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A MetaFilter article today innocently linked to the web site of a Scientology front organization that exists, essentially, to question the use of prescription drugs, particularly for mental illness.

Looking through the site, I found the page for their board of directors and there was Dr. Lorraine Day. Oh dear, I thought. What now?

I first encountered Dr. Day in 1988 or 89 when I was working for an orthopedic medical journal. She was one of our regular peer reviewers, and I found her a very impressive person. She’d clawed her way up from nothing through community college classes, a dental hygienist job, medical assistant, through nursing school and the nursing profession, to medical school, and finally had broken into one of the most notorious boy’s clubs in medicine: orthopedic surgery. She was at the time Chief of Surgery at San Francisco General Hospital and at the top of her profession.

Around the time I left that job, Dr. Day had stopped reviewing for us because she was “working full-time on the AIDS problem”, which sounded laudable to me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Like many healthcare workers, especially in places like San Francisco that got the full first wave of AIDS patients, she was very frightened of exposure to this deadly and poorly understood disease. As a surgeon who worked in one of the most splattery surgical specialties, she had more reason than most to worry about infection. And her early activism was an entirely appropriate criticism of the poor safety mechanisms in place to protect healthcare workers from exposure to HIV.

She then descended into ignorant gaybashing stupidity. She became the go-to person for the “Medical conservative viewpoint” on the talk shows, advocating restrictions of the basic civil rights of homosexuals, blaming gay men for AIDS, and in general feeding the Bigotry Monster. She appeared on TBN and the 700 Club constantly. She was shrill, and mean-spirited, and unscientific, and downright Un-American. I was sad because I’d thought of her before as kind of a career hero to me: someone who had triumphed over adversity to succeed and help others.

According to her web site, she acquired and then beat cancer recently. That’s cool. However, she’s also selling “natural cure” books, barley “dietary supplements” that cure everything, and a load of other prescientific and dangerous quackery all larded up with religious sentiment.

This is, quite literally, tragic. When I think of that long journey from nobody, through dental hygienist, up through the medical ranks to surgeon; of all of that skill, caring, and good hard scientific knowledge; and of all those years of experience that could be passed on; and I see a deranged fundamentalist herb-saleswoman leading on other sufferers to death? It makes me sad.

There’s a spot where paranoia, health-food crankery, know-nothing religion, and distrust of authority meet. That’s where Dr. Day has landed, 15 years after she abandoned her oath, started gaybashing and turned away from science.

Say it ain’t so, Dr. Day. Say you didn’t sell out to hatred and ignorance and fraud and Scientology and quackery. Say it ain’t so.

I grew up in the 1970s, which was the Decade of Brown.

The general brownness of those years expressed itself in a myriad of ways. Pretty much everything “designed” was some shade of tan, mahogany, or chocolate. Cars, the interiors of homes, clothing, electronics, all of it. Fake wood, for example, was everywhere, and brown plaids and corduroys dominated the back-to-school wardrobe of my childhood. There are still parts of my house that have left over brown plywood veneer on them.

It wasn’t just a matter of designers’ taste, though. Brown was a general cultural preference. In food, for example, white was out and brown was in. Rice, sugar, bread, pasta, eggs: everything was to be a dusky color now. Brownness was goodness: it meant whole grains with more nutrition, less refinement and processing, and the idea of “natural”. Brown things that no one had eaten before, like carob, were suddenly everywhere. The Diet for a Small Planet was in, and so was macrobiotic cooking.

A lot of this was based in good science. Whole grains, for example, are a great idea nutritionally. Brown rice and whole wheat bread are, in fact, better for you without a doubt. But brown sugar? It’s just sugar. Unrefined honey? It’s just a different color. Brown eggs? Come on!

And none of this explains the deep dark wooden tones of damn near everything around us in those years.

The reason for it all was race. After the explosions of the 1960s, everyone realized that White Only wasn’t working, not for anyone. The left and the Civil Rights movement had won, and starting with the universities we all got a good PC reeducation. Brown people, we were told, were at least equal and probably superior to white people. As children we were marinated in “positive images” of brown-ness, at least in my Southern California primary schools. Most of this was for the best. After hundreds of years of racial insanity in my country, a bit of pendulum swing isn’t anything to complain of!

As the négritude of those times finally passed, we got back to disliking each others’ skin color like the dumb humans we are, writing Bell Curves and listening to Farrakhans and generally backsliding like drunks into our racial stupidity. But brown stayed in some places. Visit your local health food store and look around. Brown eggs? Check. Brown grains? Check. Dark, dark unrefined molasses and honey? Yup.

Our souls have been sold back to the devil. Brown people still make less money doing less pleasant jobs. Countries full of them we bomb or ignore. People still say “American” when they mean “white”. But our bellies? We fill them with the comforting mulatto foods of my childhood, because brown is the color of the noble savage, the unrefined “natural goodness” we all need to live.

I hear corduroy is making a comeback.

