Robert Preston's Cloudburst, Joe Scarborough's Alarms

If Oz was the first serial prison drama on HBO, there are a few scenes in the early episodes which seem too convenient, or gratuitous. The elimination of the Schibetta’s without much pushback from the families who once ran New York, while clever, smacks more of an Agatha Christie murder mystery than any real life crime syndicate. The godfathers weren’t that stupid, nor so blind as to not be able to put two and two together, even if their power was on the wane at the time Fontana created the show. Walker’s Said rejection of Governor Devlin’s clemency is too  strident, regardless of what sociology teaches about recidivism. If Kareem had been a real life figure the Catholic Church itself might have been hard pressed not to nominate the man for sainthood. His entire character arc is passive aggressive martyrdom, riot and fundamental flaws in justice aside; and though one might ask why a lawyer guilty of vehicular homicide would be placed in Oz, while acknowledging that rape and physical torture desensitize, Beecher’s slasher killing of the relatively civil Nazi Metizer strains credulity, just as Alvarez blinding Officer Rivera is medieval barbarity, even for a hard time facility. That type of mutilation, goaded into or not, falls into the category of sensational gore on display for shock value. Fontana doesn’t know what to do with the character after the graphic reverberation of the assault, and it can be considered a failed story line upon which Krauthammer’s “blame the culture” mantra may be duly aimed, spilling right into the Dick Wolf universe like a stream out of time continuum, a prelude to hard boiled Baked Apple.

Although I was aware of Meloni being in the cast when I put the first season on my watch list, I had no idea I would be playing musical chairs with eighteen years of Law & Order spin offs. Barring the majority of Wolf’s big guns, every Law & Order recur is there, like a revolving door from cable’s seepage into network, Erbe the delusional child killer marinating into Kathryn Erbe street wise sidekick, Simmons the Aryan potbelly to Simmons the urbane criminal analyst. Eamonn Walker, even Edie Falco, let alone that Meloni is barely credible as Keller. Yet I did a partial run through to season three to remind myself how miserable progressive outrage marred my life, stark inner city, sterile public housing, so much calamity, now fighting and failing and wasting every medically subsidized dollar into an acute ulcer, or a bad case of heartburn. I was never vain about much, but my long hair is ugly silver, matted beyond decency, an owl’s nest, with ill trained Africans driving me insane, all due to poorly rationed technology. Even my attempt to hang tough for the sake of my published work seems a dismal exercise, amidst a streaming glut which hasn’t proven itself a healthy anchorage. Austin Petersen had a couple of interesting tweets about big corporate which made me think it is no longer such a sharp divide, Marxist to free market models, but my big event this morning is rolling my torso on the hospital bed by myself. I’d like to torch it.

Phosphorus Spots

This is the problem with battling a life on whatever entitlement system you can to name. The crisis such as I am having now, these are exceedingly difficult to manage. I have taken a huge hit, over two hundred dollars in additional expenses, with my static life, in an environment which was never one of my own choosing, I can barely nibble any food, remembering my mother coming to Ridley Senior High, where I was parked, as always, in the administrative offices, guidance counselor, perhaps, with the SSI paperwork. I was 16, and had I the benefit of hindsight, to be forthright, I might have stopped my education then and there, with the federal welfare stranglehold. Yesterday, I viewed, come to think of it, one of the last late Law & Order episodes with Waterston and Roache, and the cattish actress who was ADA Connie. The abortion doctor assassination, which, for Wolf's writing team, was powerfully done, in terms of authenticity, and like some of those genetically doomed babies, I should have been allowed to die, instead of incubated, although, even in the incubator, I was supposed to die. Even premature, perhaps it was my destiny, to terrorize ableism. I do not know.

