I think) if they sold coffee and she pointed me to a Mr. Coffee maker in the corner. I sized up the situation, decided against drinking the Folgers, and proceeded to look around the store in order to not seem rude for not buying their shitty coffee. After a minute of walking around the store I was approached by the owner (old white guy) of the store, who offered me a cup of coffee from a coffee urn in the attached restaurant (actually just part of the mini-mart separated by a room divider with a microwave for Jimmy Dean sausage n’ biscuit sandwich). The weird part was that he refused any money for the coffee, and I offered to pay several times. Standing outside with my coffee and looking at the black people in the parking lot I felt like Eddie Murphy in the old SNL skit where he dressed up as a white guy to see what white America was like. The white Eddie went into a mini-mart and the dude at the counter refused his money & laughed at white Eddie saying “There aren’t any black people here, you don’t have to pay”. Like Mr. Tubb said, don't worry about they got down in Texas, just think about how much they got of it.

Top Three Disappointments of the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Prairie View, TX)

3. I didn't get a new oatmeal lavender soap today.
2. Remmington's Lounge should be closer to the front desk.
1. The breakfast buffet is $12.95 even though there are no donuts or bagels, and the mexi-hasbrowns are not as good as they look.

Top Four Attractions at Remmington's Lounge (the bar at the Crowne Plaza Hotel)

4. The Irish or English or Scottish guy at the end of the bar talking to his Irish or English or Scottish friend non-stop for the entire hour I was there, explaining how being successful and doing his best was what he was all about.

3. Shiner Bock on draft.

2. The Junk Yard pinball game.

1. The funny guy form Louisiana who runs remote-control underwater robots on oil rigs in the Gulf. He only ever saw one octopus, and it was at 7000 feet underwater. He wanted to use the robot arms he controlled to mess with the octopus but decided against doing so because the robot arms are so powerful they crush any living thing they grab.

Top Four Items on the Crowne Plaza Hotel Breakfast Buffet (Praire View, TX)

4. Link Sausage
3. Biscuits and Gravy
2. Breakfast Burritos
1. Waffles in the shape of Texas

The shock of realizing that I am not rolling in coffee riches had lessened and I really haven't thought about it all day. I'm off to Texas in a couple of hours - gotta run.