I am a fount of ideas. Although I have no practical experience in business, many of my best new concepts are in the area of new business development. Since my genius has been systematically ignored, I’m going to share some of the best with the Group Mind out there. I have faith that some of you are future Captains of Industry who can take these gems and make them into beautiful tiaras of wealth. Share and enjoy!

1. I read years ago that some of the sharpest increase in tobacco abuse was in children using smokeless tobacco. Obviously this is a social ill we must strive to defeat, and the private sector is the place to do it. My solution: kid-friendly, fun nicotine patches for kids who need to quit the habit. Flintstones vitamins, Yu Gi Oh characters, Disney stuff. Make the patch fun, and you’ll remove that childish hunger for chaw!
   
2. Firearms ownership isn’t nearly as popular as it should be in this great country. Especially the younger set are left out; they think it’s boring just because they’ve never experienced the raw joy of a .357 bucking and sparking in your hand as it fills a target with lead. My solution: A new, hip gun magazine for young people on the move. I want to call it BANG!. Sort of a Details or Maxim vibe, celebs, cute girls, emphasis on fun. It’s a huge win.
   
3. Jack Daniels Fruit Rollups.
   
4. Blue Velvet: The Musical.. ON ICE!. Just imagine. The ice is quiet and empty as the theme music slowly swells. Then, out of one corner comes a bloody ear on skates. How can anyone resist?
   
5. “Steps”, the bar for AA people. It’ll be crowded, smoky, full of red-faced jerks, and sell overpriced drinks in bottles. Just no alcohol. I figure I can franchise this in any town that has a TGI Fridays or a Bennigan’s.

No need to pay me for these. Just remember: I was the spark that started your flame.

I was at my local coffeehouse today and a woman came who turned a lot of heads. She was young, very tan, with one of those spectacularly unrealistic Barbie bodies. Her face was a bit worn from sun and partying. She was on the arm of a spiky-haired and also very tan guy in his 30s who exuded money and oily charm. He had on one of those longish “club shirts” and expensive-looking shoes, and was dangling a BMW key chain.

In short, they were a “bro” and a “ho”.

There are a lot of these people in my part of Orange County, California. The subprime mortgage industry, as it feeds off the desperation of strapped hicks all over the country, has created a lot of high-wage jobs for business school graduates with connections. For some reason a particular kind of person flourishes in this environment. The men are simultaneously degenerate and athletic, and spend money with abandon. The women are simultaneously degenerate and athletic, and are sexually available without much trouble. The result is a seaside Las Vegas dream of wealth, sex, and endless leisure that can be neatly summed up in the use of “party” as a verb.

As long as interest rates are low and the nation’s struggling classes are refinancing their mortgages for extra cash, this predatory class of surfer bankers can pull in very good money, as much as $30,000 to $60,000 a month in some cases. They’re almost all male, and they and their girlfriends share a set of values in which paying for sex is not a problem as long as the fees are high enough to make it look like the high life instead of a prostitution racket. Strip clubs, beach house weekends, Lake Havasu houseboat parties, and hot tub group sex fill their time.

The gods of these modern Beau Brummels are P. Diddy, Dennis Rodman, Kid Rock, and the rest of the MTV “bling bling” crew. Floating on a raft of money, eternally youthful, they ride in their Escalades from party to party, accompanied by a series of anonymous young women with spectacular bodies. Every bro has his ho, everything is for sale, and the cocaine and Dom Perignon can flow all night as long as everyone can show up to work the next day and screw a few more rural homeowners out of a few more points on the re-fi.

There’s another group of people I see at this coffeehouse regularly. On Thursday and Saturday nights, a similar group of sunburnt, slightly aging Hawaiian shirt-wearing men and leathery but curvaceous women shows up. They cluster outside the door of the coffeehouse drinking root beer and smoking. There’s lots of hugging and high-fiving. These are the local 12-step groups for drug and alcohol addicts. At some point, someone lost control of the BMW after a long night of Veuve-Clicquot, or stopped showing up at the mortgage office, or woke up covered in his own blood, and the party ended. Whether the judge told them to go or the doctor did, here they are.

And inevitably, interest rates will rise again, the money will move, and the easy money will leave the subprime mortgage business. A lot of those $30,000 a month jobs for well-connected partiers will vanish, as will the leased supercars and the beach houses. I hope the bro’s and their ho’s have a plan for that day, or we’ll be seeing a lot more of them on Thursdays and Saturdays.

These are canonical beliefs of executive types, which are not to be questioned, and which define their attitudes and behavior. Anyone with a title of Director or above in a company, and many business owners, subscribe to this dogma.