I am still here, of course, but it is too much for me. I may not kill a minority building manager or any of her residents, or a lesbian, or my former supervisor, but I am clinging to the escarpment hidden by rushing waterfalls, and can see my psyche, a spastic psyche, riddled with bullet holes, on some derivative of Thorazine, little more than a maniac, like so many Inglis residents. Yet this L&O episode challenged my extermination of the species as effectively, if not more so, than all the Catholic accounts I follow, and, if I did not know better, Pope Francis might have been tweeting directly to me earlier this morning. For once, this socialist Argentine, of whom I am diffident, reached me as Santo Padre; yet I refuse, like Anne Rice, to flip flop, fall on my knees, and give in to my occasional awareness of a devout fervor. Why? When I did believe, I was too self-conscious to accept all this damned nonsense, the holy spirit, the tongues. I dared to laugh at God, as Umberto Eco raised so dramatically in The Name of the Rose, three years before I ever graced a campus, I laughed at God, and I feel the import of that sacrilegious defiance, and thus force mystery and materialism to co-habituate in my Catholic Atheism. Better to reject divine character than to accept and damn yourself for knowing you can never love it, indeed, hate it, which probably matters little.

This Office 365 download is agonizingly slow, but I threw in the towel  on installing my older 2007 version, and have yet to see if it will take on this expensive, but still ten year old laptop, my feet swollen, tinnitus swirling in my eardrum, powerless, squalid woman, desperate to restore her work, sweating fish oil through her pores. The high school secretary, she had a predication for Sidney Sheldon. I too, find Rage of Angels moves along at a pleasingly taut, climatic pace. Even just sitting here, oblivious to section 202 housing hostilities and jeopardy, I'm suffering, yowling at my poor baby brother for surcease, gratified to engage Gretchen again, even playing along with Facebook humor, I might as well be a writhing succubus: the download is complete, but I have to go to bed, with so little to spare, like a box of food for little kimmy.

Muffled Down

Capitalism's need for productive and consuming bodies means that it works with Baconian medicine to repair, segregate, or eliminate those embodiments that prevent the free flow of capital.-- Jason Reiner Greig, Reconsidering Intellectual Disability, p 83

It could reasonably be argued, in 2007, when the parents of Ashley X ignited their high profile ethical controversy, I still considered myself part of the activist family, mortally wounded as I may have felt. I did not get involved in the protests surrounding the aggressive sterilization of this child, but I did not lend my voice in opposition to the protests, in part because I shared the activists repugnant recoil over the surgical repression of Ashley's womanhood. I've gone further since, as some of my readers know, simplifying things, like King Herod, but before we wade back into that, parents, particularly mothers, are in the wrong here, to do everything you can to keep minimally sentient humans alive, only to turn them into exceptional medical experiments in the service of scientists. It may be excruciating to let such children die. Hargitay's writers were clever in the one midterm SVU episode, where Olivia was given power of attorney over a premie who even beat me by a number of weeks, and the audience is left hanging, not knowing whether Wolf's battle scarred diva opts for brain surgery or letting the child pass away. It was a nice touch, the writers not resolving the crisis, though granted, irresolution may have been an escape valve, as these powerful unions did not want to take a position to ignite further piss offs, in Jason Statham lingo.

Just as in real time, popular procedurals are greatly ambivalent about disability and crime, the pathology and implications involved. It runs the gamut, from paralyzed cops, traumatic brain injured ball players whose damaged lobe aggression poses legitimate danger, to autistics being used as a diversionary blame, to impaired witnesses being implicated, but crucial to the case. The latter day Linus Roache episode, Falling, rather shamefully gives Not Dead Yet the wish fulfillment it did not achieve in real time protests, while looking at the implications less starkly than Criminal Intent. 

Oh, the duress of the parents comes out here, but the mother ship is more concerned with societal consequences, as opposed to Goren's internalized psychological battles. In this sense, it can be argued that the US very successfully uses Hollywood to anesthetize militancy in the bud. At least until Trump destroyed established conservative models.

Now, as to what I believe, even if it offends the laity, is that the Spartans had it right, not that we any longer dash fetal flesh in rock quarries, but the better part of valor is to let children with severe developmental defects be recycled, as natural processes intended for those who cannot achieve their own dignity of person. Pillow Angels are morally reprehensible, as much a material product as the mega shopping malls John Paul II inveighed against in his last encyclicals.