1. I am a member of a privileged caste. This status is permanent, and results from my having achieved a certain level of management.
2. My caste status entitles me to a large salary, generous retirement benefits, guaranteed bonus payments, stock options, and many perks paid for by the company. This is independent of my function or the quality of my work: I am simply granted these things because of Item 1.
3. I am not required to work. Work is an “implementation level” task. I decree policies, produce strategic concepts, review the work of others, and meet with other executives to agree broadly on things that will later be worked out in detail by lower castes.
4. It is not important that I possess intelligence, skill, or charm. I can misuse technology, murder spelling and grammar, and treat others poorly with impunity. My status is independent of any ability on my part to create things, accurately communicate, or interact appropriately with others.
5. If I command something it is not to be questioned by anyone outside the executive caste. Questions, corrections, or objections are insubordination.
6. The rules of my organization are made for my benefit and not for the benefit of the organization or any other people. I may ignore them but others must obey them.
7. I must only associate socially with other “executive quality” people.
8. I cannot hear bad news, detailed explanations of a situation, or technical briefings. I will blame those who bring me news I do not like. Anyone who gives me detail or technical explanations will be informed that I need something at the 100,000 foot level, and that I am a big picture person. If I become knowledgeable or know about things going wrong, I could lose my mana and become a worker bee.

What’s on your summer playlist? When the sun gets hot and the days get long and slow, my musical taste gets a bit more conservative. The music that goes well with an iced tea in the backyard on a July Saturday is a certain subset of the usual rotation here. My list includes:

• Brazilian jazz

• 60s Motown hits
• Generic “oldies” (usually I can’t stand this stuff)
• Classical piano, especially Satie and Mozart
• Older, slower ska (no 90s stuff please)
• Spanish guitar music

What’s your list? What’s summer music? I’m interested.

You know those phone calls you get, where there’s an awkward silence at first and then you hear a click and a call-center person says “Hello, may I speak to [mangled version of your name]“? That’s a call from a predictive dialing system.

A friend works at a major financial services company that has just put in such a system, from a bankrupt dot-com formerly known as Melita. The predictive dialer is a computer that sits at his desk. It calls people. As we’ll see below, it presents some problems.
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I spent a big chunk of the 1980s and 1990s in the San Fernando Valley. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I had to hump it over the hill on the RTD from West L.A. to North Hollywood to my job, which was at Laurel and Victory. The transfer point was Van Nuys and Victory. Since I worked at a newspaper, I had to stay as late as possible, and I ended up taking the last bus back over the pass more often than not.

One night I was there at about midnight, waiting for the last #560 to Westwood. The bus stop was in front of a shoe store with the appealing name of “Shoes for Sale”, a discount outlet that sold athletic shoes to the local gang members.

One of these guys, a stereotypical hairnet-and-white-T-shirt Mexican gangbanger, was waiting with me for the bus. He was peering in the shoe store window as I listened to my Walkman. Finally I noticed that he was trying to get my attention. I took off the headphones.

“Hey man,” he said, “come check this out.”

I tried to ignore him. I didn’t want to get rolled at the bus stop; this had happened before and it wasn’t fun. And this guy was a tough character for sure.

“No really, you got to see this. C’mere, man. ” He had an urgency to his voice and was looking pretty genuine. I decided to take the risk and walk over to him.

Cholo guy pointed into the shoe store.

“That is fucked-up man. Check that shit OUT.”

He was right. The display window was full of rats. Happy, playful rats. They were rushing about playfighting, crashing into things, and gnawing at the shoes in an ecstacy of rodential play. There were at least five of them that I could see immediately, and undoubtedly many more.

“I ain’t never buyin’ no shoes there, man,” said Cholo Guy. “That is just wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right, that’s a lot of rats. Really a lot of rats. That is seriously messed up.” We were both quiet and bonded a bit while watching the verminous riot inside Shoes for Sale.

Then the bus arrived and we both boarded, glad to be saved by the RTD from the Kingdom of the Rats.

My friend Mack and I used to work at a dot-com disaster in Hollywood. Sometimes we’d eat at a restaurant on Franklin Avenue we liked. It was a chicken restaurant with a Hitchcock theme called “Birds”. The food was good, the joke was better, and there was lots of cool Hitchcock decor, especially from the eponymous film. It may well still be there; I don’t go to Hollywood much.

One day Mack was sitting inside enjoying a late lunch. Outside on the patio was a gaggle of annoying yuppies sipping their chardonnay, comparing SUVs, chittering, chattering, and waving their beautiful hair. As he watched them, suddenly their happy polished smiles gave away to trepidation, anxiety, worry, and finally screaming panic. They leaped out of their chairs and hopped about, arms and legs jerking wildly like marionettes or seizure victims. Finally they fled down Franklin westward, shrieking and cavorting as if possessed by demons.

It was then that the sun caught the scene right and he saw that they were being pursued by a huge swarm of angry bees.

The best thing about college for me was the radio station. Not just for the usual reasons people enjoy college radio (shared coolness, access to free stuff, the magic of radio itself), but because it was a place to hang. Ever since then I’ve needed a hangout.

A hangout has certain features. It’s open long hours, or always. It is semi-public; maybe anyone can be there, but generally a known group is there. It’s a place where you can do something if you want, or do nothing. It should also be a place where you can have a function if you want, such as working there or helping out in some way. And it should be a place where arriving and leaving are easy, without a lot of explanation.
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