Meanwhile, I woke desperately trying to save my work, knowing The Guardian isn't an option. I've used the work of their journalists as background, and I'd have to seriously revamp. I also need to relax. "Crime Fighter Feline" was an outgrowth of an essay started in the mid-90's about how terrible living in Philadelphia is, though it is true I no longer have the luxury to incubate successfully accepted pieces over that length of time.

Clay Warner's Anticipatory Erosion

"In the real world, the value of human life is relative."-- Saul Rubinek

I rushed my column, winced at my typographical error in misspelling Kinsley's name, repaired this after the fact, and now I'm sitting, belabored, speculating about whether it's worth getting more pissed off and trying again, as perhaps my point about Donald and Serge was contradictory. Zakaria can rehash white suicides on a subtle curvature, and I cannot even get back in the game, for obvious reasons, and perhaps more effusive ones; debating about whether annoying busy editors with personal slants will do any good. When I wrote about my broken nuptials for Philadelphia Inquirer's Metro section in 2005, I tapped into a national sentiment unexpectedly and felt incredibly gratified, had absolutely no other writers to share my good fortune with, and the residents and managers alike at Riverside said "I read your column," (the good old days) but that I earned the byline caught me entirely off guard. 

The situation is now reversed. I feel the media owes my voice for the injustices of my late middle age, and I'm lucky if The Nation responds "this is too national in scope," and I never truly countenanced that my 53rd year would be the beginning of the end, not senile, but livid enough to alarm Google, enough to earn a cautionary note about my lack of reticence, not knowing if I'm capable of killing my former supervisor. Statements such as those, in such a battered intelligence, is relegated to creative non fiction, or the screen writers guild, not an online account, even with an adult content warning, especially as said supervisor is a real person, a disabled woman herself conditioned to humiliate her like.

While my twitter application sat in my wheelchair pouch at eleven am, I had a skittish transfer to the porcelain throne, a rather painful evacuation, and almost did not make it back to the cushion, crooked in my pivot, flexed hand on the bar, better left hand on the arm grip, gasping, trembling a little, urging myself to release my grasp, perhaps a bad day, or conversely, my quality time has a more immediate expiration, but I will not allow authorities to re-institutionalize me, which, in essence, has an inevitable conclusion.

Of the lengthy Sam Waterston arc as the indomitable Jack McCoy, "Genius" is not the most scintillating in the Dick Wolf neural net, but between the lines, the writers were challenging the very essence of regulating human deviation. They did it on the sly, of course, as Wike doesn't off sympathetic victims, especially as a Klan leader incognito with bodies on his conscience isn't something even angry old bitches want to go to the mat for, but Clay Warner does not represent a magnified human aberration, took no pleasure from his actions, and saw his eliminations as rather justifiable. If we dispense with the outer contours of the plot, (creative genius as a subversive threat, and Warner's willingness to dispense with his life) the argument challenging judicial process for an intellectual acuity which correctly assesses bad actors essentially implies that adjudication cannot always achieve an equitable balance. That is one caveat I've been arguing all along, one that creative minds recognize. And with this note in mind, let's return to Sandra Bland.

Spastic believed initial reports indicated she crossed traffic lanes improperly. Now it seems Encinia loses his job over a turn signal. If, among other things, the ACLU and libertarians like my licentious twitter ally Tony Stiles have their way, the US dispenses with civilian police forces, perhaps hiring volunteer eunuchs at a cheaper rate to remove collateral corpses off the asphalt after the weekly LA driveby. What happens? Communities invariably police themselves, the margin for error increases, invariably enforcers naturally reoccur and we're back we're we started. The dowager has no idea why Bland is dead. If it was homicide, it seems the state troopers are going to incredible lengths over very little: not every bigot thirsts to lynch those they hold in contempt. If she hung herself, deflated by a disreputable environment, Encinia is being wrongly punished, because it is a sign of the times that millennials are coddled by the rose colored glasses of their parents. It was a fucking holding cell, not a pleasant place, and I fail to see why correction officers would have harmed her deliberately, or even another prisoner. No evidence was found to indicate this. She would have been released, and had she actually caused a collision, reporters would have decried laxity in state license suspensions. We've gone so far afield we really cannot distinguish anuses from dirt holes.

Here We Go

Dick Wolf's Law & Order series was ahead of Slate contributor Jennifer Bleyer by 15, 20 years, at least, that the dark side of identity politics was going to lead us down this inextricable, and really ugly path. I am not like Jennifer's inter-source critic, Reisman, and will not say that executing pedophiles is the answer, though I have stated that Sandusky should receive the death penalty, but again, I am asking progressives, at what point are any of you going to say enough is enough? I can never go back to monotheism, but I have no problem tying my atheism to my own moral values, and we have to stop using biology as an excuse for relativism. I did push too hard yesterday, I had little choice, and so I am expanding and revising this after a lengthy rest, but at the rate we are going, we're losing any pragmatic sense of our own humanity. Violence, and aggression do actually have a function within evolutionary theory. Dominant males in many mammalian species kill to eliminate the faulty wiring that Jennifer suggests should be met with empathy, gunning very hard to put us in the pedophile's place-- not here.

Compassion is not going to keep our species in the best shape. Survival is brutal but that is how things work, and I know this will shock some of you, but when my dad got drunk in 05 and said he did not force my mother to abort me, well, maybe he should have. Not that systemic culling should result in mayhem like this, or even like this. Erin Moran clearly has not adapted to the fact that her fifteen minutes has expired, but what about those of us who haven't spiraled out of control? I suffered until my late twenties, and my life came to a halt pretty much by the age of 42. It is eight years of punishment later, and my body is breaking down. How can I move on if I cannot change my circumstances, no longer capable of sustaining the commute and punishment field work inflicted?

The disability movement shuts this down, saying take pride, be empowered, yep, they empowered me to nearly the edge of suicide, and will never take responsibility for it. I will not be around long enough to see the nightmare that is coming your way, and it is a consolation.

Wolf's Subversive Sniffer

Dick Wolf's modality undercuts the no pity exaltation by acknowledgment of cruelty within the matrix of disabity itself, as well as exposing the realism of our vulnerabilty to systems designed to help us. I know of actual cases of Paratransit users raped by minority drivers, and Wolf's SVU writers expose this by flipping the caste, but still exposing the fact that transit authorities hire criminals who hurt us. Saving money is more acceptable than our safety. CI nuances this more finely with both leads, D'Onofrio and Noth, and I give them credit for the honesty about the darkness in the bell jar of chronic conditions. "Conscience" is a great example of this. Heart disease feeds the original motive of the husband, who wants control of a trust fund and cannot, therefore, kill the wife, and, merely as a matter of technicality, puts her in a persistent vegetative state, which then triggers the opening murder of the doctor hoping to relocate the person within the damaged mind, which cannot be done, but fear of viability triggers the husband's admission of guilt that was meant to satisfy those convinced of something more sinister in the motives behind the battle between Schiavo's spouse and family. If Terri's husband had truly wanted her dead, the case would not have dragged on for fifteen years in which the woman's brain did not rewire itself. Josie Byzek sniveled to me over this meal I could not afford that "we [the activists] should have never gotten involved."

I'd like to ask what human being wants to languish like that? With rapid and sustained intervention, some PVS can be reversed, but disability activists need to grow the fuck up. Every dollar wasted on Terri's brain stem after the obvious became apparent could have been spent on helping those of us with living minds, and this is in part why Josie pisses me off, aside from burning me on a potential date. The woman refuses to apply herself beyond issues of empowerment. I am still consciously aware and dare to assert that I deserve better than living like this; if my brain implodes, then yes, let me decease under humane palliative care. I'd rather those dollars go to wheelchair users who might dare to dream of romantic adventures in Paris, Tuscany.